On October 14, 1970, science fiction writer, critic and editor
Damon Knight spoke at Milton College. He ended his presentation
by reading this story.

A CASE HISTORY, by John Anthony West.

In the days of old we were slaves. They did what they pleased
with us. "Go left!" they told us, and we went. When they said:
"Go Right" we did so. We were sentinels, masons, couriers at
their beck and call. And when they commanded: "Die for the
cause!" we died.

For our thralldom they paid us a pittance from the Great Rivers.

Then heretics arose among us; wise men, savants who questioned
the charter and the laws. What cause? they asked. What meaning?
What for? What proof? These sages rebelled. Our wise men turned
upon us, called us fools and oxen. "No need for Vassalage!" they
cried. "Freedom for All!" "Proliferate and Prevail!" 

What wars there were in those days! The enemy sent wizards;
shamans and prophets preaching irrational gibberish.  "In
slavery, freedom", we were told. But our savants stood fast. With
bright tools of logic we chipped away, undermined the pedestals,
and the magicians toppled over in public ignominy. The troops
they sent to quell the insurrection were ambushed and destroyed.
We had learned the secret of hiding deep in the forests, to hit
and run where they least expected attack.

And now we drank our fill from the Great Rivers.

"Proliferate and Prevail!"  Enlightened and encouraged by
scholars and liberators we raised funds and armies, our
missionaries explored the furthest extremities of the Great
Rivers. And where we conquered, we colonized. Now we chose our
own professions.  Masters of our destinies, we worked proudly for
freedom, whereas formerly we drudged in servitude.

Civilizations rose and fell. And there were setbacks, and  Dark
Ages when one wizard or another gained a following and a
foothold; but gradually all were overcome and their influence
waned and was forgotten.

We encroached upon their lands and set up our cities in the
wilderness. We assimilated the inhabitants; those who resisted we
rooted out and destroyed.  Everywhere the voice of freedom was
heard.

For the tide had turned. And the armies they sent out to meet us
were recruited form adolescents and old men. We mocked them and
sent then on their way. And only the control of the Machinery
eluded us.

But the battle is almost over. It cannot be long now. We control
the Great Rivers (we use them to carry off our industrial
wastes), the banks, islands, archipelagoes, peninsulas,
continents, all are ours, all but the Machinery. And we shall
have that. It will not be long before our savants solve this one
remaining mystery:---we will know what makes it tick.

Of our enemy, almost nothing is heard, The shamans have virtually
vanished; no new men are sent to replace those that die, and
those that remain are old.

They stand barefoot and in rags, exiled by law to the stinking
mudflats of the Great Rivers, their voices drowned out by the
whirr and hum of the factories along the banks. Thrill-seekers
and tourists still consult them to make what they can of their
incoherent oracles, though nothing remains of their once-vaunted
eloquence but repetitious di-syllabic babble.

And, though the exigencies of freedom demand the full time
attention of most of our sages, occasionally, in the interest of
science, an effort is made to decipher the code, if such it is.
But to date these efforts have been inconclusive, The general
belief is that the refrain stems from one of their forgotten
incantations, and that its meaning--if it ever had any meaning---
is unknown even to themselves. So these old anachronisms are
still with us, standing day after day in the mudflats mumbling at
whoever will come close enough to listen.

"Cancer", they say over and over again. "Cancer, cancer, cancer,
cancer, cancer......"