THE LAST SECRET
Meyer, Ernest L.
The Last Secret By ERNEST L. MEYER (WASHINGTON, D. C—Dr. Will Ogburn, professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, suggested before a joint Senate subcommittee that the nation break up and...
...It was dark as a tomb, and Ruffio stood motionless and alert...
...Ruffio and Justin sat on a rock trying to absorb a little warmth from a sun that hung in the sky, a wan, frail disc against the blue...
...Ruffio looked Justin straight in the face, and asked: "Until that time, for greater warmth, why can we not share the same cave...
...I have long lived alone...
...A feather of smoke curled upward and through the hole in the roof...
...But there is very little wood to burn...
...AND Ruffio and Justin, the last two men in all the shattered acres, preyed on the beasts and so somehow remained alive to roost in the ruins...
...And then, my father told me, the men of another land found a swifter way to make a thing of even more enormous power...
...Then the secret of making things from metal, and later a whole long list of secrets about strange magic called steam and electricity and airplanes and radio...
...They spiraled for a moment in the air that was bitter cold, and then they, too, were gone...
...Yet you have shown me the magic of the first secret...
...A few thin wisps of smoke rose from the hole in the mound...
...Then a small flame lighted the cavern dimly, and Ruffio noted that Justin was on his knees blowing into a heap of timber shavings, and that in one hand he held a piece of glistening rock, in the other a length of metal...
...A few mice near the entrance, alarmed at Justin's approach, scurried away and passed Ruffio in the dark...
...They stole from the sun, for it seemed that the stuff of the sun was the very stuff of the thing itself...
...It is as I suspected," thought Ruffio furiously...
...The huge saucer was pitted at many places with dark holes which were the entrances to tunnels and caverns, and prowling near the entrances were the things that had fashioned the holes: the snakes, the ground-hogs, the moles, the woodchucks, the gophers, the mice, the prairie owls...
...Then he saw a sudden spark of light, and heard a sound as of two hard things scraping, followed by the labored puffing and blowing of Justin's breath...
...These, or a few of them, living underground, had magically survived the great blast, and some of them continued to live, preying on each other...
...He stepped silently over the porcelain crust, around the stray piles and pillars of the ruins, and at last saw Justin enter the hole where he lived under a mound of girders and charred timbers...
...It would be good," Ruffio ruminated gloomily, "to find again the first secret, the "secret of fire...
...And Ruffio, hugging to himself the rags that were his clothes, grumbled: "This chill eats to my very bones, Justin...
...The first, he said, was the secret of fire, which made life easier...
...The plain before them and behind them had been scooped into a vast saucer crusted with a hard surface that had the sheen of porcelain...
...And they fashioned great stores of the thing, and they kept the secret, too, and the sun shrank...
...Poising his club, Ruffio crept stealthily forward...
...That was the last word my father told me before he thrust me deep into a tunnel he had built and went out to look anxiously at the sky...
...Ruffio picked up his heavy club which he used to knock over the beasts...
...Then we could warm our bones, and no longer eat the raw flesh of the beasts, which grows wearisome...
...Even so, it was a precious missile, this thing, and the men of our land kept the way of its making secret...
...Its half-light added bleakness to the desolate place where the two men sat...
...Very well then," Ruffio grumbled...
...Will Ogburn, professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, suggested before a joint Senate subcommittee that the nation break up and scatter its big cities as- a safeguard against atomic bomb attacks...
...I do not understand," Ruffio said, looking at the sun without blinking...
...It seems to me, though I was but a child in those times, that I have a memory of warm days, and some that were of great heat...
...Ruffio waited for a long moment, then walked forward into the entrance on tiptoes...
...It may be," said Justin vaguely...
...It was laborious'work, and slow, for they had to dig deep in faraway places for the rare stuff of which the thing was made, and erect vast buildings in which to fashion it...
...The second was the secret of the wheel, which made work more tolerable...
...NOW the sun had set and it was bitter cold as the two parted...
...RUFFIO hugged his bones silently, and after a moment Justin added: "My father called the thing 'the last secret.' He told me, too, of many other secrets men had learned in times long ago...
...Let it be good night...
...Could we not find the secret of fire, Justin...
...Later the mice stole back to the cavern entrance and played unmolested in the moonlight...
...United Press dispatch...
...In the last years of those times, he told me, men of our land fashioned a missile of prodigious power...
...Then a loose stone clattered under his foot, and Justin rose and whirled around to face him...
...And then the thing, the last secret of all, and the sun shrank, and the earth is as you see it...
...There was a short, narrow passage that seemed to open into a larger room with some sort of hole in its roof, for Ruffio could feel a breath of cold air on his cheek...
...IT was, by the Old Calendar long forgotten, midsummer of the year 1990...
...I prefer it," Justin murmured, averting his eyes...
...Oh, my friend, my excellent friend...
...But it was cold, though midsummer...
...Why do you live so distant from me...
...I had it from my father who was among the wise of his day," Justin went on...
...Ogburn cautioned that an international agreement to outlaw the atomic bomb might not endure...
...That is the truth," Justin nodded, "but that was before we stole from the sun to make it the sorry wafer that it is...
...But instead of turning toward his own shelter, he waited a moment and then cautiously followed Justin through the gathering dark...
...Out of the immensity of the plain arose here and there, sparsely and throwing crooked shadows, grotesque ruins which the people of yesterday might have recognized as a shattered factory chimney, the spire of a blasted church, the hanging, twisted girders of a bridge, and one wall of a great building whose paneless windows were black squares looking blindly at the empty horizon...
...If so, he said, "if we wait until the battle starts," it may be too late to disperse city populations...
Vol. 9 • November 1945 • No. 45
