Time Travel Omnibus, page 849
Where did he come from? What secret did he possess that made him so fearless? The longer she followed, the more amazed she became. In the afternoon, he took them to the winged statue. He walked around it. Weena sat on a smooth stone bench and watched. He pushed on the bronze base, and from his expression, she knew he was frustrated. Clearly he wanted in. Why would he want that? This too was a Morlock place. If he could open it, he would only face a passage into the dark from where no Eloi returned.
Weena hopped off her bench. The giant had placed his ear against the base, then rapped his knuckles against the metal. He moved a foot farther and did this again. Weena touched his back. “What are you looking for? You will wake the Morlocks.”
They didn’t have enough language to understand each other yet, but he showed her tracks in the lawn. Something heavy had rested in the grass twenty feet from the pedestal. The giant pantomimed dragging an object and pointed to the marks on the ground. She understood. Something of his had been pulled into the Morlock passage, and they’d shut the door to it. After a long series of gestures and using the few words they both knew, she began to understand that the Morlocks had stolen a “vehicle,” something the giant traveled in. Weena tried to imagine what the vehicle would look like. Where would he go in it, and why weren’t there marks in the grass that showed how the vehicle got there? The lawn was soft from rains and hail-storms over the last few days—even their feet left prints—except there was no sign that showed how the vehicle arrived. Did it fly? Weena asked him if he came out of the sky. It took a few tries before he understood what she was asking. He laughed, a booming sound that startled her at first, and he shook his head.
Weena patted his hand, having no words to say to him. If she could just learn what he knew, maybe she could face the night. For the first time since she’d given herself to the river, she shook off its chill. Her throat didn’t feel constricted by the water’s rush. She could breathe.
That evening, despite her protests, he slept away from the grey home, in the open. Didn’t he know about the new moon? But he was determined to sleep on the grass near the winged statue. Weena struggled within herself. He lay down without fear. Shut his eyes. He didn’t care if she came or went. He was a giant, safe within himself. She looked at the complex shadows in the bushes, the darkening horizon, and lay down beside him.
Weena learned about boys while gathering flowers one morning in the spring. She’d followed a group of children, and as they spread out down the hill, they separated until she was alone with a boy she didn’t know very well. He slept in a different home and had other friends, but he was nice. He smiled at her as they walked together around a pile of vine-choked rubble. Weena smiled back, then moved into low bushes to pick handfuls of yellow blossomed Cheek-daisy.
Something soft hit her ear. She looked up. The boy tossed a flower at her and smiled again. She threw one back, and soon they were wrestling in the soft grass.
Weena knew what was happening. The more experienced girls talked about it, and the adults made love in the open, but she had never done it herself. Some girls said that it hurt the first time. She was frightened, just a little, as she pulled her tunic up around her waist, but it hardly hurt at all, and it was over before she had time to think much about it. Still, it seemed special, and they stayed together for the rest of the day, holding hands and kissing.
The boy’s name was Tomey, and when the evening fell, Weena asked him to sleep in the grey home. As the darkness deepened, they snuggled into sleep among the other Eloi, his knees fitting neatly into the backs of her legs and his arms wrapped warmly around her chest.
Then, later, when all was nearly black, something woke her. She didn’t move. None of the Eloi did. They never did. The Fear was upon her, cutting her from her muscles, paralyzing her. In the pitchy dark, ghostly figures moved among them. Slyly they slid through the room, hunched over, pale shadows among the deeps. One approached her. Its dry foot scraped the floor. This close, its breath rasped. Its hand touched her shoulder, and she came loose inside. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t inhale. It reached behind her, pushed its hand along her back and pried Tomey off. His arm pulled out from beneath her; his other dragged across her chest.
Then the Morlock was off, carrying Tomey like a dead thing across his shoulder. Tomey never made a sound.
In the morning, no one talked about their missing friends. Weena looked around her. They rose, ate their fruit, spoke among themselves, made ready to bathe or to play outside. She couldn’t speak to them. Instead a pressure built inside her, it filled her lungs, eddied into her throat and pushed at the back of her eyes. Then she wept. Some looked at her as they left, but no one asked her to explain. When they were all gone, the huge room echoed with her sobs.
Over the next couple of days, Weena learned the giant’s language as he learned hers. As he continued his explorations, she watched him carefully. He knew things; he had an attitude about things. At a brown structure, neatly covered with trees and prickly bushes, a stuck door stymied him. Weena waited to see what he would do. His approach fascinated her. He didn’t come to an obstruction and give up as the Eloi did—he worried the problem until he solved it. How would he act here? The door to the brown structure had always been closed. The building was impenetrable; everyone knew that, but the giant dug at the door’s base, pulling rock and dirt out by the handful. He jammed his fingers into a crack and tugged again. The door moved! Not enough to let him in, but it had never occurred to her to change the door’s condition. The giant found a stout branch, worked it into the wider gap and pulled back on it. Slowly the door gave way. He dropped the branch, then squeezed into the building. Weena looked at the branch for a long time. It was like looking at the stream behind the grey home when she was young. There was a problem: she didn’t want to walk to the river to bathe. There was a solution: dam up the current until a pool formed.
Weena crouched by the branch, ran her fingers along the rough bark, fingered the place where the door had stripped it to the green wood. She rubbed the sap between her fingers. It smelled fresh. The Morlocks—now there was a problem, she thought. Was there a solution?
The giant emerged, his face smudged.
“It’s empty,” he said. “What happened to your people? They built these wonderful structures.” He waved his hand. From where they stood, she saw a half-dozen other buildings. Some were homes where Eloi slept at night. Some were like the brown building beside them now—abandoned, useless, dark places where Eloi never went.
“We do not build,” she said. “They have always been here since the day the world was born.”
He shook his head. “No, dear Weena. They were built by people. Your people, I suspect, thousands of years ago. By the descendants of my people.” He looked sad and said more to himself than to her, “What happened to us?”
By the afternoon, Weena was too tired to follow the giant any further. She returned to the grey home to eat. Thoughtful, she munched a fruit in the warm light that poured through the windows high on the grey home’s walls. A boy she recognized but had never talked to sat beside her. “You speak with the giant. What does he say?”
She looked him over. He was younger than her by a year or two. Bright eyes. Curious eyes—something she didn’t see in the Eloi, ever. In the days she’d spent with the giant, no one had asked her about him. “He asks a lot of questions,” she said.
“About what?”
“Why do you want to know?”
Around them, other Eloi ate or played or talked their idle chatter.
He squirmed in his seat, didn’t meet her eyes. “I’m sorry if I’m bothering you. It’s just . . . well . . . sometimes I . . . wonder about things.”
The silence stretched between them. She could tell he was on the verge of bolting.
“So do I,” she said.
He looked up gratefully. “Really? I thought I was the only one.”
“What is your name?” she said.
“Blythe.”
“I am happy to meet you, Blythe.”
She spent the afternoon answering his questions until evening came, then she went outside to find the giant, who continued to sleep away from the grey home, fearless of the approach of the new moon and the Morlocks.
On his fifth morning with Weena, the giant marched to one of the Morlock portals, a low, circular wall around a bottomless shaft, protected by a sturdy, stone cupola. There were dozens of them in the area.
“I’ll come back, Weena,” he said, and kissed her on the forehead.
At first Weena didn’t understand what he intended, but when he threw one leg over the wall, she grabbed his shirt sleeve and pulled him back. “You cannot go down. The Morlocks live there.”
He shrugged her off and vanished into the shaft. Weena peered down after him, her limbs shaking. He was already many feet deep. He smiled at her, then continued the descent. Weena watched after him until she could see him no more. A dull thudding vibration came from below, and she could feel air being drawn into the shaft.
Until this time she thought her interest in the giant was to find out what he knew, to learn from him, but as she peered into the blackness, she realized she worried about him. She didn’t want him to be hurt.
She sat on the grass near the cupola, determined to wait. Soon, Blythe came and sat beside her. It seemed obvious that he’d been watching them from some hidden place.
“Will he come back?” he said.
“How can he?” Weena plucked a blade of grass, wrapped it tight around her finger until the grass broke.
“He is a giant,” Blythe said with confidence.
Weena thought about this with wonder. “Yes, he is,” but she didn’t believe that he would return.
“He will teach us how to protect ourselves from the Morlocks.”
Astonished, Weena looked at him. Although she’d thought such things, she’d never heard anyone say them.
But Weena didn’t believe the giant would return until some time later when his hand appeared at the wall’s edge, and he crawled out to collapse on the grass.
Crying with joy, Weena kissed his hands and face until the giant laughed at her and hugged her close. Then he fell back and slept. Weena sat with him, holding his hand until he woke much later.
That afternoon the giant went exploring again with renewed purpose. He wouldn’t tell Weena, but something he’d seen underground clearly bothered him. In each building, he examined the doors, the broken windows. In many he found Morlock passages, and he left in disgust. Unlike his trips before, when Weena tired, he picked her up and let her sit upon his shoulder.
Weena wrapped her arm around his head. He set out away from the grey home in a straight line, and his long strides swallowed ground at a dizzying speed. After a while, she could see they were heading toward a distant building, a huge, green structure in the hills that no Eloi she knew had ever visited. Soon, though, the Sun slipped behind the hills, and the air grew cool.
“We need to go back,” she said. Overhead the first stars glimmered through the dusk. She clung tightly, but he didn’t answer. He appeared tireless. Weena wondered if they would walk all night. Could the Morlocks even catch them at this pace? Would they dare attack him? He’d gone straight into their lair and emerged unscathed. Maybe he couldn’t be hurt. Maybe they feared him as much as she feared them.
She thought about this as the night swept over the land. Maybe he had no secrets to discover. If all that protected him was his size, then she might as well return to the river and let herself drown. She remembered the moment of peace, the comforting water’s roar as she floated downstream. Then she remembered the first gagging swallow. She shuddered. Was drowning better than the Fear when nothing could move her, when her arms and legs betrayed her, when the Morlocks walked among them?
Still, the giant pushed forward. Weena rested her cheek against his head, closed her eyes against the thousand stars and fell asleep.
In the morning they set off again.
After they had covered some distance, he said, “I come from far away.”
Weena walked beside him. He had thrown away his shoes and seemed to have picked up a limp. She chose her words carefully. He didn’t talk about himself much. Most of their conversations were about her or the Eloi. “I know. You came in your vehicle the Morlocks stole.”
He stopped, sat down and rubbed the heel of one foot. A purple bruise marked it. He massaged it gingerly.
“My vehicle doesn’t travel distance,” he said. “It travels in time.”
Weena didn’t know what to say, so she smiled and nodded.
“My house used to be by the winged statue, where we saw the marks from my vehicle. I didn’t move an inch, but I traveled many . . .” He searched for a word. “Lifetimes. Many, many lives passed while I rode. So many that the world was different. None of these buildings were here. There used to be a city, London, and I lived there with others like me. We ruled great machines in my city that would do our work for us. Make tools for us. Take us from place to place without walking. We could send messages across tremendous distances to learn what was going on in other parts of the world.”
He kept talking about where he came from while Weena puzzled over the idea of travel through time. How could one live many lifetimes? And there was only one question that mattered, though. “Were there Morlocks?”
He shook his head. “We had our own demons.” The green building stood on a hill beyond a tree-filled valley. They would be there after a short walk. The giant looked across the valley, past the building, as if he didn’t see it standing there. “We fought them. We didn’t wait for them to consume us.” He wiped his mouth. “Mankind was never meant to be cattle.”
“I don’t understand . . . cattle?”
“Of course not,” he said, shifting his gaze to her. He looked tired. She wondered if he’d slept the night before. “You live on milk and honey. You’re the fatted calf. What does the herd think about when they’re in the holding pens, when they’re led up the long ramp to the slaughterhouse?”
His face flushed. Weena touched his hand. She didn’t know all the words he used, but she got the sense of them. “You fought your Morlocks?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.” He squeezed her hand. “I don’t know why I should tell you these things, sweet Weena. You are not equipped to understand them. Evolution has robbed you of reason. You live a beautiful life here. A beautiful, thoughtless life with something ugly underneath. Maybe it’s best if I don’t paint a different picture.” He stood, grimaced when he put weight on his foot. “It’s better when you are happy.”
She thought, but I’m not happy! I’m frightened all the time. What can you teach me? What do you know? But she didn’t know how to ask the question. He took her hand, and they started down the hill toward the green building.
Weena walked beside him struggling with a new thought. They fought their demons, he said. If he would only show her how.
The green building was tremendous! Weena had never seen a structure so large. The first room’s ceiling was vague in shadow, and long spears of hazy light cut through broken windows high above the floor. The giant paused beside a pile of bones so old that many crumbled when he touched them. “This was a dinosaur. We’re in a museum,” he said. At one side of the room, he cleared dust from sloping shelves. Weena peered around him. The shelves were glass, and within the boxes were stones and animal teeth and other items she did not recognize. The giant moved excitedly from display to display, knocking a perfeet storm of dust into the air.
He said, “Here is sulfur. If I could find saltpeter, we could build a little surprise for the Morlocks.” But he didn’t explain what he meant. He moved from room to room, casting about from one side to the other. Weena trailed him, hushed and expectant. He would find a tool they could use against the Morlocks. They wouldn’t need to fear the night of the new moon any longer!
But as the giant continued to search farther into the green building’s depths, he found nothing useful, and the rooms grew progressively dark. Weena stayed closer, trying to see into the rooms’ unlit comers, wary of the cavernous shadows beneath the tables and machinery they passed. Several times she saw narrow footprints in the dust. The giant didn’t notice until a stealthy pattering of footsteps echoed in a room. He grabbed Weena’s hand, looked around until he found a metal bar protruding from a rusted, useless machine. He broke it off, hefted its weight. “Now I have something,” he said.
Weena bit back her disappointment. All this way for a club? No tools like he’d spoke of? No machines that would jump at his bidding? Just a club? Having clubs would not save the Eloi, even if she could convince the others to use them. Once the Sun set, the Fear would petrify them, just as it had immobilized her when Tomey was carried away. The Eloi could not defend themselves in the dark.
The giant said, “We will be out of here soon enough, little Weena.” Now he moved from room to room with refreshed urgency. Weena stayed close. Dirt blocked the light through most windows, and the afternoon was wearing away. In a nearly undamaged gallery, the giant found something that pleased him: in an unbroken case, a box of matches. He danced with delight, kicking clouds of choking dust off the floor. In another case, he found a sealed jar that when opened exuded a pungent odor. He was nearly as pleased with this new discovery. “Camphor,” he said. “It bums.”
Weena didn’t know the word, “bums,” but she recognized the matches. He’d amazed some Eloi with them in his first days, scratching them against a rock and then showing the yellow, dancing light at its end. Why he was happy to find them, she could not decide. More importantly, the Sun through the windows was failing. Tonight was the new moon, and she’d seen too many Morlock signs within this cavernous building. Soon they’d be rising from their subterranean hiding places, and the giant had found nothing helpful other than a club and his glowing toy. Could he protect her? Would he protect her?
