The Time Machine — EN

XIII
The Trap of the White Sphinx

“About eight or nine in the morn­ing I came to the same seat of yel­low met­al from which I had viewed the world upon the evening of my arrival. I thought of my hasty con­clu­sions upon that evening and could not refrain from laugh­ing bit­ter­ly at my con­fi­dence. Here was the same beau­ti­ful scene, the same abun­dant foliage, the same splen­did palaces and mag­nif­i­cent ruins, the same sil­ver riv­er run­ning between its fer­tile banks. The gay robes of the beau­ti­ful peo­ple moved hith­er and thith­er among the trees. Some were bathing in exact­ly the place where I had saved Weena, and that sud­den­ly gave me a keen stab of pain. And like blots upon the land­scape rose the cupo­las above the ways to the Under-world. I under­stood now what all the beau­ty of the Over-world peo­ple cov­ered. Very pleas­ant was their day, as pleas­ant as the day of the cat­tle in the field. Like the cat­tle, they knew of no ene­mies and pro­vid­ed against no needs. And their end was the same.

“I griev­ed to think how brief the dream of the human intel­lect had been. It had com­mit­ted sui­cide. It had set itself stead­fast­ly towards com­fort and ease, a bal­anced soci­ety with secu­ri­ty and per­ma­nen­cy as its watch­word, it had attained its hopes – to come to this at last. Once, life and prop­er­ty must have reached almost absolute safe­ty. The rich had been assured of his wealth and com­fort, the toil­er assured of his life and work. No doubt in that per­fect world there had been no unem­ployed prob­lem, no social ques­tion left unsolved. And a great qui­et had followed.

“It is a law of nature we over­look, that intel­lec­tu­al ver­sa­til­i­ty is the com­pen­sa­tion for change, dan­ger, and trou­ble. An ani­mal per­fect­ly in har­mo­ny with its envi­ron­ment is a per­fect mech­a­nism. Nature nev­er appeals to intel­li­gence until habit and instinct are use­less. There is no intel­li­gence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those ani­mals par­take of intel­li­gence that have to meet a huge vari­ety of needs and dangers.

“So, as I see it, the Upper-world man had drift­ed towards his fee­ble pret­ti­ness, and the Under-world to mere mechan­i­cal indus­try. But that per­fect state had lacked one thing even for mechan­i­cal per­fec­tion – absolute per­ma­nen­cy. Appar­ent­ly as time went on, the feed­ing of the Under-world, how­ev­er it was effect­ed, had become dis­joint­ed. Moth­er Neces­si­ty, who had been staved off for a few thou­sand years, came back again, and she began below.

The Under-world being in con­tact with machin­ery, which, how­ev­er per­fect, still needs some lit­tle thought out­side habit, had prob­a­bly retained per­force rather more ini­tia­tive, if less of every oth­er human char­ac­ter, than the Upper. And when oth­er meat failed them, they turned to what old habit had hith­er­to for­bid­den. So I say I saw it in my last view of the world of Eight Hun­dred and Two Thou­sand Sev­en Hun­dred and One. It may be as wrong an expla­na­tion as mor­tal wit could invent. It is how the thing shaped itself to me, and as that I give it to you.

“After the fatigues, excite­ments, and ter­rors of the past days, and in spite of my grief, this seat and the tran­quil view and the warm sun­light were very pleas­ant. I was very tired and sleepy, and soon my the­o­riz­ing passed into doz­ing. Catch­ing myself at that, I took my own hint, and spread­ing myself out upon the turf I had a long and refresh­ing sleep.

“I awoke a lit­tle before sun­set­ting. I now felt safe against being caught nap­ping by the Mor­locks, and, stretch­ing myself, I came on down the hill towards the White Sphinx. I had my crow­bar in one hand, and the oth­er hand played with the match­es in my pocket.

“And now came a most unex­pect­ed thing. As I approached the pedestal of the sphinx I found the bronze valves were open. They had slid down into grooves.

“At that I stopped short before them, hes­i­tat­ing to enter.

“With­in was a small apart­ment, and on a raised place in the cor­ner of this was the Time Machine. I had the small levers in my pock­et. So here, after all my elab­o­rate prepa­ra­tions for the siege of the White Sphinx, was a meek sur­ren­der. I threw my iron bar away, almost sor­ry not to use it.

“A sud­den thought came into my head as I stooped towards the por­tal. For once, at least, I grasped the men­tal oper­a­tions of the Mor­locks. Sup­press­ing a strong incli­na­tion to laugh, I stepped through the bronze frame and up to the Time Machine. I was sur­prised to find it had been care­ful­ly oiled and cleaned. I have sus­pect­ed since that the Mor­locks had even par­tial­ly tak­en it to pieces while try­ing in their dim way to grasp its purpose.

“Now as I stood and exam­ined it, find­ing a plea­sure in the mere touch of the con­trivance, the thing I had expect­ed hap­pened. The bronze pan­els sud­den­ly slid up and struck the frame with a clang. I was in the dark – trapped. So the Mor­locks thought. At that I chuck­led glee­ful­ly.

“I could already hear their mur­mur­ing laugh­ter as they came towards me. Very calm­ly I tried to strike the match. I had only to fix on the levers and depart then like a ghost. But I had over­looked one lit­tle thing. The match­es were of that abom­inable kind that light only on the box.

“You may imag­ine how all my calm van­ished. The lit­tle brutes were close upon me. One touched me. I made a sweep­ing blow in the dark at them with the levers, and began to scram­ble into the sad­dle of the machine. Then came one hand upon me and then anoth­er. Then I had sim­ply to fight against their per­sis­tent fin­gers for my levers, and at the same time feel for the studs over which these fit­ted. One, indeed, they almost got away from me. As it slipped from my hand, I had to butt in the dark with my head – I could hear the Morlock’s skull ring – to recov­er it. It was a near­er thing than the fight in the for­est, I think, this last scram­ble.

“But at last the lever was fit­ted and pulled over. The cling­ing hands slipped from me. The dark­ness present­ly fell from my eyes. I found myself in the same grey light and tumult I have already described.