hey moved on, their faminedistended stomachs craving more to eat,
driving the ones who were but one step further from starvation ever
before them.

Long ago they had chewed on the leather of their footgear and devoured
all cats, dogs and rodents. They ate the stiffened and putrid carcasses
of draft animals which had been pushed to the last extremity; they
turned upon the corpses of the newly dead and fed on them, and at length
did not wait for death from hunger to make a new cadaver, but mercifully
slew the weak and ate the still warm bodies.

The Asiatic influx was a social accordion. The pulledout end, the high
notes, as it were, the Indian princes, Chinese warlords, arrived quickly
and settled into a welcoming obscurity. They came by plane, with gold
and jewels and government bonds and shares of Consolidated Pemmican. The
middle creases of the accordion came later, more slowly, but as quickly
as money could speed their way. Men of wealth when they began their
journey, they arrived little more than penniless and were looked upon
with suspicion, tolerated only so long as they did not become a public
charge.

The low notes, the thick and heavy pleats, took not days nor weeks nor
months, but years to make the trek. They kept but a step ahead of the
Grass, traveling at the same pace. They came not alone, but with
accretions, pushing ahead of them millions of their same dispossessed,
hungry, penniless kind. These were not greeted with suspicion, but with
hatred; machineguns were turned upon the advancing mobs, the few
airplanes in service were commandeered to bomb them, and only lack of
fuel and explosives allowed them to sweep into Europe and overwhelm
most of it as the barbarians had overwhelmed Rome.

But I anticipate. While the bulk of the Orientals was still beyond the
Himalayas and the Gobi, Europe indulged in a wild saturnalia to
celebrate its own doom. All pretense of sexual morality vanished. Men
and women coupled openly upon the streets. The small illprinted
newspapers carried advertisements promising the gratification of strange
lusts. A new cult of Priapus sprang up and virgins were ceremoniously
deflowered at his shrine. Those beyond the age of concupiscence attended
celebrations of the Black Mass, although I was told by one communicant
that participation lacked the necessary zest, since none possessed a
faith to which blasphemy could give a shocking thrill.

Murder was indulged in purely for the pleasure