The Best Science Fiction Stories of H G Wells

by H. G. Wells

  I had an inspiration. “After all,” I said, “it could have been only a dream.”

  “A dream!” he cried, flaming upon me, “a dream—when even now——.”

  For the first time he became animated. A faint flush crept into his cheek. He raised his open hand and clenched it, and dropped it to his knee. He spoke, looking away from me, and for all the rest of the time he looked away. “We are but phantoms,” he said, “and the phantoms of phantoms, desires like cloud shadows and wills of straw that eddy in the wind; the days pass, use and wont carry us through as a train carries the shadow of its lights—so be it! But one thing is real and certain, one thing is no dreamstuff, but eternal and enduring. It is the centre of my life, and all other things about it are subordinate or altogether vain. I loved her, that woman of a dream. And she and I are dead together!

  “A dream! How can it be a dream, when it drenched a living life with unappeasable sorrow, when it makes all that I have lived for and cared for, worthless and unmeaning?

  “Until that very moment when she was killed I believed we had still a chance of getting away,” he said. “All through the night and morning that we sailed across the sea from Capri to Salerno, we talked of escape. We were full of hope, and it clung about us to the end, hope for the life together we should lead, out of it all, out of the battle and struggle, the wild and empty passions, the empty arbitrary ‘thou shalt’ and ‘thou shalt not’ of the world. We were uplifted, as though our quest was a holy thing, as though love for one another was a mission. . . .

  “Even when from our boat we saw the fair face of that great rock Capri—already scarred and gashed by the gun emplacements and hiding-places that were to make it a fastness—we reckoned nothing of the imminent slaughter, though the fury of preparation hung about in puffs and clouds of dust at a hundred points amidst the grey; but, indeed, I made a text of that and talked. There, you know, was the rock, still beautiful, for all its scars, with its countless windows and arches and ways, tier upon tier, for a thousand feet, a vast carving of grey, broken by vine-clad terraces, and lemon and orange groves, and masses of agave and prickly pear, and puffs of almond blossom. And out under the archway that is built over the Piccola Marina other boats were coming; and as we came round the cape and within sight of the mainland, another little string of boats came into view, driving before the wind towards the southwest. In a little while a multitude had come out, the remoter just little specks of ultramarine in the shadow of the eastward cliff.

  “‘It is love and reason,’ I said, ‘fleeing from all this madness of war.’

  “And though we presently saw a squadron of aeroplanes flying across the southern sky we did not heed it. There it was—a line of little dots in the sky—and then more, dotting the southeastern horizon, and then still more, until all that quarter of the sky was stippled with blue specks. Now they were all thin little strokes of blue, and now one and now a multitude would heel and catch the sun and become short flashes of light. They came rising and falling and growing larger, like some huge flight of gulls or rooks or such-like birds moving with a marvellous uniformity, and ever as they drew nearer they spread over a greater width of sky. The southward wing flung itself in an arrow-headed cloud athwart the sun. And then suddenly they swept round to the eastward and streamed eastward, growing smaller and smaller and clearer and clearer again until they vanished from the sky. And after that we noted to the northward and very high Evesham’s fighting machines hanging high over Naples like an evening swarm of gnats.

  “It seemed to have no more to do with us than a flight of birds.

  “Even the mutter of guns far away in the southeast seemed to us to signify nothing. . . .

  “Each day, each dream after that, we were still exalted, still seeking that refuge where we might live and love. Fatigue had come upon us, pain and many distresses. For though we were dusty and stained by our toilsome tramping, and half starved and with the horror of the dead men we had seen and the flight of the peasants—for very soon a gust of fighting swept up the peninsula—with these things haunting our minds it still resulted only in a deepening resolution to escape. O, but she was brave and patient! She who had never faced hardship and exposure had courage for herself—and me. We went to and fro seeking an outlet, over a country all commandeered and ransacked by the gathering hosts of war. Always we went on foot. At first there were other fugitives, but we did not mingle with them. Some escaped northward, some were caught in the torrent of peasantry that swept along the main roads; many gave themselves into the hands of the soldiery and were sent northward. Many of the men were impressed. But we kept away from these things; we had brought no money to bribe a passage north, and I feared for my lady at the hands of these conscript crowds. We had landed at Salerno, and we had been turned back from Cava, and we had tried to cross towards Taranto by a pass over Mount Alburno, but we had been driven back for want of food, and so we had come down among the marshes by Pæstum, where those great temples stand alone. I had some vague idea that by Pæstum it might be possible to find a boat or something, and take once more to sea. And there it was the battle overtook us.

  “A sort of soul-blindness had me. Plainly I could see that we were being hemmed in; that the great net of that giant Warfare had us in its toils. Many times we had seen the levies that had come down from the north going to and fro, and had come upon them in the distance amidst the mountains making ways for the ammunition and preparing the mounting of the guns. Once we fancied they had fired at us, taking us for spies—at any rate a shot had gone shuddering over us. Several times we had hidden in woods from hovering aeroplanes.

  “But all these things do not matter now, these nights of flight and pain. . . . We were in an open place near those great temples at Pæstum, at last, on a blank stony place dotted with spiky bushes, empty and desolate and so flat that a grove of eucalyptus far away showed to the feet of its stems. How I can see it! My lady was sitting down under a bush, resting a little, for she was very weak and weary, and I was standing up watching to see if I could tell the distance of the firing that came and went. They were still, you know, fighting far from each other, with those terrible new weapons that had never before been used: guns that would carry beyond sight, and aeroplanes that would do——What they would do no man could foretell.

  “I knew that we were between the two armies, and that they drew together. I knew we were in danger, and that we could not stop there and rest!

  “Though all these things were in my mind, they were in the background. They seemed to be affairs beyond our concern. Chiefly, I was thinking of my lady. An aching distress filled me. For the first time she had owned herself beaten and had fallen a-weeping. Behind me I could hear her sobbing, but I would not turn round to her because I knew she had need of weeping, and had held herself so far and so long for me. It was well, I thought, that she would weep and rest and then we would toil on again, for I had no inkling of the thing that hung so near. Even now I can see her as she sat there, her lovely hair upon her shoulder, can mark again the deepening hollow of her cheek.

  “‘If we had parted,’ she said, ‘if I had let you go.’

  “‘No,’ said I. ‘Even now, I do not repent. I will not repent; I made my choice, and I will hold on to the end.’

  “And then——

  “Overhead in the sky flashed something and burst, and all about us I heard the bullets making a noise like a handful of peas suddenly thrown. They chipped the stones about us, and whirled fragments from the bricks and passed. . . .”

  He put his hand to his mouth, and then moistened his lips.

  “At the flash I had turned about. . . .

  “You know—she stood up——

  “She stood up, you know, and moved a step towards me——

  “As though she wanted to reach me——

  “And she had been shot through the heart.”

  He stopped and stared at me. I felt all that foolish incapacity an Englishman feels on such occasions. I met h
is eyes for a moment, and then stared out of the window. For a long space we kept silence. When at last I looked at him he was sitting back in his corner, his arms folded, and his teeth gnawing at his knuckles.

  He bit his nail suddenly, and stared at it.

  “I carried her,” he said, “towards the temples, in my arms—as though it mattered. I don’t know why. They seemed a sort of sanctuary, you know, they had lasted so long, I suppose.

  “She must have died almost instantly. Only—I talked to her—all the way.”

  Silence again.

  “I have seen those temples,” I said abruptly, and indeed he had brought those still, sunlit arcades of worn sandstone very vividly before me.

  “It was the brown one, the big brown one. I sat down on a fallen pillar and held her in my arms. . . . Silent after the first babble was over. And after a little while the lizards came out and ran about again, as though nothing unusual was going on, as though nothing had changed. . . . It was tremendously still there, the sun high, and the shadows still; even the shadows of the weeds upon the entablature were still—in spite of the thudding and banging that went all about the sky.

  “I seem to remember that the aeroplanes came up out of the south, and that the battle went away to the west. One aeroplane was struck, and overset and fell. I remember that—though it didn’t interest me in the least. It didn’t seem to signify. It was like a wounded gull, you know—flapping for a time in the water. I could see it down the aisle of the temple—a black thing in the bright blue water.

  “Three or four times shells burst about the beach, and then that ceased. Each time that happened all the lizards scuttled in and hid for a space. That was all the mischief done, except that once a stray bullet gashed the stone hard by—made just a fresh bright surface.

  “As the shadows grew longer, the stillness seemed greater.

  “The curious thing,” he remarked, with the manner of a man who makes a trivial conversation, “is that I didn’t think—I didn’t think at all. I sat with her in my arms amidst the stones—in a sort of lethargy—stagnant.

  “And I don’t remember waking up. I don’t remember dressing that day. I know I found myself in my office, with my letters all slit open in front of me, and how I was struck by the absurdity of being there, seeing that in reality I was sitting, stunned, in that Pæstum temple with a dead woman in my arms. I read my letters like a machine. I have forgotten what they were about.”

  He stopped, and there was a long silence.

  Suddenly I perceived that we were running down the incline from Chalk Farm to Euston. I started at this passing of time. I turned on him with a brutal question, with the tone of “Now or never.”

  “And did you dream again?”

  “Yes.”

  He seemed to force himself to finish. His voice was very low.

  “Once more, and as it were only for a few instants. I seemed to have suddenly awakened out of a great apathy, to have risen into a sitting position, and the body lay there on the stones beside me. A gaunt body. Not her, you know. So soon—it was not her. . . .

  “I may have heard voices. I do not know. Only I knew clearly that men were coming into the solitude and that that was a last outrage.

  “I stood up and walked through the temple, and then there came into sight—first one man with a yellow face, dressed in a uniform of dirty white, trimmed with blue, and then several, climbing to the crest of the old wall of the vanished city, and crouching there. They were little bright figures in the sunlight, and there they hung, weapon in hand, peering cautiously before them.

  “And further away I saw others and then more at another point in the wall. It was a long lax line of men in open order.

  “Presently the man I had first seen stood up and shouted a command, and his men came tumbling down the wall and into the high weeds towards the temple. He scrambled down with them and led them. He came facing towards me, and when he saw me he stopped.

  “At first I had watched these men with a mere curiosity, but when I had seen they meant to come to the temple I was moved to forbid them. I shouted to the officer.

  “‘You must not come here,’ I cried, ‘I am here. I am here with my dead.’

  “He stared, and then shouted a question back to me in some unknown tongue.

  “I repeated what I had said.

  “He shouted again, and I folded my arms and stood still. Presently he spoke to his men and came forward. He carried a drawn sword.

  “I signed to him to keep away, but he continued to advance. I told him again very patiently and clearly: ‘You must not come here. These are old temples and I am here with my dead.’

  “Presently he was so close I could see his face clearly. It was a narrow face, with dull grey eyes, and a black moustache. He had a scar on his upper lip, and he was dirty and unshaven. He kept shouting unintelligible things, questions perhaps, at me.

  “I know now that he was afraid of me, but at the time that did not occur to me. As I tried to explain to him he interrupted me in imperious tones, bidding me, I suppose, stand aside.

  “He made to go past me, and I caught hold of him.

  “I saw his face change at my grip.

  “‘You fool,’ I cried. ‘Don’t you know? She is dead!’

  “He started back. He looked at me with cruel eyes. I saw a sort of exultant resolve leap into them—delight. Then, suddenly, with a scowl, he swept his sword back—so—and thrust.”

  He stopped abruptly. I became aware of a change in the rhythm of the train. The brakes lifted their voices and the carriage jarred and jerked. This present world insisted upon itself, became clamorous. I saw through the steamy window huge electric lights glaring down from tall masts upon a fog, saw rows of stationary empty carriages passing by, and then a signal-box, hoisting its constellation of green and red into the murky London twilight, marched after them. I looked again at his drawn features.

  “He ran me through the heart. It was with a sort of astonishment—no fear, no pain—but just amazement, that I felt it pierce me, felt the sword drive home into my body. It didn’t hurt, you know. It didn’t hurt at all.”

  The yellow platform lights came into the field of view, passing first rapidly, then slowly, and at last stopping with a jerk. Dim shapes of men passed to and fro without.

  “Euston!” cried a voice.

  “Do you mean——?”

  “There was no pain, no sting or smart. Amazement and then darkness sweeping over everything. The hot, brutal face before me, the face of the man who had killed me, seemed to recede. It swept out of existence——”

  “Euston!” clamoured the voices outside; “Euston!”

  The carriage door opened, admitting a flood of sound, and a porter stood regarding us. The sounds of doors slamming, and the hoof-clatter of cab-horses, and behind these things the featureless remote roar of the London cobble-stones, came to my ears. A truckload of lighted lamps blazed along the platform.

  “A darkness, a flood of darkness that opened and spread and blotted out all things.”

  “Any luggage, sir?” said the porter.

  “And that was the end?” I asked.

  He seemed to hesitate. Then, almost inaudibly, he answered, “No.”

  “You mean?”

  “I couldn’t get to her. She was there on the other side of the temple——And then——”

  “Yes,” I insisted. “Yes?”

  “Nightmares,” he cried; “nightmares indeed! My God! Great birds that fought and tore.”

  AEPYORNIS ISLAND

  THE MAN with the scarred face leant over the table and looked at my bundle.

  “Orchids?” he asked.

  “A few,” I said.

  “Cypripediums?” he said.

  “Chiefly,” said I.

  “Anything new?—I thought not. I did these islands twenty-five—twenty-seven years ago. If you find anything new here—well, it’s brand new. I didn’t leave much.”

  “I’m not a collector,”
said I.

  “I was young then,” he went on. “Lord! how I used to fly round.” He seemed to take my measure. “I was in the East Indies two years, and in Brazil seven. Then I went to Madagascar.”

  “I know a few explorers by name,” I said anticipating a yarn. “Who did you collect for?”

  “Dawsons. I wonder if you’ve heard the name of Butcher ever?”

  “Butcher—Butcher?” The name seemed vaguely present in my memory; then I recalled Butcher v. Dawsons. “Why!” said I, “you are the man who sued them for four years’ salary—got cast away on a desert island—”

  “Your servant,” said the man with the scar, bowing. “Funny case, wasn’t it? Here was me, making a little fortune on that island, doing nothing for it neither, and them quite unable to give me notice. It often used to amuse me thinking over it while I was there. I did calculations of it—big—all over the blessed atoll in ornamental figuring.”

  “How did it happen?” said I. “I don’t rightly remember the case.”

  “Well—you’ve heard of the Æpyornis?”

  “Rather. Andrews was telling me of a new species he was working on only a month or so ago. Just before I sailed. They’ve got a thigh bone, it seems, nearly a yard long. Monster the thing must have been!”

  “I believe you,” said the man with the scar. “It was a monster. Sinbad’s roc was just a legend of ’em. But when did they find these bones?”

  “Three or four years ago—’91 I fancy. Why?”

  “Why?—Because I found ’em—Lord!—it’s nearly twenty years ago. If Dawsons hadn’t been silly about that salary they might have made a perfect ring in ’em.—I couldn’t help the infernal boat going adrift.”