The Time Ships

by Stephen Baxter

  We approached an area, perhaps a half-mile square, where the partitions seemed lower than usual. As we neared, I became aware of a rising level of noise — a babble of liquid throats — and a sharply increased smell of Morlock, of their characteristic musty, sickly sweetness. Nebogipfel bade me pause on the edge of this clearing.

  Through my goggles I was able to see that the surface of the cleared-out area was alive — it pulsated — with the mewling, wriggling, toddling form of babies. There were thousands of them, these tumbling Morlock infants, their little hands and feet pawing at each other’s clumps of untidy hair. They rolled, just like young apes, and poked at junior versions of the informative partitions I have described elsewhere, or crammed food into their dark mouths; here and there, adults walked through the crowd, raising one who had fallen here, untangling a miniature dispute there, soothing a wailing infant beyond.

  I gazed out over this sea of infants, bemused. Perhaps such a collection of human children might be found appealing by some — not by me, a confirmed bachelor — but these were Morlocks… You must remember that the Morlock is not an attractive entity to human sensibilities, even as a child, with his worm-pallor flesh, his coolness to the touch, and that spider-webbing of hair. If you think of a giant table-top covered in wriggling maggots, you will have something of my impression as I stood there!

  I turned to Nebogipfel. “But where are their parents?”

  He hesitated, as if searching for the right phrase. “They have no parents. This is a birth farm. When old enough, the infants will be transported from here to a nursery community, either on the Sphere or…”

  But I had stopped listening. I glanced at Nebogipfel, up and down, but his hair masked the form of his body.

  With a jolt of wonder, I saw now another of those facts which had stared me in the eyeball since my arrival here, but which I was too clever by far to perceive: there was no evidence of sexual discrimination — not in Nebogipfel, nor in any of the Morlocks I had come across — not even in those, like my low-gravity visitors, whose bodies were sparsely coated with hair, and so easier to make out. Your average Morlock was built like a child, undifferentiated sexually, with the same lack of emphasis on hips or chest… I realized with a shock that I knew nothing of — nor had I thought to question — the Morlocks’ processes of love and birth!

  Nebogipfel told me something now of the rearing and education of the Morlock young.

  The Morlock began his life in these birth farms and nursery communities — the whole of the earth, to my painful recollection, had been given over to one such — and there, in addition to the rudiments of civilized behavior, the youngster was taught one essential skill: the ability to learn. It is as if a schoolboy of the nineteenth century — instead of having drummed into his poor head a lot of nonsense about Greek and Latin and obscure geometric theorems — had been taught, instead, how to concentrate, and to use libraries, and how to assimilate knowledge — how, above all, to think. After that, the acquisition of any specific knowledge depended on the needs of the task in hand, and the inclination of the individual.

  When Nebogipfel summarized this to me, its simplicity of logic struck me with an almost physical force. Of course! — I said to myself — so much for schools! What a contrast to the battleground of Ignorance with Incompetence that made up my own, unlamented schooldays!

  I was moved to ask Nebogipfel about his own profession.

  He explained to me that once the date of my origin had been fixed, he had made himself into something of an expert in my period and its mores from the records of his people; and he had become aware of several significant differences between the ways of our races.

  “Our occupations are not as consuming as yours,” he said. “I have two loves — two vocations.” His eyes were invisible, making his emotions even more impossible to read. He said: “Physics, and the training of the young.”

  Education, and training of all sorts, continued throughout a Morlock’s lifetime, and it was not unusual for an individual to pursue three or four “careers,” as we might call them, in sequence, or even in parallel. The general level of intelligence of the Morlocks was, I got the impression, rather higher than that of the people of my own century.

  Still, Nebogipfel’s choice of vocations startled me; I had thought that Nebogipfel must specialize solely in the physical sciences, such was his ability to follow my sometimes rambling accounts of the theory of the Time Machine, and the evolution of History.

  “Tell me,” I said lightly, “for which of your talents were you appointed to supervise me? Your expertise in physics — or your nannying skills?”

  I thought his black, small-toothed mouth stretched in a grin.

  Then the truth struck me — and I felt a certain humiliation burn in me at the thought. I am an eminent man of my day, and yet I had been put in the charge of one more suited to shepherding children!

  …And yet, I reflected now, what was my blundering about, when I first arrived in the Year 657,208, but the actions of a comparative child?

  Now Nebogipfel led me to a corner of the nursery area. This special place was covered by a structure about the size and shape of a small conservatory, done out in the pale, translucent material of the Floor — in fact, this was one of the few parts of that city-chamber to be covered over in any way. Nebogipfel led me inside the structure. The shelter was empty of furniture or apparatus, save for one or two of the partitions with glowing screens which I had noticed elsewhere. And, in the center of the Floor, there was what looked like a small bundle — of clothing, perhaps — being extruded from the glass.

  The Morlocks who attended here had a more serious bent than those who supervised the children, I perceived. Over their pale hair they wore loose smocks — vest-like garments with many pockets — crammed with tools which were mostly quite incomprehensible to me. Some of the tools glowed faintly. This latest class of Morlock had something of the air of the engineer, I thought: it was an odd attribute in this sea of babies; and, although they were distracted by my clumsy presence, the engineers watched the little bundle on the Floor, and passed instruments over it periodically.

  My curiosity engaged, I stepped towards that central bundle. Nebogipfel hung back, letting me proceed alone. The thing was only a few inches long, and was still half-embedded in the glass, like a sculpture being hewn from some rocky surface. In fact it did look a little like a statue: here were the buds of two arms, I thought, and there was what might become a face — a disc coated with hair, and split by a thin mouth. The bundle’s extrusion seemed slow, and I wondered what was so difficult for the hidden devices about manufacturing this particular artifact. Was it especially complex, perhaps?

  And then — it was a moment which will haunt me as long as I live — that tiny mouth opened. The lips parted with a soft popping sound, and a mewling, fainter than that of the tiniest kitten, emerged to float on the air; and the miniature face crumpled, as if in some mild distress.

  I stumbled backwards, as shocked as if I had been punched.

  Nebogipfel seemed to have anticipated something of my distress. He said, “You must remember that you are dislocated in Time by a half million years: the interval between us is ten times the age of your species…”

  “Nebogipfel — can it be true? That your young — you yourself — are extruded from this Floor, manufactured with no more majesty than a cup of water?” The Morlocks had indeed “mastered their genetic inheritance,” I thought — for they had abolished gender, and done away with birth.

  “Nebogipfel,” I protested, “this is — inhuman.”

  He tilted his head; evidently the word meant nothing to him. “Our policy is designed to optimize the potential of the human form — for we are human too,” he said severely. “That form is dictated by a sequence of a million genes, and so the number of possible human individuals — while large — is finite. And all of these individuals may be” — he hesitated — “imagined by the Sphere’s intelligence.”

&nbs
p; Sepulture, he told me, was also governed by the Sphere, with the abandoned bodies of the dead being passed into the Floor without ceremony or reverence, for the dismantling and reuse of their materials.

  “The Sphere assembles the materials required to give the chosen individual life, and—”

  “ ’Chosen’?” I confronted the Morlock, and the anger and violence which I had excluded from my thoughts for so long flooded back into my soul. “How very rational. But what else have you rationalized out, Morlock? What of tenderness? What of love?”

  [16]

  Decision and Departure

  I stumbled out of that grisly birthing-hut and stared around at the huge city-chamber, with its ranks of patient Morlocks pursuing their incomprehensible activities. I longed to shout at them, to shatter their repulsive perfection; but I knew, even in that dark moment, that I could not afford to allow their perception of my behavior to worsen once more.

  I wanted to flee even from Nebogipfel. He had shown some kindness and consideration to me, I realized: more than I deserved, perhaps, and more, probably, than men of my own age might have afforded some violent savage from a half-million years before Christ. But still, he had been, I sensed, fascinated and amused by my reactions to the birthing process. Perhaps he had engineered this revelation to provoke just such an extreme of emotion in me! Well, if such was his intention, Nebogipfel had succeeded. But now my humiliation and unreasoning anger were such that I could scarcely bear to look on his ornately coiffed features.

  And yet I had nowhere else to go! Like it or not, I knew, Nebogipfel was my only point of reference in this strange Morlock world: the only individual alive whose name I knew, and — for all I knew of Morlock politics — my only protector.

  Perhaps Nebogipfel sensed some of this conflict in me. At any rate, he did not press his company on me; instead, he turned his back, and once more evoked my small sleeping — but from the Floor. I ducked into the hut and sat in its darkest corner, with my arms wrapped around me — I cowered like some forest animal brought to New York!

  I stayed in there for some hours — perhaps I slept. At last, I felt some resilience of mind returning, and I took some food and performed a perfunctory toilet.

  I think — before the incident of the birth farm — I had come to be intrigued by my glimpses of this New Morlock world. I have always thought myself above all a Rational man, and I was fascinated by this vision of how a society of Rational Beings might order things — of how Science and Engineering might be applied to build a better world. I had been impressed by the Morlocks’ tolerance of different approaches to politics and governance, for instance. But the sight of that half-formed homunculus had quite unhinged me. Perhaps my reaction demonstrates how deep embedded are the basic values and instincts of our species.

  If it was true that the New Morlocks had conquered their genetic inheritance, the taint of the ancient oceans, then, at that moment of inner turmoil, I envied then their equanimity!

  I knew now that I must get away from the company of the Morlocks — I might be tolerated, but there was no place for me here, any more than for a gorilla in a Mayfair hotel — and I began to formulate a new resolve.

  I emerged from my shelter. Nebogipfel was there, waiting, as if he had never left the vicinity of the hut. With a brush of his hand over a pedestal, he caused the discarded shelter to dissolve back into the Floor.

  “Nebogipfel,” I said briskly, “it must be obvious to you that I am as out of place here as some zoo animal, escaped in a city.”

  He said nothing; his gaze seemed impassive.

  “Unless it is your intention to hold me as a prisoner, or as a specimen in some laboratory, I have no desire to stay here. I request that you allow me access to my Time Machine, so that I might return to my own Age.”

  “You are not a prisoner,” he said. “The word has no translation in our language. You are a sentient being, and as such you have rights. The only constraints on your behavior are that you should not further harm others by your actions—”

  “Which constraints I accept,” I said stiffly.

  “ — and,” he went on, “that you should not depart in your machine.”

  “Then so much for my rights,” I snarled at him. “I am a prisoner here — and a prisoner in time!”

  “Although the theory of time travel is clear enough — and the mechanical structure of your device is obvious — we do not yet have any understanding of the principles involved,” the Morlock said. I thought this must mean that they did not yet understand the significance of Plattnerite. “But,” Nebogipfel went on, “we think this technology could be of great value to our species.”

  “I’m sure you do!” Earlier I had been willing to cooperate with Nebogipfel — up to a point — as I sought advantage. But now that I had learned so much of the Morlocks, I was determined to oppose them. I had a vision of these Morlocks, with their magical devices and wondrous weapons, returning on adapted Time Machines to the London of 1891.

  The Morlocks would keep my Humanity safe and fed. But, deprived of his soul, and perhaps at last of his children, I foresaw that modern man would survive no more than a few generations!

  My horror at this prospect got the blood pumping through my neck — and yet even at that moment, some remote, rational corner of my mind was pointing out to me certain difficulties with this picture. “Look here,” I told myself, “if all modern men were destroyed in this way — but modern man is nevertheless the ancestor of the Morlock — then the Morlocks could never evolve in the first place, and so never capture my machine and return through time… It’s a paradox, isn’t it? For you can’t have it both ways.” You have to remember that in some remote part of my brain the unsolved problem of my second flight through time — with the divergence of Histories I had witnessed — was still fermenting away, and I knew in my heart that my understanding of the philosophy behind this time traveling business was still limited, at best.

  But I pushed all that away as I confronted Nebogipfel. “Never. I will never assist you to acquire time travel.”

  Nebogipfel regarded me. “Then — within the constraints I have set out for you — you are free, to travel anywhere in our worlds.”

  “In that case, I ask that you take me to a place — wherever it might be in this engineered solar system — where men like me still exist.”

  I think I threw out this challenge, expecting a denial of any such possibility. But, to my surprise, Nebogipfel stepped towards me. “Not precisely like you,” he said. “But still — come.”

  And, with that, he stepped out once more across that immense, populated plain. I thought his final words had been more than ominous, but I could not understand what he meant and, in any event, I had little choice but to follow him.

  We reached a clear area perhaps a quarter-mile across. I had long since lost any sense of direction in that immense city-chamber. Nebogipfel donned his goggles, and I retained mine.

  Suddenly — without warning — a beam of light arced down from the roof above and skewered us. I peered up into a warm yellowness, and saw dust-motes cascading about in the air; for a moment I thought I had been returned to my Cage of Light.

  For some seconds we waited — I could not see that Nebogipfel had issued any commands to the invisible machines that governed this place — but then the Floor under my feet gave a sharp jolt. I stumbled, for it had felt like a small earthquake, and was quite unexpected; but I recovered quickly.

  “What was that?”

  Nebogipfel was unperturbed. “Perhaps I should have warned you. Our ascent has started.”

  “Ascent?”

  A disc of glass, perhaps a quarter-mile wide, was rising up out of the Floor, I saw now, and was bearing me and Nebogipfel aloft. It was as if I stood atop some immense pillar, which thrust out of the ground. Already we had risen through perhaps ten feet, and our pace upwards seemed to be accelerating; I felt a whisper of breeze on my forehead.

  I walked a little way towards the lip
of the disc and I watched as that immense, complex plain of Morlocks opened up below me. The chamber stretched as far as I could see, utterly flat, evenly populated. The Floor looked like some elaborate map, perhaps of the constellations, done out in silver thread and black velvet — and overlaying the real star vista beneath. One or two silvery faces were turned up to us as we ascended, but most of the Morlocks seemed quite indifferent.

  “Nebogipfel — where are we going?”

  “To the Interior,” he said calmly.

  I was aware of a change in the light. It seemed much brighter, and more diffuse — it was no longer restricted to a single ray, as might be seen at the bottom of a well.

  I craned up my neck. The disc of light above me was widening, even as I watched, so that I could now make out a ring of sky, around the central disc of sun. That sky was blue, and speckled with high, fluffy clouds; but the sky had an odd texture, a blotchiness of color which at first I attributed to the goggles I still wore.

  Nebogipfel turned from me. He tapped with his foot at the base of our platform, and an object was extruded — at first I could not recognize it — it was a shallow bowl, with a stick protruding from its, center. It was only when Nebogipfel picked it up and held it over his head that I recognized it for what it was: a simple parasol, to keep the sun from his etiolated flesh.

  Thus prepared, we rose up into the light — the shaft widened — and my nineteenth-century head ascended into a plain of grass!

  [17]

  In the Interior

  “Welcome to the Interior,” Nebogipfel announced, comical with his parasol.

  Our quarter-mile-wide pillar of glass ascended through its last few yards quite soundlessly. I felt as if I were rising like some illusionist’s assistant on a stage. I took off my goggles, and shaded my eyes with my hands.

  The platform slowed to a halt, and its edge merged with the meadow of short, wiry grass which ringed it, as seamless as if it were some foundation of concrete which had been laid there. My shadow was a sharp dark patch, directly beneath me. It was noon here, of course; everywhere in the Interior, it was noon, all day and every day! The blinding sun beat down on my head and neck — I suspected I should soon get burned — but the pleasurable feel of this captive sunlight was worth the cost, at that moment.