The Time Ships (16 page)

S
ince this experience I have become convinced that we all, without exception, use the mirror to deceive ourselves. The reflection we see there is so much
under our control
: we favour our best features, if unconsciously, and adjust our mannerisms into a pattern which our closest friend would not recognize. And, of course, we are under no compulsion to consider ourselves from less favourable angles: such as from the back of the head, or with our prominent nose in full, glorious profile.

Well, here was one reflection which was
not
under my control – and a troubling experience it was.

He was my height, of course: if anything, I was startled to find, I had shrunk a little in the intervening eighteen years. His forehead was odd: peculiarly broad, just as many people have pointed out to me, unkindly, through my life, and dusted with thin, mouse-brown hair, yet to recede or show any streaks of grey. The eyes were a clear grey, the nose straight, the jaw firm; but I had hardly been a handsome devil: he was naturally pale, and that pallor was enhanced by the long hours he had spent, since his formative years, in libraries, studies, teaching-rooms and laboratories.

I felt vaguely repulsed; there was indeed a little of the Morlock in me! And had my ears
ever
been so prominent?

But it was the clothes which caught my eye.
The clothes!

He wore what I remembered as the costume of a
masher
: a short, bright red coat over a yellow and black waistcoat fixed with heavy brass buttons, boots tall and yellow, and a nosegay adorning his lapel.

Had
I
ever worn such garments? I must have done! – but anything further from my own sober style would have been difficult to imagine.

‘Confound it,’ I couldn’t help but say, ‘you’re dressed like a circus clown!’

He seemed uncertain – he saw something odd about my face, evidently – but he replied briskly enough: ‘Perhaps I should close this door in your face, sir. Have you climbed the Hill just to insult my clothing?’

I noticed that his nosegay was rather wilted, and I thought I could smell brandy on his breath. ‘Tell me. Is this Thursday?’

‘That’s a very odd question. I ought to …’

‘Yes?’

He held up the candle and peered into my face. So fascinated was he by me – by his own, dimly perceived self – that he ignored the Morlock: a man-thing from the distant future, standing not two yards away from him! I wondered if there was some clumsy Metaphor buried in this little scene: had I travelled into time, after all, only to seek out myself?

But I have no time for irony, and I felt rather embarrassed at even having framed such a Literary thought!

‘It
is
Thursday, as it happens. Or was – we’re in Friday’s small hours now. What of it? And why don’t you know in the first place? Who
are
you, sir?’

‘I’ll tell you who I am,’ I said. ‘And –’ I indicated the Morlock, and evoked widened eyes from our reluctant host ‘– and who
this
is. And why I’m not
sure what hour it is, or even what day. But first – may we come inside? For I would relish a little of your brandy.’

He stood there for perhaps half a minute, the candle wick sputtering in its pool of wax; and, in the distance, I heard the sigh of the Thames as it made its languid way through the bridges of Richmond. Then, at length, he said: ‘I should throw you into the street! – but …’

‘I know,’ I said gently. I regarded my younger self with indulgence; I have never been shy of feverish speculation, and I could imagine what wild hypotheses were already fomenting in that fecund, undisciplined mind!

He came to his decision. He stepped back from the door.

I gestured Nebogipfel forward. The Morlock’s feet, bare save for a coat of hair, padded on the hall’s parquetry floor. My younger self stared anew – Nebogipfel returned his gaze with interest – and he said: ‘It’s – ah – it’s late. I don’t want to get the servants up. Come on through to the dining-room; it’s probably the warmest place.’

The hall was dark, with a painted dado and a row of hat-pegs; our reluctant host’s broad skull was silhouetted by his single candle as he led the way past the door to the smoking-room. In the dining-room, there was still a glow of coals in the fireplace. Our host lit candles from the one he carried, and the room emerged into brightness, for there were a dozen or so candles in there: two in brass sticks on the mantel, with a tobacco jar plump and complacent between, and the rest in sconces.

I gazed around at this warm and comfortable room – so familiar, and yet made so different by the most subtle of rearrangements and redecoration! There was the little table at the door, with its pile of news
papers – replete, no doubt, with gloomy analyses of Mr Disraeli’s latest pronouncements, or perhaps some dreadfully dreary stuff about the Eastern Question – and there was my armchair close to the fire, low and comfortable. But of my set of small octagonal tables, and of my incandescent lamps with their lilies of silver, there was no sign.

Our host came up to the Morlock. He leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees. ‘What is this? It looks like some form of ape – or a deformed child. Is this your jacket it’s wearing?’

I bridled at this tone – and surprised myself for doing so. ‘“It”,’ I said, ‘is actually a “he”. And he can speak for himself.’

‘Can it?’ He swivelled his face back to Nebogipfel. ‘I mean, can you? Great Scott.’

He kept on staring into poor Nebogipfel’s hairy face, and I stood there on the carpet of the dining-room, trying not to betray my impatience – not to say embarrassment – at this ill-courtesy.

He remembered his hospitable duties. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry. Please – here. Sit down.’

Nebogipfel, swamped by my jacket, stood in the middle of the hearth-rug. He glanced down at the floor, and then around the room. He seemed to be waiting for something – and in a moment, I understood. So used was the Morlock to the technology of his time, he was waiting for furniture to be extruded from the carpet! Although, later in our acquaintance, the Morlock was to show himself rather knowledgeable about things and flexible of mind, just then he was as baffled as I might have been had I searched for a gas mantle on the wall of some Stone Age cave.

‘Nebogipfel,’ I said, ‘these are simpler times. The forms are
fixed
.’ I pointed to the dining-table and chairs. ‘You must select one of these.’

My younger self listened to this exchange with evident curiosity.

The Morlock, after a few more seconds’ hesitation, made for one of the bulkier chairs.

I got there before him. ‘Actually, not this one, Nebogipfel,’ I said gently. ‘I don’t think you’d find it comfortable – it might try to give you a massage, you see, but it’s not designed for your weight …’

My host looked at me, startled.

Nebogipfel, under my guidance – I felt like a clumsy parent as I fussed about him – pulled out a simple upright and climbed up into it; he sat there with his legs dangling like some hairy child.

‘How did you know about my Active Chairs?’ my host demanded. ‘I’ve only demonstrated them to a few friends – the design isn’t even patented yet –’

I did not answer: I simply held his gaze, for long seconds. I could see that the extraordinary answer to his question was already forming in his mind.

He broke the gaze. ‘Sit down,’ he said to me. ‘Please. I’ll fetch the brandy.’

I sat with Nebogipfel – at my own transmuted dining-table, with a Morlock for company! – and I glanced around. In one corner of the dining-room, on its tripod, sat the old Gregorian telescope which I had brought from my parents’ home – a simple thing capable of delivering only cloudy images, and yet a window for me as a child into worlds of wonder in the sky, and into the intriguing marvels of physical optics. And, beyond this room, there was the dark passage to the laboratory, with the doors left carelessly open; through the passage I caught tantalizing glimpses of my workshop itself: the clutter of apparatuses on the benches, sheets of drawings laid across the floor, and various tools and appliances.

Our host rejoined us; he carried, clumsily, three glasses for brandy, and a carafe. He poured out three
generous measures, and the liquor sparkled in the light of the candles. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Are you cold? Would you like the fire?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘thank you.’ I raised the brandy, sniffed at it, then let it roll over my tongue.

Nebogipfel did not pick up his glass. He dipped a pallid finger into the stuff, withdrew it, and licked a drop from his fingertip. He seemed to shudder. Then, delicately, he pushed the glass away from him, as if it were full to the brim with the most noxious ale imaginable!

My host watched this curiously. Then, with an evident effort, he turned to me. ‘You have me at a disadvantage. I don’t know you. But you know me, it appears.’

‘Yes.’ I smiled. ‘But I’m at something of a quandary as to what to call you.’

He frowned, looking uneasy. ‘I don’t see why that’s any sort of a problem. My name is –’

I held up my hand; I had an inspiration. ‘No. I will use – if you will permit –
Moses
.’

He took a deep pull on his brandy, and gazed at me with genuine anger in his grey eyes. ‘How do you know about that?’

Moses
– my hated first name, for which I had been endlessly tormented at school – and which I had kept a secret since leaving home!

‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘Your secret is safe with me.’

‘Look here, I’m growing tired of these games. You turn up here with your – companion – and make all sorts of disparagements about my clothes. And I still don’t even know your name!’

‘But,’ I said, ‘perhaps you do.’

His long fingers closed around his glass. He knew something strange, and wonderful, was going on – but what? I could see in his face, as clear as day, that mixture of excitement, impatience and a little fear
which I had felt so often when confronting the Unknown.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m prepared to tell you everything you want to know, just as I promised. But first –’

‘Yes?’

‘I would be honoured to view your laboratory. And I’m sure Nebogipfel would be curious. Tell us something of
you
,’ I said. ‘And in the course of that, you will learn about
me
.’

He sat for a while, clutching his drink. Then, with a brisk motion, he recharged our glasses, stood up, and took his candle from the mantel.

‘Come with me.’

B
earing his candle aloft, he led us down the cold passage-way to the laboratory. Those few seconds are vivid in my memory: the light of the candle casting huge shadows from Moses’s wide skull, and his jacket and boots glimmering in the uncertain light; behind me the Morlock’s feet padded softly, and in the enclosed space his rotten-sweet stench was strong.

At the laboratory Moses made his way around the walls and benches, lighting candles and incandescent lamps. Soon the place was brilliantly lit. The walls were whitewashed and free of ornamentation – save for some of Moses’s notes, crudely pinned there – and the single book-case was crammed with journals, standard texts and volumes of mathematical tables and physical measurements. The place was cold; in my shirtsleeves, I found myself shivering, and wrapped my arms about my body.

Nebogipfel padded across the workshop floor towards the book-case. He crouched down and studied the battered spines of the volumes there. I wondered if he could read English; for I had seen no evidence of books or papers in the Sphere, and the lettering on those ubiquitous panels of blue glass had been unfamiliar.

‘I’m not very interested in giving you a biographical summary,’ Moses said. ‘And nor –’ more sharply ‘– do I understand yet why you are so interested in me.
But I’m willing to play your game. Look here: suppose I run you through my most recent experimental findings. How does that sound?’

I smiled. How in keeping with my – his – character, with little to the surface of the mind but the current puzzle!

He went to a bench, on which stood a haphazard arrangement of retort stands, lamps, gratings and lenses. ‘I’d be grateful if you wouldn’t touch anything here. It may look a little random, but I assure you there’s a system! I have the devil of a time keeping Mrs Penforth and her dusters and brooms out of here, I can tell you.’

Mrs Penforth
? I had an impulse to ask after Mrs Watchets – but then I remembered that Mrs Penforth had been Mrs Watchets’s predecessor. I had released her some fifteen years before my departure into time, after I had caught her pilfering from my small stock of industrial diamonds. I thought of warning Moses of this little occurrence, but no real harm had been done; and – I thought with an oddly paternal mood towards my younger self – it would probably do Moses good to take a closer interest in the affairs of his household for once in a while, and not leave it all to chance!

Moses went on, ‘My general field is physical optics – that is to say, the physical properties of light, which –’

‘We know,’ I said gently.

He frowned. ‘All right. Well, recently, I’ve been somewhat diverted by an odd conundrum – it’s the study of a new mineral, a sample of which I came upon by chance two years ago.’ He showed me a common eight-ounce graduated medicine bottle, plugged with rubber; the bottle was half-full of a fine, greenish powder, oddly shining. ‘Look here: can you see how there is a faint translucence about it, as if it were glowing from within?’ And indeed the material
shone as if it were composed of fine glass beads. ‘But where,’ Moses went on, ‘is the energy source for such illumination?

‘So I began my researches – at first in odd moments, for I have my work to do! – I depend on grants and commissions, which depend in turn on my building up a respectable flow of research results. I have no time for chasing wild geese … But later,’ he admitted, ‘this Plattnerite came to absorb a great deal of my time – for such I had decided to call the stuff, after the rather mysterious chap – Gottfried Plattner, he called himself – who donated it to me.

‘I’m no chemist – even within the limits of the Three Gases my practical chemistry has always been a little tentative – but still, I set to with a will. I bought test tubes, a gas supply and burners, litmus paper, and all the rest of that smelly paraphernalia. I poured my green dust into test tubes and tried it with water, and with acids – sulphuric, nitric and hydrochloric – learning nothing. Then I emptied out a heap onto a slate and held it over my gas burner.’ He rubbed his nose. ‘The resulting bang blew out a skylight and made a fearful mess of one wall,’ he said.

It had been the south-western wall which had sustained damage, and now – I could not help myself – I glanced that way, but there was nothing to distinguish it, for the repair work had been thorough. Moses noted my glance, curiously, for he had not indicated which wall it had been.

‘After this failure,’ he went on, ‘I was still no closer to unravelling the mysteries of Plattnerite. Then, however –’ his tone grew more animated ‘– I began to apply a little more reason to the case. The translucence is an optical phenomenon, after all. So – I reasoned – perhaps the key to the secrets of Plattnerite lay not in its chemistry, but in its optical properties.’

I felt a peculiar satisfaction – a kind of remote self-regard – at hearing this summary of my own clear thinking processes! And I could tell that Moses was enjoying the momentum of his own narrative: I have always enjoyed recounting a good tale, to whatever audience – I think there is something of the showman in me.

‘So I swept aside my clutter of Schoolboy Chemistry,’ Moses went on, ‘and began a new series of tests. And very quickly I came upon striking anomalies: bizarre results concerning Plattnerite’s refractive index – which, you may know, depends on the velocity of light within the substance. And it turned out that the behaviour of light rays passing through Plattnerite is highly peculiar.’ He turned to the experiment on the bench-top. ‘Now, look here; this is the clearest demonstration of Plattnerite’s optical oddities which I have been able to devise.’

Moses had set up his test in three parts, in a line. There was a small electric lamp with a curved mirror behind it, and, perhaps a yard away, a white screen, held upright by a retort stand; between these two, clamped in the claws of another retort, was a cardboard panel which bore the evidence of fine scoring. Beside the lamp, wires trailed to an electromotive cell beneath the bench.

The set-up was lucidly simple: I have always sought as straightforward as possible a demonstration of any new phenomenon, the better to focus the mind on the phenomenon itself, and not on deficiencies in the experimental arrangement, or – it is always possible – some trickery on behalf of the experimenter.

Now Moses closed a switch, and the lamp lit; it was a small yellow star in the candle-lit room. The cardboard panel shielded the screen from the light, save for a dim central glow, cast by rays admitted by the scoring in the panel. ‘Sodium light,’ Moses said. ‘It is
nearly a pure colour – as opposed, say, to white sunlight, which is a mixture of all the colours. This mirror behind the lamp is parabolic, so it casts all the lamp’s light towards the interposed card.’

He traced the paths of the light rays towards the card. ‘On the card I have scored two slits. The slits are a mere fraction of an inch apart – but the structure of light is so fine that the slits are, nevertheless, some three hundred wavelengths apart. Rays emerge from the two slits –’ his finger continued on ‘– and travel onwards to the screen, here. Now, the rays from the two slits
interfere
– their crests and troughs reinforce and cancel each other out, at successive places.’ He looked at me uncertainly. ‘Are you familiar with the idea? You would get much the same effect if you were to drop two stones into a still pond, and watch how the spreading ripples coalesced …’

‘I understand.’

‘Well, in just the same way, these waves of light – ripples in the ether – interfere with each other, and set up a pattern which one may observe, here on this screen beyond.’ He pointed to the patch of yellow illumination which had reached the screen beyond the slits. ‘Can you see? – one really needs a glass – right at the heart of it, there, you’ll see bands of illumination and darkness, alternating, a few tenths of an inch apart. Well, those are the spots where the rays from the two slits are combining.’

Moses straightened up. ‘This interference is a well-known effect. Such an experiment is commonly used to determine the wavelength of the sodium light – it works out at a fifty-thousandth part of an inch, if you’re interested.’

‘And the Plattnerite?’ Nebogipfel asked.

Moses started at hearing the Morlock’s liquid tones, but he carried on gamely. From another part of the bench he produced a glass slide, perhaps six
inches square, held upright in a stand. The glass appeared to be stained green. ‘Here I have some Plattnerite – actually, this slide is a sandwich of two glass sheets, with the Plattnerite sprinkled and scattered between – do you see? Now, watch what happens when I interpose the Plattnerite between card and screen …’

It took him some adjusting, but he arranged affairs so that one of the slits in the cards remained clear, and the other was covered by the Plattnerite slide. Thus, one of the two interfering sets of rays would have to pass through Plattnerite before reaching the screen.

The image of interference bands on the screen was made fainter – it was tinged with green – and the pattern was shifted and distorted.

Moses said, ‘The rays are rendered less pure, of course – some of the sodium light is scattered from the Plattnerite itself, and so emerges with wavelengths appropriate to the greener part of the spectrum – but still, enough of the original sodium light passes through the Plattnerite without scattering to allow the interference phenomenon to persist. But – can you see the changes this has made?’

Nebogipfel bent closer; the sodium light shone from his goggles.

‘The shifting of a few smears of light on a card may not seem so important to the layman,’ Moses went on, ‘but the effect is of great significance, if analysed closely. For – and I can show you the mathematics to prove it,’ he said, waving unconvincingly at a heap of notes on the floor, ‘the light rays, passing through the Plattnerite, undergo a
temporal distortion
. It is a tiny effect, but measurable – it shows up in a distortion of the interference pattern, you see.’

‘A “temporal distortion”?’ Nebogipfel said, looking up. ‘You mean …’

‘Yes.’ Moses’s skin was coldly illuminated in the sodium light. ‘I believe that the light rays – in passing through the Plattnerite –
are transferred through time
.’

I gazed with a sort of rapture at this crude demonstration, of bulb and cards and clamps. For this was the start – it was from this naïve beginning that the long, difficult experimental and theoretical trail would lead, at last, to the construction of the Time Machine itself!