Lincoln awaited Graham in an apartment beneath the flying stages. He seemed curious to learn all that had happened, pleased to hear of the extraordinary delight and interest which Graham took in flying. Graham was in a mood of enthusiasm. "I must learn to fly," he cried. "I must master that. I pity all poor souls who have died without this opportunity. The sweet swift air! It is the most wonderful experience in the world."
"You will find our new times full of wonderful experiences," said Lincoln. "I do not know what you will care to do now. We have music that may seem novel."
"For the present," said Graham, "flying holds me. Let me learn more of that. Your aeronaut was saying there is some trades union objection to one's learning."
"There is, I believe," said Lincoln. "But for you--! If you would like to occupy yourself with that, we can make you a sworn aeronaut to-morrow."
Graham expressed his wishes vividly1 and talked of his sensations for a while. "And as for affairs," he asked abruptly2. "How are things going on?"
Lincoln waved affairs aside. "Ostrog will tell you that to-morrow," he said. "Everything is settling down. The Revolution accomplishes itself all over the world. Friction3 is inevitable4 here and there, of course; but your rule is assured. You may rest secure with things in Ostrog's hands."
"Would it be possible for me to be made a sworn aeronaut, as you call it, forthwith--before I sleep?" said Graham, pacing. "Then I could be at it the very first thing to-morrow again...."
"It would be possible," said Lincoln thoughtfully. "Quite possible. Indeed, it shall be done." He laughed. "I came prepared to suggest amusements, but you have found one for yourself. I will telephone to the aeronautical5 offices from here and we will return to your apartments in the Wind-Vane Control. By the time you have dined the aeronauts will be able to come. You don't think that after you have dined you might prefer--?" He paused.
"Yes," said Graham.
"We had prepared a show of dancers--they have been brought from the Capri theatre."
"I hate ballets," said Graham, shortly. "Always did. That other--. That's not what I want to see. We had dancers in the old days. For the matter of that, they had them in ancient Egypt. But flying--"
"True," said Lincoln. "Though our dancers--"
"They can afford to wait," said Graham; "they can afford to wait. I know. I'm not a Latin. There's questions I want to ask some expert--about your machinery6. I'm keen. I want no distractions7."
"You have the world to choose from," said Lincoln; "whatever you want is yours."
Asano appeared, and under the escort of a strong guard they returned through the city streets to Graham's apartments. Far larger crowds had assembled to witness his return than his departure had gathered, and the shouts and cheering of these masses of people sometimes drowned Lincoln's answers to the endless questions Graham's aerial journey had suggested. At first Graham had acknowledged the cheering and cries of the crowd by bows and gestures, but Lincoln warned him that such a recognition would be considered incorrect behaviour. Graham, already a little wearied by rhythmic8 civilities, ignored his subjects for the remainder of his public progress.
Directly they arrived at his apartments Asano departed in search of kinematographic renderings9 of machinery in motion, and Lincoln despatched Graham's commands for models of machines and small machines to illustrate11 the various mechanical advances of the last two centuries. The little group of appliances for telegraphic communication attracted the Master so strongly that his delightfully12 prepared dinner, served by a number of charmingly dexterous13 girls, waited for a space. The habit of smoking had almost ceased from the face of the earth, but when he expressed a wish for that indulgence, enquiries were made and some excellent cigars were discovered in Florida, and sent to him by pneumatic despatch10 while the dinner was still in progress. Afterwards came the aeronauts, and a feast of ingenious wonders in the hands of a latter-day engineer. For the time, at any rate, the neat dexterity14 of counting and numbering machines, building machines, spinning engines, patent doorways15, explosive motors, grain and water elevators, slaughter-house machines and harvesting appliances, was more fascinating to Graham than any bayadere. "We were savages16," was his refrain, "we were savages. We were in the stone age--compared with this.... And what else have you?"
There came also practical psychologists with some very interesting developments in the art of hypnotism. The names of Milne Bramwell, Fechner, Liebault, William James, Myers and Gurney, he found, bore a value now that would have astonished their contemporaries. Several practical applications of psychology17 were now in general use; it had largely superseded18 drugs, antiseptics and anesthetics in medicine; was employed by almost all who had any need of mental concentration. A real enlargement of human faculty19 seemed to have been effected in this direction. The feats20 of "calculating boys," the wonders, as Graham had been wont21 to regard them, of mesmerisers, were now within the range of anyone who could afford the services of a skilled hypnotist. Long ago the old examination methods in education had been destroyed by these expedients22. Instead of years of study, candidates had substituted a few weeks of trances, and during the trances expert coaches had simply to repeat all the points necessary for adequate answering, adding a suggestion of the post-hypnotic recollection of these points. In process mathematics particularly, this aid had been of singular service, and it was now invariably invoked23 by such players of chess and games of manual dexterity as were still to be found. In fact, all operations conducted under finite rules, of a quasi-mechanical sort that is, were now systematically24 relieved from the wanderings of imagination and emotion, and brought to an unexampled pitch of accuracy. Little children of the labouring classes, so soon as they were of sufficient age to be hypnotised, were thus converted into beautifully punctual and trustworthy machine minders, and released forthwith from the long, long thoughts of youth. Aeronautical pupils, who gave way to giddiness, could be relieved from their imaginary terrors. In every street were hypnotists ready to print permanent memories upon the mind. If anyone desired to remember a name, a series of numbers, a song or a speech, it could be done by this method, and conversely memories could be effaced25, habits removed, and desires eradicated--a sort of psychic26 surgery was, in fact, in general use. Indignities27, humbling28 experiences, were thus forgotten, widows would obliterate29 their previous husbands, angry lovers release themselves from their slavery. To graft30 desires, however, was still impossible, and the facts of thought transference were yet unsystematised. The psychologists illustrated31 their expositions with some astounding32 experiments in mnemonics33 made through the agency of a troupe34 of pale-faced children in blue.
Graham, like most of the people of his former time, distrusted the hypnotist, or he might then and there have eased his mind of many painful preoccupations. But in spite of Lincoln's assurances he held to the old theory that to be hypnotised was in some way the surrender of his personality, the abdication35 of his will. At the banquet of wonderful experiences that was beginning, he wanted very keenly to remain absolutely himself.
The next day, and another day, and yet another day passed in such interests as these. Each day Graham spent many hours in the glorious entertainment of flying. On the third, he soared across middle France, and within sight of the snow-clad Alps. These vigorous exercises gave him restful sleep; he recovered almost wholly from the spiritless anemia36 of his first awakening37. And whenever he was not in the air, and awake, Lincoln was assiduous in the cause of his amusement; all that was novel and curious in contemporary invention was brought to him, until at last his appetite for novelty was well-nigh glutted38. One might fill a dozen inconsecutive volumes with the strange things they exhibited. Each afternoon he held his court for an hour or so. He found his interest in his contemporaries becoming personal and intimate. At first he had been alert chiefly for unfamiliarity39 and peculiarity40; any foppishness in their dress, any discordance41 with his preconceptions of nobility in their status and manners had jarred upon him, and it was remarkable42 to him how soon that strangeness and the faint hostility43 that arose from it, disappeared; how soon he came to appreciate the true perspective of his position, and see the old Victorian days remote and quaint44. He found himself particularly amused by the red-haired daughter of the Manager of the European Piggeries. On the second day after dinner he made the acquaintance of a latter-day dancing girl, and found her an astonishing artist. And after that, more hypnotic wonders. On the third day Lincoln was moved to suggest that the Master should repair to a Pleasure City, but this Graham declined, nor would he accept the services of the hypnotists in his aeronautical experiments. The link of locality held him to London; he found a delight in topographical identifications that he would have missed abroad. "Here--or a hundred feet below here," he could say, "I used to eat my midday cutlets during my London University days. Underneath45 here was Waterloo and the tiresome46 hunt for confusing trains. Often have I stood waiting down there, bag in hand, and stared up into the sky above the forest of signals, little thinking I should walk some day a hundred yards in the air. And now in that very sky that was once a grey smoke canopy47, I circle in a monoplane."
During those three days Graham was so occupied with these distractions that the vast political movements in progress outside his quarters had but a small share of his attention. Those about him told him little. Daily came Ostrog, the Boss, his Grand Vizier, his mayor of the palace, to report in vague terms the steady establishment of his rule; "a little trouble" soon to be settled in this city, "a slight disturbance48" in that. The song of the social revolt came to him no more; he never learned that it had been forbidden in the municipal limits; and all the great emotions of the crow's nest slumbered49 in his mind.
But on the second and third of the three days he found himself, in spite of his interest in the daughter of the Pig Manager, or it may be by reason of the thoughts her conversation suggested, remembering the girl Helen Wotton, who had spoken to him so oddly at the Wind-Vane Keeper's gathering50. The impression, she had made was a deep one, albeit51 the incessant52 surprise of novel circumstances had kept him from brooding upon it for a space. But now her memory was coming to its own. He wondered what she had meant by those broken half-forgotten sentences; the picture of her eyes and the earnest passion of her face became more vivid as his mechanical interests faded. Her slender beauty came compellingly between him and certain immediate53 temptations of ignoble54 passion. But he did not see her again until three full days were past.
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vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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friction
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| n.摩擦，摩擦力 | |
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inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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aeronautical
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| adj.航空（学）的 | |
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machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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distractions
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| n.使人分心的事[人]( distraction的名词复数 )；娱乐，消遣；心烦意乱；精神错乱 | |
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rhythmic
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| adj.有节奏的，有韵律的 | |
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renderings
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| n.（戏剧或乐曲的）演奏( rendering的名词复数 )；扮演；表演；翻译作品 | |
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despatch
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| n./v.(dispatch)派遣；发送；n.急件；新闻报道 | |
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illustrate
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| v.举例说明，阐明；图解，加插图 | |
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delightfully
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| 大喜，欣然 | |
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dexterous
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| adj.灵敏的；灵巧的 | |
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dexterity
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| n.(手的)灵巧，灵活 | |
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doorways
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| n.门口，门道( doorway的名词复数 ) | |
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savages
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| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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superseded
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| [医]被代替的，废弃的 | |
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faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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feats
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| 功绩，伟业，技艺( feat的名词复数 ) | |
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wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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expedients
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| n.应急有效的，权宜之计的( expedient的名词复数 ) | |
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invoked
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| v.援引( invoke的过去式和过去分词 )；行使（权利等）；祈求救助；恳求 | |
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systematically
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| adv.有系统地 | |
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effaced
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| v.擦掉( efface的过去式和过去分词 )；抹去；超越；使黯然失色 | |
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psychic
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| n.对超自然力敏感的人；adj.有超自然力的 | |
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indignities
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| n.侮辱，轻蔑( indignity的名词复数 ) | |
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humbling
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| adj.令人羞辱的v.使谦恭( humble的现在分词 )；轻松打败（尤指强大的对手）；低声下气 | |
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obliterate
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| v.擦去，涂抹，去掉...痕迹，消失，除去 | |
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graft
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| n.移植，嫁接，艰苦工作，贪污；v.移植，嫁接 | |
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illustrated
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| adj. 有插图的，列举的 动词illustrate的过去式和过去分词 | |
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astounding
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| adj.使人震惊的vt.使震惊，使大吃一惊astound的现在分词) | |
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mnemonics
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| n.记忆术 | |
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troupe
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| n.剧团，戏班；杂技团；马戏团 | |
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abdication
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| n.辞职；退位 | |
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anemia
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| n.贫血，贫血症 | |
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awakening
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| n.觉醒，醒悟 adj.觉醒中的；唤醒的 | |
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glutted
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| v.吃得过多( glut的过去式和过去分词 )；（对胃口、欲望等）纵情满足；使厌腻；塞满 | |
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unfamiliarity
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peculiarity
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| n.独特性，特色；特殊的东西；怪癖 | |
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discordance
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| n.不调和，不和，不一致性；不整合；假整合 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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hostility
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| n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争 | |
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quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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tiresome
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| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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canopy
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| n.天篷，遮篷 | |
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disturbance
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| n.动乱，骚动；打扰，干扰；(身心)失调 | |
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slumbered
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| 微睡，睡眠（slumber的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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albeit
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| conj.即使；纵使；虽然 | |
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incessant
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| adj.不停的，连续的 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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ignoble
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| adj.不光彩的，卑鄙的；可耻的 | |
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