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Light Earth Building
Franz Volhard
Light Earth Building
A Handbook for Building
with Wood and Earth

Birkhäuser
Basel
Dipl. Ing. Franz Volhard
Schauer + Volhard Architekten BDA, Darmstadt, Germany
www.schauer-volhard.de

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data

A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is
concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting,
­reproduction on microfilms or in other ways, and storage in databases. For any kind of use, permission
of the copyright owner must be obtained.

Cover photo: Light earth external skin applied to battens on a new private house in Darmstadt, 2012
Translation from German into English: Julian Reisenberger
Layout: Michael Karner
Typesetting: Sven Schrape
Lithography: Manfred Kostal, pixelstorm
Printing: Holzhausen Druck GmbH, A-Wolkersdorf

Bibliographic information published by the German National Library

The German National Library lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

This publication is also available as an e-book (ISBN PDF 978-3-0356-0645-4; ISBN EPUB 978-3-0356-0648-5) and in
the original German edition (Bauen mit Leichtlehm, 8., neubearbeitete und ergänzte Auflage, ISBN 978-3-0­356-0619-5)
and in a French edition (Construire en terre allégée, Éditions Actes Sud 2016, ISBN 978-2-330-05050-4).

© 2016 Birkhäuser Verlag GmbH, Basel

P.O. Box 44, 4009 Basel, Switzerland
Part of Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Printed on acid-free paper produced from chlorine-free pulp. TCF ∞

Printed in Austria

ISBN 978-3-0356-0634-8

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 www.birkhauser.com
Content

Foreword 9

100 Introduction
110 Earth as a building material 11
120 Earth building methods 12
Solid earth construction – Frame construction
130 Building with earth – a historical overview 15
140 Building with earth today? 31
150 What possibilities can earth building techniques offer today? 33
160 Building with timber and earth 33
Straw-clay and fibre-clay mixtures – Light earth

200 Building materials for light earth

210 Soil and earth 41
Soil formation and deposition – Cohesion – Soil texture – Soil identification –
Testing cohesion – Testing slurryability – Sourcing earth for building
220 Fibres and aggregates for light earth 53
Straw – Woodchip – Mineral lightweight aggregates

300 Preparation of materials for light earth

310 Preparation of clay slip 57
Weathering – Soaking – Drying – Mixing by hand – Mixing with an agitator –
Mixing with a compulsory mixer – Consistency of the clay slip – Liquifying agent –
The addition of lime
320 Preparing fibres and aggregates 66
Straw – Wooden aggregates
330 Preparation of the light earth mix 69
Spray method – Dipping method – Mixing in a compulsory mixer –
Mixing proportions – Tempering
340 Organisation of the building site 78
350 Ready-mixed material 80

400 Wet construction

410 Shuttered walls 81
External walls – Internal walls – Formwork – Formwork systems –
Walls with lost formwork – Compacting the light earth mix
420 Manual application 98
Wattle – Stakes – Earth reels – Laths – Manual application onto lathwork
430 Floors and ceilings 107
Preparation of the timber construction – Earth reel floors – Compacted earth
floors on sliding formwork – Floor infill on permanent formwork – Floor infill on
supporting stakes – Suspended lath ceilings
440 Roof insulation 119
Light earth reels – Compaction behind sliding formwork – Infill behind permanent
formwork – Infill on lathwork – Inner lining on lathwork

Content 5
450 Light earth in building restoration 124
Panel infill with straw-clay – Panel infill with light earth – Insulating wall
lining of external walls – Internal insulation applied to lathwork
460 Spray application approaches 131

500 Dry construction

510 Light earth bricks and blocks 133
Brick-format products
520 Light earth panels 135
Panel-format products
530 Self-produced bricks and panels 136
Manual manufacture
540 Walls 142
Light earth masonry – Panel infill in half-timbered structures – Thermally-insulating
internal wall linings – Stacked walls – Partition wall panel elements
550 Floors and roof inclines 151
Self-supporting floor slabs – Earth slabs and bricks for floor weighting
560 Dry construction 154
Walls – Ceilings and roof spaces

600 Aspects of building construction and finishing

610 Protection of the construction 159
Rising damp and splash water – Weather protection – Airtightness –
Wood preservation and surface treatment
620 Plasters and paints 163
Preparations
630 Two-coat lime renders (inside and outside) 168
640 Earth plasters 169
Earth plasters with sand – Fibre-clay or straw-clay plasters – Two traditional
recipes – Paints and wallpapers on earth plasters – Ready-mix mortars –
Requirements of earth plaster mortars
650 Windows and doors 182
660 Floors 183
670 Internal wall coverings 184
Timber wall panelling – Tiling
680 Technical installations and fixings 186
Water installations – Wall chases and anchoring methods

700 Planning and costs

710 Construction period 187
720 Cost and labour 188
Labour – Tips for rationalising the working process – Professional contractors –
Self-building
730 Building codes and regulations 192
Early earth building norms – Current norms – Planning permission and
construction permits – Thermal performance – Building material properties
740 Design, specification and construction supervision 197
750 Self-building 197
760 Typical mistakes 198

6 Light Earth Building

800 Physical properties
810 Thermal protection 199
Thermal insulation – Thermal retention – Heat absorption and dissipation –
Surface temperature – Thermal damping
820 Moisture/drying 209
Water vapour diffusion resistance factor – Equilibrium moisture content
(sorption moisture) – Hygroscopic moisture adsorption and discharge –
Moisture transport – Preventing condensation – Construction moisture and
drying – Side effects during drying
830 Fire behaviour 221
Building material class – Fire resistance class – Classified timber building
elements with earth infill
840 Sound insulation 227
Airborne sound insulation – Sound insulation of timber joist floors
850 Airtightness 232
860 Absorption of toxins 232

Projects
1 Conversion and extension of a half-timbered house (D) 234
2 New private house with workshop (D) 236
3 Earth building settlement: Domaine de la Terre, L’Isle d’Abeau (F) 240
4 New youth community building (D) 242
5 Barn conversion (D) 244
6 House extension (D) 246
7 Cowshed and barn conversions (F) 249
8 Summerhouse (S) 250
9 Atelier (D) 252
10 Earth house in Maria Rain (A) 256
11 Historical renovation and extension of a listed building (D) 258
12 Historical renovation of a listed building (D) 261
13 Single-family home in Raisio (FIN) 264
14 Littlecroft, demonstration building for a research project (UK) 266
15 Sandberghof community-oriented housing (D) 268
16 Single-family home in Sweden (S) 272
17 Church in Järna (S) 273
18 Guesthouse in New Mexico (USA) 274
19 Prajna Yoga Studio in New Mexico (USA) 276
20 Single-family home in Wisconsin (USA) 278
21 Single-family Home in Carla Bayle (F) 280
22 Twenty houses made of straw light earth (F) 282
23 Conversion of a rural house in Normandy (F) 283
24 House rebuilding in Haiti 284
25 Schap 2011 – Primary school in South Africa (ZA) 286
26 Single-family home in Victoria (AU) 288
27 Private house in Darmstadt (D) 290
28 Single-family home in Kaipara Flats (NZ) 294

Content 7
Appendix
Sources and reference literature 296
Publications of projects 301
Index 304
Picture credits 308
About the author 309
Glossary 310
Foreword

First published in 1983 under the name “Leichtlehmbau – alter Baustoff – neue Technik”
(Light Earth Building: New Techniques for an Old Building Material), this book arose in
conjunction with a renewed interest in earth as an environmentally-friendly building
material in the early 1980s and quickly became the first major reference book of its kind.
The intention was to undertake an in-depth study of all the available literature and
norms and to systematically examine ways in which walls, floors and roofs could be built
using earth and straw. Aside from the lack of building codes, there was little knowledge
of the building physics of earth as a building material. The key physical characteristics
of earth, e.g. thermal performance, moisture resistance, sound insulation and its
reaction to fire, had not been fully quantified. Initial comparative fire performance tests
were undertaken to establish that the material has good fire-resistant properties, even
with a high straw content. However, expensive thermal insulation testing methods were
not possible, and a more pragmatic approach was taken by compiling information that
already existed on the material’s thermal conductivity properties. Later sources
corroborated these values and they were adopted, following a proposal by the author,
in the “Lehmbau Regeln” (the German earth building codes) and in DIN 4108-4 (the
German standard governing thermal protection and energy economy in buildings).
While the homogenous, single-leaf light earth wall detailed in the original book has
become the signature form of light earth construction, it is just one of a range of
different possible applications. In the early 1990s we developed multi-leaf constructions
with additional layers of insulation to improve energy economy and comfort levels as
well as to meet the requirements of stricter regulations. These were included in the fifth
edition of this book. In combination with natural, renewable or recycled thermal
insulation materials such as cellulose fibres, it was possible to build sustainable and
more energy-efficient constructions using timber and earth. With the introduction of
additional layers of insulation, the light earth layer could be made thinner but heavier
and more thermally retentive, enabling it to dry out more quickly on site.
In 2013, the seventh edition of this book was published under a new title – “Bauen
mit Leichtlehm, Handbuch für das Bauen mit Lehm und Holz” (Building with Light Earth,
A Handbook for Building with Earth and Wood) – and with a new organisational structure
that better reflects the division in earth building materials and building elements used
in the “Lehmbau Regeln”. The book was expanded to include both traditional historical
techniques as well as new methods of manually applying straw-clay and heavy light
earth mixtures. These were based on the results of a research project in Limburg and
numerous practical tests and investigations.
Light earth is used solely in a non-loadbearing capacity as an infill material. In (tim-
ber) skeleton frame constructions it presents an alternative to the usual lightweight
insulation materials, improving the physical characteristics of the building envelope and
the room climate within. This edition of the book contains numerous practical examples
of simplified wall constructions using earth and light earth that offer improved material
characteristics, for example a very simple design-based means of moisture protection

Foreword 9
that obviates the need for a vapour barrier and adhesive sealing tapes of questionable
durability and longevity. Timber construction has always had the advantage of having
a comparatively slender structure, freeing up more space for the floor plan. Today’s
high-strength building materials are hard and in many cases stronger than they actually
need to be. They are correspondingly hard to recycle, usually requiring shredding or
crushing. Timber and earth constructions, by contrast, are easily adapted and converted
to new uses, and the majority of its constituent building materials can be re-used or
recycled. Houses made of timber and earth need not be expensive, and there are plenty
of opportunities for clients and homeowners to personally contribute through
self-building.
The breadth of new projects – family homes, churches, children’s nurseries, schools,
buildings for livestock, summerhouses, ateliers for artists and museums – shows both
how versatile as well as how commonplace the use of earth as a building material has
become. In industrialised nations, building with earth is no longer exotic but a modern,
affordable and exceptionally sustainable way of building that also offers new aesthetic
possibilities. Alongside the projects that illustrate how prefabricated earth building
materials can be used in today’s construction processes, numerous self-built projects
reveal how people have discovered the unique possibilities of this building material with
their own hands.
This, the eighth edition of this book, expands on techniques of building with light
earth without formwork and details new developments in the earth building norms.
The project section has been expanded to include projects from English-speaking
countries. It was a pleasant surprise to discover that architects and builders around
the world – inspired by earlier editions of this book – have been enthusiastically building
with straw and earth and in the process have developed techniques and machinery
of their own to prepare the material for construction.
I would like to take this opportunity to once again thank all those who provided
material for earlier German editions of this book: in particular Peter Breidenbach, Lydie
Didier, Andreas Dilthey, Alexandre Douline, Lou Host-Jablonski, Hugo Houben, Franck
Lahure, Alain Marcom, Aymone Nicolas, Sophie Popot, Teuvo Ranki, Johannes Riesterer,
Ulrich Röhlen, Elias and Eva Rubin, Olivier Scherrer, Manfred Speidel, Juan Trabanino,
Mikael Westermarck and Christof Ziegert. For this edition, I would especially like to
thank the following people not only for contributing images and information but also for
their suggestions and constructive criticism: Vasko Drogiski, James Henderson, Robert
Laporte and Paula Baker-Laporte, Sandy Lidell Halliday, Chris Morgan, Florian Primbs,
Michael Schauer and last but not least Ute Schauer.

Franz Volhard
September 2015

10 Light Earth Building

100 Introduction

“Be not afraid of being called un-fashionable. Changes in the traditional way of building
are only permitted if they are an improvement. Otherwise stay with what is traditional, for
truth, even if it be hundreds of years old, has a stronger inner bond with us than the lie
that walks by our side.”
Adolf Loos, 1913

110 Earth as a building material

In central and northern Europe there is a long tradition of building with earth. European
cultural and climatic conditions, together with the necessity of using locally available
materials, gave rise to numerous different methods of using earth for building purposes:
−− solid building constructions using earth for walls, floor and vaulted roofs
−− hybrid building constructions employing earth in combination with wood and plant
material for walls, ceilings and roof coverings
−− stone masonry with earth mortar
A particular characteristic of earth is that its composition varies from place to place.
Earth is a mixture of clay, silt, sand and gravel or stones in different quantities and
proportions. Not all earths are equally suitable for building purposes – the kinds of
locally occurring deposits therefore determined the building methods used.
Earth hardens exclusively through drying in air and does not chemically cure like
gypsum or cement. Unlike other materials, if water is added, it will soften and can be
refashioned into a new form. That means that it can be reused again and again, but also
that it is sensitive to exposure to water. An important aspect of building with earth is
therefore ensuring that the structure is protected against the potentially destructive
effects of rain or water. A variety of techniques have developed in response to this:
−− periodic repair and replacement of eroded external layers of the building envelope
with new earth material, as seen for example in Africa
−− protection of the earth material through water-resistant coatings such as renders,
plasters or paints
−− stabilisation of the earth material through additives
−− prevention of moisture ingress by means of a weatherproof construction
If left unprotected, earth buildings will return to what they once were. The earth
from which they were made can be returned after use – whether demolished, collapsed
or leftover building material – to the life cycle of nature without the need for extra
processing and need not be disposed of as waste material. Excavations have revealed
that a great flood reduced the ancient “antediluvian” Sumerian city of Ur to a three-­
metre-thick layer of earth.

Introduction 11
120 Earth building methods

121 Solid earth construction

When earth is properly processed and of a suitable thickness, its compressive strength
is sufficient to build multi-storey buildings of earth. In Yemen and North Africa there are
examples of buildings that are eight to ten storeys high. In northern Europe, earth
buildings were rarely taller than three to four storeys.
To be useful as a loadbearing material, earth must have a raw density of greater than
1,700 kg/m³. The most important solid earth construction techniques are earth brick
and earth block masonry, rammed earth and cob construction.
Earth masonry is one of the oldest building methods. The cities of early advanced
civilisations, such as those in Mesopotamia, were built with air-dried earth blocks or
adobe bricks. The earth was either “patted” in a malleable consistency into a mould,
applied by hand as a soft paste or rammed or pressed into formwork in a naturally-­
moist state. To stabilise the resulting mixture, chopped straw was added. Masonry walls
were constructed with mortars made of lime or earth. Aside from these traditional
methods, all of which can still be seen in many parts of the world, earth materials are
also produced at an industrial scale, for example in adobe “farms” in New Mexico, USA.
Compressed blocks can also be made in larger quantities on site using hand-operated or
mechanised presses. In America, Brazil, Mexico and Algeria, compressed bricks and
blocks are also factory-produced in automated production lines in a manner comparable
to the industrial production of other building materials.
Rammed earth is a more advanced earth building technique that likewise has a long
history. As the walls are created directly on site, rammed earth is less time-consuming
than the manufacture, drying and laying of bricks or blocks. Rammed earth is most
common in regions where stony earth mixtures occur in appropriate compositions.

Fig. 1 Street in the Lyonnais with rendered rammed earth buildings

12 Light Earth Building

121-03
Fig. 2 Earth block masonry Fig. 3 Rammed earth

Traditional earth
Traditioneller brick mould
Formrahmen
für Lehmsteine

Fig. 4
Traditioneller
Traditional rammed Traditional moulds for rammed
Stampfbau
earth construction earth and earth blocks

The naturally-moist, processed earth material, is rammed between two sets of

shuttering boards or travelling formwork panels to create continuous, monolithic wall
constructions. Traditional rammed earth techniques are still, indeed again, in use today
in Latin America, Morocco, Afghanistan and China. In Europe, the USA and Australia,
these have been developed into advanced techniques using large-format shuttering
systems, mechanised processing and pneumatic rammers to reduce the degree of
manual labour involved.

122 Frame construction

Earth is also used in frame construction as a non-loadbearing infill material for wall
sections. A pre-erected roof construction ensures that vulnerable earth construction
works are shielded from the weather. For this reason, this method is particularly wide­
spread in northern climatic zones with mild, wet summers. In central and northern
Europe, as well as in Japan, timber-frame and traditional half-timbered constructions

Introduction 13
are common. The transmission of loads from the roof and floors via posts or columns in
the walls also improves structural stability in earthquake-prone regions (see project 24).
This technique derives from the early tent, pile and skeleton frame structures with
wattle walls daubed with earth [Soeder 1964].
Over the course of time, many different techniques have developed. In Europe,
diverse means of applying earth to wattles, stakes or a lath of battens evolved, along
with earth brick masonry. These techniques were once so commonplace and generally
known that little is written about them in the literature.
The fill material was mostly straw-clay, a mixture of earth and straw to lend the
material stability. During the renovation of the oldest, 700-year-old, half-timbered
building in Germany, the author had the opportunity to investigate the characteristics
and qualities of these historical techniques, gaining valuable practical insight for the
construction of new infill panels [Volhard 2010a].

Fig. 5 Wattle and daub panels,

Marburg

14 Light Earth Building

130 Building with earth – a historical overview

“ne caementorum quidem apud illos aut tegularum usus, materia ad omnia utuntur
informi et citra speciem aut delectationem. quaedam loca diligentius inlinunt terra ita
pura ac splendente, ut picturam ac lineamenta colorum imitetur.”
Tacitus, Germania

“They make no use of stone or brick, but employ wood for all purposes. Their buildings
are mere rude masses, without ornament or attractiveness, although occasionally they
are stained in part with a kind of clay which is so clear and bright that it resembles
painting, or a coloured design.”
Tacitus’ account tells us that the early Germans used wood and earth to build their
dwellings. Stone and brick buildings were probably unknown at that time, not just in
Germany but throughout all of northern Europe, and probably became gradually more
widespread with the expansion of the Roman Empire. This can be seen in German
terms such as Mauer (wall), Ziegel (brick), Mörtel (mortar) and Kalk (lime), which derive
from the Late Latin words murus, tegula, mortarium and calx.
In central Europe, skeleton frame constructions with wattle walling daubed with clay
already existed in the Neolithic period. Archaeologists discovered settlements in Lower
Austria that date back to the 5th or 6th century BC, and can be seen as reconstructions
in the Museum of Prehistory in Asparn/Zaya. The history of earth building in Germany,

Fig. 6 Rendered half-timbered

building, Tübingen

Introduction 15
and in other neighbouring countries of the same general latitude, is essentially that of
half-timbered construction.
Solid earth constructions are rare, and generally restricted to isolated regions and
certain historical phases, e.g. from the end of the 18th century to the middle of the 19th
century, and in the times of need after the two World Wars. Half-timbered construction,
on the other hand, remained the predominant building method for almost all kinds of
buildings until the 19th century, and diverse regional house types and forms of
construction developed over the centuries.
Over time, a variety of different circumstances and new developments caused half-­
timbered construction to be displaced by stone and brick constructions. These include:
−− The felling of forests caused a general shortage of wood from the 17th century
onwards. Half-timbered construction consumed significant quantities of wood, and
the intuitively-derived cross-sections of members were generally thicker than they
need have been.
−− Fires that occurred in more densely populated settlements frequently caused the
destruction of entire sections of towns and cities. Brick and stone were less
susceptible to fire.
−− Brick and stone were better able to fulfil a need for greater durability and safety than
perishable materials such as wood and earth.
Because brick production also required wood to fire the ovens and stone buildings were
expensive and often cold and wet, there was a brief period towards the end of the 18th

Fig. 7 15th century half-timbered

building, Hasselt, Belgium, renova­
ted in 1996

16 Light Earth Building

century when the conditions for monolithic earth construction methods were good. In
1764, for example, the Prussian State decreed the use of earth lumps as an alternative to
wood, which was then in short supply. In France, C. de Cadenet built a village in 1741 for
farm labourers using a rammed earth technique (Charleval, Durance).
In 1772, G. Goiffon published “Art du maçon piseur”, the first manual detailing the
technique originating from the Romans and brought via the colonies to France. Shortly
after, in 1790, the French architect F. Cointeraux published his famous “School of Rural
Architecture” which included detailed instructions on Pisé construction. This book was
translated into most European languages, the German edition being published in 1793
[Cointeraux 1793].
In 1797, D. Gilly also published his “Handbuch zur Land-Bau-Kunst” [Gilly 1818] in
which he outlined this technique of building with earth. The uptake of the Pisé method in
Germany, which was described as a means of building dwellings that were “extremely
economical, healthy, durable, warm and absolutely fireproof” [Wimpf 1841] was, however,
largely limited to localised pockets where particular individuals were especially active.
In Weilburg, the factory owner Wilhelm Jakob Wimpf was responsible for the building of
several rammed earth buildings, some of them several storeys high, most of which are
still intact although not outwardly apparent as rammed earth buildings (fig. 8) [Erhard
1982]. In Austria too, rammed earth was not used widely and only a few isolated
examples of historical buildings still remain [Kugler 2009].

Fig. 8 Rammed earth house,

1828/29, Bahnhofstrasse 11,
Weilburg

Introduction 17
 In France, by contrast, a new culture of building with earth began to emerge in the 19th
century in many parts of the country. Entire towns and villages, chateaus, residential
buildings, schools, town halls, workshops, barns and farmsteads were built using rammed
earth or earth bricks, many of which are still in good condition, for example in the
rammed earth region of the Rhône-Alpes in the hinterland of Lyon and St. Etienne (fig. 1).
The soil in this region is ideal for rammed earth: it is stony and gravelly but also cohesive,
and can often be used without further processing for ramming between formwork.
One of the reasons why rammed earth failed to become more widely adopted in
Germany and elsewhere is that it did not build on a regionally pre-existing building
tradition and many were therefore not receptive to the unfamiliar building method. In
regions with less suitable soil, for example very silty soil, the preparation of a suitable
mixture is laborious, in regions with very lean earth even impossible or dangerous. In
more northerly climes, the weather conditions were less conducive to using rammed
earth as a construction method. Earth brick masonry was more quickly constructed,
especially under a roof, and more widespread as a result.
Almost all the still existent earth buildings in Austria’s so-called “Ingenieurdörfer”
(engineered villages) in northern Burgenland and the Weinviertel were built during this
period out of earth brick, though many are at risk of being demolished. These houses
with their traditional limewashed façades define the typical appearance of the local
villages, and especially the Kellergassen, the cellar lanes (fig. 9). The loess soil typical
of the region was mixed with chopped straw and originally formed into clumps that were
then stacked on top of one another to form so-called “Wuzlmauern” (lump or ‘clat’
walls). Later, this mix was pressed into moulds and then dried to make earth bricks in
Austrian format (29 × 14 × 6.5 cm) or blocks (approx. 30 × 15 × 15 cm) for “Quaderstock-
mauerwerk” (ashlar walls) [Kugler 2009, Maldoner/Schmid 2008, Bruckner 1996].

Fig. 9 Weinviertel, Lower Austria

18 Light Earth Building

 The ultimate cause of the decline of earth building techniques, and likewise of half-­
timbered construction, from the mid 19th century onwards lies in the onset of industrial­
isation. New building tasks demanded new solutions: multi-storey buildings and wide
spans were not achievable with earth building techniques, and its methods are not
well-suited for façade decorations, cornices, projections and recesses. As new building
techniques became available, earth building seemed backward, primitive and impover-
ished by comparison. New large-scale housing programmes could only be achieved with
new industrialised building methods, and while the rest of the building sector became
increasing industrialised, earth building remained a craft. With the tapping of coal
resources, brickworks, cement factories and iron foundries arose producing new “durable”
materials and even entire prefabricated sections of buildings. Earth building techniques
were used at most for sealing, for screed floors and as ballast in suspended floors.
“Earth building was ultimately brought to a standstill through a relentless one-sided
campaign by building materials producers, most notably the fledgling brick industry.
Banks would not finance earth constructions at the same conditions as other masonry
buildings, and insurance companies started to be more discriminating. It has to be said,
however, that many of the earth buildings of the time were a sorry sight with detached
plaster resulting from improper building techniques.” [Hölscher et al. 1947]
And indeed, the problem of achieving a good lime plaster bond on solid earth building
constructions does seem to be a recurring topic in the literature of the day. The
architect Hermann Muthesius likewise saw this as a key disadvantage of earth building
(see below). But other methods, such as the traditional thin layer of hair-reinforced lime
plasters applied to straw-clay infill panels, did not present such problems.

Fig. 10 Pisé building, France

Introduction 19
 With the end of the First World War, however, earth building experienced a revival in
Germany. Materials that were dependent on coal for production were scarce, transport
possibilities were limited and tradesmen few and far between. In the space of just a few
years, more than 20,000 new earth buildings were built, mostly as self-built settlements
in rural areas [Fauth 1946, 1948].
The “German Committee for the Advancement of Earth Building Methods” was
founded and teaching and advice centres were established along with congresses and
courses for training earth builders. Initial teething problems due to a lack of experience
were soon overcome and the first scientific research was conducted into aspects such
as fire safety, compressive strength and materials testing procedures at materials
testing laboratories. A generally accepted state of the art of earth building soon emerged.
However, despite state subsidisation, an official building code never followed. The phase
of earth building was brief, lasting only a few years directly after the war until the
building materials industry recovered and transport possibilities had “normalised”.
Thereafter, earth building techniques were used only in individual cases. Towards
the end of the Second World War, earth building represented a way of circumventing
“the prohibition of all non-war-oriented building activities” [Hölscher et al. 1947]. Several
exemplary settlements made of earth were built in Pomerania.
In anticipation of the housing shortage towards the end of the war in 1944, a group
of German earth building experts, among them Richard Niemeyer and Wilhelm Fauth,
developed a draft ordinance as a formal basis for the reintroduction of earth building
techniques – one did not want to be unprepared for the second time. This Earth Building
Ordinance, the [Lehmbauordnung 1944], was published on 4 October 1944 in the
Reichsgesetzblatt, the National Gazette.
After the end of the war, earth building techniques were once again propagated as
a method of building houses and workplaces with the few means available. Once again,
a “German Council for Earth Building” was founded and numerous teaching and
information centres established for training earth building labourers on building sites.
This time, however, experts called for earth building to be included as part of the
rationalisation and mechanisation of building after the war:
“We must overcome the idea that earth building is a provisional building method. It must
be given the same consideration as other construction methods with regard to mechanisa-
tion and industrialisation. The key to the success of earth building, as with the rest of the
building sector, is systematic rationalisation.” [Pollack/Richter 1952]
The scientific development of earth building was documented in the magazine
“Naturbauweisen” (Natural Building Methods, fig. 14) and in numerous other publications.
Earth building was put forward not just as a provisional method for times of emergency,
but also as an economic and resource-efficient necessity.
“The top priority for the leaders of an economy, especially one that has to overcome the
devastations of wartime, has to be the prudent use of resources … The building of a house
out of the soil of the earth on which it stands is an example of such prudence.”
[Pollack/Richter 1952]
Earth building activities in Germany were, however, most widespread in the then
Soviet Occupation Zone following the Soviet Military Administration’s Order No. 209 for

20 Light Earth Building

Exploring the Variety of Random
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Title: Second Childhood

Author: Clifford D. Simak

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SECOND

CHILDHOOD ***
 Second Childhood

By CLIFFORD D. SIMAK

Illustrated by DON HUNTER

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

Galaxy Science Fiction February 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
 Achieving immortality is only half of the
problem.
The other half is knowing how to live with it
once
it's been made possible—and inescapable!

You did not die.

There was no normal way to die.
You lived as carelessly and as recklessly as you could and you hoped
that you would be lucky and be accidentally killed.
You kept on living and you got tired of living.
"God, how tired a man can get of living!" Andrew Young said.
John Riggs, chairman of the immortality commission, cleared his
throat.
"You realize," he said to Andrew Young, "that this petition is a highly
irregular procedure to bring to our attention."
He picked up the sheaf of papers off the table and ruffled through
them rapidly.
"There is no precedent," he added.
"I had hoped," said Andrew Young, "to establish precedent."
Commissioner Stanford said, "I must admit that you have made a
good case, Ancestor Young. Yet you must realize that this
commission has no possible jurisdiction over the life of any person,
except to see that everyone is assured of all the benefits of
immortality and to work out any kinks that may show up."
"I am well aware of that," answered Young, "and it seems to me
that my case is one of the kinks you mention."
He stood silently, watching the faces of the members of the board.
They are afraid, he thought. Every one of them. Afraid of the day
they will face the thing I am facing now. They have sought an
answer and there is no answer yet except the pitifully basic answer,
the brutally fundamental answer that I have given them.
"My request is simple," he told them, calmly. "I have asked for
permission to discontinue life. And since suicide has been made
psychologically impossible, I have asked that this commission
appoint a panel of next-friends to make the necessary and
somewhat distasteful arrangements to bring about the
discontinuance of my life."
"If we did," said Riggs, "we would destroy everything we have.
There is no virtue in a life of only five thousand years. No more than
in a life of only a hundred years. If Man is to be immortal, he must
be genuinely immortal. He cannot compromise."
"And yet," said Young, "my friends are gone."

He gestured at the papers Riggs held in his hands. "I have them
listed there," he said. "Their names and when and where and how
they died. Take a look at them. More than two hundred names.
People of my own generation and of the generations closely
following mine. Their names and the photo-copies of their death
certificates."
He put both of his hands upon the table, palms flat against the
table, and leaned his weight upon his arms.
"Take a look at how they died," he said. "Every one involves
accidental violence. Some of them drove their vehicles too fast and,
more than likely, very recklessly. One fell off a cliff when he reached
down to pick a flower that was growing on its edge. A case of
deliberately poor judgment, to my mind. One got stinking drunk and
took a bath and passed out in the tub. He drowned...."
"Ancestor Young," Riggs said sharply, "you are surely not implying
these folks were suicides."
"No," Andrew Young said bitterly. "We abolished suicide three
thousand years ago, cleared it clean out of human minds. How could
they have killed themselves?"
Stanford said, peering up at Young, "I believe, sir, you sat on the
board that resolved that problem."
Andrew Young nodded. "It was after the first wave of suicides. I
remember it quite well. It took years of work. We had to change
human perspective, shift certain facets of human nature. We had to
condition human reasoning by education and propaganda and instill
a new set of moral values. I think we did a good job of it. Perhaps
too good a job. Today a man can no more think of deliberately
committing suicide than he could think of overthrowing our
government. The very idea, the very word is repulsive, instinctively
repulsive. You can come a long way, gentlemen, in three thousand
years."
He leaned across the table and tapped the sheaf of papers with a
lean, tense finger.
"They didn't kill themselves," he said. "They did not commit suicide.
They just didn't give a damn. They were tired of living ... as I am
tired of living. So they lived recklessly in every way. Perhaps there
always was a secret hope that they would drown while drunk or their
car would hit a tree or...."

He straightened up and faced them. "Gentlemen," he said. "I am

5,786 years of age. I was born at Lancaster, Maine, on the planet
Earth on September 21, 1968. I have served humankind well in
those fifty-seven centuries. My record is there for you to see.
Boards, commissions, legislative posts, diplomatic missions. No one
can say that I have shirked my duty. I submit that I have paid any
debt I owe humanity ... even the well-intentioned debt for a chance
at immortality."
"We wish," said Riggs, "that you would reconsider."
"I am a lonely man," replied Young. "A lonely man and tired. I have
no friends. There is nothing any longer that holds my interest. It is
my hope that I can make you see the desirability of assuming
jurisdiction in cases such as mine. Someday you may find a solution
to the problem, but until that time arrives, I ask you, in the name of
mercy, to give us relief from life."
"The problem, as we see it," said Riggs, "is to find some way to wipe
out mental perspective. When a man lives as you have, sir, for fifty
centuries, he has too long a memory. The memories add up to the
disadvantage of present realities and prospects for the future."
"I know," said Young. "I remember we used to talk about that in the
early days. It was one of the problems which was recognized when
immortality first became practical. But we always thought that
memory would erase itself, that the brain could accommodate only
so many memories, that when it got full up it would dump the old
ones. It hasn't worked that way."
He made a savage gesture. "Gentlemen, I can recall my childhood
much more vividly than I recall anything that happened yesterday."
"Memories are buried," said Riggs, "and in the old days, when men
lived no longer than a hundred years at most, it was thought those
buried memories were forgotten. Life, Man told himself, is a process
of forgetting. So Man wasn't too worried over memories when he
became immortal. He thought he would forget them."
"He should have known," argued Young. "I can remember my father,
and I remember him much more intimately than I will remember you
gentlemen once I leave this room.... I can remember my father
telling me that, in his later years, he could recall things which
happened in his childhood that had been forgotten all his younger
years. And that, alone, should have tipped us off. The brain buries
only the newer memories deeply ... they are not available; they do
not rise to bother one, because they are not sorted or oriented or
correlated or whatever it is that the brain may do with them. But
once they are all nicely docketed and filed, they pop up in an
instant."

Riggs nodded agreement. "There's a lag of a good many years in the

brain's bookkeeping. We will overcome it in time."
"We have tried," said Stanford. "We tried conditioning, the same
solution that worked with suicides. But in this, it didn't work. For a
man's life is built upon his memories. There are certain basic
memories that must remain intact. With conditioning, you could not
be selective. You could not keep the structural memories and
winnow out the trash. It didn't work that way."
"There was one machine that worked," Riggs put in. "It got rid of
memories. I don't understand exactly how it worked, but it did the
job all right. It did too good a job. It swept the mind as clean as an
empty room. It didn't leave a thing. It took all memories and it left
no capacity to build a new set. A man went in a human being and
came out a vegetable."
"Suspended animation," said Stanford, "would be a solution. If we
had suspended animation. Simply stack a man away until we found
the answer, then revive and recondition him."
"Be that as it may," Young told them, "I should like your most
earnest consideration of my petition. I do not feel quite equal to
waiting until you have the answer solved."
Riggs said, harshly, "You are asking us to legalize death."
Young nodded. "If you wish to phrase it that way. I'm asking it in the
name of common decency."
Commissioner Stanford said, "We can ill afford to lose you,
Ancestor."
Young sighed. "There is that damned attitude again. Immortality
pays all debts. When a man is made immortal, he has received full
compensation for everything that he may endure. I have lived longer
than any man could be expected to live and still I am denied the
dignity of old age. A man's desires are few, and quickly sated, and
yet he is expected to continue living with desires burned up and
blown away to ash. He gets to a point where nothing has a value ...
even to a point where his own personal values are no more than
shadows. Gentlemen, there was a time when I could not have
committed murder ... literally could not have forced myself to kill
another man ... but today I could, without a second thought.
Disillusion and cynicism have crept in upon me and I have no
conscience."

"There are compensations," Riggs said. "Your family...."

"They get in my hair," said Young disgustedly. "Thousands upon
thousands of young squirts calling me Grandsire and Ancestor and
coming to me for advice they practically never follow. I don't know
even a fraction of them and I listen to them carefully explain a
relationship so tangled and trivial that it makes me yawn in their
faces. It's all new to them and so old, so damned and damnably old
to me."
"Ancestor Young," said Stanford, "you have seen Man spread out
from Earth to distant stellar systems. You have seen the human race
expand from one planet to several thousand planets. You have had a
part in this. Is there not some satisfaction...."
"You're talking in abstracts," Young cut in. "What I am concerned
about is myself ... a certain specific mass of protoplasm shaped in
biped form and tagged by the designation, ironic as it may seem, of
Andrew Young. I have been unselfish all my life. I've asked little for
myself. Now I am being utterly and entirely selfish and I ask that this
matter be regarded as a personal problem rather than as a racial
abstraction."
"Whether you'll admit it or not," said Stanford, "it is more than a
personal problem. It is a problem which some day must be solved
for the salvation of the race."
"That is what I am trying to impress upon you," Young snapped. "It
is a problem that you must face. Some day you will solve it, but until
you do, you must make provisions for those who face the unsolved
problem."
"Wait a while," counseled Chairman Riggs. "Who knows? Today,
tomorrow."
"Or a million years from now," Young told him bitterly and left, a tall,
vigorous-looking man whose step was swift in anger where normally
it was slow with weariness and despair.

There was yet a chance, of course.

But there was little hope.
How can a man go back almost six thousand years and snare a thing
he never understood?
And yet Andrew Young remembered it. Remembered it as clearly as
if it had been a thing that had happened in the morning of this very
day.
It was a shining thing, a bright thing, a happiness that was brand-
new and fresh as a bluebird's wing of an April morning or a shy
woods flower after sudden rain.
He had been a boy and he had seen the bluebird and he had no
words to say the thing he felt, but he had held up his tiny fingers
and pointed and shaped his lips to coo.
Once, he thought, I had it in my very fingers and I did not have the
experience to know what it was, nor the value of it. And now I know
the value, but it has escaped me—it escaped me on the day that I
began to think like a human being. The first adult thought pushed it
just a little and the next one pushed it farther and finally it was gone
entirely and I didn't even know that it had gone.
He sat in the chair on the flagstone patio and felt the Sun upon him,
filtering through the branches of trees misty with the breaking leaves
of Spring.
Something else, thought Andrew Young. Something that was not
human—yet. A tiny animal that had many ways to choose, many
roads to walk. And, of course, I chose the wrong way. I chose the
human way. But there was another way. I know there must have
been. A fairy way—or a brownie way, or maybe even pixie. That
sounds foolish and childish now, but it wasn't always.
I chose the human way because I was guided into it. I was pushed
and shoved, like a herded sheep.
I grew up and I lost the thing I held.
He sat and made his mind go hard and tried to analyze what it was
he sought and there was no name for it. Except happiness. And
happiness was a state of being, not a thing to regain and grasp.

But he could remember how it felt. With his eyes open in the
present, he could remember the brightness of the day of the past,
the clean-washed goodness of it, the wonder of the colors that were
more brilliant than he ever since had seen—as if it were the first
second after Creation and the world was still shiningly new.
It was that new, of course. It would be that new to a child.
But that didn't explain it all.
It didn't explain the bottomless capacity for seeing and knowing and
believing in the beauty and the goodness of a clean new world. It
didn't explain the almost non-human elation of knowing that there
were colors to see and scents to smell and soft green grass to touch.
I'm insane, Andrew Young said to himself. Insane, or going insane.
But if insanity will take me back to an understanding of the strange
perception I had when I was a child, and lost, I'll take insanity.
He leaned back in his chair and let his eyes go shut and his mind
drift back.
He was crouching in a corner of a garden and the leaves were
drifting down from the walnut trees like a rain of saffron gold. He
lifted one of the leaves and it slipped from his fingers, for his hands
were chubby still and not too sure in grasping. But he tried again
and he clutched it by the stem in one stubby fist and he saw that it
was not just a blob of yellowness, but delicate, with many little
veins. When he held it so that the Sun struck it, he imagined that he
could almost see through it, the gold was spun so fine.
He crouched with the leaf clutched tightly in his hand and for a
moment there was a silence that held him motionless. Then he
heard the frost-loosened leaves pattering all around him, pattering
as they fell, talking in little whispers as they sailed down through the
air and found themselves a bed with their golden fellows.
In that moment he knew that he was one with the leaves and the
whispers that they made, one with the gold and the autumn
sunshine and the far blue mist upon the hill above the apple
orchard.
A foot crunched stone behind him and his eyes came open and the
golden leaves were gone.
"I am sorry if I disturbed you, Ancestor," said the man. "I had an
appointment for this hour, but I would not have disturbed you if I
had known."
Young stared at him reproachfully without answering.
"I am kin," the man told him.
"I wouldn't doubt it," said Andrew Young. "The Galaxy is cluttered up
with descendants of mine."
The man was very humble. "Of course, you must resent us
sometimes. But we are proud of you, sir. I might almost say that we
revere you. No other family—"
"I know," interrupted Andrew Young. "No other family has any fossil
quite so old as I am."
"Nor as wise," said the man.
Andrew Young snorted. "Cut out that nonsense. Let's hear what you
have to say and get it over with."

The technician was harassed and worried and very frankly puzzled.
But he stayed respectful, for one always was respectful to an
ancestor, whoever he might be. Today there were mighty few left
who had been born into a mortal world.
Not that Andrew Young looked old. He looked like all adults, a fine
figure of a person in the early twenties.
The technician shifted uneasily. "But, sir, this ... this...."
"Teddy bear," said Young.
"Yes, of course. An extinct terrestrial subspecies of animal?"
"It's a toy," Young told him. "A very ancient toy. All children used to
have them five thousand years ago. They took them to bed."
The technician shuddered. "A deplorable custom. Primitive."
"Depends on the viewpoint," said Young. "I've slept with them many
a time. There's a world of comfort in one, I can personally assure
you."
The technician saw that it was no use to argue. He might as well
fabricate the thing and get it over with.
"I can build you a fine model, sir," he said, trying to work up some
enthusiasm. "I'll build in a response mechanism so that it can give
simple answers to certain keyed questions and, of course, I'll fix it so
it'll walk, either on two legs or four...."
"No," said Andrew Young.
The technician looked surprised and hurt. "No?"
"No," repeated Andrew Young. "I don't want it fancied up. I want it a
simple lump of make-believe. No wonder the children of today have
no imagination. Modern toys entertain them with a bag of tricks that
leave the young'uns no room for imagination. They couldn't possibly
think up, on their own, all the screwy things these new toys do.
Built-in responses and implied consciousness and all such
mechanical trivia...."
"You just want a stuffed fabric," said the technician, sadly, "with
jointed arms and legs."
"Precisely," agreed Young.
"You're sure you want fabric, sir? I could do a neater job in plastics."
"Fabric," Young insisted firmly, "and it must be scratchy."
"Scratchy, sir?"
"Sure. You know. Bristly. So it scratches when you rub your face
against it."
"But no one in his right mind would want to rub his face...."
"I would," said Andrew Young. "I fully intend to do so."
"As you wish, sir," the technician answered, beaten now.
"When you get it done," said Young, "I have some other things in
mind."
"Other things?" The technician looked wildly about, as if seeking
some escape.
"A high chair," said Young. "And a crib. And a woolly dog. And
buttons."
"Buttons?" asked the technician. "What are buttons?"
"I'll explain it all to you," Young told him airily. "It all is very simple."

It seemed, when Andrew Young came into the room, that Riggs and
Stanford had been expecting him, had known that he was coming
and had been waiting for him.
He wasted no time on preliminaries or formalities.
They know, he told himself. They know, or they have guessed. They
would be watching me. Ever since I brought in my petition, they
have been watching me, wondering what I would be thinking, trying
to puzzle out what I might do next. They know every move I've
made, they know about the toys and the furniture and all the other
things. And I don't need to tell them what I plan to do.
"I need some help," he said, and they nodded soberly, as if they had
guessed he needed help.
"I want to build a house," he explained. "A big house. Much larger
than the usual house."
Riggs said, "We'll draw the plans for you. Do anything else that you
—"
"A house," Young went on, "about four or five times as big as the
ordinary house. Four or five times normal scale, I mean. Doors
twenty-five to thirty feet high and everything else in proportion."
"Neighbors or privacy?" asked Stanford.
"Privacy," said Young.
"We'll take care of it," promised Riggs. "Leave the matter of the
house to us."
Young stood for a long moment, looking at the two of them. Then
he said, "I thank you, gentlemen. I thank you for your helpfulness
and your understanding. But most of all I thank you for not asking
any questions."
He turned slowly and walked out of the room and they sat in silence
for minutes after he was gone.
Finally, Stanford offered a deduction: "It will have to be a place that
a boy would like. Woods to run in and a little stream to fish in and a
field where he can fly his kites. What else could it be?"
"He's been out ordering children's furniture and toys," Riggs agreed.
"Stuff from five thousand years ago. The kind of things he used
when he was a child. But scaled to adult size."
"Now," said Stanford, "he wants a house built to the same
proportions. A house that will make him think or help him believe
that he is a child. But will it work, Riggs? His body will not change.
He cannot make it change. It will only be in his mind."
"Illusion," declared Riggs. "The illusion of bigness in relation to
himself. To a child, creeping on the floor, a door is twenty-five to
thirty feet high, relatively. Of course the child doesn't know that. But
Andrew Young does. I don't see how he'll overcome that."
"At first," suggested Stanford, "he will know that it's illusion, but
after a time, isn't there a possibility that it will become reality so far
as he's concerned? That's why he needs our help. So that the house
will not be firmly planted in his memory as a thing that's merely out
of proportion ... so that it will slide from illusion into reality without
too great a strain."
"We must keep our mouths shut." Riggs nodded soberly. "There
must be no interference. It's a thing he must do himself ... entirely
by himself. Our help with the house must be the help of an unseen,
silent agency. Like brownies, I think the term was that he used, we
must help and be never seen. Intrusion by anyone would introduce a
jarring note and would destroy illusion and that is all he has to work
on. Illusion pure and simple."
"Others have tried," objected Stanford, pessimistic again. "Many
others. With gadgets and machines...."
"None has tried it," said Riggs, "with the power of mind alone. With
the sheer determination to wipe out five thousand years of memory."
"That will be his stumbling block," said Stanford. "The old, dead
memories are the things he has to beat. He has to get rid of them ...
not just bury them, but get rid of them for good and all, forever."
"He must do more than that," said Riggs. "He must replace his
memories with the outlook he had when he was a child. His mind
must be washed out, refreshed, wiped clean and shining and made
new again ... ready to live another five thousand years."
The two men sat and looked at one another and in each other's eyes
they saw a single thought—the day would come when they, too,
each of them alone, would face the problem Andrew Young faced.
"We must help," said Riggs, "in every way we can and we must keep
watch and we must be ready ... but Andrew Young cannot know that
we are helping or that we are watching him. We must anticipate the
materials and tools and the aids that he may need."

Stanford started to speak, then hesitated, as if seeking in his mind

for the proper words.
"Yes," said Riggs. "What is it?"
"Later on," Stanford managed to say, "much later on, toward the
very end, there is a certain factor that we must supply. The one
thing that he will need the most and the one thing that he cannot
think about, even in advance. All the rest can be stage setting and
he can still go on toward the time when it becomes reality. All the
rest may be make-believe, but one thing must come as genuine or
the entire effort will collapse in failure."
Riggs nodded. "Of course. That's something we'll have to work out
carefully."
"If we can," Stanford said.

The yellow button over here and the red one over there and the
green one doesn't fit, so I'll throw it on the floor and just for the fun
of it, I'll put the pink one in my mouth and someone will find me
with it and they'll raise a ruckus because they will be afraid that I
will swallow it.
And there's nothing, absolutely nothing, that I love better than a
full-blown ruckus. Especially if it is over me.
"Ug," said Andrew Young, and he swallowed the button.
He sat stiff and straight in the towering high chair and then, in a
fury, swept the oversized muffin tin and its freight of buttons
crashing to the floor.
For a second he felt like weeping in utter frustration and then a
sense of shame crept in on him.
Big baby, he said to himself.
Crazy to be sitting in an overgrown high chair, playing with buttons
and mouthing baby talk and trying to force a mind conditioned by
five thousand years of life into the channels of an infant's thoughts.
Carefully he disengaged the tray and slid it out, cautiously shinnied
down the twelve-foot-high chair.
The room engulfed him, the ceiling towering far above him.
The neighbors, he told himself, no doubt thought him crazy,
although none of them had said so. Come to think of it, he had not
seen any of his neighbors for a long spell now.
A suspicion came into his mind. Maybe they knew what he was
doing, maybe they were deliberately keeping out of his way in order
not to embarrass him.
That, of course, would be what they would do if they had realized
what he was about. But he had expected ... he had expected ... that
fellow, what's his name? ... at the commission, what's the name of
that commission, anyhow? Well, anyway, he'd expected a fellow
whose name he couldn't remember from a commission the name of
which he could not recall to come snooping around, wondering what
he might be up to, offering to help, spoiling the whole setup,
everything he'd planned.
I can't remember, he complained to himself. I can't remember the
name of a man whose name I knew so short a time ago as
yesterday. Nor the name of a commission that I knew as well as I
know my name. I'm getting forgetful. I'm getting downright childish.
Childish?
Childish!
Childish and forgetful.
Good Lord, thought Andrew Young, that's just the way I want it.
On hands and knees he scrabbled about and picked up the buttons,
put them in his pocket. Then, with the muffin tin underneath his
arm, he shinnied up the high chair and, seating himself comfortably,
sorted out the buttons in the pan.
The green one over here in this compartment and the yellow one ...
oops, there she goes onto the floor. And the red one in with the blue
one and this one ... this one ... what's the color of this one? Color?
What's that?
What is what?
What—

"It's almost time," said Stanford, "and we are ready, as ready as

we'll ever be. We'll move in when the time is right, but we can't
move in too soon. Better to be a little late than a little early. We have
all the things we need. Special size diapers and—"
"Good Lord," exclaimed Riggs, "it won't go that far, will it?"
"It should," said Stanford. "It should go even further to work right.
He got lost yesterday. One of our men found him and led him home.
He didn't have the slightest idea where he was and he was getting
pretty scared and he cried a little. He chattered about birds and
flowers and he insisted that our man stay and play with him."
Riggs chuckled softly. "Did he?"
"Oh, certainly. He came back worn to a frazzle."
"Food?" I asked Riggs. "How is he feeding himself?"
"We see there's a supply of stuff, cookies and such-wise, left on a
low shelf, where he can get at them. One of the robots cooks up
some more substantial stuff on a regular schedule and leaves it
where he can find it. We have to be careful. We can't mess around
too much. We can't intrude on him. I have a feeling he's almost
reached an actual turning point. We can't afford to upset things now
that he's come this far."
"The android's ready?"
"Just about," said Stanford.
"And the playmates?"
"Ready. They were less of a problem."
"There's nothing more that we can do?"
"Nothing," Stanford said. "Just wait, that's all. Young has carried
himself this far by the sheer force of will alone. That will is gone
now. He can't consciously force himself any further back. He is more
child than adult now. He's built up a regressive momentum and the
only question is whether that momentum is sufficient to carry him all
the way back to actual babyhood."
"It has to go back to that?" Riggs looked unhappy, obviously thinking
of his own future. "You're only guessing, aren't you?"
"All the way or it simply is no good," Stanford said dogmatically. "He
has to get an absolutely fresh start. All the way or nothing."
"And if he gets stuck halfway between? Half child, half man, what
then?"
"That's something I don't want to think about," Stanford said.

He had lost his favorite teddy bear and gone to hunt it in the dusk
that was filled with elusive fireflies and the hush of a world quieting
down for the time of sleep. The grass was drenched with dew and
he felt the cold wetness of it soaking through his shoes as he went
from bush to hedge to flowerbed, looking for the missing toy.
It was necessary, he told himself, that he find the nice little bear, for
it was the one that slept with him and if he did not find it, he knew
that it would spend a lonely and comfortless night. But at no time
did he admit, even to his innermost thought, that it was he who
needed the bear and not the bear who needed him.
A soaring bat swooped low and for a horrified moment, catching
sight of the zooming terror, a blob of darkness in the gathering dusk,
he squatted low against the ground, huddling against the sudden
fear that came out of the night. Sounds of fright bubbled in his
throat and now he saw the great dark garden as an unknown place,
filled with lurking shadows that lay in wait for him.
He stayed cowering against the ground and tried to fight off the
alien fear that growled from behind each bush and snarled in every
darkened corner. But even as the fear washed over him, there was
one hidden corner of his mind that knew there was no need of fear.
It was as if that one area of his brain still fought against the rest of
him, as if that small section of cells might know that the bat was no
more than a flying bat, that the shadows in the garden were no
more than absence of light.
There was a reason, he knew, why he should not be afraid—a good
reason born of a certain knowledge he no longer had. And that he
should have such knowledge seemed unbelievable, for he was
scarcely two years old.

He tried to say it—two years old.

There was something wrong with his tongue, something the matter
with the way he had to use his mouth, with the way his lips refused
to shape the words he meant to say.
He tried to define the words, tried to tell himself what he meant by
two years old and one moment it seemed that he knew the meaning
of it and then it escaped him.
The bat came again and he huddled close against the ground,
shivering as he crouched. He lifted his eyes fearfully, darting glances
here and there, and out of the corner of his eye he saw the looming
house and it was a place he knew as refuge.
"House," he said, and the word was wrong, not the word itself, but
the way he said it.
He ran on trembling, unsure feet and the great door loomed before
him, with the latch too high to reach. But there was another way, a
small swinging door built into the big door, the sort of door that is
built for cats and dogs and sometimes little children. He darted
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