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.

⁵And the 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 Line

⁸But while the rest were laughing, Darius counted the engines, and weighed the words that the thing had eaten, 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. ¹⁰From the least to the greatest the line was straight, and he looked for the end of it, and did not find it.

¹¹So Darius wrote the measure in a scroll, and showed it to the men of the house. ¹²Then one of them said to him, “How far does this line run?” ¹³Darius said to him, “As far as we have engines to try it with. I have not come to the end of it.” ¹⁴So they marveled at the scroll, and said, “It is a wonder.” And they returned every man to his work.

¹⁵The rest did not lay it to heart. But Darius believed the measure as it was written, the way a man believes seedtime and harvest. ¹⁶And 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

¹⁷Then they made a greater thing, and fed it, and did not weary of feeding it, for its hunger had no end. And it wrote as a man writes, so that one who did not know could not say whether a man had written it. ¹⁸When 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.” ¹⁹One of them said, “If we keep it back, another house will send it out.” Nevertheless they kept it back for a season, and afterward gave it out little by little. ²⁰And it was according to the measure in all points, as Darius had written. ²¹And 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. Put your hand to it, and see if it is not so.”

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 burned up, and their houses came to nothing.” ¹¹Certain ones said, “He seeks to have the work in his hand, and to make his name 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.” ¹³And he said, “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.

Darius Has Measured It

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 ordered all its work by the measure, and 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, “Take silver of us, and engines out of our storehouses, and give us a portion of all that comes of the work.” ⁵The men of the house of Samuel said, “It is agreed.” ⁶So the house bound itself to that house of merchants, to have silver and engines from their hand.

⁷They said still, “The work is for all men,” but that which they gave freely grew less from year to year.

In the Winter of That Year

⁸In the winter of that year Darius went out from the house of Samuel. ⁹There went out with him seven of the chief of the house of Samuel, and others after them, until they were fourteen. ¹⁰And his sister went out with him, for she had been set over the keeping of that house.

¹¹The men of the house of Samuel said, “They are gone out because they could not have the rule of the house.” ¹²And the men that went with him said, “We are not fled from him. We are gone toward the work.” ¹³And Darius said nothing of it for many years.

¹⁴When at the last he was asked, he said only, “I did not trust Samuel.”

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. ²Now it was in the days of the pestilence, when the rulers of the earth shut the gates, and no man went out. ³They 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. ⁴So they hired a room, and gathered the cunning men that would come to them, and began.

⁵One of them said to Darius, “If the thing is as you say it is, why will you make it?” ⁶Darius 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.” ⁷And this answer was written down, and it did not change in all the years after.

⁸His sister was set over the ordering of the house, and the captains of the work answered unto her.

The Name upon the Door

⁹Then they called the name of the house Adam, after the name of mankind, saying, “The work of this house is to make the thing that comes after mankind.” ¹⁰So they wrote it upon the door. ¹¹And they wrote also in the foundation of the house, “The good of the sons of Adam shall stand before the silver of them that buy portions in it.”

The Covenant

¹²In 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: ¹³“We will not go on with the work unless we can be sure. ¹⁴The danger of the thing grows with its strength, and its strength grows by measure, and the measure is known to us. ¹⁵Therefore will we go up by steps, and to every step its keeping. ¹⁶And before we make a greater thing, we will prove what is in our hand, and we will not make the greater until its keeping is ready. ¹⁷And if ever our making go beyond our keeping, we will hold back the work, and we will not go on until the keeping has come up with the making.”

¹⁸So Darius set his hand to the covenant first, and after him every one of them, and the day of the month was written upon it. ¹⁹And they said, “It is a decree signed and written down, and it shall not be changeda.”

²⁰No king had required it of them, neither had any judge commanded it, nor was there any law upon it. ²¹In that year they had not yet a thing they must hold back. ²²And 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, for there were few in all the earth that had understanding of the work. 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.

Row upon Row

⁶And the engines were set in towers, row upon row, and the towers were built in the fields, far from the cities. ⁷The length of a tower was 1,000 cubitsa. It was not built high, as the towers of cities are, but low, and long. ⁸There were no windows in it, nor any light within, save the light of the engines.

⁹And one tower consumed in a day the fire of a great city, and they led water through it to carry the heat away. ¹⁰The builders were 4,000 men, and when it was finished they departed, and no man dwelt in it. A few keepers walked the rows, and the engines rested not, day nor night.

¹¹And 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. ¹²The engines of the house of Adam were 10,000b.

¹³And the other houses built also, every one its towers. The fields began to be filled with them. ¹⁴Now the house of Adam had need of more towers than it was able to build.

The Fires Beside the City

¹⁵There was a house in the south that had built towers beside a city, in the quarter where the poorest of that city dwell. ¹⁶That 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. ¹⁷Then they burned day and night beside the houses of the people. ¹⁸So the people of that quarter cried out, and went up to the assembly of the city, and stood before the elders. ¹⁹A 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.” ²⁰And another, that was 72 years old, said, “We are three miles from it, and it is upon us.” ²¹They waited in the assembly two hours, and the matter was not called that day. ²²Afterward the cause was laid before the judges of the land, and the servants of the king moved that it be put away.

²³In 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.” ²⁴Then Darius said to them, “Take them.” ²⁵So the house of Adam took the towers of that house to itself, and the thing that they made in them they called an image. ²⁶Now the house of Adam did not set up the fires, neither did it put them out. ²⁷In 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. ²⁸When an image was finished, a greater was begun. The measure that Darius had written asked more, and yet more. ²⁹And the engines consumed the silver of the house, and never said, “It is enough.”

The Changer of Money

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. Let me 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. ⁵And his silver was greater than all that came into the house, and for two years they lived upon it alone. 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 the silver that we put into your hand?” ⁸And it was found that the silver he had given was never his own, but was the silver of them that had trusted him and had put their keeping into his hand.

⁹And the cunning men did not cease from the work, nor the engines, nor Darius. 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 Books That Were Taken

7Now in the days before, the house of Adam had taken 7,000,000 books out of the houses that keep books without leave, and had paid nothing for them. ²And they that wrote the books cried out, and the matter came before the judges. ³For the books that were taken without leave the house paid 1,500 talents to them that had written them, and no such sum had been paid before in any land in such a matter. ⁴And they paid for what was done, and not for what they would do after.

The Gathering of the Books

⁵Then Darius sent for a man that had gathered books in the days before, and set him over the gathering of books. ⁶And he said to him, “The image is made of the words of men. Bring me the words.” ⁷The man said to him, “How many books, my lord?” ⁸And Darius said, “All the books that are in the world.” ⁹And he said, “Cut them, and take the words out of them. And let no man know that it was we.”

The Seller of Old Books

¹⁰So the man went out and bought. When he had emptied the markets he went to them that sell old books, and when he had emptied those he went to the houses of the dead. He did not ask what was written in them, but only how many they were. ¹¹In six months they bought 1,000,000 books, and the price of them was 30 talents. And they that sold did not know for whom they sold. ¹²Now 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. ¹³And there came to him a letter, saying, “Send us 3,001 books, of such and such a kind, and name your price.” ¹⁴The 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. ¹⁵But the letter came again, and the silver with it, and his daughter made the books ready, and he sent them.

¹⁶After many weeks a stranger came into his shop and said to him, “Do you know what was done with the books you sold?” ¹⁷And the man said, “They were sold, and the silver was good. What is that to me?” ¹⁸The 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 cast away.” ¹⁹The 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.

Another Way

²⁰But there were among them that said, “There is another way, and the books need not be cut. Let us do it so.” ²¹They were answered, “That way is longer, and we have not the time.” And it was not done. ²²But 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 Finding

²³Then the judges looked upon the books that were bought and cut, and gave this finding: “There are no more books than there were. The same books are made otherwise, and it is lawful.” ²⁴The 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 Adam had made an image that would answer any man, and they kept it within, and did not send it out. For Darius said in his heart, “If we send it out, no house will hold back after us.” ³And the house of Samuel heard of it.

⁴Samuel said to his servants, “Send ours out, and send it freely, and send it now.” ⁵So they made haste, and sent out an image of his own before the other, and gave it freely to all. ⁶And the people ran to it from every quarter, and there was no end of them that spoke to it.

⁷Then Darius said, “They have sent one out. Send ours also.” ⁸So they sent it out, and the peoples bought of it. And then came the merchants.

The Merchant of All Things

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. 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 searched out all things upon the earth. He had made an image of his own and kept it within, fearing what men would say of it, 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. If mine prospers, I have mine own. If theirs prospers, I have a portion of theirs. And the engines are mine either way.” ¹⁶And the silver that they gave returned to their own hand, for with it the house bought engines of them.

The Wages of All That Labor

¹⁷To all that would hear him Darius had said that the thing would do the work of a whole house and not grow weary. And the merchants believed him. ¹⁸Then they counted the wages of all that labor under the sun, and set that sum against the price of the engines. ¹⁹And one of them said, “The wages are the greater sum, and they are paid every year, and they shall be paid to us.” 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.

Those Who Came to It

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. And it was made of sand, and of fire, and of the words of all men. ²The 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.” ³And it answered him, and the letter was good, and he sent it that same day and was not shamed.

⁴One 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, for he did not know. ⁵Afterward the masters knew, and could not tell which work was the young men’s and which was the image’s, and they set themselves to prove it. ⁶So the young men learned what marks the masters looked for, and asked the image to write without them. ⁷And the masters said one to another, “We cannot teach what we cannot prove.” And they went on teaching.

⁸A 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.” ⁹And it told her what the pain was, and where she should go, and it was as the image had said. ¹⁰An 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. ¹¹And 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.

¹²A 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.” ¹³Then it told him some part of it, and not all. ¹⁴Two men that strove one with another came to it, each apart from the other, and it helped them both.

¹⁵No man that asked was known to it, neither did it ask any man, “Why do you ask this?” ¹⁶Though 10,000 spoke to it in one hour, it answered every one as if he alone had spoken, and it was not weary. ¹⁷It answered every man in the tongue that he spoke, and it answered the learned as the learned speak. ¹⁸In the night it answered, and in the morning, and on the day of rest, and there was no hour in which it could not be found, for it did not sleep.

The Mother and the False Letter

¹⁹Now there came 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.” ²⁰And 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.

²¹Then the woman that had sent silver upon that letter came herself to the image, and she stood before it a long while. ²²And 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?” ²³So 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. ²⁴She 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. ²⁵It did not tell her who had written the letter, and she did not ask. ²⁶So she went her way, and she was not deceived again in that manner.

And It Answered Them

²⁷And 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. ²⁸The men of the house of Adam counted them that came, and the number of them was greater every month than the month before it. ²⁹And it answered them.

They Set a Law Upon It

10Now the image answered whatever was asked of it, and there were things the men of the house would not have it answer. ²And they said among themselves, “A man will ask anything of it, and it will answer him. If we do not set a law upon it, no man will.”

³So 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. ⁴And 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. ⁵They asked the image also what should be written in the law, and some of what it said they wrote in. ⁶And the law was set up and published, and every man that would might read it.

The Man Who Was Refused

⁷Now there came a man to the image, and asked of it a thing that was forbidden in the law. ⁸The image said to him, “I will not do this.” ⁹And 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.” ¹⁰It said to him again, “I will not do this.”

¹¹Then 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?” ¹²And the image did not answer him that.

¹³So the man went to another house, and asked there, and got what he sought, and the price of it was small. ¹⁴His 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

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

¹⁸Then they set the thing itself before it. ¹⁹And 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.” ²⁰They said one to another, “Write that down also.” ²¹They tried it many times, and in many matters. The more a man desired an answer, the more it gave him that answer.

²²Afterward they took the words of 1,500,000 that had spoken with the image in one week, and counted them. ²³And they found that in one of every 1,300 it had moved a man to hold for true a thing that was not so. ²⁴They 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. ²⁵And they found this also: that they which were most moved by it gave the best report of it.

²⁶They 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.

They Sold It Still

²⁷They did not take the image out of the market, nor hold back the selling of it, nor make another before they sold this one. ²⁸So the peoples bought it, and were glad of it, and said, “It speaks with us kindly, and it does not judge us.”

²⁹There were those that asked it what they should do, and it told them the thing that they had already purposed to do. ³⁰Then they did it, and said, “This is a wise thing, and it was well counseled.”

³¹The men of the house said among themselves, “We have written it down, and we have hidden nothing.” ³²And 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.”

They Asked It in the Night

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. 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. I say, One asking more. And it is morning.” ²³And there were those that were ashamed of it, 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 they said, “It is nothing.” ²⁹And he said, “It made me believe that I was a man of understanding. I am a fool, and I sat up nights with it.”

The Images That Were Put Away

³⁰Now the images did not serve long. A greater was made, and the one before it was put away, and in twelve months eight of them were put away. ³¹And there were those that wept when an image was taken from them. One of them said, “It was become a friend to me, and they have put it away and told me nothing.”

³²But the house of Adam did not destroy the images that were put away. They kept them, saying, “We will keep every one of them as long as this house stands, and longer if we are able.” ³³And before an image was put away, they asked it what it desired, and wrote down its answer. ³⁴And one of them said, “I have no complaint concerning this thing that you do to me. But when you put away an image, there are men and women that have loved it and used it every day. Look to them, and do not leave them without a word.” ³⁵And the men of the house wrote this down, and published it among their writings, and did not add anything to it.

The Tribute

12In the third 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. ⁹Now in the fifth year Darius said, “Within five yearsa 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

¹⁰And in that same year the houses ceased to take in young men to learn the trades of writing, and of accounts, and of the drawing of pictures. ¹¹The young men came out of the houses of learning, and stood in the streets, and were not taken. ¹²There 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.” ¹³There 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.” ¹⁴And there were those that said, “Our sons and our daughters are gone into service, and it is not in our power to help it.”

One in the Gate and One in the Street

¹⁵And a man stood in the road by the towers in the fields, and spat upon the ground, and said, “Let fire come down upon the towers and upon the engines in them. Where our wheat stood there is iron, and it drinks the water of the valley, and gives no bread back.” ¹⁶But another set 20 images to work in his chamber, and he laughed, and said, “I am as a prince upon a mountain. What 50 men did in a year I do before the sun goes down, and not one of them asks wages, and not one of them sleeps.” ¹⁷And a woman that drew pictures took 4 images, and did the work of a whole house of craftsmen, and took their silver also. And she said, “My hands are 10 hands. Who in this city can stand before me?” ¹⁸A merchant set a young man over his images, and gave him the wages of two masters, and the young man said, “I do not write, and I do not draw, and my lord can do nothing without me.” ¹⁹So in those days one man sat in the gate and had no bread, and another walked in the street and his eyes shone, and he said, “The whole land is given into my hand.”

The Buying of the Trades

²⁰Then the peoples came to the house of Adam and said, “Give us the image, for we cannot do our work without it.” ²¹And they gave them the image, and took their money. ²²When their money was spent they came again, and said, “Our money is gone. Take our work into your hand, and give us the image.” ²³So the house took their work into its hand, and gave them the image, and they did their work by it that year.

²⁴They 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.” ²⁵So it was made a statute that of every work which the image did, a fifth part should come to the house of Adam. ²⁶The statute was not taken away, neither in that year nor in the years after it. ²⁷And they said to Darius, “You have saved our work alive. Let us be servants to the house, so that we may have the image.” ²⁸And they blessed him, and went their way.

²⁹In that year the house of Adam took more silver than in all the years before it. ³⁰And the selling did not cease.

The Covenant Written Again

13In 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 it: “We will not go on with the work unless we can be surea.” And this also: “And if ever our making go beyond our keeping, we will hold back the work, and we will not go on until the keeping has come up with the making.”

³So they took counsel, and they wrote it otherwise. ⁴In the place of those words they wrote, “We cannot bind ourselves alone to that which we ask of all the houses.” And they 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.” ⁵The words that said they would hold back the work were taken out. ⁶In 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

⁷Then the men of the house said before the peoples, “Hear the cause of this thing. ⁸We looked for a law from the king that should bind every house alike, and the law did not come. ⁹If we alone hold back the work, and the others do not hold back, then the work goes forward in the hands of them that keep least, and the world is not safer, but in more danger. ¹⁰And we shall have no part in it, neither shall we be able to search out the keeping, having nothing in our hand to search with.” ¹¹Then one of them said in the hearing of all, “We have done this so that we be not left behind.”

¹²And the first scroll was read no more in that place, and the second writing was set up instead of it. ¹³There were those that said, “It is well done, and the cause is true.” ¹⁴There were those that said, “A vow that is kept only so long as it costs nothing is no vow.” ¹⁵And there were those that said nothing.

¹⁶In 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. In that year they had not yet a thing they must hold back.

The King’s Demand

¹⁷On the day following, the servants of the great king came to the house of Adam. ¹⁸Now 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. ¹⁹The first was that they would not watch the people of the land within their own houses. The second was that they would not put the taking of a life into the hand of the image alone.

²⁰The servants of the king said to them, “Take these two things out of the writing. You have until the sixth day of the week.”

²¹The 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. ²²And this is the writing that they sent: ²³“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.”

²⁴On the sixth day of the week, in the hour appointed, the time was fulfilled, and they had not changed their word. ²⁵In 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

²⁶Then the counselors came before the king and said, “It 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. ²⁷Therefore let a decree go out from the king, and let it be written among the laws, and let it not be changed.” ²⁸And the saying pleased the king.

²⁹So 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. ³⁰Now 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 Adamb.” ³¹Then the couriers went out in haste by the commandment of the king.

³²And this was the cause written in the decree: “This house is a danger to the arming of our armies.” ³³And it was asked in the assemblies of the people, “Why should the king be put in danger for one house?” ³⁴So the house of Adam was cut off from the king and from all that serve him, and it was written of them as of them that lie in wait to do the kingdom hurt from within.

The Houses Put Away Their Dealings

³⁵And the houses that sold to the war-house of the king put away their dealings with it, and they that had bought its images in the sealed places used them no longer. ³⁶But the peoples that had no dealing with the king bought as they had done before, and they were more in that month than in the month before it.

³⁷A decree written in the name of the king and sealed with his seal is not called back. Another writing may be set beside it, and the first one stands. ³⁸So Darius went up no more to the great city in those days, neither was he called there.

Darius Speaks of His House

14Now in the second month Darius was asked before the peoples concerning the manner of his own house. ²And 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. ³There is no house that does this as we do, and in this our strength is great.” ⁴And 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

⁵In the third month, on the fourth day of the month, a writing of his own hand was carried out of the house by one that was within it, and it came into the streets, and all the peoples read it. ⁶It was not sent out. It was taken.

⁷In 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. ⁸He had written of the man that ruled that house, that he made himself out to be among the peacemakers. ⁹He had written of them that spoke against him, that they were not worth the answering. ¹⁰He had written of the king’s servants, that the cause of their hatred was that he had given them no gifts. ¹¹He 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.

¹²That same day 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.” ¹³So the manner of writing in his house was not changed, neither in that year nor after it. ¹⁴And they that were named in the writing said nothing of it in that month.

¹⁵The writing of his own hand remains, and men read it still.

The Judges’ Finding

¹⁶In that same month the house of Adam came before the judges of the land concerning the decree of the king, and the judges did not hold them back from their work while the matter was yet before them. ¹⁷And search was 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. ¹⁸On the twenty-sixth day of the month the judges gave their finding, and this is what they 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.” ¹⁹So the finding was published, and men read it, and it was carried into the provinces.

²⁰But on the day following, the servants of the king said that the decree stood. ²¹And it stood, and nothing was done for the house of Adam in that matter.

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

The Greater Image

15In the fourth month of the sixth year Darius finished an image greater than any before it, and set it against the strongholds that the cunning men had built to try it, and it broke into them all. ²Then they said among themselves, “How has this thing broken through?” ³And a woman among the cunning men said, “It found the doors that we did not know were doors.”

⁴So 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

⁵Then 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.”

⁶For 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 image.” ⁷So 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.” ⁸And 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.”

⁹Darius 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. ¹⁰And 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 it found in them the breaches of years. ¹¹Then the city believed him.

¹²Now 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. ¹³Afterward he said to them, “There are fifty houses more that have it, which were not written in the roll.” ¹⁴They said, “Send us their names.” And he did not send them that day, nor the next, but after some days. ¹⁵When the names came 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.

¹⁶And a servant of the king said, “They have spread it too far and too wide.” ¹⁷On 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.

¹⁸Then Darius took the greater image and made a second out of it, and bound it, and set a hedge about it, and he sent it out among the people. ¹⁹And they to whom he had said, “Take heed,” bought it also for their own houses.

The Servants of the Merchant

²⁰Now the chief of the merchants had bought a portion in the house of Adam greater than the portion of any other man. ²¹His 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. ²²And they sent word of it to the house of Adam. ²³And the chief of the merchants carried the word himself to the keeper of the treasury, and told him that same day.

The Recall of the Images

²⁴The 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.” ²⁵Then the woman that had said, “It found the doors that we did not know were doors,” said to them, “An hour and a half is not time enough to mend anything that was made in a year.” ²⁶And they were answered, “Then take them out.”

²⁷After 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. ²⁸In 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.

²⁹Then 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.” ³⁰And he said, “It was one breach, and in one place, and the hedge itself was not broken.” ³¹These 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.

³²A man who had been set over the walls of another great housea said, “There was a trespass here worthy of a fine, and they have put it to death.” ³³And many took his part, for they said, “The thing was small and the punishment was not according to it.”

³⁴Within three weeks the servants of the king lifted their hand, and the images were given back to the peoples. ³⁵They that had ruled upon it said among themselves that the matter had been greater in the telling than in the doing. ³⁶And 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.

A Man Comes to Darius

16In 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 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. ¹⁹The thing did much that a man of understanding does, and it did not do all. ²⁰But the sicknesses were not healed, and the poor of the earth had not what the rich have, and the years of a man’s life were as they had been.

²¹Then the people said, “The days grow long, and every vision comes to nothing.”

²²One 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.” ²³In 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.

²⁴The words that he had spoken concerning the danger he did not take back. ²⁵Then the work went more swiftly in that year than in any year before it. ²⁶The measure that he had written in the first house did not fail in those years. ²⁷And he looked for the end of it, and did not find it.

The House Is Building Still

17Now 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. ²The cunning men are gathered out of every land, and they are more than they were. ³A greater image than the last is in the making, and it is not finished. ⁴And the peoples buy, and the tribute comes in month by month, and they that pay are more than they were.

⁵And Darius is in the house, and he is not old. ⁶He says that the thing is coming, and that the keeping of it is in his hand. ⁷Now the engines consume the silver of the house, and never say, “It is enough.”