The Time Machine Read online

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  'As I stood there musing over this too perfect triumph of man, thefull moon, yellow and gibbous, came up out of an overflow of silverlight in the north-east. The bright little figures ceased to moveabout below, a noiseless owl flitted by, and I shivered with thechill of the night. I determined to descend and find where I couldsleep.

  'I looked for the building I knew. Then my eye travelled along tothe figure of the White Sphinx upon the pedestal of bronze, growingdistinct as the light of the rising moon grew brighter. I could seethe silver birch against it. There was the tangle of rhododendronbushes, black in the pale light, and there was the little lawn.I looked at the lawn again. A queer doubt chilled my complacency."No," said I stoutly to myself, "that was not the lawn."

  'But it _was_ the lawn. For the white leprous face of the sphinx wastowards it. Can you imagine what I felt as this conviction camehome to me? But you cannot. The Time Machine was gone!

  'At once, like a lash across the face, came the possibility oflosing my own age, of being left helpless in this strange new world.The bare thought of it was an actual physical sensation. I couldfeel it grip me at the throat and stop my breathing. In anothermoment I was in a passion of fear and running with great leapingstrides down the slope. Once I fell headlong and cut my face; I lostno time in stanching the blood, but jumped up and ran on, with awarm trickle down my cheek and chin. All the time I ran I was sayingto myself: "They have moved it a little, pushed it under the bushesout of the way." Nevertheless, I ran with all my might. All thetime, with the certainty that sometimes comes with excessive dread,I knew that such assurance was folly, knew instinctively that themachine was removed out of my reach. My breath came with pain. Isuppose I covered the whole distance from the hill crest to thelittle lawn, two miles perhaps, in ten minutes. And I am not a youngman. I cursed aloud, as I ran, at my confident folly in leaving themachine, wasting good breath thereby. I cried aloud, and noneanswered. Not a creature seemed to be stirring in that moonlitworld.

  'When I reached the lawn my worst fears were realized. Not a traceof the thing was to be seen. I felt faint and cold when I faced theempty space among the black tangle of bushes. I ran round itfuriously, as if the thing might be hidden in a corner, and thenstopped abruptly, with my hands clutching my hair. Above me toweredthe sphinx, upon the bronze pedestal, white, shining, leprous, inthe light of the rising moon. It seemed to smile in mockery of mydismay.

  'I might have consoled myself by imagining the little people had putthe mechanism in some shelter for me, had I not felt assured oftheir physical and intellectual inadequacy. That is what dismayedme: the sense of some hitherto unsuspected power, through whoseintervention my invention had vanished. Yet, for one thing I feltassured: unless some other age had produced its exact duplicate,the machine could not have moved in time. The attachment of thelevers--I will show you the method later--prevented any one fromtampering with it in that way when they were removed. It had moved,and was hid, only in space. But then, where could it be?

  'I think I must have had a kind of frenzy. I remember runningviolently in and out among the moonlit bushes all round the sphinx,and startling some white animal that, in the dim light, I took for asmall deer. I remember, too, late that night, beating the busheswith my clenched fist until my knuckles were gashed and bleedingfrom the broken twigs. Then, sobbing and raving in my anguish ofmind, I went down to the great building of stone. The big hall wasdark, silent, and deserted. I slipped on the uneven floor, and fellover one of the malachite tables, almost breaking my shin. I lit amatch and went on past the dusty curtains, of which I have told you.

  'There I found a second great hall covered with cushions, uponwhich, perhaps, a score or so of the little people were sleeping. Ihave no doubt they found my second appearance strange enough, comingsuddenly out of the quiet darkness with inarticulate noises and thesplutter and flare of a match. For they had forgotten about matches."Where is my Time Machine?" I began, bawling like an angry child,laying hands upon them and shaking them up together. It must havebeen very queer to them. Some laughed, most of them looked sorelyfrightened. When I saw them standing round me, it came into my headthat I was doing as foolish a thing as it was possible for me to dounder the circumstances, in trying to revive the sensation of fear.For, reasoning from their daylight behaviour, I thought that fearmust be forgotten.

  'Abruptly, I dashed down the match, and, knocking one of the peopleover in my course, went blundering across the big dining-hall again,out under the moonlight. I heard cries of terror and their littlefeet running and stumbling this way and that. I do not remember allI did as the moon crept up the sky. I suppose it was the unexpectednature of my loss that maddened me. I felt hopelessly cut off frommy own kind--a strange animal in an unknown world. I must have ravedto and fro, screaming and crying upon God and Fate. I have a memoryof horrible fatigue, as the long night of despair wore away; oflooking in this impossible place and that; of groping among moon-litruins and touching strange creatures in the black shadows; at last,of lying on the ground near the sphinx and weeping with absolutewretchedness. I had nothing left but misery. Then I slept, and whenI woke again it was full day, and a couple of sparrows were hoppinground me on the turf within reach of my arm.

  'I sat up in the freshness of the morning, trying to remember howI had got there, and why I had such a profound sense of desertionand despair. Then things came clear in my mind. With the plain,reasonable daylight, I could look my circumstances fairly in theface. I saw the wild folly of my frenzy overnight, and I couldreason with myself. "Suppose the worst?" I said. "Suppose themachine altogether lost--perhaps destroyed? It behoves me to becalm and patient, to learn the way of the people, to get a clearidea of the method of my loss, and the means of getting materialsand tools; so that in the end, perhaps, I may make another." Thatwould be my only hope, perhaps, but better than despair. And, afterall, it was a beautiful and curious world.

  'But probably, the machine had only been taken away. Still, I mustbe calm and patient, find its hiding-place, and recover it by forceor cunning. And with that I scrambled to my feet and looked aboutme, wondering where I could bathe. I felt weary, stiff, andtravel-soiled. The freshness of the morning made me desire an equalfreshness. I had exhausted my emotion. Indeed, as I went aboutmy business, I found myself wondering at my intense excitementovernight. I made a careful examination of the ground about thelittle lawn. I wasted some time in futile questionings, conveyed, aswell as I was able, to such of the little people as came by. Theyall failed to understand my gestures; some were simply stolid, somethought it was a jest and laughed at me. I had the hardest task inthe world to keep my hands off their pretty laughing faces. It wasa foolish impulse, but the devil begotten of fear and blind angerwas ill curbed and still eager to take advantage of my perplexity.The turf gave better counsel. I found a groove ripped in it, aboutmidway between the pedestal of the sphinx and the marks of my feetwhere, on arrival, I had struggled with the overturned machine.There were other signs of removal about, with queer narrowfootprints like those I could imagine made by a sloth. This directedmy closer attention to the pedestal. It was, as I think I have said,of bronze. It was not a mere block, but highly decorated with deepframed panels on either side. I went and rapped at these. Thepedestal was hollow. Examining the panels with care I found themdiscontinuous with the frames. There were no handles or keyholes,but possibly the panels, if they were doors, as I supposed, openedfrom within. One thing was clear enough to my mind. It took no verygreat mental effort to infer that my Time Machine was inside thatpedestal. But how it got there was a different problem.

  'I saw the heads of two orange-clad people coming through the bushesand under some blossom-covered apple-trees towards me. I turnedsmiling to them and beckoned them to me. They came, and then,pointing to the bronze pedestal, I tried to intimate my wish to openit. But at my first gesture towards this they behaved very oddly. Idon't know how to convey their expression to you. Suppose you wereto use a grossly improper gesture to a delicate
-minded woman--it ishow she would look. They went off as if they had received the lastpossible insult. I tried a sweet-looking little chap in white next,with exactly the same result. Somehow, his manner made me feelashamed of myself. But, as you know, I wanted the Time Machine, andI tried him once more. As he turned off, like the others, my tempergot the better of me. In three strides I was after him, had him bythe loose part of his robe round the neck, and began dragging himtowards the sphinx. Then I saw the horror and repugnance of hisface, and all of a sudden I let him go.

  'But I was not beaten yet. I banged with my fist at the bronzepanels. I thought I heard something stir inside--to be explicit,I thought I heard a sound like a chuckle--but I must have beenmistaken. Then I got a big pebble from the river, and came andhammered till I had flattened a coil in the decorations, and theverdigris came off in powdery flakes. The delicate little peoplemust have heard me hammering in gusty outbreaks a mile away oneither hand, but nothing came of it. I saw a crowd of them upon theslopes, looking furtively at me. At last, hot and tired, I sat downto watch the place. But I was too restless to watch long; I am tooOccidental for a long vigil. I could work at a problem for years,but to wait inactive for twenty-four hours--that is another matter.

  'I got up after a time, and began walking aimlessly through thebushes towards the hill again. "Patience," said I to myself. "If youwant your machine again you must leave that sphinx alone. If theymean to take your machine away, it's little good your wrecking theirbronze panels, and if they don't, you will get it back as soon asyou can ask for it. To sit among all those unknown things before apuzzle like that is hopeless. That way lies monomania. Face thisworld. Learn its ways, watch it, be careful of too hasty guessesat its meaning. In the end you will find clues to it all." Thensuddenly the humour of the situation came into my mind: the thoughtof the years I had spent in study and toil to get into the futureage, and now my passion of anxiety to get out of it. I had mademyself the most complicated and the most hopeless trap that ever aman devised. Although it was at my own expense, I could not helpmyself. I laughed aloud.

  'Going through the big palace, it seemed to me that the littlepeople avoided me. It may have been my fancy, or it may have hadsomething to do with my hammering at the gates of bronze. Yet I felttolerably sure of the avoidance. I was careful, however, to show noconcern and to abstain from any pursuit of them, and in the courseof a day or two things got back to the old footing. I made whatprogress I could in the language, and in addition I pushed myexplorations here and there. Either I missed some subtle point ortheir language was excessively simple--almost exclusively composedof concrete substantives and verbs. There seemed to be few, if any,abstract terms, or little use of figurative language. Theirsentences were usually simple and of two words, and I failed toconvey or understand any but the simplest propositions. I determinedto put the thought of my Time Machine and the mystery of the bronzedoors under the sphinx as much as possible in a corner of memory,until my growing knowledge would lead me back to them in a naturalway. Yet a certain feeling, you may understand, tethered me in acircle of a few miles round the point of my arrival.

  'So far as I could see, all the world displayed the same exuberantrichness as the Thames valley. From every hill I climbed I saw thesame abundance of splendid buildings, endlessly varied in materialand style, the same clustering thickets of evergreens, the sameblossom-laden trees and tree-ferns. Here and there water shone likesilver, and beyond, the land rose into blue undulating hills, andso faded into the serenity of the sky. A peculiar feature, whichpresently attracted my attention, was the presence of certaincircular 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 myfirst walk. Like the others, it was rimmed with bronze, curiouslywrought, and protected by a little cupola from the rain. Sitting bythe side of these wells, and peering down into the shafted darkness,I could see no gleam of water, nor could I start any reflectionwith 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 Idiscovered, from the flaring of my matches, that a steady current ofair set down the shafts. Further, I threw a scrap of paper into thethroat of one, and, instead of fluttering slowly down, it was atonce sucked swiftly out of sight.

  'After a time, too, I came to connect these wells with tall towersstanding here and there upon the slopes; for above them there wasoften just such a flicker in the air as one sees on a hot day abovea sun-scorched beach. Putting things together, I reached a strongsuggestion of an extensive system of subterranean ventilation, whosetrue import it was difficult to imagine. I was at first inclined toassociate it with the sanitary apparatus of these people. It was anobvious conclusion, but it was absolutely wrong.

  'And here I must admit that I learned very little of drains andbells and modes of conveyance, and the like conveniences, during mytime in this real future. In some of these visions of Utopias andcoming times which I have read, there is a vast amount of detailabout building, and social arrangements, and so forth. But whilesuch details are easy enough to obtain when the whole world iscontained in one's imagination, they are altogether inaccessible toa real traveller amid such realities as I found here. Conceive thetale of London which a negro, fresh from Central Africa, would takeback to his tribe! What would he know of railway companies, ofsocial movements, of telephone and telegraph wires, of the ParcelsDelivery Company, and postal orders and the like? Yet we, at least,should be willing enough to explain these things to him! And even ofwhat he knew, how much could he make his untravelled friend eitherapprehend or believe? Then, think how narrow the gap between a negroand a white man of our own times, and how wide the interval betweenmyself and these of the Golden Age! I was sensible of much which wasunseen, and which contributed to my comfort; but save for a generalimpression of automatic organization, I fear I can convey verylittle of the difference to your mind.

  'In the matter of sepulture, for instance, I could see no signs ofcrematoria nor anything suggestive of tombs. But it occurred to methat, possibly, there might be cemeteries (or crematoria) somewherebeyond the range of my explorings. This, again, was a question Ideliberately put to myself, and my curiosity was at first entirelydefeated upon the point. The thing puzzled me, and I was led to makea further remark, which puzzled me still more: that aged and infirmamong this people there were none.

  'I must confess that my satisfaction with my first theories of anautomatic civilization and a decadent humanity did not long endure.Yet I could think of no other. Let me put my difficulties. Theseveral big palaces I had explored were mere living places, greatdining-halls and sleeping apartments. I could find no machinery, noappliances of any kind. Yet these people were clothed in pleasantfabrics that must at times need renewal, and their sandals, thoughundecorated, were fairly complex specimens of metalwork. Somehowsuch things must be made. And the little people displayed no vestigeof a creative tendency. There were no shops, no workshops, no signof importations among them. They spent all their time in playinggently, in bathing in the river, in making love in a half-playfulfashion, in eating fruit and sleeping. I could not see how thingswere 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? Forthe life of me I could not imagine. Those waterless wells, too,those flickering pillars. I felt I lacked a clue. I felt--how shallI put it? Suppose you found an inscription, with sentences here andthere in excellent plain English, and interpolated therewith, othersmade up of words, of letters even, absolutely unknown to you? Well,on the third day of my visit, that was how the world of EightHundred and Two Thousand Seven Hundred and One presented itself tome!

  'That day, too, I made a friend--of a sort. It happened that, as Iwas watching some of the little people bathing in a shallow, one ofthem was seized with cramp and began drifting downstream. The maincurrent ran rather swiftly, but not too strongly for even a moderateswimmer. It will give you an idea, therefore, of the strangedeficie
ncy in these creatures, when I tell you that none made theslightest attempt to rescue the weakly crying little thing whichwas drowning before their eyes. When I realized this, I hurriedlyslipped off my clothes, and, wading in at a point lower down, Icaught the poor mite and drew her safe to land. A little rubbing ofthe limbs soon brought her round, and I had the satisfaction ofseeing she was all right before I left her. I had got to such a lowestimate of her kind that I did not expect any gratitude from her.In that, however, I was wrong.

  'This happened in the morning. In the afternoon I met my littlewoman, as I believe it was, as I was returning towards my centrefrom an exploration, and she received me with cries of delight andpresented me with a big garland of flowers--evidently made for meand me alone. The thing took my imagination. Very possibly I hadbeen feeling desolate. At any rate I did my best to display myappreciation of the gift. We were soon seated together in a littlestone arbour, engaged in conversation, chiefly of smiles. Thecreature's friendliness affected me exactly as a child's might havedone. We passed each other flowers, and she kissed my hands. I didthe same to hers. Then I tried talk, and found that her name wasWeena, which, though I don't know what it meant, somehow seemedappropriate enough. That was the beginning of a queer friendshipwhich lasted a week, and ended--as I will tell you!

  'She was exactly like a child. She wanted to be with me always. Shetried to follow me everywhere, and on my next journey out and aboutit went to my heart to tire her down, and leave her at last,exhausted and calling after me rather plaintively. But the problemsof the world had to be mastered. I had not, I said to myself, comeinto the future to carry on a miniature flirtation. Yet her distresswhen I left her was very great, her expostulations at the partingwere sometimes frantic, and I think, altogether, I had as muchtrouble as comfort from her devotion. Nevertheless she was, somehow,a very great comfort. I thought it was mere childish affection thatmade her cling to me. Until it was too late, I did not clearly knowwhat I had inflicted upon her when I left her. Nor until it was toolate did I clearly understand what she was to me. For, by merelyseeming fond of me, and showing in her weak, futile way that shecared for me, the little doll of a creature presently gave my returnto the neighbourhood of the White Sphinx almost the feeling ofcoming home; and I would watch for her tiny figure of white and goldso soon as I came over the hill.

  'It was from her, too, that I learned that fear had not yet left theworld. She was fearless enough in the daylight, and she had theoddest confidence in me; for once, in a foolish moment, I madethreatening grimaces at her, and she simply laughed at them. But shedreaded the dark, dreaded shadows, dreaded black things. Darknessto her was the one thing dreadful. It was a singularly passionateemotion, and it set me thinking and observing. I discovered then,among other things, that these little people gathered into the greathouses after dark, and slept in droves. To enter upon them without alight was to put them into a tumult of apprehension. I never foundone out of doors, or one sleeping alone within doors, after dark.Yet I was still such a blockhead that I missed the lesson of thatfear, and in spite of Weena's distress I insisted upon sleeping awayfrom these slumbering multitudes.

  'It troubled her greatly, but in the end her odd affection for metriumphed, and for five of the nights of our acquaintance, includingthe last night of all, she slept with her head pillowed on my arm.But my story slips away from me as I speak of her. It must have beenthe night before her rescue that I was awakened about dawn. I hadbeen restless, dreaming most disagreeably that I was drowned, andthat sea anemones were feeling over my face with their soft palps.I woke with a start, and with an odd fancy that some greyish animalhad just rushed out of the chamber. I tried to get to sleep again,but I felt restless and uncomfortable. It was that dim grey hourwhen things are just creeping out of darkness, when everything iscolourless and clear cut, and yet unreal. I got up, and went downinto the great hall, and so out upon the flagstones in front of thepalace. I thought I would make a virtue of necessity, and see thesunrise.

  'The moon was setting, and the dying moonlight and the first pallorof dawn were mingled in a ghastly half-light. The bushes were inkyblack, the ground a sombre grey, the sky colourless and cheerless.And up the hill I thought I could see ghosts. There several times,as I scanned the slope, I saw white figures. Twice I fancied I sawa solitary white, ape-like creature running rather quickly up thehill, and once near the ruins I saw a leash of them carrying somedark body. They moved hastily. I did not see what became of them.It seemed that they vanished among the bushes. The dawn was stillindistinct, you must understand. I was feeling that chill,uncertain, early-morning feeling you may have known. I doubtedmy eyes.

  'As the eastern sky grew brighter, and the light of the day came onand its vivid colouring returned upon the world once more, I scannedthe view keenly. But I saw no vestige of my white figures. They weremere creatures of the half light. "They must have been ghosts," Isaid; "I wonder whence they dated." For a queer notion of GrantAllen's came into my head, and amused me. If each generation die andleave ghosts, he argued, the world at last will get overcrowded withthem. On that theory they would have grown innumerable some EightHundred Thousand Years hence, and it was no great wonder to see fourat once. But the jest was unsatisfying, and I was thinking of thesefigures all the morning, until Weena's rescue drove them out of myhead. I associated them in some indefinite way with the white animalI had startled in my first passionate search for the Time Machine.But Weena was a pleasant substitute. Yet all the same, they weresoon destined to take far deadlier possession of my mind.

  'I think I have said how much hotter than our own was the weatherof this Golden Age. I cannot account for it. It may be that the sunwas hotter, or the earth nearer the sun. It is usual to assume thatthe sun will go on cooling steadily in the future. But people,unfamiliar with such speculations as those of the younger Darwin,forget that the planets must ultimately fall back one by one intothe parent body. As these catastrophes occur, the sun will blazewith renewed energy; and it may be that some inner planet hadsuffered this fate. Whatever the reason, the fact remains that thesun was very much hotter than we know it.

  'Well, one very hot morning--my fourth, I think--as I was seekingshelter from the heat and glare in a colossal ruin near the greathouse where I slept and fed, there happened this strange thing:Clambering among these heaps of masonry, I found a narrow gallery,whose end and side windows were blocked by fallen masses of stone.By contrast with the brilliancy outside, it seemed at firstimpenetrably dark to me. I entered it groping, for the change fromlight to blackness made spots of colour swim before me. Suddenly Ihalted spellbound. A pair of eyes, luminous by reflection againstthe daylight without, was watching me out of the darkness.

  'The old instinctive dread of wild beasts came upon me. I clenchedmy hands and steadfastly looked into the glaring eyeballs. I wasafraid to turn. Then the thought of the absolute security in whichhumanity appeared to be living came to my mind. And then Iremembered that strange terror of the dark. Overcoming my fear tosome extent, I advanced a step and spoke. I will admit that myvoice was harsh and ill-controlled. I put out my hand and touchedsomething soft. At once the eyes darted sideways, and somethingwhite ran past me. I turned with my heart in my mouth, and saw aqueer little ape-like figure, its head held down in a peculiarmanner, running across the sunlit space behind me. It blunderedagainst a block of granite, staggered aside, and in a moment washidden in a black shadow beneath another pile of ruined masonry.

  'My impression of it is, of course, imperfect; but I know it was adull white, and had strange large greyish-red eyes; also that therewas flaxen hair on its head and down its back. But, as I say, itwent too fast for me to see distinctly. I cannot even say whether itran on all-fours, or only with its forearms held very low. After aninstant's pause I followed it into the second heap of ruins. I couldnot find it at first; but, after a time in the profound obscurity, Icame upon one of those round well-like openings of which I have toldyou, half closed by a fallen pillar. A sudden thought came to me.Could t
his Thing have vanished down the shaft? I lit a match, and,looking down, I saw a small, white, moving creature, with largebright eyes which regarded me steadfastly as it retreated. It mademe shudder. It was so like a human spider! It was clambering downthe wall, and now I saw for the first time a number of metal footand hand rests forming a kind of ladder down the shaft. Then thelight burned my fingers and fell out of my hand, going out as itdropped, and when I had lit another the little monster haddisappeared.

  'I do not know how long I sat peering down that well. It was not forsome time that I could succeed in persuading myself that the thing Ihad seen was human. But, gradually, the truth dawned on me: thatMan had not remained one species, but had differentiated into twodistinct animals: that my graceful children of the Upper-world werenot the sole descendants of our generation, but that this bleached,obscene, nocturnal Thing, which had flashed before me, was also heirto all the ages.

  'I thought of the flickering pillars and of my theory of anunderground ventilation. I began to suspect their true import. Andwhat, I wondered, was this Lemur doing in my scheme of a perfectlybalanced organization? How was it related to the indolent serenityof the beautiful Upper-worlders? And what was hidden down there,at the foot of that shaft? I sat upon the edge of the well tellingmyself that, at any rate, there was nothing to fear, and that thereI must descend for the solution of my difficulties. And withal Iwas absolutely afraid to go! As I hesitated, two of the beautifulUpper-world people came running in their amorous sport across thedaylight in the shadow. The male pursued the female, flingingflowers at her as he ran.

  'They seemed distressed to find me, my arm against the overturnedpillar, peering down the well. Apparently it was considered bad formto remark these apertures; for when I pointed to this one, and triedto frame a question about it in their tongue, they were still morevisibly distressed and turned away. But they were interested by mymatches, and I struck some to amuse them. I tried them again aboutthe well, and again I failed. So presently I left them, meaning togo back to Weena, and see what I could get from her. But my mind wasalready in revolution; my guesses and impressions were slipping andsliding to a new adjustment. I had now a clue to the import of thesewells, to the ventilating towers, to the mystery of the ghosts; tosay nothing of a hint at the meaning of the bronze gates and thefate of the Time Machine! And very vaguely there came a suggestiontowards the solution of the economic problem that had puzzled me.

  'Here was the new view. Plainly, this second species of Man wassubterranean. There were three circumstances in particular whichmade me think that its rare emergence above ground was the outcomeof a long-continued underground habit. In the first place, there wasthe bleached look common in most animals that live largely in thedark--the white fish of the Kentucky caves, for instance. Then,those large eyes, with that capacity for reflecting light, arecommon features of nocturnal things--witness the owl and the cat.And last of all, that evident confusion in the sunshine, that hastyyet fumbling awkward flight towards dark shadow, and that peculiarcarriage of the head while in the light--all reinforced the theoryof an extreme sensitiveness of the retina.

  'Beneath my feet, then, the earth must be tunnelled enormously, andthese tunnellings were the habitat of the new race. The presence ofventilating shafts and wells along the hill slopes--everywhere, infact, except along the river valley--showed how universal were itsramifications. What so natural, then, as to assume that it was inthis artificial Underworld that such work as was necessary to thecomfort of the daylight race was done? The notion was so plausiblethat I at once accepted it, and went on to assume the _how_ of thissplitting of the human species. I dare say you will anticipate theshape of my theory; though, for myself, I very soon felt that itfell far short of the truth.

  'At first, proceeding from the problems of our own age, it seemedclear as daylight to me that the gradual widening of the presentmerely temporary and social difference between the Capitalist andthe Labourer, was the key to the whole position. No doubt it willseem grotesque enough to you--and wildly incredible!--and yet evennow there are existing circumstances to point that way. There isa tendency to utilize underground space for the less ornamentalpurposes of civilization; there is the Metropolitan Railway inLondon, for instance, there are new electric railways, there aresubways, there are underground workrooms and restaurants, and theyincrease and multiply. Evidently, I thought, this tendency hadincreased till Industry had gradually lost its birthright in thesky. I mean that it had gone deeper and deeper into larger and everlarger underground factories, spending a still-increasing amount ofits time therein, till, in the end--! Even now, does not an East-endworker live in such artificial conditions as practically to be cutoff from the natural surface of the earth?

  'Again, the exclusive tendency of richer people--due, no doubt, tothe increasing refinement of their education, and the widening gulfbetween them and the rude violence of the poor--is already leadingto the closing, in their interest, of considerable portions of thesurface of the land. About London, for instance, perhaps half theprettier country is shut in against intrusion. And this samewidening gulf--which is due to the length and expense of the highereducational process and the increased facilities for and temptationstowards refined habits on the part of the rich--will make thatexchange between class and class, that promotion by intermarriagewhich at present retards the splitting of our species along linesof social stratification, less and less frequent. So, in the end,above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfortand beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers gettingcontinually adapted to the conditions of their labour. Once theywere there, they would no doubt have to pay rent, and not a littleof it, for the ventilation of their caverns; and if they refused,they would starve or be suffocated for arrears. Such of them as wereso constituted as to be miserable and rebellious would die; and, inthe end, the balance being permanent, the survivors would become aswell adapted to the conditions of underground life, and as happy intheir way, as the Upper-world people were to theirs. As it seemed tome, the refined beauty and the etiolated pallor followed naturallyenough.

  'The great triumph of Humanity I had dreamed of took a differentshape in my mind. It had been no such triumph of moral education andgeneral co-operation as I had imagined. Instead, I saw a realaristocracy, armed with a perfected science and working to a logicalconclusion the industrial system of to-day. Its triumph had not beensimply a triumph over Nature, but a triumph over Nature and thefellow-man. This, I must warn you, was my theory at the time. I hadno convenient cicerone in the pattern of the Utopian books. Myexplanation may be absolutely wrong. I still think it is themost plausible one. But even on this supposition the balancedcivilization that was at last attained must have long since passedits zenith, and was now far fallen into decay. The too-perfectsecurity of the Upper-worlders had led them to a slow movement ofdegeneration, to a general dwindling in size, strength, andintelligence. That I could see clearly enough already. What hadhappened to the Under-grounders I did not yet suspect; but from whatI had seen of the Morlocks--that, by the by, was the name by whichthese creatures were called--I could imagine that the modificationof the human type was even far more profound than among the "Eloi,"the beautiful race that I already knew.

  'Then came troublesome doubts. Why had the Morlocks taken my TimeMachine? For I felt sure it was they who had taken it. Why, too, ifthe Eloi were masters, could they not restore the machine to me? Andwhy were they so terribly afraid of the dark? I proceeded, as I havesaid, to question Weena about this Under-world, but here again I wasdisappointed. At first she would not understand my questions, andpresently she refused to answer them. She shivered as though thetopic was unendurable. And when I pressed her, perhaps a littleharshly, she burst into tears. They were the only tears, except myown, I ever saw in that Golden Age. When I saw them I ceasedabruptly to trouble about the Morlocks, and was only concerned inbanishing these signs of the human inheritance from Weena's eyes.And very soon she was smiling and clapping her hands, while Isolemnly
burned a match.