Christopher Priest - The Space Machine

I sucked in my breath involuntarily, and discovered that in so doing I had inadvertently inhaled several of Amelia’s long hairs. Even in the immense distractions of the journey I found a moment to rejoice at this furtive intimacy.

Amelia shouted to me: “Are you frightened?”

This was no time for prevarication. “Yes!” I shouted back.

“Hold tight … there is no danger.”

Our raised voices were necessary only as an expression of our excitement; in the attenuated dimension all was silent.

The sun came up, and set again almost as quickly. The next period of darkness was shorter, and the following daylight shorter still. The Time Machine was accelerating into futurity!

In what seemed to us only a few more seconds the procession of day and night was so fast as to be virtually undetectable, and our surroundings were visible only in a grey, twilight glow.

About us, details of the laboratory became hazy, and the image of the sun became a path of light seemingly fixed in a deep-blue sky.

When I spoke to Amelia I had lost the strands of her hair from my mouth. About me was a spectacular sight, and yet for all its wonder it did not compare with the feel of this girl in my arms. Prompted no doubt by the new infusion of port into my blood I became emboldened, and I moved my face nearer and took several strands of her hair between my lips, I raised my head slightly, allowing the hair to slide sensuously across my tongue. Amelia made no response I could detect, and so I allowed the strands to fall and took a few more. Still she did not stop me. The third time I tipped my head to one side, so as not to dislodge my hat, and pressed my lips gently but very firmly on the smooth white skin of her neck.

I was allowed to linger there for no more than a second, but then she sat forward as if in sudden excitement, and said: “The Machine is slowing, Edward!”

Beyond the glass roof the sun was now moving visibly slower, and the periods of dark, between the sun’s passages, were distinct, if only as the briefest flickers of darkness.

Amelia started reading off the dials before her: “We are in December, Edward! January … January 1903. February…

One by one the months were called, and the pauses between her words were growing longer.

Then: “This is June, Edward.; . we are nearly there!”

I glanced up at the clock for confirmation of this; but I saw that the device had unaccountably stopped.

“Have we arrived?” I said.

“Not quite.”

“But the clock on the wall is not moving.”

Amelia looked briefly at it. “No one has wound it, that is all.”

“Then you will have to tell me when we arrive.”

“The wheel is slowing … we are almost at rest … now!”

And with that word the silence of attenuation was broken. Somewhere just outside the house there was a massive explosion, and some of the panes of glass cracked. Splinters fell down upon us.

Beyond the transparent walls I saw that it was daytime and the sun was shining … but there was smoke drifting past, and we heard the crackle of burning timber.

There came a second explosion, but this was further away. I felt Amelia stiffen in my arms, and she turned awkwardly in the saddle to face me.

“What have we come to?” she said.

“I cannot say.”

Some distance away somebody screamed horribly, and as if this were a signal the scream was echoed by two other voices. A third blast occurred, louder than either of the previous two. More panes cracked, and splinters tinkled down to the floor. One piece fell on to the Time Machine itself, not six inches from my foot.

Gradually, as our ears adapted to the confusion of sounds around us, one noise in particular stood out above all others: a deep-throated braying, rising like a factory siren, then howling around the upper note. It drowned temporarily the crackle of the fires and the cries of the men. The siren note fell away, but then it was repeated.

“Edward!” Amelia’s face was snow-white, and her voice had become a high-pitched whisper. “What is happening?”

“I cannot imagine. We must leave. Take the controls!”

“I don’t know how. We must wait for the automatic return.”

“How long have we been here?”

Before she could answer there was another shattering explosion.

“Hold still,” I said. “We cannot be here much longer. We have blundered into a war.”

“But the world is at peace!”

“In our time, yes.”

I wondered how long we had been waiting here in this hell of 1903, and cursed again that the clock was not working. It could not be long before the automatic return took us back through the safety of attenuation to our own blissfully peaceful time.

Amelia had turned her face so that it was now buried in my shoulder, her body twisted awkwardly on the saddle. I kept my arms around her, doing what I could to calm her in that fearful bedlam.

I looked around the laboratory, seeing how strangely it had changed from the first time I had seen it: debris was everywhere, and filth and dust overlaid everything bar the Time Machine itself.

Unexpectedly, I saw a movement beyond the walls of the laboratory, and looking that way I saw that there was someone running desperately across the lawn towards the house. As the figure came nearer I saw that it was that of a woman. She came right up to the wall, pressing her face against the glass. Behind her I saw another figure, running too.

I said: “Amelia … look!”

“What is it?”

“There!”

She turned to look at the two figures, but just as she did two things happened simultaneously. One was a shattering explosion accompanied by a gust of flame erupting across the lawn and consuming the woman … and the other was a vertiginous lurch from the Time Machine. The silence of attenuation fell about us, the laboratory appeared whole once more, and over head began the reverse procession of day and night.

Still turned uncomfortably towards me, Amelia burst into tears of relief, and I held her in my arms in silence.

When she had calmed, she said: “What were you seeing just before we returned?”

“Nothing,” I said. “My eyes deceived me.”

There was no way I could describe to her the woman I had seen. She had been like a wild animal: hair matted and in disarray, blood disfiguring her face, clothes torn so as to reveal the nakedness beneath. Nor did I know how to say what was for me the greatest horror of all.

I had recognized the woman and knew her to be Amelia, suffering her dying moments in the hellish war of 1903!

I could not say this, could not even believe what I myself had seen. But it was so: futurity was real, and that was Amelia’s real destiny. In June 1903, on the 22nd day, she would be consumed by fire in the garden of Sir William’s house.

The girl was cradled in my arms, and I felt her trembling still. I could not allow that destiny to be fulfilled!

So it was, without understanding the precipitate nature of my actions, that I moved to avert destiny. The Time Machine would now carry us further into futurity, beyond that terrible day!

I was in a mad trance. I stood up abruptly and Amelia, who had been leaning against me, stared up in astonishment. Over my head, the days and nights were flickering.

There was a startling and heady rush of sensations coursing through me, caused I suppose, by the vertigo of the attenuation, but also because some instinct was preparing me for the act that followed. I stepped forward, placing my foot on the floor of the Machine in front of the saddle, and supporting myself on the brass rail, I managed to crouch down in front of Amelia.

“Edward, what are you doing?” Her voice was trembling, and she sobbed as soon as her sentence was said. I paid her no attention, peering instead at the dials which were now but a few inches from my face.