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Men Like Gods Book 2 Chapter 1 - The Epidemic · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter nine of Men Like Gods. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
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  Speaker 1: by Daniel T. Garcia. Men Like Gods by H. G. Wells,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter nine book, The Second Quarantine Crag chapter the first
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  Speaker 1: The epidemic one. The shadow of the great epidemic in
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  Speaker 1: Utopia fell upon our little band of earthlings in the
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  Speaker 1: second day after their eruption. For more than twenty centuries,
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  Speaker 1: the Utopians had had the completest freedom from infectious and
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  Speaker 1: contagious disease of all sorts. Not only had the graver epidemic,
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  Speaker 1: fevers and all sorts of skin diseases gone out of
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  Speaker 1: the lives of animals and men, but all the minor
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  Speaker 1: infections of colds, coughs, influenzas, and the like had also
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  Speaker 1: been mastered and ended by isolation, by the control of carriers,
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  Speaker 1: and so forth. The fates had been cornered and obliged
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  Speaker 1: to die out, And there had followed a corresponding change
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  Speaker 1: in the Utopian physiology. Secretions and reactions that had given
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  Speaker 1: the body resisting power to infection had diminished, the energy
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  Speaker 1: that produced them had been withdrawn to other more serviceable applications.
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  Speaker 1: The Utopian physiology, relieved of these merely defensive necessities, had
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  Speaker 1: simplified itself and become more direct and efficient. This cleaning
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  Speaker 1: up of infections was such ancient history in Utopia that
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  Speaker 1: only those who specialized in the history of pathology understood
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  Speaker 1: anything of the miseries mankind had suffered under from this source,
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  Speaker 1: and even these specialists do not seem to have had
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  Speaker 1: any idea of how far the race had lost its
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  Speaker 1: former resistance to infection. The first person to think of
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  Speaker 1: this lost resisting power seems to have been mister Rupert Katskill.
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  Speaker 1: Mister Barnstaple recalled that when they had met early on
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  Speaker 1: the first morning of their stay in the conference gardens,
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  Speaker 1: he had been hinting that nature was, in some unexplained
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  Speaker 1: way on the side of the Earthlings. If making them
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  Speaker 1: obnoxious was being on their side, then certainly nature was
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  Speaker 1: on their side. By the evening of the second day
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  Speaker 1: after their arrival, nearly everybody who had been in contact
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  Speaker 1: with the Earthlings, with the exception of Lichness, Serpentine, and
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  Speaker 1: three or four others, who had retained something of their
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  Speaker 1: ancestral antitoxins was in a fever, with cough, sore throat, aching, bones, headache,
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  Speaker 1: and such physical depression and misery as Utopia had not
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  Speaker 1: known for twenty centuries. The first inhabitant of Utopia to
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  Speaker 1: die was that leopard which had sniffed at mister Rupert
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  Speaker 1: catskill on his first arrival. It was found unaccountably dead
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  Speaker 1: on the second morning after that encounter. In the afternoon
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  Speaker 1: of the same day, one of the girls who had
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  Speaker 1: helped Lady Stellato unpack her bags sickened suddenly and died.
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  Speaker 1: Utopia was even less prepared for the coming of these
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  Speaker 1: disease germs than for the coming of the earthlings who
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  Speaker 1: brought them. The monstrous multitude of general and fever hospitals, doctors,
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  Speaker 1: drug shops, and so forth that had existed in the
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  Speaker 1: last age of Confusion had long since passed out of memory.
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  Speaker 1: There was a surgical service for accidents, and a watch
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  Speaker 1: kept upon the health of the young, and there were
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  Speaker 1: places of at which those who were extremely old were assisted,
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  Speaker 1: But there remained scarcely anything of the hygienic organization that
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  Speaker 1: had formerly struggled against disease abruptly, the Utopian intelligence had
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  Speaker 1: to take up again a tangle of problems long since
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  Speaker 1: solved and set aside, to improvise forgotten apparatus and organizations
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  Speaker 1: for disinfection and treatment, and to return to all the
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  Speaker 1: disciplines of the war against diseases that had marked an
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  Speaker 1: epoch in its history twenty centuries before. In one respect, indeed,
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  Speaker 1: that war had left Utopia with certain permanent advantages. Nearly
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  Speaker 1: all the insect disease carriers had been exterminated, and rats
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  Speaker 1: and mice and the untidier sorts of small bird had
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  Speaker 1: passed out of the problem of sanitation. That set very
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  Speaker 1: definite limits to the spread of the new infections and
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  Speaker 1: to the nature of the infections that could be spread.
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  Speaker 1: It enabled the earthlings only to communicate such ailments as
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  Speaker 1: could be breathed across an interval or conveyed by a
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  Speaker 1: contaminating touch. Though not one of them was ailing at all,
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  Speaker 1: it became clear that someone among them had brought latent
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  Speaker 1: measles into the u s Utopian universe, and that three
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  Speaker 1: or four of them had liberated a long suppressed influenza.
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  Speaker 1: Themselves too tough to suffer, they remained at the focus
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  Speaker 1: of these two epidemics, while their victims coughed and sneezed,
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  Speaker 1: and kissed and whispered them about the Utopian planet. It
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  Speaker 1: was not until the afternoon of the second day after
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  Speaker 1: the eruption that Utopia realized what had happened and set
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  Speaker 1: itself to deal with this relapse into barbaric solicitudes two.
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  Speaker 1: Mister Barnstaple was probably the last of the earthlings to
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  Speaker 1: hear of the epidemic. He was away from the rest
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  Speaker 1: of the party upon an expedition of his own. It
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  Speaker 1: was early clear to him that the Utopians did not
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  Speaker 1: intend to devote any considerable amount of time or energy
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  Speaker 1: to the edification of their Earthling visitors. After the ecclesismond
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  Speaker 1: of the afternoon of the eruption, there were no further
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  Speaker 1: attempts to lecture to the visitors upon the constitution and
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  Speaker 1: methods of Utopia, and only some very brief questioning upon
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  Speaker 1: the earthly state of affairs. The earthlings were left very
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  Speaker 1: much together to talk things out among themselves. Several Utopians
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  Speaker 1: were evidentdently entrusted with their comfort and well being, but
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  Speaker 1: they did not seem to think that their functions extended
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  Speaker 1: to edification. Mister Barnstaple found much to irritate him in
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  Speaker 1: the ideas and comments of several of his associates, and
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  Speaker 1: so he obeyed his natural inclination to explore utopia for himself.
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  Speaker 1: There was something that stirred his imagination in the vast
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  Speaker 1: plain below the lake that he had glimpsed before his
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  Speaker 1: aeroplane descended into the valley of the conference, And on
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  Speaker 1: his second morning he had taken a little boat and
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  Speaker 1: rowed out across the lake to examine the dam that
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  Speaker 1: retained its waters and to get a view of the
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  Speaker 1: Great Plain from the parapet of the dam. The lake
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  Speaker 1: was much wider than he had thought it, and the
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  Speaker 1: dam much larger. The water was crystalline clear and very cold,
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  Speaker 1: and there were but few fish in it. He had
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  Speaker 1: come out immediately after his breakfast, but it was near
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  Speaker 1: midday before he had got to the parapet of the
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  Speaker 1: great dam and could look down the lower valley to
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  Speaker 1: the Great Plain. The dam was built of huge blocks
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  Speaker 1: of red and gold veined rock, but steps at intervals
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  Speaker 1: gave access to the roadway along its crest. The great
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  Speaker 1: seated figures which brooded over the distant plain had been
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  Speaker 1: put there, it would seem in a mood of artistic lightheartedness.
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  Speaker 1: They sat as if they watched or thought vast rude shapes,
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  Speaker 1: half mountainous, half human. Mister Barnstaple guessed them to be
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  Speaker 1: perhaps two hundred feet high. By pacing the distance between
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  Speaker 1: two of them, and afterwards counting the number of them,
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  Speaker 1: he came to the conclusion that the dam was between
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  Speaker 1: seven and ten miles long. On the far side, it
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  Speaker 1: dropped sheerly for perhaps five hundred feet, and it was
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  Speaker 1: sustained by a series of enormous buttresses that passed almost
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  Speaker 1: insensibly into native rock. In the bays. Between these buttresses
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  Speaker 1: hummed great batteries of water turbines. And then its first
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  Speaker 1: task done, the water dropped, foaming and disheveled, and gathered
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  Speaker 1: in another broad lake, retained by a second great dam
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  Speaker 1: two miles or so away, and perhaps a thousand feet lower.
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  Speaker 1: Far away was a third lake and a third dam,
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  Speaker 1: and then the plain. Only three or four minute looking
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  Speaker 1: utopians were visible. Amidst all this titanic engineering, mister Barnstaple
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  Speaker 1: stood the smallest of objects in the shadow of a
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  Speaker 1: brooding colossus, and peered over these nearer things, at the
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  Speaker 1: hazy levels of the plain, beyond what sort of life
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  Speaker 1: was going on there. The relationship of plain to mountain
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  Speaker 1: reminded him very strongly of the Alps and the great
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  Speaker 1: Plain of northern Italy, down into which he had walked
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  Speaker 1: as the climax of many a summer holiday in his youth.
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  Speaker 1: In Italy. He knew that those distant levels would be
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  Speaker 1: covered with clustering towns and villages and carefully irrigated and
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  Speaker 1: closely cultivated fields. A dense population would be toiling with
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  Speaker 1: an ant like industry in the production of food, forever
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  Speaker 1: increasing its numbers, until those inevitable consequences of overcrowding, disease,
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  Speaker 1: and pestilence established a sort of balance between the area
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  Speaker 1: of the land and the number of families scraping at
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  Speaker 1: it for nourishment. As a toiling man can grow more
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  Speaker 1: food than he can actually eat, and as virtuous women
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  Speaker 1: can bear more children than the land can possibly employ,
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  Speaker 1: a surplus of landless population would be gathered in when
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  Speaker 1: like towns and cities engaged there in legal and financial
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  Speaker 1: operations against the agriculturalist, or in the manufacture of just
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  Speaker 1: plausible articles for sale. Ninety nine out of every hundred
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  Speaker 1: of this population would be concentrated from childhood to old
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  Speaker 1: age upon the difficult task which is known as getting
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  Speaker 1: a living. Amidst it, sustained by a pretense of magical propitiations,
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  Speaker 1: would rise shrines and temples, supporting a parasitic host of
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  Speaker 1: priests and monks and nuns, eating and breeding the simple
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  Speaker 1: routines of the common life. Since human societies began complications
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  Speaker 1: of food getting, elaborations of acquisitiveness, and attribute paid to fear,
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  Speaker 1: Such would be the spectacle that any warm and fertile
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  Speaker 1: stretch of earth would still display. There would be gleams
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  Speaker 1: of laughter and humor, there brief interludes of holiday, flashes
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  Speaker 1: of youth before its extinction in adult toil, But a
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  Speaker 1: driven labour, the spite and hates of overcrowding, the eternal
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  Speaker 1: uncertainty of destitution would dominate the scene. Decrepitude would come
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  Speaker 1: by sixty women would be old and worn out by forty.
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  Speaker 1: But this utopian plane below, sunlit and fertile, though it was,
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  Speaker 1: was under another law. Here that common life of mankind,
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  Speaker 1: its ancient traditions, its hoary jests and tales, repeated generation
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  Speaker 1: after generation. Its seasonal festivals, its pious fears and spasmodic indulgences,
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  Speaker 1: its limited yet incessant and pitifully childish hoping, and its
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  Speaker 1: abounding misery and tragic futility had come to an end.
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  Speaker 1: It had passed forever out of this older world, that
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  Speaker 1: high tide of common living had receded and vanished, while
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  Speaker 1: the soil was still productive and the sun still shone.
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  Speaker 1: It was with something like awe that mister Barnstaple realized
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  Speaker 1: how clean a sweep had been made of the common
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  Speaker 1: life in a mere score of centuries, how boldly and
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  Speaker 1: dreadfully the mind of man had taken hold soul and body,
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  Speaker 1: and destiny of the life, and destiny of the race.
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  Speaker 1: He knew himself now for the creature of transition. He
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  Speaker 1: was so deep in the habits of the old, so
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  Speaker 1: sympathetic with the idea of the new that has still
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  Speaker 1: but scarcely dawned on earth. For long he had known
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  Speaker 1: how intensely he loathed and despised that wreeking peasant life
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  Speaker 1: which is our past. He realized now for the first
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  Speaker 1: time how profoundly he feared the high, austere, utopian life
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  Speaker 1: which lies before us. This world he looked out upon,
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  Speaker 1: seemed very clean and dreadful to him. What were they
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  Speaker 1: doing upon those distant plains? What daily life did they
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  Speaker 1: lead there? He knew enough of utopia now to know
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  Speaker 1: that the whole land would be like a garden, with
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  Speaker 1: every natural tendency to beauty seized upon and developed, and
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  Speaker 1: every innate ugliness corrected and overcome. These people could work
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  Speaker 1: and struggle for loveliness, he knew, for his two rose
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  Speaker 1: growers had taught him as much. And to and fro
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  Speaker 1: the food folk and the housing people, and those who
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  Speaker 1: ordered the general life went, keeping the economic machine running
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  Speaker 1: so smoothly that one heard nothing of the jangling and
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  Speaker 1: jarring and internal breakages that constitute the dominant melody in
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  Speaker 1: our earth's affairs. The ages of economic disputes and experiments
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  Speaker 1: had come to an end. The right way to do
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  Speaker 1: things had been found, and the population of this utopia,
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  Speaker 1: which had shrunken at one time to only two hundred million,
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  Speaker 1: was now increasing again to keep pace with the constant
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  Speaker 1: increase in human resources. Having freed itself from a thousand
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  Speaker 1: evils that would otherwise have grown with its growth, the
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  Speaker 1: race could grow indeed, and down there, under the blue
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  Speaker 1: haze of the Great Plain, almost all those who were
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  Speaker 1: not engaged in the affairs of food and architecture, health, education,
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  Speaker 1: and the correlation of activities were busied upon creative work.
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  Speaker 1: They were continually exploring the world without or the world
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  Speaker 1: within through scientific research and artistic creation. They were continually
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  Speaker 1: adding to their collective power over life, or to the
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  Speaker 1: realized worth of life. Mister Barnstaple was accustomed to think
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  Speaker 1: of our own world as a wild rush of inventions
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  Speaker 1: and knowledge, but all the progress of Earth for a
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  Speaker 1: hundred years could not compare. He knew with the forward
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  Speaker 1: swing of these millions of associated intelligences. In one single year,
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  Speaker 1: knowledge swept forward here, and darkness passed as the shadow
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  Speaker 1: of a cloud passes on a winded Down there, they
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  Speaker 1: were assaying the minerals that lie in the heart of
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  Speaker 1: their planet, and weaving a web to capture the sun
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  Speaker 1: and the stars. Life marched here. It was terrifying to
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  Speaker 1: think with what strides. Terrifying because at the back of
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  Speaker 1: mister Barnstaple's mind, as at the back of so many
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  Speaker 1: intelligent minds in our world, still had been the persuasion
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  Speaker 1: that presently everything would be known, and the scientific process
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  Speaker 1: come to an end, and then we should be happy
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  Speaker 1: forever after. He was not really acclimated to progress. He
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  Speaker 1: had always thought of utopia as a tranquility, with everything
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  Speaker 1: settled for good. Even today it seemed tranquil under that
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  Speaker 1: level haze. But he knew that this quiet was the
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  Speaker 1: steadiness of a mill race, which seems almost motionless in
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  Speaker 1: its quiet horush, until a bubble or a fleck of foam,
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  Speaker 1: or some stick or leaf shoots along it and reveals
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  Speaker 1: its velocity. And how did it feel to be living
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  Speaker 1: in utopia? The lives of the people must be like
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  Speaker 1: the lives of very successful artists or scientific workers in
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  Speaker 1: this world, a continual refreshing discover of new things, a
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  Speaker 1: constant adventure into the unknown, and untried for recreation. They
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  Speaker 1: went about their planet, and there was much love and
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  Speaker 1: laughter and friendship in Utopia, and an abundant, easy and
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  Speaker 1: formal social life. Games that did not involve bodily exercise,
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  Speaker 1: those substitutes of the half witted for research and mental
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  Speaker 1: effort had gone entirely out of life, But many active
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  Speaker 1: games were played for the sake of fun and bodily vigor.
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  Speaker 1: It must be a good life for those who had
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  Speaker 1: been educated to live it, indeed, a most enviable life,
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  Speaker 1: And pervading it all must be the happy sense that
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  Speaker 1: it mattered. It went on to endless consequences, and they
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  Speaker 1: loved no doubt, subtly and deliciously, but perhaps a little hardly.
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  Speaker 1: Perhaps in those distant planes, there was not much pity
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  Speaker 1: or tenderness. Bright and lovely beings, they were in no
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  Speaker 1: way pitiful, There would be no need for those qualities.
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  Speaker 1: Yet the woman richness looked kind. Did they keep faith
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  Speaker 1: or need to keep faith as earthly lovers do? What
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  Speaker 1: was love like in utopia? Lovers still whispered in the dusk.
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  Speaker 1: What was the essence of love? A preference, a sweet pride,
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  Speaker 1: a delightful gift, one the most exquisite reassurance of body
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  Speaker 1: and mind? What could it be like to love and
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  Speaker 1: be loved by one of these utopian women, to have
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  Speaker 1: her glowing face close to one's own, to be quickened
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  Speaker 1: into life by her kiss. Mister Barnstaple sat in his flannels, barefooted,
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  Speaker 1: in the shadow of a stone colossus. He felt like
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  Speaker 1: some minute stray insect perched upon the big dam. It
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  Speaker 1: seemed to him that it was impossible that this triumphant
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  Speaker 1: utopian race could ever fall back again from its magnificent
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  Speaker 1: attack upon the dominion of all things high and tremendously.
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  Speaker 1: This world had clamored and was still clamoring. Surely it
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  Speaker 1: was safe now in its attainment. Yet all this stupendous
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  Speaker 1: security and mastery of nature had come about in the
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  Speaker 1: little space of three thousand years. The race could not
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  Speaker 1: have altered fundamentally in that brief interval. Essentially, it was
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  Speaker 1: still a stone age race. It was not twenty thousand
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  Speaker 1: years away from the dangers when it knew nothing of
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  Speaker 1: metals and could not read or write. Deep in its nature,
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  Speaker 1: arrested and undeveloped, there still lay the seeds of anger
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  Speaker 1: and fear and dissension. There must still be many uneasy
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  Speaker 1: and insubordinate spirits in this utopia. Eugenics had scarcely begun. Here.
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  Speaker 1: He remembered the keen, sweet face of the young girl
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  Speaker 1: who had spoken to him in the starlight on the
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  Speaker 1: night of his arrival, and the note of romantic eagerness
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  Speaker 1: in her voice when she had asked if Lord bar
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  Speaker 1: Alanga was not a very vigorous and cruel man. Did
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  Speaker 1: the romantic spirit still trouble imaginations here? Possibly only adolescent imaginations.
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  Speaker 1: Might not some great shock or some phase of confusion
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  Speaker 1: still be possible to this immense order? Might not its
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  Speaker 1: system of education become wearied by its task of discipline
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  Speaker 1: and fall a prey to the experimental spirit. Might not
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  Speaker 1: the unforeseen be still lying in wait for this race?
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  Speaker 1: Suppose their so proved to be an infection of Father
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  Speaker 1: Amerton's religious fervor, or rupert catskills in curable craving for
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  Speaker 1: fantastic enterprises. No, it was inconceivable. The achievement of this
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  Speaker 1: world was too Calmly Crates and assured, mister Barnstaple stood
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  Speaker 1: up and made his way down the steps of the
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  Speaker 1: great dam to wear far below. His little skiff floated
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  Speaker 1: like a minute flower pedal upon the clear water. Three
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  Speaker 1: he became aware of a considerable commotion in the conference places.
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  Speaker 1: There were more than thirty aeroplanes circling in the air
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  Speaker 1: and descending and ascending from the park, and a great
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  Speaker 1: number of big white vehicles were coming and going by
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  Speaker 1: the pass road. Also, people seemed to be moving briskly
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  Speaker 1: among the houses. But it was too far off to
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  Speaker 1: distinguish what they were doing. He stared for a time
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  Speaker 1: and then got into his little boat. He could not
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  Speaker 1: watch what was going on as he returned across the
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  Speaker 1: lake because his back was towards the slopes. But once
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  Speaker 1: an aeroplane came down very close to him, and he
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  Speaker 1: saw its occupant looking at him as he rowed. And once,
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  Speaker 1: when he rested from rowing and sat round to look,
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  Speaker 1: he saw what he thought was a litter carried by
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  Speaker 1: two men. As he drew near the shore, a boat
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  Speaker 1: put off to meet him. He was astonished to see
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  Speaker 1: that its occupants were wearing what looked like helmets of
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  Speaker 1: glass with white point advisors. He was enormously astonished and puzzled.
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  Speaker 1: As they approached, their message resonated into his mind, quarantine.
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  Speaker 1: You have to go into quarantine. You earthlings have started
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  Speaker 1: an epidemic, and it is necessary to put you into quarantine.
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  Speaker 1: Then these glass helmets must be a sort of gas mask.
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  Speaker 1: When they came alongside him, he saw that this was so.
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  Speaker 1: They were made of highly flexible and perfectly translucent material.
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  Speaker 1: Four Mister Barnstaple was taken past some sleeping lodges where
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  Speaker 1: utopians were lying in beds, while others who wore gas
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: masks waited upon them. He found that all the Earthlings
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: and all their possessions except their cars, were assembled in
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: the hall of the first day's conference. He was told
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: that the whole party were to be removed to a
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: new place where they could be isolated and treated. The
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: only Utopians with the party were two who wore gas
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: masks and lounged in the open portico in attitudes disagreeably
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: suggestive of centuries or custodians. The Earthlings sat about in
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: little groups among the seats, except for mister Rupert Catskill,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: who was walking up and down in the apse talking.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: He was hatless, flushed and excited, with his hair and
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: some disorder. It's what I foresaw what happen all along,
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: he repeated. Didn't I tell you nature was on our side?
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: Didn't I say it? Mister Burley was shocked and argumentative.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: For the life of me, I can't see the logic
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: of it, he declared. Here we are absolutely the only
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: perfectly immune people here, and we we are to be isolated.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: They say they catch things from us, said Lady Stella.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: Very well, said mister Burley, making his point with his
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: long white hand. Very well, then let them be isolated.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: This is Chinese, this is topsy turvy. I'm disappointed than them.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: I suppose it's their world, said mister Hunker, And we've
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: got to do things their way. Mister Catskill concentrated upon
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: Lord Bara Langa and the two chauffeurs. I welcome this treatment.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: I welcome it. What's your idea, rupert, said his lordship.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: We lose our freedom of action, not at all, said
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: mister Catskill. Not at all. We gain it. We are
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: to be isolated, we are to be put by ourselves
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: in some island or mountain. Well and good, well and good.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: This is only the beginning of our adventures. We shall
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: see what we shall see. But how wait a little
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: until we can speak more freely. These are panic measures,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: This pestilence is only in its opening stage. Everything is
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: just beginning, trust me. Mister Barnstable sat sulkily by his valise,
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: avoiding the challenge of mister Catskill's eye. End of Chapter
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: nine recording by Daniel T. Garcia