The Time Ships (19 page)

It was true! This Captain – experienced and wounded soldier, and commander of a deadlier fighting machine than I could ever have envisaged – was a
woman
.

S
he smiled, revealing a scar about her chin, and I saw that she could be no more than twenty-five years of age.

‘Look here, Captain,’ I said, ‘I demand to know by what right you’re holding us.’

She was unruffled. ‘My mission is a priority for the National Defence. I’m sorry if –’

But now Moses stepped forward; in his gaudy masher’s outfit he looked strikingly out of place in that drab, military interior. ‘Madam Captain, there is no
need
for National Defence in the Year 1873!’

‘But there is in the Year 1938.’ This Captain was quite immovable, I saw; she radiated an air of unshakeable command. ‘My mission has been to safeguard the scientific research which is proceeding in that house on Petersham Road – in particular, to discourage anachronistic interference with its due process.’

Moses grimaced. ‘“Anachronistic interference” – I take it you are talking of Time Travellers.’

I smiled. ‘A lovely word, that
discourage
! Have you brought back enough guns, do you think, effectively to
discourage
?’

Now Nebogipfel stepped forward. ‘Captain Bond,’ the Morlock said slowly, ‘surely you can see that your mission is a logical absurdity. Do you know who these men are? How can you safeguard the research when
its prime progenitor –’ he pointed to Moses with one hairy hand ‘– is being abducted from his rightful time?’

At that Bond stared at the Morlock for long seconds; and then she turned her attention to Moses – and to me – and I thought she saw, as if for the first time, our resemblance! She snapped out questions to us all, aimed at confirming the truth of the Morlock’s remark, and Moses’s identity. I did not deny it – I could see little advantage to us either way – perhaps, I calculated, we should be treated with more consideration if we were thought to be historically significant; but I made as little as I could of my shared identity with Moses.

At last, Hilary Bond whispered brief instructions to the trooper, and he went off to another part of the craft.

‘I’ll inform the Air Ministry of this when we get back. I’m sure they will be more than interested in you – and you’ll have plenty of opportunity to debate the issue with the authorities on our return.’

‘
Return
?’ I snapped. ‘
Return
– do you mean, to your 1938?’

She looked strained. ‘The paradoxes of time travel are a bit beyond me, I’m afraid; no doubt the clever chaps at the Ministry will untangle it all.’

I was aware of Moses laughing beside me – loudly, and with a touch of hysteria. ‘Oh, this is rich!’ he said. ‘Oh, it’s rich – now I needn’t bother building the wretched Time Machine at all!’

Nebogipfel regarded me sombrely. ‘I’m afraid these multiple blows to causality are moving us further and further from the primal version of History – that which existed before the first operation of the Time Machine …’

Now Captain Bond cut us short. ‘I can understand your consternation. But I can assure you you’ll not be
harmed in any way – on the contrary, my mission is to protect you. Also,’ she said with an easy grace, ‘I’ve gone to the trouble of bringing along someone to help you settle in with us. A native of the period, you might say.’

Another figure made its slow way towards us from the darkened rear of the passage. It came to us wearing the ubiquitous epaulettes, hand-weapon and mask dangling at the waist; but the uniform – a drab, black affair – bore no military insignia. This new person moved slowly, quite painfully, along the awkward cat-walks, with every sign of age; I saw how uniform fabric was stretched over a sagging belly.

His voice was feeble – barely audible above the din of the engines. ‘Good God, it’s you,’ he called to me. ‘I’m armed to the teeth for Germans – but do you know, I scarcely expected you to turn up again, after that last Thursday dinner-party – and not in circumstances like these!’

As he came into the light, it was my turn for another shock. For, though the eyes were dulled, the demeanour stooped, and barely a trace of red left in that shock of grey hair – and though the man’s forehead was disfigured by an ugly scar, as if he had been burned – this was, unmistakably,
Filby
.

I told him I was damned.

Filby snickered as he came up to me. I grasped his hand – it was fragile and liver-spotted – and I judged him to be aged no less than seventy-five. ‘Damned you may be. Damned we all are, perhaps! – but it’s good to see you, nevertheless.’ He gave Moses some odd looks: not surprising, I thought!

‘Filby – Great Scott, man – I’m teeming with questions.’

‘I’ll bet you are. That’s why they dug me out of my old people’s shelter in the Bournemouth Dome. I’m
in charge of Acclimatization, they call it – to help you natives of the period adjust – do you see?’

‘But Filby – it seems only yesterday – how did you come to –’

‘
This
?’ He indicated his withered frame with a dismissive, cynical gesture. ‘How did I come to this?
Time
, my friend. That wonderful River on whose breast, you would have us believe, you could skate around like a water-boatman. Well, time is no friend of the common man;
I’ve
been travelling through time the hard way, and here is what the journey has done to me. For me, it’s been forty-seven years since that last session in Richmond, and your bits of magic quackery with the model Time Machine – do you remember? – and your subsequent disappearance into the Day After Tomorrow.’

‘Still the same old Filby,’ I said with affection, and I grasped his arm. ‘Even you have to admit – at last – that I was right about time travel!’

‘Much good it’s done any of us,’ he growled.

‘And now,’ the Captain said, ‘if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I’ve a ’Naut to command. We’ll be ready to depart in a few minutes.’ And, with a nod to Filby, she turned to her crew.

Filby sighed. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘There’s a place at the back where we can sit; it’s a little less noisy, and dirty, than this.’

We made our way towards the rear of the fort.

As we walked through the central passage I was able to get a closer look at the fort’s means of locomotion. Below the central cat-walks I could see an arrangement of long axles, each free to swivel about a common axis, with a metal floor beneath; and the axles were hitched up to those immense wheels. Those elephantine feet we had spotted earlier dangled from the wheels on stumps of legs. The
wheels dripped mud and bits of churned-up road surface into the engineered interior. By means of the axles, I saw, the wheels could be raised or lowered relative to the main body of the fort, and it seemed that the feet and legs could also be raised, on pneumatic pistons. It was through this arrangement that the fort’s variable pitch was achieved, enabling it to travel across the most uneven ground, or hold itself level on steep hills.

Moses pointed out the sturdy, box-shaped steel framework which underpinned the construction of the fort. ‘And look,’ he said quietly to me, ‘can you see something odd about that section? – and that, over there? – the rods which look rather like quartz. It’s hard to see what structural purpose they serve.’

I looked more closely; it was difficult to be certain in the light of the remote electric lamps, but I thought I could see an odd green translucence about the sections of quartz and nickel – a translucence which looked more than familiar!

‘It is
Plattnerite
,’ I hissed at Moses. ‘The rods have been doped … Moses, I am convinced – I cannot be mistaken, despite the uncertain light – those are components taken from my own laboratory: spares, prototypes and discards I produced during the construction of my Time Machine.’

Moses nodded. ‘So at least we know these people haven’t learned the technique of manufacturing Plattnerite for themselves, yet.’

The Morlock came up to me and pointed at something stored in a darkened recess in the engine compartment. It took some squinting, but I could make out that that bulky shape was my own Time Machine! – whole and unbroken, evidently extracted from Richmond Hill and brought into this fort, its rails still stained by grass. The machine was wrapped about by ropes as if confined in a spider-web.

I felt a powerful urge, at the sight of that potent symbol of safety, to break free of these soldiers – if I could – and make for my machine. Perhaps I could reach my home, even now …

But I knew it would be a futile attempt, and I stilled myself. Even if I could reach the machine – and I could not, for these troopers would gun me down in a moment – I could not find my home again. After this latest incident, no version of 1891 which I could reach could bear any resemblance to the safe and prosperous Year I had abandoned so foolishly. I was stranded in time!

Filby joined me. ‘What do you think of the machinery – eh?’ He punched me in the shoulder, and his touch had the withered feebleness of an old man. He said, ‘The whole thing was designed by Sir Albert Stern, who has been prominent in these things since the early days of the War. I’ve taken quite an interest in these beasts, as they’ve evolved over the years … You know I’ve always had a fascination for things mechanical.

‘Look at that.’ He pointed into the recesses of the engine compartment. ‘Rolls Royce “Meteor” engines – a whole row of ’em! And a Merrit-Brown gear-box – see it, over there? We’ve got Horstmann suspension, with those three bogeys to either side …’

‘Yes,’ I cut in, ‘but – dear old Filby – what is it all
for
?’

‘
For
? It’s
for
the prosecution of the War, of course.’ Filby waved his hand about. ‘This is a Juggernaut: Kitchener-class; one of the latest models. The main purpose of the ’Nauts is to break up the Siege of Europe, you see; they can negotiate all but the widest trench-works with alacrity – although they are expensive, prone to malfunction, and vulnerable to shelling.
Raglan
is rather an appropriate name, don’t you think? – For Lord Fitzroy Raglan was the old
devil who made such a hash of the siege of Sebastopol, in the Crimea. Perhaps poor old Raglan would have –’

‘
The Siege of Europe
?’

He looked at me sadly. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Perhaps they shouldn’t have sent me after all – I keep forgetting how little you must know! I’ve turned into the most awful old buffer, I’m afraid. Look here – I’ve got to tell you that we’ve been at War, since 1914.’

‘
War
? With whom?’

‘Well, with the Germans, of course. Who else? And it really is a terrible mess …’

These words, this casual glimpse of a future Europe darkened by twenty-four years of War, chilled me to the core!

W
e came to a chamber perhaps ten feet square; it was little more than a box of metal bolted to the inner hull of the ’Naut. A single electric bulb glowed in the ceiling, and padded leather coated the walls, alleviating the metal bleakness of the fort and suppressing the noise of the engines – although a deeper throb could be felt through the fabric of the vessel. There were six chairs here: simple upright affairs that were bolted to the floor, facing each other, and fitted with leather harnesses. There was also a low cabinet.

Filby waved us to the chairs and started fussing around the cabinet. ‘I should strap yourselves in,’ he said. ‘This time-hurdling nonsense is quite vertiginous.’

Moses and I sat down to face each other. I fastened the restraints loosely around me; Nebogipfel had some trouble with his buckles, and the straps dangled about him until Moses helped him adjust their tightness.

Now Filby came pottering up to me with something in his hand; it was a cup of tea in a cracked china saucer, with a small biscuit to one side of the cup. I could not help but laugh. ‘Filby, the turns of fate never cease to amaze me. Here we are, about to journey through time in this menacing mobile fort – and you serve us with tea and biscuits!’

‘Well, this business is quite difficult enough without life’s comforts.
You
must know that!’

I sipped the tea; it was lukewarm and rather stewed. Thus fortified, I became, incongruously, rather mischievous – I think on reflection my mental state was a little fragile, and I was unwilling to face my own future, or the dire prospect of this 1938 War. ‘Filby,’ I teased him, ‘do you not observe anything – ah –
odd
about my companions?’

‘Odd?’

I introduced him to Moses – and poor Filby began a staring session which resulted in him dribbling tea down his chin.

‘And
there
is the true shock of time travel,’ I said to Filby with feeling. ‘Forget all this stuff about the Origin of the Species, or the Destiny of Humanity – it’s only when you come face to face with yourself as a young man that you realize what
shock
is all about!’

Filby questioned us on this issue of our identity for a little longer – good old Filby, sceptical to the last! ‘I thought I’d seen enough changes and wonders in my life, even without this time business. But now – well!’ He sighed, and I suspected that he had actually seen a little
too much
in his long lifetime, poor fellow; he always had been prone to a certain brain-weariness, even as a young man.

I leaned forward, as far as my restraints allowed. ‘Filby, I can scarce believe that men have fallen so far – become so blind. Why, from my perspective, this damnable Future War of yours sounds pretty much like the end of civilization.’

‘For men of our day,’ he said solemnly, ‘perhaps it is. But this younger generation, who’ve grown up to know nothing but War, who have never felt the sun on their faces without fear of the air-torpedoes – well! I think they’re inured to it; it’s as if we’re turning into a subterranean species.’

I could not resist a glance at the Morlock.

‘Filby, why this mission through time?’

‘It isn’t so much
you
, as the
Machine
. They had to
ensure
the construction of the Time Machine, you see,’ Filby began. ‘Time technology is so vital to the War Effort. Or so some of them feel.

‘They knew pretty much how you went about your research, from the bits of notes you left behind – although you never published anything on the subject; there was only that odd account you left with us of your first trip into the remote future, on your brief return. And so the
Raglan
has been sent to guard your house against any intrusion by a Time Traveller – like you …’

Nebogipfel lifted his head. ‘More confusion about causality,’ he said. ‘Evidently the scientists of 1938 have still not begun to grasp the concept of Multiplicity – that one cannot
ensure
anything about the past: one cannot change History; one can only generate new versions of –’

Filby stared at him – this chattering vision in a school uniform, with hair sprouting from every limb!

‘Not now,’ I said to Nebogipfel. ‘Filby, you keep saying
they
. Who are
they
?’

He seemed surprised by the question. ‘The Government, of course.’

‘Which party?’ snapped Moses.

‘Party? Oh, all of
that
is pretty much a thing of the past.’

He gave us that chilling news – of the death of Democracy in Britain – with just those casual words!

He went on, ‘I think we have all been expecting to find
die Zeitmaschine
here, rolling around Richmond Park and hoping for a bit of assassination …’ He looked mournful. ‘It’s the Germans, you know. The blessed Germans! They’re making the most frightful mess of everything … Just as they’ve always done!’

And with that, the single electric bulb dimmed, and I heard the engines roar; I felt the familiar, helpless plummeting which told me that this
Raglan
had launched me into time once more.