Time Travelers

by Peter Haining (ed)

  “We both killed him.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “My boy,” I said, “time is entirely subjective. It’s a private matter—a personal experience. There is no such thing as objective time, just as there is no such thing as objective love, or an objective soul.”

  “Do you mean to say that time travel is impossible? But we’ve done it.”

  “To be sure, and many others, for all I know. But we each travel into our own past, and no other person’s. There is no universal continuum, Henry. There are only billions of individuals, each with his own continuum; and one continuum cannot affect the other. We’re like millions of strands of spaghetti in the same pot. No time traveler can ever meet another time traveler in the past or future. Each of us must travel up and down his own strand alone.”

  “But we’re meeting each other now.”

  “We’re no longer time travelers, Henry. We’ve become the spaghetti sauce.”

  “Spaghetti sauce?”

  “Yes. You and I can visit any strand we like, because we’ve destroyed ourselves.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “When a man changes the past he only affects his own past—no one else’s. The past is like memory. When you erase a man’s memory, you wipe him out, but you don’t wipe out anybody else’s. You and I have erased our past. The individual worlds of the others go on, but we have ceased to exist.”

  “What d’you mean, ‘ceased to exist’?”

  “With each act of destruction we dissolved a little. Now we’re all gone. We’ve committed chronicide. We’re ghosts. I hope Mrs.

  Hassel will be very happy with Mr. Murphy… Now let’s go over to the Académie. Ampère is telling a great story about Ludwig Boltzmann.”

  TIME INTERVENING

  Ray Bradbury

  Very late on this night, the old man came from his house with a flashlight in his hand and asked of the little boys the object of their frolic. The little boys gave no answer, but tumbled on in the leaves.

  The old man went into his house and sat down and worried. It was three in the morning. He saw his own pale small hands trembling on his knees. He was all joints and angles, and his face, reflected above the mantel, was no more than a pale cloud of breath exhaled upon the mirror.

  The children laughed softly outside, in the leaf piles.

  He switched out his flashlight quietly and sat in the dark. Why he should be in any way bothered by playing children he could not know. But it was late for them to be out, at three in the morning, playing. He was very cold.

  There was a sound of a key in the door and the old man arose to go see who could possibly be coming into his house. The front door opened and a young man entered with a young woman. They were looking at each other softly and tenderly, holding hands, and the old man stared at them and cried, ‘What are you doing in my house?’

  The young man and the young woman replied, ‘What are you doing in our house?’ The young man said, ‘Here now, get on out.’ And took the old man by the elbow and shoved him out of the door and closed and locked it after searching him to see if he had stolen something.

  ‘This is my house, you can’t lock me out.’ The old man beat upon the door. He stood in the dark morning air. Looking up he saw the lights illumine the warm inside windows and rooms upstairs and then, with a move of shadows, go out.

  The old man walked down the street and came back and still the small boys rolled in the dark icy morning leaves, not looking at him. He stood before the house and as he watched the lights turned on and turned off more than a thousand times. He counted softly under his breath.

  A young boy of about fourteen ran by to the house, a football in his hand. He opened the door without even trying to unlock it, and went in. The door closed.

  Half an hour later, with the morning wind rising, the old man saw a car pull up and a plump woman got out with a little boy three years old. They walked across the dark lawn and went into the house after the woman had looked at the old man and said, ‘Is that you, Mr. Terle?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the old man, automatically, for somehow he didn’t wish to frighten her. But it was a lie. He knew he was not Mr. Terle at all. Mr. Terle lived down the street.

  The lights glowed on and off a thousand more times.

  The children rustled softly in the dark leaves.

  A seventeen-year-old boy bounded across the street, smelling faintly of the smudged lipstick on his cheek, almost knocked the old man down, cried, ‘Sorry!’ and leaped up the steps. Fitting a key to the lock he went in.

  The old man stood there with the town lying asleep on all sides of him; the unlit windows, the breathing rooms, the stars all through the trees, liberally caught and held on winter branches, so much snow suspended glittering on the cold air.

  ‘That’s my house; who are all those people going in it!’ cried the old man to the wrestling children.

  The wind blew, shaking the empty trees.

  In the year which was 1923 the house was dark, a car drove up before it, the mother stepped from the car with her son William who was three. William looked at the dark morning world and saw his house and as he felt his mother lead him towards the house he heard her say, ‘Is that you, Mr. Terle?’ and in the shadows by the great wind-filled oak tree an old man stood and replied, ‘Yes.’ The door closed.

  In the year which was 1934 William came running in the summer night, feeling the football cradled in his hands, feeling the dark street pass under his running feet, along the sidewalk. He smelled, rather than saw, an old man, as he ran past. Neither of them spoke. And so on into the house.

  In the year 1937 William ran with antelope boundings across the street, a smell of lipstick on his face, a smell of someone young and fresh upon his cheeks; all thoughts of love and deep night. He almost knocked the stranger down, cried, ‘Sorry!’ and ran to fit a key to the front door.

  In the year 1947 a car drew up before the house, William relaxed, his wife beside him. He wore a fine tweed suit, it was late, he was tired, they both smelled faintly of so many drinks offered and accepted. For a moment they both heard the wind in the trees. ‘Is that a light in our house?’ asked the wife. William felt uneasy. ‘Yes,’ he said. They got out of the car and let themselves into the house with a key. An old man came from the living-room and cried, ‘What are you doing in my house?’

  ‘Your house?’ said William. ‘Here now, old man, get on out.’ And William, feeling faintly sick to his stomach, for there was something to the old man that made him feel all water and nothing, searched the old man and pushed him out of the door and closed and locked it. From outside the old man cried, ‘This is my house, you can’t lock me out!’

  They went up to bed and turned the lights out.

  In the year 1928, William and the other small boys wrestled on the lawn, waiting for the time when they would leave to watch the circus come chuffing in to the dawn-pale railroad station on the blue metal tracks. In the leaves they lay and laughed and kicked and fought. An old man with a flashlight came across the lawn. ‘Why are you playing here on my lawn at this time of morning?’ asked the old man. Who are you?’ replied William looking up a moment from the tangle.

  The old man stood over the tumbling children a long moment. Then he dropped his flashlight. ‘Oh my dear boy, I know now, now I know!’ He bent to touch the boy. ‘I am you, and you are me. I love you, my dear boy, with all of my heart! Let me tell you what will happen to you in the years to come! If you knew! I am you, and you were once me! My name is William, so is yours! And all those people going into the house, they are William, they are you, they are me!’ The old man shivered. ‘Oh, all the dark years and the passing of time!’

  ‘Go away,’ said the boy. ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘But,’ said the old man.

  ‘You’re crazy. I’ll call my father!’

  The old man turned and walked away.

  There was a flickering of the house lights, on and off. The boys wrestled quiet
ly and secretly in the rustling leaves. The old man stood on the dark lawn.

  Upstairs, in his bed, William Latting did not sleep on his bed in the year 1947. He sat up, lit a cigarette, and looked out of the window. His wife was awake. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘That old man,’ said William Latting. ‘I think he’s still down there, under the oak tree.’

  ‘Oh, he couldn’t be,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t see very well, but I think he’s there. I can barely make him out, it’s so dark.’

  ‘He’ll go away,’ she said.

  William Latting drew quietly on his cigarette. He nodded. ‘Who are those kids?’

  From her bed his wife said, ‘What kidsT

  ‘Playing on the lawn out there, what a hell of a time of night to be playing in the leaves.’

  ‘Probably the Moran boys.’

  ‘Doesn’t look like them.’

  He stood by the window. ‘You hear something?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A baby crying. Way off.’

  ‘I don’t hear anything,’ she said.

  She lay listening. They both thought they heard running footsteps on the street, a key to the door. William Latting went to the hall and looked down the stairs but saw nothing.

  In the year 1937, coming in the door, William saw a man in a dressing-gown at the top of the stairs looking down, a cigarette in his hand. ‘That you, Dad?’ No answer. The man sighed and went back into some room. William went to the kitchen to raid the ice-box.

  The children wrestled in the soft dark leaves of morning.

  William Latting said, ‘Listen.’

  He and his wife listened.

  ‘It’s the old man,’ said William. ‘Crying.’

  ‘Why should he be crying?’

  ‘I don’t know. Why does anybody cry? Maybe he’s unhappy.’

  ‘If he’s still down there in the morning,’ said his wife, in the dark room, ‘call the police.’

  William Latting went away from the window, put out his cigarette and lay in the bed, his eyes closed. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘I won’t call the police. Not for him, I won’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  His voice was certain. ‘I wouldn’t want to do that. I just wouldn’t.’

  They both lay there and faintly there was a sound of crying and the wind blew and William Latting knew that all he had to do if he wanted to watch the boys wrestling in the dark cool leaves of morning would be reach out with his hand and lift the shade and look, and there they would be, far below, wrestling and wrestling as dawn came pale in the eastern sky.

  THE GREY MAN

  H.G. Wells

  “I have already told you of the sickness and confusion that comes with time travelling. And this time I was not seated properly in the saddle, but sideways and in an unstable fashion. For an indefinite time I clung to the machine as it swayed and vibrated, quite unheeding how I went, and when I brought myself to look at the dials again I was amazed to find where I had arrived. One dial records days, another thousands of days, another millions of days, and another thousands of millions. Now, instead of reversing the levers I had pulled them over so as to go forward with them, and when I came to look at these indicators I found that the thousands hand was sweeping round as fast as the seconds hand of a watch—into futurity. Very cautiously, for I remembered my former headlong fall, I began to reverse my motion. Slower and slower went the circling hands until the thousands one seemed motionless and the daily one was no longer a mere mist upon its scale. Still slower, until the grey haze around me became distincter and dim outlines of an undulating waste grew visible.

  “I stopped. I was on a bleak moorland, covered with a sparse vegetation, and grey with a thin hoarfrost. The time was midday, the orange sun, shorn of its effulgence, brooding near the meridian in a sky of drabby grey. Only a few black bushes broke the monotony of the scene. The great buildings of the decadent men among whom, it seemed to me, I had been so recently, had vanished and left no trace, not a mound even marked their position. Hill and valley, sea and river—all, under the wear and work of the rain and frost, had melted into new forms. No doubt, too, the rain and snow had long since washed out the Morlock tunnels. A nipping breeze stung my hands and face. So far as I could see there were neither hills, nor trees, nor rivers: only an uneven stretch of cheerless plateau.

  “Then suddenly a dark bulk rose out of the moor, something that gleamed like a serrated row of iron plates, and vanished almost immediately in a depression. And then I became aware of a number of faint-grey things, coloured to almost the exact tint of the frost-bitten soil, which were browsing here and there upon its scanty grass, and running to and fro. I saw one jump with a sudden start, and then my eye detected perhaps a score of them. At first I thought they were rabbits, or some small breed of kangaroo. Then, as one came hopping near me, I perceived that it belonged to neither of these groups. It was plantigrade, its hind legs rather the longer; it was tailless, and covered with a straight greyish hair that thickened about the head into a Skye terrier’s mane. As I had understood that in the Golden Age man had killed out almost all the other animals, sparing only a few of the more ornamental, I was naturally curious about the creatures. They did not seem afraid of me, but browsed on, much as rabbits would do in a place unfrequented by men; and it occurred to me that I might perhaps secure a specimen.

  “I got off the machine, and picked up a big stone. I had scarcely done so when one of the little creatures came within easy range. I was so lucky as to hit it on the head, and it rolled over at once and lay motionless. I ran to it at once. It remained still, almost as if it were killed. I was surprised to see that the things had five feeble digits to both its fore and hind feet—the fore feet, indeed, were almost as human as the fore feet of a frog. It had, moreover, a roundish head, with a projecting forehead and forward-looking eyes, obscured by its lank hair. A disagreeable apprehension flashed across my mind. As I knelt down and seized my capture, intending to examine its teeth and other anatomical points which might show human characteristics, the metallic-looking object, to which I have already alluded, reappeared above a ridge in the moor, coming towards me and making a strange clattering sound as it came. Forthwith the grey animals about me began to answer with a short, weak yelping—as if of terror—and bolted off in a direction opposite to that from which this new creature approached. They must have hidden in burrows or behind bushes and tussocks, for in a moment not one of them was visible.

  “I rose to my feet, and stared at this grotesque monster. I can only describe it by comparing it to a centipede. It stood about three feet high, and had a long segmented body, perhaps thirty feet long, with curiously overlapping greenish-black plates. It seemed to crawl upon a multitude of feet, looping its body as it advanced. Its blunt round head with a polygonal arrangement of black eye spots, carried two flexible, writhing, horn-like antennae. It was coming along, I should judge, at a pace of about eight or ten miles an hour, and it left me little time for thinking. Leaving my grey animal, or grey man, whichever it was, on the ground, I set off for the machine. Halfway I paused, regretting that abandonment, but a glance over my shoulder destroyed any such regret. When I gained the machine the monster was scarce fifty yards away. It was certainly not a vertebrated animal. It had no snout, and its mouth was fringed with jointed dark-coloured plates. But I did not care for a nearer view.

  “I traversed one day and stopped again, hoping to find colossus gone and some vestige of my victim; but, I should judge, the giant centipede did not trouble itself about bones. At any rate both had vanished. The faintly human touch of these little creatures perplexed me greatly. If you come to think, there is no reason why a degenerate humanity should not come at last to differentiate into as many species as the descendants of the mud fish who fathered all the land vertebrates. I saw no more of any insect colossus, as to my thinking the segmented creature must have been. Evidently the physiological difficulty that at present keeps all the insects sm
all had been surmounted at last, and this division of the animal kingdom had arrived at the long awaited supremacy which its enormous energy and vitality deserve. I made several attempts to kill or capture another of the greyish vermin, but none of my missiles were so successful as my first; and, after perhaps a dozen disappointing throws, that left my arm aching, I felt a gust of irritation at my folly in coming so far into futurity without weapons or equipment. I resolved to run on for one glimpse of the still remoter future—one peep into the deeper abysm of time—and then to return to you and my own epoch. Once more I remounted the machine, and once more the world grew hazy and grey.

  “As I drove on, a peculiar change crept over the appearance of things. The unwonted greyness grew lighter; then—though I was travelling with prodigious velocity—the blinking succession of day and night, which was usually indicative of a slower pace, returned, and grew more and more marked. This puzzled me very much at first. The alternations of night and day grew slower and slower, and so did the passage of the sun across the sky, until they seemed to stretch through centuries. At last a steady twilight brooded over the earth, a twilight only broken now and then when a comet glared across the darkling sky. The band of light that had indicated the sun had long since disappeared; for the sun had ceased to set—it simply rose and fell in the west, and grew ever broader and more red. All trace of the moon had vanished. The circling of the stars, growing slower and slower, had given place to creeping points of light. At last, sometime before I stopped, the sun, red and very large, halted motionless upon the horizon, a vast dome glowing with a dull heat, and now and then suffering a momentary extinction. At one time it had for a little while glowed more brilliantly again, but it speedily reverted to its sullen red-heat. I perceived by this slowing down of its rising and setting that the work of the tidal drag was done. The earth had come to rest with one face to the sun, even as in our own time the moon faces the earth.

  “I stopped very gently and sat upon the Time Machine, looking round.”