Christopher Priest - The Space Machine

“I am a little light-headed,” I said, gasping unexpectedly.:

“And I.”

“Then we must not exert ourselves.”

I looked around desperately; in this Stygian gloom all that could be seen was the bank of weeds silhouetted against the starlight. It seemed to me that dank and wet as they were, they offered the only hope of shelter, and I put this to Amelia. She had no better proposal, and so with our arms around one another we returned to the vegetation. We found a clump of fronds standing about two feet high, on the very edge of the growth, and I felt experimentally with my hands. The stalks seemed to be dry, and beneath them the ground was not as hard as that on which we had been sitting.

An idea came to me, and I took one of the stalks and broke it off with my hand. At once, I felt cold fluid run over my fingers.

“The plants issue sap if they are broken,” I said, holding out the stalk for Amelia to take. “If we can climb under the leaves without snapping the branches, we should remain dry.”

I sat down on the soil and began to move forward, feet first. Crawling gently in this fashion I was soon beneath the vegetation, and in a dark, silent cocoon of plants. A moment later, Amelia followed, and when she was beside me we lay still.

To say that lying there under the fronds was pleasant would be utterly misleading, but it was certainly preferable to being exposed on the plain. Indeed, as the minutes passed and we made no movement I felt a little more comfortable, and realized that the confinement of our bodies was warming us a little.

I reached out to Amelia, who was lying not six inches from me, and placed my hand on her side. The fabric of her jacket was still damp, but I sensed that she too was rather warmer.

“Let us hold each other,” I said. “We must not get any colder.”

I placed my arm around her back, and pulled her towards me. She came willingly enough, and soon we were lying together, face to face in the dark. I moved my head and our noses touched; I pressed forward and kissed her full on the lips.

At once she pulled her face away from mine.

“Please don’t take advantage of me, Edward.”

“How can you accuse me of that? We must stay warm.”

“Then let us do just that. I do not want you to kiss me.”

“But I thought—”

“Circumstance has thrown us together. Let us not forget that we barely know each other.”

I could hardly believe my ears. Amelia’s friendly manner during the day had seemed an unmistakable confirmation of my own feelings, and in spite of our dreadful situation her very presence was enough to inflame my passions. I had expected her to allow me to kiss her, and after this rebuff I lay in silence, hurt and embarrassed.

A few minutes later Amelia moved again, and kissed me briefly on my forehead.

“I’m very fond of you, Edward,” she said. “Is that not enough?”

“I thought… well, I’d been feeling that you—”

“Have I said or done anything to indicate that I felt for you more than friendship?”

“Well … no.”

“Then please, lie still.”

She placed one of her arms around me, and pressed me to her a little more tightly. We lay like that for a long time, barely moving except to ease cramped muscles, and during the rest of that long night we managed to doze for only a few short periods.

Sunrise came more suddenly than either of us had expected. One moment we had been lying in that dark, silent growth, the next there was a brilliance of light, filtering through the fronds. We moved simultaneously in response, both sensing that the day ahead was to be momentous.

We rose painfully, and walked haltingly away from the vegetation, towards the sun. It was still touching the horizon, dazzlingly white. The sky above us was a deep blue. There were no clouds.

We walked for ten yards, then turned to look back at the bank of vegetation.

Amelia, who had been holding my arm, now clutched me suddenly. I too stared in amazement, for the vegetation stretched as far as we could see to left and right of us. It stood in a line that was generally straight, but parts of it advanced and others receded. In places the weeds heaped together, forming mounds two hundred feet or more in height. This much we could have expected from our experience of it during the night, but nothing could have warned us of the profoundest surprise of all: that there was not a stem, not a leaf, not a bulbous, spreading tuber lying grotesquely across the sandy soil that was not a vivid blood-red.

We stared for a long time at that wall of scarlet plant-life, lacking the vocabulary to express our reactions to it.

The higher part of the weed-bank had the appearance of being smooth and rounded, especially towards its visible cres~ Here it looked like a gentle, undulating hill, although by looking in more detail at its surface we could see that what appeared to be an unbroken face was in fact made up of thousands or millions of branches.

Lower down, in the part of the growth where we had lain, its appearance was quite different. Here the newer plants were growing, presumably from seeds thrown out from the main bulk of vegetation. Both Amelia and I remarked on a horrible feeling that the wall was inexorably advancing, throwing out new shoots and piling up its mass behind.

Then, even as we looked aghast at this incredible weed-bank, we saw that the impact of the sun’s rays was having an effect, for from all along the wall there came a deep-throated groaning, and a thrashing, breaking sound. One branch moved, then another … then all along that living cliff-face branches and stems moved in a semblance of unthinking animation.

Amelia clutched my arm again, and pointed directly in front of us.

“See Edward!” she said. “My bag is there! We must have my bag!”

I saw that about thirty feet up the wall of vegetation there was what appeared to be a broken hole in the smooth-seeming surface. As Amelia started forward towards it,I realized that that must be the place where the Time Machine had so precipitately deposited us.

A few feet away, absurd in its context, lay Amelia’s hand bag, caught on a stem.

I hurried forward and caught up with Amelia, just as she was preparing to push through the nearest plants, her skirt raised almost to her knees.

“You can’t go in there,” I said. “The plants are coming to life!”

As I spoke to her a long, creeper like plant snaked silently towards us, and a seed-pod exploded with a report like a pistol. A cloud of dust-like seeds drifted away from the plant.

“Edward, it is imperative that I have my bag!”

“You can’t got up there to get it!”

“I must.”

“You will have to manage without your powders and creams.” She glared angrily at me for a moment. “There is more in it than face-powder. Money… and my brandy-flask. Many things.”

She plunged desperately into the vegetation, but as she did so a branch creaked into apparent life, and raised itself up. It caught the hem of her skirt, tore the fabric and spun her round.

She fell, screaming.

I hurried to her, and helped her away from the plants. “Stay here… I’ll go.”

Without further hesitation I plunged into that forest of groaning, moving stems, and scrambled towards where I had last seen her bag. It was not too difficult at first; I quickly learned which stems would, and which would not, bear my weight. As the height of the plants grew to a point where they were above my head I started to climb, slipping several times as the branch I gripped broke in my hand and released a flood of sap. All around me the plants were moving; growing and waving like the arms of a cheering crowd. Glancing up, I saw Amelia’s hand-bag on one such stem, dangling some twenty feet above my head. I had managed to climb only three or four feet towards it. There was nothing here that would bear my weight.