The Time Machine — EN

“In anoth­er moment we were stand­ing face to face, I and this frag­ile thing out of futu­ri­ty. He came straight up to me and laughed into my eyes. The absence from his bear­ing of any sign of fear struck me at once. Then he turned to the two oth­ers who were fol­low­ing him and spoke to them in a strange and very sweet and liq­uid tongue.

“There were oth­ers com­ing, and present­ly a lit­tle group of per­haps eight or ten of these exquis­ite crea­tures were about me. One of them addressed me. It came into my head, odd­ly enough, that my voice was too harsh and deep for them. So I shook my head, and, point­ing to my ears, shook it again. He came a step for­ward, hes­i­tat­ed, and then touched my hand. Then I felt oth­er soft lit­tle ten­ta­cles upon my back and shoul­ders. They want­ed to make sure I was real. There was noth­ing in this at all alarm­ing. Indeed, there was some­thing in these pret­ty lit­tle peo­ple that inspired con­fi­dence – a grace­ful gen­tle­ness, a cer­tain child­like ease. And besides, they looked so frail that I could fan­cy myself fling­ing the whole dozen of them about like nine-pins. But I made a sud­den motion to warn them when I saw their lit­tle pink hands feel­ing at the Time Machine. Hap­pi­ly then, when it was not too late, I thought of a dan­ger I had hith­er­to for­got­ten, and reach­ing over the bars of the machine I unscrewed the lit­tle levers that would set it in motion, and put these in my pock­et. Then I turned again to see what I could do in the way of communication.

“And then, look­ing more near­ly into their fea­tures, I saw some fur­ther pecu­liar­i­ties in their Dres­den-chi­na type of pret­ti­ness. Their hair, which was uni­form­ly curly, came to a sharp end at the neck and cheek; there was not the faintest sug­ges­tion of it on the face, and their ears were sin­gu­lar­ly minute. The mouths were small, with bright red, rather thin lips, and the lit­tle chins ran to a point. The eyes were large and mild; and – this may seem ego­tism on my part – I fan­cied even that there was a cer­tain lack of the inter­est I might have expect­ed in them.

“As they made no effort to com­mu­ni­cate with me, but sim­ply stood round me smil­ing and speak­ing in soft coo­ing notes to each oth­er, I began the con­ver­sa­tion. I point­ed to the Time Machine and to myself. Then hes­i­tat­ing for a moment how to express time, I point­ed to the sun. At once a quaint­ly pret­ty lit­tle fig­ure in che­quered pur­ple and white fol­lowed my ges­ture, and then aston­ished me by imi­tat­ing the sound of thunder.

“For a moment I was stag­gered, though the import of his ges­ture was plain enough. The ques­tion had come into my mind abrupt­ly: were these crea­tures fools? You may hard­ly under­stand how it took me. You see I had always antic­i­pat­ed that the peo­ple of the year Eight Hun­dred and Two Thou­sand odd would be incred­i­bly in front of us in knowl­edge, art, every­thing. Then one of them sud­den­ly asked me a ques­tion that showed him to be on the intel­lec­tu­al lev­el of one of our five-year-old chil­dren – asked me, in fact, if I had come from the sun in a thun­der­storm! It let loose the judg­ment I had sus­pend­ed upon their clothes, their frail light limbs, and frag­ile fea­tures. A flow of dis­ap­point­ment rushed across my mind. For a moment I felt that I had built the Time Machine in vain.

“I nod­ded, point­ed to the sun, and gave them such a vivid ren­der­ing of a thun­der­clap as star­tled them. They all with­drew a pace or so and bowed. Then came one laugh­ing towards me, car­ry­ing a chain of beau­ti­ful flow­ers alto­geth­er new to me, and put it about my neck. The idea was received with melo­di­ous applause; and present­ly they were all run­ning to and fro for flow­ers, and laugh­ing­ly fling­ing them upon me until I was almost smoth­ered with blos­som. You who have nev­er seen the like can scarce­ly imag­ine what del­i­cate and won­der­ful flow­ers count­less years of cul­ture had cre­at­ed. Then some­one sug­gest­ed that their play­thing should be exhib­it­ed in the near­est build­ing, and so I was led past the sphinx of white mar­ble, which had seemed to watch me all the while with a smile at my aston­ish­ment, towards a vast grey edi­fice of fret­ted stone. As I went with them the mem­o­ry of my con­fi­dent antic­i­pa­tions of a pro­found­ly grave and intel­lec­tu­al pos­ter­i­ty came, with irre­sistible mer­ri­ment, to my mind.

“The build­ing had a huge entry, and was alto­geth­er of colos­sal dimen­sions. I was nat­u­ral­ly most occu­pied with the grow­ing crowd of lit­tle peo­ple, and with the big open por­tals that yawned before me shad­owy and mys­te­ri­ous. My gen­er­al impres­sion of the world I saw over their heads was a tan­gled waste of beau­ti­ful bush­es and flow­ers, a long neglect­ed and yet weed­less gar­den. I saw a num­ber of tall spikes of strange white flow­ers, mea­sur­ing a foot per­haps across the spread of the wax­en petals. They grew scat­tered, as if wild, among the var­ie­gat­ed shrubs, but, as I say, I did not exam­ine them close­ly at this time. The Time Machine was left desert­ed on the turf among the rhodo­den­drons.

“The arch of the door­way was rich­ly carved, but nat­u­ral­ly I did not observe the carv­ing very nar­row­ly, though I fan­cied I saw sug­ges­tions of old Phoeni­cian dec­o­ra­tions as I passed through, and it struck me that they were very bad­ly bro­ken and weath­er-worn. Sev­er­al more bright­ly clad peo­ple met me in the door­way, and so we entered, I, dressed in dingy nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry gar­ments, look­ing grotesque enough, gar­land­ed with flow­ers, and sur­round­ed by an eddy­ing mass of bright, soft-col­ored robes and shin­ing white limbs, in a melo­di­ous whirl of laugh­ter and laugh­ing speech.

“The big door­way opened into a pro­por­tion­ate­ly great hall hung with brown. The roof was in shad­ow, and the win­dows, par­tial­ly glazed with coloured glass and par­tial­ly unglazed, admit­ted a tem­pered light. The floor was made up of huge blocks of some very hard white met­al, not plates nor slabs – blocks, and it was so much worn, as I judged by the going to and fro of past gen­er­a­tions, as to be deeply chan­nelled along the more fre­quent­ed ways. Trans­verse to the length were tables made of slabs of pol­ished stone, raised per­haps a foot from the floor, and upon these were heaps of fruits. Some I rec­og­nized as a kind of hyper­tro­phied rasp­ber­ry and orange, but for the most part they were strange.

“Between the tables was scat­tered a great num­ber of cush­ions. Upon these my con­duc­tors seat­ed them­selves, sign­ing for me to do like­wise. With a pret­ty absence of cer­e­mo­ny they began to eat the fruit with their hands, fling­ing peel and stalks, and so forth, into the round open­ings in the sides of the tables. I was not loath to fol­low their exam­ple, for I felt thirsty and hun­gry. As I did so I sur­veyed the hall at my leisure.

“And per­haps the thing that struck me most was its dilap­i­dat­ed look. The stained-glass win­dows, which dis­played only a geo­met­ri­cal pat­tern, were bro­ken in many places, and the cur­tains that hung across the low­er end were thick with dust. And it caught my eye that the cor­ner of the mar­ble table near me was frac­tured. Nev­er­the­less, the gen­er­al effect was extreme­ly rich and pic­turesque. There were, per­haps, a cou­ple of hun­dred peo­ple din­ing in the hall, and most of them, seat­ed as near to me as they could come, were watch­ing me with inter­est, their lit­tle eyes shin­ing over the fruit they were eat­ing. All were clad in the same soft and yet strong, silky material.

“Fruit, by the by, was all their diet. These peo­ple of the remote future were strict veg­e­tar­i­ans, and while I was with them, in spite of some car­nal crav­ings, I had to be fru­giv­o­rous also.

Indeed, I found after­wards that hors­es, cat­tle, sheep, dogs, had fol­lowed the Ichthyosaurus into extinc­tion. But the fruits were very delight­ful; one, in par­tic­u­lar, that seemed to be in sea­son all the time I was there – a floury thing in a three-sided husk – was espe­cial­ly good, and I made it my sta­ple. At first I was puz­zled by all these strange fruits, and by the strange flow­ers I saw, but lat­er I began to per­ceive their import.

“How­ev­er, I am telling you of my fruit din­ner in the dis­tant future now. So soon as my appetite was a lit­tle checked, I deter­mined to make a res­olute attemptto learn the speech of these new men of mine. Clear­ly that was the next thing to do. The fruits seemed a con­ve­nient thing to begin upon, and hold­ing one of these up I began a series of inter­rog­a­tive sounds and ges­tures. I had some con­sid­er­able dif­fi­cul­ty in con­vey­ing my mean­ing. At first my efforts met with a stare of sur­prise or inex­tin­guish­able laugh­ter, but present­ly a fair-haired lit­tle crea­ture seemed to grasp my inten­tion and repeat­ed a name. They had to chat­ter and explain the busi­ness at great length to each oth­er, and my first attempts to make the exquis­ite lit­tle sounds of their lan­guage caused an immense amount of amuse­ment. How­ev­er, I felt like a school­mas­ter amidst chil­dren, and per­sist­ed, and present­ly I had a score of noun sub­stan­tives at least at my com­mand; and then I got to demon­stra­tive pro­nouns, and even the verb “to eat.” But it was slow work, and the lit­tle peo­ple soon tired and want­ed to get away from my inter­ro­ga­tions, so I deter­mined, rather of neces­si­ty, to let them give their lessons in lit­tle dos­es when they felt inclined. And very lit­tle dos­es I found they were before long, for I nev­er met peo­ple more indo­lent or more eas­i­ly fatigued.