Nor could I. “Are the resemblances between your story and his really so close that there is no possibility of coincidence?” I asked.
“They are,” he said, positively. “My time-traveller uses a machine to transport him into the future rather than a drug, but what my protagonist discovers in the first future era he visits is so similar to what Copplestone has described as to be an evident copy.”
I found this news strangely disturbing. “You have also foreseen a future in which the human race serves as the cattle of a race of vampires?”
He blinked in perplexity. “Oh no,” he said. “Not vampires. But in my vision of the year 802,701 the human race has divided into two separate species, one of them living meekly upon the surface enjoying a life of ease while the other lives underground, tending the machinery which sustains the apparent Golden Age. They are, you see, the ultimate descendants of the two great classes of our society: the leisured and the labourers. But in my story, the wretched and ugly Morlocks have their revenge upon the lovely Eloi, for they emerge from their caverns by night to prey upon their onetime masters, feeding upon their flesh. Copplestone’s story is a simple transfiguration of mine. It is plagiarism – there is no other possible explanation.”
“Pardon me,” interposed another voice, “but I believe there is.” It was the older of the two men of science: Sir William Crookes.
“I should be interested to hear it,” I murmured, while the young man bridled.
“Even sceptics like my friend Tesla must admit,” said the old man, equably, “that it is possible that all men are capable of a degree of precognition. There is evidence that our dreams routinely bring us news of the future, admittedly confused by our own minds with other materials. Must we not admit the possibility that you, Mr Wells, have something of the innate ability which Copplestone’s native shamans possess, and that your mind is capable of reaching into the future even without the kind of chemical assistance which Copplestone requires. Not unnaturally, you construe your vision as a pure product of your own imagination, but perhaps it is a true – if somewhat blurred – vision of the shape of things to come.”
“That is every bit as fantastic as Dr Copplestone’s story, Sir William!” he exclaimed.
“Which is,” the other pointed out, “every bit as fantastic as your own.”
“But mine is pure invention!”
“If what you said earlier about the future being determined and discoverable is true,” I murmured, “there may be no such thing as pure invention.”
At that moment, Copplestone re-entered the room, seemingly revived and revitalized by whatever treatment the doctor had administered. He suggested to us that we take the seats which had been set out for us around the fireplace. As dutiful guests, Wells, Crookes and I had no option but to postpone our argument while our host resumed his tale.
“I was carried by my captors into a curious Underworld,” said Copplestone, a little hoarsely. “It was dimly lit, and the light had an odd hue, somewhere between blue and violet. It was futile to struggle against the strong arms which held me, for I was evidently not much of a burden to my captors. They held me gingerly, as though my insubstantial body felt strange and unpleasant, but there was no prospect of my breaking away. My captors’ eyes were very much like cats’ eyes, with lenticular pupils. They had full lips, which seemed nearly black rather than red. They were all male but all beardless, and their faces were curiously unblemished. It was impossible to guess how old they might be. Their dark clothing was more elaborate than that worn by the people of the town, but simpler than the suits of our own era.
“I reminded myself that my time in this world was strictly limited, and that I was certain to return to my body in due course. From the viewpoint of my captors I would simply vanish into thin air. In the meantime, the task before me was to find out as much as I possibly could about the vampires and their empire of the night. They took me into an extraordinary room, whose walls were mounted with numerous rectangular screens. Most of the screens were inert but four displayed moving pictures of various kinds. One showed several persons in conversation – beings like those who had seized me – while another showed machines in flight: contraptions like those I had seen outside. Beneath the screens were panels decked with countless buttons and switches.
There were three persons already in the room. When I was brought in they became very excited; two who had been seated instantly stood up. They fired questions at my captors while they moved around me, inspecting me very curiously. They also attempted to fire questions at me, but I could not understand their language and my attempts to reply sounded grotesque. They prodded and poked me in a manner which suggested that they doubted their own senses. After several minutes of animated discussion their attitude changed. Solicitously, they ushered me to a chair situated before one of the screens, and invited me with a mime of exaggerated politeness to sit down. When I had done so, clumsily, one of them began moving his fingers over the control-panel before me, with incredible speed and dexterity.
“The image of yet another cat-eyed person appeared on the screen. It was clear from his attitude that my image must have been simultaneously relayed to him. A voice emerged from a disc beneath the screen. There was a long and somewhat confused exchange of staccato conversation between the person on the screen and the persons clustering about me. One of my captors began signalling to me furiously, gesturing with his hand in front of his mouth. I inferred that he wanted me to speak, and I did so, haltingly at first but more fluently as he encouraged me to continue. I said that my name was Copplestone, and pointed at my chest in order to make my meaning clear. I then tried to give some account of the experiment which had brought me here. Whenever I hesitated, my interrogator-in-chief resumed his urgent signing.
“Just as I had mastered the art of walking by dint of practising, so my speech improved by degrees. Within a few minutes I was enunciating clearly enough, although my voice still sounded unreasonably deep and slow. After some twelve or fifteen minutes the one who had taken charge held up his hand. He then began playing with the control-board again. After a few moments, I heard the sound of my own voice emerging from the speaker. I winced at the uncouth tone. Embarrassment left me little space to wonder at the fact that my words had been so accurately recorded – and my wonderment was banished entirely when the recording was interrupted by another voice, which said: ‘Anglish. Is Anglish.’
“I looked up at the image of the man on the screen, but he was not speaking. Like me, he was listening – but he was looking at me eagerly, avid for some response. The voice which had spoken was as hollow and hoarse and distorted as mine, but that was presumably mere imitation. ‘English,’ I said, correcting the pronunciation. ‘The language is English.’
“The words were immediately repeated back to me. The voice, I realized, was an echo of my own, presumably produced by a machine which, with the resources I had provided, had contrived to identify the language which I spoke. That was the moment when it finally came home to me what resources these people had – and made me wonder whether they were invaders from some other world who had conquered, subdued and made prey of mankind. The man on the screen spoke, and there was a brief pause before what I assume to be a translation of his words emerged in English from the speaker: ‘We understand,’ he said. ‘Your language is preserved in the memory banks. Where have you come from?’
“ ‘My name is Copplestone,’ I repeated. ‘I am a timeshadow. My own body lies unconscious . . .” I intended to say in the city of London, in the year 1895, but I never got the chance.
“ ‘What is timeshadow?’ demanded the other, sharply. ‘Explain!’
“ ‘I am a man of the past,’ I said. ‘Your world is my future; this timeshadow is the means by which I can look into it.’
“This was translated, but the person on the screen seemed deeply confused. He uttered a single brief syllable, which the machine rendered into English as: ‘Impossible.’
“ ‘As you ca
n see,’ I retorted, stiffly ‘it is not impossible. I am here. What kind of man are you?’
“ ‘No man,’ replied the other, with apparent contempt, as soon as the machine had translated my words. ‘We are overmen.’
“It was my turn to say: ‘What are overmen? Explain!’
“It was, I think, the translation machine itself that responded, not the man on the screen. ‘Members of dominant species,’ it said. ‘Endproducts of earthly evolution.’
“ ‘What year is this?’ I asked. ‘How long has it been since my kind were emperors of the earth? How many thousands of years?’
“The man on the screen – or, rather, the overman on the screen – shook his head in bewilderment. I took what further comfort I could from the fact that whatever technical miracles were his to command, the science of casting a timeshadow did not seem to be among them.
“ ‘I came to this world,’ I said, ‘to see what time would make of Homo sapiens, man the wise. I came to see what triumphs and glories lay in store for my own kind. If the earth has passed into the care of overmen who use their fellows as cattle and milk them of their life-blood, then the news which I must carry back with me is dire and terrible.’ I added, as my resolution faltered: ‘I must hope, I suppose, that this is nothing but an opium-dream.’
“While he waited for this speech to be translated the person on the screen grew much more thoughtful. When he replied, he spoke in a level tone which the translation-machine reproduced. ‘The lovers of daylight are not our kind, not our fellows. In the long-gone days before they became our docile herds, they were our deadliest enemies. Is that truly what you are: a wild and savage man from the dawn of history?’ It seemed that the translation machine was having some slight trouble with the concept man.
“ ‘Some of the men of my time are wild and savage,’ I told him. ‘Some, it is said, still have the cannibal habit, but I am a civilized . . .’
“I intended to say far more but the world was turning to mist around me, dissolving into darkness. I felt that I was falling into an infinite abyss . . . and when I eventually awoke again, I was all a-tremble in my true body, and Dr W***** was busy reassuring himself that I was fit and well, or at least alive and sensible.”
VII
Copplestone’s voice had remained steady, but his body was now slumped in his armchair in a fashion which suggested that he was on the point of exhaustion. As I looked around I could see that I was not the only one anxious on his behalf. I saw, too, that the young man who had spoken to me about the resemblances between Copplestone’s tale and his own was very eager to make his complaint generally known, but his curly-haired companion restrained him.
“I think, Dr Copplestone,” said the dark-complexioned young man, “that it might be as well to clear up one puzzling point before we hear the continuation of your story. My friend and I have been struck by the similarity between your account of the far future and a series of speculative articles recently published in the National Observer. We cannot help but wonder whether your visionary experience might be reproducing – unwittingly, no doubt – a distorted version of these articles, which you might have read or heard discussed.”
I watched Copplestone’s face very closely. If it were true, I thought, then the distortions of his tale might also have a commonplace source, and the parts of the story which most interested me might also have been borrowed – wittingly or not – from Arminius Vambery, presumably via Bram Stoker. The professor, however, seemed genuinely surprised by Mr Shiel’s suggestion.
“I have read no such articles,” he said. “There are so many periodicals in circulation these days that I can hardly keep track of their titles, let alone their contents. My experiments have taken up almost all of my time these last few months, and I have had little contact with anyone save for my servants and Dr W*****. I certainly do not recall discussing anything of this kind, or hearing it discussed, and I am certain that I would have paid careful attention to any such discussion. There were, I recall, some articles issued a little over a year ago in the Pall Mall Budget which Dr W***** did bring to my attention. One was entitled ‘The Man of the Year Million’, another ‘The Extinction of Man’. I thought them fascinating, but . . .”
“They too were mine!” the pale young man interposed, unable to keep silent any longer. “All of this is mine!”
“Yours?” Copplestone’s amazement seemed sincere enough. “I am sorry, then, that I did not recognize your name when you were introduced to me. Your presence here is a happy coincidence.”
“It is not entirely coincidental,” confessed the pale young man’s friend. “I suppose that you contacted me because you remembered my interest in certain matters on which your story has touched, expressed en passant in conversations we had before I went to Derbyshire. Having so recently returned, I had no intimate acquaintance I might bring with me, so I wrote to Mr Wells – whom I hardly know, save by repute – because I knew of his very similar interests. I dare say that there are others here who came with some kind of predisposition to be intrigued. Crookes and Tesla presumably came to hear your accounts of the electrical machinery of the future. Mr Wilde and his friend might well be interested in your visionary method – although I have had some experience of opium myself, and I must say that your experience does not seem to me to have the least resemblance to an opium dream.”
“I think he has confused you with Count Stenbock,” Wilde whispered to me. “A man born and nursed in the colonies can hardly be expected to be able to tell one Count from another.” I forbore to point out that it might be his own reputation which had led the young man to suppose that we had an intimate interest in the quest for les paradis artificiels.
“My experience was certainly no opium dream,” Copplestone said. “It was careless of me to introduce such a simile. My time machine is a compound of a very different chemical class, which sharpens very different sensibilities. I wonder if it is possible that Mr Wells has the kind of natural gift which can perceive the future – albeit dimly – even without such assistance. Except that . . .”
I saw the white-beared man of science nod with satisfaction at hearing his own hypothesis repeated, but his companion scowled. Mr Tesla presumably thought that one improbability was now being piled atop another. Given that there was a much more ordinary way by which Mr Wells’s ideas could have influenced Dr Copplestone, I was half-inclined to agree with him. And yet, Copplestone’s story did seem sincere.
Copplestone, after pausing briefly to reflect, began again. “May I ask, sir,” he said to the excitable young man, “whether your story continues beyond a point parallel to that which my own has reached?”
“In the National Observer version, no,” Wells replied. “but I have now completed a revised version which is somewhat longer. But even if the continuation of your adventure reproduces that part of the story, the similarity might still be accountable. Henley has seen it, and half a dozen others. There are a dozen ways the rumour could have got around.”
“That is a pity,” said Copplestone. “It would have been more interesting had there been no possible way for me to have knowledge of it. I wonder, however, whether our stories will continue to run along parallel paths, or whether they diverge. May I ask whether your story deals, after the fashion of your earlier essays, with the man of the year million and the extinction of man?”
“Only the latter,” said the young man, a little suspiciously. “The extinction of man on earth is, of course, inevitable and must be the end-point of any future history. As the sun gradually fades to a mere ember, as it must while it exhausts the fuel of its combustion, the surface of the earth will become uninhabitable by life as we know it – and that is how my story concludes. Men may find habitats elsewhere, of course, but on earth their day will be done in a million years, or a few millions at most.”
“That is most interesting,” said Copplestone, judiciously. “My account of the future also includes the extinction of man, but man’s successors continue to thri
ve. I think that if you will agree to be patient for a while, you might find that any resemblance between your story and mine will disappear by degrees.”
“If I may say so,” Wilde interposed, mildly, “this digression is unhelpful. There will be time enough to discuss the possible provenance of your story when we have heard it all, and I am perfectly happy – as Mr Wells must surely be – to accept your word that no deliberate borrowing of ideas has taken place.”
Mr Wells shrugged his shoulders. “I suppose I should accept the similarity as an endorsement of my own powers of foresight,” he muttered, sarcastically. He seemed to take little comfort in the notion that other prophets might come forward – an entire legion of them, if Copplestone’s formula were ever to be published – to testify to the accuracy of his story. There was an understandable conflict between his desire to be reckoned an accurate prophet and his desire to be reckoned an original artist.
“I am glad that Mr Wells has brought the matter of the similarity between my story and his to our attention,” Copplestone said, “but I think that we should press on. If there is no objection, I will continue my story.”
There was no objection. I was evidently not the only one who did not relish the thought that the business might take all night.
“For the purposes of my second excursion in far futurity I increased the dosage of the drug by a third,” Copplestone said. “The after-effects of my first expedition were relatively mild, and I thought the risk justified. I had no way of knowing exactly how far into the future my first expedition had taken me, but I hoped that I would now be able to span several times as many years.
“I found myself once again standing on a hillside lit by a warm summer sun. I was reassured by the daylight, but I knew that I would have to face nightfall eventually, and that if the world were still ruled by the vampire race I had encountered in my first expedition I was certain to encounter them again. I was dressed exactly as I had been before. Although my timeshadow was just as cumbersome I now understood how to adapt, and when I began to walk I soon felt reasonably competent and fairly comfortable. While I cultivated a normal gait I practised pronouncing familiar syllables, schooling my voice until I could produce an acceptable version of the English language. I did not suppose for an instant that anyone I met might be able to understand any words I spoke, but I wanted to avoid the embarrassment of seeming stupidly inarticulate.
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