Christopher Priest - The Space Machine

“What is it?” I cried.

“The Time Machine is attenuated, existing as it were in the Fourth Dimension. It is real, but it does not exist in the real world as we know it. It is, you must understand, travelling through Time even as we stand here.”

“But you cannot be serious… because if it were travelling it would not be here now!”

“On the contrary, Edward.” She indicated a huge metal flywheel directly in front of the saddle, which corresponded approximately with the silver cog-wheel I had seen on Sir William’s model. “It is turning. Can you see that?”

“Yes, yes I can,” I said, leaning as near it as I dared. The great wheel was rotating almost imperceptibly.

“If it were not turning, the Machine would be stationary in Time. To us, as Sir William explained, the Machine would then vanish into the past, for we ourselves are moving forward in Time.”

“So the Machine must always be in operation.”

While we had been there the evening had deepened, and gloom was spreading in the eerie laboratory.

Amelia stepped to one side and went to yet another infernal contraption. Attached to this was a cord wound around an external wheel, and she pulled the cord sharply. At once the device emitted a coughing, spitting sound, and as it picked up speed, light poured forth from eight incandescent globes hanging from the frame ceiling.

Amelia glanced up at a clock on the wall, which showed the time of twenty-five minutes past six.

It will be time for dinner in half an hour,” she said. “Do you think a stroll around the garden would be enjoyable before then?”

I tore my attention away from the wondrous machines Sir William had made.

The Time Machine might slowly move into futurity, but Amelia was, to my. way of thinking, stationary. in Time. She was not attenuated, and not at all a creature of past or future.

I said, for I was understanding that my time here in Richmond must soon be at an end: “Will you take my arm?”

She slipped her hand around my elbow, and together we walked past the Time Machine, and the noisy reciprocating engine, through a door in the far corner of the laboratory, and out into the cool evening light of the garden. Only once did I glance back, seeing the pure-white radiance of the electrical lamps shining through the glass walls of the annexe.

I had ascertained that the last train to London left Richmond at ten-thirty, and I knew that to catch it I should have to leave by ten. At eight-thirty, though, I was in no mood to think of returning to my lodgings. Furthermore, the prospect of returning to work the next day was one I greeted with the utmost despondency. This was because with the completion of dinner, which had been accompanied by a dry and intoxicating wine, and with the move from the dining-room to the semi-dark intimacy of the drawing-room, and with a glass of port inside me and another half finished, and the subtle fragrance of Amelia’s perfume distracting my senses, I was subject to the most perturbing fantasies.

Amelia was no less intoxicated than I, and I fancied that she could not have mistaken the change in my manner. Until this moment I had felt awkward in her company. This was partly because I had had only the barest experience with young women, but more especially because of all young women Amelia seemed to me the most extraordinary. I had grown used to her forthright manner, and the emancipated airs she assumed, but what I had not until this moment realized was that I had, most inappropriately, fallen blindly and rashly in love with her.

In wine there is truth, and although I was able to contain my excesses, and fell short of protesting my undying amour, our conversation had touched on most remarkably personal matters.

Soon after nine-thirty, I knew I could delay no more. I had only half an hour before I had to leave, and as I had no idea of when or how I should see her again, I felt that then was the. moment to state, in no uncertain terms, that to me she was already more than just a pleasant companion.

I poured myself a liberal helping of port, and then, still uncertain of how I was to phrase my words, I reached into my waistcoat pocket and consulted my watch.

“My dear Amelia,” I started to say. “I see that it is twenty-five minutes. to ten, and at ten I must leave. Before that I have something I must tell you.”

“But why must you leave?” she said, instantly destroying the thread of my thoughts.

“I have a train to catch.”

“Oh, please don’t go yet!”

“But I must return to London.”

“Hillyer can take you. If you miss your train, he will take you all the way to London.”

“Hillyer is already in London,” I said.

She laughed, a little drunkenly. “I had forgotten. Then you must walk.”

“And so I must leave at ten.”

“No … I will have Mrs Watchets prepare a room for you.”

“Amelia, I cannot stay, much as I would wish to. I must work in the morning.”

She leaned towards me, and I saw light dancing in her eyes. “Then I shall take you to the station myself.”

“There is another carriage?” I said.

“In a manner of speaking.” She stood up, and knocked over her empty glass. “Come with me, Edward, and I shall convey you to the station in Sir William’s Time Machine!”

She took my hand in hers, and half-dragged me towards the door. We started to laugh; it is difficult to write of this in retrospect, for intoxication, however mild, is not a state in which one acts one’s finest. For me it was the gaiety of the moment that contributed to the compliance.

I shouted to her as we ran along: “But to travel in Time will not take me to the station!”

“Yes it will!”

We reached the laboratory and went inside, closing the door behind us. The electrical lamps were still burning, and in the comparatively harsh glare our escapade took on a different aspect.

“Amelia,” I said, trying to restrain her. “What are you doing?”

“I am doing what I said. We will travel to the station.”

I stood before her, and took her hands in mine.

“We have both had a little too much to drink,” I said “Please don’t jest with me. You cannot seriously propose to operate Sir William’s Machine.”

Her hands tightened on mine. “I am not as intoxicated as you believe. My manner is gay, but I am in perfect earnest.”

“Then let us return to the drawing-room at once.”

She turned away from me, and walked towards the Time Machine. She gripped one of the brass rails in her hands, and immediately the Machine trembled as before.

She said: “You heard what Sir William said. Time and Space are inseparable. There is no need for you to leave in the next few minutes. Although the Machine is designed to travel into futurity, it will also move across spatial distances. In short, although it will journey across thousands of years, it can also be used for a trip as prosaic as taking a friend to the station.”

“You are still jesting,” I said. “Nor am I convinced that the Machine will even travel in Time.”

“But it has been proved.”

“Not to my satisfaction it hasn’t,” I said.

She turned to face me, and her expression was as serious as before. “Then allow me to demonstrate it to you!”

“No, Amelia! It would be foolhardy to drive the Machine!”

“Why, Edward? I know what to do … I have watched Sir William’s tests often enough.”

“But we do not know the craft is safe!”

“There would be no danger.”

I simply shook my head with the agony of the moment. Amelia turned back to the Machine and reached over to one of the dials. She did something to this, then pulled back the lever with the bicycle handle-bar attached.