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Men Like Gods Book 3 Chapter 1 - The Peaceful Hills Behind the River · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Section thirteen 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. Men
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  Speaker 1: Like Gods by H. G. Wells, Book three, A neophyte
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  Speaker 1: in Utopia, Chapter one, The peaceful hills beside the River.
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  Speaker 1: God has made more universes than there are pages in
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  Speaker 1: all the libraries of Earth. Man may learn and grow
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  Speaker 1: forever amidst the multitude of his worlds. Mister Barnstaple had
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  Speaker 1: a sense of floating from star to star, and from
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  Speaker 1: plain to plain, through an incessant variety and wonder of existences.
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  Speaker 1: He passed over the edge of being. He drifted for
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  Speaker 1: ages down the faces of immeasurable cliffs. He traveled from
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  Speaker 1: everlasting to everlasting in a stream of innumerable little stars.
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  Speaker 1: At last came a phase of profound rushfulness. There was
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  Speaker 1: a sky of level clouds warmed by the light of
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  Speaker 1: a declining sun, and a skyline of gently undulating hills,
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  Speaker 1: golden grassy upon their crests, and carrying dark purple woods
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  Speaker 1: and thickets, and patches of pale yellowlike ripening corn upon
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  Speaker 1: their billowing slopes here, and there were domed buildings and terraces,
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  Speaker 1: flowering gardens, and little villas, and great tanks of gleaming water.
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  Speaker 1: There were many trees like the eucalyptus, only that they
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  Speaker 1: had darker leaves upon the slopes immediately below and round
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  Speaker 1: and about him, and all the land fell at last
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  Speaker 1: towards a very broad valley, down which a shining river
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  Speaker 1: lounged leisurely in great semicircular bends, until it became invisible
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  Speaker 1: in the evening haze. A slight movement turned his eyes
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  Speaker 1: to discover lichness seated beside him. She smiled at him
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  Speaker 1: and put her finger on her lips. He had a
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  Speaker 1: vague desire to address her, and smiled faintly and moved
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  Speaker 1: his head. She got up and slipped away from him,
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  Speaker 1: past the head of his couch. He was too feeble
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  Speaker 1: and incurious to raise his head, and looked to see
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  Speaker 1: where she had gone. But he saw that she had
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  Speaker 1: been sitting at a white table, on which was a
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  Speaker 1: silver bowl full of intensely blue flowers. And the color
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  Speaker 1: of the flowers held him and diverted his first faint
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  Speaker 1: impulse of curiosity. He wondered whether colors were really brighter
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  Speaker 1: in this utopian world, or whether something in the air
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  Speaker 1: quickened and clarified his apprehension. Beyond the table were the
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  Speaker 1: white pillars of the loggia, a branch of one of
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  Speaker 1: these eucalyptus like trees. Lee's bronze black came very close outside,
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  Speaker 1: and there was music. It was a little trickle of
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  Speaker 1: sound that dripped and ran, a mere, unobtrusive rivulet of
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  Speaker 1: little clear notes upon the margin of his consciousness, the
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  Speaker 1: song of some fairy land Debuca Peace. He was awake again.
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  Speaker 1: He tried hard to remember. He had been knocked over
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  Speaker 1: and stunned in some manner too big and violent for
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  Speaker 1: his mind to hold. As yet, then people had stood
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  Speaker 1: about him and talked about him. He remembered their feet.
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  Speaker 1: He must have been lying on his face, with his
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  Speaker 1: face very close to the ground. Then they had turned
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  Speaker 1: him over, and the light of the rising sun had
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  Speaker 1: been blinding in his eyes. Two gentle goddesses had given
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  Speaker 1: him some restorative in a gorge at the foot of
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  Speaker 1: high cliffs. He had been carried in the woman's arms
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  Speaker 1: as a child is carried. After that, there were cloudy
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  Speaker 1: and dissolving memories of a long journey, a long flight
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  Speaker 1: through the air. There was something next to this, a
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  Speaker 1: vision of huge, complicated machinery that did not join on
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  Speaker 1: to anything else. For a time his mind held this
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  Speaker 1: up in an interrogative fashion, and then dropped it wearily.
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  Speaker 1: There had been voices in consultation, the prick of an injection,
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  Speaker 1: and some gas that he had had to inhale, and sleep,
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  Speaker 1: or sleeps, spells of sleep interspersed with dreams. Now with
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  Speaker 1: regard to that gorge, how had he got there? The gorge?
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  Speaker 1: In another light, a greenish light with utopians who struggled
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  Speaker 1: with a great cable. Suddenly, hard and clear came the
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  Speaker 1: vision of the headland of Coronation Crag, towering up against
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  Speaker 1: the bright blue morning sky, and then the crest of
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  Speaker 1: its grinding round, with its fluttering flags and its disheveled figures,
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  Speaker 1: passing slowly and steadily, as some great ship passes out
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  Speaker 1: of the dock with its flags and passengers into the
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  Speaker 1: invisible and unknown. All the wonder of his great adventure
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  Speaker 1: returned to mister Barnstable's mind. He sat up in a
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  Speaker 1: state of interrogation and lytched its reappear at his elbow.
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  Speaker 1: She seated herself on his bed close to him, shook
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  Speaker 1: up some pillows behind him, and persuaded him to lie
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  Speaker 1: back upon them. She conveyed to him that he was
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  Speaker 1: cured of some illness and no longer infectious, but that
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  Speaker 1: he was still very weak. Of what illness, he asked himself.
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  Speaker 1: More of the immediate past became clear to him. There
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  Speaker 1: was an epidemic, he said, a sort of mixed epidemic
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  Speaker 1: of all our infections. She smiled reassuringly. It was over.
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  Speaker 1: The science and organization of Utopia had taken the danger
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  Speaker 1: by the throat and banished it. Lichness, however, had nothing
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  Speaker 1: to do with the preventive and cleansing work that had
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  Speaker 1: ended the career of these invading microbes so speedily. Her
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  Speaker 1: work had been the help and care of the sick.
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  Speaker 1: Something came through to the intelligence of mister Barnstaple that
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  Speaker 1: made him think that she was faintly sorry that this
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  Speaker 1: work of pity was no longer necessary. He looked up
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  Speaker 1: into her beautiful, kindly eyes and met her affectionate solicitude.
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  Speaker 1: She was not sorry. Utopia was cured again. That was incredible,
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  Speaker 1: But it seemed to him that she was sorry that
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  Speaker 1: she could no longer spend herself in help, and that
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  Speaker 1: she was glad that he, at least, was still in
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  Speaker 1: need of assistance. What became of those people on the rock,
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  Speaker 1: he asked? What became of the other Earthlinks. She did
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  Speaker 1: not know they had been cast out of Utopia, she thought,
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  Speaker 1: back to Earth. She did not think they had gone
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  Speaker 1: back to Earth. They had perhaps gone into yet another universe,
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  Speaker 1: but she did not know. She was one of those
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  Speaker 1: who had no mathematical aptitudes, and physical chemical science, and
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  Speaker 1: the complex theories of dimensions that interested so many people
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  Speaker 1: in Utopia were outside her circle of ideas. She believed
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  Speaker 1: that the crest of Coronation Crag had been swung out
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  Speaker 1: of the Utopian universe. Altogether, a great number of people
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  Speaker 1: were now intensely interested in this experimental work upon the
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  Speaker 1: unexplored dimensions into which physical processes might be swung. But
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  Speaker 1: these matters terrified her. Her mind recoiled from them as
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  Speaker 1: one recoiled from the edge of a cliff. She did
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  Speaker 1: not want to think where the Earthlings had gone, what
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  Speaker 1: deeps they had reeled over, what immensities they had seen?
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  Speaker 1: And swept down into such thoughts opened dark gulfs beneath
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  Speaker 1: her feet, where she had thought everything fixed and secure.
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  Speaker 1: She was a conservative in utopia. She loved life as
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  Speaker 1: it was and as it had been. She had given
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  Speaker 1: herself to the care of mister Barnstaple when she had
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  Speaker 1: found that he had escaped the fate of the other Earthlings,
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  Speaker 1: and she had not troubled very greatly about the particulars
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  Speaker 1: of that fate. She had avoided thinking about it. But
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  Speaker 1: where are they? Where have they gone? She did not know,
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  Speaker 1: She conveyed to him, haltingly and imperfectly her own halting
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  Speaker 1: and unsympathetic ideas. Of these new discoveries that had inflamed
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  Speaker 1: the Utopian imagination. Crucible had been the experiment of Arden
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  Speaker 1: and Green Lake that had brought the Earthlings into Utopia.
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  Speaker 1: That had been the first rupture of the hitherto invincible
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  Speaker 1: barriers that had held their universe in three spatial dimensions,
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  Speaker 1: that had opened these abysses. That had been the moment
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  Speaker 1: of release for all the new work that now filled Utopia.
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  Speaker 1: That had been the first achievement of practical results from
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  Speaker 1: an intricate network of theory and deduction. It sent mister
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  Speaker 1: Barnstable's mind back to the humbler discoveries of Earth, to
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  Speaker 1: Franklin snapping the captive lightning from his kite in Galvani
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  Speaker 1: with his dancing frog's legs, puzzling over the miracle that
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  Speaker 1: brought a electricity into the service of men. But it
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  Speaker 1: had taken a century and a half for electricity to
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  Speaker 1: make any sensible changes in human life, because the earthly
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  Speaker 1: workers were so few, and the ways of the world
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  Speaker 1: so obstructive and slow and spiteful. In Utopia, to make
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  Speaker 1: a novel discovery was to light an intellectual conflagration. Hundreds
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  Speaker 1: of thousands of experimentalists, in free and open cooperation were
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  Speaker 1: now working along the fruitful lines that Arden and Green
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  Speaker 1: Lake had made manifest every day every hour. Now new
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  Speaker 1: and hitherto fantastic possibilities of interspatial relationship were being made
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  Speaker 1: plain to the Utopians. Mister Barnstaple rubbed his head and
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  Speaker 1: eyes with both hands, and then lay back, blinking at
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  Speaker 1: the great valley below him, growing slowly golden as the
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  Speaker 1: sun sank. He felt himself to be the most secure
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  Speaker 1: and stable of beings, at the very center of a
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  Speaker 1: sphere of glowing serenity, and that effect of an immense
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  Speaker 1: tranquility was a delusion that still evening peace was woven
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  Speaker 1: of incredible billions of hurrying and clashing atoms. All the
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  Speaker 1: peace and fixity that man has ever known, or will
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  Speaker 1: ever know, is but the smoothness of the face of
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  Speaker 1: a torrent that flies along with incredible speed from cataract
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  Speaker 1: to cataract. Time was when men could talk of everlasting hills.
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  Speaker 1: Today a schoolboy knows that they dissolve under the frost
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  Speaker 1: and wind and rain and poor seaward day by day
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  Speaker 1: and hour by hour. Time was when men could speak
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  Speaker 1: of terra firma and feel the earth fixed at a
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  Speaker 1: mantime beneath their feet. Now they know that it whirls
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  Speaker 1: through space, eddying about a spinning, blindly driven sun amidst
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  Speaker 1: a sheeplike drift of stars. And this fair curtain of
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  Speaker 1: appearance before the eyes of mister Barnstable, this still and
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  Speaker 1: level flush of sunset, and the great cloth of starry
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  Speaker 1: space that hung behind the blue, that too, was now
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  Speaker 1: to be pierced and torn and rent asunder. The extended
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  Speaker 1: fingers of his mind closed on the things that concerned
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  Speaker 1: him most. But where are my people, he asked, Where
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  Speaker 1: are their bodies. Is it just possible they are still alive?
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  Speaker 1: She could not tell him. He lay thinking it was
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  Speaker 1: natural that he should be given into the charge of
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  Speaker 1: a rather backward binded woman. The active binded here had
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  Speaker 1: no more use for him in their lives than active
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  Speaker 1: binded people on Earth have for pet animals. She did
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  Speaker 1: not want to think about these spatial relations at all.
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  Speaker 1: The subject was too difficult for her. She was one
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  Speaker 1: of Utopia's educational failures. She sat beside him with the
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  Speaker 1: divine sweetness and tranquility upon her face, and he felt
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  Speaker 1: his own judgment upon her like a committed treachery. Yet
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  Speaker 1: he wanted to know very badly the answer to his question.
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  Speaker 1: He supposed the crest of Coronation Crag had been twisted
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  Speaker 1: round and flung off into some outer space. It was
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  Speaker 1: unlikely that this time the Earthlings would strike a convenient
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  Speaker 1: planet again. In all probability, they had been turned off
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  Speaker 1: into the void, into the interstellar space of some unknown universe.
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  Speaker 1: What would happen then? They would freeze, The air would
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  Speaker 1: instantly diffuse right out of them. Their own gravitation would
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  Speaker 1: flatten them out, crush them together, collapse them. At least
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  Speaker 1: they would have no time to suffer a gasp, like
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  Speaker 1: someone flung into ice cold water. He contemplated these possibilities.
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  Speaker 1: Flung out, he said aloud, like a cage full of
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  Speaker 1: mice thrown over the side of a ship. I don't understand,
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  Speaker 1: said Lychness, Turning to him, he appealed to her, and
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  Speaker 1: now tell me what is to become of me. For
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  Speaker 1: a time, Lychness gave him no answer. She sat with
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  Speaker 1: her soft eyes upon the blue haze into which the
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  Speaker 1: great River Valley had now dissolved. Then she turned to
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  Speaker 1: him with a question, you want to stay in this world?
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  Speaker 1: Surely any earthling would want to stay in this world.
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  Speaker 1: My body has been purified. Why should I not stay?
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  Speaker 1: It seems a good world to you, loveliness, order, health, energy,
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  Speaker 1: and wonder. It has all the good thing for which
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  Speaker 1: my world groans and travails. And yet our world is
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  Speaker 1: not content. I could be contented. You are tired and weak.
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  Speaker 1: Still in this air, I could grow strong and vigorous.
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  Speaker 1: I could almost grow young in this world. In years
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  Speaker 1: as you count them. Here I am still a young man. Again.
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  Speaker 1: She was silent for a time. The mighty lap of
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  Speaker 1: the landscape was now filled with indistinguishable blue, and beyond
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  Speaker 1: the black silhouettes of the trees upon the hillside, only
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  Speaker 1: the skyline of the hills was visible against the yellow
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  Speaker 1: green and pale yellow of the evening sky. Never had
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  Speaker 1: mister Barnstaple seen so peaceful a nightfall. But her words
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  Speaker 1: denied that peace. Here, She said, there is no rest.
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  Speaker 1: Every day men and women awake and say, what new
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  Speaker 1: things shall we do today? What shall we change? They
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  Speaker 1: have changed a wild planet of disease and disorder into
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  Speaker 1: the sphere of beauty and safety. They have made the
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  Speaker 1: wilderness of human motives bear union and knowledge, and power
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  Speaker 1: and research never rests, and curiosity and the desire for
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  Speaker 1: more power and still more power consumes all our world
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  Speaker 1: the appetite. I am tired now, as weak and weary
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  Speaker 1: and soft, as as though I had just been born.
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  Speaker 1: But presently, when I have grown stronger, I too may
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  Speaker 1: share in that curiosity and take a part in these
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  Speaker 1: great discoveries that now set utopia. Astir who knows he
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  Speaker 1: smiled at her kind eyes. You will have much to learn,
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  Speaker 1: she said. She seemed to measure her own failure as
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  Speaker 1: she said these words. Some sense of the profound differences
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  Speaker 1: that three thousand years of progress might have made in
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  Speaker 1: the fundamental ideas and ways of thinking of the race
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  Speaker 1: dawned upon mister Barnstaple's mind. He remembered that in Utopia
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  Speaker 1: he heard only the things he could understand, and that
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  Speaker 1: all that found no place in his terrestrial circle of
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  Speaker 1: ideas was inaudible to his mind. The gulfts of misunderstanding
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  Speaker 1: might be wider and deeper than he was, assuming a
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  Speaker 1: totally gold coast bigro trying to master thermal electricity would
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  Speaker 1: have set himself a far more hopeful task. After all,
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  Speaker 1: it is not the new discoveries that I want to share,
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  Speaker 1: he said, Quite possibly, they are altogether beyond me. It
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  Speaker 1: is this perfect, beautiful daily life, this life of all
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  Speaker 1: the dreams of my own time come true, that I want.
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  Speaker 1: I just want to be alive here. That will be
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  Speaker 1: enough for me. You are weak and tired, yet, said Lychness.
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  Speaker 1: When you are stronger, you may face other ideas, But
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  Speaker 1: what other ideas? Your mind may turn back to your
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  Speaker 1: own world and your own life, go back to earth.
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  Speaker 1: Lychnist looked at the twilight again for a while before
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  Speaker 1: she turned him with you and you are an Earthling
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  Speaker 1: born and maid. What else can you be? What else
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  Speaker 1: can I be? Mister Barnstaples mind rested upon that, and
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  Speaker 1: he lay feeling rather than thinking, amidst its implications. As
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  Speaker 1: the pinpoint lights of Utopia pricked the darkling blue below
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  Speaker 1: and ran into chains in groups of and coalesced into
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  Speaker 1: nebulous patches. He resisted the truth below her words. This
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  Speaker 1: glorious world of Utopia, perfect and assured, poised, ready for
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  Speaker 1: tremendous adventures amidst untraveled universes, was a world of sweet
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  Speaker 1: giants and uncompanionable beauty, a world of enterprises in which
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  Speaker 1: a poor, muddy witted, weak willed earthling might neither help
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  Speaker 1: nor share. They had plundered their planet as one empties
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  Speaker 1: of purse, they thrust out their power amidst the stars.
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  Speaker 1: They were kind, They were very kind, But they were different.
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  Speaker 1: End of Book three, Chapter one,