Amelia clutched my arm again, and pointed directly in front of us.
“See Edward!” she said. “My bag is there! We must have my bag!”
I saw that about thirty feet up the wall of vegetation there was what appeared to be a broken hole in the smooth-seeming surface. As Amelia started forward towards it,I realized that that must be the place where the Time Machine had so precipitately deposited us.
A few feet away, absurd in its context, lay Amelia’s hand bag, caught on a stem.
I hurried forward and caught up with Amelia, just as she was preparing to push through the nearest plants, her skirt raised almost to her knees.
“You can’t go in there,” I said. “The plants are coming to life!”
As I spoke to her a long, creeper like plant snaked silently towards us, and a seed-pod exploded with a report like a pistol. A cloud of dust-like seeds drifted away from the plant.
“Edward, it is imperative that I have my bag!”
“You can’t got up there to get it!”
“I must.”
“You will have to manage without your powders and creams.” She glared angrily at me for a moment. “There is more in it than face-powder. Money… and my brandy-flask. Many things.”
She plunged desperately into the vegetation, but as she did so a branch creaked into apparent life, and raised itself up. It caught the hem of her skirt, tore the fabric and spun her round.
She fell, screaming.
I hurried to her, and helped her away from the plants. “Stay here… I’ll go.”
Without further hesitation I plunged into that forest of groaning, moving stems, and scrambled towards where I had last seen her bag. It was not too difficult at first; I quickly learned which stems would, and which would not, bear my weight. As the height of the plants grew to a point where they were above my head I started to climb, slipping several times as the branch I gripped broke in my hand and released a flood of sap. All around me the plants were moving; growing and waving like the arms of a cheering crowd. Glancing up, I saw Amelia’s hand-bag on one such stem, dangling some twenty feet above my head. I had managed to climb only three or four feet towards it. There was nothing here that would bear my weight.
There came a crashing noise a few yards to my right, and I ducked, imagining in my horror that some major trunk was moving into life … but then I saw that it had been Amelia’s bag, slipping from its perch.
Thankfully, I abandoned my futile attempt to climb, and thrust myself through the waving lower stems. The noise of this riotous growth was now considerable, and when another seed-pod exploded by my ear I was temporarily deafened by it. My only thought now was to retrieve Amelia’s bag and get away from this nightmare vegetation. Not caring where I placed my feet, nor how many stems I broke and how much I drenched myself, I pushed wildly through the stalks, seized the bag and headed at once for the edge of the growth.
Amelia was sitting on the ground, and I threw the bag down beside her. Unreasonably, I felt angry with her, although I knew it was simply a reaction to my terror.
As she thanked me for collecting the bag, I turned away from her and stared at the wall of scarlet vegetation. It was visibly much more disordered than before, with branches and stems swinging out from every place. In the soil at the very edge of the growth I saw new, pink seedlings appearing. The plants were advancing on us, slowly but relentlessly. I watched the process for a few minutes more, seeing how sap from the adult plants dripped down on the soil, crudely irrigating the new shoots.
When I turned back to Amelia she was wiping her face and hands with a piece of flannel she had taken from her bag. Beside her on the ground was her flask. She held this out to me.
“Would you like some brandy, Edward?”
“Thank you.”
The liquor flowed over my tongue, immediately warming me. I took only one small mouthful, sensing that we should have to make last what we had.
With the rising of the sun, we both felt the benefit of its heat We were evidently in an equatorial region, for the sun was rising steeply, and its rays were warm.
“Edward, come here.”
I squatted on the ground in front of Amelia. She looked remarkably fresh, but then I realized that in addition to having had a cursory wash with her dampened face-flannel, she had brushed her hair. Her clothes, though, were in a dreadful state: the sleeve of her jacket had been torn, and there was a long rent in her skirt where the plant had swung her round. There were dirty pink streaks and stains all over her clothes. Glancing down at myself, I saw that my new suit had become equally spoiled.
“Would you like to clean yourself?” she said, offering me the flannel.
I took it from her, and wiped my face and hands.
“How do you come to have this with you?” I said, marvelling at the unexpected pleasure of washing myself.
“I have travelled a lot,” she said. “One grows accustomed to anticipating any contingency.”
She showed me that she had a traveller’s tidy, containing as well as the face-flannel, a square of soap, a toothbrush, a mirror, a pair of folding nail-scissors and a comb.
I ran my hand over my chin, thinking I should soon need a shave, but that was one contingency she seemed not to have anticipated.
I borrowed her comb to straighten my hair, and then allowed her to tidy my moustache.
“There,” she said, giving it a final twirl. “Now we are fit to re-enter civilization. But first, we must have some breakfast to sustain us.”
She dipped into her bag and produced a large bar of Menier’s chocolate.
“May I ask what else you have concealed in there?” I said.
“Nothing that will be of use to us. Now, we will have to ration this, for it is the only food I have. We shall have two squares each now, and a little more as we need it.”
We munched the chocolate hungrily, then followed it with another mouthful of brandy.
Amelia closed her bag, and we stood up.
“We will walk in that direction,” she said, pointing parallel to the wall of vegetation.
“Why that way?” I said, curious at her apparent resolution.
“Because the sun rose over there,” she pointed across the desert, “and so the weed-bank must run from north to south. We have seen how cold it can be at night, therefore we can do no better than move southwards.”
It was unassailable logic. We had walked several yards before an argument occurred to me.
“You assume we are still in the northern hemisphere,” I said.
“Of course. For your information, Edward, I have already deduced where we have landed. It is so high and cold that this can only be Tibet”
“Then we are walking towards the Himalayas,” I said.
“We will deal with that problem when we encounter it”
iii
We found that walking across this terrain was not easy. Although our surroundings became quite pleasant as the sun rose higher, and there was a distinct spring in our step, lent, we assumed, by the clean cold air and the altitude, we discovered that we tired readily and were forced to make frequent halts.
For about three hours we maintained a steady pace, by walking and resting at regular periods, and we took it in turns to carry the bag. I felt invigorated by the exercise, but Amelia did not find it easy; her breathing became laboured and she complained frequently of dizziness.
What we both found dispiriting was that the landscape had not changed from the moment we set out. With minor variations in size, the wall of vegetation ran in an unbroken line across the desert.
As the sun moved higher its radiant heat increased, and our clothes were soon completely dry. Unprotected as we were (Amelia’s bonnet had no brim, and I had lost my straw hat in the weeds) we soon began to suffer the first effects of sunburn, and we both complained of an unpleasant tingling on the skin of our faces.