“Are you asleep, Edward?” Her voice was very soft.
“No,” I said.
“I’m still cold. Do you think we should quickly cut some more leaves?”
“I think we should stay still. Warmth will come.”
“Hold me tighter.”
What followed that apparently simple remark I could never have imagined, even in my most improper fancies. Spontaneously, I brought my other hand across and hugged her to me; in the same moment Amelia too placed her arms fully about me, and we discovered we were embracing each other with an intimacy that made me throw aside caution.
Her face was pressed directly against the side of mine, and I felt it moving sensuously to and fro. I responded in kind, fully aware that the love and passion I had been suppressing were growing in me at an uncontrollable rate. In the back of my mind I sensed a sudden despair, knowing that later I would regret this abandonment, but I thrust it aside for my emotions were clamouring for expression. Her neck was by my mouth, and without any attempt at subterfuge I pressed my lips to it and kissed her firmly and with great feeling. Her response was to hold me yet tighter, and uncaring of how we dislodged our shelter we rolled passionately from one side to another.
Then at last I pulled myself away, and Amelia turned her face and pressed her lips against mine. I was now lying almost completely atop her, and my weight was on her. We broke apart eventually, and I held my face half an inch from hers.
I simply said, with all the sincerity of absolute truth: “I love you, Amelia.”
She made no answer other than to press my face to hers once more, and we kissed as if we had never stopped. She was everything that could ever exist for me, and for that period at least the extraordinary nature of our immediate surroundings ceased to matter. I wanted simply that we should continue kissing forever. Indeed, by the very nature of her response, I assumed that Amelia was in accord. Her hand was behind my head, her fingers spread through my hair, and she was pressing me to her as we kissed.
Then she suddenly snatched her hand away, wrenched her face from mine, and she cried out aloud.
The tension drained away, and my body slumped. I fell forward across her, my face once more buried in the hollow of her shoulder. We lay immobile for many minutes, my breathing irregular and painful, my breath hot in the confined space. Amelia was crying, and I felt her tears trickle down her cheek and against the side of my face.
ii
I moved only once more, to ease a cramp in my left arm, and then I lay still again, most of my weight on Amelia.
For a long time my mind was blank; all desire to justify my actions to myself had drained as quickly as the physical passion. Drained also were the self-recriminations. I lay still, aware only of a slight bruising around my mouth, the residual flavour of Amelia’s kiss and the strands of her hair which brushed my forehead.
She sobbed quietly for a few minutes more, but then became quiet. A few minutes later her breathing became regular, and I judged she had fallen asleep. Soon, I too could feel the fatigue of the day clouding my mind, and in due course I fell asleep.
I do not know how long I slept, but some time later I realized I was awake, yet still in the same position on top of Amelia. Our earlier problem of warmth was banished, for my whole body glowed with heat. I had slept in spite of the awkward angle in which I was lying, and now my back was badly cramped. I wanted to move, to rest from this position, and in addition I could feel the stiff collar of my shirt cutting into my neck and at the front the brass stud was biting into my throat, but I did not want to rouse Amelia. I decided to lie still, and hope to fall asleep again.
I found that my spirits were high, and this in spite of all that had happened. Considered objectively our chances of survival seemed slim; Amelia had also realized this. Unless we were to reach civilization within the next twenty-four hours it was likely we would perish out here on this plateau.
However, I could not forget that glimpse I had had of Amelia’s future destiny.
I knew that if Amelia were to be living in Richmond in the year 1903 she would be killed in the conflagration about the house. I had not been rational at the time, but my irresponsible tampering with the Time Machine had been an instinctive response to this. That accident had precipitated our current predicament, but I was in no way sorry.
Wherever on Earth we were, and in whatever year, I had decided what we were to do. From now I would make it my business to see that Amelia would never return to England until that day had passed!
I had already declared my love for her, and she had seemed to respond; it would be no greater step to avow my love as being eternal, and propose marriage. Whether she would accept I could not say, but I was determined to be resolute and patient. As my wife, she would be subject to my will. Of course, she was clearly of gentle birth, and my own origins were more humble, but I argued to myself that this had not so far been allowed to affect our behaviour to one another; she was an emancipationist, and if our love were true it would not be marred by—
“Are you awake, Edward?”
Her voice was close by my ear.
“Yes. Did I wake you?”
“No…I’ve been awake for some time. I heard your breathing change.”
“Is it daylight yet?” I said.
“I don’t think so.”
“I think I should move,” I said. “My weight must be crushing you.”
Her arms, which were still around my back, tightened momentarily.
“Please stay as you are,” she said.
“I do not wish to seem to be taking advantage of you.”
“It is I who is taking the advantage. You are an excellent substitute for blankets.”
I lifted myself slightly away from her, so that my face was directly above hers. Around us, the leaves rustled in the darkness.
I said: “Amelia, I have something to say to you. I am passionately in love with you.”
Once again her arms tightened their hold, pulling me down so that my face was alongside hers.
“Dear Edward,” she said, hugging me affectionately.
“Do you have nothing else to say?”
“Only…only that I’m sorry for what happened.”
“Do you not love me too?”
“I’m not sure, Edward.”
“Will you marry me?”
I felt her head move: it was shaking from side to side, but beyond this she made no answer.
“Amelia?”
She maintained her silence, and I waited anxiously. She was now quite immobile, her arms resting across my back but exerting no pressure of any kind.
I said: “I cannot conceive of life without you, Amelia. I have known you for such a short time, and yet it is as if I have been with you all my life.”
“That is how I feel,” she said, but her voice was almost inaudible, and her tone was lifeless.
“Then please marry me. When we reach civilization we will find a British Consul or a missionary church, and we may marry at once.”
“We should not talk of these things.”
I said, for my spirits were low: “Are you refusing me?”
“Please, Edward…”
“Are you already engaged to another?”
“No, and I am not refusing you. I say we must not talk of this because of the uncertainty of our prospects. We do not even know in which country we are. And until then…”
Her voice tailed away, sounding as uncertain as her argument.
“But tomorrow,” I went on, “we will find where we are, and will you then present another excuse? I’m asking only one thing: do you love me as much as I love you?”
“I don’t know, Edward.”
“I love you dearly. Can you say that to me?”
Unexpectedly; her head turned and for a moment her lips pressed gently against my cheek. Then she said: “I am unusually fond of you, Edward dear.”
I had to be content with that. I raised my head, and brought my lips down to hers. They touched fo
r a second, but then she turned her head away.
“We were foolish before,” she said. “Let us not make the same mistake. We have been forced to pass a night together, and neither of us should take advantage of the other.”
“If that is how you see it.”
“My dear, we must not assume that we will not be discovered. For all we know, this might be someone’s private estate.”
“You have not suggested that before.”
“No, but we may not be as alone as we think.”
“I doubt if anyone will investigate a mound of leaves!” I said.
She laughed then, and hugged me. “We must sleep. We may have another long walk ahead of us.”
“Are you still comfortable in this position?”
“Yes. And you?”
I said: “My collar is hurting me. Would you consider it improper if I were to remove my tie?”
“You are always so formal! Let me do it for you…it must be choking you.”
I raised myself away from her, and with deft fingers she loosened the knot and released both front and back studs. When this was done I lowered myself, and felt her arms closing about my back. I pressed the side of my face to hers, kissed her once on the lobe of her ear, and then we lay still, waiting for sleep to return.
iii
We were awakened not by the rising sun, as our covering leaves effectively filtered the light to an almost imperceptible maroon glow, but by the creaking and groaning of the near-by weed-bank. Amelia and I lay in each other’s arms for a few minutes before rising, as if sensing that the warmth and intimacy of the overnight tryst should be savoured. Then at last we kicked and pushed the scarlet leaves aside, and emerged into the brilliant daylight and hard radiant heat. We stretched elaborately, each of us stiff from the enforced stillness of the night.
Our morning toilet was brief, our breakfast briefer. We wiped our faces with Amelia’s flannel, and combed our hair. We each took two squares of chocolate, and followed them with a draught of sap. Then we collected our few belongings, and prepared to continue on our way. I noticed that Amelia still carried her corset between the handles of her bag.
“Shall we not leave that behind?” I said, thinking how pleasant it would be if she were never to wear it again.
“And these?” she said, producing my collar and tie from the hand-bag. “Shall we leave these behind too?”
“Of course not,” I said. “I must wear them when we find civilization.”
“Then we are agreed.”
“The difference is,” I said, “that I do not need a servant. Nor have I ever had one.”
“If your intentions for me are sincere, Edward, you must prepare yourself for the prospect of hiring staff.”
Amelia’s tone was as non-committal as ever, but the unmistakable reference to my proposal had the effect of quickening my heart. I took the bag from her, and held her hand in mine. She glanced at me once, and I thought I saw a trace of a smile, but then we were walking and we each kept our gaze directed ahead. The weed-bank was in the full throes of its seeming animation, and we stayed at a wary distance from it.
Knowing that most of our walking must be done before midday, we maintained a good pace, walking and resting at regular periods. As before, we found that the altitude made breathing difficult, and so we talked very little while we were walking.
During one of our rests, though, I brought up a subject which had been occupying me.
“In which year do you suppose we are?” I said.
“I have no idea. It depends on the degree to which you tampered with the controls.”
“I didn’t know what I was doing. I altered the monthly pre-setting dial, and it was then during the summer months of 1902. But I did not move the lever before I broke the nickel rod, and so I am wondering whether the automatic return was not interrupted, and we are now in 1893.”
Amelia considered this for several moments, but then said: “I think not. The crucial act was the breaking of that rod. It would have interrupted the automatic return, and extended the original journey. At the end of that, the automatic return would come into operation again, as we found when we lost the Machine. On the other hand, your changing of the monthly dial might have had an effect. By how much did you alter it?”
I thought about this with great concentration. “I turned it several months forward.”
“I still cannot say for certain. It seems to me that we are in one of three possible times. Either we returned to 1893, as you suggest, and are dislocated by several thousand miles, or the accident has left us in 1902, at the date showing on the dials when the rod was broken…or we have travelled forward those few months, and are now at, say, the end of 1902 or the beginning of 1903. In any event, one matter is certain: we have been propelled a considerable distance from Richmond.”
None of these postulations was welcome, for any one of them meant that the disastrous day in June 1903 still lay ahead. I did not wish to dwell on the consequences of this, so I raised another topic that had been troubling me.
“If we were now to return to England,” I said, “is it likely that we could meet ourselves?”
Amelia did not answer my question directly. She said: “What do you mean, if we were to return to England? Surely we will arrange that as soon as possible?”
“Yes, of course,” I said, hastily, regretting that I had phrased my question in that way. “So it is not a rhetorical question: are we soon to meet ourselves?”
Amelia frowned.
“I don’t think it is possible,” she said at length. “We have travelled in Time just as positively as we have travelled in Space, and if my own belief is correct, we have left the world of 1893 as far behind as we seem to have left Richmond. There is at this moment neither Amelia Fitzgibbon nor Edward Turnbull in England.”
“Then what,” I said, having anticipated this answer, “will Sir William have made of our disappearance?”
Amelia smiled unexpectedly. “I’m sure I do not know. Nor am I sure that he will even notice my absence until several days have passed. He is a man of great preoccupations. When he realizes I have gone, I suppose he will contact the police and I will be listed as a Missing Person. That much at least he will see as his responsibility.”
“But you talk of this with such coldness. Surely Sir William will be most concerned at your disappearance?”
“I am merely speaking the facts as I see them. I know that he was preparing his Time Machine for a journey of exploration, and had we not pre-empted him he would have been the first man to travel into futurity. When he returns to his laboratory he will find the Machine apparently untouched—for it would have returned directly from here—and he will continue with his plans without regard for the household.”
I said: “Do you think that if Sir William were to suspect the cause of your disappearance he might use the Machine to try to find us?”
Amelia shook her head at once. “You assume two things. First, that he would realize that we had tampered with the Machine, and second, that even if so he would know where to search for us. The first is almost impossible to suspect, for to all appearances the Machine will appear untouched, and the second is unthinkable, as the Machine has no record of its journeys when the automatic return has been in operation.”
“So we must make our own way back.”
At this Amelia came a little closer and grasped my hand.
“Yes, my dear,” she said.
iv
The sun was past its zenith, and already the weed-bank was throwing a shadow, and we walked stoically on. Then, just as I was feeling we should stop for another rest, I caught Amelia’s elbow and pointed forward.
“Look, Amelia!” I shouted. “There…on the horizon!”
Directly in front of us was the most welcome sight either of us could have imagined. Something metallic and polished was ahead of us, for the sun’s rays were being reflected off into our eyes. The steadiness of the dazzle was such that we knew it could not be comin
g from a natural feature, such as a sea or a lake. It was man-made, and our first sight of civilization.
We started towards it, but in a moment the glare vanished.
“What has happened?” Amelia said. “Did we imagine it?”
“Whatever it was, it has moved,” I said. “But it was no illusion.”
We walked as quickly as we could, but we were still suffering the effects of altitude and were forced to maintain our usual steady pace.
Within two or three minutes we saw the reflected light again, and knew we had not been mistaken. At last sense prevailed and we took a short rest, eating the remainder of our chocolate and drinking as much of the sap as we could stomach. Thus fortified, we continued towards the intermittent light, knowing that at last our long walk was nearly over.
After another hour we were close enough to see the source of the reflection, although by then the sun had moved further across the sky and it had been some time since we had seen the dazzle. There was a metal tower built in the desert, and it was the roof of this that had been catching the sunshine. In this rarefied atmosphere distances were deceptive, and although we had been able to see the tower for some time, it wasn’t until we were almost on it that we were able to estimate its size. By then we were close enough to see that it was not alone, and that some distance beyond it were several more.
The overall height of the nearest tower was about sixty feet. In appearance, the nearest analogy I can draw is that of a huge, elongated pin, for the tower consisted of a thin central pillar, surmounted by a circular enclosed platform. This description is itself misleading, for there was not one central pillar, but three. These were built very closely together, though, and ran parallel to each other up to the platform they supported, so it was only as we walked beneath the tower that Amelia and I noticed this. These three pillars were firmly buried in the soil but staring up at them I noticed that the platform was capable of being raised or lowered, for the pillars were jointed in several places and made of telescopic tubes.