The Hollow Lands

The white light burned his eyes. He became dizzy. Pain began to nag at his nerves and he stopped himself from screaming, for fear that she would hear him and be troubled.

The liquid grew dark until it was the colour of blood. His senses fled him.

He woke up knowing that the journey must be over. He tried to turn himself round so that he could see if Mrs. Underwood were awake. He could feel her body resting against his leg.

But then, surprisingly, the process began again. The green lights gave way to red, to blue and to yellow. The white light shrieked. The pain increased, the liquid became dark again.

And again he fainted.

He woke up. This time he stared directly into Mrs. Underwood's pale, unconscious face. He tried to reach out to take her hand and, as if this action were enough to begin it, the process started again. The green and red alternating lights, the blue and yellow lights, the blinding whiteness, the pain, the loss of his awareness. He woke up. The machine was shuddering. From somewhere there came a grating whine.

This time he screamed, in spite of himself, and he thought that Mrs. Underwood was also screaming. The white light throbbed. Suddenly it was totally black. Then a green light flickered. It went out. A red light flickered and went out. Blue and yellow lights flashed.

And then Jherek Carnelian knew that Lord Jagged's fears had been realized. There had been too many attempts at once to manipulate Time — and Time was refusing further manipulation. They were adrift. They were shifting back and forth at random on the timeflow. They were as much victims of the Morphail Effect as if they had never entered the time machine. Time was taking its vengeance on those who had sought to conquer it.

Jherek's one consolation, as he fainted again, was that at least he and Mrs. Underwood were together.

19. In Which Jherek Carnelian and Mrs. Amelia Underwood Debate Certain Moral Problems

"Mr. Carnelian! Please, Mr. Carnelian, try to wake up!"

"I am awake," he groaned, but he did not open his eyes. His skin felt pleasantly warm. There was a delicious smell in his nostrils. There was silence.

"Then open your eyes, please, Mr. Carnelian," she demanded. "I need your advice."

He obeyed her. He blinked. "What an extraordinarily deep blue," he said of the sky. "So we are back, after all. I became a trifle pessimistic, I must admit, when the machine seemed to be malfunctioning. How did we get out?"

"I pulled you out, and it was as well I did." She made a gesture. He looked and saw that the time machine was in even worse condition than when he had landed in the 19th century. Mrs. Underwood was brushing sand from her tattered dress of maroon velvet. "That awful stuff," she said. "Even when it dries it makes everything stiff."

He sat up, smiling. "It will be the work of a moment to supply you with fresh clothes. I still have most of my power rings. I wonder who made this. It is ravishing!"

The scenery stretched for miles, all waving fern-like plants of a variety of sizes, from the small ones carpeting the ground to very large ones as big as poplars; and not far from the beach on which they lay was a lazy sea stretching to the horizon. In the far distance behind them was a line of low, gentle hills.

"It is a remarkable reproduction," she agreed. "Rather better in detail than most of those made by your people."

"You know the original?"

"I studied such things once. My father was of the modern school. He did not reject Darwin out of hand."

"Darwin loved him?" Jherek's thoughts had returned to his favourite subject.

"Darwin was a scientist, Mr. Carnelian," she said impatiently.

"And he made a world like this?"

"No, no. It isn't anything really to do with him. A figure of speech."

"What is a 'figure of speech?' "

"I will explain that later. My point was that this landscape resembles the world at a very early age of its geological development. It is tropical and typical ferns and plants are in evidence. It is probably the Ordovician period of the Paleozoic, possibly the Silurian. If this were a perfect reproduction those seas you observe would team with edible life. There would be clams and so on, but no large beasts. Everything possible to sustain life, and nothing very much to threaten it!"

"I can't imagine who could have made it," said Jherek. "Unless it was Lady Voiceless. She built a series of early worlds a while ago — the Egyptian was her best."

"Such a world as this would have flourished millions of years before Egypt," said Mrs. Underwood, becoming lyrical. "Millions of years before Man — before the dinosaurs, even. Ah, it is paradise! You see, there are no signs at all of animal life as we know it."

"There hasn't actually been any animal life, as such for a good while," said Jherek. "Only that which we make for ourselves."

"You aren't following me very closely, Mr. Carnelian."

"I am sorry. I will try. I want my moral education to begin as soon as possible. There are all sorts of things you can teach me."

"I regard that ," she said, "as my duty. I could not justify being here otherwise." She smiled to herself. "After all, I come from a long line of missionaries."

"A new dress?" he said.

"If you please."

He touched a power ring; the emerald.

Nothing happened.

He touched the diamond and then the amethyst. And nothing at all happened. He was puzzled. "I have never known my power rings to fail me," he said.

Mrs. Underwood cleared her throat. "It is becoming increasingly hot. Suppose we stroll into the shade of those ferns?"

He agreed. As they walked, he tried his power rings again, shaking his head in surprise.

"Strange. Perhaps when the time machine began to go awry…"

"It went wrong, the time machine?"

"Yes. Plainly shifting back and forth in time at random. I had completely despaired of returning here."

"Here?"

"Oh, dear," he said.

"So," she said, seating herself upon a reddish-coloured rock and staring around her at the mile upon mile of Silurian ferns, "we could have travelled backwards, could we, Mr. Carnelian?"

"I would say that we could have, yes."

"So much for your friend Lord Jagged's assurances," she said.

"Yes." He sucked his lower lip. "But he was afraid we had left things too late, if you recall."

"He was correct." Again she cleared her throat.

Jherek cleared his. "If this is the age you think it is, am I to gather there are no people to be found here at all."

"Not one. Not a primate."

"We are at the begi

"For want of a better description, yes." Her lovely fingers drummed rapidly against the rock. She did not seem pleased.

"Oh dear," he said, "we shall never see the Iron Orchid again!"

She brightened a little at this. "We'll have to make the best of it, I suppose, and hope that we are rescued in due course."

"The chances are slight, Mrs. Underwood. Nobody has ever gone this far back. You heard Lord Jagged say that your age was the furthest he could reach into the past."

She straightened her shoulders rather as she had done that time when they stood upon the bank of the river. "We must build a hut, of course — preferably two huts — and we must test which of the life, such as it is, is edible. We must make a fire and keep it lit. We must see what the time machine will give us that is useable. Not much I would assume."

"You are certain that this is the period…?"

"Mr. Carnelian! Your power rings do not work. We have no other evidence. We must assume that we are marooned in the Silurian."

"The Morphail Effect is supposed to send us into the future," he said, "not the past."