Morlock Night (21 page)

  Tafe's voice broke in upon my dark meditations. "What do you suppose is going to happen now?" she said. Her voice sounded singularly unemotional. Perhaps she had arrived at the same inner judgments as I had.

  "I have no idea." I gestured at the cubicle's bleak walls, illumined by a single blue sphere overhead. "Perhaps they have put us here and already forgotten us. This might very well be our tomb."

  "Didn't that Nalga say something about doing some travelling, though? I wonder where to." She mused on the empty space in front of her.

  "Who knows?" I said. "Their motivations can hardly be credited as human. For all I know they may intend to ship us to some victory banquet they are planning, and to serve us on silver platters with apples in our mouths."

  Our conversation ceased on that cheerful note. For a span of some hours we sat in gloomy silence, keeping our thoughts to ourselves. Starvation at least was not to be our lot, for one of the Morlock guards opened the door and deposited a tray bearing a carafe of water and a pair of flat, circular loaves of bread. After a moment's hesitation, wondering as to the origin of the food, we ate and drank. So passed an unknown amount of time, terminated when I at last fell asleep on one of the thin blankets.

  The sound of the door being pulled open roused me from a dreamless sleep. Tafe was already sitting up with her back to one of the chamber's walls, regarding our visitor. I righted myself and saw that it was Col. Nalga standing in the doorway with his retinue of Morlock guards standing just behind him.

  His repugnant sneer of victory was still congealed across his death-white face. "It seems," he said, "as if I'm not yet relieved of the responsibility for you. As I've brought you this far, it is now my duty to transport you somewhat farther."

  "And where might that be?" I said with stiff formality. However many triumphs he might be anticipating for his noxious breed, the Morlock officer remained an insufferable upstart.

  "You'll see soon enough," he said, the sneer turning into a wide and nasty grin. "If you two would care to step out into the corridor, our journey may commence."

  As we exited the tiny room one of the Morlock guards stepped forward with the manacles and chain we had borne previously. Col. Nalga waved him away. "I think we can dispense with those," he said, turning toward us. "I'm sure you both recognise the futility of attempting anything rash."

  Indeed, the close presence of the Morlock guards precluded any chances of escape. And beyond that, where was there to escape to? We were irrevocably stranded centuries away from any succour. Our captors' mercy – a laughable notion – was our only fate.

  "Very good," continued Col. Nalga. "Come along this way, then." He led us to the lofty main corridor. There, on the metal tracks on which the carts of supplies ran to be loaded near the Time Machine, was a small passenger vehicle. Through its windows could be seen several upholstered seats arranged against its walls. An engine, not steam but some other type that emitted a low hum, was connected to the front of the little cab.

  "Get in, please," said Col. Nalga as one of the guards ran ahead and opened the cab's door. Tafe and I mounted up a set of folding steps and took our seats on either side of the compartment. The elegant appearance of the vehicle was much diminished upon close inspection. The leather of the seats was racked and split open, and the dark wood panelling was warped where it was not actually peeling away. Apparently this, like the Atlantean submarine back in the Lost Coin World, was an item that the Morlocks had salvaged from the remains of some earlier people. Perhaps it was an artifact of the last true men before they had died out and left the world to the Morlocks and the effete surface people of which I remembered the Time Machine's inventor talking. No wonder that the Morlocks, incapable of creating anything themselves, wished to plunder an earlier world's creations and resources.

  Col. Nalga and two of the guards climbed into the cab and took the remaining seats. The engine ahead whined and started to move. In a few moments we were rocketing, down the vaulted corridor at quite a heady rate of speed.

  "I hope you're not alarmed," said Col. Nalga. "But we have a great distance to go, and patience is not the long suit of those who are waiting for us."

  "You refused before to divulge our destination," I said. "Will you tell us then who it is we're going to see?"

  "Forgive me for toying with you so cruelly. I don't wish to play cat-and-mouse with your questions and my answers, but I have my orders. Suffice it to say that you will soon be face to face with one who is not a Morlock such as I, but who nevertheless leads our plans to invade your time."

  "Merdenne?" I said. "Is that whom you're speaking of?"

  "Merdenne!" scoffed the Morlock officer. "That fumbler! Whatever happened to him he no doubt walked right into. No, he's not the one. But that's enough – I can say no more. Relax and enjoy this little excursion. It will soon emerge from this monotonous corridor and become more pleasant." He evidently relished the irony his politeness made in the face of our situation.

  His words proved true in a short time. The little cab in which we rode reached a terminal point on the subterranean rail line, and we dismounted. An elevator, subject to stalls during its upward progress, took us to the surface.

  It was late evening when we stepped out into the open air, but how good even the muted scarlet rays of the sunset felt upon my skin! My lungs drank in the air uncontaminated by the underground's clamminess and filth. The grim hope sprung up in me that, whatever the fate the Morlocks had in store for us, we would be allowed to meet it out in the open rather than in some fetid chamber in the Earth's dark bowels. A spasm of horror at the thought of an underground death coursed through me, then passed away as I forced myself to observe the landscape around us.

  The Time Machine's inventor had described it accurately. This far-advanced age had transformed England into a sylvan park, the beauty of which belied the hideous activities of the Morlocks below the surface. Trees and lush-grown, rolling hills, and not one stone upon another to show that the great city of London had once stood here. All that was past.

  "Where are… the other people?" I said. "I can't remember what the fellow said they were called."

  "The Eloi?" said Col. Nalga. He and the group of Morlock guards had put on dark blue spectacles to shield their eyes from even the sunset's dim light.

  "Yes, that's right. That's the name."

  "I'm afraid that the fellow who told you of them actually observed our culture at a slightly earlier period than this. At this time we do not allow our valuable food source to wander freely around in herds. We use pens."

  For a moment I was stricken with revulsion at this bold-faced statement of cannibalism. But then I reasoned that it would make as much sense to accuse a lion or other wild man-eater of the same crime. An animal such as that seemed as related to us as the Morlocks were – that is to say, not much. No, the process of evolution had made them into a separate species. No matter what our common origins might be, they were a breed apart. And as such, if I could have raised my hand to strike down the whole lot of them I would have done so with no more remorse than that felt by some rural vermin-hunter of my time toward his prey.

  As the skies darkened we proceeded a short distance to the bank of the Thames, now a clear, sweet-smelling flow of water rather than the refusechoked lane of commerce it had been in my day. At a small dock a boat was waiting for us. We boarded and headed out to the channel. As the craft cut through the water I looked away from the gloating faces of our captors and up into the night sky. Over the centuries the stars had slowly shifted their positions. None of the constellations I knew from my time were still recognisable in the heavens. Those too were past, lost in the ocean of Time. Beside me, Tafe leaned over the rail and spat into the water.

  I fell asleep with my back against the rail, and woke only when we reached the shore of the European continent. Another transfer was made, this time to a train much like the ones I had known. At its head, however, was the same oddly humming type of engine. Tafe and I were placed in a compartment with two narrow bunks in it. "Relax and rest yourself, dear friends," said Col. Nalga as he closed the compartment's door. "You have yet a long journey ahead of you."

  The door proved locked from the outside when I tried it. The windows as well had been sealed over with a heavy metal plate, except for a small ventilation space at the bottom.

  "Paranoid bastards," said Tafe. "What's so important that they don't want us to see?"

  "Like most evildoers," I noted, "they have a penchant for needless secrecy. Fleeing when no one's pursuing, as it were." I laid down on one of the bunks and closed my eyes. The train's motion as it picked up speed lulled my thoughts. In a few moments I was back in the sleep I had started while crossing the Channel.

  Dr. Ambrose was speaking to me, but I couldn't see him. All I could make out around me was a vast pattern of alternating black and white squares like a chessboard. I stood on one of the squares and in the distance other figures loomed, dark and mysterious.
Fear will lose the game
, said Ambrose's voice.
Take
courage… take the sword…

  "Take it easy, Hocker! Just hold still and lay back. Jeez, are you awake?"

  My eyelids fluttered, opened and I looked up into Tafe's worried face. Her hands were on my shoulders, pressing me back into the bunk. "What– what's the matter?" I said hoarsely.

  "Where
were
you?" she said. "You were thrashing around and yelling 'What sword? What sword?' Like to scare me to death. What was all that about?"

  "I– I don't know." The chessboard landscape was fading from my mind. "I thought I heard… No. Nothing. He must be long past, too, by now."

  Tafe stared at me for a moment, then went back to her own bunk. I lay awake, listening to the train's passage through the night.

 

We had two meals brought to us, of the same flat bread and water, before the journey was done. A full day – or two? – had gone by outside our sealed compartment, for it was night again when Col. Nalga and the Morlock guards took us off the train. Before leaving the little compartment they had given us heavy coats and fur-trimmed hats such as they themselves were now wearing. The reason for such apparel was clear as soon as we stepped into the open.

  A freezing blast of wind struck us, flinging sharp, stinging crystals of ice into our faces. We braced ourselves against the arctic gale while our Morlock escort grouped around us. "What is this place?" I shouted to Col. Nalga through the roaring wind. All I could see was snow and darkness.

  "We've travelled a long ways, Mr. Hocker," Col. Nalga shouted back. "Farther than you probably think. This area is in what was known in your time as Germany, near the mountain mass that was then called the Zillertal. The climate is considerably changed due to the advance of the Schleigeiss glacier."

  Germany! Even in the numbing onslaught of cold, a shock ran through me on hearing this revelation. For what purpose could the Morlocks have brought us here? This seemed to surpass all the mysteries that had been generated so far.

  "For God's sake," I asked, "what could possibly be here?"

  "In your time there was only a small village nearby. That's all gone now, of course. If you hadn't had the misfortune to arrive in this storm you would have been able to see that to which we have come. But there!" He extended his arm, made thick with his heavy coat. "You can just make it out where it stands."

  My eyes followed the direction the Morlock officer indicated, but at first I could see nothing. Then an outline took form, looming through the obscuring storm. Dark against the surrounding darkness, it seemed like some massive medieval fortification standing alone on the bleak crag above us. In all my studies I had never read of such a thing being erected in this remote area. Who could have built it in the centuries since my time, and for what reason?

  The Morlock guards were at last assembled about us, and Col. Nalga led the way toward the towering dark shape. As we struggled toward it, staggering in the face of the wind and the snow, I could make out the sputtering glow of torches at a point near the castle's base. A few yards closer and I could see that they flanked a high-arched entranceway. Another group of Morlocks was there, awaiting our arrival.

  We gained the shelter of the arch and could stand upright again. The storm beyond the stone walls continued to rage, blotting out any sight of the train that had brought us to this desolate landscape.

  Salutes were exchanged between Col. Nalga and the Morlock officer in charge of the group that had been waiting for us. After a brief exchange in their own language, Col. Nalga turned to Tafe and myself. "You're in luck," he said, grinning malevolently. His pallid face beneath the fur-trimmed hat was as cold and heartless as the snow beyond. "You won't have to spend any time waiting. The one who ordered you to be brought here is ready to see you now."

  "This seems as good a time as any," I said, then defiantly: "Lead the way."

  With our previous guards behind and the ones from the castle before us, Tafe and I were escorted into the dark structure. By the light of the smouldering torches set at intervals in the walls I noted the castle's apparent great age. The stones that formed the walls were much battered and covered with time-worn inscriptions, and the stones of the floor were worn in channels from centuries of feet treading upon them. In all, everything about the castle gave an atmosphere of great antiquity and the solemn mystery that often accompanies old relics.