The Time Ships (17 page)

I
could not betray how much I knew, of course, and I did my best to simulate surprise and shock at his pronouncement. ‘Well,’ I said vaguely, ‘well – Great Scott …’

He looked at me, dissatisfied. He was evidently forming the opinion that I was something of an unimaginative fool. He turned away and began to tinker with his apparatus.

I took the opportunity to draw the Morlock to one side. ‘What did you make of that? An ingenious demonstration.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but I am surprised he has not noticed the radio-activity of your mysterious substance, Plattnerite. The goggles show clearly –’

‘
Radio-activity
?’

He looked at me. ‘The term is unfamiliar?’ He gave me a quick survey of this phenomenon, which involves, it seems, elements which break up and fly into pieces. All elements do this – according to Nebogipfel – at more or less perceptible rates; some, like radium, do it in a manner spectacular enough to be measurable – if one knows what to look for!

All this stirred up some memories. ‘I remember a toy called a spinthariscope,’ I told Nebogipfel. ‘Where radium is held in close proximity to a screen, coated with sulphide of zinc –’

‘And the screen fluoresces. Yes. It is the disintegra
tion of the cores of radium atoms which causes this,’ he said.

‘But the atom is indivisible – or so it is thought –’

‘The phenomenon of subatomic structure will be demonstrated by Thomson at Cambridge, no more than a few years – if I recall my studies – after your departure into time.’

‘Subatomic structure – by Thomson! Why, I’ve met Joseph Thomson myself, several times – a rather pompous buffer, I always thought – and only a handful of years younger than me …’

Not for the first time I felt a deep regret at my precipitate plummeting into time! If only I had stayed to take part in such intellectual excitement – I could have been at the thick of it, even without my experiments in time travel – surely that would have been adventure enough, for any one lifetime.

Now Moses seemed to be done, and he reached out to turn off the sodium lamp – but he snatched his hand back with a cry.

Nebogipfel had touched Moses’s fingers with his own, hairless palm. ‘I am sorry.’

Moses rubbed his hand, as if trying to wipe it clean. ‘Your touch,’ he said. ‘It’s so –
cold
.’ He stared at Nebogipfel as if seeing him, in all his strangeness, for the first time.

Nebogipfel apologized again. ‘I did not mean to startle you. But –’

‘Yes?’ I said.

The Morlock reached out with one worm-like finger, and pointed at the slab of Plattnerite. ‘
Look
.’

With Moses, I bent down and squinted into the illuminated slab.

At first I could make out nothing but the speckled reflection of the sodium bulb, a sheen of fine dust on the surface of the glass slides … and then I became aware of a growing light, a glow from deep within the
substance of the Plattnerite itself: a green illumination that shone as if the slide was a tiny window into another world.

The glow intensified further, and evoked glittering reflections from the test tubes and slides and other paraphernalia of the laboratory.

We retired to the dining-room. It was now long hours since the fire had died, and the room was growing chilly, but Moses did not show any awareness of my discomfort. He supplied me with another brandy, and I accepted an offer of a cigar; Nebogipfel asked for some clear water. I lit up my cigar with a sigh, while Nebogipfel watched me with what I took to be blank astonishment, all his acquired human mannerisms forgotten!

‘Well, sir,’ I said, ‘when do you intend to publish these remarkable findings?’

Moses scratched his scalp and loosened his gaudy tie. ‘I’m not certain,’ he said frankly. ‘What I have amounts to little more than a catalogue of observations of anomalies, you know, of a substance whose provenance is uncertain. Still, perhaps there are brighter fellows than me out there who might make something out of it – learn how to manufacture more Plattnerite, perhaps …’

‘No,’ Nebogipfel said obscurely. ‘The means to manufacture radio-active material will not exist for another several decades.’

Moses looked at the Morlock curiously, but did not take up the point.

I said bluntly, ‘But you’ve no intention of publishing.’

He gave me a conspiratorial wink – another grating mannerism! – and said, ‘All in good time. You know, in some ways I’m not quite like a True Scientist – you know what I mean, the careful,
miniature sort of chap who ends up known in the Press known as a “distinguished scientist”. You see such a chap giving his little talk, on some obscure aspect of toxic alkaloids, perhaps, and floating out of the magic-lantern darkness you might hear the odd fragment the chap imagines himself to be reading audibly; and you might catch a glimpse of gold-rimmed spectacles and cloth boots cut open for corns …’

I prompted, ‘But you –’

‘Oh, I’m not meaning to decry the patient plodders of the world! – I daresay I have my share of plodding to do in the years to come – but I also have a certain impatience. I always want to know how things turn out, you see.’ He sipped his drink. ‘I do have some publications behind me – including one in the
Philosophical Transactions
– and a number of other studies which should yield papers. But the Plattnerite work …’

‘Yes?’

‘I have an odd notion about that. I want to see how far I can take it myself …’

I leaned forward. I saw how the bubbles in his glass caught the candlelight, and his face was animated, alive. It was the quietest part of the night, and I seemed to see every detail, hear the tick of every clock in the house, with preternatural clarity. ‘Tell me what you mean.’

He straightened his ridiculous masher’s jacket. ‘I’ve told you of my speculation that a ray of light, passing through Plattnerite, is temporally transferred. By that I mean that the ray moves between two points in space without any intervening interval in time. But it seems to me,’ he said slowly, ‘that if
light
can move through these time intervals in such a fashion – then so, perhaps, can
material objects
. I have this notion that if one were to mix up the Plattnerite with some
appropriate crystalline substance – quartz, perhaps, or some rock crystal – then …’

‘Yes?’

He seemed to recover himself. He put his brandy-glass down on a table close to his chair, and leaned forward; his grey eyes seemed to shine in the candlelight, pale and earnest. ‘I’m not sure I want to say any more! Look here: I’ve been very open with you. And now, it’s time for you to be just as open with me. Will you do that?’

For answer, I looked into his face – into eyes which, though surrounded by smoother skin, were undeniably my own, the eyes which stared out from my shaving-mirror every day!

Evidently unable to look away, he hissed: ‘
Who are you
?’

‘You
know
who I am. Don’t you?’

The moment stretched on, still and silent. The Morlock was a wraith-like presence, hardly noticed by either of us.

At length, Moses said: ‘Yes. Yes, I think I do.’

I wanted to give him room to take in all of this. The reality of time travel – for any object more substantial than a light ray – was still in the realms of half-fantasy for Moses! To be confronted, so abruptly, with its physical proof – and worse, to be faced by one’s own self from the future – must be an immense shock.

‘Perhaps you should regard my presence here as an inevitable consequence of your own researches,’ I suggested. ‘Is not a meeting like this
bound
to happen, if you carry on down the experimental path you’ve set yourself?’

‘Perhaps …’

But now I became aware that his reaction – far from remaining awe-struck, as I might have expected – seemed rather less respectful. He seemed to be
inspecting me anew; his gaze travelled, appraising, over my face, my hair, my clothes.

I tried to see myself through the eyes of this brash twenty-six-year-old. Absurdly, I felt self-conscious; I brushed back my hair – which had not been combed since the Year A.D. 657,208 – and sucked in my stomach, which was rather less well-defined than once it had been. But that disapproval lingered in his face.

‘Have a good look,’ I said with feeling. ‘This is how it turns out for you!’

He stroked his chin. ‘Don’t take a lot of exercise, do you?’ He jerked his thumb. ‘And him – Nebogipfel. Is he –’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He is a Man from the Future – from the Year
A.D.
657,208, and much evolved from our present state –
who I have brought back on my Time Machine
: on the machine whose first, dim blueprint you are already conceiving.’

‘I am tempted to ask you how it all turns out for me – am I a success? will I marry? – and so forth. But I suspect I’m better off without such knowledge.’ He eyed Nebogipfel. ‘The future of the species, though, is another matter.’

‘You do believe me – don’t you?’

He picked up his brandy-glass, found it empty, and set it down again. ‘I don’t know. I mean, it is all very easy for a fellow to walk into a house and say that he is one’s Future Self –’

‘But you have already conceived of the possibility of time travel yourself. And – look at my face!’

‘I admit there’s a certain superficial resemblance; but it’s also quite possible that this is all some sort of a prank, set up – maybe with malicious intent – to expose me as a quack.’ He looked at me sternly. ‘If you are who you say you are – if you are
me
– then you have surely travelled here with a purpose.’

‘Yes.’ I tried to put aside my anger; I tried to
remember that my communication with this difficult and rather arrogant young man was of vital importance. ‘Yes. I have a mission.’

He pulled at his chin. ‘Dramatic words. But how can I be so vital? I am a scientist – not even that, probably; I am a tinkerer, a dilettante. I am not a politician or a prophet.’

‘No. But you are – or will be – the inventor of the most potent weapon that could be devised: I mean the Time Machine.’

‘What is it you’ve come to tell me?’

‘That you must destroy the Plattnerite; find some other line of research. You must
not
develop the Time Machine – that is essential!’

He steepled his fingers and regarded me. ‘Well. Evidently you have a story to tell. Is it to be a long narrative? Do you want some more brandy – or some tea, perhaps?’

‘No. No, thank you. I will be as brief as I can manage.’

And so I began my account, with a short summary of the discoveries that had led me to the final construction of the machine – and how I had boarded it for the first time, and launched myself into the History of Eloi and Morlock – and what I discovered when I returned, and tried to go forward in time once more.

I suppose I spoke wearily – I could not remember how many hours had elapsed since I had last slept – but as my account developed I grew more animated, and I fixed on Moses’s sincere, round face in the bright circle of the candlelight. At first I was aware of Nebogipfel’s presence, for he sat silently by throughout my account, and at times – during my first description of the Morlocks, for example – Moses turned to Nebogipfel as if for confirmation of some detail.

But after a while he ceased to do even that; and he looked only at my face.

T
he early dawn of summer was well advanced by the time I was done.

Moses sat in his chair, his eyes still set on me, his chin cupped in his hand. Then, at length: ‘Well,’ he said, as if to break a spell – ‘Well.’ He stood up, stretched his back, and crossed the room to the windows; he pulled them back to reveal a cloudy but lightening sky.

‘It’s a remarkable account.’

‘It’s more than that,’ I said, my voice hoarse. ‘Don’t you see? On my second journey into the future, I travelled into a
different History
. The Time Machine is a Wrecker of History – a Destroyer of Worlds and Species. Don’t you see why it must
not
be built?’

Moses turned to Nebogipfel. ‘If you are a Man from the Future – what do you have to say to all this?’

Nebogipfel’s chair was still in shadow, but he cowered from the encroaching daylight. ‘I am not a Man,’ he said in his cold, quiet voice. ‘But I am from
a
Future – one of an infinite number, perhaps, of possible variants. And it seems true – it is certainly logically possible – that a Time Machine can change History’s course, thus generating new variants of events. In fact the very principle of the Machine’s operation appears to rely on its extension, through the properties of Plattnerite, into another, parallel History.’

Moses went to the window, and the rising sun caught his profile. ‘But to abandon my research, just on your uncorroborated say-so –’

‘
Say-so
? I think I deserve a little more respect than that,’ I said, in rising anger. ‘After all, I am you! Oh, you are so stubborn. I’ve brought a Man from the Future – what more persuasion do you want?’

He shook his head. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m tired – I’ve been up all night, and all that brandy hasn’t helped much. And you two look as if you could do with some rest as well. I have spare rooms; I’ll escort you –’

‘I know the way,’ I said with some frost.

He conceded the point with some humour. ‘I’ll have Mrs Penforth bring you breakfast … or,’ he went on, looking at Nebogipfel again, ‘perhaps I’ll have it served in here.

‘Come,’ he said. ‘The Destiny of the Race can wait for a few hours.’

I slept deeply – remarkably so. I was wakened by Moses, who brought me a pitcher of hot water.

I’d folded up my clothes on a chair; after my adventures in time, they were rather the worse for wear. ‘I don’t suppose you could lend me a suit of clothes, could you?’

‘You can have a house-coat, if you like. I’m sorry, old man – I hardly think anything of mine would fit you!’

I was angered by this casual arrogance. ‘One day, you too will grow a little older. And then I hope you remember – Oh – never mind!’ I said.

‘Look – I’ll have my man brush out these clothes for you, and patch the worst damage. Come down when you’re ready.’

In the dining-room, breakfast had been set out as a
sort of buffet. Moses and Nebogipfel were already there. Moses wore the same costume as yesterday – or at least, an identical copy of it. The bright morning sun turned the parakeet colours of his coat into a clamour even more ghastly than before. And as for Nebogipfel, the Morlock was now dressed – ludicrously! – in short trousers and battered blazer. He had a cap tucked over his goggled, hairy face, and he stood patiently by the buffet.

‘I told Mrs Penforth to keep out of here,’ Moses said. ‘As for Nebogipfel, that battered jacket of yours – it’s over the back of that chair, by the way – seemed hardly sufficient for him. So I dug out an old school uniform – the only thing I could find that might fit him: he reeks of moth-balls, but he seems a little happier.

‘Now then.’ He walked up to Nebogipfel. ‘Let me help you, sir. What would you like? You can see we have bacon, eggs, toast, sausages –’

In his quiet, fluid tones, Nebogipfel asked Moses to explain the provenance of these various items. Moses did so, in graphic terms: he picked up a slice of bacon on his fork, for example, and described the Nature of the Pig.

When Moses was done, Nebogipfel picked up a single piece of fruit – an apple – and walked with that, and a glass of water, to the room’s darkest corner.

As for me, after subsisting for so long on a diet of the Morlocks’ bland stuff, I could not have relished my breakfast more if I had known – which I did not – that it was the last nineteenth-century meal I should ever enjoy!

With breakfast done, Moses escorted us to his smoking-room. Nebogipfel installed himself in the darkest corner, while Moses and I sat on opposed armchairs.
Moses dug out his pipe, filled it from a small pouch in his pocket, and lit it.

I watched him, seething. He was so maddeningly calm! ‘Do you have nothing to say? I have brought you a dire warning from the future – from several futures – which –’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it is dramatic stuff. But,’ he went on, tamping down his pipe, ‘I’m still not sure if –’

‘Not sure?’ I cried, jumping to my feet. ‘What more proof – what persuasion – do you want?’

‘It seems to me that your logic has a few holes. Oh, do sit down.’

I sat, feeling weak. ‘Holes?’

‘Look at it this way. You claim that I’m you – and you’re me. Yes?’

‘Exactly. We are two slices of a single Four-Dimensioned entity, taken at different points, and juxtaposed by the Time Machine.’

‘Very well. But let us consider this: if you were once me,
then you should share my memories
.’

‘I –’ I fell silent.

‘Then,’ Moses said with a note of triumph, ‘what memories do you have of a rather burly stranger, and an odd companion of this sort, turning up on the door-step one night? Eh?’

The answer, of course – horrifying! impossible! – was that I had
no
such memories. I turned to Nebogipfel, stricken. ‘How can this not have occurred to me? Of
course
, my mission is impossible. It always was. I could never persuade young Moses, because I have no memories of how I, when I was Moses, was persuaded in my turn!’

The Morlock retorted, ‘Cause and Effect, when Time Machines are about, are rather awkward concepts.’

Moses said, with more of that insufferable cockiness, ‘Here’s another puzzle for you. Suppose I agree
with you. Suppose I accept your story about your trips into time and your visions of Histories and so forth. Suppose I agree to destroy the Time Machine.’

I could anticipate his argument. ‘Then, if the Time Machine were never built –’

‘You would not be able to return through time, to put a stop to its building –’

‘– and so the machine would be built after all …’

‘– and you would return through time to stop the building once more – and on it would go, like an endless merry-go-round!’ he cried with a flourish.

‘Yes. It is a pathological causal loop,’ Nebogipfel said. ‘The Time Machine must be built, in order to put a stop to its own building …’

I buried my face in my hands. Apart from my despair at the destruction of my case, I had the uncomfortable feeling that young Moses was more
intelligent
than I. I should have spotted these logical difficulties! – perhaps it was true, horribly, that intelligence, like more gross physical faculties, declines as age comes on.

‘But – despite all this logic-chopping –
it is nevertheless the truth
,’ I whispered. ‘And the machine must never be built.’

‘Then you explain it,’ Moses said with less sympathy. ‘“To Be, or Not To Be” – that, it seems, is
not
the question,’ Moses said. ‘If you are me, you will remember being forced to play the part of Hamlet’s Father in that dire production at school.’

‘I remember it well.’

‘The question is more, it seems to me: How can things
Be
and – simultaneously –
Not Be
?’

‘But it is true,’ Nebogipfel said. The Morlock stepped forward a little way, into the light, and looked from one to the other of us. ‘But we must construct, it seems to me, a
higher
logic – a logic which can take account of the interaction of a Time
Machine with History – a logic capable of dealing with a
Multiplicity
of Histories …’

And then – just at that moment, when my own uncertainty was greatest – I heard a roar, as of some immense motor, which echoed up the Hill, outside the house. The ground seemed to shudder – it was as if some monster were walking there – and I heard shouting, and – though it was quite impossible that such a thing should happen here, in sleepy, early-morning Richmond! –
the rattle of a gun
.

Moses and I looked wildly at each other. ‘Great Scott,’ Moses said. ‘What is that?’

I thought I heard the gun clatter again, and now a shout turned to a scream, suddenly cut off.

Together, we ran out of the smoking-room and into the hall. Moses pulled open the door – it was already unlatched – and we spilled into the street. There was Mrs Penforth, thin and severe, and Poole, Moses’s manservant of the time. Mrs Penforth carried a duster, bright yellow, and she clutched at Poole’s arm. They glanced perfunctorily at us, but then looked away – ignoring a Morlock as if he were no more odd than a Frenchman, or Scotsman!

There were a number of people in the Petersham Road, standing there staring. Moses touched my sleeve, and he pointed down the road in the direction of the town.’ ‘
There
,’ he said. ‘There’s your anomaly.’

It was as if an ironclad had been lifted out of the sea and deposited by some great wave, high on Richmond Hill. It was perhaps two hundred yards from the house: it was a great box of metal which lay along the length of the Petersham Road like some immense, iron insect, at least eighty feet long.

But this was no stranded monster: it was, I saw now, crawling towards us, slow but quite deliberate, and where it passed I saw that it had scored the road
surface with a series of linked indentations, like the trail of a bird. The ironclad’s upper surface was a complex speckle of ports – I took them to be gun ports, or telescope holes.

The morning traffic had been forced to make way for the thing; two dog-carts lay overturned in the road ahead of it, as did a brewer’s dray, with a distressed horse still caught between the shafts, and beer spilling from broken barrels.

One youth in a cap, foolhardy, hurled a lump of churned-up cobble at the thing’s metal hide. The stone bounced off the hull without leaving so much as a scratch, but there was a response: I saw a rifle poke its snout out of one of those upper ports, and fire off with a crack at the youth.

He fell where he had stood, and lay still.

At that, the crowd dispersed quickly, and there were more screams. Mrs Penforth seemed to be weeping into her duster; Poole escorted her into the house.

A hatch in the front of the land ironclad opened with a clang – I caught a brief impression of a dim interior – and I saw a face (I thought masked) peer out towards us.

‘It is Out of Time,’ Nebogipfel said. ‘And it has come for us.’

‘Indeed.’ I turned to Moses. ‘Well,’ I said to him. ‘
Now
do you believe me?’