Three Days
:
When The Sleeper Wakes
Lincoln awaited Graham in an apartment beneath the flying stages. He
seemed curious to learn all that had happened, pleased to hear of the
extraordinary delight and interest which Graham took in flying Graham
was in a mood of enthusiasm. "I must learn to fly," he cried. "I
must master that. I pity all poor souls who have died without this
opportunity. The sweet swift air! It is the most wonderful experience in
th
world."
"You will find our new times full of wonderful experiences," said
Lincoln. "I do not know what you will care to do now. We have music that
may seem novel."
"For the present," said Graham, "flying holds me. Let me learn more of
that. Your aeronaut was saying there is some trades union objection to
one's learning."
"There is, I believe," said Lincoln. "But for you--! If you would'
like to occupy yourself with that, we can make you a sworn aeronaut
tomorrow."
Graham expressed his wishes vividly and talked of his sensations for a
while. "And as for affairs," he asked abruptly. "How are things going
on?"
Lincoln waved affairs aside. "Ostrog will tell you that tomorrow," he
said. "Everything is settling down. The Revolution accomplishes itself
all over the world. Friction is inevitable here and there, of course;
but your rule is assured. You may rest secure with things in Ostrog's
hands."
"Would it be possible for me to be made a sworn aeronaut, as you call
it, forthwith--before I sleep?" said Graham, pacing. "Then I could be at
it the very first thing tomorrow again.
"It would be possible," said Lincoln thoughtfully. "Quite possible.
Indeed, it shall be done." He laughed. "I came prepared to suggest
amusements, but you have found one for yourself. I will telephone to the
aeronautical offices from here and we will return to your apartments in
the Wind-Vane Control. By the time you have dined the aeronauts will
be able to come. You don't think that after you have dined, you might
prefer--?" He paused.
"Yes," said Graham.
"We had prepared a show of dancers--they have been brought from the
Capri theatre."
"I hate ballets," said Graham, shortly. "Always did. That other--.
That's not what I want to see. We had dancers in the old days. For the
matter of that, they had them in ancient Egypt. But flying--"
"True," said Lincoln. "Though our dancers--"
"They can afford to wait," said Graham; "they can afford to wait.
I know. I'm not a Latin. There's questions I want to ask some
expert--about your machinery. I'm keen. I want no distractions."
"You have the world to choose from," said Lincoln; "whatever you want is
yours."
Asano appeared, and under the escort of a strong guard they returned
through the city streets to Graham's apartments. Far larger crowds had
assembled to witness his return than his departure had gathered, and
the shouts and cheering of these masses of people sometimes drowned
Lincoln's answers to the endless questions Graham's aerial journey had
suggested. At first Graham had acknowledged the cheering and cries
of the crowd by bows and gestures, but Lincoln warned him that such a
recognition would be considered incorrect behaviour. Graham, already
a little wearied by rhythmic civilities, ignored his subjects for the
remainder of his public progress.
Directly they arrived at his apartments Asano departed in search
of kinematographic renderings of machinery in motion, and Lincoln
despatched Graham's commands for models of machines and small machines
to illustrate the various mechanical advances of the last two centuries.
The little group of appliances for telegraphic communication attracted
the Master so strongly that his delightfully prepared dinner, served by
a number of charmingly dexterous girls, waited for a space. The habit
of smoking had almost ceased from the face of the earth, but when he
expressed a wish for that indulgence, inquiries were made and some
excellent cigars were discovered in Florida, and sent to him by
pneumatic dispatch while the dinner was still in progress. Afterwards
came the aeronauts, and a feast of ingenious wonders in the hands of a
latter-day engineer. For the time, at any rate, the neat dexterity of
counting and numbering machines, building machines, spinning engines,
patent doorways, explosive motors, grain and water elevators,
slaughter-house machines and harvesting appliances, was more fascinating
to Graham than any bayadere. "We were savages," was his refrain, "we
were savages. We were in the stone age--compared with this.... And what
else have you?"
There came also practical psychologists with some very interesting
developments in the art of hypnotism. The names of Milne Bramwell,
Fechner, Liebault, William James, Myers and Gurney, he found, bore
a value now that would have astonished their contemporaries. Several
practical applications of psychology were now in general use; it had
largely superseded drugs, antiseptics and anaesthetics in medicine; was
employed by almost all who had any need of mental concentration. A
real enlargement of human faculty seemed to have been effected in this
direction. The feats of "calculating boys," the wonders, as Graham had
been wont to regard them, of mesmerisers, were now within the range of
anyone who could afford the services of a skilled hypnotist. Long ago
the old examination methods in education had been destroyed by these
expedients. Instead of years of study, candidates had substituted a few
weeks of trances, and during the trances expert coaches had simply
to repeat all the points necessary for adequate answering, adding a
suggestion of the post hypnotic recollection of these points. In process
mathematics particularly, this aid had been of singular service, and it
was now invariably invoked by such players of chess and games of manual
dexterity as were still to be found. In fact, all operations conducted
under finite rules, of a quasi-mechanical sort that is, were now
systematically relieved from the wanderings of imagination and emotion,
and brought to an unexampled pitch of accuracy. Little children of
the labouring classes, so soon as they were of sufficient age to
be hypnotised, were thus converted into beautifully punctual and
trustworthy machine minders, and released forthwith from the long, long
thoughts of youth. Aeronautical pupils, who gave way to giddiness,
could be relieved from their imaginary terrors. In every street were
hypnotists ready to print permanent memories upon the mind. If anyone
desired to remember a name, a series of numbers, a song or a speech, it
could be done by this method, and conversely memories could be effaced,
habits removed, and desires eradicated--a sort of psychic surgery was,
in fact, in general use. Indignities, humbling experiences, were thus
forgotten, amorous widows would obliterate their previous husbands,
angry lovers release themselves from their slavery. To graft desires,
however, was still impossible, and the facts of thought transference
were yet unsystematised. The psychologists illustrated their expositions
with some astounding experiments in mnemonics made through the agency of
a troupe of pale-faced children in blue.
Graham, like most of the people of his former time, distrusted the
hypnotist, or he might then and there have eased his mind of many
painful preoccupations. But in spite of Lincoln's assurances he held to
the old theory that to be hypnotised was in some way the surrender of
his personality, the abdication of his will. At the banquet of wonderful
experiences that was beginning, he wanted very keenly to remain
absolutely himself.
The next day, and another day, and yet another day passed in such
interests as these. Each day Graham spent many hours in the glorious
entertainment of flying. On the third day he soared across middle
France, and within sight of the snow-clad Alps. These vigorous exercises
gave him restful sleep, and each day saw a great stride in his health
from the spiritless anaemia of his first awakening. And whenever he was
not in the air, and awake, Lincoln was assiduous in the cause of his
amusement; all that was novel and curious in contemporary invention was
brought to him, until at last his appetite for novelty was well-nigh
glutted. One might fill a dozen inconsecutive volumes with the strange
things they exhibited. Each afternoon he held his court for an hour
or so. He speedily found his interest in his contemporaries becoming
personal and intimate. At first he had been alert chiefly for
unfamiliarity and peculiarity; any foppishness in their dress, any
discordance with his preconceptions of nobility in their status and
manners had jarred upon him, and it was remarkable to him how soon that
strangeness and the faint hostility that arose from it, disappeared; how
soon he came to appreciate the true perspective of his position, and see
the old Victorian days remote and quaint. He found himself particularly
amused by the red-haired daughter of the Manager of the European
Piggeries. On the second day after dinner he made the acquaintance of a
latter-day dancing girl, and found her an astonishing artist. And after
that, more hypnotic wonders. On the third day Lincoln was moved to
suggest that the Master should repair to a Pleasure City, but this
Graham declined, nor would he accept the services of the hypnotists in
his aeronautical experiments. The link of locality held him to London;
he found a perpetual wonder in topographical identifications that he
would have missed abroad. "Here--or a hundred feet below here," he could
say, "I used to eat my midday cutlets during my London University
days. Underneath here was Waterloo and the perpetual hunt for confusing
trains. Often have I stood waiting down there, bag in hand, and stared
up into the sky above the forest of signals, little thinking I should
walk some day a hundred yards in the air. And now in that very sky that
was once a grey smoke canopy, I circle in an aeropile."
During those three days Graham was so occupied with such distractions
that the vast political movements in progress outside his quarters had
but a small share of his attention. Those about him told him little.
Daily came Ostrog, the Boss, his Grand Vizier, his mayor of the palace,
to report in vague terms the steady establishment of his rule; "a little
trouble" soon to be settled in this city, "a slight disturbance" in
that. The song of the social revolt came to him no more; he never
learned that it had been forbidden in the municipal limits; and all the
great emotions of the crow's nest slumbered in his mind.
But on the second and third of the three days he found himself, in spite
of his interest in the daughter of the Pig Manager, or it may be by,
reason of the thoughts her conversation suggested, remembering the girl
Helen Wotton, who had spoken to him so oddly at the Wind-Vane Keeper's
gathering. The impression she had made was a deep one, albeit the
incessant surprise of novel circumstances had kept him from brooding
upon it for a space. But now her memory was coming to its own. He
wondered what she had meant by those broken half-forgotten sentences;
the picture of her eyes and the earnest passion of her face became more
vivid as his mechanical interests faded. Her beauty came compellingly
between him and certain immediate temptations of ignoble passion. But he
did not see her again until three full days were past.