The Time Ships

by Stephen Baxter

“Well, I ought to. I’ve traversed through such intervals, with you, on the way to the Palaeocene and back.”

  “But then we traveled through a History free of intelligence. Look — I have told you of interstellar migration. If Mind is given the chance to work on such scales—”

  “I’ve seen what can be done to the earth.”

  “More than that! — more than a single planet! The patient, termite-burrowing of Mind can undermine even the fabric of the universe,” he whispered, “if given enough time… Even we only had a half-million years since the plains of Africa, and we captured a sun…

  “Look at the sky,” he said. “Where are the stars? There is hardly a naked star in the sky. This is 1891, or thereabouts, remember: here can be no cosmological reason for the extinction of the stars, as compared to the sky of your own Richmond.

  “With my dark-evolved eyes, I can see a little more than you. And I tell you there is an array of dull-red pinpoints up there: it is infra-red radiation — heat.”

  Then it struck me, with almost a physical force. “It is true,” I said. “It is true… Your hypothesis of Galactic conquest. The proof of it is visible, in the sky itself! The stars must be cloaked about — almost all of them — by artificial shells, like your Morlock Sphere.” I stared out at the empty sky. “Dear God, Nebogipfel; human beings — and their machines — have changed Heaven itself!”

  “It was inevitable that it would come to this, once the first Constructor was launched — do you see?”

  I stared into that darkened sky, oppressed by awe. It was not so much the changed nature of the sky that astonished me so, but the notion that all this — all of it, to the furthest end of the Galaxy — had been brought about by my shattering of History with the Time Machine!

  “I can see that men have gone from the earth,” I said. “The climatic instability has done for us here. But somewhere” — I waved a hand — “somewhere out there must be men and women, in those scattered homes!”

  “No,” he said. “The Constructors see everywhere, remember; they know everything. And I have seen no evidence of men like you. Oh, here and there you may find biological creatures descended from man — but as diverse, in their way, from your form of human as I am. And would you count me a man? And the biological forms are, besides, mostly degenerated…”

  “There are no true men?”

  “There are descendants of man everywhere. But nowhere will you find a creature who is more closely related to you than — say — a whale or an elephant…”

  I quoted to him what I remembered of Charles Darwin: “ ’Judging by the past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity…’ “

  “Darwin was right,” Nebogipfel said gently.

  That idea — that, of your type, you are alone in the Galaxy! — is hard to accept, and I fell silent, gazing up at the blanked-out stars. Was each of those great globes as densely populated as Nebogipfel’s Sphere? My fertile mind began to inhabit those immense world-buildings with the descendants of true men — with fish-men, and bird-men, men of fire and ice — and I wondered what a tale might be brought back if some immortal Gulliver were able to travel from world to world, visiting all the diverse offspring of Humanity.

  “Men may have become extinct,” Nebogipfel said. “Any biological species will, on a long enough time-scale, become extinct. But the Constructors cannot become extinct. Do you see that? With the Constructors, the essence of the race is not the form, biological or otherwise — it is the Information the race has gathered, and stored. And that is immortal. Once a race has committed itself to such Children, of Metal and Machines and Information, it cannot die out. Do you see that?”

  I turned to the prospect of White Earth beyond our window.

  I saw it, all right — I saw it all, only too well!

  Men had launched off these mechanical workers to the stars, to find new worlds, build colonies. I imagined that great argosy of light reaching out from an earth which had grown too small, going glittering up into the sky, smaller and smaller until the blue had swallowed them up… There were a million lost stories, I thought, of how men had come to know how to bear the strange gravitations, the attenuated and unfamiliar gases and all the stresses of space.

  It was an epochal migration — it changed the nature of the cosmos — but its launch was, perhaps, a last effort, a spasm before the collapse of civilization on the Mother World. In the face of the disintegration of the atmosphere, men on earth weakened, dwindled — we had the evidence of the pathetic mirror on the moon to show us that — and, at last, died.

  But then, much later, to the deserted earth, back came the colony machines man had sent out — or their descendants, the Universal Constructors, enormously sophisticated. The Constructors were descended from men, in a way and yet they had gone far beyond the boundaries of what men could achieve; for they had discarded old Adam, and all the vestiges of brutes and reptiles that had lurked in his body and spirit.

  I saw it all! The earth had been repopulated; and — not by man — but by the Mechanical Heirs of Man, who had returned, changed, from the stars.

  And all of this — all of it — had propagated out of the little colony which had been founded in the Palaeocene. Hilary had foreseen something of this, I thought: the re-engineering of the cosmos had unfolded from that little, fragile huddle of twelve people, that unremarkable seed planted fifty million years deep.

  [8]

  A Proposition

  Time wore away slowly, in that bizarre, cocooned place.

  For his part, Nebogipfel seemed quite content with our arrangements. He spent most of each day with his face pressed up against the glistening hide of the Universal Constructor, immersed in the Information Sea. He had little time, or patience, for me; it was clearly an effort — a loss — for him to break away from that rich vein of ancient wisdom, and to confront my ignorance — and even more so my primitive desire for company.

  I took to mooching, aimlessly, about the apartment. I munched at my plates of food; I used the steam bath; I toyed with the Multiplicity table; I peered out of the windows at an earth which had become as inhospitable to me as the surface of Jupiter.

  I had nothing to do! — and in this mood of futility, for I was now so remote from home and my own kind that I could not see how I might live, I began to plumb new depths of depression.

  Then, one day, Nebogipfel came to see me, with what he called a proposition.

  We were in the room in which our friendly Constructor sat, as squat and placid as ever. Nebogipfel, as usual, was connected to the Constructor by his tube of glistening cilia.

  “You must understand the background to all this,” he said, and his natural eye rotated so he could watch me. “To begin with, you must see that the goals of the Constructors are very different from those of your species — or from mine.”

  “That’s understandable,” I said. “The physical differences alone—”

  “It goes beyond that.”

  Generally, when we got into this sort of debate — with myself cast in the role of the Ignoramus — Nebogipfel showed signs of impatience, of a salmon-like longing to return to the gleaming depths of his Information Sea. This time, though, his speech was patient and deliberate, and I realized that he was taking unusual care over what he had to say.

  I began to feel uneasy. Clearly the Morlock felt he had to convince me of something.

  He continued to discuss the goals of the Constructors. “You see, a species cannot survive for long if it continues to carry around the freight of antique motivations that you bear. No offense.”

  “None taken,” I said drily.

  “I mean, of course, territoriality, aggression, the violent settlement of disputes… Imperialist designs and the like become unimaginable when technology advances past a certain point. With weapons of the power of die Zeitmaschine’s Carolinum Bomb — or worse — things must change. A man of your own age said that the invention of a
tomic weapons had changed everything — except Humanity’s way of thinking.”

  “I can’t argue with your thesis,” I said, “for it does seem that — as you say — the limits of Humanity, the vestiges of old Adam, were at last enough to bring us down… But what of the goals of your metal super-men, the Constructors?”

  He hesitated. “In a sense a species, taken as a whole, does not have goals. Did men have goals in common, in your day, save to keep on breathing, eating, and reproducing?”

  I grunted. “Goals shared with the lowest bacillus.”

  “But; despite this complexity, one can — I think — classify the goals of a species, depending on its state of advancement, and the resources it requires as a consequence.”

  A Pre-Industrial civilization, Nebogipfel said — I thought of England in the Middle Ages — needs raw materials: for food, clothing, warmth and so forth.

  But once Industry has developed, materials can be substituted for each other, to accommodate the shortage of a particular resource. And so the key requirements then are for capital and labor. Such a state would describe my own century, and I saw how one could indeed regard, in a generic sense, the activities of mankind in that benighted century as driven in the large by competition for those two key resources: labor and capital.

  “But there is a stage beyond the Industrial,” Nebogipfel said. “It is the Post-Industrial. My own species had entered this stage — we had been there for the best part of half a million years, on your arrival — but it is a stage without an end.”

  “Tell me what it means. If capital and labor are no longer the determinants of social evolution…”

  “They are not, because Information can compensate for their lack. Do you see? Thus, the transmutating Floor of the Sphere by means of the knowledge invested in its structure — could compensate for any shortage of resource, beyond primal energy…”

  “And so you are saying that these Constructor — given their fragmentation into a myriad complex factions — are, at base, driving for more knowledge?”

  “Information — its gathering, interpretation and storage — is the ultimate goal of all intelligent life.” He regarded me somberly. “We had understood that, and had begun to translate the resources of the solar system to that goal; you men of the nineteenth century had barely begun to grope your way to that realization.”

  “Very well,” I said. “So, we must ask, what is it that limits the gathering of Information?” I peered out at the enclosed stars. “These Universal Constructors have already fenced off much of this Galaxy, it seems to me.”

  “And there are more Galaxies beyond,” Nebogipfel said. “A million million star systems, as large as this one.”

  “Perhaps, then, even now, the Constructors’ great sail-ships are drifting out, like dandelion seeds, to whatever lies beyond the Galaxy… Perhaps, in the end, the Constructors can conquer all of this material universe, and turn it over to the storage and classification of Information which you describe. It would be a universe become a great Library — the greatest imaginable, infinite in scope and depth—”

  “It is a grand project indeed — and, yes, the bulk of the energy of the Constructors is devoted to that goal: and to studies of how intelligence can survive into the far fixture — when Mind has encompassed the universe, and when all the stars have died, and the planets have drifted from their suns… and matter itself begins to decay.

  “But you are wrong: the universe is not infinite. And as such, it is not enough. Not for some factions of the Constructors. Do you see? This universe is bounded in Space and Time; it began at a fixed period in the past, and it must finish with the final decay of matter, at the ultimate end of time…

  “Some of the Constructors — a faction — are not prepared to accept this finitude,” Nebogipfel said. “They will not countenance any limits to knowledge. A finite universe is not enough for them! — and they are preparing to do something about it.”

  That sent a chill — of pure, unadulterated awe — prickling over my scalp. I looked out at the hidden stars. This was a species which was already Immortal, which had conquered a Galaxy, which would absorb a universe — how could their ambitions stretch further still?

  And, I wondered grimly, how could it involve us?

  Nebogipfel, still locked to his eye-scope, rubbed his face with the back of his hand, in the manner of a cat, removing fragments of food from the hair about his chin. “I do not yet have a full understanding of this scheme of theirs,” he said. “It is to do with time travel, and Plattnerite; and — I think — the concept of the Multiplicity of Histories. The data is complex — so bright…” I thought this was an extraordinary word to use; for the first time it occurred to me what courage and intellectual strength it must take for the Morlock to descend into the Constructors’ Information Sea — to confront that ocean of blazing Ideas.

  He said, “A fleet of Ships is being constructed — huge Time Machines, far beyond the capabilities of your century or mine. With these, the Constructors intend — I think — to penetrate the past. The deep past.”

  “How far back? Beyond the Palaeocene?”

  He regarded me. “Oh, much further than that.”

  “Well. And what of us, Nebogipfel? What is this ’proposition’ you have?”

  “Our patron — the Constructor here with us — is of this faction. He was able to detect our approach through time — I cannot give you details; they are very advanced — they were able to sense our coming, on our crude Time-Car, up from the Palaeocene. And so, he was here to greet us.”

  Our Constructor had been able to follow our progress, up towards the surface of time, as if we were timid deep-sea fish! “Well, I’m grateful he was. After all, if he hadn’t been on hand to meet us as he did, and treat us with his molecular surgery, we’d be dead as nails.”

  “Indeed.”

  “And now?”

  He withdrew his face from the Constructor’s eye-scope; it came loose with an obscene plop. “I think,” — he said slowly, “that they understand your significance — the fact that your initial invention propagated the changes, the explosion in Multiplicity, which led to all this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think they know who you are. And they want us to come with them. In their great Ships — to the Boundary at the Beginning of Time.”

  [9]

  Options and Introspections

  To travel to the Beginning of Time… My soul quailed at the prospect!

  You may think me something of a coward for this reaction. Well, perhaps I was. But you must remember that I had already been granted a vision of one extremity of Time — its bitter End — in one of the Histories I had investigated: the very first, where I had watched the dying of the sun over that desolate beach. I remembered, too, my nausea, my sickness and confusion; and how it had only been a greater dread of lying helpless in that rayless obscurity which had impelled me to get aboard the Time Machine once more and haul myself back into the past.

  I knew that the picture I should find at the dawn of things would be rather different — unimaginably so! — but it was the memory of that dread and weakness which made me hesitate.

  I am a human — and proud of it! — but my extraordinary experiences, I dare say more unusual than any man of my generation, had led me to understand the limitations of the human soul — or, at any rate, of my soul. I could deal with the descendants of man, like the Morlocks, and I could make a fair fist of coping with your prehistoric monstrosities like Pristichampus. And, when it was a mere intellectual exercise — in the warmth of the lounge of the Linnaean — I could conceive of going much further: I could have debated for long hours the Finitude of Time, or von Helmholtz’s views on the inevitability of the Heat Death of the universe.

  …But, the truth is, I found the reality altogether more daunting.

  The available alternative, however, was hardly attractive!

  I have always been a man of action — I like to get hold of thi
ngs! — but here I was, cushioned in the hands of metal creatures so advanced they could not conceive even of talking to me, any more than I should think of holding spiritual conversations with a flask of bacillus. There was nothing I could do here on White Earth — for the Universal Constructors had done it all.

  Many times, I wished I had ignored Nebogipfel’s invitation and stayed in the Palaeocene! There, I had been a part of a growing, developing society, and my skills and intellect as well as my physical strength — could have played a major part in the survival and development of Humanity in that hospitable Age. I found my thoughts, inwardly directed as they were, turning also to Weena — to that world Of A.D. 802,701 to which I had first traveled through time, and to which I had intended to return — only to be blown off my course by the first Bifurcation of History. If things had been different, I thought — if I had behaved differently, that first time, perhaps I could have retrieved Weena from the flames, even at the cost of my own health or life. Or, if I had survived that, perhaps I could have gone on to make a genuine difference in that unhappy History, by somehow leading Eloi and Morlock to confront their common degradation.

  I had done none of that, of course; I had run for home, as soon as I retrieved my Time Machine again. And now I was forced to accept that, because of the endless calving-off of Histories, I could never return to 802,701 — or, indeed, to my own time.

  It seemed that my nomadic trail had ended here, in these meaningless few rooms!

  I would be kept alive by these Constructors, it seemed, as long as my body continued to function. Since I have always been robust, I supposed I could look forward to several decades more of life — and perhaps even longer; for if Nebogipfel was right about the sub-molecular capabilities of these Constructors, perhaps (so Nebogipfel speculated, to my astonishment) they would be able to halt, or reverse, even the aging processes of my body!

  But it seemed I would be deprived of companionship forever — save for my unequal relationship with a Morlock who, already being my intellectual superior, and with his continuing immersion in the Information Sea, would surely soon pass on to concerns advanced far beyond my understanding.