Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships

I entered through a carved archway, with its decorations badly weatherworn and broken up. Within I found a single great chamber hung with brown, and the floor was set with blocks of that hard white metal I had observed before, worn into tracks by the soft feet of innumerable generations of Eloi. Slabs of polished stone formed tables, on which were heaped piles of fruit; and around the tables were gathered little clusters of Eloi, in their pretty tunics, eating and jabbering to each other like so many cage-birds.

I stood there in my dingy jungle twill — that relic of the Palaeocene was quite out of place in all that sunlit prettiness, and I mused that the Watchers might have outfitted me more elegantly! — and a group of the Eloi came to me and clustered around. I felt little hands on me, like soft tentacles, pulling at my shirt. Their faces had the small mouths, pointed chins and tiny ears characteristic of their race, but these seemed to be a different set of Eloi from those I had encountered near the Sphinx; and these little folk had no great memory, and therefore no fear, of me.

I had come here to rescue one of their kind, not to commit more of that graceless barbarism which had disfigured my previous visit; so I submitted to their inspection with good grace and open hands.

I made for the tables, followed everywhere by a little gaggle of the Eloi. I found a cluster of hypertrophied strawberries, and I crammed these into my mouth; and it was not long before I found several samples of that floury fruit in its three-sided husk which had proved my particular favorite before. I collected a haul I judged sufficient, found a darker, shaded corner, and settled down to eat, surrounded by a little wall of the curious Eloi.

I smiled at the Eloi, welcoming them, and tried to remember those scraps of their simple speech which I had learned before. As I spoke their little faces pressed around me, their eyes wide in the dark, their red lips parted like children’s. I relaxed. I think it was the plainness of this encounter, the easy humanity of it, which entranced me then; I had suffered too much inhuman strangeness recently! The Eloi were not human, I knew — in their way they were as alien to me as the Morlocks — but they were a good facsimile.

I seemed just to close my eyes.

I came to myself with a start. It had grown quite dark! There were fewer of the Eloi close to me, and their mild, unquestioning eyes seemed to shine at me in the gloom.

I got to my feet in a panic. Fruit husks and flowers fell from my person, where they had been arranged by the playful Eloi. I blundered across the main chamber. It was quite full of Eloi, now, and they slept in little clusters across the metal floor. I emerged at last through the doorway and into the daylight…

Or rather, what little there was left of the day! Peering about wildly, I saw how a last sliver of sun was barely visible — a mere fingernail of light, resting on the western horizon — and to the east, I saw a single bright planet — perhaps it was Venus.

I cried out and lifted my arms to the sky. After all my inner resolve that I should make amends for the impetuous foolishness of the past, here I had dozed through the afternoon, as indolent as you like!

I plunged back to the path I had followed and struck out for the wood. So much for my plans for arriving in the wood during daylight! As the twilight drew in around me, I caught glimpses of gray-white ghosts, barely visible at the edge of my vision. I whirled about at each such apparition, but they fled, staying beyond my reach.

The shapes were Morlocks, of course — the cunning, brutal Morlocks of this History — and they were tracking me with all the silent hunting skills they could command. My earlier resolve that I should not need a weapon for this expedition now began to seem a little foolish, and I told myself that as soon as I reached the wood I should find a fallen branch or some such, to serve me in the office of a club.

I tripped on the unevenness of the ground several times, and would have twisted my ankles, I think, if it were not for the stiffness of my soldier’s boots.

By the time I came upon the wood, it was full night.

I surveyed that expanse of dank, black forest. The futility of my quest came to me. I remembered how it had seemed to me that a great host of Morlocks had been gathered about me: how was I to find that malevolent handful which would bear away Weena?

I considered plunging into the forest — I remembered, roughly, the way I had gone the first time — and I might come upon my earlier self, with Weena. But the folly of that procedure struck me immediately. For one thing, I had got turned about in my struggles with the Morlocks, and had finished up stumbling about the forest more or less at random. And besides, I had no protection: in the dark enclosure of the forest I should be quite vulnerable. No doubt I should make a satisfying mess of some of them, before they brought me down — but bring me down they surely would; and in any event such a battle was not my intention.

So I retreat, through a quarter-mile or so, until I came upon a hillock which overlooked the wood.

The full darkness gathered about me, and the stars emerged in their glory. As I had done once before, I distracted myself by seeking out signs of the old constellations, but the gradual proper motion of the stars had quite distorted the familiar picture. Still, though, that planet I had noticed earlier shone down on me, as steady as a true companion.

The last time I had studied this altered sky, I remembered, I had had Weena at my side, wrapped up in my jacket for warmth, as we had rested the night while making for the Palace of Green Porcelain. I recalled my feelings then: I had reflected on the littleness of earthly life, compared to the millennial migrations of the stars, and I had been taken, briefly, by an elegiac remoteness — by a view of the grandeur of time, above the level of my earthly troubles.

But now, it seemed to me, I was done with all that. I had had enough of perspective, of Infinities and Eternities; I felt impatient and taut. I was, and always had been, no more than a man, and now I was fully immersed once more in the gritty concerns of Humanity, and only my own projects filled my consciousness.

I dropped my eyes from the remote, unfathomable stars, and down to the woods before me. And now, even as I watched, a gentle, roseate glow began to spread across the south-western horizon. I got to my feet, and did a sort of dance step, such was my sudden elation. Here was confirmation that, after all my adventures, I had finished up on the right day, of all the possible days, here in this remote century! For that glow was a fire in the forest — a fire started, with careless abandon, by myself.

I struggled to remember what had come next on that fateful night — the precise sequence…

The fire I had started had been a quite new and wonderful thing to Weena, and she had wanted to play with its red sheets and flickers; I had been forced to restrain her from throwing her self into that liquid light. Then I picked her up — she had struggled — and I had plunged on into that wood, with the light of my fire illuminating my path.

Soon we had left the glow of those flames, and were proceeding in blackness, broken only by patches of deep blue sky beyond the trees’ stems. It had not been long, in all that oily darkness, before I had heard the pattering of narrow feet, the soft cooing of voices, all around me; I remembered a tug of my coat, and then at my sleeve. I had put Weena down so that I could find my matches, and there was a struggle about my knees, as those Morlocks, like persistent insects, had fallen on her poor body. I got a match lit when its head flared I had seen a row of white Morlock faces, illuminated as if by a flash lamp, all turned up towards me with their red gray eyes — and then, in a second, they had fled.