Пища богов

УДК 
372.8
ББК 
81.2 Англ-93
 
У98

ISBN 978-5-9925-1073-7

 
Уэллс, Герберт Джордж.
У98 
Пища богов : книга для чтения на анг лий ском языке. — Санкт-Петер бург : КАРО, 2015. — 
352 с. — (Classical Literature).

ISBN 978-5-9925-1073-7.

Вниманию читателей предлагается широко известный фантастический роман Г. Дж. Уэллса «Пища богов».
Издание адресовано студентам языковых вузов, а также всем любителям англоязычной литературы и, в частности, фантастики. Неадаптированный текст на языке оригинала снабжен постраничными комментариями и словарем.

УДК 372.8
ББК 81.2 Англ-93

© КАРО, 2015

BOOK I
THE DAWN OF THE FOOD

CHAPTER THE FIRST
THE DISCOVERY OF THE FOOD

I

In the middle years of the nineteenth century there 
fi rst became abundant in this strange world of ours a 
class of men, men tending for the most part to become 
elderly, who are called, and who are very properly 
called, but who dislike extremely to be called — 
“Scientists.” Th ey dislike that word so much that from 
the columns of Nature1, which was from the fi rst their 
distinctive and characteristic paper, it is as carefully 
excluded as if it were — that other word which is the 
basis of all really bad language in this country. But the 
Great Public and its Press know better, and “Scientists” 
they are, and when they emerge to any sort of publicity, 
“distinguished scientists” and “eminent scientists” and 
“well-known scientists” is the very least we call them.
Certainly both Mr. Bensington and Professor 
Redwood quite merited any of these terms long before 

1 Nature — еженедельный британский журнал

BOOK I. THE DAWN OF THE FOOD

4

they came upon the marvellous discovery of which 
this story tells. Mr. Bensington was a Fellow1 of the 
Royal Society and a former president of the Chemical 
Society, and Professor Redwood was Professor of 
Physiology in the Bond Street College of the London 
University, and he had been grossly libelled by the 
anti-vivisectionists time aft er time. And they had led 
lives of academic distinction from their very earliest 
youth.
Th ey were of course quite undistinguished-looking 
men, as indeed all true Scientists are. Th ere is more 
personal distinction about the mildest-mannered 
actor alive than there is about the entire Royal Society. 
Mr. Bensington was short and very, very bald, and he 
stooped slightly; he wore gold-rimmed spectacles and 
cloth boots that were abundantly cut open because of 
his numerous corns, and Professor Redwood was 
entirely ordinary in his appearance. Until they 
happened upon the Food of the Gods (as I must insist 
upon calling it) they led lives of such eminent and 
studious obscurity that it is hard to fi nd anything 
whatever to tell the reader about them.
Mr. Bensington won his spurs (if one may use such 
an expression of a gentleman in boots of slashed cloth) 
by his splendid researches upon the More Toxic 
Alkaloids, and Professor Redwood rose to eminence — I do not clearly remember how he rose to 
eminence! I know he was very eminent, and that’s all. 

1 Fellow — член научного общества

CHAPTER THE FIRST. THE DISCOVERY OF THE FOOD

5

Th ings of this sort grow. I fancy it was a voluminous 
work on Reaction Times with numerous plates of 
sphygmograph tracings (I write subject to correction) 
and an admirable new terminology, that did the thing 
for him.
Th e general public saw little or nothing of either of 
these gentlemen. Sometimes at places like the Royal 
Institution and the Society of Arts it did in a sort of 
way see Mr. Bensington, or at least his blushing 
baldness and something of his collar and coat, and 
hear fragments of a lecture or paper that he imagined 
himself to be reading audibly; and once I remember — 
one midday in the vanished past — when the British 
Association was at Dover, coming on Section C or D, 
or some such letter, which had taken up its quarters in 
a public-house, and following two, serious-looking 
ladies with paper parcels, out of mere curiosity, 
through a door labelled “Billiards” and “Pool” into a 
scandalous darkness, broken only by a magic-lantern 
circle of Redwood’s tracings.
I watched the lantern slides come and go, and 
listened to a voice (I forget what it was saying) which 
I believe was the voice of Professor Redwood, and 
there was a sizzling from the lantern and another 
sound that kept me there, still out of curiosity, until 
the lights were unexpectedly turned up. And then I 
perceived that this sound was the sound of the 
munching of buns and sandwiches and things that the 
assembled British Associates had come there to eat 
under cover of the magic-lantern darkness.

BOOK I. THE DAWN OF THE FOOD

6

And Redwood I remember went on talking all the 
time the lights were up and dabbing at the place where 
his diagram ought to have been visible on the screen — 
and so it was again so soon as the darkness was 
restored. I remember him then as a most ordinary, 
slightly nervous-looking dark man, with an air of 
being preoccupied with something else1, and doing 
what he was doing just then under an unaccountable 
sense of duty.
I heard Bensington also once — in the old days — 
at an educational conference in Bloomsbury. Like 
most eminent chemists and botanists, Mr. Bensington 
was very authoritative upon teaching — though I am 
certain he would have been scared out of his wits2 by 
an average Board School class in half-an-hour — and 
so far as I can remember now, he was propounding an 
improvement of Professor Armstrong’s Heuristic 
method, whereby at the cost of three or four hundred 
pounds’ worth of apparatus, a total neglect of all other 
studies and the undivided attention of a teacher of 
exceptional gift s, an average child might with a 
peculiar sort of thumby thoroughness learn in the 
course of ten or twelve years almost as much chemistry 
as one could get in one of those objectionable shilling 
text-books that were then so common…

1 with an air of being preoccupied with something 
else — (разг.) с видом человека безумно занятого
2 would have been scared out of his wits — был бы до 
смерти напуган

CHAPTER THE FIRST. THE DISCOVERY OF THE FOOD

7

Quite ordinary persons you perceive, both of them, 
outside their science. Or if anything on the unpractical 
side of ordinary. And that you will fi nd is the case with 
“scientists” as a class all the world over. What there is 
great of them is an annoyance to their fellow scientists 
and a mystery to the general public, and what is not is 
evident.
Th ere is no doubt about what is not great, no race 
of men have such obvious littlenesses. Th ey live in a 
narrow world so far as their human intercourse goes; 
their researches involve infi nite attention and an 
almost monastic seclusion; and what is left  over is not 
very much. To witness some queer, shy, misshapen, 
grey-headed, self-important, little discoverer of great 
discoveries, ridiculously adorned with the wide 
ribbon of some order of chivalry and holding a 
reception of his fellow-men, or to read the anguish 
of Nature at the “neglect of science” when the angel of 
the birthday honours passes the Royal Society by, or 
to listen to one indefatigable lichenologist commenting 
on the work of another indefatigable lichenologist, 
such things force one to realise the unfaltering littleness of men.
And withal the reef of Science that these little 
“scientists” built and are yet building is so wonderful, 
so portentous, so full of mysterious half-shapen 
promises for the mighty future of man! Th ey do not 
seem to realise the things they are doing! No doubt 
long ago even Mr. Bensington, when he chose this 
calling, when he consecrated his life to the alkaloids 

BOOK I. THE DAWN OF THE FOOD

8

and their kindred compounds, had some inkling of 
the vision, — more than an inkling. Without some 
such inspiration, for such glories and positions only 
as a “scientist” may expect, what young man would 
have given his life to such work, as young men do? No, 
they must have seen the glory, they must have had the 
vision, but so near that it has blinded them. Th e 
splendour has blinded them, mercifully, so that for 
the rest of their lives they can hold the lights of 
knowledge in comfort — that we may see!
And perhaps it accounts for Redwood’s touch of 
preoccupation, that — there can be no doubt of it 
now — he among his fellows was diff erent, he was 
diff erent inasmuch as something of the vision still 
lingered in his eyes.

II

Th e Food of the Gods I call it, this substance that 
Mr. Bensington and Professor Redwood made 
between them; and having regard now to what it has 
already done and all that it is certainly going to do, 
there is surely no exaggeration in the name. So I shall 
continue to call it therefore throughout my story. But 
Mr. Bensington would no more have called it that in 
cold blood than he would have gone out from his fl at 
in Sloane Street clad in regal scarlet and a wreath of 
laurel. Th e phrase was a mere fi rst cry of astonishment 
from him. He called it the Food of the Gods, in his 
enthusiasm and for an hour or so at the most altogether. 

CHAPTER THE FIRST. THE DISCOVERY OF THE FOOD

9

Aft er that he decided he was being absurd. When he 
fi rst thought of the thing he saw, as it were, a vista of 
enormous possibilities — literally enormous possibilities; but upon this dazzling vista, aft er one stare of 
amazement, he resolutely shut his eyes, even as a 
conscientious “scientist” should. Aft er that, the Food 
of the Gods sounded blatant to the pitch of indecency. 
He was surprised he had used the expression. Yet for 
all that something of that clear-eyed moment hung 
about him and broke out ever and again…
“Really, you know,” he said, rubbing his hands 
together and laughing nervously, “it has more than a 
theoretical interest.
“For example,” he confi ded, bringing his face close 
to the Professor’s and dropping to an undertone, “it 
would perhaps, if suitably handled, sell…
“Precisely,” he said, walking away, — “as a Food. 
Or at least a food ingredient.
“Assuming of course that it is palatable. A thing we 
cannot know till we have prepared it.”
He turned upon the hearthrug, and studied the 
carefully designed slits upon his cloth shoes.
“Name?” he said, looking up in response to an inquiry. 
“For my part I incline to the good old classical allusion. 
It — it makes Science rest. Gives it a touch of oldfashioned dignity. I have been thinking… I don’t know if 
you will think it absurd of me… A little fancy is surely 
occasionally permissible… Herakleophorbia. Eh? Th e 
nutrition of a possible Hercules? You know it might…
“Of course if you think not —”

BOOK I. THE DAWN OF THE FOOD

10

Redwood refl ected with his eyes on the fi re and 
made no objection.
“You think it would do?”
Redwood moved his head gravely.
“It might be Titanophorbia, you know. Food of 
Titans… You prefer the former?”
“You’re quite sure you don’t think it a little too —”
“No.”
“Ah! I’m glad.”
And so they called it Herakleophorbia throughout 
their investigations, and in their report, — the report 
that was never published, because of the unexpected 
developments that upset all their arrangements, — it 
is invariably written in that way. Th ere were three 
kindred substances prepared before they hit on the 
one their speculations had foretolds and these they 
spoke of as Herakleophorbia I, Herakleophorbia II, 
and Herakleophorbia III. It is Herakleophorbia IV 
which I — insisting upon Bensington’s original 
name — call here the Food of the Gods.

III

Th e idea was Mr. Bensington’s. But as it was 
suggested to him by one of Professor Redwood’s 
contributions to the Philosophical Transactions, he 
very properly consulted that gentleman before he 
carried it further. Besides which it was, as a research, 
a physiological, quite as much as a chemical inquiry.
Professor Redwood was one of those scientifi c 
men who are addicted to tracings and curves. You are