Читать книгу The Time Ships - Stephen Baxter - Страница 24

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 behaviour 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-hut 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 them 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 behaviour 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!’ I had a sudden 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 travelling 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 colour 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 centre. 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!