The Moving Ways

: When The Sleeper Wakes

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 spacious 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 w dth 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

facade was grey and dim and broken by great archings, circular

perforations, balconies, buttresses, turret projections, myriads of vast

windows, and an intricate scheme of architectural relief. Athwart these

ran inscriptions horizontally and obliquely in an unfamiliar lettering.

Here and there close to the roof cables of a peculiar stoutness were

fastened, and drooped in a steep curve to circular openings on the

opposite side of the space, and even as Graham noted these a remote

and tiny figure of a man clad in pale blue arrested his attention.

This little figure was far overhead across the space beside the higher

fastening of one of these festoons, hanging forward from a little ledge

of masonry and handling some well-nigh invisible strings dependent from

the line. Then suddenly, with a swoop that sent Graham's heart into his

mouth, this man had rushed down the curve and vanished through a round

opening on the hither side of the way. Graham had been looking up as he

came out upon the balcony, and the things he saw above and opposed to

him had at first seized his attention to the exclusion of anything else.

Then suddenly he discovered the roadway! It was not a roadway at all,

as Graham understood such things, for in the nineteenth century the

only roads and streets were beaten tracks of motionless earth, jostling

rivulets of vehicles between narrow footways. But this roadway was three

hundred feet across, and it moved; it moved, all save the middle,

the lowest part. For a moment, the motion dazzled his mind. Then he

understood.



Under the balcony this extraordinary roadway ran swiftly to Graham's

right, an endless flow rushing along as fast as a nineteenth century

express train, an endless platform of narrow transverse overlapping

slats with little interspaces that permitted it to follow the curvatures

of the street. Upon it were seats, and here and there little kiosks,

but they swept by too swiftly for him to see what might be therein. From

this nearest and swiftest platform a series of others descended to the

centre of the space. Each moved to the right, each perceptibly slower

than the one above it, but the difference in pace was small enough to

permit anyone to step from any platform to the one adjacent, and so walk

uninterruptedly from the swiftest to the motionless middle way. Beyond

this middle way was another series of endless platforms rushing with

varying pace to Graham's left. And seated in crowds upon the two widest

and swiftest platforms, or stepping from one to another down the steps,

or swarming over the central space, was an innumerable and wonderfully

diversified multitude of people.



"You must not stop here," shouted Howard suddenly at his side. "You must

come away at once."



Graham made no answer. He heard without hearing. The platforms ran with

a roar and the people were shouting. He perceived women and girls

with flowing hair, beautifully robed, with bands crossing between the

breasts. These first came out of the confusion. Then he perceived that

the dominant note in that kaleidoscope of costume was the pale blue that

the tailor's boy had worn. He became aware of cries of "The Sleeper.

What has happened to the Sleeper?" and it seemed as though the rushing

platforms before him were suddenly spattered with the pale buff of

human faces, and then still more thickly. He saw pointing fingers. He

perceived that the motionless central area of this huge arcade just

opposite to the balcony was densely crowded with blue-clad people. Some

sort of struggle had sprung into life. People seemed to be pushed up the

running platforms on either side, and carried away against their will.

They would spring off so soon as they were beyond the thick of the

confusion, and run back towards the conflict.



"It is the Sleeper. Verily it is the Sleeper," shouted voices. "That is

never the Sleeper," shouted others. More and more faces were turned to

him. At the intervals along this central area Graham noted openings,

pits, apparently the heads of staircases going down with people

ascending out of them and descending into them. The struggle it seemed

centred about the one of these nearest to him. People were running

down the moving platforms to this, leaping dexterously from platform to

platform. The clustering people on the higher platforms seemed to divide

their interest between this point and the balcony. A number of sturdy

little figures clad in a uniform of bright red, and working methodically

together, were employed it seemed in preventing access to this

descending staircase. About them a crowd was rapidly accumulating.

Their brilliant colour contrasted vividly with the whitish-blue of their

antagonists, for the struggle was indisputable.



He saw these things with Howard shouting in his ear and shaking his arm.

And then suddenly Howard was gone and he stood alone.



He perceived that the cries of "The Sleeper" grew in volume, and that

the people on the nearer platform were standing up. The nearer swifter

platform he perceived was empty to the right of him, and far across the

space the platform running in the opposite direction was coming crowded

and passing away bare. With incredible swiftness a vast crowd had

gathered in the central space before his eyes; a dense swaying mass

of people, and the shouts grew from a fitful crying to a voluminous

incessant clamour: "The Sleeper! The Sleeper!" and yells and cheers, a

waving of garments and cries of "Stop the ways!" They were also crying

another name strange to Graham. It sounded like "Ostrog." The slower

platforms were soon thick with active people, running against the

movement so as to keep themselves opposite to him.



"Stop the ways," they cried. Agile figures ran up swiftly from the

centre to the swift road nearest to him, were borne rapidly past him,

shouting strange, unintelligible things, and ran back obliquely to the

central way. One thing he distinguished: "It is indeed the Sleeper. It

is indeed the Sleeper," they testified.



For a space Graham stood without a movement. Then he became vividly

aware that all this concerned him. He was pleased at his wonderful

popularity, he bowed, and, seeking a gesture of longer range, waved his

arm. He was astonished at the violence of uproar that this provoked. The

tumult about the descending stairway rose to furious violence. He

became aware of crowded balconies, of men sliding along ropes, of men

in trapeze-like seats hurling athwart the space. He heard voices behind

him, a number of people descending the steps through the archway; he

suddenly perceived that his guardian Howard was back again and gripping

his arm painfully, and shouting inaudibly in his ear.



He turned, and Howard's face was white. "Come back," he heard. "They

will stop the ways. The whole city will be in confusion."



He perceived a number of men hurrying along the passage of blue pillars

behind Howard, the red-haired man, the man with the flaxen beard, a tall

man in vivid vermilion, a crowd of others in red carrying staves, and

all these people had anxious eager faces.



"Get him away," cried Howard.



"But why?" said Graham. "I don't see--"



"You must come away!" said the man in red in a resolute voice. His face

and eyes were resolute, too. Graham's glances went from face to face,

and he was suddenly aware of that most disagreeable flavour in life,

compulsion. Some one gripped his arm.... He was being dragged away. It

seemed as though the tumult suddenly became two, as if half the shouts

that had come in from this wonderful roadway had sprung into the

passages of the great building behind him. Marvelling and confused,

feeling an impotent desire to resist, Graham was half led, half thrust,

along the passage of blue pillars, and suddenly he found himself alone

with Howard in a lift and moving swiftly upward.