Christopher Priest - The Space Machine

I thought about this with great concentration. “I turned it several months forward.”

“I still cannot say for certain. It seems to me that we are in one of three possible times. Either we returned to 1893, as you suggest, and are dislocated by several thousand miles, or the accident has left us in 1902, at the date showing on the dials when the rod was broken… or we have travelled forward those few months, and are now at, say, the end of 1902 or the beginning of 1903. In any event, one matter is certain: we have been propelled a considerable distance from Richmond.”

None of these postulations was welcome, for any one of them meant that the disastrous day in June 1903 still lay ahead. I did not wish to dwell on the consequences of this, so I raised another topic that had been troubling me.

“If we were now to return to England,” I said, “is it likely that we could meet ourselves?”

Amelia did not answer my question directly. She said:

“What do you mean, if we were to return to England? Surely we will arrange that as soon as possible?”

“Yes, of course,” I said, hastily, regretting that I had phrased my question in that way. “So it is not a rhetorical question: are we soon to meet ourselves?”

Amelia frowned.

“I don’t think it is possible,” she said at length. “We have travelled in Time just as positively as we have travelled in Space, and if my own belief is correct, we have left the world of 1893 as far behind as we seem to have left Richmond. There is at this moment neither Amelia Fitzgibbon nor Edward Turnbull in England.”

“Then what,” I said, having anticipated this answer, “will Sir William have made of our disappearance?”

Amelia smiled unexpectedly. “I’m sure I do not know. Nor am I sure that he will even notice my absence until several days have passed. He is a man of great preoccupations. When he realizes I have gone, I suppose he will contact the police and I will be listed as a Missing Person. That much at least he will see as his responsibility.”

“But you talk of this with such coldness. Surely Sir William will be most concerned at your disappearance?”

“I am merely speaking the facts as I see them. I know that he was preparing his Time Machine for a journey of exploration, and had we not pre-empted him he would have been the first man to travel into futurity. When he returns to his laboratory he will find the Machine apparently untouched—for it would have returned directly from here—and he will continue with his plans without regard for the household.”

I said: “Do you think that if Sir William were to suspect the cause of your disappearance he might use the Machine to try to find us?”

Amelia shook her head at once. “You assume two things. First, that he would realize that we had tampered with the Machine, and second, that even if so he would know where to search for us. The first is almost impossible to suspect, for to all appearances the Machine will appear untouched, and the second is unthinkable, as the Machine has no record of its journeys when the automatic return has been in operation.”

“So we must make our own way back.”

At this Amelia came a little closer and grasped my hand. “Yes, my dear,” she said.

The sun was past its zenith, and already the weed-bank was throwing a shadow, and we walked stoically on. Then, just as I was feeling we should stop for another rest, I caught Amelia’s elbow and pointed forward.

“Look, Amelia!” I shouted. “There… on the horizon!”

Directly in front of us was the most welcome sight either of us could have imagined. Something metallic and polished was ahead of us, for the sun’s rays were being reflected off into our eyes. The steadiness of the dazzle was such that we knew it could not be coming from a natural feature, such as a sea or a lake. It was man-made, and our first sight of civilization.

We started towards it, but in a moment the glare vanished.

“What has happened?” Amelia said. “Did we imagine it?”

“Whatever it was, it has moved,” I said. “But it was no illusion.”

We walked as quickly as we could, but we were still suffering the effects of altitude and were forced to maintain our usual steady pace.

Within two or three minutes we saw the reflected light again, and knew we had not been mistaken. At last sense prevailed and we took a short rest, eating the remainder of our chocolate and drinking as much of the sap as we could stomach. Thus fortified, we continued towards the intermittent light, knowing that at last our long walk was nearly over.

After another hour we were close enough to see the source of the reflection, although by then the sun had moved further across the sky and it had been some time since we had seen the dazzle. There was a metal tower built in the desert, and it was the roof of this that had been catching the sunshine. In this rarefied atmosphere distances were deceptive, and although we had been able to see the tower for some time, it wasn’t until we were almost on it that we were able to estimate its size. By then we were close enough to see that it was not alone, and that some distance beyond it were several more.

The overall height of the nearest tower was about sixty feet. In appearance, the nearest analogy I can draw is that of a huge, elongated pin, for the tower consisted of a thin central pillar, surmounted by a circular enclosed platform. This description is itself misleading, for there was not one central pillar, but three. These were built very closely together, though, and ran parallel to each other up to the platform they supported, so it was only as we walked beneath the tower that Amelia and I noticed this. These three pillars were firmly buried in the soil but staring up at them I noticed that the platform was capable of being raised or lowered, for the pillars were jointed in several places and made of telescopic tubes.

The platform at the top was perhaps ten feet in diameter, and about seven feet high. On one side there was what seemed to be a large oval window, but this was made of dark glass and it was impossible to see beyond it from where we stood. Beneath the platform was a mechanical mounting, rather like gimbals, and it was this that enabled the platform to rotate slowly to and fro, thus causing the sun’s reflection to flash at us earlier. The platform was moving from side to side now, but apart from this there was no sign of anyone about.

“Hallo up there!” I called, then after a few seconds repeated the call. Either they could not hear me, or my voice was weaker than I had realized, but there was no reply from the occupants.

While I had been examining the tower, Amelia had moved past me and was staring towards the weed-bank. We had walked diagonally away from the vegetation to visit the tower, but now I saw that the bank here was even further away than I would have expected, and much lower. What was more, working at the base of it were many people.

Amelia turned towards me, and I could see the joy in her expression.

“Edward, we’re safe!” she cried, and came towards me and we embraced warmly.

Safety indeed it was, for this was clear evidence of the habitation we had been seeking for so long. I was all for going over to the people at once, but Amelia delayed.

“We must make ourselves presentable,” she said, and fumbled inside her bag. She passed me my collar and tie, and while I put these on she sat down and fussed with her face. After this she tried to dab off some of the worst weed-stains from her clothes, using her face-flannel, and then combed her hair. I was in dire need of a shave, but there was nothing that could be done about that.

Apart from our general untidiness, there was another matter that was troubling us both. Our long hours exposed to the hot sunshine had left their mark, in the fact that we were both suffering from sunburn. Amelia’s face had gone a bright pink—and she told me mine was no better—and although she had applied some cold-cream from a pot in her bag, she said she was suffering considerably.