"Herbert George Wells. When the Sleeper Wakes" - читать интересную книгу автора

century the only roads and streets were beaten tracks of motionless earth,
jostling rivulets of vehicles between narrow footways. But this roadway was
three hundred feet across, and it moved; it moved, all save the middle, the
lowest part. For a moment, the motion dazzled his mind. Then he understood.

Under the balcony this extraordinary roadway ran swiftly to Graham's right,
an endless flow rushing along as fast as a nineteenth century express
train, an endless platform of narrow transverse overlapping slats with
little interspaces that permitted it to follow the curvatures of the
street. Upon it were seats, and here and there little kiosks, but they
swept by too swiftly for him to see what might be therein. From this
nearest and swiftest platform a series of others descended to the centre of
the space. Each moved to the right, each perceptibly slower than the one
above it, but the difference in pace was small enough to permit anyone to
step from any platform to the one adjacent, and so walk uninterruptedly
from the swiftest to the motionless middle way. Beyond this middle way was
another series of endless platforms rushing with varying pace to Graham's
left. And seated in crowds upon the two widest and swiftest platforms, or
stepping from one to another down the steps, or swarming over the central
space, was an innumerable and wonderfully diversified multitude of people.

"You must not stop here," shouted Howard suddenly at his side. "You must
come away at once."

Graham made no answer. He heard without hearing. The platforms ran with a
roar and the people were shouting. He perceived women and girls with
flowing hair, beautifully robed, with bands crossing between the breasts.
These first came out of the confusion. Then he perceived that the dominant
note in that kaleidoscope of costume was the pale blue that the tailor's
boy had worn. He became aware of cries of "The Sleeper. What has happened
to the Sleeper?" and it seemed as though the rushing platforms before him
were suddenly spattered with the pale buff of human faces, and then still
more thickly. He saw pointing fingers. He perceived that the motionless
central area of this huge arcade just opposite to the balcony was densely
crowded with blue-clad people. Some sort of struggle had sprung into life.
People seemed to be pushed up the running platforms on either side, and
carried away against their will. They would spring off so soon as they were
beyond the thick of the confusion, and run back towards the conflict.

"It is the Sleeper. Verily it is the Sleeper," shouted voices. "That is
never the Sleeper," shouted others. More and more faces were turned to him.
At the intervals along this central area Graham noted openings, pits,
apparently the heads of staircases going down with people ascending out of
them and descending into them. The struggle it seemed centred about the one
of these nearest to him. People were running down the moving platforms to
this, leaping dexterously from platform to platform. The clustering people
on the higher platforms seemed to divide their interest between this point
and the balcony. A number of sturdy little figures clad in a uniform of
bright red, and working methodically together, were employed it seemed in
preventing access to this descending staircase. About them a crowd was