THE MOVING WAYS
He went to the railings of the balcony and stared upward. An exclamation
of surprise at his appearance, and the movements of a number of people
came from the great area below.
His first impression was of overwhelming architecture. The place into
which he looked was an aisle of Titanic buildings, curving spaciously in
either direction. Overhead mighty cantilevers sprang together across the
huge width of the place, and a tracery of translucent material shut out
the sky. Gigantic globes of cool white light shamed the pale sunbeams
that filtered down through the girders and wires. Here and there a
gossamer suspension bridge dotted with foot passengers flung across the
chasm and the air was webbed with slender cables. A cliff of edifice
hung above him, he perceived as he glanced upward, and the opposite
façade was grey and dim and broken by great archings, circular
perforations, balconies, buttresses, turret projections, myriads of vast
windows, and an intricate scheme of architectural relief. Athwart these
ran inscriptions horizontally and obliquely in an unfamiliar lettering.
Here and there close to the roof cables of a peculiar stoutness were
fastened, and drooped in a steep curve to circular openings on the
opposite side of the space, and even as Graham noted these a remote and
tiny figure of a man clad in pale blue arrested his attention. This
little figure was far overhead across the space beside the higher
fastening of one of these festoons, hanging forward from a little ledge
of masonry and handling some well-nigh invisible strings dependent from
the line. Then suddenly, with a swoop that sent Graham's heart into his
mouth, this man had rushed down the curve and vanished through a round
opening on the hither side of the way. Graham had been looking up as he
came out upon the balcony, and the things he saw above and opposed to
him had at first seized his attention to the exclusion of anything else.
Then suddenly he discovered the roadway! It was not a roadway at all, as
Graham understood such things, for in the nineteenth 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 rapidly accumulating. Their brilliant
colour contrasted vividly with the whitish-blue of their antagonists, for
the struggle was indisputable.
He saw these things with Howard shouting in his ear and shaking his arm.
And then suddenly Howard was gone and he stood alone.
He perceived that the cries of "The Sleeper!" grew in volume, and that
the people on the nearer platform were standing up. The nearer platform
he perceived was empty to the right of him, and far across the space the
platform running in the opposite direction was coming crowded and passing
away bare. With incredible swiftness a vast crowd had gathered in the
central space before his eyes; a dense swaying mass of people, and the
shouts grew from a fitful crying to a voluminous incessant clamour: "The
Sleeper! The Sleeper!" and yells and cheers, a waving of garments and
cries of "Stop the Ways!" They were also crying another name strange to
Graham. It sounded like "Ostrog." The slower platforms were soon thick
with active people, running against the movement so as to keep themselves
opposite to him.
"Stop the Ways," they cried. Agile figures ran up from the centre to the
swift road nearest to him, were borne rapidly past him, shouting strange,
unintelligible things, and ran back obliquely to the central way. One
thing he distinguished: "It is indeed the Sleeper. It is indeed the
Sleeper," they testified.
For a space Graham stood motionless. Then he became vividly aware that
all this concerned him. He was pleased at his wonderful popularity, he
bowed, and, seeking a gesture of longer range, waved his arm. He was
astonished at the violence of uproar that this provoked. The tumult about
the descending stairway rose to furious violence. He became aware of
crowded balconies, of men sliding along ropes, of men in trapeze-like
seats hurling athwart the space. He heard voices behind him, a number of
people descending the steps through the archway; he suddenly perceived
that his guardian Howard was back again and gripping his arm painfully,
and shouting inaudibly in his ear.
He turned, and Howard's face was white. "Come back," he heard. "They will
stop the ways. The whole city will be in confusion."
He perceived a number of men hurrying along the passage of blue pillars
behind Howard, the red-haired man, the man with the flaxen beard, a tall
man in vivid vermilion, a crowd of others in red carrying staves, and all
these people had anxious eager faces.
"Get him away," cried Howard.
"But why?" said Graham. "I don't see--"
"You must come away!" said the man in red in a resolute voice. His face
and eyes were resolute, too. Graham's glances went from face to face, and
he was suddenly aware of that most disagreeable flavour in life,
compulsion. Someone 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.