Time Travel Omnibus, page 842
They were two of a kind.
The true meaning of George’s communication lay encased in ice, no more than one hundred meters from where the time machine had died. Those castles of ice along the beach had apparently grown naturally, but George climbed inside, and his lofty frame was dwarfed by spectacular crystal spires. The creature caressed those crystalline structures as The Time Traveler had caressed his machine, and then they shared the warmth of that castle so that the Englishman would know, at last, what George was. This was no structure of ice, but of a soft, cool glass, and it had carried George here, to the end of the Earth.
Although George had originated from an era far in advance of the old warring Earth, the creature had been unable to repair his machine, because the death of the planet signaled the death of machines as well. It had something to do with shifting magnetic fields, George explained through the touch of flesh and glass, and even in one so advanced as this creature, curiosity had been his undoing. They were, indeed, two of a kind, though The Time Traveler still felt the sting of his own inferiority, particularly in the size and depth of his own heart.
Their world had consisted of the two of them, but after a new machine sputtered and melted into the frozen sand, George had a fresh life to save, and the Englishman helped as much as he could, given his knowledge of Nineteenth Century medicine. The stranger looked more conventional to The Time Traveler than George had, and, in fact, it resembled a Morlock. Its machine looked uncomfortably like his own, and The Time Traveler wondered what the Morlocks might have learned while they had held his invention within the white sphinx.
They pulled the Morlock from its machine, and it struggled as The Time Traveler had, but then George put the tiny crabs to work, and before long the creature had a new pair of lungs. There was something wrong behind its yellow eyes, and the creature gasped and tore at its chest, but before George could make things right, the Morlock convulsed, then stopped moving. They tried to get its heart pumping again, and even made use of The Time Traveler’s archaic notions of medicine, but in the end the Morlock suffered the same fate as his machine. Earlier in his journey, The Time Traveler might have killed such a creature with little remorse, but George had taught him something of the value of life, and so they burned a hole in the sand for their new companion.
The Time Traveler knew that George had done what he could for the Morlock, and that sometimes even the efforts of such an advanced being could prove inadequate. The creature was only human, after all, a fact that aggravated even The Time Traveler, at first, despite his deep respect for the theories of Darwin. The Morlocks had adapted to a subterranean existence, just as George’s people had adapted to a future Earth. A renaissance of thought had flowered after the docile Eloi had fashioned their intellectual wasteland, and The Time Traveler could imagine George’s kind building upon the ruins of those who had come before, burying England and Eloi alike beneath a new technology that operated hand in hand with love.
They said their good-byes to the creature who they never knew, and then they moved on, stopping to watch the horizon.
The sun was growing larger.
Even the lichen that had clung to the rocks before it, too, had died, had carried the scent of living things, but here, there was nothing but the scent of The Time Traveler himself, and of George, a creature who kept himself clean with the aid of small metallic box. This was just another facet of the creature’s behavior that assured The Time Traveler’s feelings of inferiority. He was bound to the old ways of doing things, but eventually he relented to the use of George’s device, and learned that the metallic box was not only an efficient tool, but pleasurable as well. As for more private matters, The Time Traveler continued to perform in the traditional manner, and he would adjourn to a secluded area of the beach when nature called.
Life might have gone on like this for some time had it not been for the arrival of other time travelers. It seemed that the closer that they drew to the death of the Earth, the more often that new explorers would arrive. George and the Englishmen would wait on the beach, and in the distance there might be a flash or a puff of smoke, followed by devices that, at times, could scarcely be recognized as time machines at all. There were castles of glass and metallic cubes, as well as ridiculous spidery contraptions and organic machines that gasped for a final breath just as their masters had done upon arriving in this land of shattered dreams. George was able to save some of The Time Travelers, but others resisted his administrations as madness overtook them, then they escaped across the surface of the sea, only to be swallowed as the ice gave way. Their forms varied just as their machines had, and the Englishman found it remarkable how the human race would evolve through the Eons. He doubted that even Darwin himself could have imagined such fanciful creatures, and the beach became a bestiary of humankind.
This once desolate world grew populated not only with the creatures who George had saved, but with many who survived without his help. It seemed that the Englishman was, by far, the most primitive human of the dying Earth, and despite the realization that he had invented time travel prior to these other creatures, he realized that he would never survive without George’s help. This fact also set him apart from the other creatures, as those who had survived initially, with or without George, lived independently. Many of them were occupied with their machines, but their efforts to get them operational accomplished nothing. The Englishmen could read fear and frustration upon their faces, and a few of the creatures died of exposure. George would peel their frozen bodies from their machines then bury them beneath the ice. This world became a cemetery world, and George and the Englishman were the final pallbearers for the glories of humankind.
The Time Traveler thought it strange that these beasts of future Earth were not more like George. While generosity was a common trait, selfishness was more universal when matters of life and death were involved. It was this that made these creatures human, for better or worse, and George and the Englishman found themselves alone despite the influx of new arrivals. While The Time Traveler, being of primitive stock, needed George to survive, the others had their own methods of providing themselves with food, clothing, and shelter. At times, their methods seemed cryptic, or worse, barbaric. This became particularly apparent upon the arrival of a creature that The Time Traveler would later call the “Queen of Hearts.”
While the Englishman had read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, he had not truly come to appreciate the author’s imagination until his final journey had brought him here. This was a world that might have sprung from the pages of a children’s book, albeit a nightmarish one, or perhaps more appropriately, from the tales of Edgar Allen Poe. Before the others had arrived, The Time Traveler had begun to find a certain odd beauty within the desolation, but later, as the beach filled with all manner of fantastic creatures, he was reminded of the bustling streets of London, and of what he had once thought of as the “modern world.” It had been a city of crimes and cruelties, and he had hoped to escape into better times, only to find Morlocks, or worse, a creature who literally stole human hearts.
The Queen of Hearts was no Morlock, but a survivor that apparently cannibalized organs in order to keep itself alive. It bore no resemblance to any of Lewis Carroll’s characters beyond its odd appearance, and even that surpassed the most perverse fancies of any author. The Queen had great, crystal wings that hung motionless from its scaly back, and sharp claws like nutcrackers. Its skin appeared to be transparent, and within its massive chest all those stolen organs could be seen, pumping and quivering and digesting the bones of those who had gotten in its way. The Englishman had witnessed those executions, and while the primitive urge to fight boiled within The Time Traveler, George told him in so many ways that he needed to be strong, and that there were other arts to master than those of hostility.
The attacks continued, and the new inhabitants of Earth fell victim, in one way or another, to the Queen. In its own technologically barbaric manner, this monster was trying to survive, and The Time Traveler imagined a future populated with such creatures, when morality would be set aside to make way for matters of survival. The others did fight back as the Queen added their mass to its own, but aside from a few minor victories, the Earth, ever hopeless, became more so for those who struggled for a new glimpse of the old world. It was entirely possible that the Queen was best suited for life here, and the Englishman imagined that despite the battles and brutalities of his own time, there would be no colder land than that which they inhabited, here, under that ailing sun.
When George lost his own battle to the monster, the Englishman was again reminded of his own primitive nature. The Queen worked quickly, and in an instant, the thing severed one of George’s legs below the knee, then immediately used the amputated portion to extend one of its own freakish limbs. The Queen then cauterized the wound, and left George crippled, but alive. This was how it did things. The Queen relied utterly upon weapons of technology to perform its duties, and so the beach became littered with writhing creatures, helpless and half alive, as if the monster was building a farm from which it could harvest those unfortunate souls. It seemed to prefer maiming to murder, although many had died while attempting to preserve the integrity of their own bodies.
The technology of death worked both ways, and the other time travelers had used it, with little avail, to fend off the attacks of the Queen. At any given time, there might have been a flash of blue light, or a stream of liquid ice, but the monster was seldom slowed by the discharge of defensive weapons, and in the end, the thing would grow with the fruits of its victory. The Englishman had no such technological weapons to rely upon, nor had George, but The Time Traveler had been a child of the Nineteenth Century, and as such, he knew something of self-defense. His anger had been nurtured by a world obsessed with war, and although he prided himself on being a man of peace, he proved to be no more civilized than those he loathed. The Time Traveler’s weapons were simple ones, just as those of prehistoric man had been, and he found himself tearing rocks from the ice, then flinging them at the Queen. Blood stained the ice, and to The Time Traveler’s amazement, he learned that it had not been his own, nor that of George. The Englishman had wounded the creature, and had done so without the aid of the new technology.
Some of the other time travelers had witnessed the activities of the Englishman, and before long, it became evident that he had seeded this land with a fresh mode of destruction. Until then, those creatures on the beach had worked independently, each concentrating almost entirely upon the unattainable dream of escaping backwards through time, but the Englishman’s example had left them with a new goal, and with a very old manner in which it might be attained. They huddled together, communicating in murmurs and screams and the touch of odd chemicals, and then they overwhelmed the Queen with stones and their naked fists, but most of all with anger.
The Queen of Hearts stained the ice, then joined the ghosts of its people. George, being a creature of limitless love, had pulled himself along the surface, but by the time he reached the Queen, the work of the others had been completed. The Englishman knew what to do next, George had taught him well, and together they laid the Queen to rest within that cold necropolis. As for the remaining time travelers, those who were healthy enough went back to their dead machines, and those who were sick or maimed waited for the end to come, until, one by one, they permitted George to help.
His efforts rarely succeeded, and so the beach became more dead than alive.
Inhumanity is what had made these creatures human. The future would be peopled by Morlocks, each bound to its machine, each with a soul of steel and ice. Perhaps the Earth would be better off without the complications of love or anger, but then, that had been the world of the Eloi. There had been no easy answers for the human race, but at that time, it hardly mattered.
They sat on the beach, taking stock of George’s remaining food supply. Time travelers continued to arrive, now and then, but more often than not, the beach began to empty. Some creatures moved on, giving up hope that their useless machines would run again, some died of starvation or exposure, and a few had ended their own lives, opting not to witness what the future would bring. As for the Englishman, he learned to care for George as the creature had cared for him, and he continued to learn even as the world ran down.
Six food pills remained, more than enough for the two of them, because the sun had just risen over the ancient world, and the Earth rained with melting ice.
MAY BE SOME TIME
Brenda W. Clough
Some explorers wind up in terra much more incognita than they anticipated!
From Scott’s last expedition by Robert Falcon Scott:
Friday, March 16, or Saturday, 17 [1912]. Lost track of dates, but think the last correct. Tragedy all down the line. At lunch, the day before yesterday, poor Titus Oates said he couldn’t go on; he proposed we should leave him in his sleeping bag. That we could not do, and we induced him to come on, on the afternoon march. In spite of its awful nature for him he struggled on and we made a few miles. At night he was worse and we knew the end had come.
Should this be found I want these facts recorded . . . We can testify to his bravery. He has borne intense suffering for weeks without complaint, and to the very last was able and willing to discuss outside subjects. He did not—would not—give up hope till the very end . . . He slept through the night before last, hoping not to wake; but he woke in the morning—yesterday. It was blowing a blizzard. He said, “I am just going outside and may be some time.” He went out into the blizzard and we have not seen him since . . . We knew that poor Oates was walking to his death, but though we tried to dissuade him, we knew it was the act of a brave man and an English gentleman. We all hope to meet the end with a similar spirit, and assuredly the end is not far.
It’s said that death from exposure is like slipping into warm sleep. Briefly, Titus Oates wondered what totty-headed pillock had first told that whisker. He no longer remembered what warmth was. He had endured too many futile hopes and broken dreams to look for an easy end now. Every step was like treading on razors, calling for a grim effort of will. Nevertheless without hesitating he hobbled on into the teeth of the storm. He did not look back. He knew the Polar Expedition’s tent was already invisible behind him.
Finer than sand, the wind-driven snow scoured over his clenched eyelids, clogging nose and mouth. The cold drove ferocious spikes deep into his temples, and gnawed at the raw frostbite wounds on brow and nose and lip. Surely it was folly to continue to huddle into his threadbare windproof. What if he flung all resistance aside, and surrendered himself to the wailing Antarctic blizzard? Suddenly he yearned to dance, free of the weighty mitts and clothing. To embrace death and waltz away!
He had left his finnesko behind. Gangrene had swollen his frozen feet to the size of melons, the ominous black streaks stealing up past the ankles nearly to the knee. Yesterday it had taken hours to coax the fur boots on. Today he had not bothered. Now his woolen sock caught on something. Excruciating pain jolted his frozen foot, suppurating from the stinking black wounds where the toes used to be. Too weak to help himself, he stumbled forward. His crippled hands, bundled in the dogskin mitts, groped to break his fall. They touched nothing. He seemed to fall and fall, a slow endless drop into blank whiteness.
And it was true! A delicious warmth lapped him round like a blanket. Tears of relief and joy crept down his starveling cheeks and burnt in the frost fissures. He was being carried, warm and safe. Rock of Ages, cleft for me!
For a very long time he lay resting, not moving a muscle. Stillness is the very stuff of Heaven, when a man has marched nearly two thousand miles, hauling a half-tonne load miles a day for months, across the Barrier ice, up the Beardmore Glacier, to the South Pole and back. He slept, and when he wasn’t actually asleep he was inert.
But after some unknowable time Titus slowly came to awareness again. He felt obscurely indignant, cheated of a just due. Wasn’t Heaven supposed to be a place of eternal rest? He’d write a letter to the Times about it . . .
“Maybe just a touch more?” one of the celestial host suggested, in distinctly American accents. Silly on the face of it, his unanalyzed assumption that all the denizens of Heaven were British . . .
“No, let’s see how he does on four cc. How’s the urine output?”
Shocked, Titus opened his eyes and looked down at himself. He was lying down, clothed in a pure white robe, all correct and as advertised. But were those a pair of angels lifting the hem? He used the drill-sergeant rasp he had picked up in the Army. “What the hell are you at?”
Both angels started horribly. Something metallic slipped from a heavenly hand and landed with a clatter on the shiny-clean floor. A beautiful angel with long black hair stared down at him, sea-blue eyes wide as saucers. “Oh my God. Oh my God, Shell! Look at this—he’s conscious! Piotr will be like a dog with two tails!”
“Damn it, now the meter’s gone.”
As the other angel stooped nearer to pick up her tool, Titus stared at her face. It was tanned but flushed with irritation. The nose had freckles. She wore huge coppery hoop earrings, and her short curly hair was dull blonde, almost mousy. “You,” Titus stated with conviction, “are not an angel.”
The happy angel—no, blister it, a woman!—exclaimed. “An angel, Shell, did you hear that? He called you an angel.”
“He did not! Don’t you ever listen, Sabrina? He just said I was not an angel.”
“This isn’t the afterlife,” Titus pursued doggedly. “Am I even dead?”
“Shell, this what we have you for. Hit it, quick!”
The irritable angel elbowed her companion into silence and spoke, clear and slow. “No, Captain Oates, you are not dead. We are doctors. I am Dr. Shell Gedeon, and this is Dr. Sabrina Trask. You are safe here, under our care.”
