Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships

Perhaps the flesh of the Eloi turned sour in the Morlock’s rank mouth, even as he bit into it in his dingy cave.

I envisaged, then, the Morlocks — or a faction of them — arising one night from their tunnels under the earth, and falling on the Eloi with their weapons and whip-muscled arms. There would be a great Culling — and, this time, not a disciplined harvesting of flesh, but a full-blooded assault with one, unthinking purpose: the final extinction of the Eloi.

How must the lawns and food palaces have run with blood, those ancient stones echoing to the childish bleating of the Eloi!

In such a contest there could be only one victor, of course. The fragile people of futurity, with their hectic, consumptive beauty, could never defend themselves against the assaults of organized, murderous Morlocks.

I saw it all — or so I thought! The Morlocks, triumphant at last, had inherited the earth. With no more use for the garden-country of the Eloi, they had allowed it to fall into ruin; they had erupted from the earth and — somehow — brought their own stygian darkness with them to cover the sun! I remembered how Weena’s folk had feared the nights of the new moon — she had called them “the Dark Nights” — now, it seemed to me, the Morlocks had brought about a final Dark Night to cover the earth, forever. The Morlocks had at last murdered the last of earth’s true children, and even murdered earth herself.

Such was my first hypothesis, then: wild, and gaudy — and wrong, in every particular!

…And I became aware, with almost a physical shock, that in the middle of all this historical speculation I had quite forgotten my regular inspections of the abandoned Time Machine.

I got to my feet and glared across the hill-side. I soon picked out the machine’s candle-lit glow — but the lights I had built flickered and wavered, as if opaque shapes were moving around the machine.

They could only be Morlocks!

With a spurt of fear — and, I have to acknowledge it, a lust for blood which pulsed in my head — I roared, lifted my poker-club, and pounded back along the path. Careless, I dropped my Kodak; behind me I heard a soft tinkle of breaking glass. For all I know, that camera lies there still — if I may use the phrase — abandoned in the darkness.

As I neared the machine, I saw they were Morlocks all right perhaps a dozen of them, capering around the machine.

They seemed alternately attracted and repelled by my lights, exactly like moths around candles. They were the same ape-like creatures I remembered — perhaps a little smaller — with that long, flaxen hair across their heads and backs, their skin a pasty white, arms long as monkeys’, and with those haunting red-gray eyes. They whooped and jabbered to each other in their queer language. They had not yet touched the Time Machine, I noted with some relief, but I knew it was a matter of moments before those uncanny fingers — ape-like, yet clever as any man’s — reached out for the sparkling brass and nickel.

But there would be no time for that, for I fell upon these Morlocks like an avenging angel.

I laid about me with my poker and my fist. The Morlocks jabbered and squealed, and tried to flee. I grabbed one of the creatures as it ran past me, and I felt again the worm-pallor cold of Morlock flesh. Hair like spider-web brushed across the back of my hand, and the animal nipped at my fingers with its small teeth, but I did not yield. I wielded my club, and I felt the soft, moist collapse of flesh and bone.

Those gray-red eyes widened, and closed.

I seemed to watch all this from a small, detached part of my brain. I had quite forgotten all my intentions to return proof of the working of time travel, or even to find Weena: I suspected at that moment that this was why I had returned into time — for this moment of revenge: for Weena, and for the murder of the earth, and my own earlier indignity. I dropped the Morlock — unconscious or dead, it was no more than a bundle of hair and bones — and grabbed for its companions, swinging my poker.

Then I heard a voice — distinctively Morlock, but quite unlike the others in tone and depth — it issued a single, imperative syllable. I turned, my arms soaked in blood up to the elbows of my jacket, and made ready for more fighting.

Before me, now, stood a Morlock who did not run from me. Though he was naked like the rest, his coat of hair seemed to have been brushed and prepared, so that he had something of the effect of a groomed dog, made to stand upright like a man. I took a massive step forward, my club held firm in both hands.

Calmly, the Morlock raised his right hand — something glinted there — and there was a green flash, and I felt the world tip backwards from under me, pitching me down beside my glowing machine; and I knew no more!

I came to my senses slowly, as if emerging from a deep and untroubled sleep. I was lying on my back, with my eyes closed. I felt so comfortable that for a moment I imagined I must be in my own bed, in my house in Richmond, and that the pink glow showing through my eyelids must be the morning sun seeping around my curtains…

But then I became aware that the surface beneath me — though yielding and quite warm — did not have the softness of a mattress. I could feel no sheets beneath me, nor blankets above me.

Then, in a flash, it returned to me: all of it — my second flight through time, the darkening of the sun, and my encounter with the Morlocks.

Fear flooded me, stiffening my muscles and tightening my stomach. I had been taken by the Morlocks! I snapped my eyes open -

And I was instantly dazzled by a brilliant illumination. It came from a remote disc of intense white light, directly above me. I cried out and flung an arm across my blinded eyes; I rolled over, pressing my face against the floor.

I pushed myself up to a crawling position. The floor was warm and giving, like leather. At first my vision was full of dancing images of that blazing disc, but at last I was able to make out my own shadow under me. And then, still on all fours, I noticed the queerest thing yet: that the surface beneath me was clear, as if made of some flexible glass, and — where my shadow shielded out the light — I could see stars, quite clearly visible through the floor beneath me. I had been deposited on some transparent platform, then, with this starry diorama below: it was as if I had been brought to some inverted planetarium.

I felt queasy to the stomach, but I was able to stand up. I had to shield my eyes with my hand against the unremitting glare from above; I wished I had not lost the hat I had brought from 1891! I still wore my light suit, although it now bore stains of sand and blood, particularly around the sleeves — though some efforts had been made to clean me up, I noticed with surprise, and my hands and arms were clear of Morlock blood, mucus and ichor. My poker was gone, and I could see no sign of my knapsack. I had been left my watch, which hung on a chain from my waistcoat, but my pockets were empty of matches or candles. My pipe and tobacco were gone, too, and I felt an incongruous stab of regret for that — in the middle of all that mystery and peril!

A thought struck me, and my hands flew to my vest pocket — and they found the Time Machine’s twin levers still there. I breathed relief.

I looked around. I was standing on a flat, even Floor of the leather-like, clear substance I have described. I was close to the center of a splash of light perhaps thirty yards wide, cast on that enigmatic Floor by the source above me. The air was quite dusty, so that it was easy to pick out the rays of light as they flooded down over me. You must imagine me standing there in the light, as if at the bottom of some dusty mine shaft, blinking up at the noonday sun. And indeed it looked like sunlight — but I could not understand how the sun could have been uncovered, nor come to be stationary above me. My only hypothesis was that I had been moved, while unconscious, to some point on the Equator.