The Time Ships (37 page)

O
ne day, Hilary Bond announced that the first anniversary of the Bombing was one week away, and that a celebratory Feast would be held to commemorate the founding of our little village.

The colonists fell on this scheme with a will, and preparations were soon well advanced. The Hall was decorated with lianas and immense garlands of flowers, gathered from the forest, and preparations were made to kill and cook one of the colony’s precious flock of
Diatryma
.

As for me, I scavenged funnels and lengths of tubing and, in the privacy of an old lean-to, began conducting intense private experiments. The colonists were curious about this, and I was forced to resort to sleeping in the lean-to to keep the secret of my improvised apparatus. It was time, I had decided, to put my scientific understanding to good use – for once!

The day of the Feast dawned. We gathered before the Hall in the bright morning light, and there was an air of great excitement and occasion. Once more the remains of uniforms had been cleaned and donned, and the infants-in-arms were decorated in the new fabrics Nebogipfel had devised of a type of local cotton, coloured bright red and purple by vegetable dyes. I passed through the little knot of people, seeking out my closer friends –

– when there was a crash of twigs, and a deep, creaking bellow.

The cry went up. ‘
Pristichampus
– it is
Pristichampus!
Look out …’

And indeed, the bellow had been characteristic of that great land-running crocodile. People ran around, and I cast about for a weapon, cursing myself for being so unprepared.

Then another voice, gentler and more familiar, came floating to us. ‘Hi! Don’t be afraid – look!’

The panic subsided, and a sprinkle of laughter broke out.

Pristichampus
– a proud male – stalked into the clear space in front of the Hall. We moved back to make room for it, and its hoofed feet left great pockmarks in the sand … and there on its back, grinning widely, his red hair flaming in the sunlight, sat Stubbins!

I approached the crocodile. Its scaly hide stank of decaying meat, and one cold eye was fixed on me, swivelling as I walked. Stubbins, bare-backed, grinned down at me; in his wiry hands he held a rein made of plaited lianas, wrapped about
Pristichampus
’s head.

‘Stubbins,’ I said, ‘this is quite an achievement’.

‘Aye, well, I know we’ve set the
Diatryma
to dragging a plough, but this creature is far more agile. Why, we’ll be able to travel miles – it’s better than a horse …’

‘Just be careful, even so,’ I admonished him. ‘And, Stubbins, if you join me later –’

‘Yes?’

‘I might have a surprise for
you
.’

Stubbins dragged at
Pristichampus
’s head. It took considerable effort, but he managed to get the beast to turn. The great creature stepped its way out of the clearing and back towards the forest, the muscles of its huge legs working like pistons.

Nebogipfel joined me, his head almost lost beneath a huge, broad-brimmed hat.

‘That’s a fine achievement,’ I remarked. ‘But – can you see? – he barely had control of the brute …’

‘He will win,’ Nebogipfel said. ‘Humans always do.’ He stepped closer to me, his white pelt shining in the morning sunlight. ‘Listen to me.’

I was startled by this sudden, incongruous whisper. ‘What? What is it?’

‘I have finished my construction.’

‘
What
construction?’

‘I leave tomorrow. If you wish to join me, you are welcome.’

And he turned and, noiselessly, walked away towards the forest; in a moment the white of his back was lost in the darkness of the trees. I stood there with the sun at my neck, gazing after the enigmatic Morlock – and it was as if the day had been transformed, for my mind was in a perfect turmoil, for his meaning was utterly clear.

A heavy hand clapped me on the back. ‘So,’ said Stubbins, ‘what’s this great secret you have for me?’

I turned to him, but I found it difficult, for some seconds, to focus on his face. ‘Come with me,’ I said at last, with as much vigour and good humour as I could muster.

A few minutes later, Stubbins – and the rest of the colonists – were raising shells full to the brim with my home-made nut-milk liqueur.

The rest of the day passed in a joyous blur. My liqueur proved more than popular – although for my part I should have much preferred to have been able to improvise a pipe-ful of tobacco! There was much dancing to the sound of inexpert singing and hand-clapping, which impersonated a jolly sort of 1944 music Stubbins called ‘swing’, that I would like, I
think, to have heard more of. I had them sing ‘The Land of the Leal’ for me, and I performed, with my usual solemnity, one of my patent improvised dances; it evoked great admiration and mirth. The
Diatryma
was roasted on a spit – the cooking of it took most of the day – and the evening saw us sprawled on the scuffed sand, with plates laden with succulent meat.

Once the sun slipped below the tree-line, the party thinned rapidly; for most of us had become accustomed to a dawn-to-dusk existence. I hailed goodnight one final time, and retired to the ruins of my improvised still. I sat in the entrance to the lean-to, sipping at the last of my liqueur, and I watched the shadow of the forest sweep across the Palaeocene Sea. Dark shapes slid through the water: rays, perhaps, or sharks.

I thought over my conversation with Nebogipfel, and tried to come to terms with the decision I must make.

After a time, there was a soft, uneven footstep on the sand.

I turned. It was Hilary Bond – I could barely make out her face in the last of the day-light – and yet, somehow, I was not surprised to see her.

She smiled. ‘Can I join you? Do you have any of that moonshine left?’

I waved her to a place in the sand beside me, and I passed her my shell. She drank with some grace. ‘It’s been a good day,’ she said.

‘Thanks to you.’

‘No. Thanks to all of us.’ She reached out and took my hand – quite without warning – the touch of her skin was like an electric jolt. She said, ‘I want to thank you for all you’ve done for us. You and Nebogipfel.’

‘We haven’t –’

‘I doubt if we’d have survived those first few days, without you.’ Her voice, soft and level, was nevertheless quite compelling. ‘And now, with all
you’ve
shown us, and all Nebogipfel’s taught us – well, I think we’ve every chance of building a new world here.’

Her fingers were delicate and long against my palm, and yet I could feel the scarring from her burns. ‘Thank you for the eulogy. But you speak as if we are going away …’

‘But you are,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you?’

‘You know about Nebogipfel’s plans?’

She shrugged. ‘In principle.’

‘Then you know more than I do. If he has built a Time-Car – where did he get the Plattnerite, for example? The Juggernauts were destroyed.’

‘From the wreck of
die Zeitmaschine
, of course.’ She sounded amused. ‘Didn’t you think of that?’ She paused. ‘And you want to go with Nebogipfel. Don’t you?’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t know. You know, sometimes I feel old – and tired – as if I have seen quite enough already!’

She snorted her contempt for that. ‘Baloney. Look: you started it –’ She waved a hand. ‘All of
this
. Time travelling – and all the changes it’s brought about.’ She gazed around at the placid Sea. ‘And now, this is the biggest
Change
of all. Isn’t it?’ She shook her head. ‘You know, I’ve had a certain amount of dealing with the strategic planners at the DChronW, and I’ve come away downcast every time at the smallness of the thinking of such types. To adjust the course of a battle here, to assassinate some tin-pot figure there … If you have such a tool as a Chronic-Displacement Vehicle, and if you know that History can be changed, as we do, then would you,
should
you, restrict yourself to such footling goals as that? Why restrict yourself to a few decades, and to fiddling with the boyhood of
Bismarck or the Kaiser, when you can go back millions of years – as we have? Now, our children will have
fifty million years
to remake the world … We’re going to rebuild the human species – aren’t we?’ She turned to me. ‘But
you
haven’t reached the end of it yet. What’s the Ultimate Change, do you think? Can you go back all the way to the Creation, and start things all over again from there? How far can this –
Changing
– go?’

I remembered Gödel, and his dreams of the Final World. ‘I don’t know how far it can go,’ I said truthfully. ‘I can’t even imagine it.’

Her face was huge before me, her eyes wells of darkness in the deepening twilight. ‘Then,’ she said, ‘you must travel on and find out. Mustn’t you?’ She moved closer, and I felt my hand tighten around hers, and her breath was warm against my cheek.

I sensed a stiffness about her – a reticence, which she seemed determined to overcome, if only by force of will. I touched her arm, and I found scarred flesh, and she shuddered, as if my fingers were made of ice. But then she clasped her hand around mine and held it against her arm. ‘You must forgive me,’ she said. ‘It is not easy for me to be close.’

‘Why? Because of the responsibilities of your command?’

‘No,’ she said, and her tone made me feel foolish and clumsy. ‘Because of the War. Do you see? Because of all of those who are gone … It’s hard to sleep, sometimes. You suffer
now
, not
then
– and that’s the tragedy of the thing, for those who survive. You feel you can’t forget – and that it’s wrong of you to go on living, even.
If you break faith with us who died/ We shall not sleep, though poppies grow/ In Flanders field
…’

I pulled her closer, and she softened against me, a fragile, wounded creature.

At the last moment, I whispered: ‘Why, Hilary? Why now?’

‘Genetic diversity,’ she said, her breath growing shallow.’
Genetic diversity
…’

And soon we travelled on – not to the ends of time – but to the limits of our Humanity, there beside the shore of that primeval Sea.

When I awoke it was still dark, and Hilary had gone.

I came to our old encampment in full daylight. Nebogipfel barely glanced at me through his slit-mask as I entered; evidently he was as unsurprised by my decision as Hilary had been.

His Time-Car was completed. It was a box about five feet square, and around it I saw fragments of an unfamiliar metal: bits, I presumed, of the Messerschmitt, salvaged by the Morlock. There was a bench, lashed up from the wood of the
dipterocarps
, and a small control panel – a crude thing of switches and buttons – that featured the blue toggle switch which Nebogipfel had salvaged from our first Time-Car.

‘I have some clothes for you,’ Nebogipfel said. He held up boots, a twill shirt, and trousers, all in reasonable order. ‘I doubt our colonists will miss them now.’

‘Thank you.’ I had been wearing shorts made of animal-skin; I dressed rapidly.

‘Where do you want to go?’

I shrugged. ‘Home. 1891.’

He distorted his face. ‘It is lost in the Multiplicity.’

‘I know.’ I climbed into the frame. ‘Let us travel forward anyway, and see what we find.’

I glanced, one last time, at the Palaeocene Sea. I thought of Stubbins, and the tame
Diatryma
, and the light off the Sea in the morning. I knew that I had come close to happiness here – to a contentment that
had eluded me all my life. But Hilary was right: it was not enough.

I still felt that great desire for
home
; it was a call in me along the River of Time, as strong, I thought, as the instinct which returns a salmon to its breeding-ground. But I knew, as Nebogipfel had said, that
my
1891, that cosy world of Richmond Hill, was lost in the fractured Multiplicity.

Well: if I could not go home, I decided, I would go on: I would follow this road of Changing, until it could take me no further!

Nebogipfel looked at me. ‘Are you ready?’

I thought of Hilary. But I am not a man to be doing with good-byes.

‘I’m ready.’

Nebogipfel climbed stiffly into the frame, favouring his badly-set leg. Without ceremony, he reached for his panel of controls and closed the blue toggle.

I
caught one last glimpse of two people – a man and a woman, both naked – who seemed to hurtle across the beach. A shadow fell briefly over the car, perhaps cast by one of the immense animals of this Age; but soon we were moving too rapidly for such details to be discernible, and we fell into the colourless tumult of time travel.

The heavy Palaeocene sun leapt across the Sea, and I imagined how from the point of view of our transition through time the earth spun like a top on its axis, and rocketed around its star. The moon, too, was visible as a hurtling disc, rendered shadowy by the flickering of its phases. Soon the sun’s daily passage merged into the band of silver light which dipped between equinoctial limits, and day and night melted into the uniform blue-grey glow I have described before.

The
dipterocarps
trees of the forest shivered with growth and death, and were shouldered aside by the vigorous growth of younger plants; but the scene around us – the forest, the Sea smoothed by our time-passage to a glassy plain – remained static in its essentials, and I wondered if, despite all my and Nebogipfel’s efforts, men had after all failed to survive, here in the Palaeocene.

Then – quite without warning – the forest withered and vanished. It was as if a blanket of greenery
had been ripped back from the soil. But the land was scarcely left bare; as soon as the forest was cleared, a melange of blocky brown and grey – the buildings of an expanding First London – swept over the earth. The buildings flowed over the denuded hills and down, past us, to the Sea, there to sprout into docks and harbours. The individual constructions shivered and expired, almost too fast for us to follow, though one or two persisted long enough – I suppose for several centuries – to become almost opaque, like crude sketches. The Sea lost its blue tinge and mutated into a sheet of dirty grey, its waves and tides made into a blur by our passage; the air seemed to take on a brown tinge, like an 1890s London fog, which gave the scene something of a dirty, twilit glow, and the air about us felt warmer.

It was striking that as the centuries fell away, regardless of the fate of individual buildings, the general outlines of the city persisted. I could see how the ribbon of the central river – the proto-Thames – and the scars of major road routes remained, in their essentials, unchanged by time; it was a striking demonstration of how geomorphology, the shape of the landscape, dominates human geography.

‘Evidently our colonists have survived,’ I said to Nebogipfel. ‘They have become a race of New Humans, and they are changing their world.’

‘Yes.’ He adjusted his skin slit-mask. ‘But remember we are travelling at several centuries per second; we are in the midst of a city which has already persisted for some thousands of years. I doubt that little is left of the First London we saw established.’

I peered around, my curiosity strong. Already my little band of exiles must be as remote to these New Humans as had been the Sumerians, say, from 1891. Had any memory persisted, in all this wide and
bustling civilization, of the fragile origins of the human species in this antique era?

I became aware of a change in the sky: an odd, green-tinged flickering about the light. I soon realized it was the moon, which still sailed around the earth, waxing and waning through its ancient cycle too fast for me to follow –
but the face of that patient companion was now stained green and blue
– the colours of earth, and life.

An inhabited, earthlike moon! This New Humanity had evidently travelled to the sister world in Space Machines, and transformed it, and colonized it. Perhaps they had developed into a race of moon-men, as tall and spindly as the low-gravity Morlocks I had encountered in the Year 657,208! Of course I could not make out any detail, as the moon’s month-long orbit took it spinning across my accelerated sky; and of that I was regretful, for I would have loved to have had a telescope and to make out the waters of new oceans lapping those deep, ancient craters, and the forests spreading across the dust of the great
maria
. How would it be to stand on those rocky plains – to be cut loose of Mother Earth’s leading-strings? With every step in that reduced gravity one would fly through the thin, cold air, with the sun fierce and motionless overhead; it would be like the landscape of a dream, I thought, with all that glare, and plants less like earthly flora than the things I imagined among the rocks at the bottom of the sea …

Well, it was a sight I should never witness. With an effort, I returned in imagination from the moon, and fixed my attention on our situation.

Now there was some movement in the western sky, low against the horizon: firefly lights flickered into life, jerked across the heavens, and settled into place, there to remain for long millennia, before fading to be replaced by others. There was soon quite a crowd
of these sparks, and they coalesced into a sort of bridge, which spanned the sky from horizon to horizon; at its peak, I counted several dozen lights in this city in the sky.

I pointed this out to Nebogipfel. ‘Are they stars?’

‘No,’ he said evenly. ‘The earth rotates still, and the true stars must be too obscured to be visible. The lights we see are hanging in a fixed position over the earth …’

‘Then what are they? Artificial moons?’

‘Perhaps. They are certainly placed there by the actions of men. The objects may be artificial – constructed of materials hauled up from the earth, or from the moon, whose gravity well is so much more shallow. Or they may be natural objects towed into place around the earth by rockets: captured asteroids or comets, perhaps.’

I peered at those jostling lights with as much awe as any cave-dweller might stare at the light of a comet beating over his upturned, ignorant head!

‘What would be the purpose of such stations in space?’

‘Such a satellite is like a tower, fixed over the earth, twenty thousand miles tall …’

I grimaced. ‘Quite a view! One could sit in it and watch the evolution of weather patterns over a hemi-sphere.’

‘Or the station could serve for the transmission of telegraphic messages from one continent to another. Or, more radically, one could imagine the transfer of great industries – heavy manufacture, or the generation of power, perhaps – to the comparative safety of high earth orbit.’

He opened his hands. ‘You can observe for yourself the degradation of the air and water around us. The earth has a limited capacity to absorb the waste products of human industry, and with enough
development, the planet could even be rendered uninhabitable.

‘In orbit, though, the limits to growth are virtually infinite: witness the Sphere, constructed by my own species.’

The temperature continued to increase, as the air grew more foul. Nebogipfel’s improvised Time-Car was functional, but poorly balanced, and it swayed and rocked; I clung to my bench miserably, for the combination of the heat, the swaying and the usual vertigo induced by time travel gave me a most nauseous feeling.