Читать книгу The Undying Fire - H. G. Wells - Страница 6

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The great winged shapes drew nearer, for Satan is the celestial raconteur. He alone makes stories.

“There was a certain man in the land of Uz whose name was Job.”

“We remember him.”

“We had a wager of sorts,” said Satan. “It was some time ago.”

“The wager was never very distinct—and now that you remind me of it, there is no record of your paying.”

“Did I lose or win? The issue was obscured by discussion. How those men did talk! You intervened. There was no decision.”

“You lost, Satan,” said a great Being of Light who bore a book. “The wager was whether Job would lose faith in God and curse him. He was afflicted in every way, and particularly by the conversation of his friends. But there remains an undying fire in man.”

Satan rested his dark face on his hand, and looked down between his knees through the pellucid floor to that little eddying in the ether which makes our world. “Job,” he said, “lives still.”

Then after an interval: “The whole earth is now—Job.”

Satan delights equally in statistics and in quoting scripture. He leant back in his seat with an expression of quiet satisfaction. “Job,” he said, in easy narrative tones, “lived to a great age. After his disagreeable experiences he lived one hundred and forty years. He had again seven sons and three daughters, and he saw his offspring for four generations. So much is classical. These ten children brought him seventy grandchildren, who again prospered generally and had large families. (It was a prolific strain.) And now if we allow three generations to a century, and the reality is rather more than that, and if we take the survival rate as roughly three to a family, and if we agree with your excellent Bishop Usher that Job lived about thirty-five centuries ago, that gives us——How many? Three to the hundred and fifth power?... It is at any rate a sum vastly in excess of the present population of the earth.... You have globes and rolls and swords and stars here; has anyone a slide rule?”

But the computation was brushed aside.

“A thousand years in my sight are but as yesterday when it is past. I will grant what you seek to prove; that Job has become mankind.”