The Time Machine Chapter 8

Books at Bedtime by Calming Anxiety, The Time Machine, Chapter 8, Explanation.

So far as I could see, all the world displayed the same exuberant richness as the Thames Valley. From every hill I climbed, I saw the same abundance of splendid buildings, endless varied in material and style, the same clustering thickets of evergreens, the same blossom laden trees and tree ferns. Here in there, water shong like silver, and beyond, the land rose into blue undulating hills, and so faded into the serenity of the sky. A peculiar feature which presently attracted my attention was the presence of certain circular wealth, several as it seemed to me, of a very great depth, one lay by the path up the hill which I had followed during my first walk. Like the others, it was roamed with bronze, curiously wrought and protected by little polar from the rain, sitting by the side of these wells and peering down into the shafted darkness, I could see no gleam of water, nor could I start any reflection with a lighted match, but in all of them I heard a certain sound, a thud, thud, thud, like the beating of some big engine, and I discovered from the flaring of my matches that a steady current of air set down the shafts. Further, I threw a scrap of paper into the throat of one, and instead of fluttering slowly down, it was at once sucked swiftly out of sight. After a time too, I came to connect these wells with tall towers standing here and there upon the slopes, for above them, there was often just such a flicker in the air as one sees on a hot day above a sun scorched beach, putting things together. I reached a strong suggestion of an extensive system of subterranean ventilation, whose true importance was difficult to imagine. I was at first inclined to associate it with the sanitary apparatus of these people. It was an obvious conclusion, but it was absolutely wrong.

And here I must admit that I lent very little of the drains and bells and modes of conveyance, and the light conveniences during my time in this real future. In some of these visions of utipus and coming times which I had read, there is a vast amount of detail about building and social arrangements and so forth, but while such details are easy enough to obtain when the whole world is contained in one's imagination, they are altogether inaccessible to a real traveler amid such realities as I found here. Conceived a tale of London which negro, fresh from Central Africa, would take back to his tribe. What would he know of railway companies, of social movements, of telephone and telegraph-wise, of the parcel delivery company and postal orders and the light? Yet we, at least, should be willing a lot to explain these things to him. And even of what he knew, how much could he make his untraveled friends either apprehend or believe? Then think how narrow the gap between a negro and a white man of our own times and how wide the interval between myself and these are the golden age. I was sensible of much of which was unseen, of which contribute to my comfort, but save for a general impression of automatic organisation. I fear I can give a very little of the difference to your mind.

In the matter of sepulchre, for instance, I could see no signs of crematorium nor anything suggestive of tombs. But it occurred to me that, possibly, there might be cemeteries or crematorium somewhere beyond the range of my expert orings. This, again, was a question I deliberately put to myself, and my curiosity was at first entirely defeated upon the point. The thing puzzled me, and I was led to make a further remark which puzzled me still more, that aged and firm among these people, there were none. I must confess that my satisfaction with my first theories of an automatic civilisation and a decadent humanity did not long in jaw. Yet, I could think of no other.

Let me put my difficulties. The several big places I had explored were mere living spaces, great dining halls and sleeping apartments. I could find no machinery, no appliances of any kind. Yet these people were closed, in pleasant fabrics, that must at times need renewal, and their sandals, though undecorated, were fairly complex specimens of metalwork. Somehow, such things must be made, and a little people displayed no vestige of creative tendency.

There were no shops, no workshops, no signs of importations among them. They spent all their time in playing gently, in bathing in the river, in making love in a half-playful fashion, in eating fruit and sleeping. I could not see how things were kept going. Then again, about the time machine, something, I knew not what had taken it into the hollow pedestal of the white things. Why? For the life of me, I could not imagine. Those waterless wells too, those flickering pillars, I felt I lacked a clue. I felt, how shall I put it? Suppose you found an inscription, with sentences, here and there, in excellent plain English, an interpolated therewith, others made up of words, of letters even absolutely unknown to you. Well, on the third day of my visit, that was how the word of 800 and 7101 presented itself to me. That day too, I made a friend of a sort. It happened that, as I was watching some of the little people bathing in a shallow, one of them was seized with cramp and began drifting downstream.

The main current ran rather swiftly, but not too strongly for even a moderate swimmer. It will give you an idea, therefore, of the strange deficiency in these creatures. When I tell you that none made the slightest attempt to rescue the weekly crying little thing, which was drowning before my eyes. When I realised this, I hurriedly slipped off my clothes, and, wading in at a point lowered down, I caught the poor mite and drew her safe to land. A little rubbing of the limbs, soon brought her around, and I had the satisfaction of seeing that she was alright before I left her. I had got to such a low estimate of her kind that I did not expect any gratitude from her. In that, however, I was wrong. This happened in the morning.

In the afternoon, I met my little woman, as I believe it was, as I was returning towards my centre from an exploration, and she received me with cries of delight and presented me with a big garland of flowers, evidently, made for me and me alone. The thing took my imagination. Very possibly, I'd been feeling desolate, but any rate, I did my best to display my appreciation of the gift. We were soon seated together in a little stone arbor, engaged in conversation, chiefly of smiles. The creature's friendliness affected me exactly as the child's might have done. We passed each other's flowers, and she kissed my hands. I did the same to hers. Then, I tried to talk, and found that her name was Wiener, which, though I don't know what it meant, somehow seemed appropriate enough. That was the beginning of a queer friendship, which lasted a week and ended as I will tell you. She was exactly like a child. She wanted to be with me always.

She tried to follow me everywhere, and on my next journey out and about, it went my heart to tie her down, and leave her at last, exhausted and calling after me rather plain to be. But the problems of the world had to be mastered. I had not, I said to myself, come into the future to carry on a miniature flirtation. Yet, her distress when I left her was very great. Her exposulations at the parting were sometimes frantic, and I think altogether, I had as much trouble as comfort from her devotion. Nevertheless, she was, somehow, a very great comfort. I thought it was mere childish affection that made her cling to me, until it was too late. I did not know what I'd inflicted upon her when I left her, nor until it was too late did I clearly understand what she was to me. Before, by merely seeming fond of me, and showing in her week few to our way that she had cared for me, the little doll of a creature presently gave my return to the neighbourhood of the white spinks, almost the feeling of coming home. And I would watch her tiny figure of white and gold so soon as I came over the hill. It was from her too, that I learnt that fear had not yet left the world.

She was fearless enough in the daylight, and she had the oddest confidence in me, for once, in a foolish moment. I made threatening grimaces at her, and she simply laughed at them. But she dreaded the dark, dreaded shadows, dreaded black things. Darkness to her was the one thing dreadful.

It was a singularly passionate emotion, and it set me thinking and observing. I discovered them, among other things, that these little people gathered into the great house after dark, and slept in rows. To enter upon them without a light was to put them into a turmoil to vapor mention. I never found out of the doors, or one sleeping alone with indoors after dark. Yet, I was still such a blockhead, that I missed the lesson of that fear, and in spite of Wiener's distress, I insisted upon sleeping away from these slumbering multitudes. It troubled her greatly, but in the end her odd affection of for me triumphed, and for five the nights of our acquaintance, including the last night of all, she slept with a head pillowed on my arm.

But my story slips away from me as I speak of her. It must have been the night before her rescue, that I was awakened about dawn. I'd been restless, dreaming most disagreeably that I was drowned, and that the sea and enemies were feeling over my face with their soft paltz. I woke with a start, with an odd fancy that some greyish animal had just rushed out of the chamber. I tried to get to sleep again, but I felt restless and uncomfortable. It was that dim grey hour when things were just creeping out of darkness.

When everything is colourless and clear-cut and yet unreal. I got up and went down into the great hall, and sew out upon the flagstones in front of the palace. I thought I would make a virtue of necessity and see the sunrise. The moon was setting, and the dying moonlight and the first pallor of dawn were mingled in a ghastly half-light. The bushes were in key back, the ground as somber grey, the sky colourless and cheerless.

And up the hill I thought I could see ghosts. Three several times as I scanned the slope, I saw white figures.

Twice, I fancied I saw a solitary white ape-like creature running rather quickly up the hill. And once near the ruins I saw a leash of them carrying some dart body. They moved hastily. I did not see what became of them. It seemed that they vanished among the bushes.

The dawn was still in distinct, you must understand. I was feeling that chill, uncertain early morning feeling that you may have known, I doubted my eyes. As the yeeson sky grew brighter, and the light of the day came on, and its vivid colouring returned upon the world once more. I scanned the view cleanly. But I saw no vestige of my white figures. They were mere creatures of the half-light. They must have been ghosts, I said. I wonder when slated.

For a queer notion of Grant Allen's came into my head and amused me. If each generation died leave ghosts he argued, the world at least will get overcrowded with him. On that theory, they would have grown in numeral, some 800,000 years hence. And it was no great wonder to see four at once. But the jask was unsatisfying, and I was thinking of these figures all the morning, until weeners rescue drove them out of my head.

I associated them in some indefinite way with the white animal I had startled in my first passionate search for the time machine. But weener was a pleasant substitute, yet all the same. They were soon destined to take far deadlier possession of my mind. I think I have said how much hotter than our own weather, this golden age was.

I cannot account for it. It may be that the sun was hotter, or the earth nearer the sun. It was usual to assume that the sun will go on cooling steadily in the future. But people unfamiliar with such speculations as those of the young Darwin. Forget that the planets must ultimately fall back one by one into the parent body. As these catastrophes occur, the sun will blaze with renewed energy.

And it may be that some inner planet had suffered this fate. Whatever the reason, the fact remains that the sun was very, very much hotter than we know it. Well, one very hot morning, my fourth I think, as I was seeking shelter from the heat and the glare in the colossal ruin near the great house where I'd slept and fed. There happened this strange thing.

Clambring among these heaps of masonry, I found an arrow gallery, whose end and side windows were blocked by fallen masses of stone. By contrast, with the billions the outside, it seemed at first impenetrablee dark to me. I entered it, groping, for the change from light to blackness made spots of colour swim before me. Suddenly, I halted spellbound. A pair of eyes, luminous by reflection against the daylight without was watching me out of the darkness. The old instinctive dread of wild beasts came upon me. I clenched my hands, instead vastly looked into the glaring eyeballs. I was afraid to turn. Then, the thought of the absolute scrutiny in which humanity appeared to be living came to my mind. And then I remembered the strange terror of the dark. Overcoming my fear to some extent, I advanced a step and spoke. I will admit that my voice was harsh and ill-controlled. I'd put out my hand and touched something soft. At once the eyes darted sideways and something white rampast me. I turned with my heart in my mouth and saw a queer little ape-like figure. Its head held down in a peculiar manner, running across the sunlit space behind me. It blundered against a block of granite, staggered aside, and in a moment was hidden in the black shadow beneath another pile of masonry. My impression of it, of course, imperfect, but I know it was a dull white and had strange large grayish red eyes. Also, that there was a flaxen hair on its head and down its back. But, as I say, it went too fast for me to see distinctly. I cannot even say whether it ran on all forms or only with its forearms held very low. After an instance paused, I followed it into the second heap of ruins.

I could not find it at first, but after a time in the profound obscurity, I came upon one of those well-rounded, well-like openings of which I told you, half-closed by a fallen pillar. A sudden thought came to me. Could this thing have vanished down the sharp? I lit a match and, looking down, I saw a small white moving creature with large bright eyes, which regarded me steadfastly as it retreated. It made me shudder. It was like a human spider. It was clambering down the wall, and now I saw for the first time a number of metal foot and hand rests, forming a kind of ladder down the shaft. Then, the light burned my fingers and fell out of my hand, going out as it dropped. And when I'd lit another, the little monster had disappeared. I do not know how long I sat peering down the well. It was not for some time that I could succeed in persuading myself that the thing I'd seen was human, but gradually the truth dawned on me. The man had not remained one species, but had differentiated into two distinct animals that my graceful children of the Apple World were not the sole descendants of our generation.

But this bleached, obscene, nocturnal thing which flashed before me was also air to all the ages. I thought of the flickering pillars of my theory of an underground ventilation. I began to suspect the true import, and what I wondered was this lemur doing in my scheme of a perfectly balanced organisation. How was it related to the indolence serenity of the beautiful overworlders? And what was hidden down here at the foot of that shaft? I sat upon the edge of the well, telling myself that, at any rate, there was nothing to fear, and that there I must ascend for my solution of my difficulties. And with all I was absolutely afraid to go, as I hesitated, two of the beautiful Apple World people came running in their amorous sport across the daylight in the shadow. The male pursued the female, flinging flowers at her as he ran. They seemed distressed to find me. My arm against the overturned pillar, peering down the well. Apparently it was considered barred form to remark these apertures.

For when I pointed to this one and tried to frame a question about it in their tongue, they were still more visibly distressed and turned away. But they were interested by my matches, and I struck some to amuse them. I tried them again about the well, and again I failed. So presently I left them, meaning to go back to Weenah and see what I could get from her. But my mind was already in revolution. My guesses and impressions were slipping and sliding to a new adjustment. I had now acclue to the import of these wells, to the ventilation towers, to the mystery of the ghost, to say nothing of a hint of meaning of the bronze gates and the fate of the time machine. And very vaguely, there came a suggestion towards the solution of the economic problems that had puzzled me. Here was the new view. Plainly, the second species of man was subterranean. There were three circumstances in particular, which made me think that its rare emergence above ground was the outcome of a long continued underground habit. In the first place, there was the bleached look common in most animals that live largely in the dark, the white fish of the Kentucky caves, for instance. Then those large eyes, with capacity for reflecting lights, are common features in locked-turned-align mounds. Witness the owl and the cat, and last of all that evident confusion in the sunshine, that hasty yet fumbling awkward flight towards dark shadows, and the peculiar carriage of the head while in the light, all reinforced the theory of an extreme sensitivity of the right. Beneath my feet then, the earth must be tunneled enormously, and these tunnelings were the habitat of the new race. The presence of ventilating shafts and wells along the hill slopes everywhere, in fact, except along the river valley, showed how universal were its ramifications. What so natural then, as to assume, that it was in this artificial underworld, that such workers was necessary to the comfort of the daylight race was done. The notion was so plausible that I at once accepted it and went on to assume the how of this splitting of the human species. I dare say, you will anticipate the shape of my theory, though, for myself, I was very soon felt that it felt far short of the truth.

At first, proceeding from the problems of our own age, it seemed clear as daylight to me, that the gradual widening of the present merely temporary and social difference between the capitalist and the labourer was the key to the whole position. No doubt, it will seem grotesque enough to you, and wildly incredible, and yet even now, there are existing circumstances to point that way. There is a tendency to use lights, underground space, for the less ornamental purposes of civilization. There is a metropolitan railway in London, for instance, and then there are new electric railways. There are the subways, there are the underground workrooms and restaurants, and they increase and multiply. Evidently, I thought, this tendency had increased till industry had gradually lost its birthright in the sky. I mean, that it had gone deeper and deeper into larger and ever larger underground factories, spending a still increasing amount of its time therein, till in the end, even now, does not an east end worker live in such artificial conditions as practically to be cut off from the natural surface of the earth. Again, the exclusive tendency of Richard people, due no doubt, to the increasing refinement of their education, and the widening gulf between them and the rude violence of the poor, is already leading to the closing in their interest of considerable portions of the surface of the land. About London, for instance, perhaps half the prettier country is shut in against intrusion. And this same widening gulf, which is due to the length and expense of the higher educational process and the increased difficulties for the temptations towards refined habits on the part of the ridge, will make that exchange between class and class, that promotion by intermarriage, which at presence retards the splitting of our species along lines of social stratification, less and less frequent. So, in the end, above ground you must have the haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground, they have knots, the workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour. Once they were there, they would do no doubt to have to pay rent and not have a little of it for the ventilation of their cabins, and if they refused, they would starve or be suffocated for a rears. Such of them as they were so constituted as to be miserable and rebellious would die.

And in the end, the balance being permanent, the survivors would become as well adapted to the conditions of underground life and as happy in their way as the overworld people were to theirs. As it seemed to me, the refined beauty and the and the attiliated pala followed naturally enough.

The great triumph of humanity I dreamed to work a different shape in my mind. It had been no such triumph of moral education and general cooperation as I had imagined. Instead, I saw a real aristocracy armed with a perfect science and a working to a logical conclusion that the industrial system of today is. Its triumph had not been simply a triumph over nature, but a triumph over nature and the fellow man.

This, I must warn you, was my theory at the time. I had no convenient way in which to place it. My explanation may be absolutely wrong. I still think it was the most plausible one, but even on this prosupposition, the balanced civilization that was at last attained must have long been passed to its zenith and was now far fallen into decay. The two perfect security of the overworld has led them to a slow movement of degeneration to a general dwindling in size, strength and intelligence. But I could see clearly enough already, but what happened to the undergrounders? I did not yet suspect, but from what I had seen of the moorlocks that, by the law, was the name by which these creatures were called, I could imagine that the modification of the human type was even far more profound than among the Eli, the beautiful race that I knew. Then came troublesome doubts. Why had the moorlocks taken my time machine? I felt sure it was that they knew who had taken it. Why too? If the Eli were masters, could they not restore the machine to me? And why were they so terribly afraid of the dark?

I proceeded, as I have said, to question Weeneth about this underworld, but here again, I was disappointed. At first, she would not understand my questions, and presently she refused to answer them. She shivered as though the topic was unendurable, and when I pressed her, perhaps a little harshly, she burst into tears. They were the only tears except my own I ever saw in that golden age. When I saw them, I ceased abruptly to trouble about the moorlocks, and was only concerned in banishing these signs of her human inheritance from Weeneth's eyes. And very soon, she was smiling and clapping her hands, while I solemnly burned her match.