“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because they were used to it.”
“Quite. And that soon became the problem of these early city dwellers. It had taken man two hundred million years to evolve from a tree shrew, and he often came close to extinction. He had battled against every kind of danger and natural catastrophe just to stay alive. And then, in the mere blink of an eyelid, he had comfort and security. . . and specialisation. It happened much too fast. He couldn’t change the habits of millions of years in a single lifetime. So he kept reverting back to his older self — the hunter-warrior. That is why he went to war with his neighbours. It made him feel alive again.”
“But wasn’t he simply destroying everything he had fought for?”
“No. Because the need for comfort and security is even stronger than the need for excitement and adventure. We want security first, then adventure — not the other way round. Besides, mere war and excitement failed to satisfy his most powerful appetite — his intelligence. It was a deeper urge than the craving for excitement that led him to invent the hoe and the plough, the wheel and the sail. . .”
The words faded, and once again Niall found himself watching an inner-panorama of history and understanding it without the need for explanations. He saw the building of the first cities in Mesopotamia and Egypt and China, the rise of the warrior kings, the construction of stone temples and pyramids, the discovery of bronze, then of iron. He witnessed the rise and fall of empires: the Sumerians, the Egyptians, the Minoans, the Chaldeans and the Assyrians. He also witnessed cruelties that left him feeling shaken and physically sick. He was spared nothing of the destruction of cities and the torture and murder of their inhabitants. The steles of the Assyrians came to life, and he watched them flogging their prisoners, beheading them, burning them alive and impaling them on stakes. It made him burn with rage, and he watched the downfall and extinction of the Assyrian warlords with malicious satisfaction. But when it was over, he felt tainted by his own anger and hatred.
Then the scene changed to ancient Greece, and his disgust vanished as he witnessed the story of the rise of Hellenic civilisation, the birth of democracy and philosophy, the invention of the drama, the discovery of geometry and experimental science. Once again he experienced that sense of enormous excitement at the widening of man’s evolutionary horizons, and a sense of pride at belonging to the human species.
In spite of the soothing effects of the peace machine, the strain of absorbing so much knowledge was exhausting. While he was watching the story of the war between Athens and Sparta, the pictures began to blend together, and then dissolved into a dream. He woke a few hours later to find himself in darkness, and covered with a blanket. Through the window, he could see the dome of the cathedral outlined against the stars. And when he woke again it was already mid-morning, and he could hear the cry of the boatmen, and the vendors in the market place. Once again, he found the food machine and went through the automatic process of eating and drinking; food and drink seemed unimportant in comparison with his craving to learn the remainder of the story of mankind. Then he hurried back and lay down once more under the frosted glass screen.
This time, the dream showed him the story of ancient Rome. He witnessed the age of democratic government, the wars against Carthage, the rise of the dictator emperors: Marius and Sulla, Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero. Once again, he was appalled and morbidly fascinated by this endless tale of bloodshed and stupidity. The story of the birth of Christianity engendered a mood of hope; this doctrine of love and universal brotherhood seemed the most promising development since the birth of civilisation. The history of the Church’s rise to power under the emperor Constantine made him realise that his optimism had been premature. These Christians showed even less tolerance of their religious opponents than the Romans had done; they even murdered one another over obscure doctrinal points. After witnessing the downfall of Rome under the onslaught of the barbarians, Niall experienced a certain weary resignation. As the picture faded and he again became conscious of his surroundings, he asked:
“Does it go on like this? Is all human history so depressing?”
The voice inside him said: “Not entirely. The next thousand years are depressing because the Church tried to maintain its grip on the minds of men and killed anyone who tried to think for himself. But all that began to change at about the time Brunelleschi built the dome of that cathedral out there.” Niall sat up, massaging his eyes. “The change began with a series of great wars called the Crusades, when men began to travel instead of staying in the same place all the time. That broadened their minds, and they built ships and began to explore the world. Then a man called John Gooseflesh invented printing, and someone else learned how to make cheap paper, and suddenly there were millions of books. Then the Church began to lose the battle to prevent people from thinking for themselves. . .”
Niall’s fatigue suddenly vanished; he lay down again and closed his eyes.
“Show me.”
This new instalment of the tale was the most absorbing so far. He witnessed the story of the Reformation, then how an amateur astronomer named Copernicus realised that the earth travelled round the sun. He saw the invention of the telescope and the great battle between Galileo and Pope Paul V about whether the earth was really the centre of the universe. He witnessed the discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton and the foundation of the Royal Society, and watched with delight as the voice of the Age of Reason refused to be silenced by the threats of the Church. He began to feel that at last humanity had discovered the secret of peace and greatness. He even applauded the storming of the Bastille and the execution of Louis XVI — for surely the execution of a few tyrants was excusable in the name of freedom and the brotherhood of man?
The nineteenth century seemed to justify his excitement. With its invention of the railway, the steamship, the telegraph, electric light, it seemed to promise the emergence of a new kind of man. But even as these thoughts filled him with optimism — and perhaps as a response to his optimism — the scene changed to a panorama of ninteenth-century wars and revolutions: the Napoleonic wars, the revolutions of 1848, the Crimean war, the Indian mutiny, the American Civil war, the Franco-Prussian war, the Russo-Turkish war, and once again he felt himself slipping into depression. It seemed incredible that his own species should be capable of so much greatness and so much stupidity. But as he stirred restively, the voice said:
“Be patient for a while. There are still interesting developments to come.”
So Niall closed his eyes again, and tried to suspend his judgement as he witnessed the history of the twentieth century: the Great War, the Russian revolution, the rise of the Fascists and the Nazis, the Sino-Japanese war, the Second World War, the invention of the atomic and hydrogen bombs, and the uneasy armed peace that these brought about. The scale of human achievement continued to excite him: the aeroplane, radio and television, the computer, the exploration of space. But by now he had become aware of the basic pattern, and had begun to fear that nothing could change it. It seemed depressingly obvious that man had grown into an intellectual giant while remaining an emotional pygmy.
The voice read his thoughts. “Yes, it is true that the history of the human race seems to point towards catastrophe. But that is because I am forced to oversimplify. If you could spend six months here, studying everything in more detail, you would find more cause for hope. Man really has remarkable powers of adaptation.”
“But did they go on behaving so stupidly until the comet forced them to leave the earth?”
“For some time, yes. Although atomic weapons forced them to stop fighting world wars, they made up for it with hundreds of minor wars. And meanwhile, their crime rate became so appalling that people were forced to turn their houses into fortresses. In spite of all attempts to prevent it, the world’s population continued to rise until the cities were like overcrowded ant hills where it was dangerous to walk the streets. Early in the twenty-first century, they invented a weapon that made war more fascinating and devastating than ever — the Reaper. It was a kind of machine-gun that fired a beam of atomic energy, so that it could be used to cut down a tree or demolish a whole street full of houses. Man found it impossible to resist using anything so magnificently destructive; it became the favourite weapon of terrorists — people who try to achieve their political ends through violence — and governments found it practically impossible to control them.