The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wainer, by Michael Shaara

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Title: Wainer

Author: Michael Shaara

Illustrator: ASHMAN

Release Date: May 3, 2010 [EBook #32230]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Wainer

By MICHAEL SHAARA

Illustrated by ASHMAN

[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction
April 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the
U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

[Sidenote: _Certainly, life has a meaning--though sometimes it takes a
lifetime to learn what it is._]

The man in the purple robe was too old to walk or stand. He was wheeled
upon a purple bench into the center of a marvelous room, where unhuman
beings whom we shall call "They" had gathered and waited. Because he was
such an old man, he commanded a great sum of respect, but he was nervous
before Them and spoke with apology, and sometimes with irritation,
because he could not understand what They were thinking and it worried
him.

Yet there was no one left like this old man. There was no one anywhere
who was as old--but that does not matter. Old men are important not for
what they have learned, but for whom they have known, and this old man
had known Wainer.

Therefore he spoke and told Them what he knew, and more that he did not
know he was telling. And They, who were not men, sat in silence and the
deepest affection, and listened....

* * * * *

William Wainer died and was forgotten (said the old man) much more than
a thousand years ago. I have heard it said that people are like waves,
rising and riding and crumbling, and if a wave fell once on a shore long
ago, then it left its mark on the beach and changed the shape of the
world, but is not remembered. That is true, except for the bigger waves.
There is nothing remarkable in Wainer's being forgotten then, because he
was not a big wave. In his own time, he