DIY History | Transcribe | Hevelin Fanzines | Acolyte, v. 2, issue 4, whole no. 8, Fall 1944 |

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Acolyte, v. 2, issue 4, whole no. 8, Fall 1944

tested his observations, he would regretfully have looked back at his discarded first hypothesis of freakishness - but in the end he would have had no choice: Ervool was indeed not evolved from man but from some reptilian ancestor, some reptile or reptilian creature no man of today ever saw, either in life or fossil.
This conclusion would not have amazed or annoyed Ervool. Every schoolboy of his race knew how their kind had branched, ages back, from a sombre reptilian stock, now almost extinct. Ervool himself belonged to a set of advanced thinkers who credited that original reptile stock with an intelligence and cultural level that more conservative and race-centric scientists denied. Ervool humously pretended to see in his own name traces of a reptiliansqueak approximated by a blur of consonants: "Lllrvvvl". But he seriously believed that the primal shaping of the great limestone caves in which all life now hid was the work of those reptiles whom some of his friends dismissed with the phrase "eldritch beasts". As he slowly ascended the great stair, resting at intervals, his imagination went back to the prehistoric, eon-distant days when it had finally become obvious that even the equatorial regions of earth were irrevocably unfit for any kind of life, when it had become obvious that no surface water could -- barring cosmic accident -- ever again be anything but ice. He dreamed of the time when reptile scientists, by means of cunning instruments, had located this set of deep limestone caverns and had patiently bored this shaft down to it. The steps up which he plodded might well be the work of his own kind, but not the shaft, surely not the shaft! All reason was against that view. His own race's whole history, known and fabled, had taken place in those dim caverns beneath; it must have been spawned there.
Ervool paused again for a little, panting, and smiled inwardly at paradox. He thought of the cosmology his primitive forebears had painfully imagined: a cosmology in which the universe was an infinite limestone solidity except for the cavern-system in which they lived. He thought of the difficulty they must have had in admitting the possibility even of other caverns. He thought of the ridicule that must have heaped on the first one who climbed a dangerous, half-choked shaft and brought back word of the terrible stars, of the active persecution of the stone-worshipping priests. He thought of the doubting wonder with which a later, scientific age had listened to the daring hypothesis that all life had originally burgeoned on the dizzy outside of the earth and had only recently sought the slower-chilling deeps, mysterious and dim with their phosphorescent vegetation. Now that daring hypothesis was a long established fact but -- thought Ervool, still smiling -- how little that tremendous fact meant to his people and how few of them ever climbed the restored shafts -- the terrible glittering stars!
The conceiving entire of the gigantic gulf of time lying between Ervool and our age is no proper task to set any hypothetical scientist, or even that almost fabulous end-product, Ervool. The multiplicity of species, the many times that cultures and other complexities had come to the fore, the near-extinction of all life when the sun dramatically shrank to a blazing dwarf star, the autumnal panorama of re-evolution and change as that bright dwarf burgeoned and imperceptibly cooled these are matters too infinite for mind, too tremendous for feeling.
One can only guess aghast at the number of non-human things that built their stony strongholds, waged their terrible wars, and wrought beauty in their mysterious times of peace.
One can only wonder -- as at the transcendant improbability, the ultimate miracle -- that Ervool resembled man as much as he did.
Had that brilliant e hypothetical scientist been also a great creative thinker he would long have wondered at that miracle of resemblance, and the longer he wondered the more he would have felt himself

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tested his observations, he would regretfully have looked back at his discarded first hypothesis of freakishness - but in the end he would have had no choice: Ervool was indeed not evolved from man but from some reptilian ancestor, some reptile or reptilian creature no man of today ever saw, either in life or fossil. This conclusion would not have amazed or annoyed Ervool. Every schoolboy of his race knew how their kind had branched, ages back, from a sombre reptilian stock, now almost extinct. Ervool himself belonged to a set of advanced thinkers who credited that original reptile stock with an intelligence and cultural level that more conservative and race-centric scientists denied. Ervool humously pretended to see in his own name traces of a reptiliansqueak approximated by a blur of consonants: "Lllrvvvl". But he seriously believed that the primal shaping of the great limestone caves in which all life now hid was the work of those reptiles whom some of his friends dismissed with the phrase "eldritch beasts". As he slowly ascended the great stair, resting at intervals, his imagination went back to the prehistoric, eon-distant days when it had finally become obvious that even the equatorial regions of earth were irrevocably unfit for any kind of life, when it had become obvious that no surface water could -- barring cosmic accident -- ever again be anything but ice. He dreamed of the time when reptile scientists, by means of cunning instruments, had located this set of deep limestone caverns and had patiently bored this shaft down to it. The steps up which he plodded might well be the work of his own kind, but not the shaft, surely not the shaft! All reason was against that view. His own race's whole history, known and fabled, had taken place in those dim caverns beneath; it must have been spawned there. Ervool paused again for a little, panting, and smiled inwardly at paradox. He thought of the cosmology his primitive forebears had painfully imagined: a cosmology in which the universe was an infinite limestone solidity except for the cavern-system in which they lived. He thought of the difficulty they must have had in admitting the possibility even of other caverns. He thought of the ridicule that must have heaped on the first one who climbed a dangerous, half-choked shaft and brought back word of the terrible stars, of the active persecution of the stone-worshipping priests. He thought of the doubting wonder with which a later, scientific age had listened to the daring hypothesis that all life had originally burgeoned on the dizzy outside of the earth and had only recently sought the slower-chilling deeps, mysterious and dim with their phosphorescent vegetation. Now that daring hypothesis was a long established fact but -- thought Ervool, still smiling -- how little that tremendous fact meant to his people and how few of them ever climbed the restored shafts -- the terrible glittering stars! The conceiving entire of the gigantic gulf of time lying between Ervool and our age is no proper task to set any hypothetical scientist, or even that almost fabulous end-product, Ervool. The multiplicity of species, the many times that cultures and other complexities had come to the fore, the near-extinction of all life when the sun dramatically shrank to a blazing dwarf star, the autumnal panorama of re-evolution and change as that bright dwarf burgeoned and imperceptibly cooled these are matters too infinite for mind, too tremendous for feeling. One can only guess aghast at the number of non-human things that built their stony strongholds, waged their terrible wars, and wrought beauty in their mysterious times of peace. One can only wonder -- as at the transcendant improbability, the ultimate miracle -- that Ervool resembled man as much as he did. Had that brilliant e hypothetical scientist been also a great creative thinker he would long have wondered at that miracle of resemblance, and the longer he wondered the more he would have felt himself