Christopher Priest - The Space Machine: A Scientific Romance

A Scientific Romance

Christopher Priest is quickly becoming a well-respected member of the science fiction world. His two previous novels Fugue For a Darkening Island and Inverted World , won awards as 'the outstanding British science fiction novel of the year'. He now writes fulltime and lives in Harrow.

Futura Publications Limited An Orbit Book

An Orbit Book

First published in Great Britain in 1976 by Faber and Faber Limited

First Futura Publications edition 1977

Copyright Christopher Priest 1976

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. ISBN 0 8600 7939 2

Printed in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, London, Reading and Fakenham

Futura Publications Limited 110 Warner Road, Camberwell London SE5

Contents

One - THE LADY COMMERCIAL
Two - A CONVERSATION IN THE NIGHT
Three - THE HOUSE ON RICHMOND HILL
Four - SIR WILLIAM EXPOUNDS A THEORY
Five - INTO FUTURITY!
Six - FUTURITY'S ALIEN LAND
Seven - THE AWAKENING OF AWARENESS
Eight - THE CITY OF GRIEF
Nine - EXPLORATIONS
Ten - A TERRIBLE INVASION
Eleven - A VOYAGE ACROSS THE SKY
Twelve - WHAT I SAW INSIDE THE CRAFT
Thirteen - A MIGHTY BATTLE
Fourteen - IN THE SLAVE-CAMP
Fifteen - A REVOLUTION Is PLANNED Sixteen - ESCAPE FROM OPPRESSION!
Seventeen - A HOMEWARD QUEST
Eighteen - INSIDE THE PIT
Nineteen - HOW WE FELL IN WITH THE PHILOSOPHER
Twenty - ROWING DOWN THE RIVER
Twenty-one - UNDER SIEGE
Twenty-Two - THE SPACE MACHINE
Twenty-Three - AN INVISIBLE NEMESIS
Twenty-Four - OF SCIENCE AND CONSCIENCE

Chapter One
THE LADY COMMERCIAL
i

In the April of I893 I was staying in the course of my business at the Devonshire Arms in Skipton, Yorkshire. I was then twenty-three years of age, and enjoying a modest and not unsuccessful career as commercial representative of the firm of Josiah Westerman & Sons, Purveyors of Leather Fancy Goods. Not much will be said in this narrative of my employment, for even at that time it was not my major preoccupation, but it was instrumental, in its inglorious fashion, in precipitating the chain of events which are the major purpose of my story.

The Devonshire was a low, grey-brick commercial hotel, threaded with draughty and illlit corridors, drab with ageing paint and dark-stained panelling. The only congenial place in the hotel was the commercials' lounge, for although it was small and burdened with furniture - the over-stuffed easy chairs were placed so close together it was scarcely possible to walk between them - the room was warm in winter and had the advantage of gas-mantle lighting, whereas the only sources of illumination in the bedrooms were dim and smoky oil-lamps.

During the evenings there was little for a resident commercial to do but stay within the confines of the lounge and converse with his colleagues. For me, the hour between the completion of dinner and nine p.m. was the one that made me the most impatient, for by long-observed tacit agreement no one would smoke between those times, and it was the accepted period for conversation. At nine, though, the pipes and cigars would appear, the air would slowly turn a suffocating blue, heads would lean back on the antimacassars and eyes would close. Then, unobtrusively, I would perhaps read for a while, or write a letter or two.

On the evening of which I am particularly thinking I had been for a short stroll after dinner, and had returned to the hotel before nine. I made a brief visit to my room to don my smoking-jacket, then went to the ground floor and entered the commercials' lounge.

Three men were already there, and although it was still only seven minutes before nine I noticed that Hughes, a representative from a Birmingham machine-tool manufacturer, had started his pipe.

I nodded to the others, and went to a chair in the furthest comer of the room.

At nine-fifteen, Dykes came into the lounge. Dykes was a young man of about my own age, and although I had affected no interest in him it was his wont to address me in some confidence.

He came directly to my corner and sat opposite me. I pulled down the top leaf over the letter I had been drafting.

"Will you smoke, Turnbull?" he said to me, offering his cigarette case.
"No thank you." I had smoked a pipe for a while, but had desisted for more than a year.

He took a cigarette for himself, and made a display of lighting it. Like me, Dykes was a commercial representative, and often declared I was too conservative in my outlook. I was usually entertained by his outgoing manner, in the way one may enjoy the excesses of others.

"I hear there's a lady commercial in tonight," he said casually now, but leaning towards me slightly to add emphasis to his words. "What do you make of that, Turnbull?"

"You surprise me," I admitted. "Are you sure of that?"
"I came in late this evening," he said, lowering his voice. "Happened to glance at the register. Miss A. Fitzgibbon of Surrey. Interesting, wouldn't you say?"

Somewhat aloof, as I saw myself to be, from the day-to-day concerns of my fellow commercials, I was nevertheless interested by what he said. One cannot help but become aware of the lore of one's own occupation, and it had long been rumoured that women were now being employed as representatives. I had never before met one myself, but it seemed logical that sales of certain requisites - shall we say of a toilette or boudoir nature - might be better negotiated by women. Certainly, some of the stores I called at employed women buyers, so there was no precedent barring their entry into the sales aspect of a transaction.

I glanced over my shoulder, although I knew that she could not have entered the lounge unnoticed.

"I haven't seen her," I said.

"No, and we're not likely to! Do you think that Mrs Anson would allow a young lady of gentle breeding into a commercial lounge?"

"So you have seen the lady?" I said.

Dykes shook his head. "She dined with Mrs Anson in the coffee-room. I saw a tray being taken there."

I said, for my interest was persisting: "Do you suppose that what is said about lady commercials has any substance?"

"Undoubtedly!" said Dykes at once. "No profession for a gentlewoman." "But you said that this Miss Fitzgibbon was a gentle-"

"A euphemism, dear chap." He leaned back in his easy chair, and drew pleasurably on his cigarette.

I usually found Dykes an amusing companion, for his ready abandonment of social niceties often meant that he would regale me with bawdy anecdotes. These I would listen to in envious silence, as most of my time was passed in enforced solitude. Many commercials were bachelors - perhaps by nature - and the life of constant movement from one town to another led to an inability to make permanent ties. Thus, when word that some firms now employed ladies as their representatives was rumoured, the smoking-rooms and commercial lounges of hotels all over the country had been sibilant with salacious speculation. Dykes himself had been a source of much information on the subject, but as time passed it became clear that there was to be no substantial change to our way of life. Indeed, this was the very first occasion on which I had even been aware that a lady commercial was staying in the same hotel as myself.
"You know, Turnbull, I fancy I shall introduce myself to Miss Fitzgibbon before the evening is out."

"But what will you say? Surely you would require an introduction?"