Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships

I remembered the words of Thomas Aquinas: that “God cannot effect that anything which is past should not have been. It is more impossible than raising the dead…” So I had believed, too! I am not much given to philosophical speculation, but I had thought of the future as an extension of the past: fixed and immutable, even for a God — and certainly for the hand of man. Futurity, in my mind, was like a huge room, fixed and static. And into the furniture of the future my Time Machine could take me, exploring.

But now, it seemed, I had learned that the future might not be a fixed thing, but something mutable! If so, I mused, what meaning could be given to the lives of men? It was bad enough to endure the thought that all of one’s achievements would be worn away to insignificance by the erosion of time — and I, of all men, knew that well enough! — but, at least, one would always have the feeling that one’s monuments, and the things one had loved, had once been. But if History were capable of this wholesale erasure and alteration, what possible worth could be ascribed to any human activity?

Reflecting on these startling possibilities, I felt as if the solidity of my thought, and the firmness of my apprehension of the world, were melting away. I stared into my candle flame, seeking the outlines of a new understanding.

I was not done yet, I decided; my fear was subsiding, and my mind stayed resilient and strong. I would explore this bizarre world, and take what pictures I could with my Kodak, and then return to 1891. There, better philosophers than I could puzzle over this conundrum of two futurities exclusive of each other.

I reached over the bars of the Time Machine, unscrewed the little levers that would launch me into time, and stored them safe in my pocket. Then I felt about until I found the sturdy form of my poker, still lodged where I had left it in the structure of the machine. I grasped its thick handle and hefted it in my hand. My confidence grew as I imagined cracking a few of the Morlocks’ soft skulls with this piece of primitive engineering. I stuck the poker in a loop of my belt. It hung there a little awkward but hugely reassuring, with its weight and solidity, and its resonance of home, and my own fireside.

I raised my candle into the air. The spectral statue, or building, which I had noticed close by the machine, came into shadowy illumination. It was indeed a monument of some kind — a colossal figure carved of some white stone, its form difficult to discern in the flickering candlelight.

I walked towards the monument. As I did so, on the edge of my vision, I fancied I saw a pair of gray-red eyes widen, and a white back which shivered away across the sandy surface with a shushing of bare feet. I rested my hand on the club of brass tucked in my belt, and continued.

The statue was set on a pedestal which appeared to be of bronze, and decorated with deep-framed, filigreed panels. The pedestal was stained, as if it had once been attacked by verdigris, now long dried out. The statue itself was of white marble, and from a leonine body great wings were spread, so that they seemed to hover over me. I wondered how those great sheets of stone were supported, for I could see no struts. Perhaps there was some metal frame, I mused — or perhaps some elements of that mastery of gravity, which I had hypothesized in my latest jaunt through the Age of Great Buildings, lingered on in this desolate era. The face of the marble beast was human, and was turned towards me; I felt as if those blank stone eyes were watching me, and there was a smile, sardonic and cruel, on the weather-beaten lips…

And with a jolt I recognized this construction; if not for fear of Morlocks I would have whooped with the joy of familiarity! This was the monument I had come to call the White Sphinxa structure I had become familiar with, in this very spot, during my first flight to the future. It was almost like greeting an old friend!

I paced around the sandy hill-side, back and forth past the machine, remembering how it had been. This spot had been a lawn, surrounded by mauve and purple rhododendrons — bushes which had dropped their blossoms over me in a hail storm on my first arrival. And, looming over it all, indistinct at first in that hail, had been the imposing form of this Sphinx.

Well, here I was again, a hundred and fifty thousand years before that date. The bushes and lawn were gone — and would never come to be, I suspected. That sunlit garden had been replaced by this bleak, darkened desert, and now existed only in the recesses of my own mind. But the Sphinx was here, solid as life and almost indestructible, it seemed.

I patted the bronze panels of the Sphinx’s pedestal with something resembling affection. Somehow the existence of the Sphinx, lingering from my previous visit, reassured me that I was not imagining all of this, that I was not going mad in some dim recess of my house in 1891! All of this was objectively real, and — no doubt, like the rest of Creation — it all conformed to some logical pattern. The White Sphinx was a part of that pattern, and it was only my ignorance and limitation of mind that prevented me from seeing the rest of it. I was bolstered up, and felt filled with a new determination to continue with my explorations.

On impulse, I walked around to the side of the pedestal closest to the Time Machine, and, by candlelight, I inspected the decorated bronze panel there. It was here, I recalled, that the Morlocks — in that other History — had opened up the hollow base of the Sphinx, and dragged the Time Machine inside the pedestal, meaning to trap me. I had come to the Sphinx with a pebble and hammered at this panel just here; I ran over the decorations with my fingertips. I had flattened out some of the coils of the panel, though to no avail.

Well, now I found those coils firm and round under my fingers, as good as new. It was strange to think that the coils would not meet the fury of my stone for millennia yet — or perhaps, never at all.

I determined to move away from the machine and proceed with my exploration. But the presence of the Sphinx had reminded me of my horror at losing the Time Machine to the clutches of the Morlocks. I patted my pocket — at least without my little levers the machine could not be operated — but there was no obstacle to those loathsome creatures crawling over my machine as soon as I was gone from it, perhaps dismantling it or stealing it again.

And besides, in this darkened landscape, how should I avoid getting lost? How should I be sure of finding the machine again, once I had gone more than a few yards from it?

I puzzled over this for a few moments, my desire to explore further battling with my apprehension. Then an idea struck me. I opened my knapsack and took out my candles and camphor blocks. With rough haste I shoved these articles into crevices in the Time Machine’s complex construction. Then I went around the machine with lighted matches until every one of the blocks and candles was ablaze.

I stood back from my glowing handiwork with some pride. Candle flames glinted from the polished nickel and brass, so that the Time Machine was lit up like some Christmas ornament. In this darkened landscape, and with the machine poised on this denuded hill-side, I would be able to see my beacon from a fair distance. With any luck, the flames would deter any Morlocks — or if they did not, I should see the diminution of the flames immediately and could come running back, to join battle.

I fingered the poker’s heavy handle. I think a part of me hoped for just such an outcome; my hands and lower arms tingled as I remembered the queer, soft sensation of my fists driving into Morlock faces!

At any rate, now I was prepared for my expedition. I picked up my Kodak, lit a small oil lamp, and made my way across the hill, pausing after every few paces to be sure the Time Machine rested undisturbed.