Stephen Baxter - The Time Ships

It seemed that my nomadic trail had ended here, in these meaningless few rooms!

I would be kept alive by these Constructors, it seemed, as long as my body continued to function. Since I have always been robust, I supposed I could look forward to several decades more of life — and perhaps even longer; for if Nebogipfel was right about the sub-molecular capabilities of these Constructors, perhaps (so Nebogipfel speculated, to my astonishment) they would be able to halt, or reverse, even the aging processes of my body!

But it seemed I would be deprived of companionship forever — save for my unequal relationship with a Morlock who, already being my intellectual superior, and with his continuing immersion in the Information Sea, would surely soon pass on to concerns advanced far beyond my understanding.

I faced a long and comfortable life, then — but it was the life of a zoo animal, caged up in these few rooms, with nothing meaningful to achieve. It was a future that had become a tunnel, closed and unending…

But, on the other hand, I knew that concurring with the Constructors’ plan was a course of action quite capable of destroying my intellect.

I confided these doubts to Nebogipfel.

“I understand your fears, and I applaud your honesty in confronting your own weakness. You have grown in understanding of yourself, since our first meeting—”

“Spare me this kindness, Nebogipfel!”

“There is no need for a decision now.”

“What do you mean?”

Nebogipfel went on to describe the immense technical scope of the Constructors’ project. To fuel the Ships, vast amounts of Plattnerite would have to be prepared.

“The Constructors work on long time-scales,” the Morlock said. “But, even so, this project is ambitious. The Constructors’ own estimates of completion (and this is vague, because the Constructors do not plan in the sense that human builders do; rather they simply build, cooperative and incremental and utterly dedicated, in the manner of termites) are that another million years will pass before the Ships are made ready.”

“A million years?… The Constructors must be patient indeed, to devise schemes on such scales!”

My imagination was caught by the scale of all this, so startled was I by that number! To consider a project spanning geological ages, and designed to send ships to the Dawn of Time: I felt a certain awe settling over me, I told Nebogipfel: a sense, perhaps, of the numinous.

Nebogipfel favored me with a sort of skeptical glare. “That is all very well,” he said. “But we must strive to be practical.”

He said that he had negotiated to have the remains of our improvised Time-Car brought to us; as well as tools, raw materials, and a supply of fresh Plattnerite…

I understood his thinking immediately. “You’re suggesting we just hop on the Time-Car, and skip forward through a million-year interval, while our patient Constructors complete the Ships’ development?”

“Why not? We have no other way to reach the launch of the Ships. The Constructors may be functionally immortal, but we are not.”

“Well — I don’t know! — it just seems… I mean, can the Constructors be so sure of completing their building program on time, and as they have envisaged it over such immense intervals? Why, in my day, the human species itself was only a tenth that age.”

“You must remember,” Nebogipfel said, “ the Constructors are not human. They are, truly, an immortal species. Individual foci of awareness may form and dissolve back into the general Sea, but the continuity of Information-gathering, and their consistency of purpose, is unwavering…

“In any event;” he said, regarding me, “what have you to lose? If we travel up through time and find that, after all, the Constructors gave up before completing their Ships — what of it?”

“Well, we could die, for one thing. What if no Constructor is available to greet us, and tend to our needs, at the distant end of your million years?”

“What of it?” the Morlock repeated. “Can you look into your heart, now, and say that you are happy” — he waved a hand at our little apartment — “to live like this for the rest of your life?”

I did not answer; but I think he read my response in my face.

“And besides — ,” he went on.

“Yes?”

“Once it is built, it is possible we may choose to use the Time-Car to travel in a different direction.”

“What do you mean?”

“We will be given plenty of Plattnerite — we could even reach the Palaeocene again, if you would like.”

I glanced about furtively, feeling like some plotting criminal! “Nebogipfel, what if the Constructors hear you saying such things?”

“What if they do? We are not prisoners here. The Constructors find us interesting — and they feel that you should accompany the Ships on their final quest, because of your historical and causal significance. But they would not force us, or keep us here if our distress was so deep that we could not survive.”

“And you?” I asked him carefully. “What do you want to do?”

“I have made no decision,” he retorted. “My main concern now is to open as many options to the future as I can.”

This was eminently sensible advice, and so — having done with introspection! — I concurred with Nebogipfel that we should make a start at rebuilding the Time-Car. We fell into a detailed discussion as to the requirements we would have for materials and tools.

The Time-Car was brought in from the ice by the Constructor. To achieve this, the Constructor split himself into four small sub-pyramids, and positioned these child-machines beneath each corner of the car’s battered frame. The child-machines moved with a kind of oily, flowing motion — think of the way a sand-dune advances, grain by grain, under the influence of a wind — and I saw how migrating threads of metal cilia connected the child-machines to each other as the strange procession continued.

When the remains of our car had been deposited in the middle of one room, the child-machines coalesced into their parent Constructor once more; they flowed upwards and into each other, as if melting. I found it a fascinating sight, if repulsive; but soon Nebogipfel was happily plugged into his eye-scope once more without a qualm.

The essential sub-structure of the Time-Car came from the skeleton of our 1938 Chronic Displacement Vehicle, but its super-structure — such as it was, merely a few panels for walls and floor — had been improvised, by Nebogipfel, from the wreckage of the Expeditionary Force’s bombed-out Juggernauts and the Messerchmitt Zeitmaschine. The simple controls had been a similarly crude affair. Much of this, now, was depleted and wrecked. So, in addition to the replacement of the Plattnerite, it was pretty clear that we needed to perform some pretty extensive renovation work on the car.

I contributed much of the skilled manual work, under the direction of Nebogipfel. At first I resented this arrangement, but it was Nebogipfel who had the access to the Information Sea, and thereby the accumulated wisdom of the Constructors; and it was he who was able to specify to the Constructor the materials we needed: pipe of such-and-such a diameter, with a thread of this-or-that pitch; and so forth.

The Constructor produced the raw materials we needed in his usual novel fashion; he simply extruded the stuff from his hide. It cost him nothing, it seemed, save a material depletion; but that was soon made up by an increased flow into the apartment of the migrating cilia which sustained him.

I found it difficult to trust the results of this process. I had visited steelworks and the like during the manufacture of components of my own Time Machine, and earlier devices: I had watched molten iron run from the blast-furnaces into Bessemer converters, there to be oxidized and mixed with spiegel and carbon… And so on. By comparison, I found it hard to put my faith in something which had been disgorged by a shapeless, glistening heap!