The Time Ships. Stephen BaxterЧитать онлайн книгу.
the completion of the Sphere, the Earth is become a nursery …
‘What Sphere?’
‘You have much to learn of us.’
‘Tell me about the Sphere!’
‘It is a Sphere around the sun.’
Those seven simple words – startling! – and yet … Of course! The solar evolution I had watched in the time-accelerated sky, the exclusion of the sunlight from the Earth – ‘I understand,’ I said to Nebogipfel. ‘I watched the sphere’s construction.’
The Morlock’s eyes seemed to widen, in a very human mannerism, as he considered this unexpected news.
And now, for me, other aspects of my situation were becoming clear.
‘You said,’ I essayed to Nebogipfel, ‘“On the Earth, you did great damage –” Something on those lines.’ It was an odd thing to say, I thought now – if I was still on the Earth. I lifted my face and let the light beat down on me. ‘Nebogipfel – beneath my feet. What is visible, through this clear Floor?’
‘Stars.’
‘Not representations, not some kind of planetarium –’
‘Stars.’
I nodded. ‘And this light from above –’
‘It is sunlight.’
Somehow, I think I had known it. I stood in the light of a sun, which was overhead for twenty-four hours of every day; I stood on a Floor above the stars …
I felt as if the world were shifting about me; I felt light-headed, and there was a remote ringing in my ears. My adventures had already taken me across the deserts of time, but now – thanks to my capture by these astonishing Morlocks – I had been lifted across space. I was no longer on the Earth – I had been transported to the Morlocks’ solar Sphere!
‘You say you travelled here on a Time Machine.’
I paced across my little disc of light, caged, restless. ‘The term is precise. It is a machine which can travel indifferently in any direction in time, and at any relative rate, as the driver determines.’
‘So you claim that you have journeyed here, from the remote past, on this machine – the machine found with you on the earth.’
‘Precisely!’ I snapped. The Morlock seemed content to stand, almost immobile, for long hours, as he developed his interrogation. But I am a man of a modern cut, and our moods did not coincide. ‘Confound it, fellow,’ I said, ‘you have observed yourself that I myself am of an archaic design. How else, but through time travel, can you explain my presence, here in the Year A.D. 657,208?’
Those huge curtain-eyelashes blinked slowly. ‘There are a number of alternatives: most of them more plausible than time travel.’
‘Such as?’ I challenged him.
‘Genetic resequencing.’
‘Genetic?’ Nebogipfel explained further, and I got the general drift. ‘You’re talking of the mechanism by which heredity operates – by which characteristics are transmitted from generation to generation.’
‘It is not impossible to generate simulacra of archaic forms by unravelling subsequent mutations.’
‘So you think I am no more than a simulacrum – reconstructed like the fossil skeleton of some Megatherium in a museum? Yes?’
‘There are precedents, though not of human forms of your vintage. Yes. It is possible.’
I felt insulted. ‘And to what purpose might I have been cobbled together in this way?’ I resumed my pacing around the Cage. The most disconcerting aspect of that bleak place was its lack of walls, and my constant, primeval sense that my back was unguarded. I would rather have been hurled in some prison cell of my own era – primitive and squalid, no doubt, but enclosed. ‘I’ll not rise to any such bait. That’s a lot of nonsense. I designed and built a Time Machine, and travelled here on it; and let that be an end to it!’
‘We will use your explanation as a working hypothesis,’ Nebogipfel said. ‘Now, please describe to me the machine’s operating principles.’
I continued my pacing, caught in a dilemma. As soon as I had realized that Nebogipfel was articulate and intelligent, unlike those Morlocks of my previous acquaintance, I had expected some such interrogation; after all, if a Time Traveller from Ancient Egypt had turned up in nineteenth century London I would have fought to be on the committee which examined him. But should I share the secret of my machine – my only advantage in this world – with these New Morlocks?
After some internal searching, I realized I had little choice. I had no doubt that the information could be forced out of me, if the Morlocks so desired. Besides, the construction of my machine was intrinsically simpler than that of, say, a fine clock. A civilization capable of throwing a shell around the sun would have little trouble reproducing the fruit of my poor lathes and presses! And if I spoke to Nebogipfel, perhaps I could put the fellow off while I sought some advantage from my difficult situation. I still had no idea where the machine was being held, still less how I should reach it and have a prospect of returning home.
But also – and here is the honest truth – the thought of my savagery among the child-Morlocks on the earth still weighed on my mind! I had no desire that Nebogipfel should think of me – nor the phase of Humanity which I, perforce, represented – as brutish. Therefore, like a child eager to impress, I wanted to show Nebogipfel how clever I was, how mechanically and scientifically adept: how far above the apes men of my type had ascended.
Still, for the first time I felt emboldened to make some demands of my own.
‘Very well,’ I said to Nebogipfel. ‘But first …’
‘Yes?’
‘Look here,’ I said, ‘the conditions under which you’re holding me are a little primitive, aren’t they? I’m not as young as I was, and I can’t do with this standing about all day. How about a chair? Is that so unreasonable a thing to ask for? And what about blankets to sleep under, if I must stay here?’
‘Chair.’ He had taken a second to reply, as if he was looking up the referent in some invisible dictionary.
I went on to other demands. I needed more fresh water, I said, and some equivalent of soap; and I asked – expecting to be refused – for a blade with which to shave my bristles.
For a time, Nebogipfel withdrew. When he returned he brought blankets and a chair; and after my next sleep period I found my two trays of provisions supplemented by a third, which bore more water.
The blankets were of some soft substance, too finely manufactured for me to detect any evidence of weaving. The chair – a simple upright thing – might have been of a light wood from its weight, but its red surface was smooth and seamless, and I could not scratch through its paint work with my fingernails, nor could I detect any evidence of joints, nails, screws or mouldings; it seemed to have been extruded as a complete whole by some unknown process. As to my toilet, the extra water came without soap, and nor would it lather, but the liquid had a smooth feel to it, and I suspected it had been treated with some detergent. By some minor miracle, the water was delivered warm to the touch – and stayed that way, no matter how long I let the bowl stand.
I was brought no blade, though – I was not surprised!
When next Nebogipfel left me alone, I undressed myself by stages and washed away the perspiration of some days, as well