Sherlock Holmes: The Coils of Time & Other Stories (Sherlock Holmes Adventures Book 1) (10 page)

Chapter XIII

Not So Well Wrought, But Sufficient

“They did copy my machine when I temporarily lost it in the future,” Maddoc said, “just as you theorised, Mr Holmes.”

There were three other machines remaining in the chamber.  While their relationship to the Time Machine they had seen in Richmond was obvious, it was clear they were not nearly as sophisticated.  Whereas Maddoc’s original mechanism had been designed with some artistic flair, with swirls and flourishes which would have earned the aesthetic appreciation of an Aubrey Beardsley or a William Morris, these machines before them were starkly utilitarian, created by a race to whom the creativity of the mind had been totally subjugated to the brutalities of survival.

“Good riddance to the beast!” Kent snapped.  “Let it go.”

“We dare not!” Maddoc cried.

“Maddoc is right,” Holmes agreed.  “As long as that creature is in possession of a Time Machine, it may start its terrible plan anew, perhaps in an era even less able to protect itself."”

“What do you suggest we do?” Kent demanded.  He surveyed the remaining machines that had been fabricated by the Morlocks and his eyes grew wide.  “Oh no! This is insanity!”

“We’ve no choice, Inspector,” Holmes said.  “If you want to stay behind, then do so, but you must destroy the third machine.”

Kent scowled savagely.  “Very well! Just show me how to work the infernal contraption!.”

“These are not so well designed and constructed as the original, but they shall be sufficient,” Maddoc said as he inspected them.  “Not yet complete, but it will only take moments to put them in working order. The Morlock artificers had to solve the problems presented by the missing levers and instrumentation in an unknown tongue.”

“They did well enough to get them here,” Kent quipped.

“Only one of the four machines, the one taken by the creature, carried a Morlock into the past,” Holmes decided.  “It arrived in Richmond, began its brood in the Old Deer Park, then made for London.  These three remaining machines were constructed after their arrival in London, and represent an improvement upon their first crude copy.  Here, the Morlocks began their colony in earnest, building strength and slowly increasing the colony’s numbers.  To sustain themselves, the Morlocks hunted in such a way, at various points about the city, but especially among the poor and homeless, as to not bring a great deal of attention to their activities.”

“Only partly successful in that,” Kent remarked.  “The East End Ghosts and the Vanishments.”

“Successful enough,” Holmes replied.  “If not for the disappearance of the unfortunate William Dunning, you might not have been drawn so far into the case.”

“What about you, Mr Holmes?” Kent asked.  “I know Sir Reginald also contacted you, but you had been gone three years when the Morlocks settled themselves in London.  How is it that you came back to London just at the right time to throw in against the Morlocks?  And Lestrade told me what happened on Baker Street, how they captured Colonel Sebastian Moran trying to kill you, him thinking you were in your rooms even though he should have know you were not, having had the Baker Street address watched all day.  How is it, Mr Holmes?”

“As to the second,” Holmes said, “I can only be thankful that Colonel Moran put a watcher on the job who obviously left much to be desired as a watcher.”

“And the first?” Kent persisted.

“I received a letter while I was in France,” Holmes replied after a moment, “addressed to the name I was utilising at the time.  It asked me to return and look into the Vanishments, upon the receipt of which I contacted my brother Mycroft by telegram and learned of Sir Reginald’s plight.”

“Who posted the letter?”

Holmes frowned.  “Of that, Inspector, I am not yet certain, and I prefer not to indulge in baseless speculation.”

“The machines are ready, gentlemen,” Maddoc announced.

The fit of the men upon the machines was not a comfortable one, for they had been designed for use by beings of grosser proportions.  The operation of the machines was not terribly complicated, and it only required a few moment’s instruction from Maddoc to thoroughly acquaint Holmes and Kent with the controls as they had been modified by the Morlocks, as well as how to disable them temporarily if necessary.

“All they really had to do was solve the problem of my energy source,” Maddoc said.  “A matter of copying, really, but if they had been forced to on their own invent…”

“Let’s get on with it!” Kent snapped.  “We’ve no time for a bloody lecture about your infernal machines!”

“Time is of the essence,” Holmes agreed.

Maddoc nodded.  “Once we set forth into time, we shall be able to see each other, follow each other, and it is important that we not become separated.”

“How will we know where in time the beast has gone?” Kent asked.

“It will leave something like a wake in time, just as a ship lays one in its passage across the surface of the sea,” Maddoc explained.

“It has returned to the future,” Holmes contended.

“How do you know?” Maddoc asked.

“Logic dictates that it can return nowhere else at the moment,” Holmes explained.  “Its base of operations here has been destroyed, and the presence of these remaining Time Machines in 1894 indicates plans unfulfilled, to infest other time periods.  The only hope of the creature is to gather additional Morlock colonisers and artificers, both of which are only available to her in her own time period, since the future you witnessed in 1954 cannot now come to pass.”

At Maddoc’s signal, they activated the machines.

“Holmes!”

Holmes looked toward the entrance of the cavern and saw Inspector Lestrade standing open-mouthed and wide-eyed.

Then his acquaintance of many years seemed to shimmer and vanish.

Chapter XIV

The Realm of the Winged Sphinx

Sherlock Holmes had experienced many odd sensations during the course of his life, from the ebullience engendered by his once-beloved seven percent solution to the all-encompassing placidity he had experienced in a meditation chamber in forbidden Tibet, but nothing could compare with the sensation of voyaging through time.  He was gripped by the sensation that he was moving at some great velocity, such as to make even the fastest special train out of Paddington seem slow, yet the sense of movement did not correspond to any spatial movement with which he was familiar.  There was no sound, and yet, paradoxically, all was not silent.

Time travel was in itself a paradox, he realised.  Ever since the start of this case, when he had received the anonymous letter written in a familiar hand, his vastly logical mind had wrestled with the paradox of cause and effect.  But was it any different, he wondered, than the paradox of his very existence in world that was anything but logical. Often he had wondered if the heavens harboured any world were logic of thought prevailed, for, obviously, Earth was not that world.

As Maddoc had predicted the three of them could see each other as they moved forward in time.  And they could also see the roiling, faintly luminous wake left by the passage of their quarry.

After Lestrade’s disappearance (though Holmes knew it was he who had vanished from Lestrade’s point of view) the cavern around them began to change as the processes of erosion became accelerated by his movement through time.  Within the space of a few momentary decades it had vanished altogether, a victim of London’s development.  As if in a vastly speeded up kinematographic projection the buildings around them were demolished and rebuilt, with brick and mortar, but also with the new construction materials of steel and glass.

The nightmare endured by Maddoc during his second venture into the future, of the suzerainty of the Morlocks over humanity, did not fully materialise, but neither did it totally vanish.  It continued to persist, like a phantom, not of things to come, but of things that may yet be.  The persistence of the vision revealed to Holmes that they had not yet vanquished the Morlocks, had not yet averted human history from that dark course.

As London was remade into a technopolis, it also lay in ruins; as humans went about their business, mobs of phantom Morlocks swarmed through the streets; as towers of commerce spired upward among the relics of London’s long history, the city was also overwatched by spectral alabaster winged sphinxes; as man took to the air in great machines, he was also crushed beneath the Morlocks’ might.

Two futures, Holmes realised.

One human, the other Morlock.

A phantom future, true, but yet possible.

Should we fail
,
Holmes thought.

As they neared the year 802701, the future of Morlock and Eloi came into being, just as Maddoc had experienced it upon his first journey.

“Stop the Mother-Thing!” Maddoc shouted.

The machine upon which Maddoc rode suddenly veered away from the other two, both in time and space.  And he was gone.

“What the blazes, Holmes!” Kent shouted.

“He is away to Richmond, or where Richmond used to be,” Holmes explained.  “We saw when we examined Maddoc’s first machine that he had at least considered the possibility of movement through space as well as time; the Morlock artificers obviously made the possibility a reality in their replicas.”

“But what is he up to?”

“To intercept himself within the Winged Sphinx,” Holmes answered.  “To destroy the Time Machine and prevent the Morlocks from copying it.”

“But if he stops himself…”

“Precisely.  If he does manage to destroy his machine in the future and prevent himself from returning to 1894, everything we have done will be undone, and we shall be overwhelmed by a massive paradox, one which has the potential of erasing our existence entirely.”

“Then we must stop him, Holmes.”

“We must stay to our course, Inspector.”

“But what about Maddoc?” Kent protested.

“He will fail in his efforts,” Holmes assured his companion.

“How do you know?”

“Because he told us himself.”

“When did he tell us that, Mr Holmes?”

Moesen Maddoc followed the course of the Thames, or what remained of it after so many centuries.  Although the land had changed vastly from what it had been in the Nineteenth Century, enough remained to guide Maddoc to his goal.  When he saw the Winged Sphinx hove into view across the verdant expanse he knew that he and attained his goal in space, and  a careful watch of the instruments, as crude and as alien as they were, ensured that he had attained his goal in time as well.

Or close to it.

He came to ground under cover of shrubbery.  His original machine had already been taken inside the pedestal of the Winged Sphinx.  He doubted he could move back in time with enough precision to keep the machine from being stolen in the first place, given the grossness of the calibrations used by the Morlocks.  He destroyed the Morlock Time Machine – if he succeeded, it would no longer be needed; if he failed, it would not matter.

Nothing would matter, for the cycle would begin anew.

Cycles within cycles.

Wheels within wheels.

Paradoxes.

He understood the contradictions inherent in his plans, but only one outcome seemed less than vague to him – he would stop the Morlocks.  Any other consideration seemed muddled in his mind, almost inconsequential, no matter how many lives were devastated, no matter how many creations uncreated.

Using knowledge gathered since his first visit – weeks, months years since then…he no longer knew – he penetrated the labyrinthine burrows of the Morlocks and stealthily made his way through their mechanistic hives into the pedestal of the Winged Sphinx.  There in the middle of the area was his Time Machine, surrounded by Morlocks who had just finished reassembling it.

He pulled from his pocket the revolver he had reloaded before departing 1894 and put a bullet through the brain of the nearest artificer.  He had arrived too late to keep them from learning the secrets of the Time Machine, but he could make sure that knowledge died with them.  Abruptly they swarmed toward him, more than he could handle with his revolver.  He had no option but to turn and run, firing blindly behind him as he ran.  They chased him, but eventually he gave them the slip, and he made his way back to the chamber in the pedestal.

He had failed to keep the Morlocks for learning the secrets of time travel, but there yet remained one hope.

When he came unto the chamber, he found it flooded with sunlight, and he was long moments seeing past the glare.

A form was silhouetted against the light, his own form.  He stood dumbfounded at seeing himself.  How young he looked, how naïve, how unconscious of the enormity of his crime against humanity.

Memory flooded back, of coming upon the Winged Sphinx after his escape from the Eloi, of finding the bronze door opened.  He remembered the hope that leaped in his heart at the sight of his once-lost machine.  And he also recalled that it had been a trap.

Maddoc cried out to his younger self, but his warning was lost in the clang of the great bronze door slamming down.  Morlocks streamed murderously into the darkness, attacking the Time Traveller as he attempted to reconnect the levers he had removed from the control panel.

Maddoc fought his way to the machine.  There was still time to warn himself, and it was even possible that the two of them could escape.  It would be a tight fit, the two of them on one machine, but they could cling like brothers.  Safe in the past, they could then plan a proper attack, refine the controls of the machine to come back the moment before the future had been destroyed.

He approached the frantic Time Traveller, started to climb onto the machine.  A Morlock pulled at him.  He kicked back and would have dislodged the creature from him had not the man on the machine lashed out blindly with a bar of metal, striking him against the head.

Maddoc crashed against the wall, dazed and almost insensible from the blow.  Through flashes of red pain he watched the Time Machine and its occupant shimmer and vanish into the past.

The Morlock horde fell ravenously upon the helpless man left behind.

“He said it himself when he told us of the battle in the pedestal of the Winged Sphinx, did he not?” Holmes said.

“Yes, he blindly fought off everything that came near him,” Kent said.  His eyes went round.  “He will fail because he has already failed.  And the poor devil has killed himself, or helped the Morlocks to do it, hasn’t he?”

“I’m afraid so,” Holmes replied.

“Paradox or irony, Mr Holmes?”

“I begin to get a glimmer of some kind of logic inherent in time travelling,” Holmes mused.  “But only the barest of glimmers.”

“Then you’re a better man than me, Mr Holmes.”

Once the Mother-Thing had attained its own century it made for the area of Richmond, for the swamps surrounding the village that had once been London were in the hands of the Eloi.

“What can we do against these Morlocks of the future?” Kent asked.  “It’s a sure bet that they have by now learned enough of Maddoc’s machine to construct the one used to travel back to our own time.”

“And we must permit them to do so,” Holmes countered.

“You can’t be serious, Holmes!”

“Quite serious, Inspector,” Holmes replied.  “We must let them build the one machine for the same reason Maddoc could not stop himself from returning to the past.”

“To avoid a paradox that would undo our efforts.”

“Precisely.”

“I’ll risk any number of paradoxes, and even my own existence, to avoid the Morlock infestation,” Kent averred.  “Have you forgotten the prisoners, or what happened to those we could not save?  We can keep young Dunning and all the others from being captured in the first place.”

“I cannot argue with your intent, but I know that we must not tamper with events that have already occurred,” Holmes said.  “I do not have the faith you possess in abundance, not enough to unquestioningly believe in an omniscient  God, but I realise we have neither the wisdom nor the knowledge to play the parts of gods.”

Kent started to argue, then sighed and shook his head.  “All right, Holmes, then what
must
we do?”

“Second, we must kill the creature or scare it  back into time,” Holmes said.  “Under no circumstances must it be allowed to make contact with its own race in this time period.”

“Make it too hot here?”

“Right.”

“Second?  What do we do first then?”

“After the Morlocks have started their invasion of our time,” Holmes replied, “we must utterly destroy their ability to fabricate any other machines.  To the best of our abilities, we must utterly destroy the subterranean empire of the Morlocks.”

“But if we chase off that Mother-Thing,” Kent protested, “how can we follow it and stay behind to do what needs to be done?”

“The logic of time travel is a different kind of logic than that to which we are accustomed in the mundane world, but it is a logic nonetheless.”  Holmes pointed out two figures moving swiftly toward the Mother-thing.

“Good Lord, Holmes,” Kent breathed.  “Is that…”

“Yes,” Holmes replied.  “It is us.”

“But how…”

“We must now move forward in time to attack the Morlock complex.”

“What about the Mother-Thing?”

“That will wait until we become them,” Holmes said, gesturing toward himself and Kent.  “Come now.”

The two men shifted forward in time, all the while watching the activities about the Winged Sphinx.  The Mother-thing and the other versions of themselves vanished so quickly there was no way of discerning what had happened.  The Morlocks created their Time Machine, and took it out of the pedestal by the light of the leprous moon looming apocalyptically huge.  After it shimmered and vanished, bound for England of 1894, Holmes and Kent began their attack.

After making their way deep into the Morlock tunnels, among miles of enigmatic machinery, they loosed hundreds of gallons of the volatile chemicals used by the creatures in their various manufactories.  They ignited the mixture,  and fled into the past, escaping the purifying flames that swept through the complex, burning alike the guilty and the innocent, the knowledgeable and the ignorant, for no other reason than necessity. Ages away, they did not feel the massive blast, nor see the surface of the earth collapse into the cavern.

The two men returned to the past they had just departed in time to see the arrival of the Mother-Thing at the Winged Sphinx.

“If we can kill it here, we must,” Holmes said.  “If we cannot, we must chase it back into time.”

“Time, then, to pick up where we started,” Kent quipped, urging his machine forward.

“I do believe you are beginning to grasp the logic of our situation, Inspector,” Holmes said, following after.

Kent laughed as he pulled out his revolver.  “In a nightmare there is no logic, Mr Holmes; you just act.”