Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / The World Set Free Chapter 5 - The Last Days of Marcus Karenin Part 2

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The World Set Free Chapter 5 - The Last Days of Marcus Karenin Part 2 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter five of the World Set Free by H. G. Wells.
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  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
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  Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Adam Marcitich, June two
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  Speaker 1: thousand nine, Alexandria, Virginia, The World Set Free by H. G. Wells,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter the fifth, The Last Days of Marcus Karinan, section six.
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  Speaker 1: About eleven. Karinan had his midday meal, and afterwards he
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  Speaker 1: slept among his artificial furs and pillows for two hours.
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  Speaker 1: Then he awoke, and some tea was brought to him,
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  Speaker 1: and he attended to a small difficulty in connection with
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  Speaker 1: the Morovian schools in the Labrador country and in Greenland,
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  Speaker 1: that Gardener knew would interest him. He remained alone for
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  Speaker 1: a little while after that, and then the two women
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  Speaker 1: came to him again. Afterwards, Edwards and Khan joined the group,
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  Speaker 1: and the talk fell upon love and the place of
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  Speaker 1: women in the renaiscent world. The cloud banks of India
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  Speaker 1: lay under a quivering haze, and the blaze of the
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  Speaker 1: sun fell full upon the eastward precipices. Ever and again,
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  Speaker 1: as they talked, some vast splinter of rock would crack
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  Speaker 1: and come away from these, or a wild rush of
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  Speaker 1: snow and ice and stone poured down in thunder, hang
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  Speaker 1: like a wet thread into the gulfs below, and cease
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  Speaker 1: Section seven. For a time, Korenan said very little, and Khan,
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  Speaker 1: the popular poet, talked of passionate love. He said that
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  Speaker 1: passionate personal love had been the abiding desire of humanity
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  Speaker 1: since ever humanity had begun, and now only it was
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  Speaker 1: becoming a possible experience. It had been a dream that
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  Speaker 1: generation after generation had pursued. That always men had lost
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  Speaker 1: on the verge of attainment. To most of those who
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  Speaker 1: had sought it obstinately, it had brought tragedy. Now, lifted
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  Speaker 1: above sordid distresses, men and women might hope for realized
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  Speaker 1: and triumphant love. This age was the dawn of love.
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  Speaker 1: Karenan remained downcast and thoughtful while Khan said these things
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  Speaker 1: against that continued silence. Khan's voice presently seemed to beat
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  Speaker 1: and fail. He had begun by addressing Karenin, but presently
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  Speaker 1: he was including Edith Hayden and Rachel Borkin in his appeal.
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  Speaker 1: Rachel listened silently Edith watched karenin and very deliberately avoided
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  Speaker 1: Khan's eyes. I know, said Karena at last, that many
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  Speaker 1: people are saying this sort of thing. I know that
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  Speaker 1: there is a vast release of love making in the world.
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  Speaker 1: This great wave of decoration and elaboration that has gone
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  Speaker 1: about the world, this efflorescence, has of course laid hold
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  Speaker 1: of that. I know that when you say that the
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  Speaker 1: world is set free, you interpret that to mean that
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  Speaker 1: the world is set free for love making. Down there
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  Speaker 1: under the clouds, the lovers foregather. I know your songs, Khan,
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  Speaker 1: your half mystical songs in which you represent this old,
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  Speaker 1: hard world dissolving into a luminous haze of love, sexual love.
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  Speaker 1: I don't think you are a writer, true in that
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  Speaker 1: you are a young, imaginative man, and you see life
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  Speaker 1: ardently with the eyes of youth. But the power that
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  Speaker 1: has brought man into these high places under this blue,
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  Speaker 1: veiled blackness of the sky, and which beckons us on
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  Speaker 1: towards the immense and all full future of our race,
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  Speaker 1: is riper and deeper and greater than any such emotions.
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  Speaker 1: All through my life it has been a necessary part
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  Speaker 1: of my work. I have had to think of this
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  Speaker 1: release of sexual love, and the riddles that perfect freedom
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  Speaker 1: and almost limitless power will put to the soul of
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  Speaker 1: our race. I can see now all over the world
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  Speaker 1: a beautiful ecstasy of waste. Let us sing and rejoice
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  Speaker 1: and be lovely and wonderful. The orgy is only beginning.
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  Speaker 1: Con it was inevitable. But that is not the end
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  Speaker 1: of mankind. Think what we are. It is but a
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  Speaker 1: yesterday in the endlessness of time. That life was a
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  Speaker 1: dreaming thing, dreaming so deeply that it forgot itself as
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  Speaker 1: a dreamt its lives, its individual instincts, its moments, were
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  Speaker 1: born and wondered and played, and desired and hungered, and
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  Speaker 1: grew weary and died. Incalculable successions of vision, Visions of
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  Speaker 1: sunlit jungle, river wilderness, wild forests, eager desire, beating hearts,
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  Speaker 1: soaring wings, and creeping terror, flamed hotly and then were
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  Speaker 1: as though they had never been. Life was an uneasiness
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  Speaker 1: across which lights played and vanished, And then we came.
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  Speaker 1: Man came and opened eyes that were a question and
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  Speaker 1: hands that were a demand, and began a mind and
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  Speaker 1: memory that dies not when men die, but lives and
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  Speaker 1: increases forever, an overmind, a dominating will, a question, and
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  Speaker 1: an aspiration that reaches to the stars. Hunger and fear,
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  Speaker 1: and this that you make so much of, this sex,
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  Speaker 1: are but the elementals of life, out of which we
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  Speaker 1: have arisen. All these elementals I grant you have to
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  Speaker 1: be provided for, dealt with, satisfied. But all these things
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  Speaker 1: have to be left behind. But love, said con, I
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  Speaker 1: speak of sexual love and the love of intimate persons,
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  Speaker 1: And that is what you mean, con Karinan shook his head.
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  Speaker 1: You cannot stay at the roots and climb the tree,
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  Speaker 1: he said, No, he said, after a pause. This sexual excitement,
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  Speaker 1: this love story, is just a part of growing up,
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  Speaker 1: and we grow out of it. So far, literature and
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  Speaker 1: art and sentiment, and all our emotional forms have been
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  Speaker 1: almost altogether adolescent plays and stories, delights and hopes. They
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  Speaker 1: have all turned on that marvelous discovery of the love interest.
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  Speaker 1: But life lengthens out now, and the mind of adult
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  Speaker 1: humanity detaches itself. Poets who used to die at thirty
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  Speaker 1: live now to eighty five. You too, Cohn, there are
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  Speaker 1: endless years yet for you, and all full of learning.
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  Speaker 1: We carry an excessive burden of sex and sexual traditions still,
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  Speaker 1: and we have to free ourselves from it. We do
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  Speaker 1: free ourselves from it. We have learned in a thousand
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  Speaker 1: different ways to hold back death. And this sex, which
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  Speaker 1: in the old barbaric days was just sufficient to balance
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  Speaker 1: our dying, is now like a hammer that has lost
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  Speaker 1: its anvil. It plunges through human life. You poets, you
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  Speaker 1: young people, want to turn it to delight. Turn it
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  Speaker 1: to delight. That may be one way out in a
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  Speaker 1: little while, if you have any brains worth thinking about,
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  Speaker 1: you will be satisfied, and then you will come up
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  Speaker 1: here to the greater things. The old religions and their
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  Speaker 1: new offsets want still I see to suppress all these things.
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  Speaker 1: Let them suppress if they can suppress in their own people.
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  Speaker 1: Either road will bring you here at last to the
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  Speaker 1: eternal search for knowledge and the great adventure of power.
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  Speaker 1: But incidentally, said Rachel Borkin, incidentally, you have half of humanity.
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  Speaker 1: You have womankind very much specialized for for this love
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  Speaker 1: and reproduction that is so much less needed than it was.
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  Speaker 1: Both sexes are specialized for love and reproduction, said Korenan.
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  Speaker 1: But the women carry the heavier burden, not in their imaginations,
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  Speaker 1: said Edwards, and surely said con When you speak of
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  Speaker 1: love as a phase, isn't it a necessary phase? Quite
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  Speaker 1: apart from reproduction? The love of the sex is necessary.
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  Speaker 1: Isn't love sexual love, which has released the imagination? Without that, sir,
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  Speaker 1: without that impulse to go out from ourselves, to be
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  Speaker 1: reckless of ourselves and wonderful, would our lives be anything
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  Speaker 1: more than the contentment of the stalled ox. The key
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  Speaker 1: that opens the door, said Karenin is not the goal
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  Speaker 1: of the journey. But women, cried Rachel. Here we are.
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  Speaker 1: What is our future as women? It is only that
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  Speaker 1: we have unlocked the doors of the imagination for you men.
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  Speaker 1: Let us speak of this question now. It is a
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  Speaker 1: thing constantly in my thoughts. Karenan, what do you think
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  Speaker 1: of us, you who must have thought so much of
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  Speaker 1: these perplexities. Kreenan seemed to weigh his words. He spoke
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  Speaker 1: very deliberately. I do not care a rap about your
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  Speaker 1: future as women. I do not care a rap about
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  Speaker 1: the future of men as males. I want to destroy
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  Speaker 1: these peculiar futures. I care for your future as intelligences,
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  Speaker 1: as parts of and contribution to the universal mind of
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  Speaker 1: the race. Humanity is not only naturally overspecialized in these matters,
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  Speaker 1: but all its institutions, its customs, everything exaggerate, intensify this difference.
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  Speaker 1: I want to unspecialize women. No new idea. Plato wanted
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  Speaker 1: exactly that. I do not want to go on as
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  Speaker 1: we go now emphasizing this natural difference. I do not
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  Speaker 1: deny it, but I want to reduce and overcome it.
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  Speaker 1: And we remain women, said Rachel Borkin need you remain
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  Speaker 1: thinking of yourselves as women. It is forced upon us,
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  Speaker 1: said Edith Hayden. I do not think a woman becomes
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  Speaker 1: less of a way because she dresses and works like
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  Speaker 1: a man, said Edwards. You women here, I mean you
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  Speaker 1: scientific women. Wear white clothing like the men, twist up
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  Speaker 1: your hair in the simplest fashion, go about your work
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  Speaker 1: as though there was only one sex in the world.
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  Speaker 1: You are just as much women, even if you are
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  Speaker 1: not so feminine as the fine lady's down below. There
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  Speaker 1: in the plains who dress for excitement and display, whose
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  Speaker 1: only thoughts are of lovers, who exaggerate every difference. Indeed,
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  Speaker 1: we love you more, but we go about our work,
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  Speaker 1: said Edith Hayden. So does it matter asked Rachel. If
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  Speaker 1: you go about your work, and if the men go
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  Speaker 1: about their work, then, for Heaven's sake, be as much
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  Speaker 1: women as you wish, said Karnan. When I ask you
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  Speaker 1: to unspecialize, I am thinking not of the abolition of sex,
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  Speaker 1: but the abolition of the irksome, restricting, obstructive obsession with sex.
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  Speaker 1: It may be true that sex made society, that the
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  Speaker 1: first society was the sex centered family, the first data
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  Speaker 1: confederacy of blood relations, the first law's sexual taboos. Until
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  Speaker 1: a few years ago, morality meant proper sexual behavior. Up
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  Speaker 1: to within a few years of us, the chief interest
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  Speaker 1: and motive of an ordinary man was to keep and
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  Speaker 1: rule a woman and her children, And the chief concern
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  Speaker 1: of a woman was to get a man to do that.
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  Speaker 1: That was the drama, that was the life, and the
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  Speaker 1: jealousy of these demands was the master motive in the world.
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  Speaker 1: You said Cohn a little while ago, that sexual love
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  Speaker 1: was the key that let one out from the solitude
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  Speaker 1: of self. But I tell you that so far it
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  Speaker 1: is only done so in order to lock us all
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  Speaker 1: up again in a solitude of two. All that may
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  Speaker 1: have been necessary, but it is necessary no longer. All
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  Speaker 1: that has changed, and changes very swiftly. Your future, Rachel,
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  Speaker 1: as women, is a diminishing future. Kareenan asked, Rachel, do
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  Speaker 1: you mean that women are to become men men and
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  Speaker 1: women have to become human beings? You would abolish women.
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  Speaker 1: But Korenan, listen, there is more than sex in this
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  Speaker 1: Apart from sex, we are different from you. We take
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  Speaker 1: up life differently. Forget we are females, Korenan. And still
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  Speaker 1: we are a different sort of human being, with a
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  Speaker 1: different use in some things. We are amazingly secondary. Here
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  Speaker 1: am I in this place because of my trick of management,
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  Speaker 1: and Edith is here because of her patient, subtle hands.
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  Speaker 1: That does not alter the fact that nearly the whole
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  Speaker 1: body of science is man made. That does not alter
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  Speaker 1: the fact that men do so predominatingly make history, that
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  Speaker 1: you could nearly write a complete history of the world
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  Speaker 1: without mentioning a woman's name. And on the other hand,
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  Speaker 1: we have a gift of devotion, of inspiration, a distinctive
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  Speaker 1: power for truly loving beautiful things, a care for life,
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  Speaker 1: and a peculiar keen close eye for behavior. You know
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  Speaker 1: men are blind beside us in these last matters. You
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  Speaker 1: know they are restless and fitful. We have a steadfastness.
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  Speaker 1: We may never draw the broad outlines nor discover the
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  Speaker 1: new paths, But in the future isn't there a confirming
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  Speaker 1: and sustaining and supplying role for for us as important,
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  Speaker 1: perhaps as yours equally important. We hold the world up, Karenan,
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  Speaker 1: though you may have raised it, you know very well Rachel,
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  Speaker 1: that I believe as you believe. I am not thinking
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  Speaker 1: of the abolition of women. But I do want to
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  Speaker 1: abolish the heroine, the sexual heroine. I want to abolish
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  Speaker 1: the woman whose support is jealousy and whose gift possession.
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  Speaker 1: I want to abolish the woman who can be won
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  Speaker 1: as a prize or locked up as a delicious treasure
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  Speaker 1: and away down there the heroine flares like a divinity.
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  Speaker 1: In America, said Edwards, men are fighting duels over the
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  Speaker 1: praises of women and holding tournaments before queens of beauty.
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  Speaker 1: I saw a beautiful girl in Lahore, said Khan. She
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  Speaker 1: sat under a golden canopy like a goddess, and three
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  Speaker 1: fine men, armed and dressed like the ancient paintings sat
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  Speaker 1: on steps below her to show their devotion, and they
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  Speaker 1: wanted only her permission to fight for her. That is
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  Speaker 1: the men's doing, said Edith Hayden. I said, cried Edwards,
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  Speaker 1: that man's imagination was more specialized for sex than the
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  Speaker 1: whole being of women. What women would do a thing
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  Speaker 1: like that? Women do but submit to it or take
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  Speaker 1: advantage of it. There is no evil between men and women.
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  Speaker 1: That is not a common evil, said Karinan. It is you,
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  Speaker 1: poets Khan, with your love songs, which turned the sweet
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  Speaker 1: fellowship of comrades into this women's centered excitement. But there
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  Speaker 1: is something in women, in many women, which responds to
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  Speaker 1: these provocations. They succumb to a peculiarly self cultivating egotism.
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  Speaker 1: They become the subjects of their own artistry. They develop
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  Speaker 1: and elaborate themselves as scarcely any man would ever do.
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  Speaker 1: They look for golden canopies, and even when they seem
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  Speaker 1: to react against that, they may do it still. I
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  Speaker 1: have been reading in the old papers of the movements
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  Speaker 1: to emancipate women that were going on before the discovery
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  Speaker 1: of atomic force. These things, which began with a desire
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  Speaker 1: to escape from the limitations and servitude of sex, ended
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  Speaker 1: in an inflamed assertion of sex and women. More heroines
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  Speaker 1: than ever Helen of Holloway was at last a big
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  Speaker 1: nuisance in her way as Helen of Troy. And so
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  Speaker 1: long as you think of yourselves as women, he held
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  Speaker 1: out a finger at Rachel and smiled gently. Instead of
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  Speaker 1: thinking of yourselves as intelligent beings, you will be in
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  Speaker 1: danger of Hellenism. To think of yourselves as women is
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  Speaker 1: to think of yourselves in relation to men. You can't
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  Speaker 1: escape that consequence. You have to learn to think of
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  Speaker 1: yourselves for our sakes and your own sakes in relation
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  Speaker 1: to the sun and stars. You have to cease to
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  Speaker 1: be our adventure Rachel, and come with us upon our adventures.
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  Speaker 1: He waved his hand towards the dark sky above the
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  Speaker 1: mountain crests. Section eight. These questions are the next questions
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  Speaker 1: to which research will bring us answers, said Krenan. While
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  Speaker 1: we sit here and talk idly and inexactly of what
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  Speaker 1: is needed and what may be, there are hundreds of
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  Speaker 1: keen witted men and women who are working these things
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  Speaker 1: out dispassionately and certainly for the love of knowledge. The
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  Speaker 1: next sciences to yield great harvest now will be psychology
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  Speaker 1: and neural physiology. These perplexities of the situation between men
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  Speaker 1: and women, and the trouble with the obstinacy of egotism.
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  Speaker 1: These are temporary troubles, the issue of our own times. Suddenly,
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  Speaker 1: all these differences that have seemed so fixed will dissolve,
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  Speaker 1: All these incompatibilities will run together, and we shall go
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  Speaker 1: on to mold our bodies and our bodily feelings and
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  Speaker 1: personal reactions as boldly as we begin now to carve
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  Speaker 1: mountains and set the seas in their places, and change
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  Speaker 1: the currents of the wind. It is the next waves,
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  Speaker 1: said Fowler, who had come out upon the terrace and
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  Speaker 1: seated himself silently behind Karinan's chair. Of course, in the
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  Speaker 1: old days, said Edwards, men were tied to their city
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  Speaker 1: or their country, tied to the homes they owned, or
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  Speaker 1: the work they did. I do not see see, said Karenan,
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  Speaker 1: that there is any final limit to man's power of
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  Speaker 1: self modification. There is none, said Fowler, walking forward and
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  Speaker 1: sitting down upon the parapet in front of Kreenan, so
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  Speaker 1: that he could see his face. There is no absolute
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  Speaker 1: limit to either knowledge or power. I hope you do
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  Speaker 1: not tire yourself talking. I am interested, said Koreenan. I
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  Speaker 1: suppose in a little while men will cease to be tired.
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  Speaker 1: I suppose in a little time you will give us
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  Speaker 1: something that will hurry away the fatigue products and restore
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  Speaker 1: our jaded tissues almost at once. This old machine may
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  Speaker 1: be made to run without slacking or cessation. That is possible, Kreenan,
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  Speaker 1: But there is much to learn in all the hours
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  Speaker 1: we give to digestion and half living. Don't you think
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  Speaker 1: there will be some way of saving these foul er?
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  Speaker 1: Not a descent and then sleep again? When man with
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  Speaker 1: his blazing lights made an end to night in his
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  Speaker 1: towns and houses, it is only a hundred years or
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  Speaker 1: so ago that that was done. Then it followed he
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  Speaker 1: would presently resent his eight hours of uselessness. Shan't we
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  Speaker 1: presently take a tabloid or lie in some field of
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  Speaker 1: force that will enable us to do with an hour
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  Speaker 1: or so of slumber, and rise refreshed again. Frobisher and
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  Speaker 1: ameer Ali have done work in that direction. And then
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  Speaker 1: the inconveniences of age and those diseases of the system
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  Speaker 1: that come with years, steadily you drive them back, and
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  Speaker 1: you lengthen and lengthen the years that stretch between the
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  Speaker 1: passionate tumults of youth and the contractions of senility. Man
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  Speaker 1: who used to weaken and die as his teeth decayed,
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  Speaker 1: now looks forward to a continually lengthening, continually fuller term
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  Speaker 1: of years. In all those parts of him that once
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  Speaker 1: gathered evil against him, the vestigial structures and odd treacherous
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  Speaker 1: corners of his body, you know better and better how
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  Speaker 1: to deal with. You carve his body about and leave
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  Speaker 1: it remodeled and unscarred. The psychologists are learning how to
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  Speaker 1: mold mines, to reduce and remove bad complexes of thought
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  Speaker 1: and motive, to relieve pressures and broaden ideas, so that
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: we are becoming more and more capable of transmitting what
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  Speaker 1: we have learned and preserving it for the race. The race,
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: the racial wisdom, science gather power continually to subdue the
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  Speaker 1: individual man to his own end. Is that not so?
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  Speaker 1: Fowler said that it was, And for a time he
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  Speaker 1: was telling Karina of new work that was in progress
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  Speaker 1: in India and Russia. And how is it with heredity,
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  Speaker 1: asked Karinan. Fowler told them of the massive inquiry accumulated
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  Speaker 1: and arranged by the genius of Tetchen, who is beginning
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  Speaker 1: to define clearly the laws of inheritance and how the
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  Speaker 1: sacks of children and the complexions and many of the
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  Speaker 1: parental qualities could be determined. He can actually do. It
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  Speaker 1: is still, so to speak, a mere laboratory triumph, said Fowler.
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  Speaker 1: But tomorrow it will be practicable, you see, cried Karenan,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: turning a laughing face to Rachel and Edith. While we
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: have been theorizing about men and women, here is science
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: getting the power for us to end that old dispute forever.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: If woman is too much for us, will reduce her
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: to a minority. And if we do not like the
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: type of men and women, will have no more of it.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: These old bodies, these old animal limitations, all this earthly
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: inheritance of gross inevitabilities falls from the spirit of man,
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: like a shriveled cocoon from an imago. And for my
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: own part, when I hear of these things, I feel
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: like that, like a wet, crawling new moth that still
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: fears to spread its wings. Because where do these things
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: take us? Beyond humanity? Said Khan. No, said Karnan. We
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: can still keep our feet upon the earth that made us,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: but the air no longer imprisons us. This round planet
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: is no longer chained to us like the ball of
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: a galley slave. In a little while, men who will
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: know how to bear the strange gravitations, the altered pressures,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: the attenuated, unfamiliar gases, and all the fearful strangeness of
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: space will be venturing out from this earth. This ball
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: will be no longer enough for us. Our spirit will
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: reach out. Cannot you see how that little argasy will
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: go glittering up into the sky, twinkling and glittering, smaller
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: and smaller, until the blue swallows it up. They may
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: succeed out there, they may perish, but other men will
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: follow them. It is as if a great window opened,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: said Krenan. Section nine. As the evening drew on, Karenan
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: and those who were about him went upon the roof
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: of the buildings so that they might the better watch
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: the sunset and the flushing of the mountains, and the
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: coming of the afterglow. They were joined by two of
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: the surgeons from the laboratories below, and presently by a
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: nurse who brought Kreenan refreshment in a thin glass cup.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: It was a cloudless, windless evening under the deep blue sky,
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: and far away to the north glittered two biplanes on
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: the way to the observatories on Everest, two hundred miles
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: distant over the precipices to the east. The little group
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: of people watched them pass over the mountains and vanish
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: into the blue, and then for a time they talked
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: of the work that the observatory was doing. From that
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: they passed to the whole process of research about the world,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: And so Kreenan's thoughts returned again to the mind of
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: the world and the great future that was opening upon
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: man's imagination. He asked the surgeons many questions upon the
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: detailed possibilities of their science, and he was keenly interested
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: and excited about the things they told him. And as
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: they talked, the sun touched the mountains and became very
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: swiftly a blazing and indented hemisphere of liquid flame, and
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: sank Karenan looked, blinking at the last quivering rim of incandescence,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: and shaded his eyes and became silent. Presently he gave
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: a little start. What, asked Rachel Borkin, I had forgotten,
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: He said, what had you forgotten? I had forgotten about
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: the operation tomorrow. I have been so interested as man
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: today that I have nearly forgotten Marcus Karenan. Marcus Kreenan
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: must go under your knife tomorrow, Fowler, and very probably
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Marcus Kreenan will die. He raised his slightly shriveled hand.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: It does not matter, Fowler, It scarcely matters even to me,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: For indeed it is Karenan who has been sitting here
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: in is it rather not a common mind, Fowler, that
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: is played about between us? You and I and all
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: of us have added thought to thought. But the threat
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: is neither you nor me. What is true we all have.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: When the individual has altogether brought himself to the test
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: and winnowing of expression, then the individual is done. I
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: feel as though I had already been emptied out of
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: that little vessel, that Marcus Karnan, which in my youth
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: held me so tightly and completely. Your beauty, dear Edith,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: and your broad brow, dear Rachel, and you Fowler, with
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: your firm and skillful hands, are now almost as much
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: to me as this hand that beats the arm of
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: my chair, and as little me and the spirit that
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: desires to know, the spirit that resolves to do, that
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: spirit that lives and has talked in us today, lived
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: in Athens, lived in Florence, lives on, I know forever.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: And you, old son, with your sort of flame, searing
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: these poor eyes of Marcus for the last time of all.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Beware of me. You think I die, And indeed I
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: am only taking off one more coat to get at you.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: I have threatened you for ten thousand years, and soon,
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: I warn you, I shall be coming when I am
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: altogether stripped and my disguise is thrown away. Very soon. Now,
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: old son, I shall launch myself at you, and I
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: shall reach you, and I shall put my foot on
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: your spotted face and tug you about your fiery locks.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: One step I shall take to the moon, and then
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: I shall leap at you. I've talked to you before,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: old son. I've talked to you a million times. And
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: now I am beginning to remember, yes, long ago, long ago,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: before I had stripped off a few thousand generations dust
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: now and forgotten, I was a hairy savage and pointed
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: my hand at you, And clearly I remember it. I
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: saw you in a net. Have you forgotten that, old son?
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: Old Son, I gather myself together out of the pools
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: of the individual that have held me dispersed so long
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: I gather my billion thoughts into science and my million
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: wills into a common purpose. Well may you slink down
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: behind the mountains from me? Well may you cower Section
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: ten Karenan desired that he might dream alone for a
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: little while before he returned to the cell in which
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: he was to sleep. He was given for pain that
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: began to trouble him, and wrapped warmly about with furs,
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: for a great coldness was creeping over all things. And
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: so they left him, and he sat for a long time,
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: watching the afterglow give place to the darkness of night.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: It seemed to those who had to watch over him unobtrusively,
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: lest he should be in want of any attention, that
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: he mused very deeply. The white and purple peaks against
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: the golden sky sank down into cold blue remoteness, glowed
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: out again and faded again, and the burning cressets of
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: the Indian stars, that even the moonrise cannot altogether quench,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: began their vigil. The moon rose behind the towering screen
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: of dark precipices to the east, and long before it
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: emerged above these, its slanting beams had filled the deep,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: gorgeous below with the luminous mist and turned the towers
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: and pinnacles of Leo Porgio to a magic dream castle
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: of radiance and wonder. Came upon a great uprush of
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: ghostly light above the black rim of rocks, and then,
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: like a bubble that is blown and detaches itself, the
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: moon floated off clear into the unfathomable dark sky. And
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: then Karinan stood up. He walked a few paces along
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: the terrace and remained for a time gazing up at
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: the great silver disc, that silvery shield that must needs
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: be man's first conquest in outer space. Presently he turned
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: about and stood with his hands folded behind him, looking
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: at the northward stars. At length he went to his
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: own cell. He lay down there and slept peacefully till
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: the morning. And early in the morning they came to him,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: and the anesthetic was given him and the operation performed.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: It was altogether successful, but Koreinan was weak, and he
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: had to lie very still, And about seven days later
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: a blood clot detached itself from the healing scar and
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: traveled to his heart, and he died in an instant
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: in the night. End of the world set free by H. G. Wells.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Adam Marcitich, June two
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: thousand and nine, Alexandria, Virginia,