The Project Gutenberg eBook of Palimpsest

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Palimpsest

Author: Roger D. Aycock

Illustrator: Herman B. Vestal

Release date: December 8, 2020 [eBook #63990]

Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63990

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PALIMPSEST ***

PALIMPSEST

By ROGER DEE

Care to sire a brand new race? Then

get aboard the Terra IV, only spaceship

to escape demolished Earth, and enter

the new-born Venusian sweepstakes.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

Planet Stories November 1951.

Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that

the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The first Venusian ship to reach Earth found a single isolated tribe of human beings roving the bushlands of a large island in the southern hemisphere. The Earthmen were without exception dark of skin and eye, and their hair, which was jet-black, was as kinky as koola wool. All were backward to the point of savagery, fleeing in superstitious terror before every attempt at communication.

Val Conna and his crew—nine tall young men, fair-skinned and lordly and alike enough to have been brothers—made an exhaustive search that carefully bypassed ruined cities still radioactive past the safety point, and after ten days abandoned their quest in disappointment.

"I find no resemblance between this remnant of Earth's people and ourselves," announced Mach Bren, expedition anthropologist, "except a bipedal structure which only bears out our theory of like species developing on like worlds, and this similarity is sharply negated by impossible divergence in racial characteristics. Neither people could have changed so greatly during the four thousand years we know our culture has existed on Venus, and therefore it is obvious that we did not stem from Earthmen nor they from us."

There was no argument.

"Then the puzzle of our origin is still unsolved," said Val Conna, and gave the order to blast-off. So they left Earth for home, already planning further expeditions to the outer planets in search of the world of their birth....

Somehow Hanlon had wormed his way into their quarters and was waiting when Geddes and Lowe and Hovic, crew of the Terra IV, returned to base from their final interview with the press. Hanlon had been drunk for days, and was in pitiable condition. His hand shook violently and the bloodshot shine of his eyes was like a reflection to the fiery red of his unkempt hair.

"I had to say good-bye before the blast-off," he said, with a sorry attempt at his old assurance. "After all, I was one of you until a couple of months ago, and I ... well, I wanted to wish you luck. I wish I were going to Venus with you."

They considered him without particular emotion, three dark, compact men in their late twenties, calm with the nerveless poise of long indoctrination and utterly sure of themselves. Hovic, bluntest of the three, ignored Hanlon and went directly to the bathroom to brush his teeth.

"You lost your chance when you flunked training, Hanlon," Geddes said. "Just now you're a definite irritant, and we can't afford being upset just before the flight. You'll have to go."

Hanlon avoided his eyes, looking thoroughly hangdog and disreputable. He needed a shave badly and his careless clothing had been slept in more than once.

"I could have borne the surgical operations," he said. "A man's appendix and tonsils and teeth can be dangerous in space or on another planet where he can't get medical attention—but their damned psycho-conditioning was too much. How could I know what I'd really be like when those cold-blooded Foundation specialists got through with me?"

"It takes a specially adapted kind of man to beat space," Geddes pointed out patiently. "We can't risk neurosis out there, any more than we can risk appendicitis or abscessed teeth. The Foundation learned a lot from those first three failures, Hanlon. This time it's not repeating its old errors."

Hovic came out of the bathroom, replacing his dentures. He was the heaviest of the crew, a muscular Slav with the unimaginative man's natural directness. "You're washed up, Hanlon. Why don't you get out and leave us alone?"

At the door Hanlon hesitated, his face averted. "You'll be blasting off in another six hours, leaving everything behind. You will be heroes when you come back and you'll be rich...."

Geddes felt his lip curling. "But right now we've no use for our spare credits, is that it? You'd like to make a last touch before we go, and if we don't come back the debt won't worry you, Hanlon."

Lowe came between them, digging out his wallet. He was a slender, sensitive sort, the only one of the three who had been really friendly with Hanlon before the Irishman's congenital wildness led to his discharge.

"Let it go, Ged. What do a few credits mean to us now?"

He emptied his wallet, dropping yellow notes into Hanlon's ready hands. After a moment Geddes followed suit, but Hovic stood fast.

"He can stay sober for my part," Hovic growled. "Let him go back to his gambling friends and his wenches if he wants a handout."

Hanlon pocketed his alms and grinned at Geddes, the hangdog look melting before his old recklessness. "Keep a close eye on my pal Hovic, Ged. Ten to one he cracks up on you at null-area and finishes the trip under hypnol."

They forgot him the instant he was gone, turning to their last-minute packing, laying out the heavy coveralls they would wear during the flight, shaving and showering before their final nap.

In the shower, Geddes caught Lowe fingering the pale scar of his appendectomy and frowning thoughtfully. Without his dentures Lowe looked older and uncertain and somehow shrunken, and in spite of his conditioned calm Geddes felt a cold stirring of alarm.

"Forget Hanlon's carping," he said. He punched Lowe in the ribs, trying to be jocular. "Those Foundation medics know what they're about. Come on, we've got to get our beauty sleep before the jumpoff."

When they awoke three hours later and dressed for the flight they found that Hanlon had paid them a second visit and had stolen all three of their wrist chronometers, expensive instruments easily negotiable for their weight in platinum.

"Cheap at the price," said Geddes, and shrugged away the loss with conditioned equanimity. Lowe had no comment. Only Hovic grumbled.

"Those chronos will keep him in Irish whiskey for weeks," he said. "I hope the louse drinks himself to death on it."

On that note they went down to the Foundation staff car that waited to take them to the launching site—three calm, resolute young men, serenely confident and prepared for anything.

They arrived at dusk, just as the last supply drum was being hoisted into the vertical bronze spindle of the Terra IV. They went up the tall personnel ladder, undisturbed by the actinic lightnings of photographers' flash-bulbs, and vanished one at a time into the belly of the ship that was finally to bridge the emptiness between Earth and Venus. They sealed the port, checked the instrument gauges and the medicine cabinet with its hypnol equipment, and strapped themselves down on jointed pneumatic acceleration couches.

A red-glowing bulb on the instrument panel turned amber and then green. Geddes pressed the firing button....

Weight bore them down like a giant hand. They were not disturbed. Inured to acceleration and knowing the exact instant when their discomfort must cease. They waited patiently, eyes closed, blackout fended off by past conditioning in centrifuges and endless sessions of psychological preparation.

They were free of Earth's atmosphere in a matter of minutes. At the end of an hour the chemical jets cut out and atomic propulsors took over, shoving the Terra IV on at a lessened acceleration that would bring her to Venus, allowing for orbital drift corrections, in exactly twenty-seven days.

Communicating with the Foundation later was in theory a simple matter of narrow-beam linkage. The Terra I had proved that in 1969, twenty-nine years before, when frozen fuel lines sent her drifting derelict into space. The catch was that the atomic drive with its monstrous din of interference must be shut off before the radio could operate.

It was eight days before null-area was reached, but long before that time—on the second day out, to be exact—the Terra IV's first emergency struck.

Lowe, making a routine check of supply crates lashed to bulkhead eye-bolts in the hold, heard a frantic hammering that originated, not from the outside hull as his first startled fancy had it, but from inside an airtight drum stenciled "FILM."

He called Geddes and Hovic, more for moral support than for assistance, and together they ripped open the drum. Inside they found Hanlon, unconscious upon a litter of food tins and exhausted oxygen flasks.

There was also a whiskey bottle among the ruck. Hanlon, true to form, was very drunk.

They carried Hanlon out of the hold and strapped him into the radio chair, a position not to be used for another six days. They clamped an oxygen mask over his purpled face and fed him intravenously, and finally his impossibly resilient constitution threw off the effects of acceleration, Irish whiskey and near-asphyxiation.

He laughed in their faces when they asked why he had stowed away.

"I'm dodging the draft," he said. "There's going to be another war any day now—the last one."

Hanlon was quite sane in spite of the punishment he had taken at blast-off and later in the stifling prison of his hideout, and his prophecy shook them more than they dared admit.

"It's been coming to a head for months," he said. "They wouldn't have told you at the Foundation, because they didn't want you distracted from training, but the bombs will be dropping before we reach Venus. You'll see when you get the radio working."

They kept Hanlon strapped to the radio couch, knowing better than to trust him, giving him temporary freedom for the physical necessities only when all three were on hand to guard him. They made their astronomical readings and orbital corrections as their instructions prescribed, concealing even from each other their eagerness for the day when the atomic uproar of the propulsors could be cut and they could assure themselves via tight-beam that Hanlon was wrong.

They spoke little among themselves, but Hanlon talked incessantly, chafing against his bonds and lapsing periodically into near-delirium until his first insistent craving for alcohol wore off. Later he set himself to assess their chances of landing safely on Venus, ignoring after his headlong fashion everything that had been taught him before his discharge from the Foundation.

"The Terra I missed, back in 1969," he said once. "The Foundation picked up her signals clear out past Jupiter when she went derelict. They never did quite prove that the Terra II was lost in 1980. The boys at Palomar claimed that her fuel pile went up just outside Venus' atmosphere, but they didn't have time for a spectroanalysis. It could have been an electrical discharge instead—there's bound to be a hell of a difference in potential between worlds, or between a space-irradiated ship and a planet as close to the sun as Venus."

They tried to ignore his arguments, resisting the thought that after all their preparation they might not be the first to set foot on the new world. Too, they could not lay claim to Venus as a Foundation possession if the Terra II had landed first. She had been a privately owned ship, manned, along with his family, by a reckless and fabulously rich Irish misogynist named Sean Connors.

The Terra III, which was built by the Foundation but manned by Army personnel, made the jump in 1991, and fell pilotless into the sun when her crew mutinied against their single officer.

And if Hanlon had guessed right, the Terra IV in 1998 might be the last.

They endured his theorizing until even their conditioned calm wore thin, and silenced him finally by threatening to put him under hypnol for the remainder of the trip. Hanlon lapsed into sullen silence and worked secretively at his bonds. The situation stagnated endlessly until the eight-day acceleration period was up, when they released Hanlon from his couch in order to use the radio.

In their eagerness to make contact with Earth they neglected to bind Hanlon again, which was a mistake, since he had not been conditioned as they had against the weird physiological reaction to weightlessness that followed the cutting of the drive.

To Hanlon it was like being dumped suddenly into a bottomless shaft down which he fell endlessly. His heart came into his throat, his ears roared, the instinctive fear of falling inherited from arboreal ancestors knotted his stomach with terror and drove out all reason.

"I'm falling!" he screamed, and snatched at a guide-rail. "Falling...."

Disoriented mechano-controls reacted wildly, refusing him balance, and he smashed into a bulkhead. Geddes and Lowe tackled him while Hovic tried to fend all three gyrating bodies from the instrument board, but Hanlon was not to be quieted. He screamed and threshed like a maniac, his limbs jerking with spastic overcompensation to every movement.

They pinned him down finally and shot enough hypnol into him to keep him unconscious for days. They left him floating limply with his belt snapped to a bulkhead ring and turned their attention to the tight-beam communicator, coddling into intelligibility the first blurred signal that reached them from Earth.

It was as well that Hanlon was not conscious, since his prophecy was fulfilled to the letter. On Earth, war had come—and gone.

They never picked up more than that single dying signal, but before it flickered out they understood that the cataclysm had been atomic, planet-wide, and final. And when that last wavering link with Earth was gone they looked at each other palely over the dead radio and felt the impossible realization of racial extinction rising up like madness behind the psycho-blocks of their carefully-conditioned sanity.

"So Hanlon was right, after all," Lowe said, and choked on the words.

They found nothing to say after that until the impressed urgency of their mission reasserted itself and they turned back to the job at hand. There was still Venus....

They did not rouse Hanlon from his hypnol stupor until the Terra IV fell into her spiral orbit for planetfall. Geddes broke the news to him then, steeling himself against Hanlon's biting irony.

"So you were right," Geddes finished baldly. "Earth is done for. Dead." He was thinking at the moment in terms of cities and governments and cultures, and the Irishman's reaction was sharply disconcerting.

"Done for?" Hanlon said, and hid his face in his hands. "God—all the little people!"

He was so quiet after that that the others, busy with the precarious business of landing, forgot him. He was still silent when the Terra IV dipped into the first milky mists of atmosphere and a sudden great blaze of white fire lashed up from the planet below and struck her with the crash of a million thunderbolts.

The Terra IV staggered, rolled half over and righted herself with a thin scream of straining gyros. The atomic propulsors faltered, recovered and drove them on into the roiling mists.

"Static charge," Geddes heard himself saying flatly. "So Hanlon was right again. It would have looked like a fuel pile letting go, if anybody were left on Earth to see it."

There was, miraculously, no serious damage. They brought the ship down, stern first, upon the waiting breast of Venus.

"The Silver Planet," Lowe said in the sudden quiet. "It was to have been the New Earth, remember?"

It was not until then that they learned the reason for Hanlon's quiet. Under cover of the landing he had plundered the supply cabinet for a plastobottle of medicinal alcohol, and was far into the process of drinking himself blind.

He cursed them thickly when they took the bottle from him. "Go out and claim your planet, you synthetic heroes. I don't want any part of it. I wish to hell I'd stayed on Earth."

They went, prompted by a conditioning that fell just short of posthypnotic suggestion, but this time they did not make the mistake of leaving their stowaway free. They overpowered the raging Hanlon and strapped him to the radio couch again before they put on their airsuits and went outside.

They climbed down the long personnel ladder and stood together on alien soil, feeling the brief thrill of accomplishment anticipated and allowed for by their Foundation mentors. But their elation was short-lived. They remembered what had happened to Earth and that there was no going home again, and there remained only the dreary routine of exploring a world that would never be used.

The ship had landed beside a clear, shallow river, a sluggish tributary feeding a larger river that emptied in the distance into a steaming, horizon-bound sea. The sky above was a smooth silver shell, with a vast circular rainbow surrounding the spot where Sol hid behind miles of vapor-laden air. The terrain undulated, closely turfed and dotted with wooded knolls, from the river upward to a low line of foothills that guarded a purple range of mountains beyond. Between the ship and the hills, undisturbed by the uproar of the Terra IV's landing, a scattered herd of fat, piebald creatures grazed comfortably.

They set about their business methodically, filling their little sterilized boxes with samples of air and soil and vegetation. Lowe went down to the edge of the shallow river and drew a bottle full of water, leaving behind him in the mud great shapeless tracks that looked more like the spoor of a mailed monster than of a man.

He brought it back to Geddes and Hovic, and the three of them stood with their prizes in their hands and looked at each other dumbly.

"Why do we have to go on with this?" Lowe asked. "Why don't we just go into the ship and push the pile up to critical mass and go up with it? What's the use?"

They were trying to think of an answer when they saw the boat coming across the river—a clumsy thing jerry-rigged from salvaged sheets of alloy, rowed by two women who were unmistakably human. Both women were dressed in brief utilitarian garments fashioned from pale green parachute silk. Their bare arms flashed white in the silver sunlight. Their red hair blew long and free in the wind.

Hovic found his tongue first. "Hanlon was right again. The Connors brought the Terra II down safely after all!"

The makeshift boat touched shore. The girl at the bow stood up, cradling an out-moded blast rifle in her arms.

"Throw away your weapons," she called peremptorily. "And take off those stupid airsuits. We'll have a look at the kind of men you are before you're welcomed to our planet!"

They discarded their belt guns gladly and shucked off the clumsy airsuits, breathing the warm air with the relief of men suddenly awakened from nightmare. They went down to the water's edge with the feeling of destiny upon them.

In the boat, their first shock was the knowledge that they were not guests, but prisoners. The two women retreated warily to the stern, significantly holding the blast rifle ready. Geddes and Hovic rowed. Lowe tried patiently for conversation.

He learned little except the bare fact of their presence. The girl with the rifle was Myrna Connors, and her sister was named Glenna. Their mother and an older brother had been killed in the landing crash of the Terra II, and Sean Connors himself, a hopeless paraplegic from the same catastrophe, waited at the camp for his daughters to return. Both women were under thirty, handsome in an elemental fashion, patently hostile and utterly without feminine restraint of manner.

They listened without comment, either uninterested or uncaring, to Lowe's account of what had happened to Earth. Neither of them, Geddes thought, could have been more than seven or eight years old when the Terra II crashed. They had seen no human being except their father for eighteen years and they felt no compassion for a world they had all but forgotten.

They reached the Connors' camp in mid-afternoon, when the solar halo was just touching the western horizon. They were on the higher ground of the foothills now, where the air was cooler and the few open swales were carpeted with fragrant, butter-yellow little flowers. The camp itself was a primitive thing, a hundred-foot stockade of wooden stakes driven Kaffir-wise into the soft soil to enclose three flimsy, thatch-roofed huts.

Myrna Connors held them with her blast rifle outside the central hut while her sister went in. There was a brief murmur of voices, the girl's mingling with a man's hoarser muttering. When Glenna came out again her attitude had altered indefinably, and when she looked the three men over her eyes held an odd speculation.

"Father will see you now," she said. "Don't argue with him. He's very weak, and argument upsets him."

They found Sean Connors propped upon a ragged couch made from a salvaged acceleration chair, a frail and twisted old man with a bald, freckled scalp and a wild tangle of bristling red beard. The piercing blue stare he turned upon them had the unnatural heat of a mind brooding long past the point of safety.

"So they killed themselves off," he whispered, and made a coughing sound that might have been laughter. "And you're the best they could send to keep the race going."

He blinked angrily when Geddes tried to speak. "Don't argue—why else do you think you were sent here, with Earth an ash heap behind you? But there's one too many of you. You'll have to draw lots."

He flew into a senile rage when they stood silent, and they saw that he was wholly obsessed by the idea. "Would you argue with Fate, you fools? Or did they send me a crew of unnaturals, with no use for women?"

He went into a fit of coughing, choking on his own fury. When they went out again he had subsided into a querulous muttering, the vacant babble of his voice lost in his tangled beard.

The two women were waiting outside. Myrna Connors had put aside her rifle and her stare had taken on some of her sister's brazen speculation.

"Father's right," she said. "Glenna and I have talked it over, and there's something about the three of you that makes you too much alike for a choice. You'll have to draw lots."

"You'd settle it like that?" Hovic demanded incredulously. "You'd have us just toss a coin, or draw straws?"

She bent her head toward the hut to listen to the old man's ravings. "Father won't live longer than another month or two. After that, what else is there? What difference does it make?"

They stood there blankly while the prismatic solar halo slipped down to the vague, far skyline. A cool wind sprang up, heavy with the smell of the yellow turf-flowers, and somewhere on the plains below the piebald grazers hooted at each other with a sound like the muted lowing of doves.

"You're right, of course," Geddes said. "We've got the race to think of, as well as ourselves. We'll draw lots."

They moved away to the compound wall, leaving the women to stare after them with open impatience. Geddes took up a dead twig and broke it into three pieces, two long and one short.

"There's more to it than this," he said, keeping his voice down. "Regardless of our opinions. And our opinions aren't what they would be if we hadn't been so thoroughly conditioned to—"

"You forgot something, Ged," Hovic cut in. "What about Hanlon?"

"I haven't forgotten Hanlon," Geddes said. "That's why I wanted to talk to you in private. Because we've been given a chance, by a miracle, to start over again from scratch, this time with knowledge enough not to make the old deadly mistakes. We're stable, and Hanlon isn't—that's why the Foundation chose us and rejected him. And we can't take the chance of having Hanlon cutting in here with his carping hedonism and his way with women, don't you see? We can't risk letting a wild strain like his into the new race. It isn't going to be easy, because we're conditioned against personal violence, but we've got to get rid of Hanlon."

They stared at him, digesting the idea.

"It doesn't have to be violent," Geddes argued. "He's under hypnol already. We've only to keep him that way."

Lowe shook his head. "I couldn't do it, Ged. I couldn't force myself to it."

Hovic was tougher. "It's the only way. Hanlon begged a handout from us and then stole our chronos to smuggle himself here. He'd never let us alone. He'd make such trouble that we'd have to kill him in the end. Why not now, when it's easier?"

"Then it's settled," Geddes said. "Two of us, the winners, stay here. The loser goes back to the ship and to Hanlon. Ready?"

They nodded. Geddes held out his closed fist, the tips of his twigs barely showing.

Lowe, his underlip bitten palely between even dentures, drew the first long straw. Hovic drew the other. Geddes opened his hand and stared down at the short twig on his palm. Somehow it had not seemed possible that he should lose; it was like death, a thing that happened only to others.

"Good enough," he said. "After all it was my idea, wasn't it?"

He moved away with the twig still clutched in his hand. By nightfall he had retraced his way to the river and the Terra IV.

He was sitting on the dew-wet turf with his back against the personnel ladder when he heard them coming. A cone of light fanned into the darkness from the open port above him, poking a yellow finger into the mists and shedding a diffuse glow that reached to the river below.

Hanlon lay on the grass beside him, shaved and bathed and dressed in clean shorts and singlet. He had eaten enormously after Geddes woke him from the hypnol, and under the tedium of their waiting he had dozed off, his chest rising and falling in the even rhythm of sleep.

Hovic and Lowe splashed through the water and came up out of the darkness, their hair streaming, eyes shining whitely in pinched faces. They were muddy and dirty—and beaten.

"You didn't do it," Hovic said hoarsely when he saw Hanlon. "Thank Heaven for that. How did you guess?"

"I've sat here all night, thinking about it," Geddes said. "I thought about the two of you up there claiming your rights as winners, and I should have gotten a vicarious excitement out of it. But I didn't, and finally I knew why. They threw you out, didn't they?"

They avoided his eyes. "It was awful," Lowe said miserably. "They were—furious. I wanted to die."

"So Hanlon was right again," Geddes said. "Doesn't that mean something to you, that he was right every time? He knew instinctively from the start that a man's natural belligerence springs directly from his sex, and that the Foundation wouldn't risk its making trouble among us on the trip. So they—eliminated it. That's why I brought Hanlon out of hypnol, because they hadn't gotten that far with him before he washed out. Because he is our last hope of keeping the race alive."

The three of them stood and watched the play of dreams across Hanlon's sleeping face with something like awe in their eyes.

"I was just wondering," Lowe said, "if something like this may have happened before? If the whole thing may not be like one of those old parchment writings the archaeologists dig up, where an earlier story has been erased and a newer one written over it? A palimpsest, I think it's called.... How do we know where we came from, in the beginning?"

Geddes stooped and shook Hanlon awake. "You'll find the boat by the river," he said. "You're starting out fresh with a new world, Hanlon. Take care of it."

They had climbed the personnel ladder and were closing the port behind them when they heard the splashing of water as Hanlon swam the river. A moment later his high, ringing yell drifted back and was lost without echo on the plain.

"He didn't waste time on the boat," Hovic said, enviously.

They were strapping themselves in for the Terra IV's final flight when Geddes laughed for the first time since the blast-off.

"I think Lowe's right," he said when they stared at him. "I wish I could come back again, after a few hundred generations. I wonder what a whole planet of Hanlons would look like?"

"... and therefore we can say with certainty that we did not descend from Earthmen," Mach Bren concluded his report to the Venusian Archaeological Society. "For how can we possibly conceive of kinship with a people whose skin and hair are black?"

The meeting was widely televised, and over the face of the Silver Planet a hundred million other red-haired Venusians shook their heads in shocked wonderment and agreed with him.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PALIMPSEST ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project Gutenberg License available with this file or online at www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property (trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project Gutenberg electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg electronic works even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project Gutenberg electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project Gutenberg electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the United States and you are located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project Gutenberg mission of promoting free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg name associated with the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg License when you share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project Gutenberg work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg License must appear prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg work (any work on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, copied or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg™ License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is posted with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked to the Project Gutenberg License for all works posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project Gutenberg License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg work in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version posted on the official Project Gutenberg website (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg works unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing access to or distributing Project Gutenberg electronic works provided that:

- • You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from the use of Project Gutenberg works calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg trademark, but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”

- • You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™ License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™ works.

- • You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of receipt of the work.

- • You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is synonymous with the free distribution of electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg’s goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg collection will remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure and permanent future for Project Gutenberg and future generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 41 Watchung Plaza #516, Montclair NJ 07042, USA, +1 (862) 621-9288. Email contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations ($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg electronic works

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project Gutenberg eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search facility: www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg, including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.

Table of Contents

PALIMPSEST

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE