I was embarrassed. “What do you mean?”

“Think about it.” She ran her hand over her ravaged scalp, where tufts of grayed hair clung. “We are thirteen — not counting your friend Nebogipfel. And that thirteen is eight women and five men.” She eyed me. “And that’s what we’re stuck with. There’s no island over the horizon, from whence might come more young men to marry off our girls…

“If we all made stable marriages — if we settled into monogamy, as you suggest then our little society would soon tear itself apart. For, you see, eight and five don’t match. And so I think a certain looseness in our arrangements is appropriate. For the good of all. Don’t you think? And besides, it’s good for this ’genetic diversity’ that Nebogipfel lectures us about.”

I was shocked; not (I fondly believed) by any moral difficulties, but by the calculation behind all this!

Troubled, I made to leave her — and then a thought struck me. I turned back. “But — Hilary — I am one of the five men you speak of.”

“Of course.” I could see she was making fun of me.

“But I don’t — I mean, I haven’t—”

She grinned. “Then perhaps it’s time you did. You’re only making things worse, you know.”

I left in confusion. Evidently, between 1891 and 1944, society had evolved in ways of which I had never dreamed!

Work on the great Hall proceeded quickly, and within no more than a few months of the Bombing, the bulk of the construction was done. Hilary Bond announced that a service of dedication would be held to commemorate the completion. At first Nebogipfel demurred — with characteristic Morlock over-analysis, he could see no purpose to such an exercise — but I persuaded him that it would be politic, as regards future relations with the colonists, to attend.

I washed and shaved, and got myself as smart as it is possible to be when dressed only in a ragged pair of trousers. Nebogipfel combed and trimmed his mane of flaxen hair. Given the practicalities of our situation, many of the colonists went around pretty much nude by now, with little more than strips of cloth or animal skin to cover their modesty. Today, however, they donned the remnants of their uniforms, cleaned up and repaired as far as possible, and, while it was a parade which would have scarce passed muster at Aldershot, we were able to present ourselves with a display of smartness and discipline which I, for one, found touching.

We walked up a shallow, uneven flight of steps and into the new Hall’s dark interior. The floor though uneven was laid and swept, and the morning sunlight slanted through the glass less windows. I felt rather awed: despite the crudeness of its architecture and construction, the place had a feeling of solidity, of intent to stay.

Hilary Bond stood on a podium improvised from the car’s petrol tank, and rested her hand for support on Stubbins’s broad shoulder. Her ruined face, topped by those bizarre tufts of hair, held a simple dignity.

Our new colony, she announced, was now founded, and ready to be named: she proposed to call it First London. Then she asked us all to join her in a prayer. I dropped my head with the rest and clasped my hands before me. I was brought up in a strict High Church household, and Hilary’s words now worked nostalgically on me, transporting me back to a simpler part of my life, a time of certainty and surety.

And at length, as Hilary spoke on, simply and effectively, I gave up my attempts at analysis and allowed myself to join in this simple, communal celebration.

The first fruits of the new unions arrived within the year, under Nebogipfel’s supervision.

Nebogipfel inspected our first new colonist carefully — I heard that the mother was most uncertain about allowing a Morlock to handle her baby, and protested; but Hilary Bond was there to calm her fears — and at last Nebogipfel announced that the baby was a perfect girl, and returned her to her parents.

Quite quickly — or so it seemed to me — there were several of the children about the place. It was a common sight to see Stubbins bouncing his baby boy on has shoulders, to the little chap’s evident delight; and I knew it should not be long before Stubbins would have the boy kicking bivalve shells for footballs about the beach.

The children were a source of immense joy to the colonists. Before the first births, several of the colonists had been prone to severe bouts of depression, brought on by homesickness and loneliness. Now, though, there were the children to think about: children who would know only First London as their home, and whose future prosperity provided a goal — the greatest goal of all — for their parents.

As for me, as I watched the soft, unmarked limbs of the children, cradled in the scarred flesh of parents who were still young themselves, it was as if I saw the shadow of that dreadful War lifting from these people at last — a shadow banished by the abundant light of the Palaeocene.

Still, though, Nebogipfel inspected each new-born arrival.

The day came, at last, when he would not return a child to its new mother: That birth turned into an occasion of private grief, into which the rest of us did not intrude; and afterwards Nebogipfel disappeared into the forest, following his secret pursuits, for long days.

Nebogipfel spent a good deal of his time running what he called “study groups.” These were open to any and all of the colonists, though in practice three or four at a time would turn up, depending on interest and other commitments. Nebogipfel held forth on practicalities of life in the conditions of the Palaeocene, such as the manufacture of candles and cloth from the local ingredients; he even devised a sort of soap, a coarse, gritty paste concocted of soda and animal fat. But he also expounded on subjects of broader significance: medicine, physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, the principles of time travel…

I sat in on a number of these sessions. Despite the unearthly nature of his voice and manner the Morlock’s exposition was always admirably clear, and he had a knack of asking questions to test the understanding of his audience. Listening to him, I realized that he could have taught the lecturers of the average British university a thing or two!

As for the content, he was careful to restrict himself to the language of his audience — to the vocabulary, if not the jargon, of 1944 — but he summarized for them the main developments in each field in the decades which followed that date. He worked demonstrations where he could, with bits of metal and wood, or produced diagrams sketched in the sand with sticks; he had his “students” cover every scrap of paper we had been able to retrieve with a codification of his knowledge.

I discussed all this with him around midnight, one dark and moonless night. He had discarded his latest slit-mask, and his gray-red eyes seemed luminescent; he was working with a crude mortar and pestle, in which he was mashing up palm fronds in some liquid. “Paper,” he said. “Or at least, an experiment in that direction… We must have more paper! Your human verbal memory is not of sufficient fidelity — they will lose everything when I am gone, within a few years…”

I took it — wrongly, as it turned out — that he was referring to a fear, or expectation at any rate, of death. I sat down beside him and took the mortar and pestle. “But is there a point to all this? Nebogipfel, we’re still barely subsisting. And you talk to them of Quantum Mechanics, and the Unified Theory of Physics! What need have they of this material?”

“None,” he said. “But their children will — if they are to survive. Look: by accepted theory, one needs a population of several hundred, of any of the large mammalian species, for sufficient genetic diversity to ensure long-term survival.”