The Time Ships

by Stephen Baxter

  “Yes,” I said slowly. “And yet—”

  “Yes?”

  “And yet the sun still shines. So the tale of these New Humans has diverged from your own. Even though they evidently have Space Machines like yours, they have no wish to cloak about the sun, as you Morlocks did.”

  “Evidently not.” He raised his pale hand to the heavens. “In fact, their intent seems altogether more ambitious.”

  I turned to see what he was indicating. Once again, I saw, that great Orbital City was showing developments. Now, huge shells — irregular, obviously thousands of miles across — were sprouting around the glowing linear town, like berries on a cane. And as soon as a shell was completed it cast off from earth, blossomed with a fire that illuminated the land, and vanished. From our point of view, the development of such an artifact, from embryonic form to departing fledgling, took a second or less; but each dose of flaring light must, I thought, have bathed the earth for decades.

  It was a startling sight, and it continued for some time — for several thousand years, by my estimation.

  The shells were, of course, huge ships in space.

  “So,” I said to the Morlock, “men are traveling from the earth, in those great space yachts. But where are they going, do you think? The planets? Mars, or Jupiter, or—”

  Nebogipfel sat with his masked face tilted up at the sky, and his hands in his lap, and the lights of the ships playing on the hairs of his face. “One does not need such spectacular energies as we have seen here to travel such petty distances. With an engine like that… I think the ambition of these New Humans is wider. I think they are abandoning the solar system, much as they appear to have abandoned the earth.”

  I peered after the departing ships in awe. “What remarkable people these must be, these New Humans! I don’t want to be rude about you Morlocks, old chap, but still — what a difference of grasp, of ambition! I mean — a Sphere around the sun is one thing, but to hurl one’s children to the stars…”

  “It is true that our ambition was limited to the careful husbandry of a single star — and there was logic to that, for more living space for the species is to be obtained by that means than through a thousand, a million interstellar jaunts.”

  “Oh, perhaps,” I said, “but it’s scarcely so spectacular, is it?”

  He adjusted his grubby skin-mask and stared around at the ruined earth. “Perhaps not. But the husbandry of a finite resource — even this earth — seems to be a competence not shared by your New Humans.”

  I saw that he was right. Even as the star-ships’ fire splashed across the sea, the remains of First London were decaying further — the crumbling ruins seemed to bubble, as if deliquescing — and the Sea became more gray, the air still more foul. The heat was now intense, and I pulled my shirt away from my chest, where it had stuck.

  Nebogipfel stirred on his bench, and peered about uneasily. “I think if it happens, it will come quickly…”

  “What will?”

  He would not reply. The heat was now more severe than I remembered ever suffering in the jungles of the Palaeocene. The ruins of the city, scattered over the hills of brown dirt, seemed to shimmer, becoming unreal…

  And then — with a glare so bright it obscured the sun — the city burst into flames!

  [21]

  Instabilities

  That consuming fire swallowed us, for the merest fraction of a second. A new heat — quite unbearable — pulsed over the Time-Car, and I cried out. But, mercifully, the heat subsided as soon as the City’s torching was done.

  In that instant of fire, the ancient city had gone. First London was scoured clean of the earth, and left behind were only a few outcroppings of ash and melted brick, and here and there the tracery of a foundation. The bare soil was soon colonized once more by the busy processes of life — a sluggish greenery slid over the hills and about the plain, and dwarfish trees shivered through their cycles at the fringe of the Sea — but the progress of this new wave of life was slow, and seemed doomed to a stunted existence; for a pearl-gray fog lay over everything, obscuring the patient glow of the Orbital City.

  “So First London is destroyed,” I said in wonder. “Do you think there was a War? That fire must have persisted for decades, until there was nothing left to burn.”

  “It was not a war,” Nebogipfel said. “But it was a catastrophe wrought by man, I think.”

  Now I saw the strangest thing. The new, sparse trees began to die back, but not by withering before my accelerated gaze, like the dipterocarps I had watched earlier. Rather, the trees burst into flame — they burned like huge matches — and then were gone, all in an instant. I saw, too, how a great scorching spread across the grass and shrubs, a blackening which persisted through the seasons, until at last no more grass would grow, and the soil was bare and dark.

  Above, those pearl-gray clouds grew thicker still, and the sun- and moon-bands were obscured.

  “I think those clouds, above, are ash,” I said to Nebogipfel. “It is if the earth is burning up… Nebogipfel — what is happening?”

  “It is as I feared,” he said. “Your profligate friends — these New Humans—”

  “Yes?”

  “With their meddling and carelessness, they have destroyed the life-bearing equilibrium of the planet’s climate.”

  I shivered, for it had grown colder: it was as if the warmth was leaking out of the world through some intangible drain. At first I welcomed this relief from the scorching heat; but the chill quickly became uncomfortable.

  “We are passing through a phase of excess oxygen, of higher sea-level pressure,” Nebogipfel said. “Buildings, plants and grasses — even damp wood — will combust, spontaneously, in such conditions. But it will not last long. It is a transition to a new equilibrium… It is the instability.”

  The temperature plummeted now — the area took on an air of chill November — and I pulled my jungle shirt closer around me. I had a brief impression of a white flickering — it was the seasonal blanketing and uncovering of the land by winter’s snow and ice — and then the ice and permafrost settled over the ground, unyielding to the seasons, a hard gray-white surface which laid itself down with every impression of permanence.

  The earth was transformed. To west, north and south, the contours of the land were masked by that layer of ice and snow. In the east, our old Palaeocene Sea had receded by some several miles; I could see ice on the beach at its fringe, and far to the north — a glint of steady white that told of bergs. The air was clear, and once more I could see the sun and green moon arcing across heaven, but now the air had about it that pearly-gray light you associate with the depths of winter, just before a snow.

  Nebogipfel had huddled over on himself, with his hands tucked into his armpits and his legs folded under him. When I touched his shoulder his flesh was icy to the touch — it was as if his essence had retreated to the warmest core of his body. The hairs over his face and chest had closed over themselves, after the manner of a bird’s feathers. I felt a stab of guilt at his distress, for, as I may have indicated, I regarded Nebogipfel’s injuries as my responsibility, either directly or indirectly. “Come now, Nebogipfel. We have been through these Glacial periods before — it was far worse than this — and we survived. We pass through a millennium every couple of seconds. We’re sure to move beyond this, and back into the sunshine, soon enough.”

  “You do not understand,” he hissed.

  “What?”

  “This is no mere Ice Age. Can’t you see that? This is qualitatively different… the instability…” His eyes closed again.

  “What do you mean? Is this lot going to last longer than before? A hundred thousand, half a million years? How long?”

  But he did not answer.

  I wrapped my arms aground my torso and tried to keep warm. The claws of cold sank deeper into the earth’s skin, and the thickness of the ice grew, century on century, like a slowly rising tide. The sky above seemed to be clearing — the light
of the sun-band was bright and hard, though apparently without heat and I guessed that the damage done to that thin layer of life-giving gases was slowly healing, now that man was no longer a force on the earth. That Orbital City still hung, glowing and inaccessible, in the sky over the frozen land, but there were no signs of life on the earth, and still less of Humanity.

  After a million years of this, I began to suspect the truth!

  “Nebogipfel,” I said. “It is never going to end — this Age of Ice. Is it?”

  He turned his head and mumbled something.

  “What?” I pressed my ear close to his mouth. “What did you say?”

  His eyes had closed over, and he was insensible.

  I got hold of Nebogipfel and lifted him from the bench. I laid him out on the Time-Car’s wooden floor, and then I lay down beside him and pressed my body against his. It was scarcely comfortable: the Morlock was like a slab of butcher’s meat against my chest, making me feel still colder myself; and I had to suppress my residual loathing of the Morlock race. But I bore it all, for I hoped that my body heat would keep him alive a little longer. I spoke to him, and rubbed at his shoulders and upper arms; I kept at it until he was awake, for I believed that if I let him remain unconscious — he might slip, unknowing, into Death.

  “Tell me about this climatic instability of yours,” I said.

  He twisted his head and mumbled. “What is the point? Your New Human friends have killed us…”

  “The point is that I should prefer to know what is killing me.”

  After rather more of this type of persuasion, Nebogipfel relented.

  He told me that the atmosphere of the earth was a dynamic thing. The atmosphere had just two naturally stable states, Nebogipfel said, and neither of these could sustain life; and the air would fail into one of these states, away from the narrow band of conditions tolerable by life, if it were too far disturbed.

  “But I don’t understand. If the atmosphere is as unstable a mixture as you suggest, how is it that the air has managed to sustain us, as it has, for so many millions of years?”

  He told me that the evolution of the atmosphere had been heavily modified by the action of life itself. “There is a balance of atmospheric gases, temperature and pressure — which is ideal for life. And so life works — in great, unconscious cycles, each involving billions of blindly toiling organisms to maintain that balance.

  “But this balance is inherently unstable. Do you see? It is like a pencil, balanced on its point: such a thing is ever likely to fall away, with the slightest disturbance.” He twisted his head. “We learned that you meddle with the cycles of life at your peril, we Morlocks; we learned that if you choose to disrupt the various mechanisms by which atmospheric stability is maintained, then they must be repaired or replaced. What a pity it is,” he said, heavily, “that these New Humans — these star-faring heroes of yours — had not absorbed similar simple lessons!”

  “Tell me about your two stabilities, Morlock; for it seems to me we are going to be visiting one or the other!”

  In the first of the lethal stable states, Nebogipfel said, the surface of earth would burn up: the atmosphere could become as opaque as the clouds over Venus, and trap the heat of the sun. Such clouds, miles thick, would obstruct most of the sunlight, leaving only a dull, reddish glow; from the surface the sun could never be seen, nor the planets or stars. Lightning would flash continually in the murky atmosphere, and the ground would be red-hot: scorched bare of life.

  “That’s as may be,” I said, trying to suppress my shivers, “but compared to this damned cold, it sounds like a pleasant holiday resort… And the second of your stable states?”

  “White Earth.”

  He closed his eyes, and would speak to me no more.

  [22]

  Abandonment and Arrival

  I do not know how long we lay there, huddled in the base of that Time-Car, grasping at our remaining flickers of body-warmth. I imagined that we were the only shards of life left on the planet — save, perhaps, for some hardy lichen clinging to an outcropping of frozen rock.

  I pushed at Nebogipfel, and kept talking to him.

  “Let me sleep,” he mumbled.

  “No,” I replied, as briskly as I could. “Morlocks don’t sleep.”

  “I do. I have been with humans too long.”

  “If you sleep, you’ll die… Nebogipfel. I think we must stop the car.”

  He was silent for a while. “Why?”

  “We must go back to the Palaeocene. The earth is deadlocked into the grip of this wretched winter — so we must return, to a more equable past.”

  “That is a fine idea” — he coughed — “save for the detail that it is impossible. I did not have the means to design complex controls into this machine.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That this Time-Car is essentially ballistic. I was able to aim it at future or past, and over a specified duration — we will be delivered to the 1891 of this History, or thereabouts — but then, after the aiming and launch, I have no control over its trajectory.

  “Do you understand? The car follows a path through time, determined by the initial settings, and the strength of the German Plattnerite. We will come to rest in 1891 — a frozen 1891 — and not before…”

  I could feel my shivering subsiding — but not through any great degree of increasing comfort, but because, I realized, my own strength was at last beginning to be exhausted.

  But perhaps we were not finished even so, I speculated wildly: if the planet were not abandoned — if men were to rebuild the earth — perhaps we could yet find a climate we could inhabit.

  “And man? What of man?” I pressed Nebogipfel.

  He grunted, and his lidded eye rolled. “How could Humanity survive? Man has surely abandoned the planet — or else become extinct altogether…”

  “Abandoned the earth?” I protested. “Why, even you Morlocks, with your Sphere around the sun, didn’t go quite so far as that!”

  I pushed away from him, and propped myself up on my elbows so I could see out of the Time-Car towards the south. For it was from there — I was sure of it now — from the direction of the Orbital City, that any hope for us would come.

  But what I saw next filled me with a deep dread.

  That girdle around the earth remained in place, the links between the brilliant stations as bright as ever but I saw now that the downward lines, which had anchored the City to the planet, had vanished. While I had been occupied with the Morlock, the orbital dwellers had dismantled their Elevators, thus abandoning their umbilical ties to Mother Earth.

  As I watched further, a brilliant light flared from several of the stations. That glow shimmered from the earth’s fields of ice, as if from a daisy-chain of miniature suns. The metal ring slid away from its position, over the equator. At first this migration was slow; but then the City appeared to turn on its axis — glowing with fire, like a Catherine-Wheel — until it moved so fast that I could not make out the individual stations.

  Then it was gone, sliding away from the earth and into invisibility.

  The symbolism of this great abandonment was startling, and without the fire from the great engines, the ice fields of the deserted earth seemed more cold, more gray than before.

  I settled back into the car. “It is true,” I said to Nebogipfel.

  “What is?”

  “That the earth is abandoned — the Orbital City has cut loose and gone. The planet’s story is done, Nebogipfel — and so, I fear, is ours!”

  Nebogipfel lapsed into unconsciousness, despite all my efforts to rouse him; and after a time, I lacked the strength to continue. I huddled against the Morlock, trying to protect his damp, cold body from the worst of the chill, I feared without much success. I knew that given our rate of passage through time, our journey should last no more than thirty hours in total — but what if the German Plattnerite, or Nebogipfel’s improvised design, were faulty? I might be trapped, slowly freezing, i
n this attenuated Dimension forever — or pitched, at any moment, out onto the eternal Ice.

  I think I slept — or fainted.

  I thought I saw the Watcher — that great broad head — hovering before my eyes, and beyond his limbless carcass I could see that elusive star-field, tinged with green. I tried to reach out to the stars, for they seemed so bright and warm; but I could not move — perhaps I dreamt it all — and then the Watcher was gone.

  At last, with a groaning lurch, the power of the Plattnerite expired, and the car fell into History once more.

  The pearly glow of the sky was dispersed, and the sun’s pale light vanished, as if a switch had been thrown: and I was plunged into darkness.

  The last of our Palaeocene warmth fell away into the great sink of the sky. Ice clawed at my flesh — it felt like burning — and I could not breathe, though whether from the cold or from poisons in the air I did not know, and I had a great pressure in my chest, as if I was drowning.

  I knew that I should not retain consciousness for many more seconds. I determined that I should at least see this 1891, so wildly changed from my own world, before I died. I got my arms underneath me — already I could not feel my hands — and pushed myself up until I was half-sitting.

  The earth lay in a silver light, like moonlight (or so I thought at first). The Time-Car sat, like a crumpled toy, in the center of a plain of ancient ice. It was night, and there were no stars — at first I thought there must be clouds — but then I saw, low in the sky, a sliver of crescent moon, and I could not understand the absence of the stars; I wondered if my eyes were somehow damaged by the cold. That sister world was still green, I saw, and I felt pleased; perhaps people still lived there. How brilliant the frozen earth must be, in the sky of that young world! Close to the moon’s limb, a bright light shone: not a star, for it was too close — it was the reflection of the sun from some lunar lake, perhaps.