The breeze didn't carry the page very far. It simply whisked it through
a convenient window, deposited it beneath a xixxix tree and then
returned to the hills to rest. But the choice of a xixxix tree is highly
significant and substantiates the malicious nature of the breeze's act.
If it had chosen a muu or a buxx tree instead, the Galactic Historian
might have found the page in the morning when he took his constitutional
through the university grounds.
However, since a xixxix tree was selected, no doubt whatever can remain
as to the breeze's basic motivation. Articles of a valuable nature just
aren't left beneath xixxix trees. Everybody knows that squixes live in
xixxix trees and everybody knows that squixes are collectors. They
collect all sorts of things, buttons and pins and twigs and
pebbles--anything at all, in fact, that isn't too big for them to pick
up and carry into their xixxix tree houses.
They have been called less kind things than collectors. Thieves, for
example, and scavengers. But collectors are what they really are.
Collecting fulfills a basic need in their mammalian makeup; the
possession of articles gives them a feeling of security. They love to
surround their little furry bodies with all sorts of odds and ends, and
their little arboreal houses are stuffed with everything you can think
of.
And they simply adore paper. They adore it because it has a practical as
well as a cultural value.
Specifically, they adore it because it is wonderful to make hammocks out
of.
When the two squixes in the xixxix tree saw the page drift to the
ground, they could hardly believe their eyes. They chittered excitedly
as they skittered down the trunk. The page had hardly stopped fluttering
before it was whisked aloft again, clenched in tiny squix fingers.
The squixes wasted no time. It had been a long while since the most
cherished of all collector's items had come their way and they needed a
new hammock badly. First, they tore the page into strips, then they
began to weave the strips together.
_--1456, Gut. Bi. pr.; 1492, Am. dis.; 1945, at. b. ex. Almgdo.; 1971,
mn. rchd._, they wove.
_--2004, Sir. rchd.; 2005-6, Sir.--E. wr.; 2042, Btlgs. rchd.; 2043-4,
Btlgs.--E. wr._
They wove and wove and wove.
_15,000, E. Emp. clpsd.; 15,038, E. dstryd.; Hist. E., end of._
It was a fine hammock, the best the two squixes had ever wove. But they
didn't sleep well that night. They twisted and turned and tossed, and
they dreamed the most fantastic dreams--
Which isn't particularly surprising, considering what they were sleeping
on. Sleeping on the history of Earth would be enough to give anybody
nightmares.
Even squixes.
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from _Fantastic Universe_ September 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
typographical errors have been corrected without note.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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