The Time Ships. Stephen Baxter

       15

       LIFE AND DEATH AMONG THE MORLOCKS

      One day, Nebogipfel led me to what was, perhaps, the most disquieting thing I saw in all my time in that city-chamber.

      We approached an area, perhaps a half-mile square, where the partitions seemed lower than usual. As we neared, I became aware of a rising level of noise – a babble of liquid throats – and a sharply increased smell of Morlock, of their characteristic musty, sickly sweetness. Nebogipfel bade me pause on the edge of this clearing.

      Through my goggles I was able to see that the surface of the cleared-out area was alive – it pulsated – with the mewling, wriggling, toddling form of babies. There were thousands of them, these tumbling Morlock infants, their little hands and feet pawing at each other’s clumps of untidy hair. They rolled, just like young apes, and poked at junior versions of the informative partitions I have described elsewhere, or crammed food into their dark mouths; here and there, adults walked through the crowd, raising one who had fallen here, untangling a miniature dispute there, soothing a wailing infant beyond.

      I gazed out over this sea of infants, bemused. Perhaps such a collection of human children might be found appealing by some – not by me, a confirmed bachelor – but these were Morlocks … You must remember that the Morlock is not an attractive entity to human sensibilities, even as a child, with his worm-pallor flesh, his coolness to the touch, and that spider-webbing of hair. If you think of a giant tabletop covered in wriggling maggots, you will have something of my impression as I stood there!

      I turned to Nebogipfel. ‘But where are their parents?’

      He hesitated, as if searching for the right phrase. ‘They have no parents. This is a birth farm. When old enough, the infants will be transported from here to a nursery community, either on the Sphere or …’

      But I had stopped listening. I glanced at Nebogipfel, up and down, but his hair masked the form of his body.

      With a jolt of wonder, I saw now another of those facts which had stared me in the eyeball since my arrival here, but which I was too clever by far to perceive: there was no evidence of sexual discrimination – not in Nebogipfel, nor in any of the Morlocks I had come across – not even in those, like my low-gravity visitors, whose bodies were sparsely coated with hair, and so easier to make out. Your average Morlock was built like a child, undifferentiated sexually, with the same lack of emphasis on hips or chest … I realized with a shock that I knew nothing of – nor had I thought to question – the Morlocks’ processes of love and birth!

      Nebogipfel told me something now of the rearing and education of the Morlock young.

      The Morlock began his life in these birth farms and nursery communities – the whole of the Earth, to my painful recollection, had been given over to one such – and there, in addition to the rudiments of civilized behaviour, the youngster was taught one essential skill: the ability to learn. It is as if a schoolboy of the nineteenth century – instead of having drummed into his poor head a lot of nonsense about Greek and Latin and obscure geometric theorems – had been taught, instead, how to concentrate, and to use libraries, and the mechanisms of how to assimilate knowledge – how, above all, to think. After that, the acquisition of any specific knowledge depended on the needs of the task in hand, and the inclination of the individual.

      When Nebogipfel summarized this to me, its simplicity of logic struck me with an almost physical force. Of course! – I said to myself – so much for schools! What a contrast to the battleground of Ignorance with Incompetence that made up my own, unlamented schooldays!

      I was moved to ask Nebogipfel about his own profession.

      He explained to me that once the date of my origin had been fixed, he had made himself into something of an expert in my period and its mores from the records of his people; and he had become aware of several significant differences between the ways of our races.

      ‘Our occupations are not as consuming as yours,’ he said. ‘I have two loves – two vocations.’ His eyes were invisible, making his emotions even more impossible to read. He said: ‘Physics, and the training of the young.’

      Education, and training of all sorts, continued throughout a Morlock’s lifetime, and it was not unusual for an individual to pursue three or four ‘careers’, as we might call them, in sequence, or even in parallel. The general level of intelligence of the Morlocks was, I got the impression, rather higher than that of the people of my own century.

      Still, Nebogipfel’s choice of vocations startled me; I had thought that Nebogipfel must specialize solely in the physical sciences, such was his ability to follow my sometimes rambling accounts of the theory of the Time Machine, and the evolution of History.

      ‘Tell me,’ I said lightly, ‘for which of your talents were you appointed to supervise me? Your expertise in physics – or your nannying skills?’

      I thought his black, small-toothed mouth stretched in a grin.

      Then the truth struck me – and I felt a certain humiliation burn in me at the thought. I am an eminent man of my day, and yet I had been put in the charge of one more suited to shepherding children!

      … And yet, I reflected now, what was my blundering about, when I first arrived in the Year 657,208, but the actions of a comparative child?

      Now Nebogipfel led me to a corner of the nursery area. This special place was covered by a structure about the size and shape of a small conservatory, done out in the pale, translucent material of the Floor – in fact, this was one of the few parts of that city-chamber to be covered over in any way. Nebogipfel led me inside the structure. The shelter was empty of furniture or apparatus, save for one or two of the partitions with glowing screens which I had noticed elsewhere. And, in the centre of the Floor, there was what looked like a small bundle – of clothing, perhaps – being extruded from the glass.

      The Morlocks who attended here had a more serious bent than those who supervised the children, I perceived. Over their pale hair they wore loose smocks – vest-like garments with many pockets – crammed with tools which were mostly quite incomprehensible to me. Some of the tools glowed faintly. This latest class of Morlock had something of the air of the engineer, I thought: it was an odd attribute in this sea of babies; and, although they were distracted by my clumsy presence, the engineers watched the little bundle on the Floor, and passed instruments over it periodically.

      My curiosity engaged, I stepped towards that central bundle. Nebogipfel hung back, letting me proceed alone. The thing was only a few inches long, and was still half-embedded in the glass, like a sculpture being hewn from some rocky surface. In fact it did look a little like a statue: here were the buds of two arms, I thought, and there was what might become a face – a disc coated with hair, and split by a thin mouth. The bundle’s extrusion seemed slow, and I wondered what was so difficult for the hidden devices about manufacturing this particular artefact. Was it especially complex, perhaps?

      And then – it was a moment which will haunt me as long as I live – that tiny mouth opened. The lips parted with a soft popping sound, and a mewling, fainter than that of the tiniest kitten, emerged to float on the air; and the miniature face crumpled, as if in some mild distress.

      I stumbled backwards, as shocked as if I had been punched.

      Nebogipfel seemed to have anticipated something of my distress. He said, ‘You must remember that you are dislocated in Time by a half million years: the interval between us is ten times the