The complete works, p.81
The Complete Works, page 81
After a space he grew calm. He sat up, his hands
hanging over his knees in almost precisely the same
attitude in which Isbister had found him on the cliff at Pentargen. His attention was attracted by a thick domineering voice, the footsteps of an advancing personage.
"What are you doing? Why was I not
warned? Surely you could tell? Someone will suffer
for this. The man must be kept quiet. Are the
doorways closed? All the doorways? He must be kept
perfectly quiet. He must not be told. Has he been
told anything?"
The man with the fair beard made some inaudible
remark, and Graham looking over his shoulder saw
approaching a very short, fat, and thickset beardless man, with aquiline nose and heavy neck and chin.
Very thick black and slightly sloping eyebrows that
almost met over his nose and overhung deep grey
eyes, gave his face an oddly formidable expression.
He scowled momentarily at Graham and then his
regard returned to the man with the flaxen beard.
"These others," he said in a voice of extreme irritation. "You had better go."
"Go? " said the red-bearded man.
"Certainly--go now. But see the doorways are
closed as you go."
The two men addressed turned obediently, after one
reluctant glance at Graham, and instead of going
through the archway as he expected, walked straight
to the dead wall of the apartment opposite the archway.
And then came a strange thing; a long strip
of this apparently solid wall rolled up with a snap, hung over the two retreating men and fell again, and immediately Graham was alone with the new comer
and the purple-robed man with the flaxen beard.
For a space the thickset man took not the slightest
notice of Graham, but proceeded to interrogate the
other--obviously his subordinate--upon the treatment of their charge. He spoke clearly, but in
phrases only partially intelligible to Graham. The
awakening seemed not only a matter of surprise but
of consternation and annoyance to him. He was evidently profoundly excited.
"You must not confuse his mind by telling him
things," he repeated again and again. "You must not confuse his mind."
His questions answered, he turned quickly and eyed
the awakened sleeper with an ambiguous expression.
"Feel queer? " he asked.
"Very."
"The world, what you see of it, seems strange to you? "
"I suppose I have to live in it, strange as it seems."
"I suppose so, now."
"In the first place, hadn't I better have some
clothes? "
"They--" said the thickset man and stopped, and the flaxen-bearded man met his eye and went away.
"You will very speedily have clothes," said the thickset man.
"Is it true indeed, that I have been asleep two hundred--?" asked Graham.
"They have told you that, have they? Two hundred and three, as a matter of fact."
Graham accepted the indisputable now with raised
eyebrows and depressed mouth. He sat silent for a
moment, and then asked a question, "Is there a mill or dynamo near here?" He did not wait for an
answer. "Things have changed tremendously, I
suppose?" he said.
"What is that shouting? " he asked abruptly.
"Nothing," said the thickset man impatiently.
"It's people. You'll understand better later--perhaps.
As you say, things have changed." He spoke
shortly, his brows were knit, and he glanced about
him like a man trying to decide in an emergency.
"We must get you clothes and so forth, at any rate.
Better wait here until some can come. No one will
come near you. You want shaving."
Graham rubbed his chin.
The man with the flaxen beard came back towards
them, turned suddenly, listened for a moment, lifted his eyebrows at the older man, and hurried off through the archway towards the balcony. The tumult of
shouting grew louder, and the thickset man turned and listened also. He cursed suddenly under his breath,
and turned his eyes upon Graham with an unfriendly
expression. It was a surge of many voices, rising and falling, shouting and screaming, and once came a
sound like blows and sharp cries, and then a snapping like the crackling of dry sticks. Graham
strained his ears to draw some single thread of sound from the woven tumult.
Then he perceived, repeated again and again, a
certain formula. For a time he doubted his ears. But surely these were the words: " how us the Sleeper!
Show us the Sleeper!"
The thickset man rushed suddenly to the archway.
"Wild! " he cried, "How do they know? Do they know? Or is it guessing? "
There was perhaps an answer.
"I can't come," said the thickset man; "I have __him__
to see to. But shout from the balcony."
There was an inaudible reply.
"Say he is not awake. Anything! I leave it to
you."
He came hurrying back to Graham. "You must
have clothes at once," he said. "You cannot stop here--and it will be impossible to--"
He rushed away, Graham shouting unanswered
questions after him. In a moment he was back.
"I can't tell you what is happening. It is too complex to explain. In a moment you shall have your
clothes made. Yes--in a moment. And then I can
take you away from here. You will find out our
troubles soon enough."
"But those voices. They were shouting--?"
"Something about the Sleeper--that's you. They
have some twisted idea. I don't know what it is. I
know nothing."
A shrill bell jetted acutely across the indistinct mingling of remote noises, and this brusque person sprang
to a little group of appliances in the corner of the room. He listened for a moment, regarding a ball of
crystal, nodded, and said a few indistinct words; then he walked to the wall through which the two men had
vanished. It rolled up again like a curtain, and he
stood waiting.
Graham lifted his arm and was astonished to find
what strength the restoratives had given him. He
thrust one leg over the side of the couch and then the other. His head no longer swam. He could scarcely
credit his rapid recovery. He sat feeling his limbs.
The man with the flaxen beard re-entered from the
archway, and as he did so the cage of a lift came
sliding down in front of the thickset man, and a lean, grey-bearded man, carrying a roll, and wearing a
tightly-fitting costume of dark green, appeared therein.
"This is the tailor," said the thickset man with an introductory gesture." It will never do for you to wear that black. I cannot understand how it got here.
But I shall. I shall. You will be as rapid as possible? "
he said to the tailor.
The man in green bowed, and, advancing, seated
himself by Graham on the bed. His manner was
calm, but his eyes were full of curiosity. "You will find the fashions altered, Sire," he said. He glanced from under his brows at the thickset man. ,
He opened the roller with a quick movement, and a
confusion of brilliant fabrics poured out over his knees.
"You lived, Sire, in a period essentially cylindrical--the Victorian. With a tendency to the hemisphere in
hats. Circular curves always. Now--" He flicked out a little appliance the size and appearance of a
keyless watch, whirled the knob, and behold--a little figure in white appeared kinetoscope fashion on the
dial, walking and turning. The tailor caught up a
pattern of bluish white satin. "That is my conception of your immediate treatment," he said.
The thickset man came and stood by the shoulder
of Graham.
"We have very little time," he said.
"Trust me," said the tailor. "My machine follows.
What do you think of this? "
"What is that?" asked the man from the nineteenth century.
"In your days they showed you a fashion-plate,"
said the tailor," but this is our modern development See here." The little figure repeated its evolutions, but in a different costume. "Or this," and with a click another small figure in a more voluminous type of robe marched on to the dial. The tailor was very
quick in his movements, and glanced twice towards
the lift as he did these things.
It rumbled again, and a crop-haired anaemic lad
with features of the Chinese type, clad in coarse
pale blue canvas, appeared together with a complicated machine, which he pushed noiselessly on
little castors into the room. Incontinently the little kinetoscope was dropped, Graham was invited to
stand in front of the machine and the tailor
muttered some instructions to the crop-haired lad,
who answered in guttural tones and with words
Graham did not recognise. The boy then went
to conduct an incomprehensible monologue in the
corner, and the tailor pulled out a number of slotted arms terminating in little discs, pulling them out until the discs were flat against the body of Graham, one
at each shoulder blade, one at the elbows, one at the neck and so forth, so that at last there were, perhaps, two score of them upon his body and limbs. At the
same time, some other person entered the room by the lift, behind Graham. The tailor set moving a mechanism that initiated a faint-sounding rhythmic movement
of parts in the machine, and in another moment he was knocking up the levers and Graham was released. The
tailor replaced his cloak of black, 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 cropheaded 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
finger, 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 Iying, 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 under-garment came a I
complex but graceful garment of bluish white, and I
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
with graceful gestures, 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 |
