“Have a good look,” I said with feeling. “This is how it turns out for you!”
He stroked his chin. “Don’t take a lot of exercise, do you?” He jerked his thumb. “And him — Nebogipfel. Is he—”
“Yes,” I said. “He is a Man from the Future — from the Year A.D. 657,208, and much evolved from our present state — who I have brought back on my Time Machine: on the machine whose first, dim blueprint you are already conceiving.”
“I am tempted to ask you how it all turns out for me — am I a success? will I marry? — and so forth. But I suspect I’m better off without such knowledge.” He eyed Nebogipfel. “The future of the species, though, is another matter.”
“You do believe me — don’t you?”
He picked up his brandy-glass, found it empty, and set it down again. “I don’t know. I mean, it is all very easy for a fellow to walk into a house and say that he is one’s Future Self—”
“But you have already conceived of the possibility of time travel yourself. And — look at my face!”
“I admit there’s a certain superficial resemblance; but it’s also quite possible that this is all some sort of a prank, set up — maybe with malicious intent — to expose me as a quack.” He looked at me sternly. “If you are who you say you are — if you are me — then you have surely traveled here with a purpose.”
“Yes.” I tried to put aside my anger; I tried to remember that my communication with this difficult and rather arrogant young man was of vital importance. “Yes. I have a mission.”
He pulled at his chin. “Dramatic words. But how can I be so vital? I am a scientist — not even that, probably; I am a tinkerer, a dilettante. I am not a politician or a prophet.”
“No. But you are — or will be — the inventor of the most potent weapon that could be devised: I mean the Time Machine.”
“What is it you’ve come to tell me?”
“That you must destroy the Plattnerite; find some other line of research. You must not develop the Time Machine — that is essential!”
He steepled his fingers and regarded me. “Well. Evidently you have a story to tell. Is it to be a long narrative? Do you want some more brandy — or some tea, perhaps?”
“No. No, thank you. I will be as brief as I can manage.”
And so I began my account, with a short summary of the discoveries that had led me to the final construction of the machine — and how I had boarded it for the first time, and launched myself into the History of Eloi and Morlock — and what I discovered when I returned, and tried to go forward in time once more.
I suppose I spoke wearily — I could not remember how many hours had elapsed since I had last slept but as my account developed I grew more animated, and I fixed on Moses’s sincere, round face in the bright circle of the candlelight. At first I was aware of Nebogipfel’s presence, for he sat silently by through out my account, and at times — during my first description of the Morlocks, for example — Moses turned to Nebogipfel as if for confirmation of some detail.
But after a while he ceased to do even that; and he looked only at my face.
[6]
Persuasion and Scepticism
The early dawn of summer was well advanced by the time I was done.
Moses sat in his chair, his eyes still set on me, his chin cupped in his hand. Then, at length: “Well,” he said, as if to break a spell — “Well.” He stood up, stretched his back, and crossed the room to the windows; he pulled them back to reveal a cloudy but lightening sky.
“It’s a remarkable account.”
“It’s more than that,” I said, my voice hoarse. “Don’t you see? On my second journey into the future, I traveled into a different History. The Time Machine is a Wrecker of History — a Destroyer of Worlds and Species. Don’t you see why it must not be built?”
Moses turned to Nebogipfel, “If you are a Man from the Future — what do you have to say to all this?”
Nebogipfel’s chair was still in shadow, but he cowered from the encroaching daylight. “I am not a Man,” he said in his cold, quiet voice. “But I am from a Future — one of an infinite number, perhaps, of possible variants. And it seems true — it is certainly logically possible — that a Time Machine can change History’s course, thus generating new variants of events. In fact the very principle of the Machine’s operation appears to rely on its extension, through the properties of Plattnerite, into another, parallel History.”
Moses went to the window, and the rising sun caught his profile. “But to abandon my research, just on your uncorroborated say-so.
“Say-so? I think I deserve a little more respect than that,” I said, in rising anger. “After all, I am you! Oh, you are so stubborn. I’ve brought a Man from the Future — what more persuasion do you want?”
He shook his head. “Look,” he said, “I’m tired — I’ve been up all night, and all that brandy hasn’t helped much. And you two look as if you could do with some rest as well. I have spare rooms; I’ll escort you—”
“I know the way,” I said with some frost.
He conceded the point with some humor. “I’ll have Mrs. Penforth bring you breakfast… or,” he went on, looking at Nebogipfel again, “perhaps I’ll have it served in here.
“Come,” he said. “The Destiny of the Race can wait for a few hours.”
I slept deeply — remarkably so. I was wakened by Moses, who brought me a pitcher of hot water.
I’d folded up my clothes on a chair; after my adventures in time, they were rather the worse for wear. “I don’t suppose you could lend me a suit of clothes, could you?”
“You can have a house-coat, if you like. I’m sorry, old man — I hardly think anything of mine would fit you!”
I was angered by this casual arrogance. “One day, you too will grow a little older. And then I hope you remember — Oh — never mind!” I said.
“Look — I’ll have my man brush out these clothes for you, and patch the worst damage. Come down when you’re ready.”
In the dining-room, breakfast had been set out as a sort of buffet. Moses and Nebogipfel were already there. Moses wore the same costume as yesterday — or at least, an identical copy of it. The bright morning sun turned the parakeet colors of his coat into a clamor even more ghastly than before. And as for Nebogipfel, the Morlock was now dressed — ludicrously! — in short trousers and battered blazer. He had a cap tucked over his goggled, hairy face, and he stood patiently by the buffet.
“I told Mrs. Penforth to keep out of here,” Moses said. “As for Nebogipfel, that battered jacket of yours — it’s over the back of that chair, by the way — seemed hardly sufficient for him. So I dug out an old school uniform — the only thing I could find that might fit him: he reeks of moth-balls, but he seems a little happier.
“Now then.” He walked up to Nebogipfel. “Let me help you, sir. What would you like? You can see we have bacon, eggs, toast, sausages—”
In his quiet, fluid tones, Nebogipfel asked Moses to explain the provenance of these various items. Moses did so, in graphic terms: he picked up a slice of bacon on his fork, for example, and described the Nature of the Pig.
When Moses was done, Nebogipfel picked up a single piece of fruit — an apple — and walked with that, and a glass of water, to the room’s darkest corner.
As for me, after subsisting for so long on a diet of the Morlocks’ bland stuff, I could not have relished my breakfast more if I had known — which I did not — that it was the last nineteenth-century meal I should ever enjoy!