The Time Ships

by Stephen Baxter

  At the end of our second session of this, the Morlock stepped back from me.

  He said: “That should be sufficient. Do you understand me?”

  I stared at him, stunned by this sudden facility with my language! His pronunciation was blurred — that liquid Morlock voice is not designed, it seems, for the harsher consonants and stops of English — but the words were quite comprehensible.

  When I did not reply, he repeated, “Do you understand me?”

  “I — yes. I mean: yes, I understand you! But how did you do this — how can you have learned my language — from so few words?” For I judged we had covered a bare five hundred words, most of those concrete nouns and simple verbs.

  “I have access to records of all of the ancient languages of Humanity — as reconstructed — from Nostratic through the Indo-European group and its prototypes. A small number of key words is sufficient for the appropriate variant to be retrieved. You must inform me if anything I say is not intelligible.”

  I took a cautious step forward. “Ancient? And how do you know I am ancient?”

  Huge lids swept down over those goggled eyes. “Your physique is archaic. As were the contents of your stomach, when analyzed.” He actually shuddered, evidently at the thought of the remnants of Mrs. Watchets’s breakfast. I was astonished: I had a fastidious Morlock! He went on, “You are out of time. We do not yet understand how you came to arrive on the earth. But no doubt we will learn.”

  “And in the meantime,” I said with some strength, “you keep me in this — this Cage of Light. As if I were a beast, not a man! You give me a floor to sleep on, and a pail for my toilet—”

  The Morlock said nothing; he observed me, impassive.

  The frustration and embarrassment which had assailed me since my arrival in this place welled up, now that I was able to express them, and I decided that sufficient pleasantries had been exchanged. I said, “Now that we can speak to each other, you’re going to tell me where on earth I am. And where you’ve hidden my machine. Do you understand that, fellow, or do I have to translate it for you?” And I reached for him, meaning to grab at the hair clumps on his chest.

  When I came within two paces of him, he raised his hand. That was all. I remember a queer green flash — I never saw the device he must have held, all the time he was near me — and then I fell to the Floor, quite insensible.

  [9]

  Revelations and Remonstrances

  I came to, spread-eagled on the Floor once more, and staring up into that confounded light.

  I hoisted myself up onto my elbows, and rubbed my dazzled eyes. My Morlock friend was still there, standing just outside the circle of light. I got to my feet, rueful. These New Morlocks were going to be a handful for me, I realized.

  The Morlock stepped into the light, its blue goggles glinting. As if nothing had interrupted our dialogue, he said, “My name is” — his pronunciation reverted to the usual shapeless Morlock pattern — “Nebogipfel.”

  “Nebogipfel. Very well.” In turn, I told him my name; within a few minutes he could repeat it with clarity and precision.

  This, I realized, was the first Morlock whose name I had learned — the first who stood out from the masses of them I had encountered, and fought; the first to have the attributes of a distinguishable person.

  “So, Nebogipfel,” I said. I sat cross-legged beside my trays, and rubbed at the rash of bruises my latest fall had inflicted on my upper arm. “You have been assigned as my keeper, here in this zoo.”

  “Zoo.” He stumbled over that word. “No. I was not assigned. I volunteered to work with you.”

  “Work with me?”

  “I — we — want to understand how you came to be here.”

  “Do you, by Jove?” I got to my feet and paced around my Cage of Light. “What if I told you that I came here in a machine that can carry a man through time?” I held up my hands. “That I built such a machine, with these brutish hands? What then, eh?”

  He seemed to think that over. “Your era, as dated from your speech and physique, is very remote from ours. You are capable of achievements of high technology — witness your machine, whether or not it carries you through time as you claim. And the clothes you wear, the state of your hands, and the wear patterns of your teeth — all of these are indicative of a high state of civilization.”

  “I’m flattered,” I said with some heat, “but if you believe I’m capable of such things — that I am a man, not an ape — why am I caged up in this way?”

  “Because,” he said evenly, “you have already tried to attack me, with every intent of doing me harm. And on the earth, you did great damage to—”

  I felt fury burning anew. I stepped towards him. “Your monkeys were pawing at my machine,” I shouted. “What did you expect? I was defending myself. I—”

  He said: “They were children.”

  His words pierced my rage. I tried to cling to the remnants of my self-justifying anger, but they were already receding from me. “What did you say?”

  “Children. They were children. Since the completion of the Sphere, the earth is become a… nursery, a place for children to roam. They were curious about your machine. That is all. They would not have done you, or it, any conscious harm. Yet you attacked them, with great savagery.”

  I stepped back from him. I remembered now I let myself think about it — that the Morlocks capering ineffectually around my machine had struck me as smaller than those I’d encountered before. And they had made no attempt to hurt me… save only the poor creature I had captured, and who had then nipped my hand — before I clubbed its face!

  “The one I struck. Did he — it — survive?”

  “The physical injuries were reparable. But—”

  “Yes?”

  “The inner scars, the scars of the mind — these may never heal.”

  I dropped my head. Could it be true? Had I been so blinded by my loathing of Morlocks that I had been unable to see those creatures around the machine for what they were: not the catlike, vicious creatures of Weena’s world — but harmless infants? “I don’t suppose you know what I’m talking about but I feel as if I’m trapped in another one of those ’Dissolving Views’…”

  “You are expressing shame,” Nebogipfel said.

  Shame… I never thought I should hear, and accept, such remonstrance from a Morlock! I looked at him, defiant. “Yes. Very well! And does that make me more than a beast, in your view, or less of one?”

  He said nothing.

  Even while I was confronting this personal horror, some calculating part of my mind was running over something Nebogipfel had said. Since the completion of the Sphere, the earth is become a nursery…

  “What Sphere?”

  “You have much to learn of us.”

  “Tell me about the Sphere!”

  “It is a Sphere around the sun.”

  Those seven simple words — startling! — and yet… Of course! The solar evolution I had watched in the time-accelerated sky, the exclusion of the sunlight from the earth — “I understand,” I said to Nebogipfel. “I watched the Sphere’s construction.”

  The Morlock’s eyes seemed to widen, in a very human mannerism, as he considered this unexpected news.

  And now, for me, other aspects of my situation were becoming clear.

  “You said,” I essayed to Nebogipfel, “ ’On the earth, you did great damage — ’ Something on those lines.” It was an odd thing to say, I thought now — if I was still on the earth. I lifted my face and let the light beat down on me. “Nebogipfel — beneath my feet. What is visible, through this clear Floor?”

  “Stars.”

  “Not representations, not some kind of planetarium—”

  “Stars.”

  I nodded. “And this light from above—”

  “It is sunlight.”

  Somehow, I think I had known it. I stood in the light of a sun, which was overhead for twenty-four hours of every day; I stood on a Floor above the stars
…

  I felt as if the world were shifting about me; I felt light headed, and there was a remote ringing in my ears. My adventures had already taken me across the deserts of time, but now — thanks to my capture by these astonishing Morlocks — I had been lifted across space. I was no longer on the earth — I had been transported to the Morlocks’ solar Sphere!

  [10]

  A Dialogue With a Morlock

  “You say you traveled here on a Time Machine.”

  I paced across my little disc of light, caged, restless. “The term is precise. It is a machine which can travel indifferently in any direction in time, and at any relative rate, as the driver determines.”

  “So you claim that you have journeyed here, from the remote past, on this machine — the machine found with you on the earth.”

  “Precisely,” I snapped. The Morlock seemed content to stand, almost immobile, for long hours, as he developed his interrogation. But I am a man of a modern cut, and our moods did not coincide. “Confound it, fellow,” I said, “you have observed yourself that I myself am of an archaic design. How else, but through time travel, can you explain my presence, here in the Year A.D. 657,208?”

  Those huge curtain-eyelashes blinked slowly. “There are a number of alternatives: most of them more plausible than time travel.”

  “Such as?” I challenged him.

  “Genetic resequencing.”

  “Genetic?” Nebogipfel explained further, and I got the general drift. “You’re talking of the mechanism by which heredity operates — by which characteristics are transmitted from generation to generation.”

  “It is not impossible to generate simulacra of archaic forms by unraveling subsequent mutations.”

  “So you think I am no more than a simulacrum — reconstructed like the fossil skeleton of some Megatherium in a museum? Yes?”

  “There are precedents, though not of human forms of your vintage. Yes. It is possible.”

  I felt insulted. “And to what purpose might I have been cobbled together in this way?” I resumed my pacing around the Cage. The most disconcerting aspect of that bleak place was its lack of walls, and my constant, primeval sense that my back was unguarded. I would rather have been hurled in some prison cell of my own era — primitive and squalid, no doubt, but enclosed. “I’ll not rise to any such bait. That’s a lot of nonsense. I designed and built a Time Machine, and traveled here on it; and let that be an end to it!”

  “We will use your explanation as a working hypothesis,” Nebogipfel said. “Now, please describe to me the machine’s operating principles.”

  I continued my pacing, caught in a dilemma. As soon as I had realized that Nebogipfel was articulate and intelligent, unlike those Morlocks of my previous acquaintance, I had expected some such interrogation; after all, if a Time Traveler from Ancient Egypt had turned up in nineteenth-century London I would have fought to be on the committee which examined him. But should I share the secret of my machine — my only advantage in this world — with these New Morlocks?

  After some internal searching, I realized I had little choice. I had no doubt that the information could be forced out of me, if the Morlocks so desired. Besides, the Morlocks could not construct more Time Machines without the secret of manufacturing Plattnerite — which I could not divulge, for I was ignorant myself. And if I spoke to Nebogipfel, perhaps I could put the fellow off while I sought some advantage from my difficult situation. I still had no idea where the machine was being held, still less how I should reach it and have a prospect of returning home.

  But also — and here is the honest truth — the thought of my savagery among the child-Morlocks on the earth still weighed on my mind! I had no desire that Nebogipfel should think of me — nor the phase of Humanity which I, perforce, represented — as brutish. Therefore, like a child eager to impress, I wanted to show Nebogipfel how clever I was, how mechanically and scientifically adept: how far above the apes men of my type had ascended.

  Still, for the first time I felt emboldened to make some demands of my own.

  “Very well,” I said to Nebogipfel. “But first…”

  “Yes?”

  “Look here,” I said, “the conditions under which you’re holding me are a little primitive, aren’t they? I’m not as young as I was, and I can’t do with this standing about all day. How about a chair? Is that so unreasonable a thing to ask for? And what about blankets to sleep under, if I must stay here?”

  “Chair.” He had taken a second to reply, as if he was looking up the referent in some invisible dictionary.

  I went on to other demands. I needed more fresh water, I said, and some equivalent of soap; and I asked — expecting to be refused — for a blade with which to shave my bristles.

  For a time, Nebogipfel withdrew. When he returned he brought blankets and a chair; and after my next sleep period I found my two trays of provisions supplemented by a third, which bore more water.

  The blankets were of some soft substance, too finely manufactured for me to detect any evidence of weaving. The chair — a simple upright thing — might have been of a light wood from its weight, but its red surface was smooth and seamless, and I could not scratch through its paint work with my fingernails, nor could I detect any evidence of joints, nails, screws or moldings; it seemed to have been extruded as a complete whole by some unknown process. As to my toilet, the extra water came without soap, and nor would it lather, but the liquid had a smooth feel to it, and I suspected it had been treated with some detergent. By some minor miracle, the water was delivered warm to the touch — and stayed that way, no matter how long I let the bowl stand.

  I was brought no blade, though — I was not surprised!

  When next Nebogipfel left me alone, I undressed myself by stages and washed away the perspiration of some days, as well as lingering traces of Morlock blood; I also took the opportunity of rinsing through my underwear and shirt.

  So my life in the Cage of Light became a little more civilized. If you imagine the contents of a cheap hotel room dumped into the middle of the floor of some vast ballroom, you will have the picture of how I was living. When I pulled together the chair, trays and blankets I had something of a cozy nest, and I did not feel quite so exposed; I took to placing my jacket-pillow under the chair, and so sleeping with my head and shoulders under the protection of this little fastness. Most of the time I was able to dismiss the prospect of stars beneath my feet I told myself that the lights in the Floor were some elaborate illusion — but sometimes my imagination would betray me, and I would feel as if I were suspended over an infinite drop, with only this insubstantial Floor to save me.

  All this was quite illogical, of course; but I am human, and must needs pander to the instinctive needs and fears of my nature!

  Nebogipfel observed all this. I could not tell if his reaction was curiosity or confusion, or perhaps something more aloof — as I might have watched the antics of a bird in building a nest, perhaps.

  And in these circumstances, the next few days wore away — I think four or five — as I strove to describe to Nebogipfel the workings of my Time Machine and as well seeking subtly to extract from him some details of this History in which I had landed myself.

  I described the researches into physical optics which had led me to my insights into the possibility of time travel.

  “It is becoming well known — or was, in my day — that the propagation of light has anomalous properties,” I said. “The speed of light in a vacuum is extremely high — it travels hundreds of thousands of miles each second — but it is finite. And, more important, as demonstrated most clearly by Michelson and Morley a few years before my departure, this speed is isotropic…”

  I took some care to explain this rum business. The essence of it is that light, as it travels through space, does not behave like a material object, such as an express train.

  Imagine a ray of light from some distant star overtaking the earth in, say, January, as our planet traverses its orbit around
the sun. The speed of the earth in its orbit is some seventy thousand miles per hour. You would imagine — if you were to measure the speed of that passing ray of star-light as seen from the earth — that the result would be reduced by that seventy thousand-odd miles per hour.

  Conversely, in July, the earth will be at the opposite side of its orbit: it will now be heading into the path of that faithful star-light beam. Measure the speed of the beam again, and you would expect to find the recorded speed increased by the earth’s velocity.

  Well, if steam trains came to us from the stars, this would no doubt be the case. But Michelson and Morley proved that for star-light, this is not so. The speed of the star-light as measured from the earth — whether we are overtaking or heading into the beam — is exactly the same!

  These observations had correlated with the sort of phenomenon I had noted about Plattnerite for some years previously — though I had not published the results of my experiments — and I had formulated an hypothesis.

  “One only needs to loosen the shackles of the imagination — particularly regarding the business of Dimensions — to see what the elements of an explanation might be. How do we measure speed, after all? Only with devices which record intervals in different Dimensions: a distance traveled through Space, measured with a simple yardstick, and an interval in Time, which may be recorded with a clock.

  “So, if we take the experimental evidence of Michelson and Morley at face value, then we have to regard the speed of light as the fixed quantity, and the Dimensions as variable things. The universe adjusts itself in order to render our light-speed measurements constant.

  “I saw that one could express this geometrically, as a twisting of the Dimensions.” I held up my hand, with two fingers and thumb held at right angles. “If we are in a framework of Four Dimensions — well, imagine rotating the whole business around, like this” — I twisted my wrist — “so that Length comes to rest where Breadth used to be, and Breadth where Height was — and, most important, Duration and a Dimension of Space are interchanged. Do you see? One would not need a full transposition, of course — just a certain intermingling of the two to explain the Michelson-Morley adjustment.