H. Wells - The World Set Free

patience.'

'Fine work is beingdone and much of it,' said Fowler. 'I can

say as much because I have nothing to do with it. I can

understanda lesson, appreciate the discoveries of abler men and

use my hands, but those others, Pigou, Masterton, Lie, and the

others, they are clearing the ground fast for the knowledgeto

come. Have you had time to follow their work?'

Karenin shook his head. 'But I can imagine the scope of it,' he

said.

'We have so many men working now,' said Fowler. 'I suppose at

present there must be at least a thousand thinkinghard,

observing, experimenting, for one who did so in nineteen

hundred.'

'Not counting those who keep the records?'

'Not counting those. Of course, the present indexing of research

is in itself a very big work, and it is only now that we are

getting it properly done. But already we are feelingthe benefit

of that. Since it ceasedto be a paid employment and became a

devotion we have had only those people who obeyed the call of an

aptitude at work upon these things. Here-I must show you it

to-day, because it will interest you-we have our copy of the

encyclopaedic index-every week sheets are taken out and replaced

by fresh sheets with new results that are brought to us by the

aeroplanes of the Research Department. It is an index of

knowledgethat grows continually, an index that becomes

continually truer. There was never anything like it before.'

'When I came into the education committee,' said Karenin, 'that

index of human knowledgeseemed an impossible thing. Research had

produced a chaotic mountain of results, in a hundred languages

and a thousand different types of publication…' He smiled

at his memories. 'How we groaned at the job!'

'Already the ordering of that chaos is nearly done. You shall

see.'

'I have been so busy with my own work--Yes, I shall be glad to

see.'

The patientregarded the surgeon for a time with interested eyes.

'You work here always?' he asked abruptly.

'No,' said Fowler.

'But mostly you work here?'

'I have worked about seven years out of the past ten. At times I

go away-down there. One has to. At least I have to. There is a

sort of grayness comes over all this, one feelshungry for life,

real, personal passionate life, love-making, eating and drinking

for the fun of the thing, jostling crowds, having adventures,

laughter-above all laughter--'

'Yes,' said Karenin understandingly.

'And then one day, suddenly one thinksof these high mountains

again…'

'That is how I would have lived, if it had not been for

my-defects,' said Karenin. 'Nobody knowsbut those who have

borne it the exasperation of abnormality. It will be goodwhen

you have nobody alive whose body cannot live the wholesome

everyday life, whose spiritcannot come up into these high places

as it wills.'

'We shall manage that soon,' said Fowler.

'For endless generations man has struggled upward against the

indignities of his body-and the indignities of his soul. Pains,

incapacities, vile fears, black moods, despairs. How well I've

knownthem. They've taken more time than all your holidays. It

is true, is it not, that every man is something of a cripple and

something of a beast? I've dipped a little deeper than most;

that's all. It's only now when he has fully learnt the truthof

that, that he can take hold of himselfto be neither beast nor

cripple. Now that he overcomes his servitude to his body, he can

for the first time thinkof living the full life of his body…

Before another generation dies you'll have the thing in hand.

You'll do as you please with the old Adam and all the vestiges

from the brutes and reptiles that lurk in his body and spirit.

Isn't that so?'

'You put it boldly,' said Fowler.

Karenin laughed cheerfully at his caution… 'When,' asked

Karenin suddenly, 'when will you operate?'

'The day after to-morrow,' said Fowler. 'For a day I want you to

drink and eat as I shall prescribe. And you may thinkand talk

as you please.'

'I should like to seethis place.'

'You shall go through it this afternoon. I will have two men

carry you in a litter. And to-morrow you shall lie out upon the

terrace. Our mountains here are the most beautiful in the

world…'

Section 3

The next morning Karenin got up early and watched the sun rise

over the mountains, and breakfasted lightly, and then young

Gardener, his secretary, came to consult him upon the spending of

his day. Would he care to seepeople? Or was this gnawing pain

within him too much to permit him to do that?

'I'd like to talk,' said Karenin. 'There must be all sorts of

lively-minded people here. Let them come and gossip with me. It

will distract me-and I can't tell you how interesting it makes

everything that is going on to have seenthe dawn of one's own

last day.'

'Your last day!'

'Fowler will kill me.'

'But he thinksnot.'

'Fowler will kill me. If he does not he will not leave very much

of me. So that this is my last day anyhow, the days afterwards if

they come at all to me, will be refuse. I know…'

Gardener was about to speak when Karenin went on again.

'I hope he kills me, Gardener. Don't be-old-fashioned. The

thing I ammost afraid of is that last rag of life. I may just go

on-a scarred salvage of suffering stuff. And then-all the

things I have hidden and kept down or discounted or set right

afterwards will get the better of me. I shall be peevish. I may

lose my grip upon my own egotism. It's never been a very firm

grip. No, no, Gardener, don't say that! You knowbetter, you've

had glimpses of it. Suppose I came through on the other side of

this affair, belittled, vain, and spiteful, using the prestige I

have got among men by my goodwork in the past just to serve some

small invalid purpose…'

He was silent for a time, watching the mists among the distant

precipices change to clouds of light, and drift and dissolve

before the searching rays of the sunrise.

'Yes,' he said at last, 'I am afraid of these anaesthetics and

these fag ends of life. It's life we are all afraid of.

Death!-nobody mindsjust death. Fowler is clever-but some day

surgery will knowits duty better and not be so anxious just to

save something… provided only that it quivers. I've tried to

hold my end up properly and do my work. After Fowler has done

with me I amcertain I shall be unfit for work-and what else is

there for me?… I knowI shall not be fit for work…

'I do not seewhy life should be judged by its last trailing

thread of vitality… I knowit for the splendid thing it is-I

who have been a diseased creature from the beginning. I knowit

well enough not to confuseit with its husks. Rememberthat,

Gardener, if presently my heart fails me and I despair, and if I

go through a little phase of painand ingratitude and dark

forgetfulness before the end… Don't believe what I may say at

the last… If the fabric is goodenough the selvage doesn't

matter. It can't matter. So long as you are alive you are just

the moment, perhaps, but when you are dead then you are all your

life from the first moment to the last…'

Section 4

Presently, in accordance with his wish, people came to talk to

him, and he could forget himselfagain. Rachel Borken sat for a

long time with him and talked chiefly of women in the world, and

with her was a girl named Edith Haydon who was already very well