When the Sleeper Wakes (A Dystopian Sci-Fi). H. G. Wells

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ and the man with the flaxen beard proffered him a little glass of some refreshing fluid. Graham saw over the rim of the glass a pale-faced young man regarding him with a singular fixity.

      The thickset man had been pacing the room fretfully, and now turned and went through the archway towards the balcony, from which the noise of a distant crowd still came in gusts and cadences. The crop-headed lad handed the tailor a roll of the bluish satin and the two began fixing this in the mechanism in a manner reminiscent of a roll of paper in a nineteenth century printing machine. Then they ran the entire thing on its easy, noiseless bearings across the room to a remote corner where a twisted cable looped rather gracefully from the wall. They made some connexion and the machine became energetic and swift.

      “What is that doing?” asked Graham, pointing with the empty glass to the busy figures and trying to ignore the scrutiny of the new comer. “Is that — some sort of force — laid on?”

      “Yes,” said the man with the flaxen beard.

      “Who is that?” He indicated the archway behind him.

      The man in purple stroked his little beard, hesitated, and answered in an undertone, “He is Howard, your chief guardian. You see, Sire — it’s a little difficult to explain. The Council appoints a guardian and assistants. This hall has under certain restrictions been public. In order that people might satisfy themselves. We have barred the doorways for the first time. But I think — if you don’t mind, I will leave him to explain.”

      “Odd!” said Graham. “Guardian? Council?” Then turning his back on the new comer, he asked in an undertone, “Why is this man glaring at me? Is he a mesmerist?”

      “Mesmerist! He is a capillotomist.”

      “Capillotomist!”

      “Yes — one of the chief. His yearly fee is sixdoz lions.”

      It sounded sheer nonsense. Graham snatched at the last phrase with an unsteady mind. “Sixdoz lions?” he said.

      “Didn’t you have lions? I suppose not. You had the old pounds? They are our monetary units.”

      “But what was that you said — sixdoz?”

      “Yes. Six dozen, Sire. Of course things, even these little things, have altered. You lived in the days of the decimal system, the Arab system — tens, and little hundreds and thousands. We have eleven numerals now. We have single figures for both ten and eleven, two figures for a dozen, and a dozen dozen makes a gross, a great hundred, you know, a dozen gross a dozand, and a dozand dozand a myriad. Very simple?”

      “I suppose so,” said Graham. “But about this cap — what was it?”

      The man with the flaxen beard glanced over his shoulder.

      “Here are your clothes!” he said. Graham turned round sharply and saw the tailor standing at his elbow smiling, and holding some palpably new garments over his arm. The crop-headed boy, by means of one ringer, was impelling the complicated machine towards the lift by which he had arrived. Graham stared at the completed suit. “You don’t mean to say —!”

      “Just made,” said the tailor. He dropped the garments at the feet of Graham, walked to the bed, on which Graham had so recently been lying, flung out the translucent mattress, and turned up the looking-glass. As he did so a furious bell summoned the thickset man to the corner. The man with the flaxen beard rushed across to him and then hurried out by the archway.

      The tailor was assisting Graham into a dark purple combination garment, stockings, vest, and pants in one, as the thickset man came back from the corner to meet the man with the flaxen beard returning from the balcony. They began speaking quickly in an undertone, their bearing had an unmistakable quality of anxiety. Over the purple undergarment came a complex garment of bluish white, and Graham, was clothed in the fashion once more and saw himself, sallow-faced, unshaven and shaggy still, but at least naked no longer, and in some indefinable unprecedented way graceful.

      “I must shave,” he said regarding himself in the glass.

      “In a moment,” said Howard.

      The persistent stare ceased. The young man closed his eyes, reopened them, and with a lean hand extended, advanced on Graham. Then he stopped, with his hand slowly gesticulating, and looked about him.

      “A seat,” said Howard impatiently, and in a moment the flaxen-bearded man had a chair behind Graham. “Sit down, please,” said Howard.

      Graham hesitated, and in the other hand of the wildeyed man he saw the glint of steel.

      “Don’t you understand, Sire?” cried the flaxen-bearded man with hurried politeness. “He is going to cut your hair.”

      “Oh!” cried Graham enlightened. “But you called him — “

      “A capillotomist — precisely! He is one of the finest artists in the world.”

      Graham sat down abruptly. The flaxen-bearded man disappeared. The capillotomist came forward, examined Graham’s ears and surveyed him, felt the back of his head, and would have sat down again to regard him but for Howard’s audible impatience. Forthwith with rapid movements and a succession of deftly handled implements he shaved Graham’s chin, clipped his moustache, and cut and arranged his hair. All this he did without a word, with something of the rapt air of a poet inspired. And as soon as he had finished Graham was handed a pair of shoes.

      Suddenly a loud voice shouted — it seemed from a piece of machinery in the corner — “At once — at once. The people know all over the city. Work is being stopped. Work is being stopped. Wait for nothing, but come.”

      This shout appeared to perturb Howard exceedingly. By his gestures it seemed to Graham that he hesitated between two directions. Abruptly he went towards the corner where the apparatus stood about the little crystal ball. As he did so the undertone of tumultuous shouting from the archway that had continued during all these occurrences rose to a mighty sound, roared as if it were sweeping past, and fell again as if receding swiftly. It drew Graham after it with an irresistible attraction. He glanced at the thickset man, and then obeyed his impulse. In two strides he was down the steps and in the passage, and in a score he was out upon the balcony upon which the three men had been standing.

      CHAPTER V

       THE MOVING WAYS

       Table of Contents

      He went to the railings of the balcony and stared upward. An exclamation of surprise at his appearance, and the movements of a number of people came from the great area below.

      His first impression was of overwhelming architecture. The place into which he looked was an aisle of Titanic buildings, curving spaciously in either direction. Overhead mighty cantilevers sprang together across the huge width of the place, and a tracery of translucent material shut out the sky. Gigantic globes of cool white light shamed the pale sunbeams that filtered down through the girders and wires. Here and there a gossamer suspension bridge dotted with foot passengers flung across the chasm and the air was webbed with slender cables. A cliff of edifice hung above him, he perceived as he glanced upward, and the opposite façade was grey and dim and broken by great archings, circular perforations, balconies, buttresses, turret projections, myriads СКАЧАТЬ