Puttick called us into the dining-room for dinner at around seven. Nebogipfel did not join us. He asked only for water and a plate of uncooked vegetables; and he stayed in the smoking-room, his goggles still clamped to his hairy face, and he listened to the phonograph and studied magazines.

Our meal proved to be plain though palatable, with as centerpiece a plate of what looked like roast beef, with potatoes, cabbage and carrots. I picked at the meat-stuff; it fell apart rather easily, and its fibers were short and soft. “What’s this?” I asked Filby.

“Soya.”

“What?”

“Soya-beans. They are grown all over the country, out of the Domes — even the Oval cricket ground has been given over to their production! — for meat isn’t so easy to come by, these days. It’s hard to persuade the sheep and cattle to keep their gas-masks on, you know!” He cut off a slice of this processed vegetable and popped it into his mouth. “Try it! — it’s palatable enough; these modern food mechanics are quite ingenious.”

The stuff had a dry, crumbling texture on my tongue, and its flavor made me think of damp cardboard.

“It’s not so bad,” Filby said bravely. “You’ll get used to it.”

I could not find a reply. I washed the stuff down with the wine — it tasted like a decent Bordeaux, though I forbore to ask its provenance — and the rest of the meal passed in silence.

I took a brief bath — there was hot water from the taps, a liberal supply of it — and then, after a quick round of brandy and cigars, we retired. Only Nebogipfel stayed up, for Morlocks do not sleep as we do, and he asked for a pad of paper and some pencils (he had to be shown how to use the sharpener and eraser).

I lay there, hot in that narrow bed, with the windows of my room sealed shut, and the air becoming steadily more stuffy. Beyond the walls the noise of this War-spoiled London rattled around the confines of its Dome, and through gaps in my curtains I saw the flickering of the Ministry news lamps, deep into the night.

I heard Nebogipfel moving about the smoking-room; strange as it tray seem, I found something comforting in the sounds of narrow Morlock feet as they padded about, and the clumsy scratching of his pencils across paper.

At last I slept.

There was a small clock on a table beside my bed, which told me that I woke at seven in the morning; though, of course, it was still as black as the deepest night outside.

I hauled myself out of bed. I put on that battered light suit which had already seen so many adventures, and I dug out a fresh set of underclothes, shirt and tie. The air was clammy, despite the earliness of the hour; I felt cotton-headed and heavy of limb.

I opened the curtain. I saw Filby’s Babble Machine still flickering against the roof; I thought I heard snatches of some stirring music, like a march, no doubt intended to hasten reluctant workers to another day’s toil on behalf of the War Effort.

I made my way downstairs to the dining-room. I found myself alone save for Puttick, the soldier-manservant, who served me with a breakfast of toast, sausages (stuffed with some unidentifiable substitute for meat) and — this was a rare treat, Puttick gave me to believe — an egg, softly fried.

When I was done, I set off, clutching a last piece of toast, for the smoking-room. There I found Moses and Nebogipfel, hunched over books and piles of paper on the big desk; cold cups of tea littered the desk’s surface.

“No sign of Filby?” I asked.

“Not yet,” Moses told me. My younger self wore a dressing gown; he was unshaven, and his hair was mussed.

I sat down at the desk. “Confound it, Moses, you look as if you haven’t slept.”

He grinned and drew a hand through the peak of hair over his broad forehead. “Well, so I haven’t. I just couldn’t settle — I think I’ve been through rather too much, you know, and my head’s been in something of a spin… I knew Nebogipfel was still up, so I came down here.” He looked at me out of eyes that were red and black-lined. “We’ve had a fascinating night — fascinating! Nebogipfel’s been introducing me to the mysteries of Quantum Mechanics.”

“Of what?”

“Indeed,” Nebogipfel said. “And Moses, in his turn, has been teaching me to read English.”

“He’s a damned fast learner, too,” said Moses. “He needed little more than the alphabet and a quick tour of the principles of phonetics, and he was off.”

I leafed through the detritus on the desk. There were several sheets of notepaper covered in odd, cryptic symbols: Nebogipfel’s writing, I surmised. When I held up a sheet I saw how clumsily he had used the pencils; in several places the paper was torn clean through. Well, the poor chap had never before had to make do with any implement so crude as a pen or pencil; I wondered how I should have got on with wielding the flint tools of my own ancestors, who were less remote in time from me than was Nebogipfel from 1938!

“I’m surprised you’ve not been listening to the phonograph,” I said to Moses. “Are you not interested in the details of this world we find ourselves in?”

Moses replied, “But much of its output is either music or fiction — and that of the Moralizing, Uplifting sort which I have never found palatable — as you know! — and I have become quite overwhelmed with the stream of trivia which masquerades as news. One wants to deal with the great Issues of the Day — Where are we? How did we get here? Where are we headed? — and instead one is inundated with a lot of nonsense about train delays and rationing shortfalls and the obscure details of remote military campaigns, whose general background one is expected to know already.”

I patted his arm. “What do you expect? Look here: we’re dipping into History, like temporal tourists. People are generally obsessed by the surface of things — and rightly so! How often in your own Year do you find the daily newspapers filled with deep analyses of the Causes of History? How much of your own conversation is occupied with explanations as to the general pattern of life in 1873?…”

“Your point is taken,” he said. He showed little interest in the conversation; he seemed unwilling to engage much concentration in the world around him. Instead: “Look,” he said, “I must tell you something of what your Morlock friend has related of this new theory.” His eyes were brighter, his voice clear, and I saw that this was an altogether more palatable subject for him — it was an escape, I supposed, from the complexities of our predicament into the clean mysteries of science.

I resolved to humor him; there would be time enough for him to confront his situation in the days to come. “I take it this has some bearing on our current plight—”

“Indeed it does,” said Nebogipfel. He ran his stubby fingers over his temples, in a gesture of evident, and very human, weariness. “Quantum Mechanics is the framework within which I must construct my understanding of the Multiplicity of Histories which we are experiencing.”

“It’s a remarkable theoretical development,” Moses enthused. “Quite unforeseen in my day — even unimaginable! — it’s astonishing that the order of things can be overturned with such speed.”

I put down Nebogipfel’s bit of paper. “Tell me,” I said.