Morlock Night Read online

  K W JETER

  Morlock Night

  To Dorothea Kenny

  INTRODUCTION

  By Tim Powers

  It was K. W. Jeter who, in the letter column of the April 1987 issue of Locus magazine, coined the word "Steampunk" to describe some books he and James Blaylock and I were writing at the time. Cyberpunk was the literary movement current in science fiction then, so Jeter jokingly proposed the new term for our stuff, "based on the appropriate technology of the era".

  When I searched for the word on Google this evening, the search engine (almost a Steampunk term right there) returned well over six million results. And though there were precursors, books by Ronald Clark and Michael Moorcock and Harry Harrison, it was Jeter's Morlock Night in 1979 that really started it all – all the books and movies about extraordinary gentlemen in capes and top hats scurrying through foggy night-time London on secret errands that involve infernal devices and wonderful machines with elaborate scrollwork on the gears and levers.

  I believe it was early in 1976 that Roger Elwood told K. W. Jeter, Ray Nelson and I that a British publisher wanted a series of ten books based on the idea of King Arthur being reincarnated throughout the centuries, obligingly reappearing whenever England needed rescuing. The three of us agreed to write them, and we got together to divvy up history, being sure to leave enough years between adventures for Arthur to have time to be born and grow to adulthood. As I recall, we kind of haggled over various dates, but Jeter came away with the clear claim on Victorian England. I'm glad now that Nelson and I missed grabbing that slot – neither of us could have written anything like Morlock Night.

  The deal with the British publisher fell apart, but Morlock Night found an American publisher, and then a different British one, and readers on both sides of the Atlantic got to experience Jeter's unique Victorian London.

  And it is unique. I think Blaylock might have visited England before he wrote books like Homunculus, but neither Jeter nor I had any first-hand knowledge of the place. Nevertheless, Blaylock, Jeter and I spent many afternoons over endless pitchers of beer in a bar called O'Hara's, hatching extravagant science fiction and fantasy plots set in London as we variously imagined it.

  Jeter discovered the priceless source book, Henry Mayhew's London Labour and London Poor, and Blaylock and I made eager use of it too. And when I recently asked Jeter about other sources, he said, "Anything else I probably swiped from reading Victorian novelists, including William Harrison Ainsworth, who was probably the best, or at least the most lurid, of the Victorian 'pulp' novelists, not that that term was used to describe writers like him back then; right at the moment I'm re-reading his GUY FAWKES […] and enjoying it a great deal; quite a reminder of just how damn good were even the Victorian writers who are now considered minor or completely forgotten. Or just flat-out maligned, such as Bulwer-Lytton, who was frankly a great writer, and any snotty little college professor who disagrees can kiss my ass; feel free to quote me in that exact language. George Gissing is considered to have been a fairly serious writer, and I read quite a few of his novels, particularly his early ones, such as DEMOS and THE NETHER WORLD, which are much more grimly Dickensian in tone than his later ones."

  In other words, Jeter had a fully-realized London in his head, and if it didn't conform precisely to the actual London of 1895, it derived from richly enhanced contemporary models. The result, Morlock Night, is a book that almost reads as if H. Rider Haggard had written it, rather than a young 20th century Californian.

  Almost. Jeter's book bangs along at a much faster pace than Haggard's books did, and the deadpan humor is all Jeter's. The "excitable and unrestrained" character of the Morlocks as they angrily try to work a machine hopelessly beyond their comprehension is wonderful to see, and the impatient banter between Edwin Hocker and Tafe is entertainingly discordant – just by the phrasing of Tafe's comments we soon catch on that she's from a more modern time.

  Not that it's all beer and skittles, by any means. There are perils, and they're downright apocalyptic. The doom that threatens the world – "Nothing comes after this […] And nothing before, either [… ] My dear fellow […] this is no end to everything, this is everything" – is a nightmare vision right out of Philip K. Dick.

  But Jeter's London is, as well as dangerous, endlessly colorful and grotesque – the underground Lost Coin World, with the vast corroded-together conglomeration of swords and coins and antediluvian submarines known as the Grand Tosh – the Edinburgh scholar whose pursuit of Atlantean artifacts has led him to retire forever into the London sewers – the malevolent mummy in the castle of Montsegur–!

  Without knowing that he was breaking a new trail that would one day be a conduit for lots of books and movies and graphic novels and clothing and jewelry and God knows what all, Jeter in this book pointed out a new and fascinating direction… and then even provided the enduring name for it.

  I'm glad the book that started it all is back in print for a new generation of readers.

  Tim Powers

  "… and another – a quiet, shy man with a beard – whom I didn't know, and who, as far as my observation went, never opened his mouth all the evening."

  H. G. Wells, The Time Machine

  1

  Mr Hocker Begins

  "An astonishing narrative, don't you think?"

  "What? Oh… yes. Yes, indeed. Quite incredible." In truth, I hadn't even been aware of the other's presence at my side until he spoke. Darkness and fog had all but swallowed up the landmarks of the city so familiar to me. The prideful namesake of the Lion Brewery had glared down at me as I passed, then was gone; I had thought myself all alone as I walked through the thickening London night air, beneath the gas lamps flaring a sulphurous yellow through the mist. Now my private universe was halved by this quiet-stepping other.

  "Incredible?" he echoed and allowed his fine lips to trace the barest motion of a smile. "Perhaps. Perhaps."

  Now that I had directed my attention toward him, I was amused that so striking a figure could have paced anywhere near the corner of my eye without forcing himself to the centre of my thoughts. Swathed in an overcoat so black it seemed a hole into which the dim street light poured and was swallowed up – indeed, my companion appeared to be an animated fragment of the night itself, with the glossy points of his patent boots the only stars. And the face! A pale moon to be sure! Handsome enough with dark eyes and sensuous mouth beneath lustrous jet hair, but a complexion of such a pallor that I couldn't help wondering what illness or unnatural habits had blanched him thus.

  "So you find his story beyond belief, eh?" asked the Pale Man – for so I had already begun to identify him in my own mind – as we paced farther down the street.

  My opinion escaped in a contemptuous snort. "If our host really expected us to believe his outlandish tale," said I, "then he badly misjudged his audience, I'm afraid. A Machine for Travelling through Time! Whizzing along through millions of years to find our descendants divided into cannibalistic brutes below the ground and effete wastrels above! What rot. A very pretty bedtime fable for the pessimistic, atheistic, and socialistic, but… no more than that, I'm sure."

  "Eh! And is that all–" The Pale Man whipped a slender ebony walking stick from his far side and blocked my progress with it. "Is that all his story signified to you?"

  I brushed the stick away from my chest and resumed my walk. My unwanted companion's singular rudeness stiffened the tenor of my voice as I replied, "A cracking good evening's entertainment I thought it, which, supplied with a more uplifting ending, would make a diverting fiction for The Strand. If I find time to put it down on paper I shall certainly submit it to the editors of that periodical. And now, sir–"

  "Oh, don't bother trying to wr
ite it," interrupted the Pale Man. "One of our host's other guests will do a perfectly adequate job of recording it, in about – let's see – this is 1892, isn't it?"

  "For God's sake, man," I said in exasperation, "of course it is! How befuddled are you?" Had I a drunkard beside me?

  "Yes," mused the Pale Man, touching his chin with his black gloved hand, "in about three years time I see Mr. Wells writing it. Yes, 1895 would be the date. That is, of course, if there ever is an 1895."

  "And why shouldn't there be?" A drunkard, and an apocalyptist to boot! On the spot I resolved to set foot no more in a parlour that attracted such queer ducks. The private income left to me by my late father enabled me to pursue my diversions as I wished – principally the study of the ancient Celtic language and artefacts – but in leading such a fetterless life I did receive the damnedest invitations. Dinners where the host babbled about his Time Machine! But no more. Better my usual solitude than any more such nonsense.

  "Ah, yes. There will always be an England, won't there?"

  My companion had a most irritating half-smile, as though prompted by the smug contemplation of someone else's stupidity. "And a solid, happy world for it to sit upon like a green and prosperous jewel. Eh? That's the way it looks to you now, doesn't it?"

  "And to anyone else with eyes to see." I decided to cut short what further arguments I now anticipated from him. "Sir, the like of your sentiments has been echoed by scores of crazed loons teetering on soap crates in every public park in London – all to sway the course of English empire no more than summer breezes do upon Gibraltar! I care not for the exact label you place on your foolishness, be it anarchism, socialism, land reform, Owenism, or whatever. To me it is muddle-headedness at best, damnable knavery at worst. And now, sir, I will be taking my leave of–"

  "Not yet," he rudely commanded. With a vice-like grip he laid hold of my arm. "You mistake me. Petty politics concern me not at all." He let go and the blood throbbed back into my arm.

  I sighed and resigned myself to further conversation. Doubtless this person meant to accompany me all the way to my front door. And farther than that? No, if necessary, a boot would keep him out of my own parlour – a satisfying thought. Since my youth I had worked out daily with a set of Indian clubs and had done a little boxing at school, so despite my slender physique I had little fear of a tussle with this boorish fellow.

  "And what does interest you then?" I asked. I found my crusted old briar in my coat pocket and brought it to my mouth, as I meant to place a smoker's defensive veil between him and myself. But further probing and thumping of my pockets didn't turn up my tobacco pouch; an annoyance, as I felt sure I had had it when I had left my host for the evening's residence.

  "Here. Try some of mine." My pallid companion extended toward me a black Morocco envelope. "Help yourself, Mr. Hocker. It is Mr. Edwin Hocker, isn't it?"

  "Yes, of course it is," I murmured as I looked into his pouch. It was filled with a crude shag of almost sinister darkness, perfect velvet with tiny oily glints. Still, a pipe can't be taken out of one's mouth without having been lit – at least satisfactorily, that is. I filled mine and lit it from my box of safety matches. The shag turned out to be nowhere as harsh as its forbidding appearance had suggested. Soon a dense nimbus of smoke was added to the thick fog pressing in around us.

  The Pale Man put his pouch away without filling a pipe of his own."

  "I'm interested in evil," he said abruptly. "And blood and death."

  "Their propagation or suppression?" I asked in amusement.

  "Do not make light of such things," he whispered ominously, and glared at me with such intensity that my teeth froze upon the stem of my briar. "What seems most secure and solid to you rests in fact on a ground eaten away from below. This comfortable world of yours is poised above an abyss of such darkness and despair as to make the story you heard a little while ago seem like nothing but the overture whose themes but foreshadow the awful climaxes of Death's, worst opera!"

  His bloodless visage and sudden passion of voice raised the hackles on my neck and the keenest apprehension. in my breast. Mad? Deranged? What in Hell was I smoking, anyway? My head felt dizzy from the smoke. Was I being drugged? I decided to throwaway the whole pipe if I detected any opiate effect from his suspicious, if pleasant smoking, gift. For the moment I tried to allay my fears by glancing surreptitiously around me for the best route of escape, in case my companion became violent. I was willing to take on a drunkard, but not a lunatic. The fog had grown even denser, obscuring all but the closest street lamps. I felt sure I'd be able to lose him in it, if need be.

  "Ah… hmmm. Yes," I managed to say beneath his vehement stare. "Death, you say?"

  His former sardonic humour seemed to filter back into his face. "Don't be alarmed. At least … not yet. Let us just speculate for the time being." His gaze turned away from me and into the dark fog where our steps were leading. "Let us suppose the story we heard tonight is true. And that our host did build a Time Machine, on the saddle of which he travelled into the far distant future, and then back here again."

  "An easy enough supposition," I said between puffs on my briar, "if one's not called upon to believe it."

  The Pale Man ignored me and went on. "Let us also suppose that he travels to the future again, as he says he intends, to that distant epoch he told us so much of. Only this time the clever ones, the Morlocks–"

  "Beastly coinage!" I interjected. "What an imagination the man has!"

  "–as I say, the Morlocks, but the really clever ones instead of the mere workers and foot-soldiers he grappled with; the Morlock generals, let's say! These are waiting for him the next time, they direct the ambush that overpowers our host – and our host's bones are tossed into an open grave millions of years removed from the day of his birth!" The disturbing vehemence had returned to his voice.

  "My good fellow, don't get so excited over a mere story! Divert yourself with whatever sequels you care to imagine, but save such passion for reality."

  "Eh? What about that?" he said in a frenzy. "What if it all happens – or is to happen – that way?"

  "If it all happens thus," I answered wearily, "it would well serve the damned fool for meddling around with such outlandish notions. Time Machine, indeed!"

  "You miss the true import of such an occurrence. All men die – don't they? – and our late host will be no more homeless a few million years from now than he would be if he were planted in his own garden. Dirt is eternal. But what of the Machine? Eh? What of it?"

  I fanned a little of the thick tobacco fumes away from my face. "I imagine that our hypothetical Morlocks would take their supposed Time Machine and scoot up and down the duration of God's own creation with the bloody thing."

  The Pale Man held up his gloved hand. "A little more speculation, if you please. Let us say our, ahem, supposed Morlocks have acquired the Machine as we say, but they don't use it to travel all over Time. No, they find instead they can only travel with it to one point in Time – our own. What then?"

  "Yes, well, I suspect they'd come to see us. Like day excursions across the Channel. Be introduced to Queen Victoria at the court, like wild Indians were before Elizabeth." It struck me that we had been walking for quite some time. Where was my house? We must have passed it or made a wrong turning in the fog without my knowing, and thus entered some section of the city unknown to me. A factory district? Through the uncommonly dense mist I could see no glimmer of street lamps, but only a few dull red glares, like foundry fires. But burning at this late hour? Surely a constable would soon come into view, who could direct me properly.

  But for the moment I dreaded the thought of being abandoned in the swirling, impenetrable fog more than I had previously abhorred my strange companion. His pallid face, the outlines of which I could still make out beside me despite the gloom, was even welcome now. Still, I kept an eye out for my longed-for constable.

  "Day excursions?" said the Pale Man. "At first perhaps, but then… Can
you not think of another time, long ago when rude eyes measured the breadth of this land from a distance, and hearts foreign to ours longed to own its green fields?"

  "You speak very handsomely," I allowed. "But a proper love for Queen and country shouldn't drive you to excessive fancies. Get hold of yourself, man. It was an evening's dubious entertainment, but nothing more than that. And even if these imaginary Morlocks were hot with greed and poised on the lip of our world like the Visigoths eyeing Rome, what could you – or I – do about it? It took a hero such as King Arthur to drive out the invaders in the Fifth Century. It would take another hero such as he to fight off the fiends that our host's and your imagination have conjured up! And where, pray, could such an Arthur Redivivus be found?! I knew I was taking a risk in going along with a possible lunacy, but I hoped that my companion's obsession might be purged by forcing it to some sort of logical conclusion. Then our conversation could be turned to more constructive channels such as finding our way out of the unknown lane into which we had wandered.