which he was now unhappily tumbling. He landed with a thump, coughing and spluttering as he breathed in some of the thick dust shrouding him. Irritated by his clumsiness, Wells rose to his feet. Luckily he had no broken bones, although as a crowning humiliation, his trousers had been torn in several places, leaving part of a scrawny white buttock exposed.
Wells shook his head. What more could go wrong? he thought, brushing himself down as best he could. As the dust settled, he stood stock still, aghast, contemplating the figures slowly emerging from the gloom. An army of automatons was staring at him in ghostly silence. There were at least a dozen, all with the same inscrutable, intimidating expression, even the one standing slightly to the fore, who was wearing an incongruous gold crown. They looked as though they had halted in their tracks when they saw him roll down the incline. A terrible panic gripped Wells as he realised where he was. He had travelled to the year 2000 and, amazingly enough, it was exactly as Gilliam Murray had portrayed in his novel. There in front of him, before his very eyes, stood Solomon himself, the evil king of the automatons responsible for the devastation around him. His fate was sealed: he was going to be shot by a mechanical toy. There, in the very future he had refused to believe in.
‘I imagine right now you must be wishing Captain Shackleton would appear. Correct?’
The voice did not come from the automaton, although at that stage nothing would have surprised him, but from somewhere behind Wells. He recognised it instantly. He would have liked never to hear it again, but somehow, perhaps because he was a writer, he had known that, sooner or later, he would bump into Murray: the story in which they were both taking part needed a satisfying conclusion, one that would not frustrate the readers’ expectations. Wells would never have envisaged the encounter taking place in the future, though, for the simple reason that he had never believed in the possibility of travelling into the future. He turned slowly.
A few yards away, Gilliam Murray was watching him, with an amused grin. He was wearing a purple suit and a green top hat, like a human descendant of those beautifully plumed biblical birds of paradise. Sitting on its haunches next to him was an enormous golden dog.
‘Welcome to the year 2000, Mr Wells,’ Murray said, jovially. ‘Or should I say to
Wells looked at him suspiciously, one eye on the eerily frozen group of automatons drawn up before them as though posing for a portrait.
‘Are you afraid of my automatons? But how can you be scared of such an unconvincing future?’ Murray asked sarcastically. He walked slowly towards the automaton at the front of the group and, grinning deliberately at Wells, like a child about to perpetrate some mischief, placed his fleshy hand on its shoulder and gave it a push. The automaton keeled over backwards, crashing noisily into the one behind it, which in turn toppled on to the one next to it until, one after another, they had collapsed on to the ground. They fell with the fascinating slowness of a glacier breaking off.
When it was finally over, Murray spread the palms of his hands as if to apologise for the din. ‘With no one inside, they’re just hollow shells, mere disguises,’ he said.
Wells gazed at the pile of upturned automatons, then back at Murray, struggling with his dizzying feeling of unreality.
‘Forgive me for bringing you to the year 2000 against your will, Mr Wells,’ apologised Murray, feigning dismay. ‘If you’d accepted one of my invitations it wouldn’t have been necessary, but as you didn’t, I had no alternative. I wanted you to see it before I closed it down. I had to send one of my men to chloroform you while you were asleep, although from what he told me, you occupy your nights with other things. He got a real shock when you came in after he’d climbed through the attic window’
Murray’s words shed a welcome light on the author’s whirling thoughts, and he lost no time in tying up the necessary loose ends. He realised immediately he had not travelled to the year 2000, as everything appeared to indicate. The machine in his attic was still just a toy, and the razed city of London was no more than a vast stage set designed to hoodwink people. No doubt, on seeing him enter the attic, Murray’s henchman had hidden behind the time machine and waited, unsure what to do, perhaps contemplating carrying out Murray’s orders using force. Fortunately he had not needed to resort to an ignoble act of violence, as Wells himself had given the man the perfect opportunity to use the chloroform-soaked handkerchief he must have had at the ready by sitting in the time machine.
Of course, once he realised he was standing on a simple stage set and that he had not undergone some impossible journey through time, Wells felt greatly relieved. The situation he found himself in was by no means pleasant, of course, but at least it was logical.
‘I trust you haven’t harmed my wife,’ he said, not quite managing to sound threatening.
‘Have no fear,’ Murray reassured him, waving a hand in the air. ‘Your wife is a deep sleeper, and my men can be very quiet when they have to be. I’m sure that the lovely Jane is at this very moment sleeping peacefully, oblivious to your absence.’
Wells was about to make a riposte, but thought better of it. Murray was addressing him with the rather overblown arrogance of people in high places who have the world at their feet. Evidently, the tables had turned since their last meeting. If, during their interview at his house in Woking, Wells had been the one wielding the sceptre of power, now Murray held it between his fleshy fingers.
Over the intervening months, Murray had changed: he had become an altogether different creature. He was no longer the aspiring writer, obliged to kneel at his master’s feet, but the owner of the most lucrative business in London before whom everyone grotesquely bowed down. Wells, of course, did not think he deserved any kind of adulation, and if he allowed him to use that superior tone it was because he considered Murray was entitled to do so: after all, he was the outright winner of the duel they had been fighting during the past few months. And had not Wells used a similar tone when the sceptre had been in his hands?
Gilliam Murray spread his arms wide, like a ringmaster announcing the acts at a circus, symbolically embracing the surrounding devastation. ‘Well, what do you think of my world?’ he asked.
Wells glanced about him with utter indifference.
‘Not bad for a glasshouse manufacturer, don’t you agree, Mr Wells? That was my occupation before you gave me another reason to go on living.’
Wells could not fail to notice the responsibility Murray had ascribed to him in the forging of his destiny, but he preferred not to comment. Undeterred by Wells’s frostiness, Murray invited him with a beckoning finger, to take a stroll through the future. The author paused for a moment, then reluctantly followed him.
‘I don’t know whether you’re aware that glasshouses are a most lucrative business,’ said Gilliam, once Wells had drawn level with him. ‘Nowadays everyone sets aside part of their garden for these cosy spaces, where grown-ups like to relax and children play, and it is possible to grow plants and fruit trees out of season. Although
