XIII The Trap of the White Sphinx chapter 13 paragraph 1 among 14 paragraphs
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“About eight or nine in the morning I came to the same seat of
yellow metal from which I had viewed the world upon the evening of my
arrival. I thought of my hasty conclusions upon that evening and could not
refrain from laughing bitterly at my confidence. Here was the same
beautiful scene, the same abundant foliage, the same splendid palaces and
magnificent ruins, the same silver river running between its fertile banks.
The gay robes of the beautiful people moved hither and thither among the
trees. Some were bathing in exactly the place where I had saved Weena, and
that suddenly gave me a keen stab of pain. And like blots upon the
landscape rose the cupolas above the ways to the Underworld. I understood
now what all the beauty of the Overworld people covered. Very pleasant was
their day, as pleasant as the day of the cattle in the field. Like the
cattle, they knew of no enemies and provided against no needs. And their
end was the same.
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“I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had
been. It had committed suicide. It had set itself steadfastly towards
comfort and ease, a balanced society with security and permanency as its
watchword, it had attained its hopes—to come to this at last. Once,
life and property must have reached almost absolute safety. The rich had
been assured of his wealth and comfort, the toiler assured of his life and
work. No doubt in that perfect world there had been no unemployed problem,
no social question left unsolved. And a great quiet had followed.
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“It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility
is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in
harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals
to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no
intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those
animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs
and dangers.
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“So, as I see it, the Upperworld man had drifted towards his
feeble prettiness, and the Underworld to mere mechanical industry. But
that perfect state had lacked one thing even for mechanical
perfection—absolute permanency. Apparently as time went on, the
feeding of an Underworld, however it was effected, had become disjointed.
Mother Necessity, who had been staved off for a few thousand years, came
back again, and she began below. The Underworld being in contact with
machinery, which, however perfect, still needs some little thought outside
habit, had probably retained perforce rather more initiative, if less of
every other human character, than the Upper. And when other meat failed
them, they turned to what old habit had hitherto forbidden. So I say I saw
it in my last view of the world of Eight Hundred and Two Thousand Seven
Hundred and One. It may be as wrong an explanation as mortal wit could
invent. It is how the thing shaped itself to me, and as that I give it to
you.
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“After the fatigues, excitements, and terrors of the past days,
and in spite of my grief, this seat and the tranquil view and the warm
sunlight were very pleasant. I was very tired and sleepy, and soon my
theorising passed into dozing. Catching myself at that, I took my own hint,
and spreading myself out upon the turf I had a long and refreshing
sleep.
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“I awoke a little before sunsetting. I now felt safe against being
caught napping by the Morlocks, and, stretching myself, I came on down the
hill towards the White Sphinx. I had my crowbar in one hand, and the other
hand played with the matches in my pocket.
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“And now came a most unexpected thing. As I approached the
pedestal of the sphinx I found the bronze valves were open. They had slid
down into grooves.
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“Within was a small apartment, and on a raised place in the corner
of this was the Time Machine. I had the small levers in my pocket. So here,
after all my elaborate preparations for the siege of the White Sphinx, was
a meek surrender. I threw my iron bar away, almost sorry not to use it.
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“A sudden thought came into my head as I stooped towards the
portal. For once, at least, I grasped the mental operations of the
Morlocks. Suppressing a strong inclination to laugh, I stepped through the
bronze frame and up to the Time Machine. I was surprised to find it had
been carefully oiled and cleaned. I have suspected since that the Morlocks
had even partially taken it to pieces while trying in their dim way to
grasp its purpose.
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“Now as I stood and examined it, finding a pleasure in the mere
touch of the contrivance, the thing I had expected happened. The bronze
panels suddenly slid up and struck the frame with a clang. I was in the
dark—trapped. So the Morlocks thought. At that I chuckled
gleefully.
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“I could already hear their murmuring laughter as they came
towards me. Very calmly I tried to strike the match. I had only to fix on
the levers and depart then like a ghost. But I had overlooked one little
thing. The matches were of that abominable kind that light only on the
box.
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“You may imagine how all my calm vanished. The little brutes were
close upon me. One touched me. I made a sweeping blow in the dark at them
with the levers, and began to scramble into the saddle of the machine. Then
came one hand upon me and then another. Then I had simply to fight against
their persistent fingers for my levers, and at the same time feel for the
studs over which these fitted. One, indeed, they almost got away from me.
As it slipped from my hand, I had to butt in the dark with my head—I
could hear the Morlock’s skull ring—to recover it. It was a
nearer thing than the fight in the forest, I think, this last scramble.
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“But at last the lever was fixed and pulled over. The clinging
hands slipped from me. The darkness presently fell from my eyes. I found
myself in the same grey light and tumult I have already described.
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XIV The Further Vision
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“I have already told you of the sickness and confusion that comes
with time travelling. And this time I was not seated properly in the
saddle, but sideways and in an unstable fashion. For an indefinite time I
clung to the machine as it swayed and vibrated, quite unheeding how I went,
and when I brought myself to look at the dials again I was amazed to find
where I had arrived. One dial records days, and another thousands of days,
another millions of days, and another thousands of millions. Now, instead
of reversing the levers, I had pulled them over so as to go forward with
them, and when I came to look at these indicators I found that the
thousands hand was sweeping round as fast as the seconds hand of a
watch—into futurity.
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“As I drove on, a peculiar change crept over the appearance of
things. The palpitating greyness grew darker; then—though I was still
travelling with prodigious velocity—the blinking succession of day
and night, which was usually indicative of a slower pace, returned, and
grew more and more marked. This puzzled me very much at first. The
alternations of night and day grew slower and slower, and so did the
passage of the sun across the sky, until they seemed to stretch through
centuries. At last a steady twilight brooded over the earth, a twilight
only broken now and then when a comet glared across the darkling sky. The
band of light that had indicated the sun had long since disappeared; for
the sun had ceased to set—it simply rose and fell in the west, and
grew ever broader and more red. All trace of the moon had vanished. The
circling of the stars, growing slower and slower, had given place to
creeping points of light. At last, some time before I stopped, the sun, red
and very large, halted motionless upon the horizon, a vast dome glowing
with a dull heat, and now and then suffering a momentary extinction. At one
time it had for a little while glowed more brilliantly again, but it
speedily reverted to its sullen red heat. I perceived by this slowing down
of its rising and setting that the work of the tidal drag was done. The
earth had come to rest with one face to the sun, even as in our own time
the moon faces the earth. Very cautiously, for I remembered my former
headlong fall, I began to reverse my motion. Slower and slower went the
circling hands until the thousands one seemed motionless and the daily one
was no longer a mere mist upon its scale. Still slower, until the dim
outlines of a desolate beach grew visible.
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“I stopped very gently and sat upon the Time Machine, looking
round. The sky was no longer blue. North-eastward it was inky black, and
out of the blackness shone brightly and steadily the pale white stars.
Overhead it was a deep Indian red and starless, and south-eastward it grew
brighter to a glowing scarlet where, cut by the horizon, lay the huge hull
of the sun, red and motionless. The rocks about me were of a harsh reddish
colour, and all the trace of life that I could see at first was the
intensely green vegetation that covered every projecting point on their
south-eastern face. It was the same rich green that one sees on forest moss
or on the lichen in caves: plants which like these grow in a perpetual
twilight.
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“The machine was standing on a sloping beach. The sea stretched
away to the south-west, to rise into a sharp bright horizon against the wan
sky. There were no breakers and no waves, for not a breath of wind was
stirring. Only a slight oily swell rose and fell like a gentle breathing,
and showed that the eternal sea was still moving and living. And along the
margin where the water sometimes broke was a thick incrustation of
salt—pink under the lurid sky. There was a sense of oppression in my
head, and I noticed that I was breathing very fast. The sensation reminded
me of my only experience of mountaineering, and from that I judged the air
to be more rarefied than it is now.
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“Far away up the desolate slope I heard a harsh scream, and saw a
thing like a huge white butterfly go slanting and fluttering up into the
sky and, circling, disappear over some low hillocks beyond. The sound of
its voice was so dismal that I shivered and seated myself more firmly upon
the machine. Looking round me again, I saw that, quite near, what I had
taken to be a reddish mass of rock was moving slowly towards me. Then I saw
the thing was really a monstrous crab-like creature. Can you imagine a crab
as large as yonder table, with its many legs moving slowly and uncertainly,
its big claws swaying, its long antennæ, like carters’ whips, waving
and feeling, and its stalked eyes gleaming at you on either side of its
metallic front? Its back was corrugated and ornamented with ungainly
bosses, and a greenish incrustation blotched it here and there. I could see
the many palps of its complicated mouth flickering and feeling as it
moved.
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“As I stared at this sinister apparition crawling towards me, I
felt a tickling on my cheek as though a fly had lighted there. I tried to
brush it away with my hand, but in a moment it returned, and almost
immediately came another by my ear. I struck at this, and caught something
threadlike. It was drawn swiftly out of my hand. With a frightful qualm, I
turned, and I saw that I had grasped the antenna of another monster crab
that stood just behind me. Its evil eyes were wriggling on their stalks,
its mouth was all alive with appetite, and its vast ungainly claws, smeared
with an algal slime, were descending upon me. In a moment my hand was on
the lever, and I had placed a month between myself and these monsters. But
I was still on the same beach, and I saw them distinctly now as soon as I
stopped. Dozens of them seemed to be crawling here and there, in the sombre
light, among the foliated sheets of intense green.
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“I cannot convey the sense of abominable desolation that hung over
the world. The red eastern sky, the northward blackness, the salt Dead Sea,
the stony beach crawling with these foul, slow-stirring monsters, the
uniform poisonous-looking green of the lichenous plants, the thin air that
hurts one’s lungs: all contributed to an appalling effect. I moved on
a hundred years, and there was the same red sun—a little larger, a
little duller—the same dying sea, the same chill air, and the same
crowd of earthy crustacea creeping in and out among the green weed and the
red rocks. And in the westward sky, I saw a curved pale line like a vast
new moon.
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