Time Travel Omnibus, page 850
At the river, the Eloi had watched her swept downstream. She’d screamed, and none of them moved. Why would the giant help her now? Why had he saved her at the river? She held his hand as they retraced their path through the building until they emerged through the broken doors. The Sun rested partly below the horizon. By the time they reached the forest’s edge, it was fully night. Oddly the giant had gathered sticks and branches until his arms were full. Weena’s eyes ached with trying to see into the woods. There! Was that a white shape moving? There! Another one. Even the giant noticed them slipping from shrub to shrub. The forest air rustled with their passing. Leaves crackled under unseen feet on all sides.
The giant set the branches in a pile on the ground. He scratched one of his matches into its tiny, yellow light. Weena hadn’t seen a match at night before. It was surprisingly bright. Then he pushed it into the branches. Twigs grew yellow with a luminous vapor. Branches glowed, and a moving, sinuous presence rose from the wood. Weena leaned forward, fascinated. What is this? she thought. It’s beautiful, like the Sun captured on the ground, like the diamond ribbon in the stream’s center. It threw light into her eyes. She reached for it.
The giant stopped her, but she’d already felt its heat. It is the Sun, she thought. He can make day! For a moment, she forgot the pressing dark around them, the rustling steps just out of sight.
“It’s a fire,” he said. “Didn’t you know?” She heard the surprise in his voice, as if what was happening was a common occurrence.
Soon all the branches crackled in flame. Every once in a while a sharp pop sent sparks flying from the damp wood. An ember landed near her foot, pulsing with heat like a tiny heart.
“Come on.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her into the wood. She turned to look back. The burning had crept from the pile of branches into the brush beside it. Fire writhed in the leaves, but it grew smaller the farther they walked. “If we get beyond the forest, we’ll be safe enough,” he said.
Weena looked up. Through the trees there was no trace of moonlight. Only the occasional star peeked through. She could feel the urge building inside, the Fear, that yelled at her to lie down. Avoid notice! it said. Become still and small and you will live. Something soft touched her neck. She twisted away, slapped against the giant’s leg, but she couldn’t see. Was it a leaf?
Twigs snapped around them. Indistinct voices, animal voices, murmured in the dark. Weena jerked her attention to each new sound. She was touched again. Her throat froze.
Then the giant let go of her hand.
There was nothing else to do. There was no way to resist the Fear anymore than she could stop from blinking if dirt flew in her eyes or she could stop from inhaling when the river swept her away. She dropped to the ground. Lie quiet, the Fear said. Be dead. They will pass you by.
But another voice in her mourned. She had lost. The Morlocks would have her. There was nothing to learn from the giant with his long strides and strange clothes and talk of vehicles that traveled through time. He was just a big man with a club, and what good was a club to the Eloi who reacted to threats in the dark by falling down?
A Morlock hand touched her. A horrible soft hand that crept down her arm, around her waist. She couldn’t see; it was black as a cave. Weena felt regret through the Fear. If she could cry now, she would cry for herself. None of the Eloi would.
Then, a flash of light. The Morlock hissed, let go and ran away. Cracking her eyes open a tiny bit, she saw the giant light some of the camphor, and the little flame was enough to drive the Morlock back. He pulled branches out of the trees, piled them on the flickering patch. Soon a smoky fire illuminated the trees around them. Still, Weena could not move. She felt the Morlock’s hand on her.
The giant picked her up, spoke to her, but she kept her eyes shut. Fear filled her. Closed her throat. Don’t let them know you are alive, the Fear said. Soon the giant put her down. He sat beside the fire, and within moments his chin dropped to his chest. He slept.
For a long time Weena stayed on her side, her arm trapped beneath her, her face pressed into the forest floor’s dry leaves, watching the fire. Gradually, the Fear left. The cheerful flame leapt through the branches. Green leaves curled, caught fire and vanished in smoky puffs. She crawled next to the giant. On the ground next to him was his box of matches. He must have dropped them. Weena held them close, put her head against the giant’s leg. The fire bathed her in warmth. Pungent smoke blanketed them. Watching the flames was mesmerizing. They danced like river waves, always moving in place.
She woke to an uproar. The giant was shouting and all was black. The fire was out! Weena heard him running, yelling incoherently. A creature rushed by her, and then another. The woods reeked with Morlocks, their strange cries rent the air. Her body locked into place. Something stepped on her foot as it ran toward the giant. A metallic crunch silenced one voice. Even gripped by the Fear, Weena smiled. So the giant’s club worked for him after all. The Morlocks could be stopped. Her smile slipped away. None of the Eloi would ever know. And what good was the knowledge? They came out at night, when the Fear ruled.
More blows in the dark. Not so loud now. The giant moved away from her, by the sounds of it, fighting Morlocks the whole way. She believed he would survive them. He had gone into their home armed with nothing and emerged. With a club, the giant would be unassailable.
Only now she was alone. Maybe they wouldn’t find her, if she stayed absolutely rigid, but Morlocks filled the woods. Their footsteps, their cooing voices were everywhere. When the giant escaped, they would take her.
Weena fought against the Fear. If she could only move. The matches were in her hand. A little movement, hardly any effort at all would light one. She could save herself. The box rested against her fingers. I can grip it, she thought, and she forced her fingers to close around its square shape. A triumph! Had any Eloi ever struggled like this before? Giving in was so much easier. Do nothing. The danger will pass. Her breath came in short gasps now. She pictured the Sun beating down the grassy meadows, the diamonds in the stream. Painfully, she rolled onto her back. Real pain, like forcing her limbs into unnatural position. A moan escaped her. Weena scrinched her face in effort so hard that she saw red in the darkness.
A roaring sound began to overwhelm the Morlocks’ shouting. She couldn’t hear the giant any more. Like a wind through the trees, it came, and Weena suddenly opened her eyes. The red was real. The forest was on fire. Their first fire must have spread, and a bright wall of light flowed toward her through the trees. It released her, the light, and her muscles relaxed. She sat. A Morlock broke into the tiny clearing, its broad eyes streaming tears; it slammed into a tree, twirled in pain, and ran on straight toward the flame.
Weena stood, brushed twigs and leaves off her tunic. The fire didn’t leap from tree to tree quickly. She had no trouble staying in front of its progress. Every once in a while, other blinded Morlocks would stagger past, some toward the fire, some wandering in circles. She stayed away from them.
When morning came, parts of the forest still burned. Weena could not find the giant. Exhausted, finally, she walked toward the home, but it was miles and miles away, and she didn’t have him to carry her. By the time the Sun was overhead, she was too tired to go on, so she stretched out on the grass. Wood smoke filled her nose, and she slept.
Blythe met her at the winged statue as evening fell. Footsore and hungry, Weena sat on the bench she’d rested on days ago when the giant had knocked on its metal walls.
“The doors were open earlier, and there was a machine behind them,” Blythe said. He sat next to her on the bench. “The giant went in. Then the doors closed. The Morlocks must have got him.”
Weena put her hands behind her and stretched her back. She had never walked for a whole day before. Her body was a medley of aches and surprising stiffness.
“I don’t think so, not if he got to the machine first,” she said. The giant had told her he could travel through time. She imagined him vanishing from the Morlocks’ grasp, just as they descended upon him.
“Either way, he’s gone,” said Blythe.
His shoulders slumped. “We’ve learned nothing. We’re just as helpless as before.” He looked at the sun as it slid below the horizon. “The night’s coming. We should go to the home.”
In the distance, the hills glowed pink. A line of skinny clouds in the west flamed brightly in the sunset.
Weena said, “No. We should gather wood and pile it by the home’s door.” She fingered the box of matches. There were enough to get them through this new moon, or they could keep the fire burning constantly. They had time to solve the problem of making fire for themselves.
“What good will that do? We need the giant to save us,” said Blythe.
Weena looked at him. The giant had said that her people had built the structures. They had commanded great tools. Once the night had been theirs. If she could see it; if Blythe could see it, there would be others.
“No, Blythe, we don’t.”
A MATTER OF TIME
Robert Reginald
It was 3:15 on a Sunday afternoon when Jake Smith decided that his neighbor had finally gone over the edge and he would have to do something about it. The Rams had just scored the go-ahead touchdown with three minutes to play, and San Francisco was driving to the forty, when there was a sputtering “ka-ka-pftt” next door, and the set went dead.
“That’s it!” Jake yelled, “that’s the last time I put up with this.”
“Put up with what, dear?” said Martha, his occasionally loving wife.
Smith banged out the back door, maiming the dog in the process. “Aubrey,” he shouted, “just what the hell are you doing over there?” He peered over the falling-down slat fence that divided their properties.
Stratton Bundford Aubrey, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Santo Verdugo, grinned happily from a seared patch of his nearly non-existent lawn. “I did it,” he chirped.
“Did what?” said Jake.
“I traveled through time,” Aubrey said. “You see, it’s merely a proper application of a force sideways against the space-time continuum . . .”
Jake tried to humor his obviously demented neighbor. “Just how far did you go?” he asked.
“About ten seconds,” Aubrey said. “Didn’t have very much power, and . . .”
“What?” Jake said. “You blew a transformer just so you could travel a few seconds into the past?”
“The past?” said Aubrey. “Oh, no, the past is much easier. It’s the future that takes so much energy, because . . .”
Jake climbed over the fence. “Just a minute,” he said, “D’you mean this thing”—he pointed at a spindly contraption full of poles stuck in at all the wrong angles—“You mean this piece of junk can actually send somebody into the past?”
“Why, yes,” Aubrey said, “or some thing—of the proper size and weight, of course. For example, if I put this rock just so”—Aubrey picked up a stone the size of his hand, and placed it into the machine—“and make the proper adjustments”—he fiddled with the controls—“and type in the proper instructions, then . . .”—there was another pfft—“Voilà!”—and the rock abruptly disappeared.
“Where’d it go?” asked Jake.
“Oh, about forty years back, I should think,” the physicist said, “somewhere in the middle of the South Pacific. We don’t want to change history, now, do we?” Aubrey grinned.
“Saaayyy,” said Jake, suddenly standing up very straight, “Just how far back could a guy go?”
“Well,” the doctor said, “there are only three variables: mass, distance, and time.”
“Time?” asked Jake.
“Yes, time,” Aubrey said. “You see, everything you send into the past eventually returns to the present, unless you exert a constant force to keep it there. Like that rock . . .”—there was a pop and an audible thump, and they both turned around to see a small stone draped with seaweed sitting in the middle of the lawn. “Well, sometimes they don’t come back exactly on target.” He chortled.
“I’ll be . . .” Jake said, and he grinned. “You know, Doc,” he added, “I’ve been tracing my family tree, and I’ve reached this dead end, because Smith is such a common name, and I’d really like to volunteer to make the first manned expedition into the past.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Aubrey, “Insurance could be difficult . . .”
“Hey, no problem, I’ll sign a waiver,” Jake said. “Besides, I just need a couple of minutes to ask my ancestor where he came from.”
It took Smith another five minutes of pleading and threats (during which the Forty-Niners scored, sending the game into overtime), but he finally convinced the good doctor that the experiment was beneficial for science in general, and for the reputation of Dr. Stratton Aubrey in particular. He raced home and grabbed a canteen, hunting knife, and knapsack, then quickly returned. “Everything ready?” Jake asked.
Aubrey looked at his instruments. “Well, I think so. Taking into account your weight, available power, and the year you want to reach—1760—I can send you back for no more than five or ten minutes. After that, you’ll automatically return. OK?”
“Yeah, sure,” Jake said.
“Everything’s ready,” said the physicist, “all you have to do is sit here.”
Jake got in, fastened the seatbelt, and looked around nervously. “You sure this won’t hurt?”
“Well, I guess we’ll soon see, won’t we?” The scientist smiled, and as Jake started to protest, Dr. Aubrey pressed ENTER on his terminal.
The world went black and red and green all over, and then Jake Smith was sitting in the middle of a cow pie in a pasture in eighteenth-century Virginia.
“My God, it worked!” he said, and quickly looked around. Fifty feet away an old man was plowing the field, plodding along behind a decrepit horse. Jake picked himself up, brushed away the good Southern sod, and hurried on over. “Six minutes,” he muttered to himself, checking his watch.
“ ’Scuse me,” he shouted, “Excuse me!” The farmer stopped his horse, gaping at this strangely dressed man from the future. “I’m looking for Meredith Smith,” Jake said.
“Ay?” the old coot said.
“Are you Meredith Smith?”
“Well, there’s them that calls me that,” old Smith said. “Some of them calls me other things too.” He wheezed a few times before Jake realized he was laughing at his own joke. “Who’re you?” he asked.
“I’m, um, Jacob Smith,” Jake said. “Your, ah, your cousin.”
Old Merry Smith looked his “cousin” up and down very carefully with his watery blue eyes. “Well, ya must be from Willyburg in the East, cuz I ain’t never seen anything like you ’round here before, cuzz. And these here duds are pretty fancy things for my kinfolk.” He grabbed Jake’s shirt with his grimy fingers, leaving smudges everywhere he touched. “What kinda cloth is this, anyhow?” he asked. “And who dya say your pappy was?”
“I didn’t,” Jake said, backing off. “Look, Mr. Smith, cousin, I’m in kind of a hurry now, so I’d really appreciate it if you answer a few of my questions.” Five minutes were left on his watch.
“Well, son, things move kinda slow in these here parts,” said Meredith Smith, “And me and the missus are pretty much all alone now, ’cept for old Lightning here, and Buster our yaller dawg.” He whistled, and started wheezing again when the mangy old mutt came ambling over. “But the young’uns, they’re all livin’ over in Stafford now, near the city, and they hardly ever come back to see us folk no how . . .”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s great,” Jake said. He was beside himself as he watched the seconds ticking away. “Look, all I really want to know is where you’re from.”
The old man shook his head in disbelief. “Gad, boy, where ya been livin’ ? We’re all loyal servants of his Majesty King George here. You ain’t one o’ dem Jacobites, is you?” He looked at Jake rather closely, then wheezed a third time. “Or some kind of Papist maybe? Or one of them Dissenters?”
Jake threw up his hands in disgust. “No, no, no, of course not!” he said. “Uh, what I mean is”—there were only four minutes left—“just precisely where were you born?”
Old Meredith Smith scratched the stubble on his chin, and popped a wad of vile-smelling tobacco into his mouth, exposing the half-dozen rotted teeth still dotting the front of his face. A stream of the brown crud oozed through one of the gaps and rolled down his chin. He looked at his visitor in disbelief. “Why, that’s easy, son,” he said, “I was a-borned in bed!”
“No,” Jake said, “I mean, I mean,” trying to control himself, “where exactly?”
The farmer scratched his head and looked puzzled at such an obvious question. “Well, I don’t rightly know,” he said. “I think it was in my pappy’s house. I was kinda young then, ya know.” There was another round of wheezing and a long blattt accompanied by a foul odor.
Jake waved his hands up and down to clear the air. “Uh, in what state,” he said, “no, what area, what, uh, province . . .?” He fumbled for the right words and looked frantically at his watch: three minutes left.
The old coot noticed the device for the first time. “Hey, what’s that shiny thing that you keep lookin’ at on your wrist, mister? You ain’t in league with the Devil, is you?” He started to edge away.
This was not going at all well. This was not what he had planned. Jake tried to calm himself, taking several deep breaths. “No,” he said, “I am not a devil worshipper. I’m your cousin. Really. And all I want, sir, is the answer to a few simple questions. I’d just like to know where you’re from.”
Meredith Smith wiped the back of his hand across his chin, and then swabbed that mess all over his coveralls. “Well, son,” he said, “you certainly know how to rile a man up. What’s yer hurry, anyways? Why don’t you come on down to the house, and the missus will run you a cup of ale to wash away that dust, and we can talk about it a piece.” He looked around. “Why, it’s just too danged hot out here in the sun to get upset about much.” He brushed away a blanket of flies.
