Stephen Baxter - The Time Ships

I knew that I should not retain consciousness for many more seconds. I determined that I should at least see this 1891, so wildly changed from my own world, before I died. I got my arms underneath me — already I could not feel my hands — and pushed myself up until I was half-sitting.

The earth lay in a silver light, like moonlight (or so I thought at first). The Time-Car sat, like a crumpled toy, in the center of a plain of ancient ice. It was night, and there were no stars — at first I thought there must be clouds — but then I saw, low in the sky, a sliver of crescent moon, and I could not understand the absence of the stars; I wondered if my eyes were somehow damaged by the cold. That sister world was still green, I saw, and I felt pleased; perhaps people still lived there. How brilliant the frozen earth must be, in the sky of that young world! Close to the moon’s limb, a bright light shone: not a star, for it was too close — it was the reflection of the sun from some lunar lake, perhaps.

A corner of my failing brain prompted me to wonder about the source of the silvery “moonlight,” for this now glinted from frost which was gathering already over the frame of the Time-Car. If the moon was verdant still, she could not be the source of this elfish glow. What, then?

With the last of my strength I twisted my head. And there, in the starless sky far above me, was a glowing disc: a shimmering, gossamer thing, as if spun from spider-web, a dozen times the size of the full moon.

And, behind the Time-Car, standing patiently on the plain of ice -

I could not make it out; I wondered if my eyes were indeed failing. It was a pyramidal form, about the height of a man, but its lines were blurred, as if with endless, insectile motion.

“Are you alive?” — I wanted to ask this ugly vision. But my throat was closed up, my voice frozen out of me, and I could ask no more questions.

The blackness closed around me, and the cold receded at last.

I opened my eyes — or rather, I had the sensation that my eye lids were lifted back, or perhaps cut away. My vision was cloudy, my view of the world refracted; I wondered if my eyeballs were iced over — perhaps even frozen through. I stared up into a random point in the dark, starless sky; at the periphery of my vision I saw a trace of green — perhaps the moon? — but I could not turn to see.

I was not breathing. That is easy to record, but it is hard to convey the ferocity of that realization! I felt as if I had been lifted out of my body; there was none of that mechanical business — the clatter of breath and heart, the million tiny aches of muscles and membranes — which makes up, all but unnoticed, the surface of our human lives. It was as if my whole being, all of my identity, had become compressed into that open, staring, fixed gaze.

I should have been frightened, I thought; I should have been struggling for another breath, as if drowning. But no such urgency struck me: I felt sleepy, dream-like, as if I had been etherized.

It was that lack of terror, I think, which convinced me I was dead.

Now a shape moved over me, interposing itself between my line of sight and the empty sky. It was roughly pyramidal, its edges indistinct; it was like a mountain, all in shadow, looming over me.

I recognized this apparition, of course: it was the thing which had stood before me, as we lay exposed on the Ice. Now this machine — for such I thought it must be — swept towards me. It moved with an odd, flowing motion; if you think of how the sand in a glass timer might shift in a composite movement of grains if you tilt the device, you will have something of the effect. I saw, at the corner of my vision, how the blurred edge of the machine’s skirt swept over my chest and stomach. Then I felt a series of prickles — tiny jabs — across my chest and belly.

Thus, sensation had returned! — and with the suddenness of a rifle shot. There was a soft scraping against the skin of my chest, as if cloth were being cut away and pulled back. And now the prickles grew deeper; it was as if tiny, insectile palps were reaching below my flesh, infesting me. I felt pain — a million tiny needle-jabs, burrowing into my gut.

So much for Death — so much for Discorporeality! And with the realization of my continued existence came the return of Fear — instantly, and in a great flood of spurting chemicals which swilled around inside me with great intensity.

Now the looming shadow of the mountain-creature, blurred and ominous, crept further along my body, in the direction of my head. Soon I should be smothered! I wanted to scream — but I could feel nothing of my mouth and lips and neck.

I had never, in all my travels, felt so helpless as in that moment. I felt splayed out, like a frog on a dissecting table.

In the last moment, I felt something move over my hand. I could feel an etiolated cold there, a brush of hair: it was Nebogipfel’s hand, holding mine. I wondered if he were lying beside me, even now, as this ghastly vivisection proceeded. I tried to enclose his fingers, but I could not move a muscle.

And now the pyramidal shadow reached my face, and my friendly patch of sky was obscured. I felt needles burrow into my neck, chin, cheeks and forehead. There was a prickle — an unbearable itch — across the surface of my exposed eyes. I longed to look away, to close my eyes; but I could not: it was the most exquisite torture I can imagine!

Then, with that deep fire penetrating even my eyeballs, my grasp on consciousness slipped mercifully away.

When next I woke, my emergence had none of the nightmarish quality of my first arousal. I surfaced towards the world through a layer of sunlit dreams: I swam through fragmentary visions of sand, forest and ocean; I tasted again tough, salty bivalves; and I lay with Hilary Bond in warmth and darkness.

Then, slowly, full awakening came.

I was lying on some hard surface. My back, which responded with a twinge when I tried to move, was real enough; as were my splayed-out legs, my arms, my tingling fingers, the engine-like whistle of air through my nostrils, and the thrum of blood in my veins. I lay in darkness — utter and complete — but that little fact, which once might have terrified me, now seemed incidental, for I was alive again, surrounded by the familiar mechanical rattle of my own body. I felt an access of relief, pure and intense, and I let out a whoop of joy!

I sat up. When I laid my hands on the floor I found coarse-grained particles there, as if a layer of sand sat over some harder surface. Though I wore only my shirt, trousers and boots, I felt quite warm. I remained in complete darkness; but the echoes of that foolish holler had returned swiftly to my ears, and I had the sensation that I was in some enclosed space.

I turned my head this way and that, seeking a window or door; but this was without avail. However I became aware of a heaviness about my head — something was pinching my nose — and when I lifted my hands to investigate, I found a pair of heavy spectacles sitting on my face, the glass integrated with the frame.

I probed at this clumsy device — and the room was flooded with a brilliant light.

At first I was dazzled, and I squeezed my eyes shut. I snatched off the spectacles — and found that the light disappeared, leaving me sunk in darkness. And when I donned the spectacles, the brightness returned.

It did not tax my ingenuity far to understand that the darkness was the reality; and that the light was being furnished for me by the spectacles themselves, which I had inadvertently activated. The spectacles were some equivalent of Nebogipfel’s goggles, which the poor Morlock had lost in the Palaeocene Storm.