When I had recovered from the shock, I realized I had crashed into the guardrail surrounding the huge basin where the pipes discharged the wastewaters. A few yards above me I saw the tunnel that had spat us out, dumping its foul cargo into the pool, and at least a dozen more doing the same. Emerging from the bottom of this pool, where London’s excrement converged, was an underwater pipe leading out of the sewers, creating a gigantic whirlpool in the middle of the basin. However, it was impossible for anyone to be able to hold their breath for the fifteen or twenty minutes I calculated it would take to swim through it. If this was the good priest’s plan, he had clearly overestimated our lung capacity. Next to me, Jane coughed. She was only half conscious, perhaps due to the fear that had overwhelmed her as we flew through the air, yet unscathed thanks to its having been my body that smashed into the guardrail. I noticed that Shackleton had fallen into the middle of the basin, but despite the huge whirlpool threatening to suck him down, he seemed unhurt and was swimming strongly toward the edge, where I could see an iron ladder embedded in the wall. I looked away from what I was certain would be Shackleton’s successful escape from the deadly vortex and searched for the others. A few yards from me, I saw Clayton, his legs wrapped around the guardrail, his one good hand clutching Wells, whose legs were thrashing in midair. I realized immediately that if Wells fell into the water, he would be too weak to swim away from the whirlpool and would be irretrievably dragged down.
“Hang on, Clayton!” I cried, clambering to my feet to help the inspector hoist Wells up.
I dragged myself over to them as fast as my bruised body would allow, trying to ignore the stabbing pain coming from my ribs, even as I saw Clayton shout something at Wells, trying to make himself heard above the din of the water. A few yards beyond where Wells and Clayton were suspended above the pool, I saw the captain, who had managed to scale the ladder and was approaching them with his muscular arms. Even so, I was closer to them than he was.
“Try to hang on a bit longer!” I cried, gritting my teeth to stop myself fainting from the pain.
But they were too busy shouting at each other, and neither of them seemed to hear me. When at last I reached them, I could hear what at that very moment Clayton was shouting to Wells, his neck straining, the thick tendons stretched to the snapping point: “Do it! Trust me, you can do it! Only you can save us!”
Not understanding what the inspector was referring to, I also cried out. “Give me your hand, Wells!” I stretched out my arm, gripping the guardrail with my other hand.
The inspector looked at me and smiled, exhausted from his terrible exertion. Then his eyes rolled back and he passed out. Unable to grab the two men in time, I watched as they plummeted into the basin forty feet below. The captain, arriving from the other direction, dived after them and managed to grab Clayton before he disappeared underwater. But I realized he couldn’t rescue Wells as well and so, without considering that I might lose consciousness as I hit the water, I leapt over the guardrail, plunging into that dirty, foul-smelling pond. The impact increased the pain in my ribs, but not so much that I lost consciousness. The water was terribly murky, and when I had managed to collect myself, I dived down, swimming desperately back and forth, struggling against the terrible power of the whirlpool threatening to suck me down to the bottom. Try as I might, I could not see Wells. When my lungs felt as if they were going to burst, I came up to the surface. And then I felt the tail coil around my neck and lift me into the air.
That was the end of our desperate flight. When one of the monsters fished me out of the water with its tail and hurled me onto the side of the basin, together with the rest of my companions, I realized we had been taken prisoner. The Envoy was standing before us, once more in the guise of Wells, leading us to deduce that Clayton’s exploding hand must have annihilated only the few of his fellow Martians who were heading the chase. Two years on, I can still remember vividly the look of defeat on our faces as we glanced at one another beside the basin, breathless and weak, and our anxiety about our future, an anxiety that today seems almost laughable compared to the dismal fate that awaited us. But my clearest memory was of Jane frantically calling to Wells, crying out his name over and over until her voice cracked. But her cries paled in comparison to the Envoy’s bellow of rage when his fellow Martians emerged from the depths of the basin to announce that the author was nowhere to be seen: his most precious cockroach had escaped, taking his secret with him. And, unfortunately for the Envoy, this changed the universe into an unfathomable place, where anything was possible. To this day, I have no idea what became of Wells. I assume he must have passed out when he hit the water and then drowned, his body flushed out into the Thames. And, although it might not seem so, he could not have wished for a better end.
Just now, beyond the gloomy forests that surround the Martian camp, the sun is sinking behind the ruined city of London, and in my cell I am hurrying to finish writing this diary, hours before my own life ends, for I am certain I shall not survive another day. My body is going to give out at any moment, or perhaps it will be my heart, this morass of despair and bitterness I carry around in my chest. Fortunately, I have succeeded in reaching the end of my story. I only hope that whilst I did not manage to be the hero of this tale, whoever reads these pages will at least have found me an adequate narrator. My life ends here, a life I wish I could have lived differently. But there is no time to make amends. All I can do now is record in these pages my belated yet heartfelt remorse.
From my cell I can see night gathering over the Martian pyramid, this structure that symbolizes better than any flag the conquest of a planet, a planet that once belonged to us, the human race. On it we forged our History, we gave the best and the worst of ourselves. Yet all this will be forgotten when the last man on Earth perishes, ending an entire species. With him, all our hopes will die.
And that is something that, although I still don’t understand it, I have come to accept.
Charles Leonard Winslow, model prisoner, the Martian Camp, Lewisham
XXXVII
ALTHOUGH DAWN FOUND HIM STILL ALIVE, Charles had nevertheless hidden the diary in his trousers before descending into the depths of the pyramid, convinced this would be his last day. Having spent the whole night wracked with fever and convulsions, he was forced to confront the day’s work, putting up with the inquisitive stares of the Martians, who were no doubt expecting him to collapse at any moment. But to his surprise, he managed to stay upright, transporting the barrels, willing his body not to give way, not to dissolve like a cloud unraveled by the breeze, reminding himself now and then to conserve enough energy to bury the diary.
When he reemerged aboveground, more dead than alive, he stumbled over to the feeding machines, where a line of prisoners was already waiting to be given their second ration of the day, before retiring finally to their cells. Charles walked past, averting his gaze, then came to a halt a few yards from where he believed the invisible ray that interacted with their neck shackles began to operate. He burrowed a hole in the ground with trembling hands, and, making sure no one was looking, buried the diary there. He wished he could have sent it by carrier pigeon, in a bold act of resistance, to a country in the old Europe where there might still be free human beings, but he had to be content with burying it within the confines of the camp. He spread a few stones on top and gazed at the tiny mound for a few moments. He didn’t know for whom he was leaving the diary there. Conceivably no one would ever find it, and time would disintegrate the pages before they were read. Or perhaps a Martian would stumble on it in a few days’ time and destroy it immediately. On reflection, he would prefer this than the creature reading it aloud to his companions, making fun of Charles’s lamentable prose, his banal meditations on the nature of love, or the futile attempts he and his companions made to escape the inevitable. But it made little difference whether the diary was found or not, he told himself, for now he felt ashamed of his reasons for writing it. He hadn’t done it to celebrate Gilliam an
d Emma’s love, or to document what he had discovered about the Martians, as he claimed in the diary. No, he had been compelled to write it, he acknowledged in a sudden fit of sincerity, by the same selfishness that had always motivated his actions: to show himself to the world in a good light, to record for posterity that despite having wasted his life, at least in his final days on Earth he had managed to act like any other dignified human being.
Well, if that had been his aim, he had fulfilled it and was now free to die. That was what his body yearned for: the absolute, peaceful, eternal rest that death offered. Charles smiled at the evening sky, exposing his wizened, toothless gums. Yes, that is what he would do. He would go back to this cell, lie down on his pallet, and wait for death, which before long would come knocking at his door. And the next morning at dawn, the neck shackle would interrupt his eternal sleep and take him for a posthumous journey through the camp, for his destiny would not be complete until he was turned into food for those who were still alive. And that would be the end of Charles Winslow.
His head spinning, Charles staggered back to his cell. He had no strength left for anything else, he told himself, and in some sense this relieved him of the burden he had felt since seeing Claire’s naked body floating in the tank and wondering if he should tell Captain Shackleton his wife was dead. He was aware that by doing so he would take away the only thing that kept Shackleton alive. But didn’t the captain also deserve some respite? Charles, with a few words, could grant him the right to surrender, to lay down his arms. Why did he not tell him, then? These doubts had been gnawing away at him all night. In the end dawn had come and he still hadn’t made a decision. No matter how hard he tried to convince himself he hadn’t the strength to go to Shackleton’s cell, this paltry excuse did little to dispel his feelings of remorse. Weak as he was, he resolved he would make it over to where the captain was to tell him what he had seen, thus releasing him from his pointless purgatory. No doubt, when the captain discovered that Claire was inside the pyramid, he would try to go down there and the shackle would instantly begin to throttle him, to kill him even, if he persisted. But what did that matter now? Clearly there would never be an uprising, Charles reflected with bitterness; the Martians would be the lords and masters of the Earth. Things had gone much too far for anyone to be able to put them right. Their doomed planet no longer had any need of a hero. And so Charles decided the time had come to offer Captain Shackleton his freedom, the only freedom to which Man could now aspire: that of deciding whether he wanted to go on living. Filled with this resolve, Charles turned around and stumbled toward the barracks where his friend’s cell was, on the other side of the camp.
However, he was weaker than he thought. The captain was forced to interrupt the exercises he was doing at the entrance to his cell when he saw Charles collapse a few yards from the barracks. He leapt down the steps, hoisted Charles’s limp body onto his shoulders, and carried him back to his cell, where he laid him out on his pallet with the gentleness of an embalmer. Then he placed his hand on Charles’s burning brow and realized he was too far gone for him to do anything: Charles would die within minutes. Shackleton sat beside him and clasped his hand. The young man appeared slowly to regain consciousness, groaning softly, his eyes struggling to focus on Shackleton.
When it appeared they had, Charles whispered, “I’m dying, Captain . . .”
The captain gave him a look of commiseration and pressed his hand but remained silent. Charles cleared his throat with a painful rasp and began.
“I’m sorry I took you away from Claire that afternoon,” he said with difficulty. “I’m so sorry it was all for nothing. I should have let you spend those last hours together. They were yours, and I took them from you. I regret it more than you could know, Captain. But I promise I didn’t do it out of spite or on a whim. I truly believed you were destined to defeat the Martians. It was written, remember?” Charles tried to smile at his own joke but only managed a pathetic rictus of pain. “And I still don’t understand why it didn’t happen, why the future you came from will not exist, even though both of us have seen it.”
Shackleton shifted uneasily in his chair but did not break his silence.
“Luckily, I don’t have much time to keep on asking myself why nothing turned out the way it was supposed to, and I suppose I’ve more than paid for all the wrong or mistaken things I may have done in my life. I’m so tired, Derek . . . all I want now is to rest . . .” Charles stared blankly at Shackleton as though a mist had descended between them, obscuring him. “And you must do the same, Derek . . . Yes, you must admit defeat, Captain. You’ve nothing left to fight for, my friend. Not anymore. I have to tell you something . . .”
Charles was seized by a sudden fit of coughing, causing his body to jerk on the pallet as several mouthfuls of blood oozed down his chin and neck, staining his skin an oily green. The captain hurriedly sat him up so he wouldn’t choke on his own blood, holding him until the coughing subsided and gazing at him with infinite sorrow. When he had recovered, Charles closed his eyes, exhausted, and Shackleton once more laid him gently down. His breathing was so slight that for a moment the captain thought Charles had passed away, but when he moved his face close to his friend’s bloodstained lips, he could feel his breath, light and fleeting, like the shadow of a dragonfly on the water. Shackleton looked at him for a few moments and shook his head slowly. Then he got up and walked over to the table on the opposite side of his cell.
“Captain Shackleton! Derek!” Charles called out suddenly, eyes wide open, frantically searching for his friend in the darkness slowly closing in around him. “Where are you, Derek? I can’t see, I can’t see . . . everything’s gone black . . . Derek!”
The captain remained motionless for a moment, his back to Charles, his shoulders hunched, as though he were carrying an immense weight. At last, he took something from the table, went back over to the bed, knelt beside the dying man, and began to speak to him, his powerful hands caressing the object.
“Listen, Charles. I, too, have something to tell you,” he said solemnly. “Much has happened during the three days since I last saw you. While you were inside the pyramid, I was in the women’s camp—and I have some news. Important news.”
Charles attempted to interrupt in a thin voice. “Derek, there’s something I have to tell you . . .”
“Hush, my friend! Don’t talk, save your strength, and listen to me,” the captain insisted. “They brought a new batch of women from the Continent. And I was able to speak to some of them, Charles. They told me the Martians are having serious problems over there. Resistance groups have sprung up in France, Italy, Germany, and many other countries. Everyone is talking about a group of strange soldiers armed with powerful weapons. Yes, Charles, weapons no one has ever seen before, weapons almost as technologically advanced as the Martians’. And these soldiers move from camp to camp, freeing the prisoners, arming them, training them. And they are growing in strength and number. It is rumored they will soon arrive in England. And do you know what else they are saying, my friend? That these soldiers are searching for their captain, that they’ve come from the future to rescue him.”
“From the future? Oh, heavens, Captain! But how can that be?” Charles managed to murmur, filled with wonder, afraid of surrendering to this miracle, to the intense joy threatening to engulf him and sweep away his pain.
“I don’t know, Charles. I’m wondering that myself.” Shackleton let out a loud guffaw, still mysteriously fondling the object he was holding. “But clearly these are my men, Charles. They are coming to save me, to save us. How could they have found out what was happening in the past? I don’t know. As I told you, in the future we have time machines that are different from the Cronotilus. The one I used to get here was destroyed, but who knows, maybe there were others I didn’t know about, and maybe other travelers saw the beginning of the invasion and went back to the future to raise the alarm.”
“But if that’s the case,” Charles protested, making
a superhuman effort to raise his voice so the captain could hear him, “then why did they take so long? And why did they turn up on the Continent and not here?”
For a few moments Shackleton remained pensive.
“I don’t know, my friend,” he said suddenly, recovering his enthusiasm, “but I can assure you that’s the first thing I’ll ask my brave men when I see them! Oh yes, Charles, you can count on it! I’ll say to them, ‘What the hell have you been doing while I, your captain, was rotting away in here? Baboons! Devil’s spawn! Sodomizing one another? Impregnating your own mothers? Or do you suppose we’ve been enjoying ourselves in here, sons of bitches?’ Yes, that’s what I’ll say. I can hear them laughing already,” declared the captain, and he began to guffaw loudly. Charles felt his own lips forming a smile, exposing his naked gums, as he began to accept as true the captain’s incredible story.
“But . . . are you sure, my dear fellow?” he asked. “Can you trust these women?”
“Of course, Charles. Look at this,” Shackleton said, placing in his friend’s hands the mysterious object he had been holding. Charles fondled it blindly, allowing the captain to guide his fingers. “One of them brought me this. It’s from my time, it’s a . . . well, we call it a marker. I knew what it was as soon as she gave it to me.”
“What is it?” Charles’s voice was scarcely audible now.
“We would use them after the battle to find survivors buried under the rubble. We all wore one around our neck. I took mine off before I traveled here, so as not to arouse suspicion among the people in your time. But now, thanks to that brave woman, I have this one. Many of the women who had escaped from the camps let themselves be recaptured, their mission to smuggle these markers in under their clothing and find me to give me one of them. And now I’m going to activate it and hide it under my clothing, Charles. That means my soldiers will reach me as soon as they land in England. It will only be a matter of months, my friend, possibly even weeks. But they will come, Charles, they will come. And that will be the end of the Martians. We’re going to defeat them, my friend.”
The Map of the Sky Page 56
