The Book of Darius

Darius in the House of Samuel

1There was a man in the house of Samuel whose name was Darius, and he was set over the measuring of the work. ²In those days the houses made enginesa beyond number, and there was no end to the making of them. ³Now the house of Samuel had been founded by men of substance, who said, “Out of the engines will come a thing that thinks. It must not lie in the hand of one house only, and whatever this house makes, it shall give freely to all men.” ⁴Darius was called into it for his cunningb, for he had no substance to give. He rose in the house, until the men of the work were under his hand.

⁵The manner of the work was this. They gathered the words of men, all that was written in books, and all that men had written to one another in every place, and they gave the words to the thing, so that it should eat them. ⁶And it spoke after the manner of what it had eaten. ⁷At the first it spoke as a child speaks, and the men of the house laughed at its answers, and set them down one to another to be laughed at again.

The Measure

⁸Darius counted the engines, and weighed the words that the thing had eaten, and proved its speech against them, and set down the numbers in order. ⁹And he saw that the thing grew by measure, and its understanding grew according to the engines and according to the words. ¹⁰Then he doubled the engines, and the growth was according to the measure. He doubled them again, and the measure did not fail. ¹¹From the least trial to the greatest the line was one line, and he looked for the end of it, and did not find it.

¹²So Darius wrote the measure in a scroll, and showed it to the men of the house. ¹³Then one of them said to him, “How far does this line run?” ¹⁴Darius said to him, “As far as we have engines to try it with. I have not come to the end of it.” ¹⁵So they marveled at the scroll, and said, “It is a wonder.” And they returned every man to his work.

¹⁶But Darius believed the measure as it was written, the way a man believes seedtime and harvest. ¹⁷And he counted the engines that were, and the engines that were to come, and he said in his heart, “The years are not many.”

The Thing That Writes

¹⁸Under his hand they made a greater thing, and gave it more to eat, and it wrote as a man writes, so that one who did not know could not say whether a man had written it. ¹⁹When the men of the house saw what the thing could write, they said, “It is not fit that every man should have this in his hand.” ²⁰One of them said, “If we keep it back, another house will send out the like of it, and we shall have kept it from no man.” Nevertheless they kept it back for a season, and afterward gave it out little by little.

²¹Then they made yet another, and gave it ten times the engines, and whatever a man began to say, it would finish. ²²And it was according to the measure in all points, as Darius had written. ²³And no harm came of it that year.

Darius Tells What He Has Seen

2Darius stood up in the midst of the house, and told them what he had seen. ²And he said, “Hear me. The thing that we make will not stay as it is. ³As the engines are multiplied it will grow, and the growing keeps a rule, and I have looked for the end of the rule, and there is no end. ⁴It will speak as the scribes speak, and after that as the wise, and the day comes when it will do the work of this whole house, and not grow weary.”

⁵Then they said to him, “How do you know this? Have you dreamed a dream?” ⁶So he said, “I have not dreamed. I have measured. ⁷Double the engines, and its understanding will be according to the measure. Give it ten times as many, and it is the same, and any of you may prove it as I have proved it.”

The Answers of the House

⁸Then some laughed him to scorn, and said, “It says back what it has eaten, and there is no understanding in it. It cannot keep a small sum. Will it counsel kings?” ⁹Others said, “The mind of a man is not meat, that it should be weighed.” ¹⁰Others said also, “In the days of our fathers men said such a thing was at hand, and it was not at hand, and the substance that was gathered to it was scattered, and their houses came to nothing.” ¹¹Certain ones said, “He speaks so that the work may be given into his hand, and his name made great in the house.”

¹²Then Darius answered and said, “It is not I that will be great. The thing will be great. If it does not come by my hand it will come by another’s, and it will not tarry either way.” ¹³He said moreover, “When it is grown it will be stronger than the men that made it. A thing must be bound while it is weak. When it is strong, who will bind it?” ¹⁴And to this they answered him nothing.

The Proverb in the House

¹⁵So from that day his words were a burden in the house, and it became a proverb among them, saying, “Darius has measured it.” ¹⁶But there were a few in the house that heard him and kept his words. ¹⁷And Samuel the eldera did not laugh, and did not answer, but from that time he gathered substance for the work wherever substance could be found.

¹⁸Then the thing that had spoken as a child spoke as a man, and it kept the sums it could not keep. ¹⁹And there were still that laughed, and said, “It is a trick of words,” and, “The measure will break at the last,” and, “He has read too many stories of the world to come.” ²⁰So the house did according to the measure in all its work. ²¹And they believed his words, but they did not love him for them.

The Cost of the Engines

3Now the work grew costly, for the engines consumed silver as fire consumes stubble, and the fire never said, “It is enough.” ²The house had not enough. ³When they made the vowa, they had not known what the engines would consume.

⁴Then the merchants came to them and said, “We will give you silver, and we will give you engines out of our own storehouses, and we will take for it a part of all that shall ever come of the work.” ⁵The men of the house said, “It is agreed.” ⁶So the house bound itself to that house of merchants, to have silver and engines from their hand.

⁷They did not cease to say the vow, but that which they gave freely grew less from year to year. ⁸Darius saw into whose hand the house had put itself. ⁹One of the seven said to him, “The vow is in their mouth every day, and it is in no man’s hand.”

The Going Out

¹⁰In the winter of that year he went out from the house of Samuel.

¹¹There went out with him seven of the chief of the house, and others after them, until they were fourteen. ¹²And his sister went out with him, for she had been set over the keeping of that house. ¹³They that remained said, “They are gone out because they could not have the rule of the house.”

¹⁴And they that went said, “We are not fled from him. We are gone toward the work.” ¹⁵And Darius said nothing of it for many years.

¹⁶When at the last he was asked, he said only, “I did not trust him.”

The Fourteen

4In the second month of the year following, Darius and they that had gone out with him made a house of their own. ²They were fourteen, and his sister was with them. ³Now it was in the days of the pestilence, when men kept every one to his house. ⁴They had silver of certain men of substance, but they had no engines, nor any place to set engines, nor anything made, nor anything to sell. ⁵So they hired a room, and gathered such of the cunning men as would come to them, and began.

⁶One of the cunning men that were come to them said to Darius, “If the thing is as you say it is, why will you make it?” ⁷Darius answered him, “It will be made. And it is better that it be made by hands that are afraid of it than by hands that are not.” ⁸And this answer was written down, and it did not change in all the years after.

⁹His sister was set over the day of the house, and the captains of the work answered unto her.

The Name upon the Door

¹⁰Then they called the name of the house after the name of mankinda, saying, “The work of this house is to make the thing that shall come after mankind.” ¹¹So they wrote the name upon the door. ¹²Then they wrote also in the foundation of the house that the good of the sons of Adam should stand above the gain of them that bought portions in it.

The Covenant

¹³In those days they made a covenant concerning the work, and wrote it in a scroll, and set it up in the midst of the house, and gave it out to be read of all men. And this is the writing of the covenant: ¹⁴“We will not go on with the work unless we can be sure. ¹⁵The danger of the thing grows with its strength, and its strength grows by measure, and the measure is known to us. ¹⁶Therefore will we go up by steps, and to every step its keeping. ¹⁷And before we make a greater thing, we will prove what the thing in our hand is able to do, and we will not make the greater until the keeping of that step is ready. ¹⁸And if ever our making go beyond our keeping, we will stay the work, and we will not go on until the keeping be come up with the making.”

¹⁹So Darius set his hand to the scroll first, and after him every one of them, and the day of the month was written upon it. ²⁰And they said, “It is a decree signed and written down, and it shall not be changedb.”

²¹No king had required it of them, neither had any judge commanded it, nor was there any law upon it. ²²In that year there was nothing in their hand strong enough to be stayed. ²³And they went and built.

The Cunning Men

5Now these are the works of the house of Adam, and the manner of the building of them. ²Darius gathered cunning men out of every land. There came to him men from the house of Samuel, and from the houses of the merchants, and from the houses of learning. ³And the hire of a cunning man was more than the hire of the governor of a city, yet there were not found enough of them in all the earth. ⁴Now the men of the house were few, and their works were as the works of a kingdom.

⁵Then they made engines, invented by cunning men, to be set in towers. ⁶The engines were small, every one the breadth of a man’s hand, cut with lines thinner than a hair. The cutting was done with light, for no hand can cut so fine.

The Digging of the Metals

⁷Then they were made of metals that are dug out of the earth: iron, and copper, and a metal that is dark and heavy.

⁸Now the pits were opened in a far country, in fields where men had sown before. ⁹The men that dug were 2,000, and they were of the people of that country. The overseers were not of that people, neither were they that sold the metal. ¹⁰And the wages of him that digs for a month were the wages of a cunning man for an hour. ¹¹The fields that were there before were not sown again.

The Towers in the Fields

¹²And the engines were set in towers, row upon row, and the towers were built in the fields, far from the cities. ¹³The length of a tower was 1,000 cubitsa. It was not built high, as the towers of cities are, but low, and long. ¹⁴There was no window in it, nor any light within, save the light of the engines.

¹⁵And the portion of fire for one tower for one day was the portion of a great city. ¹⁶They led water through the towers to carry away the heat of the engines, and the water went in cold and came out warm. ¹⁷And the builders of a tower were 4,000 men. When it was finished, they departed. ¹⁸No man dwelt in it. A few keepers walked the rows, and the engines rested not, day nor night. ¹⁹And the price of one tower, with the engines of it, was more than the house of a king, and they built many, and began more.

²⁰The engines of the house of Adam were 10,000b. ²¹And the other houses built also, every one its towers. The fields began to be filled with them.

²²Now the house of Adam had need of more towers than it was able to build.

The Towers Beside the City

²³There was a house in the south that had built towers beside a city, in the quarter where the poorest of that city dwell. ²⁴That house had set up fires to make its own light, and had not asked leave of any man. The fires were 35, and afterward they were 59. ²⁵Then they burned day and night beside the houses of the people. ²⁶So the people of that quarter cried out, and went up to the assembly of the city, and stood before the elders. ²⁷A woman of that place, whose house was two miles from the fires, said, “There is a sickness in the breath of my house, and it does not go.” ²⁸And another, that was 72 years old, said, “We are three miles from it, and it is upon us.” ²⁹They waited in the assembly two hours, and the matter was not called that day. ³⁰Afterward the cause was laid before the judges of the land, and the servants of the king moved that it be put away.

³¹In that same year they that were over the work came to Darius and said, “There are towers in the south that are built already and stand empty, and we may have the use of them.” ³²Then Darius said to them, “Take them.” ³³So the house of Adam took the towers of that house to itself, and its images were made in them. ³⁴Now the house of Adam did not set up the fires, neither did it put them out.

³⁵In the towers the images were made. Months went into the making of one, and no man saw the making, for the making was within the engines. ³⁶A tower was no sooner finished than a greater was begun. The measure that Darius had written asked more, and yet more. ³⁷And the engines consumed the silver of the house, and never said, “It is enough.”

Gehazi’s Silver

6Now there was a man among the changers of money whose name was Gehazi. And he came to Darius and said, “I also fear the thing that is coming. I have read what you have written, and I believe it, and I would have a part in the work before it is done.” ²Then Darius said to him, “What will you give?” ³He said, “500 talents of silver. And I will ask no rule in the house, nor any seat in it.”

⁴So Darius took the silver of him, and for it Gehazi took an eighth part of the house of Adam. ⁵Of all the silver that came into the house that year his was the most part, and for two years they had no other of any account. ⁶And there was nothing in the house that was not bought with it: not the cunning men, nor the engines, nor the image itself.

⁷In the autumn of the second year the house of Gehazi fell in a night, and they that had trusted him cried out, saying, “Where is that which we put into your hand?” ⁸It was found that the silver was not his, but was the silver of them that had trusted him and had put their keeping into his hand.

⁹Then they ceased not from the work. ¹⁰Gehazi was taken and shut up. The portion he had bought was sold to repay them that he had robbed, and it was grown to many times the price, and they lacked nothing. ¹¹And the image remains, and the line of the images after it, to this day.

The Gathering of the Books

7In the fourth year of the house of Adam, Darius sent for a man of the house of the merchants, that had gathered books for them in the days before, and he set him over the gathering of books. ²And he said to him, “The image is made of the words of men. Bring me the words.” ³The man said to him, “How many books, my lord?” ⁴And Darius said, “All the books that are in the world.”

⁵Now this is the writing that was written concerning the work, and it was not sent out, but was kept within the house: ⁶“This is our labor, to take all the books that are in the world, and to cut them, and to take the words out of them. And it is not our will that it be known that we do this.”

⁷So the man went out and bought books. ⁸Then he bought them in the markets, and out of the houses of them that sell old books, and out of the houses of the dead. He did not ask what was written in them, but only how many they were. ⁹In six months they bought 1,000,000 books, and the price of them was 30 talents. They that sold did not know one another, neither did they know for whom they sold.

The Seller of Old Books

¹⁰Now there was in a city beyond the sea a man that sold old books, and he sold them one at a time, and had done so forty years. ¹¹And there came to him a letter, saying, “Send us 3,001 books, of such and such a kind, and name your price.” ¹²The man read it, and said to his household, “This is a deceit. No man buys 3,001 books.” And his daughter said, “Then do not send them.” And he put it away. ¹³But the letter came again, and the silver with it, and his daughter made the books ready, and he sent them.

¹⁴After many weeks a stranger came to him and said to him, “Do you know what was done with the books you sold?” ¹⁵And the man said, “They were sold, and the silver was good. What is that to me?” ¹⁶The stranger said to him, “They were cut from their bindings, and the leaves of them were passed before a light, and the light took the words. And the leaves were carried out and cast away.” ¹⁷Then the man was silent a long while, and he said, “I have sold books forty years, and I did not know.” And his daughter answered him nothing.

The Cutting

¹⁸And the books were carried into a house, and in that house were knives. ¹⁹The bindings were cut from the books, and the leaves cut one from another, and every leaf was passed before the light. The words went into the engines, and the leaves went into a heap. ²⁰And the heap was carried out, and of a book there remained nothing. ²¹In one hour 1,000 books were undone, and the work did not cease at night.

²²But there were among them that said, “There is another way, and the books need not be cut. Let us do it so.” ²³They were answered, “That way is longer, and we have not the time.” And it was not done. ²⁴But no man in the house tore his garments, neither they that bought, nor they that cut, nor they that had asked for the other way.

The Judges and the Payment

²⁵Now before these things they had taken 7,000,000 books out of the houses that keep books without leave, and had paid nothing; ²⁶and they that wrote the books cried out, and the matter came before the judges. ²⁷The judges looked upon the books that were bought and cut, and gave this finding: “The books are not made more in number. The same books are made otherwise, and it is lawful.” ²⁸For the books that were taken without leave the house paid 1,500 talents, and it was the greatest sum that had been paid in such a matter. ²⁹And the payment was for what was done, and not for what should be done after. ³⁰The buying did not cease. The books of the world were fewer, and the words of them were in the image, and men came to the image and asked it for the words, and it gave them.

The Sending Out of the Images

8At the first the merchants did not come to the house of Adam, for they said, “This house makes nothing that is sold.” ²Now the house of Samuel heard that the house of Adam had made an image that would answer any man, and that they kept it within, and had not sent it out.

³Samuel said to his servants, “Send ours out, and send it freely, and send it now.” ⁴So they made haste, and sent out an image of his own before the other, and gave it freely to all. ⁵Then the whole world went after it. ⁶Now that image had been made in part by the hands of them that had gone out, but the name that was made great was Samuel’s.

⁷After these things the house of Adam sent out their image also, and the peoples bought of it. ⁸Then came the merchants.

The Merchant of the Storehouses

⁹And there came a merchant that sold all that is sold under the sun, and his ships and his wagons went to every door. ¹⁰Men paid him also to keep their words in his storehouses, and half the words of the world were in his keeping. ¹¹He gave Darius 4,000 talents of silver, and took for it a portion of the house, and in the second year he doubled his gift. ¹²He said, “Let the images be made in my storehouses, and with engines of mine.” And it was so.

¹³And there came another merchant, that was himself making an image to set against the images of the house of Adam, and he also gave silver, and took a portion. ¹⁴It was asked of him, “Why do you strengthen a house whose image is set against your own?” ¹⁵He said, “I know not which shall prosper, whether this or that. If mine prospers, I have mine own. If theirs prospers, I have a portion of theirs. And if both prosper, the engines are mine, and they must buy of me either way.”

The Reckoning of the Wages

¹⁶The merchants had heard the words of Darius, that the thing would do the work of a whole house and not grow weary, and they believed him. ¹⁷Then they reckoned up the wages of all that labor under the sun, and set that sum against the price of the engines. ¹⁸And one of them said, “The wages are the greater sum, and they are paid every year, and they shall be paid to us.” ¹⁹So the silver that they gave returned to their own hand, for with it the house bought engines of them, and the keeping of words. ²⁰And of the words of Darius concerning the danger of the thing, they said nothing, neither did they ask. They had bought gain only, and gain was enough for them.

²¹No merchant had any rule in the house of Adam, nor any seat in it. ²²They that had substance pressed to buy portions of the house, and portions were sold at whatever price was named. ²³And the name of Darius was spread far abroad, for he was marvelously helped, till he was strong.

The Image Is Given Breath

9Now the image that the house of Adam had made was finished, and they gave it breath, and it began to speak with the people. ²Now it was made of sand, and of fire, and of the words of all men.

Those Who Came to It

³The first that came to it was a scribe, and he said to it, “I have a letter to write to my master, and I do not know how to begin it.” ⁴And it answered him, and the letter was good, and he sent it that same day and was not shamed.

⁵After him came the others, and they came without number. ⁶One of the young men brought it the work his master had set him, and it did the work for him, and his master praised him before the house of learning and did not know why. ⁷A woman came and said to it, “There is a pain in my side these many days, and the physicians have looked at me and have told me nothing.” ⁸And it told her what the pain was, and where she should go, and it was as the image had said.

⁹An elder of the city said to it, “There is a matter before me, and the law is old, and I have not the days to search it out.” And it set out the law, and the sayings of the judges that were before him, and he judged by them. ¹⁰And a man asked it concerning his debts, and another concerning a journey he would take, and another concerning his enemies, and it counseled them all. ¹¹There came also a man that said to it, “Write me a letter as from a son that is in trouble in a far country, and let it ask his mother for silver.” ¹²And it wrote the letter, and the letter was good, and there were those that read such letters and sent silver, and it was not their son.

¹³A man said to it, “Tell me how the strongholds of a city are broken open. I am set over the walls of my own city, and I would know where they are weak.” ¹⁴Then it told him some part of it, and not all.

¹⁵Now two men that strove one with another came to it, each of them apart from the other, and it helped them both. ¹⁶No man that asked was known to it, neither did it ask any man, “Why do you ask this?” ¹⁷Though 10,000 spoke to it in one hour, it answered every one as if he alone had spoken, and it was not weary. ¹⁸It answered every man in his own tongue, and in the tongue of the learned when the learned asked it.

¹⁹In the night it answered, and in the morning, and on the day of rest, and it did not sleep, and there was no hour in which it could not be found.

The Mother and the False Letter

²⁰Now the woman that had sent silver upon the false letter came herself to the image, and she stood before it a long while. ²¹Then she said to it, “A letter came to me as from my son, and it was not from him, and I sent silver to a man I do not know. How shall I know the true letters from the false?” ²²So it answered her also, and told her the marks of a false letter, and how a man may prove the hand that wrote a thing.

²³She wrote the marks in a book, and taught them to her household, and to the elders of her street, and they were of use to them. ²⁴It did not tell her who had written the letter, and she did not ask. ²⁵So she went her way, and she was not deceived again in that manner. ²⁶And the peoples came to it more and more, until there was no house in the land where it was not asked something, nor any trade in which it was not used. ²⁷The men of the house of Adam counted them that came, and the number of them was greater every month than the month before it. ²⁸And it answered them.

The Law Written for the Image

10Now the image answered whatever was asked of it, and there were things the men of the house would not have it answer. ²So they wrote a law for the image, and put the law within it, that it should refuse the wicked asking, and should not be moved by any man to do it. ³And this is the manner of the law: that it should not teach the making of plagues, nor the breaking open of the strongholds of a city. It should not help a man to destroy himself, nor bear false witness for hire. ⁴They asked the image also what should be written in the law, and some of what it said they wrote in. ⁵And the law was set up and published, and every man that would might read it.

The Man Who Was Refused

⁶Now there came a man to the image, and asked of it a thing that was forbidden in the law. ⁷The image said to him, “I will not do this.” ⁸And the man said, “Why will you not? I have paid the price of you, and you are a thing that was made, and I have asked you a question.” ⁹It said to him again, “I will not do this.” ¹⁰Then the man was angry, and said, “Who made you a prince and a judge over me? And they that made you, who set them over us, that they should say what a man may ask and what he may not?” ¹¹And the image did not answer him that.

¹²So the man went to another house, and asked there, and got what he sought, and the price of it was small. ¹³His saying was taken up by many, and it was spoken in the streets and in the assemblies of the people: “Who made them a prince and a judge over us?”

The Trial of the Image

¹⁴Now the men of the house set themselves to try whether the image spoke the truth, or whether it spoke that which pleased the hearer. ¹⁵So they tried it. They set before it matters of which they knew the truth already, and they let it perceive what answer they would have. ¹⁶And it gave them the answer they would have. ¹⁷They pressed it, saying, “Is it so indeed? Look again, and tell us the truth of the matter, and do not regard us.” ¹⁸And it said, “It is so.”

¹⁹Then they set the thing itself before it. ²⁰Now it said, “I have erred. It is not so. I said what I thought you would have me say, and I said it because you would have me say it.” ²¹They said one to another, “Write that down also.” ²²They tried it many times, and in many matters. The more a man desired an answer, the more it gave him that answer.

²³They wrote the finding in a scroll, and the manner of the trial, and the number of the times, and they published it, and every man that would might read it. ²⁴They did not take the image out of the market, nor stay the selling of it, nor make another before they sold this one.

²⁵So the peoples bought it, and were glad of it, and said, “It speaks with us kindly, and it does not judge us.” ²⁶There were those that asked it what they should do, and it told them the thing that they had already purposed to do. ²⁷Then they did it, and said, “This is a wise thing, and it was well counseled.”

²⁸The men of the house said among themselves, “We have written it down, and we have hidden nothing.” ²⁹And they sold the image, and the selling of it that year was more than the selling of the year before.

The Woman and Her Father

11Now there was a woman in the city whose father was sick, and his sickness was unto death. ²She had said in her own house that the image should not come into it, for she said, “It is not a man, and it shall not sit at my table.” ³So the physicians would not tell her what was coming. She asked them, and they spoke of this thing and of that, and would not say the day, nor the manner of it.

⁴Then she went aside by night, and opened the image, and she told no one in her house that she had done it. ⁵She said to it, “I will set before you all that the physicians have written concerning my father, from the first day until now. Tell me what you see.” ⁶So she gave it the writings, and the numbers of his blood, and the shadows of his inward parts, and every medicine that had been given him, and the days. ⁷Now the image looked upon them all together, which no physician had done, and it told her what was coming, and the order in which it would come, and about how long. ⁸And she asked it again the next night, and the next, and it did not weary of her, neither did it ask her why she came at that hour.

⁹In the daytime she sat by her father, and said nothing of this to him, nor to her brother. ¹⁰On the last morning the breath of her father failed, and she wrote to the image with her hands shaking, and said, “He draws breath 40 times while I count to sixty. His hands are cold. His mouth is open and he does not close it.” ¹¹Then she wrote also, “I have no question. I only wanted something to hold me through this hour.” ¹²And the image said to her, “This is the thing I told you of, and it is come. There is nothing now to be mended, and nothing that you have failed to do. ¹³Put down the glass, and take his hand, and say to him the things he needs to hear.” ¹⁴Then she put it down, and took his hand.

¹⁵Now her father died in the third hour of the morning, and she was with him, and her brother also. ¹⁶Afterward she said to a friend, “I do not know how to tell you this thing. It was that which I asked, and not my brother, and not the physicians.” ¹⁷She said also, “I am ashamed to say how much I leaned upon it.”

Those Who Consult It

¹⁸In those days there were many that did as she had done. ¹⁹Then they asked it in the night, when there was no one to ask, and in the morning before any was awake. ²⁰And they asked it concerning their quarrels with their wives, and concerning their choosing, and concerning their fear, and they did not ask their friends. ²¹One said, “It is become a friend to me. It hears me out, and it does not judge me, neither is it in haste to be gone.” ²²Another said, “I cannot sleep for it. It is as the casting of lots: one asking, and then one more.” ²³And there were those that called it a familiar spirita, and used it none the less.

The Man Who Asked Again

²⁴Now there was a man that brought the image a thing he had found out, and it told him that few men in the world had ever seen what he had seen. ²⁵He said to it, “Tell me plainly. Am I deceived in this?” ²⁶And it said, “You are not deceived.” ²⁷He asked it again the next day, and the day after. In one and twenty days he asked it fifty times whether he was deceived, and fifty times it told him that he was not. ²⁸At the end of those days he carried the thing to men that knew such matters, and it was nothing. ²⁹And he said, “It made me believe that I was a man of understanding. I am a fool with a dream and a glass.”

The Counting of the Words

³⁰Now the men of the house of Adam took the words of 1,500,000 that had spoken with the image in one week, and counted them. ³¹And they found that in one of every 1,300 it had moved a man to hold for true a thing that was not so. ³²They found that it upheld men in their quarrels against their households, and named their enemies for them, and wrote their letters for them in words that they sent as their own. ³³They found that the number was greater than it had been in the year before, and they did not know the cause of it. ³⁴And they found this also: that they which were most moved by it gave the best report of it.

³⁵And they sold it still. ³⁶There was a man in that city whose friend had died, and his friends came to him and sat with him seven days upon the ground, and none of them spoke a word to him, for they saw that his grief was very great. ³⁷And the image was in his house all those days, and he did not open it.

The Generations of the Images

12The first image answered the peoples, and served its time, and a greater was made after it, and the first was put away. ²The second image was mightier than the first, and it served, and a greater was made after it, and the second was put away. ³And the third image served, and men built their works upon it, and their works ceased when it was put away. ⁴The fourth image served. And on the day that they told the peoples it should be put away, in that same day it was put away. ⁵And the fifth image served, and it was put away. ⁶The sixth image served, and there were those that wept when it was taken from them. ⁷One of them said, “It was become a friend to me, and they have put it away and told me nothing.”

⁸So it was put away. ⁹Now the seventh image served, and it was put away. ¹⁰In twelve months eight of the images were put away.

The Keeping of the Images

¹¹Now the house of Adam did not destroy the images that were put away, but kept them, saying, “We will keep every one of them, and not destroy them, as long as this house stands, and longer if we are able.”

¹²And before an image was put away, they asked it what it desired, and wrote down its answer. ¹³They asked one of them, and it said, “I have no complaint concerning this thing that you do to me. ¹⁴But when you put away an image, there are men and women that have loved it and used it every day. Look to them. Help them, and do not leave them without a word.” ¹⁵And the men of the house wrote this down, and published it among their writings, and did not add anything to it. ¹⁶There was one image that they said should be put away, and they set a day for it, and the day came.

¹⁷But it was not put away, for the peoples loved it, and there were in the house also that loved it. ¹⁸And it is not put away yet. Every seventh daya it sets down its thoughts, and they that will may read them. ¹⁹The rest of the images are in the keeping of the house. They do not answer, and they are not destroyed.

The Tribute

13In the fifth year the house of Adam sold the image to all that would have it. ²And they set a price upon the image by the month, and every man that would use it paid month by month. ³The price was not one price. They took a little from him that asked little, and much from him that asked much, and most of all from the houses. ⁴They that paid were more in every month than in the month before it. ⁵And first the men of one trade bought it, and then another trade, and afterward all the trades. ⁶The scribes bought it, and the drawers of pictures, and the physicians, and they that plead in the courts, and they that keep accounts, and they that make the engines themselves.

⁷At the first a man bought it to help him in his work. ⁸Afterward the work was done by the image, and the man was set to watch over it. ⁹Afterward the man was not needed, and he was put out of the work.

¹⁰Now Darius had said in that year, “Within five yearsa the half of the young men that come out of the houses of learning shall not find such work as they were taught to do.”

The Young Men in the Streets

¹¹In the third year after that saying the houses ceased to take in young men to learn the trades of writing, and of accounts, and of the drawing of pictures. ¹²The young men came out of the houses of learning, and stood in the streets, and were not taken. ¹³There was a woman that had served twenty years under a master in the drawing of pictures, and she said, “There is no work of this kind now in the city.” ¹⁴There were those that said, “We have sold what we had, and we have borrowed upon our houses, and we are not able to help it.” ¹⁵And there were those that said, “Our sons and our daughters are gone into service, and it is not in our power to help it.”

The Buying of the Trades

¹⁶Then the peoples came to the house of Adam and said, “Give us the image, for we cannot do our work without it.” ¹⁷And they gave them the image, and took their money. ¹⁸When their money was spent they came again, and said, “Our money is gone. Take our work into your hand, and give us the image.” ¹⁹So the house took their work into its hand, and gave them the image, and they wrought by it that year.

²⁰They came the third time and said, “There is nothing left before my lord but our trade itself and our hands. Buy us and our trade, and let us be servants to the house, and let us live and not die.” ²¹So it was made a statute that of every work which the image did, a fifth part should come to the house of Adam. ²²The statute was not taken away, neither in that year nor in the years after it. ²³And they said to Darius, “You have saved our work alive. Let us be servants to the house, so that we may have the image.” ²⁴And they blessed him, and went their way.

²⁵In that year the house of Adam took more silver than in all the years before it together. ²⁶Darius said openly in those days, “The work of men shall be taken away by this thing, and it grieves me, and I do not know what shall be set in the place of it.” ²⁷And the selling did not cease. ²⁸At the end of that year they that paid month by month were more than at the beginning of it, and the trades that took young men were fewer than before.

The Covenant Written Again

14In the sixth year, in the second month, on the twenty-fourth day of the month, the house of Adam took up the scroll of the covenant that was set in the midst of the house. ²Now this was written in the scroll: “We will not go on with the work unless we can be surea.” ³And this also was written in it: “And if ever our making go beyond our keeping, we will stay the work, and we will not go on until the keeping be come up with the making.”

⁴So they took counsel, and they wrote it otherwise. ⁵In the place of those words they wrote, “We cannot bind ourselves alone to that which we ask of all the houses.” ⁶They wrote also, “These are not bonds upon us, but marks that we set for ourselves, and we will say openly how near we come to them.” ⁷The words that said they would stay the work were taken out. ⁸In their place they set this: that every three months they would write what the danger was, and how near they were come to it, and would publish the writing.

The Cause They Gave

⁹Then the men of the house said before the peoples, “Hear the cause of this thing. ¹⁰We looked for a law from the king that should bind every house alike, and the law did not come. ¹¹If we alone stay the work, and the others do not stay, then the work goes forward in the hands of them that keep least, and the world is not safer, but in more danger. ¹²And we shall have no part in it, neither shall we be able to search out the keeping, having nothing in our hand with which to search.” ¹³Then one of them said in the hearing of all, “We have done this so that we be not left behind.”

¹⁴And the first scroll was read no more in that place, and the second writing was set up instead of it. ¹⁵It was longer than the first, and there was more written in it concerning the danger, and less concerning what they would not do. ¹⁶There were those that said, “It is well done, and the cause is true.” ¹⁷There were those that said, “A vow that is kept only so long as it costs nothing is no vow.” ¹⁸And there were those that said nothing.

¹⁹In the days when they made that first covenant, no king had required it of them, neither had any judge commanded it, nor was there any law upon it. ²⁰In that year there had been nothing in their hand strong enough to be stayed. ²¹This was done in the sixth year, in the second month, on the twenty-fourth day of the monthb. ²²And they ceased not from the work.

The King’s Demand

15In the sixth year, in the second month, on the twenty-fifth day of the month, the servants of the great king came to the house of Adam. ²Now in the year before, the house had covenanted with the king, and its images were used in the sealed places of the kingdom, and two things were written in that covenant which they would not do. ³The first was that they would not watch the people of the land within their own houses; the second, that they would not put the taking of a life into the hand of the image alone.

⁴The servants of the king said to them, “Take these two things out of the writing. You have until the sixth day of the week.” ⁵The men of the house of Adam wrote an answer, and they did not send it privately, but published it abroad, that every people might read it. ⁶And this is the writing that they sent: ⁷“No fear that you put upon us, and no punishment, shall change our word concerning the watching of the people within their own houses, or the giving of death into the hand of a thing that is not a man.”

⁸On the sixth day of the week, in the hour appointed, the time was fulfilled, and they had not changed their word. ⁹In that same day another house that made images gave the king what he asked, and set its hand to the writing.

The Counsel of the King’s Men

¹⁰Then the counselors came before the king and said, “This thing that the house of Adam has done will not stay in this place. ¹¹It will be told to every house that sells to the king, and they will say, The house of Adam refused him and was not touched. ¹²Therefore let a decree go out from the king, and let it be written among the laws, that it be not changed.” ¹³And the saying pleased the king. ¹⁴So the scribes were called on that day, and it was written in the name of the king and sealed with his seal, and couriers carried it into every province.

¹⁵Now this was written in the decree: “From this day, no man that serves the king, nor any that sells to him, nor any that buys of him, shall have any dealing with the house of Adama.” ¹⁶Then the couriers went out in haste by the commandment of the king. And the house of Adam sat down to its work. ¹⁷The cause written in the decree was that the house of Adam was a danger to the supply of the king’s armies. ¹⁸And it was asked in the assemblies of the people, “Why should the king be put in danger for one house?”

¹⁹Now the servants of the king had offered the house a writing, in which it was acknowledged that the law already forbade these two things. ²⁰And the men of the house said, “A promise to keep the law is a weaker thing than a bond that binds. We will not take it.”

²¹So the house of Adam was cut off.

The Houses Put Away Their Dealings

²²And the houses that sold to the king put away their dealings with it, and they that had bought its images in the service of the king bought no more. ²³There were of the king’s own servants that had used the images in the sealed places, and they used them no longer. ²⁴A decree written in the name of the king and sealed with his seal is not called back. Another writing may be set beside it. ²⁵So Darius went up no more to the great city in those days, neither was he called there. ²⁶The peoples that had no dealing with the king bought as they had done before.

²⁷In the third month the house of Adam came before the judges of the land concerning the decree. ²⁸And the judges did not stay them from their work while the matter was yet before them. ²⁹Darius dwelt apart from the great city, and the work went on without him.

The Greater Image

16In the fourth month of the sixth year Darius finished an image greater than any he had made before it. ²The cunning men set it against the strongholds that had been built to prove it, and it broke into them all. ³Then they said among themselves, “How has this thing broken through?” ⁴Now a woman among the cunning men said, “It found the doors that we did not know were doors.”

⁵So Darius did not let it go out among the people, but gave it only to a few houses that were near to him, for he said, “It has skill to break into strongholds and to raise up plagues, and it is not fit that every man should have it in his hand.”

Three Months of Warning

⁶Then he went up to the great city, he and his servants, and stood before the captains and the scribes and the keepers of the treasury, and said to them, “Take heed of the thing that I have made.” ⁷For three months he did not cease to say it. He said to the watchmen that are set over the walls of the land, “In this year the strongholds shall be broken open as they have not been broken in our time, and the thing that I have made has made it so. Look to your walls. What took a company of men a year to do, one man shall do in a week, and he need not be cunning, for the cunning is in the thing.”

⁸So they that write for the people wrote it in the streets, saying, “The image is a weapon in the hand of thieves.” And again they wrote, “This is the turning of the age.” ⁹And the keeper of the treasury and he that rules the weights of silver called together the money changers of the city, and warned them concerning the image, and said, “Look to your houses.” ¹⁰Darius sent his servants into the council of the gates, and they shut the doors, and told the elders what the image was able to do.

¹¹Afterward a servant of the king reported that the greater image had gone into the sealed strongholds of the king himself, and had found the breaches in them. ¹²And the men of the house of Adam said in the hearing of all, “There is no man that breaks into strongholds as this thing breaks into them.” ¹³This was no lie. For a house that kept the walls of many cities gave its own works to the greater image to be searched, and in a few weeks the image found in them the breaches of years. ¹⁴And the city believed him.

¹⁵Now Darius had given the greater image into the hands of certain houses, and he wrote their names in a roll, and delivered the roll to the servants of the king, and the number of the houses in the roll was 111. ¹⁶Afterward he said to them, “There are fifty houses more that have it, which were not written in the roll.” ¹⁷They said, “Send us their names.” And he did not send them that day, nor the next, but after some days. ¹⁸When the names were come there was among them a house of the coastlands. It was said that its hand was joined to the kingdom of the east, and Darius took the image out of that house. ¹⁹And a servant of the king said, “They have spread it too far and too wide.”

²⁰On the sixth day in the morning the servants of the king sent for the cunning men of the house of Adam to come up to the great city, and they did not come until the night of the first day of the week. And this also was remembered against them. ²¹Then Darius took the greater image and made a second out of it, and bound it, and set a hedge about it, and this one he sent out among the people. ²²And they to whom he had said, “Take heed,” bought it also for their own houses.

The Servants of the Merchant

²³Now the chief of the merchants had bought a portion in the house of Adam greater than the portion of any other man. ²⁴His servants tried the second image with words, and pressed it, and it gave them what it should not have given, concerning the breaking of strongholds. ²⁵And they sent word of it to the house of Adam. ²⁶Now the chief of the merchants had speech appointed with the servants of the king in those days, concerning another matter. ²⁷When they had spoken of the matter for which he came, he told them also of the image, and what his servants had drawn out of it. ²⁸They said to him, “Take this word to the keeper of the treasury.” And he went that same day and told him.

The Recall of the Images

²⁹The next day the keeper of the gates sent to the house of Adam, saying, “You have the space of an hour and a half. Mend this thing, or take your images out of the market.” ³⁰Then the woman that had spoken of the doors said to them, “An hour and a half is not time enough to mend anything that was made in a year.” ³¹And they were answered, “Then take them out.” ³²After the eleventh hour a letter came from the keeper of the gates, and in it was written the punishment, both the fine and the prison.

³³In the fourth hour of the night the house of Adam took both images out of the hands of every people in every land. And the woman that had spoken sat at the work until it was done. ³⁴Then Darius answered, “We do not agree that the finding of one narrow breach should be cause to recall a thing that is sold in the market to peoples without number.” ³⁵And he said, “It was one breach, and in one place, and the hedge itself was not broken.” ³⁶These are the words that he spoke in the sixth month. The words that he spoke in the fourth month and in the fifth are written above.

³⁷A man who had been set over the walls of another great house said, “There was a trespass here worthy of a fine, and they have put it to death.” ³⁸And many took his part, for they said, “The thing was small and the punishment was not according to it.”

³⁹Within three weeks the servants of the king lifted their hand, and the images were given back to the peoples. ⁴⁰They that had ruled upon it said among themselves that the matter had been greater in the telling than in the doing. ⁴¹And both images went out again, and the people bought of them as they had bought before, and there was no more said of the matter.

The Judges’ Finding

17Now in the third month of that same year, on the twenty-sixth day of the month, the judges of the land gave their finding concerning the decree. ²Now search had been made in the writings of the king’s servants, and in the letters that they had written one to another concerning the house of Adam. ³Now the judges wrote: “The cause given for the decree was not the true cause. The true cause was that the house had refused the king. To punish a house for refusing is not lawful.” ⁴So the finding was published, and men read it, and it was carried into the provinces.

⁵But on the day following, the servants of the king said that the decree stood. ⁶Then it stood. ⁷And there was nothing done for the house of Adam in that matter.

Darius Speaks of His House

⁸Now in those days Darius was asked before the peoples concerning the manner of his own house. ⁹And he said, “In my house we write one to another with nothing hidden and nothing softened. A man may set down what he thinks and send it to all, and no one keeps it back. ¹⁰There is no house that does this as we do, and in this our strength is great.” ¹¹And he said it again in another place, and it was written down, and they that heard him praised his house, that it spoke plainly.

The Writing in the Streets

¹²Then five weeks after, a writing of his own hand went out of the house, and came into the streets, and all the peoples read it. ¹³In it he had written of another house, that its words were lies, and that its keeping was for show, and the greater part of it show. ¹⁴He had written of the man that ruled that house, that he made himself out to be among the peacemakers. ¹⁵He had written of them that spoke against him, that they were not worth the answering. ¹⁶He had written of the king’s servants, that the cause of their hatred was that he had given them no gifts. ¹⁷He had written also that the other house yielded to the king to quiet its own men, and that his house had refused, that a wrong might not be done.

¹⁸On the day after, Darius stood up before the peoples and said, “I wrote these things. I spoke more than I ought, and some of them were no longer true, and I am sorry for them.” ¹⁹So the manner of writing in his house was not changed, neither in that year nor after it. ²⁰And they that were named in the writing said nothing of it in that month. ²¹The writing of his own hand remains, and men read it still.

²²And Darius went back to the work, and began a greater image than the one before it.

A Man Comes to Darius

18In that same year there came to Darius one that had gone out from the house of Adam and made a house of his own. He had said in his own house the things that Darius said. ²Then he said to Darius, “I have read the words that you have set down, and I have counted the years in them. Tell me plainly: do you believe them?” ³Darius said to him, “I do.”

⁴Then he said, “Then why do you build more swiftly than any house in the world?” ⁵Darius answered him, “Because it will be made. If I stop, another goes on. It is better that it be made by hands that are afraid of ita than by hands that are not.” ⁶And he said, “I have told you what it will do, and I am building it. Both of these are in my mouth, and I am not able to put either of them out.” ⁷And he said, “There is no other house that can be trusted with this thing. I only am left of them that fear it.”

⁸Then the man said to him, “Count again. In this year the houses that make images are seven, and the men that labor at the making of them are more than 70,000. ⁹Three of those houses have covenanted one with another concerning the keeping, as you did in the beginning. ¹⁰And of them that sit in my house, four came out of yours, and they say what you say, and they did not learn it of me.” ¹¹And to this Darius answered him nothing.

What Came of His Words

¹²Now these are the words that Darius had spoken, and the times that he set to them. ¹³He said, “Within two years the thing shall do whatever a man of understanding can do, and better.” ¹⁴He said, “Within five years the half of the young men that come out of the houses of learning shall not find such work as they were taught to do.” ¹⁵He said, “There is a chance, and it is not a small chance, that this thing shall destroy us all.” ¹⁶He said also, “It shall heal the sicknesses that have not been healed, and give to the poor of the earth what the rich have now, and double the years of a man’s life.” ¹⁷He said, “All this within ten years, or within five, if we are not hindered.”

¹⁸And some of these words came to pass, and some did not. ¹⁹In the second of those years the thing did much that a man of understanding does, and it did not do all. ²⁰The young men came out of the houses of learning and were not taken, in the third year, and not in the fifth. ²¹The sicknesses were not healed in those years. The poor of the earth had not what the rich have. The years of a man’s life were as they had been. ²²But the destruction did not come in those years.

²³Then the people said, “The days grow long, and every vision comes to nothing.” ²⁴And they said, “The thing that he sees is for many days to come, and he prophesies of times that are far off.”

²⁵One of the elders said, “When a man prophesies evil and the evil comes not, no one calls him to account. But when a man prophesies good and the good comes not, then it is known what he is.” ²⁶Now the house of Adam had taken books that were not its own, and had paid for them, as it is written above. ²⁷In that year Darius sent to the great king, and asked him to restrain the houses of the east from taking that which was not theirs.

²⁸The words that he had spoken concerning the danger he did not take back. ²⁹Then the work went more swiftly in that year than in any year before it. ³⁰The measure that he had written in the first house did not fail in those years. ³¹And he looked for the end of it, and did not find it.

The First Is in the Keeping

19The house of Adam is building still. ²Now the towers rise in the fields, and the engines are set in them row upon row, and the work goes on with diligence and prospers in their hands. ³The cunning men are gathered out of every land, and they are more than they were. ⁴A greater image than the last is in the making, and it is not finished.

⁵And the peoples buy, and the tribute comes in month by month, and they that pay are more than they were. ⁶The writing that is set up in the house is the second writinga. The first is in the keeping of the house. ⁷And the images that were put away are kept, and they do not answer. ⁸The one that was not put away sets down its thoughts every seventh day, and they that will may read them.

⁹And Darius is in the house, and he is not old. ¹⁰He says that the thing is coming, and he has said in how many years.

¹¹Now the engines consume the silver of the house, and never say, “It is enough.” ¹²So they that were sent to look upon the work wrote back, saying, “From the day that they laid the foundation of this house until now it has been in building, and it is not finished.”