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

was suddenly aware of that most disagreeable flavour in life, compulsion.
Some one gripped his arm.... He was being dragged away. It seemed as though
the tumult suddenly became two, as if half the shouts that had come in from
this wonderful roadway had sprung into the passages of the great building
behind him. Marvelling and confused, feeling an impotent desire to resist,
Graham was half led, half thrust, along the passage of blue pillars, and
suddenly he found himself alone with Howard in a lift and moving swiftly
upward.

CHAPTER VI

THE HALL OF THE ATLAS

From the moment when the tailor had bowed his farewell to the moment when
Graham found himself in the lift, was altogether barely five minutes. And
as yet the haze of his vast interval of sleep hung about him, as yet the
initial strangeness of his being alive at all in this remote age touched
everything with wonder, with a sense of the irrational, with something of
the quality of a realistic dream. He was still detached, an astonished
spectator, still but half involved in life. What he had seen, and
especially the last crowded tumult, framed in the setting of the balcony,
had a spectacular turn, like a thing witnessed from the box of a theatre.
"I don't understand," he said. "What was the trouble? My mind is in a
whirl. Why were they shouting? What is the danger?"

"We have our troubles," said Howard. His eyes avoided Graham's enquiry.
"This is a time of unrest. And, in fact, your appearance, your waking just
now, has a sort of connexion-"

He spoke jerkily, like a man not quite sure of his breathing. He stopped
abruptly.

"I don't understand," said Graham.

"It will be clearer later," said Howard.

He glanced uneasily upward, as though he found the progress of the lift
slow.

"I shall understand better, no doubt, when I have seen my way about a
little," said Graham puzzled. "It. will be-it is bound to be perplexing. At
present it is all so strange. Anything seems possible. Anything In the
details even. Your counting, I understand, is different."

The lift stopped, and they stepped out into a narrow but very long passage
between high walls, along which ran an extraordinary number of tubes and
big cables.

"What a huge place this is!" said Graham. "Is it all one building? What
place is it?"