The Time Ships

“None. None. I had to get away from Europe,” he said to me, and his voice was low, like a conspirator’s.

“Why?”

“Because of the Kaiser, of course.”

Barnes Wallis shot me warning glares.

“I have evidence, you know,” Godel said intently. “Take two photographs — one from 1915, say, and one from this year, of the man purporting to be Kaiser Wilhelm. If you measure the length of the nose, and take its ratio with the distance from the tip of the nose to the point of the chin — you’ll find it different!”

“I — ah — Great Scott!”

“Indeed. And with such a simulacrum at the helm — who knows where Germany is heading? Eh?”

“Quite,” said Wallis hastily. “Anyway, whatever your motives, we’re glad you accepted our offer of a Professorship here — that you chose Britain to make your home.”

“Yes,” I said, “couldn’t you have found a place in America? Perhaps at Princeton, or—”

He looked shocked. “I’m sure I could. But it would be quite impossible. Quite impossible.”

“Why?”

“Because of the Constitution, of course!” And now this extraordinary chap went into a long and rambling discourse on how he had discovered a logical loop-hole in the American Constitution, which would allow the legal creation of a dictatorship!

Wallis and I sat and endured this.

“Well,” Godel said when he had run down, “what do you think of that?”

I got more stern looks from Wallis, but I decided to be honest. “I can’t fault your logic,” I said, “but its application strikes me as outlandish in the extreme.”

He snorted. “Well — perhaps! — but logic is everything. Don’t you think? The axiomatic method is very powerful.” He smiled. “I also have an ontological proof for the existence of God — quite faultless, as far as I can see — and with honorable antecedents, going back eight hundred years to Archbishop Anselm. You see—”

“Perhaps another time, Professor,” Wallis said.

“Ah — yes. Very well.” He looked from one to other of us — his gaze was piercing, quite unnerving. “So. Time travel. I’m really quite envious of you, you know.”

“For my traveling?”

“Yes. But not for all this tedious hopping about through History.” His eyes were watery; they gleamed in the strong electric light.

“What, then?”

“Why, for the glimpses of other Worlds than this — other Possibilities — do you see?”

I felt chilled; his grasp seemed extraordinary — almost telepathic. “Tell me what you mean.”

“The reality of other Worlds, containing a meaning beyond that of our brief existence, seems evident to me. Anyone who has experienced the wonder of mathematical discovery must know that mathematical Truths have an independent existence from the minds in which they lodge — that the Truths are splinters of the thoughts of some higher Mind…

“Look: our lives, here on earth, have but a dubious meaning. And so their true significance must lie outside this world. Do you see? So much is mere logic. And the idea that everything in the world has an ultimate Meaning is an exact analogue of the principle that everything has a Cause — a principle on which rests all of science.

“It follows, immediately, that somewhere beyond our History is the Final World — the World where all Meaning is resolved.

“Time travel, by its very nature, results in the perturbation of History, and hence the generation, or discovery, of Worlds other than this. Therefore the task of the Time Traveler is to search — to search on, until that Final World is found — or built!”

By the time we left Godel, my thoughts were racing. I resolved never to mock Mathematical Philosophers again, for this odd little man had journeyed further in Time, Space and Understanding, without leaving his office, than I ever had in my Time Machine! And I knew that I must indeed visit Godel again soon… for I was convinced that I had seen a flask of raw Plattnerite, tucked inside his crate!

[11] The New World Order

I was returned to our lodging at about six. I came in calling halloos, and found the rest of my party in the smoking-room. The Morlock was still poring over his notes — he seemed to be trying to reconstruct the whole of this future science of Quantum Mechanics from his own imperfect memory — but he jumped up when I came in. “Did you find him? Godel?”

“I did.” I smiled at him. “And — yes! — you were right.” I glanced at Filby, but the poor old chap was dozing over a magazine, and could not hear us. “I think Godel has some Plattnerite.”

“Ah.” The Morlock’s face was as inexpressive as ever, but he thumped one fist into the other palm in a decidedly human gesture. “Then there is hope.”

Now Moses walked up to me; he handed me a glass of what proved to be whisky-and-water. I gulped at the drink gratefully, for the day had stayed as hot as in the morning.

Moses moved a little closer to me, and the three of us bent our heads together and spoke quietly. “I’ve come to a conclusion as well,” Moses said.

“Which is?”

“That we must indeed get out of here — by any means possible!”

Moses told me the story of his day. Growing bored with his confinement, he had struck up conversations with our young soldier-guards. Some of these were privates, but others were Officer- class; and all of those assigned to guard us and to other duties in this scientific campus area were generally intelligent and well-educated. They seemed to have taken a liking to Moses, and had invited him to a nearby hostelry — the Queen’s Arms in Queen’s Gate Mews — and later they had taken rickshaws into the West End. Over several drinks, these young people had evidently enjoyed arguing through their ideas — and the concepts of their new Modern State — with this stranger from the past.

For my part I was pleased that Moses seemed to be shaking off his timidity, and was showing interest in the world in which we found ourselves. I listened to what he had to say with fascination.

“These youngsters are all highly likable,” Moses said. “Competent — practical — clearly brave. But their views!”

The great concept of the future — Moses had learned — was to be Planning. When the Modern State was in place, as directed by a victorious Britain and her Allies, an Air and Sea Control would take effective possession of all the ports, coal mines, oil wells, power stations and mines. Similarly a Transport Control would take over the world’s shipyards and turn them away from warships to manufacturing steel cargo ships. The Allied Supply Control would organize the production of iron, steel, rubber, metals, cotton, wool and vegetable substances. And the Food Control…

“Well!” Moses said. “You get the picture. It’s an end of Ownership, you see; all these resources will be owned by the new Allied World State. The resources of the world will be made to work together, at last, for the repair of the War-ravaged lands — and later, for the betterment of Humanity. All Planned, you see, by an all-wise, all-knowing Fellowship — who, by the by, will elect themselves!”

“Aside from that last, it doesn’t sound so bad,” I mused.

“Maybe — but this Planning isn’t to stop with the physical resources of the planet. It includes the human resources as well.

“And that’s where the problems start. First of all there is behavior.” He looked at me. “These youngsters don’t look back with much favor on our times,” he said. “We suffer from a ’profound laxity of private conduct’ — so I was informed! These new types have gone back the other way: towards a severe austerity — particularly regarding sexual excitement. Decent busy-ness! — that is the order of the day.”

I felt a twinge of nostalgia. “I suppose this bodes ill for the future of the Empire, Leicester Square.”

“Closed already! Demolished? — to make way for a Railway Planning Office.

“And it goes on. In the next phase, things will get a little more active. We will see the painless destruction of the more ’pitiful sorts of defectives’ — these are not my words! — and also the sterilization of some types who would otherwise have transmitted tendencies that are, I quote, ’plainly undesirable.’ “

“In some parts of Britain, it seems, this cleansing process has already begun. They have a type of gas called Pabst’s Kinetogens…

“Well. You can see that they are making a start here at directing Humanity’s racial heredity.”

“Hmm,” I said. “I find myself with a deep distrust of such normalizing, Is it really so desirable that the future of the human species should be filtered through the ’tolerance’ of the Englishman of 1938? Should his long shadow stretch down, through all the millions of years to come?”

“It’s all Planning, you see,” Moses said. “And, they say, the only alternative is a relapse through chaotic barbarism — to final extinction.”

“Are men — modern men — capable of such epochal deeds?”

Moses said, “There will surely be bloodshed and conflict on a scale not yet envisaged — even by the standards of this dull, ghastly War as the majority of the world resists the imposition of a flawed Plan by these Allied technocrats.”

I met Moses’s eyes, and I recognized there a certain righteous anger, an infuriation at the foolishness of mankind, which had informed my own, younger soul. I had always had a distrust of the advancement, willy-nilly, of civilization, for it seemed to me an unstable edifice which must one day collapse about the foolish heads of its makers; and this Modern State business seemed about the most extreme folly, short of actual War, I had heard in awhile! It was as if I could see Moses’s thoughts in his gray eye — she had thrown off his funk, and become a younger, more determined version of me — and I had not felt closer to him since we met.

“Well, then,” I said, “the matter is decided. I don’t think any of us can tolerate such a future.” Moses shook his head — Nebogipfel appeared to acquiesce — and, for my part, I renewed my resolve to put an end to this time-traveling business once and for all. “We must escape. But how—”

And then, even before I could finish framing the question, the house shook.

I was hurled down, nearly catching my head on the desk. There was a rumble — a deep boom, like the slamming of a door, deep inside the earth. The lamps flickered, but did not die. All around me there were cries — poor Filby whimpered — and I heard the tinkle of glass, the clatter of falling furniture.

The building seemed to settle. Coughing, for an inordinate quantity of dust had been raised, I struggled to my feet. “Is everyone all right? Moses? Morlock?”

Moses had already turned to help Nebogipfel. The Morlock seemed unhurt, but he’d got himself caught under a fallen bookcase.

I let them be and looked for Filby. The old chap had been lucky; he’d not even been thrown out of his chair. But now he stood up and made his way to the window, which was cracked clean across.

I reached him and put my arms around his bowed shoulders. “Filby, my dear chap — come away.”

But he ignored me. His rheumy eyes streaming with water, and his face caked with dust, he raised a crooked finger to the window. “Look.”

I leaned closer to the glass, cupping my hand against the reflection of the electric lamps. The Babble Machine Aldis lamps had died, as had many of the street-lamps. I saw people running,