Stephen Baxter - The Time Ships

Nebogipfel pulled the garment around him, huddling under its folds.

“And besides,” I said, “when I stop the machine, I will ensure we arrive when it is night, so we can find you shelter.” As I thought about this, I realized that to arrive in the hours of darkness would be a good idea in any event: a fine sight I should have made, appearing on Richmond Hill with this monster from the future, in the middle of a crowd of gaping promenaders!

The permanent greenery receded from the hill-side and we returned to a cycle of seasons. We began our passage back through the Age of Great Buildings which I have described before. Nebogipfel, with the jacket draped over his head, peered out with obvious fascination as bridges and pylons passed over the flickering landscape like mist. As for me, I felt an intense relief that we were approaching my own century.

Suddenly Nebogipfel hissed — it was a queer, cat-like sound — and pressed himself closer to the fabric of the machine. He stared ahead, his eyes huge and fixed.

I turned from him, and I realized that the extraordinary optical effects which I had observed during my voyage to the year A.D. 657,208 were again becoming apparent. I had the impression of star-fields, gaudy and crowded, trying to break through the diluted surface of things, all about me… And here, hovering a few yards before the machine, was the Watcher: my impossible companion. Its eyes were fixed on me, and I grabbed at a rail. I stared at that distorted parody of a human face, and those dangling tentacles — and again I was struck by the similarity with the flopping creature I had seen on that remote beach thirty million years hence.

It is an odd thing, but my goggles — which had been so useful in resolving the Morlock darkness — were of no help to me as I studied this creature; I saw it no more clearly than I could with my naked eyes.

I became aware of a low mumbling, like a whimper. It was Nebogipfel, clinging to his place in the machine with every evidence of distress.

“You’ve no need to be afraid,” I said, a little awkwardly. “I told you of my encounter with this creature on my way to your century. It is a strange sight, but it seems to be without harm.”

Through his shuddery whimpering, Nebogipfel said, “You do not understand. What we see is impossible. Your Watcher apparently has the ability to cross the corridors to traverse between potential versions of History… even to enter the attenuated environs of a traveling Time Machine. It is impossible!”

And then — as easily as it had arisen — the star-glow faded, and my Watcher receded into invisibility, and the machine surged on its way into the past.

At length I said to the Morlock harshly, “You must understand this, Nebogipfel: I have no intention of returning to the future, after this last trip.”

He wrapped his long fingers around the machine’s struts. “I know I cannot return,” he said. “I knew that even as I hurled myself onto the machine. Even if your intention was to return to the future—”

“Yes?”

“By its return through time once more, this machine of yours is bound to force another adjustment of History, in an unpredictable way.” He turned to me, his eyes huge behind the goggles. “Do you understand? My History, my home, is lost — perhaps destroyed. I have already become a refugee in time… Just as you are.”

His words chilled me. Could he be right? Could I be inflicting more damage on the carcass of History with this new expedition, even as I sat here?

My resolve to put all of this right — to put a stop to the Time Machine’s destructiveness — hardened in me!

“But if you knew all this was so, your recklessness in following me was folly of the first order—”

“Perhaps.” His voice was muffled, for he sheltered his head beneath his arms. “But to see such sights as I have already witnessed — to travel in time — to gather such information… none of my species has ever had such an opportunity!”

He fell silent, and my sympathy for him grew. I wondered how I might have reacted, had I been presented with a single second of opportunity — as the Morlock had.

The chronometric dials continued to wind back, and I saw that we were approaching my own century. The world assembled itself into a more familiar configuration, with the Thames firmly set in its old bank, and bridges I thought I recognized flickering into existence over it.

I pulled the levers over. The sun became visible as a discrete object, flying over our heads like a glowing bullet; and the passage of night was a perceptible flickering. Two of the chronometric dials were already stationary; only thousands of days — a mere few years — remained to be traversed.

I became aware that Richmond Hill had congealed around me, in more or less the form I recognized from my own day. With the obstructing trees reduced to transient transparency by my travel, I took in a good view of the meadows of Petersham and Twickenham, and all dotted about with stands of ancient trees. It was all reassuring and familiar — despite the fact that my velocity through time was still so high that it was impossible to make out people, or deer, or cows, or other denizens of the Hill, meadows or river; and the flickering of night and day bathed the whole scene in an unnatural glow — despite all this, I was nearly home!

I watched my dials as the thousands hand approached its zero — for at zero I was home, and it took all my determination not to halt the machine there and then, for my longing to return to my own Year was strong in the extreme — but I kept the levers pressed over, and watched the dials run on into their negative region.

Around me the Hill flickered through night and day, with here and there a splash of color as some picnic party stayed on the grass long enough for them to register on my vision. At last, with the dials reading six thousand, five hundred and sixty days before my departure, I pressed the levers again.

I brought the Time Machine to rest, in the depths of a cloudy, moonless night. If I had got my calculations right, I had landed in July of 1873. With my Morlock goggles, I saw the slope of the Hill, and the river’s flank, and dew glittering on the grass; and I could see that — although the Morlocks had deposited my machine on an open stretch of hill-side, a half-mile from my house — there was nobody about to witness my arrival. The sounds and scents of my century flooded over me: the sharp tang of wood burning in some grate somewhere, the distant murmur of the Thames, the brush of a breeze through the trees, the naphtha flares of hawkers’ barrows. It was all delicious, and familiar, and welcome!

Nebogipfel stood up cautiously. He had slipped his arms into my jacket sleeves, and now that heavy garment hung from him as if he were a child. “Is this 1891?”

“No,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I have brought us back further in time.” I glanced along the Hill, in the direction of my house. “Nebogipfel, in a laboratory up there, a brash young man is embarking on a series of experiments which will lead, ultimately, to the creation of a Time Machine…”

“You are saying—”

“That this is the year 1873 — and I anticipate, soon, meeting myself as a young man!”

His goggled, chinless face swiveled towards me in what appeared to be astonishment.

“Now come, Nebogipfel, and assist me in finding a place of concealment for this contraption.”

I cannot describe how odd it seemed to me to walk through the night air along the Petersham Road, coming at last to my own house — with a Morlock at my side!

The house was an end terrace, with big bay windows, rather unambitious carvings about the door frame, and a porch with mock-Grecian pillars. At the front there was an area with steps which went down to the basement, railed off by a bit of delicate, black-painted metal-work. The whole effect was really a sort of imitation of the genuinely grand houses on the Green, or in the Terrace at the top of the Hill; but it was a big, roomy, comfortable place which I had bought as a bargain as a younger man, and from which I had since had no thoughts of moving away.