The Map of the Sky

by Félix J Palma

  “But there isn’t anyone else here, Curly, just us,” Emma protested gently, gazing uneasily after the child’s hand.

  “They’re here,” Curly insisted stubbornly. “They’ve been here a long time.”

  Somewhat bewildered by Curly’s insistence, we studied the vast chamber once more, peering into the shadows, but as far as we could see we were alone in there. I was about to ask Curly to explain himself when all of a sudden, Wells and Clayton, as though acting on a shared intuition, unhooked a pair of lanterns from the nearest column and edged their way cautiously toward the far wall. Intrigued, we all followed them, forming a kind of procession, while the children remained in the middle of the chamber. When the author and the inspector reached the wall, they each headed for a different corner. They raised their lanterns and began to examine it closely. As the lamplight shone onto the surface, we could see that it was divided into squares, like a checkerboard, each decorated with strange, vaguely oriental-looking symbols. Wells moved his lamp along the wall, revealing it to be covered in these chiseled boxes with their peculiar signs, which gave off a coppery glow, while Clayton did the same at the other end.

  “Good God . . . ,” gasped the author.

  “Good Lord . . . ,” Clayton’s voice echoed.

  “What is it?” I asked, unable to fathom what was going on.

  Wells wheeled round to face us, then looked nervously at the children, who were clustered together in the center of the chamber.

  “They’ve brought us to see their parents—only their parents are their ancestors,” the author murmured in amazement.

  “What do you mean, Mr. Wells?” I said, still puzzled.

  “Look, Mr. Winslow.” Clayton beckoned me over. “What do you think each of these squares is?”

  “I’ve no idea,” I avowed with irritation, in no mood to play guessing games.

  “So you don’t know,” he replied disappointedly. Then he turned to the author. “But you know, don’t you, Mr. Wells?”

  Wells nodded solemnly. They were the same as the ones he had seen on the spaceship hidden in the Chamber of Marvels.

  “They are Martian symbols,” he said. “And these squares on the wall, Mr. Winslow, are tombs.”

  Tombs? Wells’s words startled me, as they did the others. And as he spoke we wheeled around with a mixture of confusion and unease, taking in the rest of the walls in the vast chamber, which we could now see was a shimmering mosaic of tombstones, marking hundreds of niches dug into the rock.

  “Are we in a Martian cemetery?” Murray asked.

  “It looks like it, sir,” Harold replied despondently.

  But in my profound bewilderment, I scarcely heard what they were saying. I was still having difficulty accepting the bizarre notion that the Martians had not arrived on Earth hours before as I had thought, but had been living among us for who knew how long. Yet if this was some kind of Martian burial ground, then these children were . . . Oh, God . . . I contemplated them in disbelief. They were still standing in a huddle in the center of the crypt, a few yards away from us, regarding us with faint curiosity. They had done what we’d asked and seemed to be waiting with indifference to see what our next whim would be, perhaps hoping we would let them get back to their games. And to me they looked just like ordinary children, with their skin still smooth and unblemished and their young, miniature bodies. Children like ours: fragile, innocent, human. But they weren’t. They only had the appearance of human children. And although I found this difficult to take in, doubtless because no Martian had yet mutated in front of my eyes, I noticed my companions were having the same difficulty: they were all staring solemnly at the children, trying to conceal the look of fear creeping over their faces.

  “One of the children is missing,” I heard Emma say beside me.

  “Yes,” Jane confirmed.

  “Right,” Clayton murmured in an imperious tone, ignoring Emma and Jane. “Let’s not panic. We’ll take advantage of the situation. Yes, that’s what we’ll do. Wipe that look of terror off your faces, we don’t want to make these delightful Martians suspicious. I want to see calm smiles, everyone.”

  He said these last words in a gruff whisper that sounded like a threat. Then, clearing his throat, like a tenor preparing to go onstage, he sauntered over to the children. The Martian children, I should clarify.

  “Hey, Curly,” he called out, crouching down in front of them. “Do you live here?”

  Curly looked away from us, turning his ringleted head toward Clayton.

  “No, of course not. What a silly idea!” the child declared. “We live up there. But he told us we couldn’t play up there today, because it would be dangerous, that’s why we came down here.”

  “Of course, of course, that way you could play safely,” Clayton calmed the child. Then he gave us a sly smile before resuming his conversation with the boy. “And who told you that, Curly? Who is ‘he’?”

  “He’s the Envoy, sir. The one we’ve been waiting for. The one they’ve been waiting for, too,” said the child, pointing at the tombs.

  “Oh, I see. And have you been waiting for him for a long time?”

  “Yes, sir, a very long time. We almost thought he wasn’t going to come.”

  “I see . . .” Clayton moistened his lips and exchanged a meaningful look with Wells, as though they shared some secret information. “And is he down here, too, Curly?”

  “Yes.”

  Clayton swallowed hard.

  “Good, good.” He smiled. “And could you take us to him?”

  “Why?” Curly looked at the inspector askance. “Do you want to kill him because of what he’s doing to you?”

  “Kill him? Why of course not, Curly,” the inspector replied with a casual wave of his hand. “How could you think such a thing?”

  “Why then?”

  “Just to talk to him, Curly.” The inspector shrugged, playing it down.

  “Talk to him about what?”

  “Er . . . well, about grown-up things, you know,” Clayton vacillated. “Nothing very interesting, in any case.”

  “Do you think we wouldn’t understand?” the boy asked in a faintly menacing tone, which struck me as all the more threatening for being cloaked in that innocent childlike voice.

  “I didn’t say that, Curly.”

  “Because I think we would.”

  “One of the children is missing,” I heard Emma whisper again behind me, in a low, quavering voice.

  I studied the group of children standing motionless, listening to the conversation between Curly and the inspector. There was something so malevolent and inhuman about their concentration that it sent a shiver down my spine.

  “Of course, of course,” I heard Clayton reassuring Curly. “I don’t doubt it, but—”

  “We’re cleverer than you think,” Curly insisted quietly, fixing his dark, terribly empty eyes on the inspector, who appeared to totter slightly, as if he was about to lose his balance, “and we understand things you could never comprehend.”

  “Oh for God’s sake! That’s enough!” Murray cried. He plunged his hand into my pocket and snatched my pistol. Before I had time to react, he leapt in front of Curly, placing the barrel against his head, and said, “Listen to me, kid: I don’t know what you understand, or even what you are, and, frankly, I don’t care. All we want to know is who is responsible for this damned invasion, and where to find him. And you, my dear little children, are going to help us do that. Otherwise, you can be sure I’ll shoot you. If there’s one thing I detest more than Martians, it’s children.”

  We heard a laugh ring out from somewhere in the room. And a voice said, “Would you be capable of taking the most sacred life of all, that of an innocent child? Is it not written in your Holy Scriptures, ‘Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God’?”

  As one, we peered into the dense surrounding gloom, trying to make out who had spoken. Then, the shadows seemed to congeal and we insta
ntly discovered more than twenty people encircling us. For the most part, they were middle-aged men, who, judging from their apparel, came from every conceivable social class. Before we could react, the children scurried behind them, and Murray found himself pointing his pistol at air. The one who had spoken was standing a few steps closer than the others. He was an elderly, dignified-looking gentleman wearing a black cassock and a collar. Unlike the others, who were glaring at us menacingly, the old priest wore a smile of amused satisfaction. I noticed then that he was holding the hand of little Hobo, who must have gone to warn them while the others kept us occupied. Skipping and singing gaily, the children had led us into a trap. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Murray aim his gun at the man who had spoken. Clayton, Harold, and Shackleton immediately followed suit. I simply piled close behind them with the others, cursing the fact that, stupidly, I had no weapon and was therefore unable to act.

  “Oh, what a proud gesture, so touchingly human,” the old man declared when he saw all our pistols pointing at him. “But do you really think shooting us will get you anywhere?”

  Those brandishing the guns stared at one another, unsure what to do next, but they continued pointing at the Martians. Our pigheadedness amused the old man, who spread his wrinkled hands in a gesture of peace.

  “Gentlemen, please. Don’t make us kill you; you know how easy that would be. Put down your weapons and surrender,” he urged in his melodious voice. “Those who do will receive His mercy: ‘Be still and know that I am God,’ Psalm Forty-Six, verse ten,” he recited, with a smile of infinite compassion. “After all, I only want to take you where you want to go: He wishes to meet you as much as you wish to meet Him. One of you, in particular . . .” He stepped forward, stretching out his hands, palms upturned. “Let us go to Him in peace, brothers: ‘My times are in thy hand: deliver me from the hand of mine enemies, and from them that persecute me. Make thy face to shine upon thy servant,’ ” he intoned, gazing at Wells with a strange look of tenderness, before adding in a whisper: “Psalm Thirty-One, verses fifteen and sixteen.”

  XXXVI

  CHARLES AWOKE THE NEXT MORNING, HIS FACE IN A pool of blood. From the taste of blood in his mouth, he assumed he had hemorrhaged from the nose during the night. When he tried to wipe the blood off with the sleeve of his jacket, two of his remaining teeth came out. He pulled himself up laboriously, sweating and shivering at the same time. The simple act of breathing had become a torment: his throat burned and his lungs felt as if they were filled with hot coals. This was proof enough that he had little time left, perhaps even less than he had thought.

  After breakfast, the Martians led them back inside the pyramid. The other prisoners in his work detail were all suffering the effects of having been exposed to the green liquid the previous day. Scarcely looking at one another, ashamed, perhaps, of their deplorable condition, or for fear of seeing their own wraithlike appearance mirrored in the others, they began trudging down the familiar long tunnel, though at one point Charles thought they took a different turning, which seemed to lead them deeper into the bowels of the Earth. He felt terribly weak and dizzy, but he knew this was not entirely due to the nosebleed or the occasional stabbing pains in his damaged lungs. The atmosphere inside the pyramid polluted his soul as well as his body. But he must conserve what little strength he had to keep walking, to stay in the line with his wretched companions as they marched forward in gloomy silence. Charles wondered where the Martians could be taking them now, what fresh atrocities awaited them after the terrible vision of the day before, an example of pure evil, of insane cruelty. What fresh nightmare of ingenious aberration could the Martians show him today to batter his benumbed soul further?

  They reached the room at the end of the tunnel, and once more the green light flooding it forced them to close their eyes. When at last they opened them, shielding their smarting eyelids with their hands, they saw tanks that stretched up to the dark, distant ceiling, like those they had seen the day before. But the bodies they contained were not those of babies. This was when Charles understood that the nightmare was unending.

  Floating inside the tanks, stacked one on top of the other in rows and columns like human bricks, were the bodies of hundreds of women. They were mostly young and tightly packed together to form these macabre layers, their heads brushing against the feet of the women in the next column. They looked as if they were sleeping, suspended in a disturbing limbo, their hair floating like seaweed in the abominable fluid, their flesh spongy and pale, their eyes closed. Their mouths were slightly open, yet he saw no sign of breathing to suggest a flicker of life. The most ghastly aspect of all was the tubes snaking out from between their legs, which seemed exactly like the cables he had seen sprouting from the babies’ navels and descending into the holes in the base of their tank. This was where those cables ended up, he now realized, snaking between the legs of these women and defiling their sex, until they reached their dormant bellies. Hundreds and hundreds of cables descended from above, undulating in the infernal ocean like monstrous sea snakes wriggling their way into the silent interior of these slumbering women. O Lord, why hast thou forsaken us? Charles whispered, overwhelmed with horror as he stumbled toward the awful tanks. The women were floating motionless, their bodies rigid and pale, as though ready for embalming. He felt as though he was going to black out and made a superhuman effort to collect himself. He refused to let them send him to the funnel, not until he’d finished his diary, or at any rate until his heart burst, unable to take any more horror. He managed not to collapse as he listened to the Martians who had begun giving orders.

  From what he could gather in his confusion, they were to carry out the same task as the day before: changing the liquid in the tanks. Driven on by the Martians’ cries, the prisoners began trudging toward the storeroom containing the barrels. The hours passed with exasperating slowness. Working mechanically for what seemed like an eternity, Charles felt so dizzy and confused he kept thinking he was seeing himself from the outside. At one point he had a violent coughing fit and everything momentarily went black, making him fear he’d lose consciousness and collapse in front of the monsters’ impassive faces. When he recovered, he stood contemplating a pool of greenish blood at his feet with two more of his teeth floating in it.

  One of the guards ordered him to resume working with a sharp push that almost sent him flying. He took the barrel he had begun moving and rolled it down the passageway. But the coughing had left him weak and he felt feverish, and as he pushed, random thoughts began to assail him: snatches of memory, fragments of dreams, bizarre images that flashed through his delirious mind as in a half sleep. A chance connection in his subconscious transported him to the Chicago World’s Fair, which he had visited in his youth, during the so-called Battle of Currents between Edison’s General Electric, which advocated direct current, and Westinghouse Electric, whose founder believed passionately in the superiority of the alternating current as conceived by Nikola Tesla. The thrilled young Charles had marveled at the generators and engines that would illuminate the world, banishing forever the empire of darkness.

  Electricity, Charles said to himself, pausing beside the tank, another of the great scientific advances that was to make Man master of all Creation. He gazed dolefully at the cables in the tanks reaching up to the ceiling and wondered whether this room really was beneath the one containing the babies’ tanks. Were these women hooked up to their offspring in a kind of insane electrical circuit, transmitting energy-charged particles from one to the other like a diabolical multiple human dynamo? Had the Martians created a gigantic human battery, using the energy supposedly transmitted by their brains, by the age-old maternal bond, to drive their machines? Charles choked back sobs as he realized that what he had been thinking during his delirium might be true, that these parasites were robbing them of their purest essence. The Martians were forcing human women to conceive and give birth, then submerging mother and baby in this green liquid, locking them into an eternal cycle o
f flowing particles that might poison the world with its corrupt love. He wept silently as he worked the levers that emptied out the tanks, unaware that the tears rolling down his cheeks were green.

  And then, in a corner of the tank, he saw her. The guards were distracted and so he was able to go up and look at her more closely, separated only by the width of the glass wall, against which his heart throbbed wildly. He recognized her, despite her long dark hair floating around her face like shreds of the night. He studied her elegant profile and recalled the adorable way she used to pout when she was alive, the delightful surliness that wrinkled her nose and curled her lips, the slight bashfulness that had made him feel strongly attracted to her the first time he saw her. That was when her friend Lucy introduced them, during the second expedition to the future, moments before they clambered aboard the Cronotilus like happy, excited children, on their way to see Captain Shackleton’s victory. And now he remembered her as she was the last time he saw her in his uncle’s basement, wearing an exquisite green silk dress she did not yet know would be the color of her shroud, standing on tiptoes, her arms around her husband’s neck, and whispering a farewell in his ear that would remain with them forever, the last words they ever spoke to each other. And here she was, joined to a child some stranger had fathered. Charles did not know if in that state of limbo she retained any vestige of consciousness, if she knew where she was, if she perhaps dreamed of the child attached to the other end of the cord, far from her embrace, or of the captain, of seeing him again one day. All he knew was that the Martians had turned her into a beautiful mermaid whose eternal torment powered their machine. It was clear that in such a state, death could only be a deliverance.

  That night, back in his cell, Charles knew he would not survive another day in the depths of the pyramid. And so he forced himself to write, despite spattering the remaining pages with drops of blood that glowed a soft green, smudging his already illegible scrawl. He doubted whether anyone finding his diary would be able to make much sense of the final entries, yet he kept on writing, trying to thrust aside the question that assailed him each time he paused to rummage through his memories: would he tell the brave Captain Shackleton that he had found his Claire?