Leaves in the Wind

by A. G. Gardiner

His voice rose to a senile shriek.

"And all the time ... hee, hee! ... all the time he was making the Machine for me—me, Odin, me and my servants, the despots, the kings, the tyrants, the dictators, the enemies of men. I laughed ... hee, hee! ... I laughed as I saw his Machine growing vaster and vaster for the day of his doom, growing beyond his own comprehension, making him more and more the slave of itself, the fly on its gigantic wheel. What a willing servant is this Power we have made, he said. What a friend of Man. How wonderful we are to have created this Machine of Benevolence...

"And it was mine ... hee, hee! ... Mine. And when it was completed I handed it over to my servants. And the Machine of Benevolence became the Monster of Destruction. First one tyrant seized it and fell; then another and he fell. This white race got the Machine for a season, then another white race got it; then the yellow race. And they all perished ... hee, hee! ... They all perished.... And with every victory the Machine grew more deadly. All the gifts of the earth and all the labour of men went to feed its mighty hunger. It devoured its creators by thousands, by millions, by nations. It slew, it poisoned, it burned, it starved. The whole earth became a desolation....

"And now I own it all ... hee, hee! ... I and my sword. We own it all.... We and the Sphinx." His voice, which had grown strong with excitement, sank back to its infantile treble.

"And what was the meaning of it all?" I asked. "And what will you do with your victory?"

"The meaning ... the meaning ... I don't know.... I've come to ask the Sphinx. I've sat here for years, centuries ... oh, so long. But she says nothing—only looks out over the desert with that terrible calm, as though she knew the riddle but would never tell it.... Look ... look now.... Aren't her lips..."

His thin voice rose to a tremulous cry. The sword shook in his palsied hands. His rheumy eyes looked up at the image with a senile frenzy.

I looked up, too.... Yes, surely the lips were moving. They were about to open. I should hear at last the reading of the enigma of the strange beings who made a God that slew them.... The lips were open now ... there was a rattling in throat....

But as I waited for the words that were struggling into utterance there came a sudden wind, hot and blinding and thick with the dust of the desert. It blotted out the sun and darkened the vision of things. The Sphinx vanished in the swirling folds of the storm, the figure of the Man faded into the general gloom, and I was left alone in the midst of nothingness....