Stephen Baxter - The Time Ships

Of course, Nebogipfel was right; and now I wondered, with a sort of nervous self-consciousness, how many of those other Ships, which prowled across the star-less skies of earth like huge animals, were also down here, in some way, because of our presence?

But now, gazing up into the Plattnerite-coated sky, another observation struck me. “Nebogipfel — behold the moon!”

The Morlock turned; I saw how the green light which played over the hairs of his face was now overlaid with a delicate silver.

My observation was elementary: that the moon had lost its delicious greenness. The life-color which had reached up from earth and coated it, for all those millions of years, had withered away, exposing the stark bone-white of the dusty mountains and maria beneath. Now, the satellite was quite indistinguishable in its dead pallor from the moon of my own day, save perhaps for a more brilliant glow over its dark side: there was a vivid Old Moon cradled in the New Moon’s arms — and I knew that this greater brightness must be due, solely, to the increased gleam of the ice-coated earth, which must blaze in those airless Lunar skies like a second sun.

“It might have been the enforced variation of the sun,” Nebogipfel speculated. “The Constructors’ Plattnerite project… That, perhaps, finally disrupted the balance of life.”

“You know,” I said with some bitterness, “I think — even after all we’ve seen and heard — I had taken some comfort from the persistence of that patch of earth-green, up in the sky. The thought that somewhere — not so impossibly far away — a scrap of the earth I remembered might still persist: that there might be some improbable, low-gravity jungle, through which the sons of man might still walk… But now there can only be ruins and shallow footprints on that bleak surface — more of them, to match those littered across the carcass of the earth.”

And it was just at that moment, while I was in this maudlin mood, that there was a report uncommonly like a gunshot — and our protective dome fractured, like an eggshell!

I saw that a series of cracks — a complex delta of them — had spread out across the face of the dome. Even as I watched, a small piece of the dome, no bigger than my hand, fell loose and settled through the air, drifting like a snowflake.

And beyond the shattering dome the threads of the Ship’s Plattnerite web were extending — they were growing, down towards me and Nebogipfel.

“Nebogipfel — what is happening? Without the dome, will we die?” I was in a febrile, electric state, in which my every nerve-end was live with suspicion and fear.

“You must try not to be afraid,” Nebogipfel said, and then with a simple, astonishing gesture, he took hold my hand in his thin Morlock fingers, and held it as an adult might a child’s. It was the first time I had felt the touch of his cold fingers since those dreadful moments when the Constructor had rebuilt me, and a distant echo of our companionship in the Palaeocene returned to warm me, here amid the ice of White Faith. I am afraid I cried out then, unhinged by my fear, and pressed myself deeper into my seat, longing only for escape; and Nebogipfel’s weak fingers tightened around my own.

The dome cracked further, and I heard a soft rain of it patter down over the Time-Car. The threads of Plattnerite reached deeper into our splintering dome, with nodules of light squirting along their lengths.

Nebogipfel said, “They mean to carry us with them — the Constructors — these beings of Plattnerite — back to the dawn of time, and perhaps beyond… But not like this.” He indicated his own fragile body. “We could never survive it — not for a minute… Do you see?”

The Plattnerite tentacles brushed against my scalp, forehead and shoulders; I ducked, to avoid their cold grip. “You mean,” I said, “that we must become like them. Like the Constructors… we must submit to the touch of these Plattnerite cilia! Why did you not warn me of this?”

“Would it have helped? It is the only way. Your fear is natural; but you must contain it, just for a moment more, and then — then you will be free…

I could feel the cool weight of Plattnerite coils settling over my legs and shoulders. I tried to hold myself still — and then I got the sense of one of those squirming cables moving across my forehead, and I could feel, quite clearly, the wriggling of cilia against my flesh, and I could not help but scream and struggle against that soft weight, but already I was unable to rise from my seat.

I was immersed in greenness now, and my view of the world beyond — of the moon, the earth’s fields of Ice, even of the greater structure of the Ship — was obscured. Those shifting, quasi-animate nodes of light passed over my body, glaring in my vision. My bowl of fruit slipped from my numbing fingers, and rattled against the floor of the car; but even that rattle subsided quickly, as my senses faded to dimness.

There was a final crumbling of the dome, a hail of fragments about me. On my forehead there was a touch of cold, the distant breath of winter, and then there was only the coolness of Nebogipfel’s fingers about mine — it was all I could feel, save for that omnipresent, liquid fumbling of Plattnerite! I imagined cilia detaching and — as they had once before — squirming into the interstices of my body. So rapidly had this invasion of light progressed, I could no longer move so much as a finger, nor could I cry out — I was pinned as if by a strait-waistcoat — and now the tentacles forced themselves between my lips, like so many worms, and into my mouth, there to dissolve against my tongue; and I felt a cold pressure on the surface of my eyes -

I was lost, disembodied, immersed in emerald light.

I was outside Time and Space.

It was not like sleep — for even in sleep, the brain is active, functioning, sorting through its freight of information and memories; even in sleep, I contend, one remains conscious, aware of one’s self and of one’s continued existence.

This interval, this timeless spell, was not like that. It was more as if the Plattnerite web had, subtle and silent, disassembled me. I was simply not there; and the fragments of my personality, my shards of memory, had been broken up and disseminated about that immense and invisible Information Sea of which Nebogipfel was so fond.

…And then — more mysterious by far! — I found myself there again — I cannot put it more plainly than that — it was less like a waking than a switching-on, as one operates an electric bulb. One moment — nothing; the next — a full, shuddering awareness.

I could see again. I had a clear view of the world — of the green-glowing hull of the Time Ship all around me, of the earth’s bone-gleam beyond.

I was existent once again! and a deep panic — a horror — of that interval of Absence pumped through my system. I have feared no Hell so much as nonexistence — indeed, I had long resolved that I should welcome whatever agonies Lucifer reserves for the intelligent Non-Believer; if those pains served as proof that my consciousness still endured!

But I was not permitted to brood on my disquietude, for now came the most extraordinary sensation of being lifted. I realized a growing stress upon me, a feeling as though some huge magnet was drawing me upward. The stress grew — I seemed a mote over which huge forces were fighting — and then of a sudden, that tension was resolved. I flew up, feeling exactly as if I was a small child again, being picked up by the strong, safe hands of my father; I had that same lightness of being, the sensation of flying. The substance of the Time Ship arose with me, so that it was like being at the center of an immense, open, green-glowing balloon, lifting from the ground.