The Time Machine — EN

“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, end­less­ly var­ied in mate­r­i­al and style, the same clus­ter­ing thick­ets of ever­greens, the same blos­som-laden trees and tree-ferns. Here and there water shone 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 wells, 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 rimmed with bronze, curi­ous­ly wrought, and pro­tect­ed by a lit­tle cupo­la 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 import it 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 learned very lit­tle of drains and bells and modes of con­veyance, and the like con­ve­niences, dur­ing my time in this real future. In some of these visions of Utopias and com­ing times which I have 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 trav­eller amid such real­i­ties as I found here. Con­ceive the tale of Lon­don which a 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 wires, of the Parcels Deliv­ery Com­pa­ny, and postal orders and the like? Yet we, at least, should be will­ing enough to explain these things to him! And even of what he knew, how much could he make his untrav­elled friend 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 of the Gold­en Age! I was sen­si­ble of much which was unseen, and which con­tributed to my com­fort; but save for a gen­er­al impres­sion of auto­mat­ic orga­ni­za­tion, I fear I can con­vey very lit­tle of the dif­fer­ence to your mind.

“In the mat­ter of sepul­chre, for instance, I could see no signs of cre­ma­to­ria nor any­thing sug­ges­tive of tombs. But it occurred to me that, pos­si­bly, there might be ceme­ter­ies (or cre­ma­to­ria) some­where beyond the range of my explor­ings. 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 infirm among this peo­ple there were none.

“I must con­fess that my sat­is­fac­tion with my first the­o­ries of an auto­mat­ic civ­i­liza­tion and a deca­dent human­i­ty did not long endure. Yet I could think of no oth­er. Let me put my dif­fi­cul­ties. The sev­er­al big palaces I had explored were mere liv­ing places, great din­ing-halls and sleep­ing apart­ments. I could find no machin­ery, no appli­ances of any kind. Yet these peo­ple were clothed 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 the lit­tle peo­ple dis­played no ves­tige of a cre­ative ten­den­cy. There were no shops, no work­shops, no sign 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 Sphinx.

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, and 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 world of Eight Hun­dred and Two Thou­sand Sev­en Hun­dred and One 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 weak­ly cry­ing lit­tle thing which was drown­ing before their eyes. When I real­ized this, I hur­ried­ly slipped off my clothes, and, wad­ing in at a point low­er down, I caught the poor mite and drew her safe to land. A lit­tle rub­bing of the limbs soon brought her round, and I had the sat­is­fac­tion of see­ing she was all right 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 had been feel­ing des­o­late. At any rate I did my best to dis­play my appre­ci­a­tion of the gift. We were soon seat­ed togeth­er in a lit­tle stone arbour, engaged in con­ver­sa­tion, chiefly of smiles. The creature’s friend­li­ness affect­ed me exact­ly as a child’s might have done. We passed each oth­er flow­ers, and she kissed my hands. I did the same to hers. Then I tried talk, and found that her name was Weena, 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 to my heart to tire her down, and leave her at last, exhaust­ed and call­ing after me rather plain­tive­ly. 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 expos­tu­la­tions 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 clear­ly know what I had inflict­ed upon her when I left her. Nor until it was too late did I clear­ly under­stand what she was to me. For, by mere­ly seem­ing fond of me, and show­ing in her weak, futile way that she cared for me, the lit­tle doll of a crea­ture present­ly gave my return to the neigh­bour­hood of the White Sphinx almost the feel­ing of com­ing home; and I would watch for her tiny fig­ure of white and gold so soon as I came over the hill.

“It was from her, too, that I learned 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 then, among oth­er things, that these lit­tle peo­ple gath­ered into the great hous­es after dark, and slept in droves. To enter upon them with­out a light was to put them into a tumult of appre­hen­sion. I nev­er found one out of doors, or one sleep­ing alone with­in doors, after dark. Yet I was still such a block­head that I missed the les­son of that fear, and in spite of Weena’s dis­tress I insist­ed upon sleep­ing away from these slum­ber­ing multitudes.

“It trou­bled her great­ly, but in the end her odd affec­tion for me tri­umphed, and for five of the nights of our acquain­tance, includ­ing the last night of all, she slept with her 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 had been rest­less, dream­ing most dis­agree­ably that I was drowned, and that sea anemones were feel­ing over my face with their soft palps. I woke with a start, and 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 are 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 so 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 inky black, the ground a som­bre grey, the sky colour­less and cheer­less. And up the hill I thought I could see ghosts. There 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 dark body. They moved hasti­ly. I did not see what became of them. It seemed that they van­ished among the bush­es. The dawn was still indis­tinct, you must under­stand. I was feel­ing that chill, uncer­tain, ear­ly-morn­ing feel­ing you may have known. I doubt­ed my eyes.

“As the east­ern 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 keen­ly. 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 whence they dat­ed.” For a queer notion of Grant Allen’s came into my head, and amused me. If each gen­er­a­tion die and leave ghosts, he argued, the world at last will get over­crowd­ed with them. On that the­o­ry they would have grown some Eight Hun­dred Thou­sand Years hence, and it was no great won­der to see four at once. But the jest was unsat­is­fy­ing, and I was think­ing of these fig­ures all the morn­ing, until Weena’s 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 Weena 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 was the weath­er of this Gold­en Age. I can­not account for it. It may be that the sun was hot­ter, or the earth near­er the sun. It is usu­al to assume that the sun will go on cool­ing steadi­ly in the future. But peo­ple, unfa­mil­iar with such spec­u­la­tions as those of the younger 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 much hot­ter than we know it.

“Well, one very hot morn­ing – my fourth, I think – as I was seek­ing shel­ter from the heat and glare in a colos­sal ruin near the great house where I slept and fed, there hap­pened this strange thing: Clam­ber­ing among these heaps of mason­ry, I found a nar­row gallery, whose end and side win­dows were blocked by fall­en mass­es of stone. By con­trast with the bril­lian­cy out­side, it seemed at first impen­e­tra­bly 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 and stead­fast­ly looked into the glar­ing eye­balls. I was afraid to turn. Then the thought of the absolute secu­ri­ty in which human­i­ty appeared to be liv­ing came to my mind. And then I remem­bered that 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 put out my hand and touched some­thing soft. At once the eyes dart­ed side­ways, and some­thing white ran past 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 a black shad­ow beneath anoth­er pile of ruined mason­ry.

“My impres­sion of it is, of course, imper­fect; but I know it was a dull white, and had strange large grey­ish-red eyes; also that there was 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-fours, or only with its fore­arms held very low. After an instant’s pause 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 round well-like open­ings of which I have told you, half closed by a fall­en pil­lar. A sud­den thought came to me. Could this Thing have van­ished down the shaft? 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 so 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 had lit anoth­er the lit­tle mon­ster had disappeared.

“I do not know how long I sat peer­ing down that well. It was not for some time that I could suc­ceed in per­suad­ing myself that the thing I had seen was human. But, grad­u­al­ly, the truth dawned on me: that Man had not remained one species, but had dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed into two dis­tinct ani­mals: that my grace­ful chil­dren of the Upper-world were not the sole descen­dants of our gen­er­a­tion, but that this bleached, obscene, noc­tur­nal Thing, which had flashed before me, was also heir to all the ages.

“I thought of the flick­er­ing pil­lars and of my the­o­ry of an under­ground ven­ti­la­tion. I began to sus­pect their true import. And what, I won­dered, was this Lemur doing in my scheme of a per­fect­ly bal­anced orga­ni­za­tion? How was it relat­ed to the indo­lent seren­i­ty of the beau­ti­ful Upper-worlders? And what was hid­den down there, 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 descend for the solu­tion of my dif­fi­cul­ties. And with­al I was absolute­ly afraid to go! As I hes­i­tat­ed, two of the beau­ti­ful Upper-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 bad 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 Weena, 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 a clue to the import of these wells, to the ven­ti­lat­ing tow­ers, to the mys­tery of the ghosts; to say noth­ing of a hint at the 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 prob­lem that had puz­zled me.

“Here was the new view. Plain­ly, this 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 that capac­i­ty for reflect­ing light, are com­mon fea­tures of noc­tur­nal things – wit­ness the owl and the cat. And last of all, that evi­dent con­fu­sion in the sun­shine, that hasty yet fum­bling awk­ward flight towards dark shad­ow, and that pecu­liar car­riage of the head while in the light – all rein­forced the the­o­ry of an extreme sen­si­tive­ness of the reti­na.

“Beneath my feet, then, the earth must be tun­nelled enor­mous­ly, and these tun­nellings 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 work as 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 very soon felt that it fell 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 uti­lize under­ground space for the less orna­men­tal pur­pos­es of civ­i­liza­tion; there is the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Rail­way in Lon­don, for instance, there are new elec­tric rail­ways, there are sub­ways, there are 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 rich­er 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 facil­i­ties for and temp­ta­tions towards refined habits on the part of the rich – will make that exchange between class and class, that pro­mo­tion by inter­mar­riage which at present 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 the Have-nots, the Work­ers get­ting con­tin­u­al­ly adapt­ed to the con­di­tions of their labour. Once they were there, they would no doubt have to pay rent, and not a lit­tle of it, for the ven­ti­la­tion of their cav­erns; and if they refused, they would starve or be suf­fo­cat­ed for arrears. Such of them as 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 Upper-world peo­ple were to theirs. As it seemed to me, the refined beau­ty and the eti­o­lat­ed pal­lor fol­lowed nat­u­ral­ly enough.

“The great tri­umph of Human­i­ty I had dreamed of took a dif­fer­ent shape in my mind. It had been no such tri­umph of moral edu­ca­tion and gen­er­al co-oper­a­tion as I had imag­ined. Instead, I saw a real aris­toc­ra­cy, armed with a per­fect­ed sci­ence and work­ing to a log­i­cal con­clu­sion the indus­tri­al sys­tem of today. 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 cicerone in the pat­tern of the Utopi­an books. My expla­na­tion may be absolute­ly wrong. I still think it is the most plau­si­ble one. But even on this sup­po­si­tion the bal­anced civ­i­liza­tion that was at last attained must have long since passed its zenith, and was now far fall­en into decay. The too-per­fect secu­ri­ty of the Upper-worlders had led them to a slow move­ment of degen­er­a­tion, to a gen­er­al dwin­dling in size, strength, and intel­li­gence. That I could see clear­ly enough already. What had hap­pened to the Under-grounders I did not yet sus­pect; but from what I had seen of the Mor­locks – that, by the by, 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 “Eloi,” the beau­ti­ful race that I already knew.

“Then came trou­ble­some doubts. Why had the Mor­locks tak­en my Time Machine? For I felt sure it was they who had tak­en it. Why, too, if the Eloi 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 Weena about this Under-world, 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 Mor­locks, and was only con­cerned in ban­ish­ing these signs of the human inher­i­tance from Weena’s eyes. And very soon she was smil­ing and clap­ping her hands, while I solemn­ly burned a match.