Men Like Gods. H.G. Wells

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СКАЧАТЬ may take different forms here," he said.

      "And how few babies or little children are visible!" Father Amerton remarked. "Nowhere have I seen a mother with her child."

      "On the other, side of the mountains there was a place like the playing field of a big school. There were children there and one or two older people dressed in white."

      "I saw that. But I was thinking of babes. Compare this with what one would see in Italy.

      "The most beautiful and desirable young women," added the reverend gentleman; "most desirable--and not a sign of maternity!"

      Their aviator, a sun-tanned blond with very blue eyes, helped them out of his machine, and they stood watching the descent of the other members of their party. Mr. Barnstaple was astonished to note how rapidly he was becoming familiarized with the colour and harmony of this new world; the strangest things in the whole spectacle now were the figures and clothing of his associates. Mr. Rupert Catskill in his celebrated grey top hat, Mr. Mush with his preposterous eye-glass, the peculiar long slenderness of Mr. Burleigh, and the square leather-clad lines of Mr. Burleigh's chauffeur, struck him as being far more incredible than the graceful Utopian forms about him.

      The aviator's interest and amusement enhanced Mr. Barnstaple's perception of his companions' oddity. And then came a wave of profound doubt.

      "I suppose this is really real," he said to Father Amerton.

      "Really real! What else can it be?"

      "I suppose we are not dreaming all this."

      "Are your dreams and my dreams likely to coincide?"

      "Yes; but there are quite impossible things--absolutely impossible things."

      "As, for instance?"

      "Well, how is it that these people are speaking to us in English--modern English?"

      "I never thought of that. It is rather incredible. They don't talk in English to one another."

      Mr. Barnstaple stared in round-eyed amazement at Father Amerton, struck for the first time by a still more incredible fact. "They don't talk in anything to one another," he said. "And we haven't noticed it until this moment!"

      The Shadow of Einstein Falls Across the Story but Passes Lightly by

      I

      Except for that one perplexing fact that all these Utopians had apparently a complete command of idiomatic English, Mr. Barnstaple found his vision of this new world developing with a congruity that no dream in his experience had ever possessed. It was so coherent, so orderly, that less and less was it like a strange world at all and more and more like an arrival in some foreign but very highly civilized country.

      Under the direction of the brown-eyed woman in the scarlet-edged robe, the Earthlings were established in their quarters near the Conference Place in the most hospitable and comfortable fashion conceivable. Five or six youths and girls made it their business to initiate the strangers in the little details of Utopian domesticity. The separate buildings in which they were lodged had each an agreeable little dressing-room, and the bed, which had sheets of the finest linen and a very light puffy coverlet, stood in an open loggia--too open Lady Stella thought, but then as she said, "One feels so safe here." The luggage appeared and the valises were identified as if they were in some hospitable earthly mansion.

      But Lady Stella had to turn two rather too friendly youths out of her apartment before she could open her dressing-bag and administer refreshment to her complexion.

      A few minutes later some excitement was caused by an outbreak of wild laughter and the sounds of an amiable but hysterical struggle that came from Lady Stella's retreat. The girl who had remained with her had displayed a quite feminine interest in her equipment and had come upon a particularly charming and diaphanous sleeping suit. For some obscure reason this secret daintiness amused the young Utopian extremely, and it was with some difficulty that Lady Stella restrained her from putting the garment on and dancing out in it for a public display. "Then you put it on," the girl insisted.

      "But you don't understand," cried Lady Stella. "It's almost--sacred! It's for nobody to see--ever."

      "But why?" the Utopian asked, puzzled beyond measure.

      Lady Stella found an answer impossible.

      The light meal that followed was by terrestrial standards an entirely satisfactory one. The anxiety of Mr. Freddy Mush was completely allayed: there were cold chicken and ham and a very pleasant meat pate. There were also rather coarse-grained but most palatable bread, pure butter, an exquisite salad, fruit, cheese of the Gruyere type, and a light white wine which won from Mr. Burleigh the tribute that "Moselle never did anything better."

      "You find our food very like your own?" asked the woman in the red-trimmed robe.

      "Eckquithit quality," said Mr. Mush with his mouth rather full.

      "Food has changed very little in the last three thousand years. People had found out all the best things to eat long before the Last Age of Confusion."

      "It's too real to be real," Mr. Barnstaple repeated to himself. "Too real to be real."

      He looked at his companions, elated, interested and eating with appreciation.

      If it wasn't for the absurdity of these Utopians speaking English with a clearness that tapped like a hammer inside his head Mr. Barnstaple would have had no doubt whatever of its reality.

      No servants waited at the clothless stone table; the woman in the white and scarlet robe and the two aviators shared the meal and the guests attended to each other's requirements. Mr. Burleigh's chauffeur was for modestly shrinking to another table until the great statesman reassured him with: "Sit down there, Penk. Next to Mr. Mush." Other Utopians with friendly but keenly observant eyes upon the Earthlings came into the great pillared veranda in which the meal had been set, and smiled and stood about or sat down. There were no introductions and few social formalities.

      "All this is most reassuring," said Mr. Burleigh. "Most reassuring. I'm bound to say these beat the Chatsworth peaches. Is that cream, my dear Rupert, in the little brown jar in front of you?... I guessed as much. If you are sure you can spare it, Rupert.... Thank you."

      II

      Several of the Utopians made themselves known by name to the Earthlings. All their voices sounded singularly alike to Mr. Barnstaple and the words were as clear as print. The brown-eyed woman's name was Lychnis. A man with a beard who might perhaps, Mr. Barnstaple thought, have been as old as forty, was either Urthred or Adam or Edom, the name for all its sharpness of enunciation had been very difficult to catch. It was as if large print hesitated. Urthred conveyed that he was an ethnologist and historian and that he desired to learn all that he possibly could about the ways of our world. He impressed Mr. Barnstaple as having the easy carriage of some earthly financier or great newspaper proprietor rather than the diffidence natural in our own every-day world to a merely learned man. Another of their hosts, Serpentine, was also, Mr. Barnstaple learnt with surprise, for his bearing too was almost masterful, a scientific man. He called himself something that Mr. Barnstaple could not catch. First it sounded like "atomic mechanician," and then oddly enough it sounded like "molecular chemist." And then Mr. Barnstaple heard СКАЧАТЬ