Stephen Baxter - The Time Ships

When I removed Nebogipfel’s splints for the first time, the broken flesh showed itself to be healing. Nebogipfel probed at his joints, however, and pronounced that they had been set incorrectly. I was not surprised, but neither of us could think of a way to improve the situation. Still, after some time, Nebogipfel was able to walk, after a fashion, by using a crutch made of a shaped branch, and he took to hobbling about our little encampment like some desiccated wizard.

His eye, however — which I had ruined with my assault in the Time-Car workshop — did not recover, and remained without sight, to my deep regret and shame.

Being a Morlock, poor Nebogipfel was far from comfortable in the intensity of the daytime sun. So he took to sleeping through the day, within the shelter I constructed, and moving about during the hours of darkness. I stuck to the daylight, and so each of us spent most of his waking hours alone. We met and talked at twilight and dawn, although I have to admit that after a few weeks of open air, heat and hard physical labor, I was pretty much spent by the time the sun fell.

The palms had broad fronds, and I determined to retrieve some of these, intent on using them to construct a better shelter. But all my efforts at hurling artifacts up into the trees were of no avail at fetching down the fronds, and I had no means of cutting down the palms themselves. So I was forced to resort to stripping down to my trousers and shinning up the trees like a monkey. Once at the crown of a tree, it was the work of moments to strip the fronds from the trunk and hurl them to the ground. I found those climbs exhausting. In the fresh sea air and sunshine, I was growing healthier and more robust; but I am not a young man, and I soon found a limit to my athletic ability.

With the retrieved fronds I constructed us a more substantial shelter, of fallen branches roofed over by plaited fronds. I made a wide hat of fronds for Nebogipfel. When he sat in the shade with this affair tied under his chin, and otherwise naked, he looked absurd.

As for me, I have always been pale of complexion, and after the first few days I suffered greatly from my exposure to the sun, and I learned caution. The skin peeled from my back, arms and nose. I grew a thick beard to protect my face, but my lips blistered in a most unsightly fashion — and the worst of it was the intense burning of the bald patch at my crown. I took to bathing my burns, and to wearing my hat and what remained of my shirt at all times.

One day, after perhaps a month of this, while I was shaving (using bits of Time-Car as blade and mirror), I realized, suddenly, how much I had changed. My teeth and eyes shone, brilliant white, from a mahogany-brown face, my stomach was as flat as it had been during my College days, and I walked about in a palm frond hat, cut-off trousers, and barefoot, as naturally as if I had been born to it.

I turned to Nebogipfel. “Look at me! My friends would barely recognize me — I’m becoming an aboriginal.”

His chinless face showed no expression. “You are an aboriginal. This is England, remember?”

Nebogipfel insisted that we retrieve the components of our smashed Time-Car from the forest. I could see the logic of this, for I knew that in the days to come we should need every scrap of raw materials, particularly metals. So we salvaged the car, and assembled the remnants in a pit in the sand. When the more urgent of our survival needs were satisfied, Nebogipfel took to spending a great deal of time with this wreckage. I did not inquire too closely at first, supposing that he was constructing some addition to our shelter, or perhaps a hunting weapon.

One morning, however, after he had fallen asleep, I studied his project. He had reconstructed the frame of the Time-Car; he had laid out the shattered floor section, and built up a cage of rods around it, tied together with bits of wire salvaged from the steering column. He had even found that blue toggle switch which had closed the Plattnerite circuit.

When he next woke, I confronted him. “You’re trying to build a new Time Machine, aren’t you?”

He dug his small teeth into palm-nut flesh. “No. I am rebuilding one.”

“Your intention is obvious. You have remade the frame which bore the essential Plattnerite circuit.”

“As you say, that is obvious.”

“But it’s futile, man!” I looked down at my callused and bleeding hands, and found myself resenting this diversion of his effort, while I was struggling to keep us alive. “We don’t have any Plattnerite. The stuff we arrived with is exhausted, and scattered about in the jungle anyway; and we’ve no possible means of manufacturing any more.”

“If we build a Time Machine,” he said, “we may not be able to escape from this Age. But if we do not build one, we certainly will not be able to escape.”

I growled. “Nebogipfel, I think you should face facts. We are stranded, here in deep time. We will never find Plattnerite here, as it is not a naturally occurring substance. We can’t make it, and no one will bring a sample to us, for no one has the faintest inkling that we are within ten million years of this era!”

For reply, he licked at the succulent meat of his palm-nut.

“Pah!” Frustrated and angry, I stalked about the shelter. “You’d be better advised to spend your ingenuity and effort in making me a gun, so I can bag some of those monkeys.”

“They are not monkeys,” he said. “The most common species are miacis and chriacus —”

“Well — whatever they are — oh!”

Infuriated, I stalked away.

My arguments made no difference, of course, and Nebogipfel continued with his patient rebuilding. But he did assist me in many ways in my quest to keep us alive, and after a time I grew to accept the presence of the rudimentary machine, glittering and complicated and exquisitely useless, there on that Palaeocene beach.

We all need hope, to give purpose and structure to our lives, I decided — and that machine, as flightless as great Diatryma, represented Nebogipfel’s last hope.

I fell ill.

I was unable to rise from the crude pallet of fronds and dried leaves I had made for myself. Nebogipfel was forced to nurse me, which duty he performed without much in the way of bedside manner, but with patience and persistence.

Once, in the dark pit of night, I came to a state of half-consciousness with the Morlock’s soft fingers probing at my face and neck. I imagined I was once more entrapped in the pedestal of that White Sphinx, with the Morlocks crowding around to destroy me. I cried out, and Nebogipfel scurried backwards; but not before I was able to lift my fist and strike him a blow in the chest. Enfeebled as I was, I retained sufficient strength to knock the Morlock off his feet.

That done, my energy was spent, and I lapsed into unconsciousness.

When I next cane to wakefulness, there was Nebogipfel at my side again, patiently trying to induce me to take a mouthful of shellfish chowder.

At length my senses returned, and I found myself propped up on my pallet. I was alone in our little hut. The sun was low, but the heat of the day still lay on me. Nebogipfel had left a nutshell of water close to my pallet; I drank this.

The sunlight seeped away, and the warm, Tropical darkness of evening settled over our lean-to. The sunset was tall and magnificent: this was because of a surplus of ash in the atmosphere, Nebogipfel had told me, deposited by volcanoes to the west of Scotland. This vulcanism would one day lead to the formation of the Atlantic Ocean; lava was flowing as far as the Arctic, Scotland and Ireland, and the warm climatic zone in which we found ourselves stretched as far north as Greenland.