Robert Sawyer: On the Surface

Grach looked behind him. Another time machine was flickering into existence, leaving only two unoccupied spots in the 120-position grid. Soon, the assault would begin.

There was little possibility for a sneak attack in this offensive, said Postan, the leader of the Morlocks. Day and night meant nothing here—one hour, or one year, was precisely like the others; there was no cover of total darkness under which to launch themselves against their foes.

And so once all hundred and twenty Morlocks were ready, they simply charged onto the beach, each one brandishing an iron club almost as long as a Morlock body.

The crabs either heard the attackers coming, despite attempts to restrain the normal cooing sounds of Morlock breathing, or else the crabs felt the footfalls conveyed through the moist sand. Either way, the crustaceans—twenty of them were visible, although more could easily be hidden in undulations of the geography—turned as one to face the charging Morlocks.

Grach had known battle once before; he had been part of the group pursuing the time-traveling giant through the woods outside the ancient palace of green porcelain. He remembered the huge fire blazing through the forest—and remembered the excitement, the thrill that went with battle. That night, they had been unsuccessful. But this time, Grach felt sure, they would triumph.

Morlocks learned quickly. They’d never thought of using clubs to attack other life forms; it hadn’t been necessary with the Eloi, after all. But that night—a few years ago, now, and a few million—when the Morlocks had fought the ancient giant, they’d seen him use a metal club, a large lever apparently broken off some old machine, to stave in skulls. And so the subterranean workshops weren’t only set to the task of duplicating the giant’s strange machine, its workings still not fully grasped but its parts easy enough to turn on a lathe or hammer out on an anvil. No, the factories were also set to making sturdy iron rods. Grach held his own rod over his head as he ran, looking forward to hearing the cracking sound of exoskeletons shattering under its impact.

The crabs’s claws were each as long as a Morlock’s forearm. They snapped open and closed, the sound oddly mechanical in this strange world of the far future. Grach knew to hold his rod out in front of him, and, indeed, it wasn’t long before the nearest crab had set upon him. The creature’s pincer tried to close tight on the rod, which rang in Grach’s hands. But although the claws were strong, they weren’t strong enough to cut through iron. Another Morlock, to Grach’s right, was waving his own rod, trying to get the crustacean to clamp onto it with its other claw. And a third Morlock—Bilt, it was—had climbed atop the crab from the rear and was now straddling its carapace while pounding down again and again with his own metal rod. The crab’s antennae whipped frantically, and Grach caught a glimpse of one of them bringing up a welt as it lashed Bilt’s face. But soon Bilt managed a killing blow, a great crack! sounding as his rod smashed in the chitinous roof between the thing’s two eyestalks. The stalks went absolutely straight for a moment, then collapsed, one atop the other, lying motionless on the broken carapace, liquid from within the animal welling up and washing over them.

The creature’s many legs folded up one by one, and its lenticular body collapsed to the sandy beach. Bilt let out a whoop of excitement, and Grach followed suit.

It had been good to aid in the kill—but Grach wanted one of his own. Several of the crabs were scurrying away now, trying to retreat from the onslaught of Morlocks, but Grach set his eyes on a particularly ugly one, its carapace especially rich with the greenish encrustation that marred the shells of some of the others.

Grach wondered if there was another way to defeat a crab. Yes, having his own kill to tell of would be good—but even better would be to have killed one in a way that had occurred to no one else.

There was but a moment to collect his thoughts: fifty or so Morlocks had veered off to pursue retreating crabs; the others were in close combat with the remaining giant crustaceans. But, so far, no one had engaged the crab that had caught Grach’s attention.

Grach ran towards his target; there was plenty of noise now to cover his approach—cracking chitin, whooping Morlocks, the harsh screams of the giant white butterfly-like beasts swooping overhead. The crab’s rear was to Grach, and it did not turn around as he came closer and closer still.

When at last he’d reached the hideous creature, Grach planted his rod in the moist ground, then reached out with his hands. He got his flat palms underneath the left edge of the crab’s carapace. With all the strength he could muster, he lifted the side of the crab.

The segmented legs on that side began to move frantically as they lost contact with the ground. As Grach tipped the creature more and more he could see the complex workings of its underbelly. For its part, the crab couldn’t observe what Grach was doing; its eyestalks lacked the reach to see underneath. Still, its claws were snapping in panicky spasms. Grach continued to lift, more, more, more still, until at last the thing’s body was vertical rather than horizontal. A final mighty shove toppled the crab over sideways onto its back. Legs worked rapidly, trying to find purchase; the forward claws attempted to right the crab, but they weren’t succeeding.

After retrieving his metal rod, Grach jumped onto the thing’s underbelly, landing on his knees, the hideous articulations of the limbs shifting and sliding beneath him. He then took his rod in both hands, held it high over his head, and drove it down with all his strength. The rod poked through the creature’s underside and soon was slipping easily through its soft innards. Grach felt it resist again as it reached the far side of the shell, but he leaned now with both hands and all of his body’s weight on the end of his pole, and at last the exoskeleton gave way. The crab convulsed for a time, but eventually it expired, impaled on the sandy beach.

The battle continued for much of—well, it felt to Grach the length of an afternoon, but there was no way to tell. When it was done, though, a dozen crabs were dead, and the others had fled, abandoning not just the beach but their fused-sand buildings, which were to become the initial surface dwellings of the Morlock race.

Of course, there had to be two great battles. The first—or second; the order of events was so hard to keep straight when time travel was involved—was the one that had already taken place here on the beach. And, naturally, no one would undertake the second battle (or was it the first?) until after the Morlocks had safely secured the far future for themselves.

It had taken Grach and the others quite some time—that word again—to comprehend it all, and perhaps their understanding of such matters was still faulty. But the reasoning they came up with seemed to make sense: first, ensure that the crabs could be routed in the far future, clearing the way for all the Morlocks to travel forward and live again on the surface.

But, with the battle in the future over, the Morlocks couldn’t simply leave the Eloi to make their own way in the past. After all, once the Morlocks had traveled forward, the Eloi would venture underground. Oh, surely not at first—months or even years might elapse before the Eloi decided the Morlocks really were gone before any of those timid, frail creatures would dare to climb down the ladders on the inside of the access wells, thereby entering the underworld. But eventually they would—perhaps, Grach thought, led by that bold female who had narrowly survived accompanying the giant during so much of his visit—and just as the Morlocks were now about to regain the surface, so the Eloi would regain what had once been theirs, as well: equipment and tools, technology and power.