"I got up after a time, and began walking aimlessly
through the bushes towards the hill again. 'Patience,' said I to myself. 'If
you want your machine again you must leave that sphinx alone. If they mean to
take your machine away, it's little good your wrecking their bronze panels, and
if they don't, you will get it back as soon as you can ask for it. To sit among
all those unknown things before a puzzle like that is hopeless. That way lies
monomania. Face this world. Learn its ways, watch it, be careful of too hasty
guesses at its meaning. In the end you will find clues to it all.' Then
suddenly the humour of the situation came into my mind: the thought of the
years I had spent in study and toil to get into the future age, and now my
passion of anxiety to get out of it. I had made myself the most complicated and
the most hopeless trap that ever a man devised. Although it was at my own
expense, I could not help myself. I laughed aloud.
"Going through the big palace, it seemed to me that the
little people avoided me. It may have been my fancy, or it may have had
something to do with my hammering at the gates of bronze. Yet I felt tolerably
sure of the avoidance. I was careful, however, to show no concern and to
abstain from any pursuit of them, and in the course of a day or two things got
back to the old footing. I made what progress I could in the language, and in
addition I pushed my explorations here and there. Either I missed some subtle
point or their language was excessively simple, almost exclusively composed of
concrete substantives and verbs. There seemed to be few, if any, abstract
terms, or little use of figurative language. Their sentences were usually
simple and of two words, and I failed to convey or understand any but the
simplest propositions. I determined to put the thought of my Time Machine and
the mystery of the bronze doors under the sphinx as much as possible in a
corner of memory, until my growing knowledge would lead me back to them in a
natural way. Yet a certain feeling, you may understand, tethered me in a circle
of a few miles round the point of my arrival.
"So far as I could see, all the world displayed the
same exuberant richness as the Thames valley. From every hill I climbed I saw
the same abundance of splendid buildings, endlessly varied in material and
style, the same clustering thickets of evergreens, the same blossom-laden trees
and tree ferns. Here and there water shone like silver, and beyond, the land
rose into blue undulating hills, and so faded into the serenity of the sky. A
peculiar feature, which presently attracted my attention, was the presence of
certain circular wells, several, as it seemed to me, of a very great depth. One
lay by the path up the hill, which I had followed during my first walk. Like
the others, it was rimmed with bronze, curiously wrought, and protected by a
little cupola from the rain. Sitting by the side of these wells, and peering
down into the shafted darkness, I could see no gleam of water, nor could I
start any reflection with a lighted match. But in all of them I heard a certain
sound: a thud, thud, thud, like the beating of some big engine; and I
discovered, from the flaring of my matches, that a steady current of air set
down the shafts. Further, I threw a scrap of paper into the throat of one, and,
instead of fluttering slowly down, it was at once sucked swiftly out of sight.
"After a time, too, I came to connect these wells with
tall towers standing here and there upon the slopes; for above them there was
often just such a flicker in the air as one sees on a hot day above a
sun-scorched beach. Putting things together, I reached a strong suggestion of
an extensive system of subterranean ventilation, whose true import it was
difficult to imagine. I was at first inclined to associate it with the sanitary
apparatus of these people. It was an obvious conclusion, but it was absolutely
wrong.
"And here I must admit that I learned very little of
drains and bells and modes of conveyance, and the like conveniences, during my
time in this real future. In some of these visions of Utopias and coming times
which I have read, there is a vast amount of detail about building, and social
arrangements, and so forth. But while such details are easy enough to obtain
when the whole world is contained in one's imagination, they are altogether
inaccessible to a real traveller amid such realities as I found here. Conceive
the tale of London which a negro, fresh from Central Africa, would take back to
his tribe! What would he know of railway companies, of social movements,
of
telephone and telegraph wires, of the Parcels Delivery Company, and postal
orders and the like? Yet we, at least, should be willing enough to explain
these things to him! And even of what he knew, how much could he make his
untravelled friend either apprehend or believe? Then, think how narrow the gap
between a negro and a white man of our own times, and how wide the interval
between myself and these of the Golden Age! I was sensible of much which was
unseen, and which contributed to my comfort; but save for a general impression
of automatic organization, I fear I can convey very little of the difference to
your mind.
"In the matter of sepulchre, for instance, I could see
no signs of crematoria nor anything suggestive of tombs. But it occurred to me
that, possibly, there might be cemeteries (or crematoria) somewhere beyond the
range of my explorings. This, again, was a question I deliberately put to
myself, and my curiosity was at first entirely defeated upon the point. The
thing puzzled me, and I was led to make a further remark, which puzzled me
still more: that aged and infirm among this people there were none.
"I must confess that my satisfaction with my first
theories of an automatic civilization and a decadent humanity did not long
endure. Yet I could think of no other. Let me put my difficulties.
The several
big palaces I had explored were mere living places, great dining-halls and
sleeping apartments. I could find no machinery, no appliances of any kind. Yet
these people were clothed in pleasant fabrics that must at times need renewal,
and their sandals, though undecorated, were fairly complex specimens of
metal-work. Somehow such things must be made. And the little people displayed
no vestige of a creative tendency. There were no shops, no workshops, no sign
of importations among them. They spent all their time in playing gently, in
bathing in the river, in making love in a half-playful fashion, in eating fruit
and sleeping. I could not see how things were kept going.
"Then, again, about the Time Machine: something, I knew
not what, had taken it into the hollow pedestal of the White Sphinx. Why? For
the life of me I could not imagine. Those waterless wells, too, those
flickering pillars. I felt I lacked a clue. I felt how shall I put it? Suppose
you found an inscription, with sentences here and there in excellent plain
English, and interpolated therewith, others made up of words, of letters even,
absolutely unknown to you? Well, on the third day of my visit, that was how the
world of Eight Hundred and Two Thousand Seven Hundred and One presented itself
to me!
"That day, too, I made a friend of a sort. It happened
that, as I was watching some of the little people bathing in a shallow, one of
them was seized with cramp and began drifting downstream. The main current ran
rather swiftly, but not too strongly for even a moderate swimmer. It will give
you an idea, therefore, of the strange deficiency in these creatures, when I
tell you that none made the slightest attempt to rescue the weakly crying
little thing which was drowning before their eyes. When I realized this, I
hurriedly slipped off my clothes, and, wading in at a point lower down, I
caught the poor mite and drew her safe to land. A little rubbing of the limbs
soon brought her round, and I had the satisfaction of seeing she was all right
before I left her. I had got to such a low estimate of her kind that I did not
expect any gratitude from her. In that, however, I was wrong.
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