The Time Ships (45 page)

O
nce more the sun rocketed across the sky, and the moon, still green, rolled through its phases, the months going by more quickly than heartbeats; soon, the velocities of both orbs had increased to the point where they had merged into those seamless, precessing bands of light I have described before, and the sky had taken on that steely greyness which was a compound of day and night. All around us, clearly visible from our elevated viewpoint, the ice-fields of White Earth swept away and over the horizon, all but unchanging as the meaningless years flapped past, displaying only a surface sheen smoothed over by the rapidity of our transition.

I should have liked to have seen those magnificent inter-stellar sail-craft soar off into space; but the rotation of the earth rendered those fragile ships impossible for me to make out, and as soon as we entered time travel the sail-ships became invisible to us.

Within seconds of our departure – as seen from our diluted point of view – our apartment was demolished. It vanished around us like dew, to leave our transparent blister sitting isolated on the flat roof of our tower. I thought of our bizarre, yet comfortable, set of chambers – with my steam-bath, that ludicrous flock wallpaper, the peculiar billiards table, and all the rest –
all
of it had been melted back, now, into general formlessness, and our apartment, no longer
required, had been reduced to a dream: a Platonic memory, in the metal imagination of the Universal Constructors!

But we were not abandoned by our own, patient Constructor, however. From my accelerated point of view I saw how he seemed to rest
here
, a few yards from us – a squat pyramid, the writhing of his cilia smoothed over by our time passage – and then he would jump, abruptly, to
there
, to linger for a few seconds – and so on. Since a mere second for us lasted centuries in the world beyond the Time-Car, I could calculate that the Constructor was remaining close to our site, all but immobile, for as much as a thousand years at a time.

I pointed this out to Nebogipfel. ‘Imagine that, if you can! To be Immortal is one thing, but to be so devoted to a single task … He is like a solitary Knight guarding his Grail, while historical ages, and the mayfly concerns of ordinary men, flutter away.’

As I have described, the buildings which neighboured ours were towers, standing two to three miles apart, all across the Thames valley. In the several weeks we had spent in our apartment I had seen no evidence of change about these towers – not even the opening of a door. Now, though, with the benefit of my accelerated perceptions, I saw how slow evolutions crept over the buildings’ surfaces. One cylindrical affair in Hammersmith had its mirror-smooth face swell up, as if raddled by some metallic disease, before settling into a new pattern of angular bumps and channels. Another tower, in the vicinity of Fulham, disappeared altogether! – One moment it was there, the next not, without even the shadow of foundations on the ground to show where it had been, for the ice closed over the exposed earth more rapidly than I could follow.

This sort of flowing evolution went on all the
time. The pace of change in this new London must be measured in centuries, I realized – rather than the
years
within which sections of my own London had been transformed – but change there was, nevertheless.

I pointed this out to Nebogipfel.

‘We can only speculate as to the purpose of this rebuilding,’ he said. ‘Perhaps the change in outer appearance signifies a change in inner utilization. But the slow processes of decay are working even here. And perhaps there are, occasionally, more spectacular incidents, such as the fall of a meteorite.’

‘Surely intelligences so vast as these Constructors could plan for such accidents as the fall of a meteor! – by tracking the falling rocks with their telescopes, perhaps using their ships with rockets and sails to knock the things away.’

‘To some extent. But the solar system is a random and chaotic place,’ Nebogipfel said. ‘One could never be sure of eliminating
all
calamities, no matter what resources were available, and no matter what planning and watching was performed … And so, even the Constructors must sometimes rebuild –
even the tower we inhabit
.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Think it out,’ Nebogipfel said. ‘Are you warm? Do you feel comfortable?’

As I have noted, my apparent exposure to the wastes of White Earth, sheltered only by this invisible dome of the Constructors, had left me feeling chilled; but I knew this could only be an internal reaction. ‘I’m quite satisfactory.’

‘Of course. So am I. And – since we have now been travelling perhaps a quarter-hour – we know that equable conditions have persisted in this building
for more than half a million years
.’

‘But,’ I said, following his thinking, ‘this tower of
ours is just as prone to the predations of time as any other … therefore our Constructor must be repairing the place, continually, to allow it to continue to serve us.’

‘Yes. Otherwise this dome which shelters us would surely have splintered and fallen away a long time ago.’

Nebogipfel was right, of course – it was another facet of the extraordinary steadiness of purpose of the Constructors – but it scarcely made me feel more comfortable! I glanced about, studying the floor beneath us; I felt as if the tower had become as insubstantial as a termite hill, being endlessly burrowed through and rebuilt by the Universal Constructors, and I was filled with vertigo!

Now I became aware of a change in the quality of light. The glaciated landscape stretched around us, apparently unchanged; but it seemed to me that the ice was rather more darkly lit than before.

The bands of sun and moon, rendered diffuse and indistinct by their precessional motions, still rocked through the sky; but – though the moon still seemed to be shining with the violent green of its transplanted vegetation – the sun appeared to be undergoing a cycle of change.

‘It seems,’ I observed, ‘that the sun is
flickering
– varying in brightness, on a scale covering centuries or more.’

‘I think you are right.’

It was this uncertainty of light, I was sure now, which was casting that odd, disorienting illusion of a shadow over the icy landscape. If you will stand by a window, hold your hand before your face with fingers outspread, and rattle your hand to and fro before your eyes – then, perhaps, you will get some impression of what I mean.

‘Confound that flickering,’ I protested, ‘it has a way of getting under the surface of the eye – of disturbing the rhythms of the mind, perhaps …’

‘But watch the light,’ Nebogipfel said. ‘Follow its quality. It is changing again.’

I stuck to my task, and presently I was rewarded by glimpses of a new aspect of the sun’s peculiar behaviour. There was a
greenness
about it – only at odd moments, when I would see a sort of pale verdancy streak along the sun’s celestial path – but real, nevertheless.

Now that I knew this green behaviour was present, I was able to detect an emerald flashing over the frozen hills and stark buildings of London. It was a poignant sight, like a memory of the life that had vanished from these hills.

Nebogipfel said, ‘I suspect that the flickering and the green flashes are connected …’ The sun, he pointed out, is the solar system’s greatest source of energy and matter. His Morlocks had themselves had exploited this, to construct their Sphere about the sun. ‘Now, I think,’ he said, ‘the Universal Constructors too are delving into that great body: they are mining the sun, for the raw materials they need …’

‘Plattnerite,’ I said, excitement growing within me. ‘That’s the meaning of the green flashes, isn’t it? The Constructors are extracting Plattnerite from the sun.’

‘Or using their alchemical skills to turn solar matter and energy into the substance of Plattnerite, which amounts to the same thing.’

For the glow of the Plattnerite to be visible to us, Nebogipfel argued, the Constructors must be building great shells of the stuff about the star. When completed, these shells would then be shipped off, in immense convoys, to construction sites elsewhere in the solar system; and the accretion of a fresh shell
begun. The flickering we saw must represent the accelerated assembly and dismantling of these great Plattnerite dumps.

‘It is extraordinary,’ I breathed. ‘The Constructors must be lifting the stuff out of the sun in batches that compare with the mass of the greatest of the planets! This overshadows even the building of your great Sphere, Nebogipfel.’

‘We know that the Constructors are not without ambition.’

Now, it seemed to me, the flickering of the patient sun grew rather less marked, as if the Constructors were nearing the end of their mining. I could see more patches of Plattnerite’s characteristic green about the sky, but these were separate from the sunband: rather, they hurtled across the sky rather in the manner of false moons. These were Plattnerite structures, I realized – huge, space-spanning buildings of the stuff – which were settling into some slow orbit about the earth.

Shifting Plattnerite light glistened from the hide of our patient Constructor, who stood by us while the sky went through these extraordinary evolutions!

Nebogipfel consulted his chronometric gauges. ‘We have travelled through nearly eight hundred thousand years … time enough, I think.’ He hauled on his levers – and the Time-Car lurched, displaying that clumsiness so characteristic of time travel – and I had nausea to contend with in addition to my awe and fear.

Immediately our Constructor disappeared from my view. I cried out – I could not help it! – and gripped the bench of the Time-Car. I think I had never felt so lost and alone, as at that moment when our faithful companion of eight thousand centuries suddenly – or so it seemed – abandoned us to strangeness.

The precessional juddering of the sun-band slowed, smoothed out and disappeared; within seconds, I perceived that disconcerting rattling of light which marks the passage of night and day, and the sky lost its washed-over, luminous-grey quality.

And now the green light of Plattnerite filled the air about me; it was all around our dome, and obscured the impassive plains of White Earth with its milky flickering.

The flapping of day and night slowed, to a beat slower than my pulse. Just in that last instant, I caught a vision – no more than a flash – of a field of stars breaking through the surface of things, dazzling and close; and I caught shadowy glimpses of several wide skulls, and huge, human eyes. Then Nebogipfel pushed his levers to their furthest extreme – the car stopped – and we emerged into History, and the crowd of Watchers vanished; and we were immersed in a flood of green light.

We were embedded in a Ship of Plattnerite!

M
yself, the Morlock, the workings and apparel of our little Time-Car –
all
of it was bathed in the emerald glow of Plattnerite, which was all about us. I had no idea of the true size of the Ship; indeed, I had some difficulty in finding my orientation within its bulk. It was not like a craft of my century, for it lacked a well-defined substructure, with walls and panels to fence off internal sections, engine compartments, and the like. Instead, you must imagine a
net
: a thing of threads and nodes all glowing with that green Plattnerite tinge, thrown about us as if by some invisible fisherman, so that Nebogipfel and I were encased in an immense mesh of rods and curves of light.

This net did not extend inwards all the way to our Time-Car: it seemed to halt at about the distance at which our dome had been resting. I was still breathing easily, and felt no colder than before. The environmental protection of the dome must still be afforded us, by some means; and I thought that the dome itself was still present, for I saw the faintest of reflections in a surface above, but so uncertain and shifting was the Plattnerite light that I could not be sure.

Nor could I make out the floor beneath the Time-Car. The netting seemed to extend below us, on and deep into the fabric of the building I remembered. I could not see how that flimsy webbing could support
a mass as great as our Time-Car’s, however, and I felt a sudden, and unwelcome, stab of vertigo. I put such primitive reactions aside with determination. My situation was extraordinary, but I wished to behave well – especially if these were to be the last moments of my life! – and I did not care to waste any energy on salving the discomfiture of the frightened ape within me, who thought he might fall out of this green-glowing tree.

I studied the net around us. Its main threads appeared to be about as thick as my index finger, although they glowed so bright it was hard to be sure if that thickness was merely some artefact of my own optical sensitivity. These threads surrounded cells perhaps a foot across, of irregular shapes: as far as I could see, no two of these cells shared a similar form. Finer threads were cast across and between these main cells, forming a complex pattern of sub-cells; and these sub-cells were themselves divided by finer threads, and so forth, right to the limit of my vision. I was reminded of the branching cilia which coated the outer layer of a Constructor.

At the nodes where the primary threads joined, points of light glowed, as defiantly green as the rest; these lumps did not stay at rest, but would migrate across threads, or would explode, in tiny, soundless flashes. You must imagine these little motions going on, all throughout the extent of the net, so that the whole thing was illuminated by a gentle, shifting glow, and a continuous evolution of structure and light.

I had a sense of fragility – it was like being cocooned in layers of spider-silk – but the whole thing had an organic quality to it, and I had the impression that if I were to reach up, clumsily, and tear great holes in this complex structure, it should soon repair itself.

And about the whole Ship, you must imagine,
there was that odd, contingent quality induced by the Plattnerite: a sense that the Ship was not embedded solidly in the world of things, a sense that it was all insubstantial and temporary.

The fabric was open enough for me to be able to see through the filmy outer hull of ‘our’ craft and to the world beyond. The hills and anonymous buildings of the Constructors’ London were still there, and the eternal ice showed no signs of disturbance. It was night-time, and the sky was clear; the moon, a silver crescent, sailed high amid the absence of stars …

And, sliding across the desolate sky of this abandoned earth, I saw more of the Plattnerite Ships. They were lenticular in form, immense, with the suggestion of the same net-structure exhibited by the one which encased me and Nebogipfel; smaller lights, like captive stars, gleamed and rustled through their complex interiors. The ice of White Earth was universally bathed with the glow of Plattnerite; the Ships were like immense, silent clouds, sailing unnaturally close to the land.

Nebogipfel studied me, the Plattnerite lending a rich green lustre to the hair coating his body. ‘Are you well? You seem a little discomposed.’

I had to laugh at that. ‘You’ve a talent for understating, Morlock. Discomposed?
I
should say so …’ I twisted in my seat, reached behind me, and found a bowl filled with the unidentifiable nuts and fruit which the Constructor had supplied me. I buried my fingers in the food and stuffed it into my mouth; I found the simple, animal actions of eating a welcome distraction from the astonishing, barely comprehensible matters about me. I wondered, in fact, if this should be the last meal I should take – the last supper of earth! ‘I think I expected our Constructor to be here to greet us.’

‘But I think he
is
here,’ Nebogipfel said. He raised his hand, and emerald light gleamed from his pale fingers. ‘This Ship is clearly designed along the same architectural principles as the Constructors themselves. I think we could say that “our” Constructor is still here: but now his consciousness is represented by some set of those sliding points of light, within this net of Plattnerite. And the Ship is surely connected to the Information Sea – indeed, perhaps one could say this is a new Universal Constructor itself.
The Ship is alive
… as alive as the Constructors.

‘And yet, since it is composed of Plattnerite, this craft must be so much
more
.’ He studied me, his single eye deep and dark behind his goggles. ‘Do you see? If this is life, it is a
new
sort of life – Plattnerite life – the first sort which is
not
bound, as the rest of us are, to the slow turning of History’s cogs. And it was
constructed
here, with ourselves as its focus … The Ship is here for us – to carry us back – just as the Constructor promised. He
is
here, you see.’

Of course, Nebogipfel was right; and now I wondered, with a sort of nervous self-consciousness, how many of those other Ships, which prowled across the star-less skies of earth like huge animals, were also down here, in some way, because of our presence?

But now, gazing up into the Plattnerite-coated sky, another observation struck me. ‘Nebogipfel – behold the moon!’

The Morlock turned; I saw how the green light which played over the hairs of his face was now overlaid with a delicate silver.

My observation was elementary: that the moon had lost its delicious greenness. The life-colour which had reached up from earth and coated it, for all those millions of years, had withered away, exposing the stark bone-white of the dusty mountains and
maria
beneath. Now, the satellite was quite indistinguishable in its dead pallor from the moon of my own day, save perhaps for a more brilliant glow over its dark side: there was a vivid Old Moon cradled in the New Moon’s arms – and I knew that this greater brightness must be due, solely, to the increased gleam of the ice-coated earth, which must blaze in those airless Lunar skies like a second sun.

‘It might have been the enforced variation of the sun,’ Nebogipfel speculated. ‘The Constructors’ Plattnerite project … That, perhaps, finally disrupted the balance of life.’

‘You know,’ I said with some bitterness, ‘I think – even after all we’ve seen and heard – I had taken some comfort from the persistence of that patch of earth-green, up in the sky. The thought that some-where – not so impossibly far away – a scrap of the earth I remembered might still persist: that there might be some improbable, low-gravity jungle, through which the sons of man might still walk … But now there can only be ruins and shallow footprints on that bleak surface – more of them, to match those littered across the carcass of the earth.’

And it was just at that moment, while I was in this maudlin mood, that there was a report uncommonly like a gunshot – and our protective dome fractured, like an eggshell!

I saw that a series of cracks – a complex delta of them – had spread out across the face of the dome. Even as I watched, a small piece of the dome, no bigger than my hand, fell loose and settled through the air, drifting like a snow-flake.

And beyond the shattering dome the threads of the Ship’s Plattnerite web were extending – they were growing,
down towards me and Nebogipfel
.

‘Nebogipfel – what is happening? Without the
dome, will we die?’ I was in a febrile, electric state, in which my every nerve-end was live with suspicion and fear.

‘You must try not to be afraid,’ Nebogipfel said, and then with a simple, astonishing gesture, he took hold my hand in his thin Morlock fingers, and held it as an adult might a child’s. It was the first time I had felt the touch of his cold fingers since those dreadful moments when the Constructor had rebuilt me, and a distant echo of our companionship in the Palaeocene returned to warm me, here amid the ice of White Earth. I am afraid I cried out then, unhinged by my fear, and pressed myself deeper into my seat, longing only for escape; and Nebogipfel’s weak fingers tightened around my own.

The dome cracked further, and I heard a soft rain of it patter down over the Time-Car. The threads of Plattnerite reached deeper into our splintering dome, with nodules of light squirting along their lengths.

Nebogipfel said, ‘They mean to carry us with them – the Constructors – these beings of Plattnerite – back to the dawn of time, and perhaps beyond … But not like
this
.’ He indicated his own fragile body. ‘We could never survive it – not for a minute … Do you see?’

The Plattnerite tentacles brushed against my scalp, forehead and shoulders; I ducked, to avoid their cold grip. ‘You mean,’ I said, ‘that we must become like
them
. Like the Constructors … we must submit to the touch of these Plattnerite cilia! Why did you not warn me of this?’

‘Would it have helped? It is the only way. Your fear is natural; but you must contain it, just for a moment more, and then – then you will be free …’

I could feel the cool weight of Plattnerite coils settling over my legs and shoulders. I tried to hold
myself still – and then I got the sense of one of those squirming cables moving across my forehead, and I could feel, quite clearly, the wriggling of cilia against my flesh, and I could not help but scream and struggle against that soft weight, but already I was unable to rise from my seat.

I was immersed in greenness now, and my view of the world beyond – of the moon, the earth’s fields of ice, even of the greater structure of the Ship – was obscured. Those shifting, quasi-animate nodes of light passed over my body, glaring in my vision. My bowl of fruit slipped from my numbing fingers, and rattled against the floor of the car; but even that rattle subsided quickly, as my senses faded to dimness.

There was a final crumbling of the dome, a hail of fragments about me. On my forehead there was a touch of cold, the distant breath of winter, and then there was only the coolness of Nebogipfel’s fingers about mine – it was all I could feel, save for that omnipresent, liquid fumbling of Plattnerite! I imagined cilia detaching and – as they had once before – squirming into the interstices of my body. So rapidly had this invasion of light progressed, I could no longer move so much as a finger, nor could I cry out – I was pinned as if by a strait-waistcoat – and now the tentacles forced themselves between my lips, like so many worms, and into my mouth, there to dissolve against my tongue; and I felt a cold pressure on the surface of my eyes –

I was lost, disembodied, immersed in emerald light.