Timelines: Stories Inspired by H.G. Wells' the Time Machine (45 page)

Examining the main panel he saw that the controls for determining the temporal destination of the machine had slipped, and that he was some fifty thousand years beyond the time of the Eloi and the Morlocks.

The seclusion of the place obviated his need for modesty, and he stripped and laid his clothes out to dry in the soft grass.

The Time Traveler then laid the components of the control panel out to dry on his coat. Having nothing to do but wait, and still feeling self-conscious about his nakedness, The Traveler sat with his back against the base of the machine and luxuriated in the sun’s warmth. As he did, he thought of Weena and how she had been lost in the fire he had set to escape the Morlocks.

It was curious. He had initially thought of her as nothing more than a child, but Weena had shown a natural curiosity and thirst for knowledge that rivaled his own. He found he missed her lilting laugh, and the way her hair shone in the bright sunlight.

“
Careful, old boy,’ he chided himself, “you sound like a man in love.”

But was it such a ridiculous notion? She was no child, that had been his own intellectual bigotry talking, not an honest assessment of her. He wished now he had had more time with her, even if just to hear her delight in discovering and learning new things.

She’s dead, he thought sadly.

But you have a Time Machine.

Of course! He could go back just before she was lost and rescue her.

It was obvious they couldn’t stay in her time. The Morlocks would never give them a moment’s peace. His own time was also out of the question. How would he explain her? How would she adjust to such a radically different world?

There was a mountain to the south that would give him a splendid view of the terrain. Once the machine was reassembled and hidden under some brush, he took a canteen and field glasses and made the climb.

His hike was eerily silent, with only the occasional breeze through trees or a burbling stream to break the silence. Were he not more disciplined, he might have talked to himself, just to hear something.

Climbing the peak took half a day, the way always more difficult and treacherous than it looked from the ground. Fortunately he was in excellent shape and soon stood astride a large flat rock on the summit.

As near as he could determine, this region of Britain was currently uninhabited. Further, as night drew on he saw no signs of light or campfires. He returned to the place by the river and slept fitfully, anxious to be on his way but knowing that he was in need of rest.

He knew there was no place for Weena in his world, or for either of them in hers.

But here, here they might find peace, a peace The Time Traveler realized he had been longing for. He knew what lay at both ends of time for the Earth, and now thought he might devote his days to developing some sort of ethical philosophy for the uses of his device. Once this was complete, he could present it to the Royal Academy. With the machine he could make the trip and arrive back before Weena even realized he was gone.

He made a list of supplies they would need and journeyed back to his laboratory.

It took him ten trips and the better part of a day, but he was able to bring everything he needed, including a variety of seeds and cuttings for growing vegetables, and several chickens that would supply both eggs and meat. Later, if he felt it was necessary, they might also bring in sheep and pigs.

The machine continued to act erratically at times, sometimes bringing him back smoothly, other times rematerializing with a lurch or a bone-rattling shake, as if it were a rat caught in the jaws of an enormous cat.

He checked the machine carefully, and could find nothing wrong. Later he would wish that he had brought along even a simple magnifying glass to examine the crystal.

Not that it would have mattered.

He had no record of the temporal or spatial coordinates when and where Weena had been taken by the fire. He would have to approximate both and refine his jumps through trial and error. Fortunately, his travels to the dying Earth had given him practice in quick, precise jumps.

What might happen if his past self were to witness his arrival? Might the knowledge that he would appear affect his actions in the past? Although a nested set of paradoxes might indeed result, he intuited that Time was rather like a river, with any number of tributaries issuing from the main flow. While he was on Tributary A, his past self might be shunted over to Tributary A-1, or even Tributary B. His travels had demonstrated that Time and its events seemed resilient, and that his peregrinations along its courses were no more bothersome than that of a fly amongst elephants.

By disengaging the main lens, he could move over the landscape without traveling through time. In a series of mile-long “hops” he was able to find the main dwelling-place of the Morlocks. There was no trace of either race, but he recognized a pattern of boulders that had once hidden one of their hateful hatches.

Weary, The Time Traveler rested and ate some bread and cheese he had brought with him. Fortified, he set the controls and made his first jump.

He arrived in the midst of flames, and saw to his horror that Weena was being consumed by the fire. Her screams piercing his heart, he quickly retreated to his origin point near the hatch and tried again.

It took him some thirty attempts. The margin for error was exceedingly small, and his hands, though practiced, could not maneuver the controls with the exacting delicacy required. In those trials he saw her die more than a dozen times, and it nearly drove him mad. If he was not sure he could rescue her, he might have set the controls for the far distant future when the sun would engulf the Earth.

He did see himself twice, and on both occasions his counterpart opened his eyes with surprise, knowing what the whirling blur that seemed to exist only on the periphery of his vision meant.

“
Who are you?” his counterpart screamed the second time, and The Traveler wondered if that Traveler would retain the memory of their encounter. He would never know, although he did find it curious that he had no such memory, and this seemed to validate his theory of multiple paths of Time.

Finally, he was able to pull Weena into the machine just before the flames reached her. She screamed and clawed at him
,
thinking she had been caught by the Morlocks. Before he could reveal himself, she succumbed to the punishing abuses of time travel and collapsed unconscious at his feet. He could not see to her without possibly upsetting the trajectory of their travels, so he remained seated, praying for the first time since he was a boy, praying that she would be all right.

They reached his little conclave near dusk, and he laid her in the tent he had erected near the stream. A cold, wet compress brought her around, and her brilliant blue eyes filled with grateful tears when she saw him leaning over her.

Weena was alarmed by the absence of the other Eloi, and The Traveler did his best to comfort her. Once she had a greater command of English, she asked him why he did not ferry the other Eloi to this place of safety. The Traveler explained that they could be retrieved any time, and that it might be best to have food plentiful and ready for them, as well as shelters from the winter storms. Weena then suggested that more Eloi would mean the work would go that much faster, and The Traveler then lied and said the multiple trips would damage the machine and he might not return. So great was her love for him that fear of losing him made all other matters trivial.

The truth was, The Traveler now held much of humanity in disdain, even the gentle and innocent Eloi. It was because of those journeys to the very end of the Earth, when Mankind was even more monstrous than the Morlocks, stripped down to its most primal savagery.

He knew in time he might bring others here, but whereas Utopia for two might be feasible, the chances for failure increased exponentially with the introduction of each new citizen.

Even Eden had fallen after the introduction of the snake.

Still
, t
heir days were idyllic, and The Traveler taught Weena all he knew of philosophy, art and science, her education supplemented by some books he had brought from his London library. The notion of art was foreign to her, but she was enchanted by many of the pictures in his books, particularly those by Italian masters of the Renaissance. She often asked if they might go to one of the museums in his machine to see the actual paintings, but he explained that modern Europe was, in some ways, more fraught with peril than the realm of the Morlocks.

He had tried establishing her in her own tent, but she had cried piteously, unused to sleeping alone. Finally, they shared a tent, though his British sense of propriety made him insist they sleep under separate blankets. As the weather turned colder, he soon found this to be uncomfortable and impractical, and they were soon sharing his bed.

He supposed he had been fooling himself that biology would not have its way over his propriety, and in submitting to those whims he found he had been far lonelier than he had known. He held her gratefully, fiercely, and she returned his embrace with one just as powerful.

One day, as they were discussing his theories of geometry and time, Weena shyly announced she was carrying his child.

The Traveler thought that he had known joy in rescuing her, then in loving her, but all that paled compared to the happiness he experienced now. He felt he might launch himself skyward and fly, so boundless was his ecstasy.

With the birth of their child imminent, he promised Weena that they would bring more of the Eloi to their “little garden” as he called it. He only wanted to wait until the child had come into the world and thrived as they had done.

On a bright summer day, the two of them walked to a pond The Traveler had created by diverting part of the river to a small dam constructed of rocks and logs. This was a pleasant spot to bathe and he also thought he might somehow contrive to stock it with trout from his own time.

Weena, who was by now quite large, placed her feet in the cool waters.

“
Traveler,” she cried happily, “you must soak your feet!” Though he had taught her both his given and Christian name, she always preferred to call him Traveler, which at first seemed silly, but now filled him with delight.

He removed his shoes and placed his bare feet in the cool water.

Weena splashed him playfully, and he did the same, making her squeal and giggle.

As he leaned to kiss her, she suddenly clutched her belly.

She looked at him, her eyes wide with terror, and disappeared.

The Traveler cried out, at first thinking she had fallen into the water, but his eyes had not lied to him.

She had disappeared.

Had he not been so close to her, he might have surmised some alternate Traveler had taken her away in his own Time Machine, but he would have seen evidence of its arrival and departure in the quiet glade.

Could the Morlocks be responsible? It was a wild, impossible notion, but the very thought of it put his stomach in knots, and made him feel icy hands around his heart.

Who else would want her? No one else even knew of her existence.

The Morlocks somehow had taken his wife and child.

The Traveler wished now some of his friends were available. Several men good with guns would put him at a definite advantage, despite the great number of the Morlocks.

The Traveler resolved to return to London. Even if he did not enlist allies he could procure weapons and lanterns that might blind the foul creatures.

He had secured the Time Machine under a heavy canvas tarp which was staked to the ground. It took him several nerve-wracking minutes to free the device, and he had to remind himself that he was the master of time, and no longer subject to its normal ebb and flow.

When it was at last removed from its bonds, he set the controls for London, 1895.

He arrived with a crash, the machine dropping several feet and knocking the wind out of him as it settled onto an outcropping of rock. Though he had set the controls for noon, he was in darkness.

The air was foul and he coughed, some instinctive sense urging him to remain quiet.

I shouldn’t have landed with such clumsiness, then, he thought ruefully.

He emerged from the machine slowly, and saw now that the world was not dark, it was befouled with smoke, like a forest in the midst of a fire.

The Time Traveler dampened his handkerchief and placed it over his mouth and nose. This made breathing measurably easier, and he moved slowly around the machine to try and discern where he was. He had his field glasses packed under the saddle and he retrieved these.

He had settled on the ledge of a great cliff. Looking below, it was all he could do to keep from screaming.

Instead of the London he had known, this was a city of iron buildings, all of them canted and placed at angles that defied convention and induced a feeling of vertigo. These monstrous structures were far larger than any building of his time, and each was covered with a patina of rust. The streets and sidewalks were covered in flakes of rust, and everywhere he looked he saw humans dressed much as the people of his own era, though their clothing was torn and ragged. These unfortunates were carrying loads or pulling carts, and driving each one was a Morlock, using whips and riding crops as if working with stubborn draft animals.