The Time Ships (44 page)

T
o travel to the Beginning of Time …
My soul quailed at the prospect!

You may think me something of a coward for this reaction. Well, perhaps I was. But you must remember that I had already been granted a vision of one extremity of Time – its bitter End – in one of the Histories I had investigated: the very first, where I had watched the dying of the sun over that desolate beach. I remembered, too, my nausea, my sickness and confusion; and how it had only been a greater dread of lying helpless in that rayless obscurity which had impelled me to get aboard the Time Machine once more and haul myself back into the past.

I knew that the picture I should find at the dawn of things would be rather different – unimaginably so! – but it was the memory of that dread and weakness which made me hesitate.

I am a human – and proud of it! – but my extraordinary experiences, I dare say more unusual that any man of my generation, had led me to understand the limitations of the human soul – or, at any rate, of
my
soul. I could deal with the descendants of man, like the Morlocks, and I could make a fair fist of coping with your prehistoric monstrosities like
Pristichampus
. And, when it was a mere intellectual exercise – in the warmth of the lounge of the Linnaean – I could conceive of going much further: I could have
debated for long hours the Finitude of Time, or von Helmholtz’s views on the inevitability of the Heat Death of the universe.

… But, the truth is, I found the reality altogether more daunting.

The available alternative, however, was hardly attractive!

I have always been a man of action – I like to get hold of things! – but here I was, cushioned in the hands of metal creatures so advanced they could not conceive even of talking to me, any more than I should think of holding spiritual conversations with a flask of bacillus. There was nothing I could
do
here on White Earth – for the Universal Constructors had
done
it all.

Many times, I wished I had ignored Nebogipfel’s invitation and stayed in the Palaeocene! There, I had been a part of a growing, developing society, and my skills and intellect – as well as my physical strength – could have played a major part in the survival and development of Humanity in that hospitable Age. I found my thoughts, inwardly directed as they were, turning also to Weena – to that world of
A.D.
802,701 to which I had first travelled through time, and to which I had intended to return – only to be blown off my course by the first Bifurcation of History. If things had been different, I thought – if
I
had behaved differently, that first time, perhaps I could have retrieved Weena from the flames, even at the cost of my own health or life. Or, if I had survived
that
, perhaps I could have gone on to make a genuine difference in that unhappy History, by somehow leading Eloi and Morlock to confront their common degradation.

I had done none of that, of course; I had run for home, as soon as I retrieved my Time Machine again. And now I was forced to accept that, because of the
endless calving-off of Histories, I could never return to 802,701 – or, indeed, to my own time.

It seemed that my nomadic trail had ended here, in these meaningless few rooms!

I would be kept alive by these Constructors, it seemed, as long as my body continued to function. Since I have always been robust, I supposed I could look forward to several decades more of life – and perhaps even longer; for if Nebogipfel was right about the sub-molecular capabilities of these Constructors, perhaps (so Nebogipfel speculated, to my astonishment) they would be able to halt, or reverse, even the ageing processes of my body!

But it seemed I would be deprived of companionship forever – save for my unequal relationship with a Morlock who, already being my intellectual superior, and with his continuing immersion in the Information Sea, would surely soon pass on to concerns far advanced beyond my understanding.

I faced a long and comfortable life, then – but it was the life of a zoo animal, caged up in these few rooms, with nothing meaningful to achieve. It was a future that had become a tunnel, closed and unending …

But, on the other hand, I knew that concurring with the Constructors’ plan was a course of action quite capable of destroying my intellect.

I confided these doubts to Nebogipfel.

‘I understand your fears, and I applaud your honesty in confronting your own weakness. You have grown in understanding of yourself, since our first meeting –’

‘Spare me this kindness, Nebogipfel!’

‘There is no need for a decision now.’

‘What do you mean?’

Nebogipfel went on to describe the immense technical scope of the Constructors’ project. To fuel the
Ships, vast amounts of Plattnerite would have to be prepared.

‘The Constructors work on long time-scales,’ the Morlock said. ‘But, even so, this project is ambitious. The Constructors’ own estimates of completion (and this is vague, because the Constructors do not
plan
in the sense that human builders do; rather they simply build, cooperative and incremental and utterly dedicated, in the manner of termites) are that another million years will pass before the Ships are made ready.’

‘
A million years
? … The Constructors must be patient indeed, to devise schemes on such scales!’

My imagination was caught by the scale of all this, so startled was I by that number! To consider a project spanning geological ages, and designed to send ships to the Dawn of Time: I felt a certain awe settling over me, I told Nebogipfel: a sense, perhaps, of the numinous.

Nebogipfel favoured me with a sort of sceptical glare. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘But we must strive to be practical.’ He said that he had negotiated to have the remains of our improvised Time-Car brought to us; as well as tools, raw materials, and a supply of fresh Plattnerite …

I understood his thinking immediately. ‘You’re suggesting we just hop on the Time-Car, and skip forward through a million-year interval, while our patient Constructors complete the Ships’ development?’

‘Why not? We have no other way to reach the launch of the Ships. The Constructors may be functionally immortal, but we are not.’

‘Well – I don’t know! – it just seems … I mean, can the Constructors be so
sure
of completing their building programme – on time, and as they have envisaged it – over such immense intervals? Why, in my
day, the human species itself was only a tenth that age.’

‘You must remember,’ Nebogipfel said, ‘
the Constructors are not human
. They are, truly, an immortal species. Individual foci of awareness may form and dissolve back into the general Sea, but the continuity of Information-gathering, and their consistency of purpose, is unwavering …

‘In any event,’ he said, regarding me, ‘what have you to lose? If we travel up through time and find that, after all, the Constructors gave up before completing their Ships – what of it?’

‘Well, we could die, for one thing. What if no Constructor is available to greet us, and tend to our needs, at the distant end of your million years?’

‘
What of it
?’ the Morlock repeated. ‘Can you look into your heart, now, and say that you are happy –’ he waved a hand at our little apartment ‘– to live like
this
for the rest of your life?’

I did not answer; but I think he read my response in my face.

‘And besides –’ he went on.

‘Yes?’

‘Once it is built, it is possible we may choose to use the Time-Car to travel in a different direction.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘We will be given plenty of Plattnerite – we could even reach the Palaeocene again, if you would like.’

I glanced about furtively, feeling like some plotting criminal! ‘Nebogipfel, what if the Constructors hear you saying such things?’

‘What if they do? We are not
prisoners
here. The Constructors find us interesting – and they feel that
you
should accompany the Ships on their final quest, because of your historical and causal significance. But they would not force us, or keep us here if our distress was so deep that we could not survive.’

‘And you?’ I asked him carefully. ‘What do
you
want to do?’

‘I have made no decision,’ he retorted. ‘My main concern
now
is to open as many options to the future as I can.’

This was eminently sensible advice, and so – having done with introspection! – I concurred with Nebogipfel that we should make a start at rebuilding the Time-Car. We fell into a detailed discussion as to the requirements we would have for materials and tools.

T
he Time-Car was brought in from the ice by the Constructor. To achieve this, the Constructor split himself into four small sub-pyramids, and positioned these child-machines beneath each corner of the car’s battered frame. The child-machines moved with a kind of oily, flowing motion – think of the way a sand-dune advances, grain by grain, under the influence of a wind – and I saw how migrating threads of metal cilia connected the child-machines to each other as the strange procession continued.

When the remains of our car had been deposited in the middle of one room, the child-machines coalesced into their parent Constructor once more; they flowed upwards and into each other, as if melting. I found it a fascinating sight, if repulsive; but soon Nebogipfel was happily plugged into his eye-scope once more without a qualm.

The essential sub-structure of the Time-Car came from the skeleton of our 1938 Chronic Displacement Vehicle, but its super-structure – such as it was, merely a few panels for walls and floor – had been improvised, by Nebogipfel, from the wreckage of the Expeditionary Force’s bombed-out Juggernauts and the Messerchmitt
Zeitmaschine
. The simple controls had been a similarly crude affair. Much of this, now, was depleted and wrecked. So, in addition to the replacement of the Plattnerite, it was pretty clear that
we needed to perform some pretty extensive renovation work on the car.

I contributed much of the skilled manual work, under the direction of Nebogipfel. At first I resented this arrangement, but it was Nebogipfel who had the access to the Information Sea, and thereby the accumulated wisdom of the Constructors; and it was he who was able to specify to the Constructor the materials we needed: pipe of such-and-such a diameter, with a thread of this-or-that pitch; and so forth.

The Constructor produced the raw materials we needed in his usual novel fashion; he simply extruded the stuff from his hide. It cost him nothing, it seemed, save a material depletion; but that was soon made up by an increased flow into the apartment of the migrating cilia which sustained him.

I found it difficult to trust the results of this process. I had visited steel-works and the like during the manufacture of components of my own Time Machine, and earlier devices: I had watched molten iron run from the blast-furnaces into Bessemer converters, there to be oxidized and mixed with spiegel and carbon … And so on. By comparison, I found it hard to put my faith in something which had been disgorged by a shapeless, glistening heap!

The Morlock pointed out my folly at this prejudice, of course. ‘The sub-atomic transmutation of which the Constructor is capable is a far more refined process than that mess of melting, mixing and hammering you describe – a process which sounds as if it had barely evolved since your departure from the caves.’

‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘but even so … It’s the invisibility of all this!’ I picked up a wrench; like all the tools we had specified, this had been disgorged by the Constructor within moments of Nebogipfel’s request for it, and it was a smooth, seamless thing, without
joints, screws or mould marks. ‘When I pick up this thing, I half-expect it to feel
warm
, or to be dripping with stomach-acid, or to be covered with those dreadful iron cilia …’

Nebogipfel shook his head, his gesture a conscious mockery. ‘You are so
intolerant
of ways of doing things other than your own!’

Despite my reservations, I was forced to allow to the Constructor providing us with more equipment and supplies. I reasoned that the journey should take thirty hours, if we retreated all the way to the Palaeocene – but no more than thirty minutes if we performed the limited hop to the future of the Time Ships. So, determined not to be unprepared
this
time, I stocked up our new car with enough food and water, to our varying requirements, to last us for some days; and I asked for thick, warm clothing to be provided for us both. Still, I was uneasy as I lifted the heavy coat the Constructor had made for me over the battered remains of my jungle-twill shirt; the coat was an affair of silvery, unidentifiable cloth, quite heavily quilted.

‘It just doesn’t seem natural,’ I protested to Nebogipfel, ‘to
wear
something which has been vomited up in such a fashion!’

‘Your reservations are becoming tedious,’ the Morlock replied. ‘It is clear enough to me that you have a morbid fear of the body and its functions. This is evidenced not only by your irrational response to the Constructor’s manufacturing capabilities, but also by your earlier reaction to Morlocks –’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I retorted, startled.

‘You have repeatedly described to me your encounters with those – cousins – of mine, using terms associated with the body: faecal analogies, fingers like worms, and so on.’

‘So you’re saying – wait a minute – you’re saying
that, in fearing the Morlock, and the products of the Constructors, I fear my own
biology
?’

Without warning, he flashed his fingers in my face; the pallor of the naked flesh of his palm, the worm-like quality of his fingers – all of it was horrifying to me, of course, as it always was! – and I could not help but flinch away.

The Morlock evidently felt he had made his point; and I remembered, too, my earlier connection between my dread of the Morlocks’ dark subterranean bases and my childhood fear of the ventilation shafts set in the grounds of my parents’ home.

Needless to say I felt distinctly uncomfortable at this brusque diagnosis of Nebogipfel’s: at the thought that my reactions to things were governed, not by the force of my intellect as I might have supposed, but by such odd, hidden facets of my nature! ‘I think,’ I concluded with all the dignity I could muster, ‘that some things are best left unsaid!’ – and I stopped the conversation.

The finished Time-Car was quite a crude design: just a box of metal, open at the top, unpainted and roughly finished. But the controls were by some distance advanced over the limited mechanisms Nebogipfel had been able to manufacture with the materials available in the Palaeocene – they even included simple chronometric dials, albeit hand-lettered – and we would have about as much freedom of movement in time as I had been afforded by my own first machine.

As I worked, and the day approached on which we had set ourselves to depart, my fear and uncertainty mounted. I knew that I could never return home – but if I went on from here, on with Nebogipfel into future and past, I might enter such strangeness that I might not survive, either in mind or body. I might, I
knew, be approaching the end of my life; and a soft, human terror settled over me.

Finally it was done. Nebogipfel set himself on his saddle. He was done up in a heavy, quilted overall of the Constructor’s silvery cloth; and new goggles were fixed over his small face. He looked a little like a small child bundled up against the winter – at least until one made out the hair cascading from his face, and the luminous quality of the eye behind the blue glasses he wore.

I sat down beside him, and made a last check over the contents of our car.

Now – as we sat there, in a startling second – the walls of our apartment melted, silently, to glass! All around us, visible now through the translucent walls of our room, the bleak plains of White Earth stretched off to the distance, gilded red by an advanced sunset. The Constructor’s cilia – again to Nebogipfel’s specification – had reworked the material of the walls of the chamber within which the Time-Car sat. We should continue to need some protection from the savage climate of White Earth; but we wished to have a view of the world as we progressed.

Although the temperature of the air was unchanged, I immediately felt much colder; I shivered, and pulled my coat closer around me.

‘I think we are set,’ Nebogipfel said.

‘Set,’ I agreed, ‘save for one thing – our decision! Do we travel to the future of the completed Ships, or-?’

‘I think the decision is yours,’ he said. But he had – I like to think – some sympathy in his alien expression.

Still that soft fear quivered inside me, for, save for those first few desperate hours after I lost Moses, I have never been a man to welcome the prospect of
death! – and yet I knew that my choice now might end my life. But still –

‘I really don’t think I have much choice,’ I told Nebogipfel. ‘We cannot stay here.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘We are exiles, you and I,’ he said. ‘I think there is nothing for us to do but continue – on to the End.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘To the Ends of Time itself, it seems … Well! So be it, Nebogipfel. So be it.’

Nebogipfel pressed forward the levers of the Time-Car – I felt my breathing accelerate, and blood pounded in my temples – and we fell into the grey clamour of time travel.