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Men Like Gods Book 1 Chapter 4 - The Shadow of Einstein Falls Across the Story and Passes Lightly by It · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Section four 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: Men Like Gods by H. G. Wells, Book one, chapter four.
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  Speaker 1: The shadow of Einstein falls across the story, but passes
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  Speaker 1: lightly by one. Except for that one perplexing fact that
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  Speaker 1: all these Utopians had, apparently a complete command of idiomatic English.
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  Speaker 1: Mister Barnstable found his vision of this new world developing
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  Speaker 1: with a congruity that no dream in his experience had
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  Speaker 1: ever possessed. It was so coherent, so orderly, that less
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  Speaker 1: and less was it like a strange world at all,
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  Speaker 1: and more and more like an arrival in some foreign
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  Speaker 1: but very highly civilized country. Under the direction of the
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  Speaker 1: brown eyed woman in the scarlet edged robe, the Earthlings
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  Speaker 1: were established in their quarters near the conference place, in
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  Speaker 1: the most hospitable and comfortable fashion conceivable. Five or six
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  Speaker 1: youths and girls made it their business to initiate the
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  Speaker 1: strangers in the little details of utopian domesticity. The separate
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  Speaker 1: buildings in which they were lodged had each an agreeable
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  Speaker 1: little dressing room and the bed, which had sheets of
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  Speaker 1: the finest linen and very light puffy coverlet, stood in
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  Speaker 1: an open loggia. Two open, Lady Stella thought. But then,
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  Speaker 1: as she said, one feels so safe here. The luggage
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  Speaker 1: appeared and the valises were identified as if they were
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  Speaker 1: in some hospitable earthly mansion. But Lady Stella had to
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  Speaker 1: turn to rather two friendly youths out of her apartment
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  Speaker 1: before she could open her dressing bag and administer a
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  Speaker 1: refreshment to her complexion. A few minutes later, some excitement
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  Speaker 1: was caused by an outbreak of wild laughter and the
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  Speaker 1: sounds of an amiable but hysterical struggle that came from
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  Speaker 1: Lady Stella's retreat. The girl who had remained with her
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  Speaker 1: had displayed a quite feminine interest in her equipment, and
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  Speaker 1: had come upon a particularly charming and diaphanous sleeping suit.
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  Speaker 1: For some obscure reason. This secret daintiness amused the young
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  Speaker 1: utopian extremely, and it was with some difficulty that Lady
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  Speaker 1: Stella restrained her from putting the garment on and dancing
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  Speaker 1: out in it for a public display. Then you put
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  Speaker 1: it on, the girl insisted. But you don't understand, cried
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  Speaker 1: Lady Stella. It's almost sacred. It's for nobody to see. Ever,
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  Speaker 1: but why, the utopian asked. Puzzled beyond measure, Lady Stella
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  Speaker 1: found an answer impossible. The light meal that followed was,
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  Speaker 1: by terrestrials standards, an entirely satisfactory one. The anxiety of
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  Speaker 1: mister Freddy Mush was completely allayed. There were cold chicken
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  Speaker 1: and ham, and a very pleasant meat petie. There were
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  Speaker 1: also rather coarse grained but most palatable bread, pure butter,
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  Speaker 1: an exquisite salad, fruit cheese of the grey are type,
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  Speaker 1: and a light white wine, which won from mister Burley
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  Speaker 1: the tribute that Moselle never did anything better. You find
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  Speaker 1: our food very like your own, asked the woman in
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  Speaker 1: the red trimmed robe. Exquisite quality, said mister Mush, with
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  Speaker 1: his mouth rather full. Food has changed very little in
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  Speaker 1: the last three thousand years. People had found out all
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  Speaker 1: the best things to eat long before the last age
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  Speaker 1: of confusion. It's too real to be real, mister Barnstable
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  Speaker 1: repeated to himself, Too real to be real. He looked
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  Speaker 1: at his companions, elated, interested and eating with appreciation. If
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  Speaker 1: it wasn't for the absurdity of these Utopians speaking English
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  Speaker 1: with a clearness that tapped like a hammer inside his head.
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  Speaker 1: Mister Barstable would have had no doubt whatever of its reality.
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  Speaker 1: No servants waited at the clothless stone table. The woman
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  Speaker 1: in the white and scarlet robe and the two aviators
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  Speaker 1: shared the meal, and the guests attended to each other's requirements.
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  Speaker 1: Mister Burley, chauffeur, was for modestly shrinking to another table,
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  Speaker 1: until the Great Statesman reassured him with sit down there,
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  Speaker 1: pink next to mister mush. Other Utopians, with friendly but
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  Speaker 1: keenly observant eyes upon the Earthlings, came into the great
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  Speaker 1: pillared veranda in which the meal had been set, and smiled,
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  Speaker 1: and stood about or sat down. There were no introductions
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  Speaker 1: and few social formalities. All this is most reassuring, said
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  Speaker 1: mister Burley, most reassuring. I'm bound to say, these beat
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  Speaker 1: the Chatsworth peaches. Is that cream, my dear Rupert, in
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  Speaker 1: the little brown jar in front of you? I guessed
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  Speaker 1: as much. If you are sure you can spare it, Rupert,
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  Speaker 1: thank you two. Several of the Utopians made themselves known
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  Speaker 1: by name to the earthlings. All their voices sounded singularly
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  Speaker 1: alike to mister Barnstable, and the words were as clear
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  Speaker 1: as print. The brown eyed woman's name was Likeness. A
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  Speaker 1: man with a beard who might, perhaps mister Barnstable thought
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  Speaker 1: have been as old as forty, was either Earthrid or
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  Speaker 1: Adam or Edam. The name, for all its sharpness of annunciation,
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  Speaker 1: had been very difficult to catch. It was as if
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  Speaker 1: large print hesitated. Erthred conveyed that he was an ethnologist
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  Speaker 1: and historian, and that he desired to learn all that
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  Speaker 1: he possibly could about the ways of our world. He
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  Speaker 1: impressed mister Barnstable as having the easy carriage of some
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  Speaker 1: earthly financier or great newspaper proprietor, rather than the diffidence
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  Speaker 1: natural in our own every day world to a merely
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  Speaker 1: learned man. Another of their hosts, Serpentine, was also mister
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  Speaker 1: Barnstable learnt with surprise, for his bearing, too, was almost masterful.
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  Speaker 1: A scientific man. He called himself something that mister Barnstable
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  Speaker 1: could not catch. First it sounded like atomic mechanician, and
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  Speaker 1: then oddly enough, it sounded like molecular chemist. And then
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  Speaker 1: mister Barnstable heard mister Burley say to mister mush He
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  Speaker 1: said physiochemist. Didn't he I thought he just called himself
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  Speaker 1: a materialist, said mister Mush. I thought he said he
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  Speaker 1: weighed things, said Lady Stella. Their intonation is peculiar, said
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  Speaker 1: mister Burley. Sometimes they are almost too loud for comfort,
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  Speaker 1: and then there is a kind of gap in the sounds.
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  Speaker 1: When the meal was at an end, the whole party
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  Speaker 1: removed to another little building that was evidently planned for
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  Speaker 1: classes and discussions. It had a semicircular apse round which
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  Speaker 1: ran a series of white tablets which evidently functioned at
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  Speaker 1: times as a lecturer's blackboard, since there were black and
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  Speaker 1: colored pencils and claws for erasure lying on a marble
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  Speaker 1: ledge at a convenient height below the tablets. The lecturer
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  Speaker 1: could walk from point to point of this semicircle as
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  Speaker 1: he talked. Likeness, Arthred, Serpentine and the Earthlings seated themselves
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  Speaker 1: on a semicircular bench below this lecturer's track, and there
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  Speaker 1: was accommodation for about eighty or one hundred people upon
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  Speaker 1: the seats before them. All these were occupied, and beyond
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  Speaker 1: stood a number of graceful groups against a background of
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  Speaker 1: rhodena like bushes, between which mister Barnstable caught glimpses of
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  Speaker 1: grassy vistas leading down to the shining waters of the lake.
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  Speaker 1: They were going to talk over this extraordinary irruption into
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  Speaker 1: their world. Could anything be more reasonable than to talk
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  Speaker 1: it over? Could anything be more fantastically impossible? Odd that
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  Speaker 1: there are no swallows, said mister mush suddenly in mister
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  Speaker 1: Barnstable's ear, I wonder why there are no swallows. Mister
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  Speaker 1: Barnstable's attention went to the empty sky, no gnats or flies. Perhaps,
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  Speaker 1: he suggested it was odd that he had not missed
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  Speaker 1: the swallows before, sh said Lady Stella, he's beginning. Three,
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  Speaker 1: This incredible conference began. It was opened by the man
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  Speaker 1: named Serpentine, and he stood before his audience and seemed
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  Speaker 1: to make a speech. His lips moved, his hands assisted
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  Speaker 1: his statements, his expressions followed his utterance. And yet mister
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  Speaker 1: Barnstable had the most subtle and indefensible doubt whether indeed
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  Speaker 1: Serpentine was speaking. There was something odd about the whole thing.
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  Speaker 1: Sometimes the thing said sounded with a peculiar resonance in
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  Speaker 1: his head. Sometimes it was indistinct and elusive, like an
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  Speaker 1: object seen through troubled waters. Sometimes though Serpentine still moved
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  Speaker 1: his fine hands and looked toward his hearers. There were
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  Speaker 1: gaps of absolute silence, as if for brief intervals mister
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  Speaker 1: Barnstable had gone deaf. Yet it was a discourse. It
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  Speaker 1: held together, and it held mister Barnstable's attention. Serpentine had
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  Speaker 1: the manner of one who was taking great pains to
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  Speaker 1: be as simple as possible. With a rather intricate question,
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  Speaker 1: he spoke, as it were, in propositions, with a pause
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  Speaker 1: between each. It had long been known. He began that
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  Speaker 1: the possible number of dimensions, like the possible number of
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  Speaker 1: anything else that could be enumerated, was unlimited. Yes, mister
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  Speaker 1: Barnstable had got that, but it proved too much for
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  Speaker 1: mister Freddy Marsh, Oh Lord. He said dimensions, and dropped
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  Speaker 1: his eye glass and became despondently. Inattentive for most practical purposes,
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  Speaker 1: Serpentine continued. The particular universe, the particular system of events
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  Speaker 1: in which we found ourselves and of which we formed part,
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  Speaker 1: could be regarded as occurring in a space of three
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  Speaker 1: rectilinear dimensions, and as undergoing translation, which translation was in
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  Speaker 1: fact duration through a fourth dimension time. Such a system
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  Speaker 1: of events was necessarily a gravitational system, er, said mister Burley, sharply,
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  Speaker 1: excuse me, I don't see that, so he at any
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  Speaker 1: rate was following it too. Any universe that endures must
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  Speaker 1: necessarily gravitate, Serpentine repeated, as if he were asserting some
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  Speaker 1: self evident fact. For the life of me, I can't
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  Speaker 1: see that, said mister Burley. After a moment's reflection, Serpentine
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  Speaker 1: considered him for a moment. It is so, he said,
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  Speaker 1: and went on with his discourse. Our minds, he continued,
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  Speaker 1: had been evolved in the form of this practical conception
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  Speaker 1: of things. They accepted it as true. And it was
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  Speaker 1: only by great efforts of sustained analysis that we were
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  Speaker 1: able to realize that this universe in which we lived
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  Speaker 1: not only extended, but was, as it were, slightly bent
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  Speaker 1: and contorted into a number of other long unsuspected spacecial dimensions.
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  Speaker 1: It extended beyond its three chief spatial dimensions into these others,
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  Speaker 1: just as a thin sheet of paper, which is practically
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  Speaker 1: two dimensional, extended not only by virtue of its thickness,
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  Speaker 1: but also of its crinkles and curvature, into a third dimension.
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  Speaker 1: Am I going death asked Lady Stella in a stage whisper.
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  Speaker 1: I can't catch a word of all this, nor I
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  Speaker 1: said Father Amerton. Mister Burley made a pacifying gesture towards
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  Speaker 1: these unfortunates, without taking his eyes off Serpentine's face. Mister
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  Speaker 1: Barnstable knitted his brows, clasped his knees, nodded his fingers,
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  Speaker 1: held on desperately. He must be hearing. Of course he
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  Speaker 1: was hearing. Serpentine proceeded to explain that just as it
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  Speaker 1: would be possible for any number of practically two dimensional
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  Speaker 1: universes to lie side by side like sheets of paper
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  Speaker 1: in a three dimensional space, so in the many dimensional
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  Speaker 1: space about which the ill equipped human mind is still
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  Speaker 1: slowly and painfully acquiring knowledge, it is possible for an
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  Speaker 1: innumerable quantity of practically three dimensional universes to lie, as
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  Speaker 1: it were, side by side, and to undergo a roughly
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  Speaker 1: parallel movement through time. The speculative work of Lonestone and
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  Speaker 1: Cephalis had long since given the soundest basis for the
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  Speaker 1: belief that there actually were a very great number of
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  Speaker 1: such space and time universes parallel to one another and
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  Speaker 1: resembling each other nearly but not exactly, much as the
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  Speaker 1: leaves of a book might resemble one another. All of
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  Speaker 1: them would have duration, all of them would be gravitating systems.
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  Speaker 1: Mister Burley shook his head to show that he still
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  Speaker 1: didn't see it, And those lying closest together would most
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  Speaker 1: nearly resemble each other, how closely. They now had an
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  Speaker 1: opportunity of learning, for the daring attempts of those two
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  Speaker 1: great geniuses Arden and green Lake to use the inaudible
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  Speaker 1: thrust of the atom to rotate a portion of the
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  Speaker 1: utopian material universe in that dimension, the f dimension into
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  Speaker 1: which it had long been known to extend for perhaps
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  Speaker 1: the length of a man's arm. To rotate this fragment
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  Speaker 1: of Utopian matter, much as a gate is swung on
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  Speaker 1: its hinges, had manifestly been altogether successful. The gate had
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  Speaker 1: swung back again, bringing with it a breath of close air,
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  Speaker 1: a storm of dust, and to the immense amazement of Utopia.
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  Speaker 1: Three sets of visitors from an unknown world. Three, he whispered,
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  Speaker 1: mister Barnstable. Doubtfully did he say, three Serpentine disregarded him.
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  Speaker 1: Our brother and sister have been killed by some unexpected
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  Speaker 1: release of force, but their experiment has opened a way
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  Speaker 1: that now need never be closed again, out of the
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  Speaker 1: present spatial limitations of utopia, into a whole vast folio
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  Speaker 1: of hitherto unimagined worlds close at hand to us, even
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  Speaker 1: as Lonestone guest ages Ago, nearer to us, as he
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  Speaker 1: put it, than the blood in our hearts, nearer to
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  Speaker 1: us than breathing, and closer than hands and feet. Father
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  Speaker 1: Amerton misquoted waking up suddenly. But what is he talking about?
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  Speaker 1: I don't catch it. We discover another planet much the
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  Speaker 1: same size as ours, To judge by the scale of
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  Speaker 1: its inhabitants circulating, we may certainly assume round the Sun
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  Speaker 1: like that in our skies, a planet bearing life and
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  Speaker 1: being slowly subjugated, even as our own is being subjugated
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  Speaker 1: by intelligent life, which has evidently evolved under almost exactly
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  Speaker 1: parallel conditions to those of our own evolution. This sister
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  Speaker 1: universe to ours is, so far as we may judge
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  Speaker 1: by appearances, a little retarded in time in relation to
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  Speaker 1: our own. Our visitors wear something very like the clothing,
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  Speaker 1: and display physical characteristics resembling those of our ancestors. During
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  Speaker 1: the last age of confusion. We are not yet justified
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  Speaker 1: in supposing that their history has been strictly parallel to ours.
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  Speaker 1: No two particles of matter are alike. No two vibrations.
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  Speaker 1: In all the dimensions of being, in all the universes
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  Speaker 1: of God, there has never been, and there can never be,
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  Speaker 1: an exact repetition that we have come to realize is
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  Speaker 1: the only impossible thing. Nevertheless, this world you call Earth
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  Speaker 1: is manifestly very near and like to this universe of ours.
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  Speaker 1: We are eager to learn from you Earthlings, to check
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  Speaker 1: our history, which is still very imperfectly known by your experiences.
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  Speaker 1: Two show you what we know, to make out what
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  Speaker 1: may be possible and desirable in intercourse and help between
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  Speaker 1: the people of your planet and ours. We here are
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  Speaker 1: the merest beginners in knowledge. We have learnt, as yet
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  Speaker 1: scarcely anything more than the immensity of the things that
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  Speaker 1: we have yet to learn and do in a million
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  Speaker 1: kindred things. Our two worlds may perhaps teach each other
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  Speaker 1: and help each other. Possibly there are streaks of heredity
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  Speaker 1: in your planet that have failed to develop or that
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  Speaker 1: have died out in ours. Possibly there are elements or
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  Speaker 1: minerals in one world that are rare or wanting in
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  Speaker 1: the other. The structure of your atoms, our worlds may
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  Speaker 1: intermarry to their common invigoration. He passed into the inaudible
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  Speaker 1: just when mister Barnstable was most moved and most eager
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  Speaker 1: to follow what he was saying. Yet a deaf man
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  Speaker 1: would have judged he was still speaking. Mister Barnstable met
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  Speaker 1: the eye of mister Rupert Catskill, as distressed and puzzled
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  Speaker 1: as his own father. Amberton's face was buried in his hands.
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  Speaker 1: Lady Stella and mister Mush were whispering softly together. They
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  Speaker 1: had long since given up any pretense of listening. Such
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  Speaker 1: said Serpentine, abruptly becoming audible again, is our first rough
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  Speaker 1: interpretation of your apparition in our world, and of the
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  Speaker 1: possibilities of our interaction. I have put our ideas before
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  Speaker 1: you as plainly as I can. I would suggest that
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  Speaker 1: now one of you tell us simply and plainly, what
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  Speaker 1: you conceive to be the truth about your world in
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  Speaker 1: relation to ours. End of Section four