In another moment we were standing face to face, I and this fragile creature from the future. He came straight up to me, looked into my eyes and laughed. He was not afraid at all. Then he turned to two others behind him and spoke to them in a strange, very sweet and soft language.
More of them came, and soon eight or ten of these lovely little people were standing around me. They touched my hands, my back and my shoulders with their small, soft hands. They wanted to know if I was real. There was nothing frightening in this. They were gentle, like children, and they looked so weak that I could have thrown a dozen of them around like toys. But when I saw their little pink hands on the Time Machine, I remembered a danger. I quickly took off the little levers that started it, and I put them in my pocket.
They did not try to talk to me, so I began. I pointed to the Time Machine and to myself. Then, to show time, I pointed to the sun. At once a pretty little figure in purple and white copied my movement, and then made the sound of thunder.
He was asking me if I had come from the sun in a thunderstorm! A question came into my head: were these people fools? You see, I had always expected that the people of the future would be far ahead of us in knowledge, in art, in everything. And now one of them asked me a question like a five-year-old child. For a moment I felt that I had built the Time Machine for nothing.
I nodded, pointed to the sun, and made a loud sound of thunder. They all stepped back and bowed. Then one of them came towards me with a chain of beautiful flowers and put it round my neck. Soon they were all running here and there for flowers and throwing them at me, laughing, until I was almost covered in them. Then they led me past the White Sphinx, which seemed to smile at my surprise, towards a huge grey building of carved stone. On the way I saw tall plants with large white flowers. The Time Machine stayed behind on the grass.
Inside was a great hall. The floor was made of blocks of hard white metal, worn into deep paths by the feet of many generations. On low tables of stone there were heaps of fruit. The little people sat down on cushions and began to eat with their hands, so I did the same, because I was hungry. As I ate, I looked round. The coloured windows were broken in many places, the curtains were thick with dust, and everything was old. About two hundred people were eating there, and most of them sat as close to me as they could and watched me.
Fruit, by the way, was all they ate. There was no meat, and while I was with them, I had to eat only fruit too. Later I found that horses, cows, sheep and dogs had all died out long ago.
When I was less hungry, I decided to learn their language. I held up a fruit and made questioning sounds. At first they just stared at me or laughed, but at last a fair-haired little creature understood and said a name. I felt like a teacher among children. Soon I knew twenty words, and even the verb “to eat”. But the little people soon got tired and wanted to get away from my questions. I never met people who were lazier or got tired more quickly.