The Hollow Lands

11. A Conversation on Time Machines and Other Topics

Although Mr. Wells's spirits seemed to have lifted considerably after he had left the Cafe Royale, he did not speak much until they had left the cab and were safely seated in a second class carriage which smelled strongly of smoke. At the ticket office Jherek had been embarrassed when he was expected to pay for his fare, but Wells, generously supposing him to have no English money, had paid for them both. Now he sat panting in one corner while Jherek sat opposite him in the other. Jherek took a wondering curiosity in the furnishings of the carriage. They were not at all as he had imagined them. He noted little stains and tears in the upholstery and assured himself that he would reproduce them faithfully at the next opportunity.

"I am extremely grateful to you, Mr. Wells. I had begun to wonder if I should ever find Bromley."

"You have friends there, have you?"

"One friend, yes. A lady. Perhaps you know her?"

"I know one or two people still, in Bromley."

"Mrs. Amelia Underwood?"

Mr. Wells frowned, shook his head and began to pack tobacco into his pipe. "No, I'm afraid not. What part does she live in?"

"Her address is 23 Collins Avenue."

"Ah, yes. One of the newer streets. Bromley's expanded a lot since I was a lad."

"You know the street?"

"I think so, yes. I'll put you on your way, don't worry." Mr. Wells sat back with his eyes twinkling. "Typical of old Harris to confuse you with someone else he'd never met. For some reason he hates to admit that he doesn't know someone. As a result he claims to know people he's absolutely no acquaintance with, they hear that he's spoken of them as if they were his dearest friends, get offended and won't have anything to do with him!" Mr. Wells's voice was high-pitched, bubbling, animated. "I'm inclined to be a bit in awe of him, none the less. He's ruined half-a-dozen papers, but still publishes some of the best stuff in London — and he gave me a chance I needed. You write for the French papers do you, Mr. Carnelian?"

"Well, no…" said Jherek, anxious not to have a repetition of his previous experience, when he had told the absolute truth and had been thoroughly disbelieved. "I travel a little."

"In England?"

"Oh, yes."

"And where have you visited so far?"

"Just the 19th century," said Jherek.

Mr. Wells plainly thought he had misheard Jherek, then his smile broadened. "You've read my book!" he said ebulliently. "You travel in time, do you, sir?"

"I do," said Jherek, relieved to be taken seriously for once.

"And you have a time machine?" Mr. Wells's eyes twinkled again.

"Not now," Jherek told him. "In fact, I'm looking for one, for I won't be able to use the method by which I arrived, to return. I'm from the future, you see, not the past."

"I see," said Mr. Wells gravely. The train had begun to move off. Jherek looked at identical smoke-grimed roof after identical smoke-grimed roof illumined by the gas-lamps.

"The houses all seem to be very similar and closely packed," he said. "They're rather different to those I saw earlier."

"Near the Cafe Royale? Yes, well you won't have slums in your age, of course."

"Slums?" said Jherek. "I don't think so." He was enjoying the jogging motion of the train. "This is great fun."

"Not quite like your monorails, eh?" said Mr. Wells.

"No," said Jherek politely. "Do you know Mr. Jackson, Mr. Wells? The man who left when I arrived."

"I've seen him once or twice. Had the odd chat with him. He seems interesting. But I visit the Saturday Review 's offices very infrequently — usually when Harris insists on it. He needs to see his contributors from time to time, to establish their reality, I think." Mr. Wells smiled in anticipation of his next remark. "Or perhaps to establish his own."

"You don't know where he lives in London?"

"You'll have to ask Harris that, I'm afraid."

"I'm not sure I'll have the chance now. As soon as I find Mrs. Underwood we'll have to start looking for a time machine. Would you know where to find one, Mr. Wells?"

Mr. Wells's reply was mysterious. "In here," he said, tapping his forehead with his pipestem. "That's where I found mine."

"You built your own?"

"You could say that."

"They are not common in this period, then?"

"Not at all common. Indeed, some critics have accused me of being altogether too imaginative in my claims. They consider my inventions not sufficiently rooted in reality."

"So time machines are just starting to catch on?"

"Well, mine seems to be catching on quite well. I'm beginning to get quite satisfactory results, although very few people expected it to go at first."

"You wouldn't be prepared to build me one, would you, Mr. Wells?"

"I'm afraid I'm more of a theorist than a practical scientist," Mr. Wells told him. "But if you build one and have any success, be sure to let me know."

"The only one I travelled in broke. There was evidence, by the way, to suggest that it came from a period two thousand years before this one. So perhaps you are actually re -discovering time travel."

"What a splendid notion, Mr. Carnelian. It's rare for me to meet someone with your particular quality of imagination. You should write the idea into a story for your Parisian readers. You'd be a rival to M. Verne in no time!"

Jherek hadn't quite followed him. "I can't write," he said. "Or read."

"No true Eloi should be able to read or write." Mr. Wells puffed on his pipe, peering out of the window. The train now ran past wider-spaced houses in broader streets as if some force at the centre of the city had the power to condense the buildings, as clay is condensed by centrifugal force as it is whirled on the potter's wheel. Jherek was hard put to think of any explanation and finally dismissed the problem. How, after all, could he expect to understand Dawn Age aesthetics as it were overnight?

"It's a shame you aren't doing my translations, M. Carnelian, you'd do a better job, I suspect, than some. You could even improve on the existing books!"

Again unable to follow the animated words of the young man, Jherek Carnelian gave up, merely nodding.

"Still, it wouldn't do to let oneself get too far-fetched, I suppose," Mr. Wells said thoughtfully. "People often ask me where I get my incredible ideas. They think I'm deliberately sensational. They don't seem to realize that the ideas seem very ordinary to me."

"Oh, they seem exceptionally ordinary to me, also!" said Jherek, eager to agree.

"Do you think so?" piped. H. G. Wells a little coldly.

"Here we are, Mr. Carnelian. This is your fabulous Bromley. We seem to be the only visitors at this time of night." Mr. Wells opened the carriage door and stepped out onto the platform. The station was lit by oil-lamps which flickered in a faint breeze. At the far end of the train a man in uniform put a whistle to his lips and blew a shrill blast, waving a green flag. Mr. Wells closed the door behind them and the train began to move out of the station. They walked past boxes full of flowers, past a white-painted fence, until they came to the exit. Here an old man accepted the tickets Mr. Wells handed him. They crossed the station precinct and entered a street full of two-story houses. A few gas-lamps lit the street. From somewhere nearby a horse trotted past. A couple of children were playing around one of the lamps. Jherek and Mr. Wells turned a corner.

"This is the High Street," Mr. Wells informed him. "I was born here, you know. It hasn't changed that much, though Bromley itself has expanded. It's pretty much a suburb of London now."

"Ah," murmured Jherek.

"There's Medhurst's," Mr. Wells pointed towards a darkened shop-front, "and that's where Atlas House used to be. It was never much of a success, my father's china shop. There's the old Bell , where most of the profits were spent. Cooper's the tailors, seems to have gone out of business. Woodall's fish-shop…" He chuckled. "For a time, you know, this was Heaven for me. Then it was Hell. Now, it's merely Purgatory."

"Why have you come back, Mr. Wells?"

"Business of my father's to clear up. I'll stop at the Rose and Crown and go back in the morning. It doesn't do any harm for a writer to take a look at his roots occasionally. I've come a long way since Bromley and Up Park. I've been very lucky, I suppose."

"And so have I been lucky, Mr. Wells, in meeting you." Jherek was almost ecstatic. "Bromley!" he breathed.

"You must be this town's first tourist, Mr. Carnelian."

"Thank you," Jherek said vaguely.

"Now," said Mr. Wells, "I'll put you on your way to Collins Avenue, then I'll head for the Rose and Crown before they begin to wonder what's happened to me."

Mr. Wells escorted him through several streets, where the hedges were extremely high and the houses much newer looking, until they paused on a corner of one tree-lined, gas-lit road. "Here we are in darkest semi-detached land," Mr. Wells announced. "Collins Avenue, see?"

He pointed out a sign which Jherek couldn't read.

"And where would Number Twenty Three be?"

"Well, I'd say about half-way up — let's see — on this side of the road. Yes — can you see it — right by that lamp."

"You're very kind, Mr. Wells. In a few moments I shall be re-united with my lost love! I have crossed thousands of centuries to be at her side! I have disproved the Morphail Theorem! I have dared the dangerous and surging seas of Time! At last, at least, I near the end of my arduous quest for Bromley!" Jherek took Mr. Wells by the shoulders and kissed him firmly upon the forehead. "And it is thanks to you , Mr. Wells, my dear!"

Mr. Wells backed away, perhaps a trifle nervously. "Glad to have been of insistence — um — assistance to you, Mr. Carnelian. Now I really must rush." And he turned and began to walk rapidly back in the direction they had come from.

Jherek was too happy to notice any change in Mr. Wells's manner. He strode with buoyant steps along the pavement of Collins Avenue. He reached a gate of curly cast iron. He jumped over it and walked up a crazy-paving path to the door of a red-brick Gothic villa not at all unlike the one Mrs. Underwood had had him build for her at the End of Time.

He knew what to do, for she had trained him well. He found the bell. He tugged it. He removed his top hat, wishing that he had remembered to bring some flowers with him. He studied, in admiration, the stained glass lilies set into the top half of the door.

There came a movement from within the house and at last the door was opened, but not by Mrs. Underwood. A rather young girl stood there. She wore black, with a white cap and a white apron. She looked at Jherek Carnelian with a mixture of surprise, curiosity and contempt.

"Yus?"

"This is Twenty Three Collins Avenue, Bromley, Kent, England, 1896?"

"It is."

"The residence of the beautiful Mrs. Amelia Underwood?"

"It's the Underwood residence right enough. What's your business?"

"I have come to see Mrs. Underwood. Is she within?"

"What's the name?"

"Carnelian. Tell her that Jherek Carnelian is here to take her back to their love-nest."

"Gor blimey!" said the young girl. "It's a bloomin' loony!"

"I do not follow you."

"You'd better not try, mister. Be off wiv yer! Garn! Mrs. Underwood'll 'ave the p'lice on yer wiv talk like that!" She tried to close the door, but Jherek was already partly inside. "Mrs. Underwood's a respectable lady! Shove off — go on !"

"I am really at a loss," said Jherek mildly, "to understand why you should have become so excited." Baffled, he still refused to budge. "Please tell Mrs. Underwood that I am here."

"Oh, lor! Oh, lor!" cried the girl. " 'Ave a bit o' sense, will yer! You'll get yerself arrested! There's a good chap — be on yer way and we'll say no more about it."

"I have come for Mrs. Underwood," Jherek said firmly. "I don't know why you should wish to stop me from seeing her. Perhaps I have offended one of your customs? I was convinced that I had done everything right. If there is something I should do — some convention I should follow — point it out, point it out. I have no desire to be rude."

"Rude! Oh, lor!" And turning her head she shouted back into the hall. "Mum! Mum! There's a maniac outside. I can't 'old him all be meself!"

A door opened. The hallway grew lighter. A figure in a dress of maroon velvet appeared.

"Mrs. Underwood!" cried Jherek. "Mrs. Amelia Underwood! It is I, Jherek Carnelian, returned to claim you for my own!"

Mrs. Underwood was as beautiful as ever, but even as he watched she grew gradually paler and paler. She leaned against the wall, her hand rising to her face. Her lips moved, but no sound issued from them.

"Help me, mum!" begged the maid, retreating into the hall. "I can't manage 'im be meself. You know 'ow strong these loonies can be!"

"I have returned, Mrs. Underwood. I have returned!"

"You —" He could barely hear the words. "You — were hanged , Mr. Carnelian. By the neck, until dead."

"Hanged? In the time machine, you mean? I thought you said you would go with me. I waited. You were evidently unable to join me. So I came back."

"C-came back!"

He pushed his way past the shivering maid. He stretched out his arms to embrace the woman he loved.

She put a pale hand to a pale forehead. There was a certain wild, distracted look in her eyes and she seemed to be talking to herself.

"My experiences — too much — knew I had not recovered properly — brain fever…"

And before he could take her to him she had collapsed upon the red and black Moorish-patterned carpet.