Stephen Baxter - The Time Ships

“Tell me about this climatic instability of yours,” I said.

He twisted his head and mumbled. “What is the point? Your New Human friends have killed us…”

“The point is that I should prefer to know what is killing me.”

After rather more of this type of persuasion, Nebogipfel relented.

He told me that the atmosphere of the earth was a dynamic thing. The atmosphere had just two naturally stable states, Nebogipfel said, and neither of these could sustain life; and the air would fail into one of these states, away from the narrow band of conditions tolerable by life, if it were too far disturbed.

“But I don’t understand. If the atmosphere is as unstable a mixture as you suggest, how is it that the air has managed to sustain us, as it has, for so many millions of years?”

He told me that the evolution of the atmosphere had been heavily modified by the action of life itself. “There is a balance of atmospheric gases, temperature and pressure — which is ideal for life. And so life works — in great, unconscious cycles, each involving billions of blindly toiling organisms to maintain that balance.

“But this balance is inherently unstable. Do you see? It is like a pencil, balanced on its point: such a thing is ever likely to fall away, with the slightest disturbance.” He twisted his head. “We learned that you meddle with the cycles of life at your peril, we Morlocks; we learned that if you choose to disrupt the various mechanisms by which atmospheric stability is maintained, then they must be repaired or replaced. What a pity it is,” he said, heavily, “that these New Humans — these star-faring heroes of yours — had not absorbed similar simple lessons!”

“Tell me about your two stabilities, Morlock; for it seems to me we are going to be visiting one or the other!”

In the first of the lethal stable states, Nebogipfel said, the surface of earth would burn up: the atmosphere could become as opaque as the clouds over Venus, and trap the heat of the sun. Such clouds, miles thick, would obstruct most of the sunlight, leaving only a dull, reddish glow; from the surface the sun could never be seen, nor the planets or stars. Lightning would flash continually in the murky atmosphere, and the ground would be red-hot: scorched bare of life.

“That’s as may be,” I said, trying to suppress my shivers, “but compared to this damned cold, it sounds like a pleasant holiday resort… And the second of your stable states?”

“White Earth.”

He closed his eyes, and would speak to me no more.

I do not know how long we lay there, huddled in the base of that Time-Car, grasping at our remaining flickers of body-warmth. I imagined that we were the only shards of life left on the planet — save, perhaps, for some hardy lichen clinging to an outcropping of frozen rock.

I pushed at Nebogipfel, and kept talking to him.

“Let me sleep,” he mumbled.

“No,” I replied, as briskly as I could. “Morlocks don’t sleep.”

“I do. I have been with humans too long.”

“If you sleep, you’ll die… Nebogipfel. I think we must stop the car.”

He was silent for a while. “Why?”

“We must go back to the Palaeocene. The earth is deadlocked into the grip of this wretched winter — so we must return, to a more equable past.”

“That is a fine idea” — he coughed — “save for the detail that it is impossible. I did not have the means to design complex controls into this machine.”

“What are you saying?”

“That this Time-Car is essentially ballistic. I was able to aim it at future or past, and over a specified duration — we will be delivered to the 1891 of this History, or thereabouts — but then, after the aiming and launch, I have no control over its trajectory.

“Do you understand? The car follows a path through time, determined by the initial settings, and the strength of the German Plattnerite. We will come to rest in 1891 — a frozen 1891 — and not before…”

I could feel my shivering subsiding — but not through any great degree of increasing comfort, but because, I realized, my own strength was at last beginning to be exhausted.

But perhaps we were not finished even so, I speculated wildly: if the planet were not abandoned — if men were to rebuild the earth — perhaps we could yet find a climate we could inhabit.

“And man? What of man?” I pressed Nebogipfel.

He grunted, and his lidded eye rolled. “How could Humanity survive? Man has surely abandoned the planet — or else become extinct altogether…”

“Abandoned the earth?” I protested. “Why, even you Morlocks, with your Sphere around the sun, didn’t go quite so far as that!”

I pushed away from him, and propped myself up on my elbows so I could see out of the Time-Car towards the south. For it was from there — I was sure of it now — from the direction of the Orbital City, that any hope for us would come.

But what I saw next filled me with a deep dread.

That girdle around the earth remained in place, the links between the brilliant stations as bright as ever but I saw now that the downward lines, which had anchored the City to the planet, had vanished. While I had been occupied with the Morlock, the orbital dwellers had dismantled their Elevators, thus abandoning their umbilical ties to Mother Earth.

As I watched further, a brilliant light flared from several of the stations. That glow shimmered from the earth’s fields of ice, as if from a daisy-chain of miniature suns. The metal ring slid away from its position, over the equator. At first this migration was slow; but then the City appeared to turn on its axis — glowing with fire, like a Catherine-Wheel — until it moved so fast that I could not make out the individual stations.

Then it was gone, sliding away from the earth and into invisibility.

The symbolism of this great abandonment was startling, and without the fire from the great engines, the ice fields of the deserted earth seemed more cold, more gray than before.

I settled back into the car. “It is true,” I said to Nebogipfel.

“What is?”

“That the earth is abandoned — the Orbital City has cut loose and gone. The planet’s story is done, Nebogipfel — and so, I fear, is ours!”

Nebogipfel lapsed into unconsciousness, despite all my efforts to rouse him; and after a time, I lacked the strength to continue. I huddled against the Morlock, trying to protect his damp, cold body from the worst of the chill, I feared without much success. I knew that given our rate of passage through time, our journey should last no more than thirty hours in total — but what if the German Plattnerite, or Nebogipfel’s improvised design, were faulty? I might be trapped, slowly freezing, in this attenuated Dimension forever — or pitched, at any moment, out onto the eternal Ice.

I think I slept — or fainted.

I thought I saw the Watcher — that great broad head — hovering before my eyes, and beyond his limbless carcass I could see that elusive star-field, tinged with green. I tried to reach out to the stars, for they seemed so bright and warm; but I could not move — perhaps I dreamt it all — and then the Watcher was gone.

At last, with a groaning lurch, the power of the Plattnerite expired, and the car fell into History once more.

The pearly glow of the sky was dispersed, and the sun’s pale light vanished, as if a switch had been thrown: and I was plunged into darkness.

The last of our Palaeocene warmth fell away into the great sink of the sky. Ice clawed at my flesh — it felt like burning — and I could not breathe, though whether from the cold or from poisons in the air I did not know, and I had a great pressure in my chest, as if I was drowning.