The following subjects are generally considered fit subject matter for the historian:

Great Men: generals, leaders, visionaries. Little Men: class struggle, labor action, social movements. Resource pressures: famines, droughts, birth rates, plagues. Conflict: rebellions, battles, wars, skirmishes. Mass migrations. Science and technology. Literature and art. Geography and botany. Names, dates, places, facts. The effects of conscious desire on the phenomenal world. Human suffering.

The following subjects are generally not considered fit subject matter for the historian:

Dramatic irony. The problems of hermeneutics. Narrative technique: the double, the foil, the mirror. The difference between tragedy and pathos. The way that human memory often imbues the day before disaster strikes with a kind of urgent lambency; the way that minor details of conversations held on that day can remain in our minds for a long, long time. The way that time seems to slow when we are terrified or in despair. The awesome power of subconscious desire. Human suffering.

When you read what historians themselves have had to say about history, however, you are left with a very different impression. Historians have written about history:

That it is petrified imagination. That it is a compound of poetry and philosophy. That it is determined not by what happens in the skies, but by what takes place in the hearts of men. That it consists of a series of encounters between individual human beings and God. That it is largely concerned with arranging good entrances for people (and exits not so good). That it is philosophy teaching by example. That it is a cyclic poem written by Time upon the memories of man. That it is a dialogue between God and man-in-pilgrimage. That it is the myth, the true myth of man’s fall, made manifest in time. That it is that terrible mill in which sawdust rejoins sawdust...

Historians don’t really understand history any better than the rest of us.

•

 
Sunday
November 23, 1990
2:14 am
Saki Dormitory

Janis hauled herself slowly up the stairs of Saki dormitory, her breath rattling ominously somewhere down deep in her chest.

I really, she thought, I really need to see a doctor about that. That sounds so not good.

She stumbled somewhere near the third floor landing and caught herself on the railing just in time. They could have escorted me all the way back to my room, she thought wearily. I mean, they could have done that. It might have been nice. Especially since...

She frowned, then glanced down at the puncture mark in her arm. Yeah, she kind of figured that they must have done that. Drugged her. She kind of remembered that from the last time.

What time is it? she wondered. For that matter, what day is it?

She reached the top of the stairs, turned the corner, and blinked dully at her door, trying to remember if she had locked it when she had left that morning. She wasn’t sure, but she thought that she probably had. Then, she had been awfully tired and feeling kind of crappy, so maybe she hadn’t. At any rate, it wasn’t locked now. It wasn’t even closed all the way.

She swung her way through the door and gazed with resigned acceptance at the slit mattresses, the emptied drawers, the overturned bookcases. For some reason, it just didn’t surprise her. She felt somehow that she had known that the room was going to look like this, had known it since she had reached the top of the stairwell.

Someone was looking for Chris’ knife in here, she thought, and did not pause to wonder why she should think so. She gazed out the window and wondered just how long they’d questioned her this time. She had vague memories of being asked about all manner of things, but she couldn’t quite remember exactly what now; it was all fuzzed.

Oh well, she thought. It doesn’t really matter. I probably just told them everything I could about whatever it was they wanted to know. I guess I would have, if I were drugged.

Even as she thought this, though, it didn’t really seem right to her. She didn’t think that she had somehow.

I don’t really think that anyone could ever make me do anything I didn’t want to do, Janis thought. I feel that now.

She looked out of the window, where a few stars shone brightly through the branches of the big sycamore tree, and she thought:

I transcend history.

She glanced over at the phone on the wall and stared steadily at it, waiting. After a long moment, it rang. She walked over and picked it up.

“Hello Brittany,” she said.

There was silence on the other end of the line. Janis smiled.

“You ready to talk now?” she asked.

There was another long silence, then a shaky laugh.

“I...” Brittany began, then said: “Well. I suppose that that all depends, darling. Are you?”

Janis said nothing.

“Will you tell me what happened in Utah?” Brittany asked her.

Did I tell her that it was Utah? Janis wondered. She couldn’t remember. Not, she supposed, that it really mattered.

“Janis,” Brittany told her firmly, after a long silence. “This can’t only go one way, you know.”

Actually, Brittany? Janis thought. It can, you know. It really can. It can go any way I want it to go.

Then she shook her head.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Yeah, okay. I’ll tell you about Utah. Will you tell me what you’re so afraid of?”

“I’ll try.”

“It’s a breeding program,” Janis said then. “Isn’t it.”

“Not on the phone,” Brittany told her. “Meet me for breakfast. Tomorrow. Snack bar.”

“Snack bar?” Janis shook her head, wincing. “Brittany, I can’t eat the food at the snack bar. It’s disgusting. Fig and Bole?”

“Fig and Bole? Five dollar cinnamon toast? Well, all right, darling, but you’re paying.”

Janis smiled. “I think I can just about manage that,” she said. “What time?”

“Seven?”

“Seven? Jesus Christ, Brittany, I don’t get up that early. It’s the middle of the night now. And I’ve got this cold...” There was another long silence. Janis sighed. “Make it eight,” she said. “All right? Isn’t that early enough for you? Don’t you ever sleep?”

“Not much,” whispered Brittany, and she sounded so miserable for a moment there that Janis blinked. “Not lately.”

“Okay, eight,” agreed Janis. “Look, just relax, will you? Everything’s going to be fine. We’ll sit down with this, and we’ll figure it all out.”

“I do admire your optimism, darling.” Brittany hung up. Janis smiled and replaced her own receiver. Then she glanced around her room and sighed.

I am just so sick of this, she thought. So very, very sick of it. I mean, look at this mess! I have to sleep in this?

“Oh, just leave me alone already,” she cried, suddenly simply exasperated beyond all endurance. “Just leave me alone, can’t you?” She scowled out the window at the universe at large. “I mean it,” she said. “I am sick of this shit. Why don’t you go and bother somebody else for a change?”

She flung herself face down on Jill’s mattress, which seemed to be slightly less ripped apart than her own, and lay there for a few moments. Then she sighed and rolled over to begin digging through the wreckage for her alarm clock. She found it dead and buried under a pile of books, dug a bit further until she found the end of the power cord, and plugged it back in, hoping that whoever had been in here hadn’t actually broken the damned thing. But no, it still worked. It blinked midnight at her, over and over and over again.

Damn, she thought. I should have asked Brittany what time it was. She thought for a moment, then crawled across the room for her backpack. She zipped open the smaller pocket, spared a quick glance at the unopened envelope, shook her head firmly, and reached past it, rummaging, until she found the watch that she had kept in there ever since the wristband had broken a couple of days before. She glanced at it and winced at the time.

Jesus, Janis thought, resetting her clock. They kept me there, asking me questions, for ten whole hours? Those total assholes.

She sighed and shoved her watch back into her backpack, and then set her alarm to wake her up at twenty minutes to eight.

Twenty minutes to eight.

Utah time.

•

 
5:27 am
6 Elm Street
Herschberg, Minnesota

“It’s about time. I expected you days ago. What’s the holdup been?

“Yeah? Well, does he know that her conditioning’s already started to wear off? Jesus Christ, he told me it was timed so it wouldn’t happen while she was still in Herschberg. It’s—

“Uh-huh. Well, it is wearing off, and fast. She’s started projecting. One of my people saw her do it, and now he won’t shut up about it. That’s not so good for me, okay? I mean, what the fuck am I supposed to tell him? This is a big problem for me. So—

“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Right. Well, if you want her, you’d better take her soon, ‘cause—

“No. No, don’t snatch her out of her dorm room. For God’s sake...

“Uh-huh. Yeah. You guys have any idea how you stand out in a place like this? I’ve already got Kent State waiting to happen here, I don’t need hysterical rumors about foreigners creeping around campus in the dead of—

“Kent State? It was...oh, never mind. Forget that. Just...

“I understand that. Okay, listen. She’ll be at the Fig and Bole tomorrow morning. That’s a diner downtown. It’s the only one, you can’t miss it.

“It’s right in the center of town, okay? It’s the only restaurant anywhere near the center of town. You really can’t miss it. She’s meeting a friend for breakfast at eight, so she should be leaving there around eight-thirty, nine, maybe even more like ten. Just take her on her way home. That way you don’t even have to get out of the van, right?

“Well, Jesus Christ, how should I know? You guys had better have some serious protections, though, ‘cause if she’s started this shit up days ahead of schedule...

“Uh-huh. Yeah, well, I sure hope you know what you’re doing. Because I’m telling you, I’ve heard about people with her talents before. They’re dangerous.

“Yeah, fine, if you say so. Tell the General he really fucking owes me one.”

•

 
2:20 am
Hiawatha Towers

Brittany put the receiver back down in its cradle and thought about the strange double-click that had been on the line right before Janis had picked up. I wonder if she knows that her line is tapped, she thought. Perhaps she would tell her, tomorrow.

She winced in the glare of the light blazing from the hundred-watt bulbs screwed into every light socket in her living room. Power cords snaked across the floor; every socket in the apartment was filled with a plug from one of the lamps she had purchased that afternoon. Something moved at the corner of her vision, a barely perceptible flicker of the shadows behind the couch. She narrowed her eyes and reached out for the neck of a desk lamp, twisting it around to aim its beam of light. The shadow disappeared, and she smiled tautly.

“Do what you like with poor Christian, darlings,” she said softly. “Entertain yourselves all you like. Be my guest.”

She glanced up at the clock, and sighed in relief.

“I don’t need friends,” she snarled, as she slammed open her medicine bottle. “I don’t need friends any more than I need you.” She shook out a handful of pills, stared at them, then put all but one back in the bottle and closed it. She tossed back her pill, swallowed hard. “I don’t need anything,” she whispered.

Brittany walked slowly into the bedroom, similarly ablaze with incandescent light, set her alarm in the optimistic hope that she might actually manage to fall asleep, and then sat on the edge of her bed, glancing nervously at the vast darkness of the window. She thought a moment, then stood up and crossed to the closet, flipped through the clothing hanging there until she found what she wanted. She reached into the pocket of the costume she had worn to last year’s Wodehouse Formal and brought out the giant wooden cross. She eyed it for a moment, then slipped it around her neck.

“Trouble me no more,” she muttered. She returned to the window and stood before it, looking out. It was clear, and the sky was filled with stars. She smiled faintly, watching them, then quickly shook her head.

“Trouble me no more,” she whispered, and with a sudden abrupt gesture, yanked the curtains shut.

She returned to her bed, took off her glasses, and rested them on the bedside table. Then she put on her eyeshades, slipped the earphones of her white noise generator over her head, and went to sleep, smiling.

•

Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

—TS Eliot, “Gerontion”

•

Events happen by chance, but history does not. History is the work of historians, and historians prefer to look for meaning.

So history says that when you sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind; and history warns that wishes are always granted in the nastiest possible way; and history claims that subconscious desires can manifest themselves in the physical world; and history insists that there are no coincidences; and history believes in the power of Nemesis. History persists in telling us these things, even though we all know that they are pure and utter nonsense.

In 1941, the editors of Reader’s Digest asked the historian Charles A. Beard if he could summarize the lessons of history in a short book. He told them that he could do it in four short sentences:

1. Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad with power.
2. The mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly small.
3. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs.
4. When it gets dark enough, you can see all the stars.

 
History is not tragedy.

But historians think that it is.

•

The Martian stands before his picture window and watches the stars, and he thinks about what the people of this planet have written about history. And he thinks:

History is the story of Great Men. History is the story of little men. It is the study of vast social forces. It is formed by the actions of the individual; it is beyond the control of the individual; it is the meeting of character and circumstance. It is the essence of innumerable biographies. People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

History is concerned with predicting; it is not concerned with predicting. It is cyclic, it is linear, it is neither. It repeats itself; it never repeats itself; it sometimes repeats itself; it repeats itself, yes, but only in cunning disguise. History is full of surprises.

History is a confused heap of facts, a vast Mississippi of falsehood, a fable agreed upon. It is nothing but a set of lies, a series of accepted judgments, a distillation of rumor. It is an account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools. History is bunk.

History has no law, any more than a kaleidoscope. It consists of a series of swindles. It sometimes indulges in jokes of questionable taste. It is too serious a subject to be left to historians.

History is a kind of sacred writing. It is a pattern of timeless moments, the one unchanging truth, the progress of thought. It is a vision of the universe expressed in four dimensions. It is the development of the spirit in time.

History is the story of hungry men in search of food. It is the sad result of each man looking out for himself. It marches on the stomachs of statesmen. It is too criminal a subject to be a fit thing to teach to children.

History is largely the glorification of the iniquities of the triumphant. It is nothing but a series of horrors, a black and gory business, a bath of blood. It is no more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind. The past is a bucket of ashes, and if you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever. History is a narrative of human misery.

History is a priori amoral, and has no conscience. To the defeated it says Alas, but cannot help or pardon. It provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong. It is just about the most cruel of all goddesses. History is—

History is—

History is—

The Martian shakes his head and wishes that he had thought to buy himself a television set. He looks out of his window and tries to pretend that he does not know just how many people will die in Iraq over the course of the next ten years.

Knowledge is not power, he thinks.

Knowledge is not power.   Knowledge is not power.   Knowledge is not power.

•

History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
—James Joyce, Ulysses

•

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