The Time Ships (31 page)

W
e never managed to retrieve Nebogipfel’s goggles after the Storm, and this proved to be a great handicap to him. But he did not complain. As before, he restricted himself to the shade during the hours of daylight, and if he was forced to emerge into the light of twilight or dawn he would wear his wide-brimmed hat and, over his eye, a slitted mask of animal skin which I made for him, to afford him some sight.

The Storm was a mental as well as a physical shock to me, for I had begun to feel as if I had protected myself against such calamities as this world might throw at me. I decided that our lives must be put on a more secure footing. After some thought I decided that a hut of some form, solidly founded, and placed on stilts – that is, above the run-off from future monsoons – was the thing to aim for. But I could not rely on fallen branches for my construction material, for these, by their nature, were often irregular of form and sometimes rotten. I needed tree-trunks – and for
that
I would need an axe.

So I spent some time as an amateur geologist, hunting about the countryside for suitable rock formations. At last I found, in a layer of gravelly debris in the area of Hampstead Heath, some dark, rounded flints, together with cherts. I thought this debris must have been washed here by some vanished river.

I carried these treasures back to our encampment with as much care as if they were made of gold – or more; for that weight of gold would not have been of any value to me.

I took to bashing up the flint on open spaces on the beach. It took a good deal of experimentation, and a considerable wasting of flint, before I found ways to crack open the nodules in sympathy with the planes of the stone, to form extensive and sharp edges. My hands felt clumsy and inexpert. I had marvelled before at the fine arrow-heads and axe blades which are displayed in glass cases in our museums, but it was only when I tried to construct such devices for myself that I understood what a deep level of skill and engineering intuition our forefathers had possessed in the Age of Polished Stone.

At last I constructed a blade with which I was satisfied. I fixed it to a short length of split wood, binding it in with strips of animal-skin, and I set off with a high mood for the forest.

I returned not fifteen minutes later with the fragments of my axe-head in my hand; for it had shattered on the second blow, with barely a cut made in the tree’s bark!

However, with a little more experimentation I got it correct, and soon I was chopping my way through a forest of young, straight trees.

For our permanent encampment, we would stay on our beach, but I ensured we were well above the tidal line, and away from the possibilities of flood from our stream. It took me some time to dig pits for the founds, deep enough to satisfy me; but at last I had erected a square framework of upright posts, securely fixed, and with a platform of thin logs attached at perhaps a yard above the ground. This floor was far from even, and I planned to acquire the skills of better plank-making one day; but when I laid
down on it at night the floor felt secure and solid, and I had a measure of security that we were raised above the various perils of the ground. I almost wished another Storm down on our heads, so that I could test out my new design!

Nebogipfel hauled his fragments of Time-Car up onto the floor by a little ladder I made for him, and continued his dogged reconstruction there.

One day, as I made my way through the forest, I became aware of a pair of bright eyes studying me from a low branch.

I slowed, taking care not to make any jerky movements, and slipped my bow from my back.

The little creature was perhaps four inches long, and rather like a miniature Lemur. Its tail and face were rodent-like, with gnawing incisors quite clear at the front; it had clawed feet and suspicious eyes. It was either so intelligent that it thought it should fool me into ignoring it by its immobility – or else so stupid that it did not recognize any danger from me.

It was the work of a moment to fit the string of the bow into the notch of an arrow, and fire it off.

Now my hunting and trapping skills had improved with practice, and my slings and traps had become moderately successful; but my bows and arrows much less so. The construction of my arrows was sound enough, but I could never find wood of the right flexibility for the bows. And generally, by the time my clumsy fingers had loaded up the bow, most of my targets, bemused by my antics, were well able to scamper for cover.

Not so this little fellow! He watched with no more than dim curiosity as my skewed arrow limped through the air towards him. For once my aim was true, and the flint head pinned his little body to the tree-trunk.

I returned to Nebogipfel, proud of my prize, for mammals were useful to us: not just as sources of meat, but for their fur, teeth, fat and bones. Nebogipfel studied the little rodent-like corpse through his slit-mask.

‘Perhaps I shall hunt down more of these,’ I said. ‘The little creature really didn’t seem to understand what danger he was in, right until the end. Poor beast!’

‘Do you know what this is?’

‘Tell me.’

‘I believe it is
Purgatorius
.’

‘And the significance –?’

‘It is a primate: the earliest known.’ He let himself sound amused.

I swore. ‘I thought I was done with all this. But even in the Palaeocene, one cannot avoid meeting one’s relatives!’ I studied the tiny corpse. ‘So here is the ancestor of monkey, and man, and Morlock! The insignificant little acorn from which will grow an oak which will smother more worlds than this earth … I wonder how many men, and nations, and
species
, would have sprung from the loins of this modest little fellow, had I not killed him. Once again, perhaps I have destroyed my own past!’

Nebogipfel said, ‘We cannot help but interact with History, you and I. With every breath we take, every tree you cut down, every animal we kill, we create a new world in the Multiplicity of Worlds. That is all. It is unavoidable.’

After that, I could not bring myself to touch the flesh of the poor little creature. I took it into the forest and buried it.

One day I set myself to follow our little fresh-water stream westwards towards its source, in the interior of the country.

I set off at dawn. Away from the coast, the tang of salt and ozone faded, to be replaced by the hot, moist scents of the
dipterocarps
forest, and the overpowering perfume of the crowding flowers. The going was difficult, with heavy growth underfoot. It became much more humid, and my cap of nut-fibre was soon soaked through; the sounds around me, the rustling of vegetation and the endless trills and coughs of the forest, took on a heavier tone in the thickening air.

By mid-morning I had travelled two or three miles, arriving somewhere in Brentford. Here I found a wide, shallow lake, from which flowed our stream and a number of others, and the lake was fed in turn by a series of minor brooks and rivers. The trees grew close around this secluded body of water, and climbing plants clung to their trunks and lower branches, including some I recognized as bottle gourds and loofahs. The water was warm and brackish, and I was wary of drinking it, but the lagoon teemed with life. Its surface was covered by groupings of giant lilies, shaped like upturned bottle-tops and perhaps six feet wide, which reminded me of plants I had once seen in Turner’s Waterlily House in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. (It was ironic, I thought, that the eventual site of Kew itself was less than a mile from where I stood!) The lilies’ saucers looked strong and buoyant enough for me to stand on, but I did not put this hypothesis to the test.

It was the work of a few minutes to improvise a fishing rod, made from the long, straight trunk of a sapling. I fixed a line to this, and I baited a hook of Time-Car metal with grubs.

I was rewarded within a few minutes by brisk tugs of the line. I grinned to imagine the envy of some of my angling friends – dear old Filby, for instance – at my discovery of this un-fished oasis.

I built a fire and ate well that night of broiled fish and tubers.

A little before dawn I was woken by a strange hooting. I sat up and looked about me. My fire had more or less died. The sun was not yet up; the sky had that unearthly tinge of steel blue which prefigures a new day. There was no wind, and not a leaf stirred; a heavy mist lay immobile on the surface of the water.

Then I made out a group of birds, a hundred yards from me around the rim of the lake. Their feathers were dun brown and each had legs as long as a flamingo’s. They stepped about the waters of the lake’s margin, or stood poised on one leg like exquisite sculptures. They had heads shaped like those of modern ducks, and they would dip those familiar-looking beaks through the shimmering surface and sweep through the water, evidently filtering for food.

The mist lifted a little, and more of the lake was revealed; I saw now that there was a great flock of these creatures (which Nebogipfel later identified as
Presbyornis
) – thousands of them, in a great, open colony. They moved like ghosts through that vaporous haze.

I told myself that this location was nowhere more exotic than the junction of Gunnersbury Avenue with the Chiswick High Road – but a vision more unlike England it is hard to conjure!

As the days wore on in that sultry, vital landscape, my memories of the England of 1891 seemed more and more remote and irrelevant. I found the greatest of satisfactions in my building, hunting and gathering; and the bathing warmth of the sun and the Sea’s freshness were combining to give me a sense of health, strength and immediacy of sensory experience lost since childhood. I had done with
Thinking
, I decided; there were but two conscious Minds in all
this elaborate panoply of Palaeocene life, and I could not see that mine would do me much good from now on, save for keeping me alive a little longer.

It was time for the Heart, and the Body, to have their say. And the more the days wore away, the more I gathered a sense of the greatness of the world, the immensity of time – and the littleness of myself and my concerns in the face of that great Multiple panorama of History. I was no longer important, even to myself; and that realization was like a liberation of the soul.

After a time, even the death of Moses ceased to clamour at my thoughts.

N
ebogipfel’s screaming woke me with a start. A Morlock’s voice, raised, is a kind of gurgle: queer, but quite chilling to hear.

I sat up in the cool darkness; and for an instant I imagined I was back in my bed in my house on the Petersham Road, but the scents and textures of the Palaeocene night came crowding in on me.

I scrambled out of my pallet and jumped down, off the floor of the shelter, and to the sand. It had been a moonless night; and the last stars were fading from the sky as the sun approached. The sea rolled, placid, and the wall of forest was black and still.

In the midst of this cool, blue-soaked tranquillity, the Morlock came limping towards me along the beach. He had lost his crutch, and, it seemed to me, he could barely stay upright, let alone run. His hair was ragged and flying, and he had lost his face-mask; even as he ran I could see how he was forced to raise his hands to cover his huge, sensitive eye.

And behind him, chasing –

It was perhaps ten feet in length, in general layout something like a crocodile; but its legs were long and supple, giving it a raised, horse-like gait, quite unlike the squat motion of the crocodiles of my time – this beast was evidently adapted to running and chasing. Its slit eyes were fixed on the Morlock, and when it opened its mouth I saw rows of saw-edge teeth.

This apparition was bare yards from Nebogipfel!

I screamed and ran at the little tableau, waving my arms, but even as I did so I knew it was all up for Nebogipfel. I grieved for the lost Morlock, but – I am ashamed to record it – my first thought was for myself, for with his death I should be left alone, here in the mindless Palaeocene …

And it was at that moment, with a startling clarity, that a rifle-shot rang out from the margin of the forest.

The first bullet missed the beast, I think; but it was enough to make that great head turn, and to slow the pumping of those mighty thighs.

The Morlock fell, now, and went sprawling in the sand; but he pushed himself up on his elbows and squirmed onwards, on his belly.

There was a second shot, and a third. The crocodile flinched as the bullets pounded into its body. It faced the forest with defiance, opened his saw-toothed mouth and emitted a roar which echoed like thunder from the trees. Then it set off on its long, determined legs towards the source of these unexpected stings.

A man – short, compact, wearing a drab uniform – emerged from the forest’s margin. He raised the rifle again, sighted along it at the crocodile, and held his nerve as the beast approached.

I reached Nebogipfel now and hauled him to his feet; he was shivering. We stood on the sand together, and waited for the drama to play itself out

The crocodile could have been no more than ten yards away from the man when the rifle spoke again. The crocodile stumbled – I could see blood streaming from its mouth – but it raised itself up with barely a sliver of its momentum lost. The rifle shouted, and bullet after bullet plunged into that immense carcase.

At last, less than ten feet from the man, the thing tumbled, its great jaws snapping at the air; and the man – as cool as you like! – stepped neatly aside to let it fall.

I found Nebogipfel’s mask for him, and the Morlock and I followed the trail of the crocodile up the slope of the beach. Its claws had scuffed up the sand, and the last few pace-marks were strewn with saliva, mucus and steaming blood. Close to, the crocodile-thing was even more intimidating than from a distance; the eyes and jaw were open and staring, and as the last echoes of life seeped from the monster the huge muscles of its rear legs twitched, and hoofed feet scuffed at the sand.

The Morlock studied the hot carcass. ‘
Pristichampus
,’ he said in his low gurgle.

Our saviour stood with his foot on the twitching corpse of the beast. He was aged perhaps twenty-five: he was clean-jawed and with a straightforward gaze. Despite his brush with death, he looked quite relaxed; he favoured us with an engaging, gap-toothed grin. His uniform consisted of brown trousers, heavy boots, and a brown khaki jacket; a blue beret perched jauntily on his head. This visitor could have come from any Age, or any variant of History, I supposed; but it did not surprise me at all when this young man said, in straightforward, neutrally-accented English, ‘Damn ugly thing, isn’t it? Tough fellow, though – did you see I had to plug him in the mouth before he fell? And even then he kept on coming. Got to give him credit – he was game enough!’

Before his relaxed, Officer-class manners, I felt clumsy, rather oafish in my skins and beard. I extended my hand. ‘Sir, I think I owe you the life of my companion.’

He took the hand and shook it. ‘Think nothing of
it.’ His grin widened. ‘Mr—, I presume,’ he said, naming me. ‘Do you know, I’ve always wanted to say that!’

‘And you are?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. The name’s Gibson. Wing Commander Guy Gibson. And I’m delighted to have found you.’