Marriott sat in an office chair at a desk wide and handsome – a desk that had no place down here - we sat on stools that must once have graced the bar above. There were papers heaped up on the desk, held in place with paperweights of flint.
‘I’m sorry about the lads,’ Marriott said when Verity briefly recounted our welcome. ‘All part of the cover, of course.’ He waved a hand. ‘You can see why an inn is so useful. Even the Martians know that people come to such places at all hours. And an inn has a cellar, like this one, where we can get up to all sorts of mischief out of the Martians’ sight. But it’s all fakery upstairs, as – what did they give their names as?’
‘Jeff and Toby.’ Verity seemed restless; she got up from her stool and roamed around, peering to see the maps in the dim light, to read labelling on the boxes and crates.
‘That’ll do,’ Marriott said. ‘But we ran out of beer on the second or third night. Ha! Didn’t take us long to drink the place dry. And of course we don’t have power or even running water. But we get by.’ He grinned, self-satisfied in his little underground kingdom.
I was quickly deciding that I did not like this man, no matter how brave he proved to be, how noble his motives. With the aim of puncturing him a little, I ignored this speech and turned to Verity. ‘How did you get in contact with these characters?’
‘They approached me,’ she murmured. ‘Wish I could read these labels better . . . Since the first days, when Abbotsdale and its folk settled down to a routine, I have always felt – restless.’
‘It’s a foul business,’ Marriott said, pushing his way back into the conversation. ‘Living as we do with the Martians, and accepting – sacrifices. Better than the alternative, I suppose, when the Martians just swoop down like something out of Bram Stoker and take a fellow. But still it’s all a brutal affair, and a daily demonstration of our humiliation. Yes, humiliation.’
‘Hence this operation,’ I said.
He beamed his pride. ‘It’s not much for now, although as it happens we have something of a spectacular planned for tomorrow. But one does what one can. And, yes, we’re always on the look-out for new recruits. One gets a sense – a certain look – if a person isn’t content to be one of the cattle.’
‘Which is how you spotted Verity.’
‘That’s it.’
Verity was inspecting a revolver. ‘I imagine much of this is a relic of the first days of the invasion.’
‘Mostly from what the Army units trapped inside the Cordon had with them – there’s a lot more out there, you can imagine, in one cache or another. That’s where the ammo comes from too, most of it. They’ve tried air drops from the outside -’
‘The Martians shoot them down,’ Verity told me. ‘They seem to be able to tell when there’s weapons or ammunition and such.
They let through drops of medicines and clothes and food – most of the time, anyhow; they seem to err on the side of caution. These crates – it is dynamite, isn’t it?’
‘Not military – there was a store here before for quarrying and demolition and such-like. Even the farmers used the odd stick to clear deep tree roots, I’m told.’ He grinned. ‘We’ve been quietly spiriting the stuff here since the invasion.’
Verity frowned. ‘Which was over two years ago.’ She looked at the crates, again trying to read the labels.
‘Think this stack is a lot? We’ve got more of it stashed all over, right up against the walls of the pits in some cases. We had a quarryman on the team, and he showed us how to lay the charges so you get the result you want. Like sculpture, he described it, like sculpting the landscape, the very earth, and we all listened to him.’
‘Hmm,’ Verity said. ‘And did he train you on how to keep dynamite?’
He ignored her. ‘All we need is the word.’
‘You seem to have got organised quickly,’ I said, at the risk of flattering Marriott.
‘That we did. And that was all thanks to Captain Tolchard – an Army man, among those who got stuck here. Older chap he was, in his fifties; but he’d had some training in franc-tireur methods, back when they were still organising in case of an invasion by the Germans. Hard to think how it used to be, ain't it? All the things we were scared of that never came to pass, save for the biggest thing of all. Anyhow he got things organised sharpish so we could resist the Martians instead. He made sure we got the weapons and so on squirreled away fast. And he found a lot of willing followers; many of us had been in the Fyrd or had served before.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘Who, Tolchard? Taken by the Martians, would you believe.
Just bad luck, that’s all. I saw him myself, a man like Tolchard he fought the Boers, you know – running like a rat before the catcher, just like a rat, before he got scooped up by one of those tentacle things -’
‘So now you’re in charge.’
‘For my sins. I was in the Fyrd myself, a second lieutenant.’
‘What did you do for a living?’
‘Bank manager, in Cheapside. Branch of the London & Country.’ He stroked his desk. ‘Was out this way for a drive in the country, just a few days out was the plan, never been here before, this part of the world. Since my wife died, well, I hadn’t been out much, but it was set to be a fine few days. And then the Martians came, and that was that – I was stuck. Just luck, really.’
‘A bank manager, though.’
‘Not much need for those skills in here! But I got this desk from a branch in Great Missenden – well, it was going to waste.
Got to have a good environment to work in, you know.’ He tapped his head. ‘Lots of planning to be done, and somebody’s got to do it.’
Verity said, ‘Those boxes of dynamite . . . These came from Somerset West, I can see that much, which is a factory in South Africa. I’m no expert, Marriott, but I’ve been around soldiers for the last two years - I can’t find a date, but the boxes look weathered– they must be a good deal older than two years - do you turn these boxes?’
He waved a hand and said sternly, ‘I have professional soldiers in this cadre and I leave all that to them, and I’d recommend you do the same.’
‘Yes, but -’
‘Perhaps you should come over here and sit down with your friend, and tell me what it was you wanted of me.’
She was clearly infuriated to be so patronised, and seemed reluctant to give up her pressing about the dynamite, but she nodded. ‘Tell him, Julie.’
‘I need to find Albert Cook.’
He scowled. ‘That traitor.’
‘Look, it doesn’t matter why. The Abbotsdale folk have got their heads down. But you must know where Cook is. It’s evident you have a wider knowledge of the country.’ I got up and walked around the desk to the big maps stuck to the wall behind him. The light was dim, but I could make out the names and places on the big, highly detailed ordnance maps. ‘We got these maps parachuted in special,’ he said with some pride.
I pointed. ‘Here’s Amersham – here’s Abbotsdale – here we
are.’ The Cordon itself, the Martians’ devastated perimeter, was a thick circular band shaded with pencil. ‘And these red spots -’
‘The subsidiary pits, as we think of them. Where the cylinders came down away from the Cordon at the edge, and away from the Redoubt, the big central group at Amersham.’ I had not seen maps of the occupied zone as detailed as this, but it was reminiscent of patterns I had seen before, in Berlin.
Just as Walter had in Berlin with his old map of Surrey and London, now with the forefinger of my right hand, following the inner pit markers, I traced one loop, two, in a scrawled clockwise spiral, an integrated pattern that must have been twenty miles across, all contained within the dark band of the Cordon. It was, I saw, the same pattern Walter had discerned in the Surrey landings of ’07, and on much the same scale. I asked Marriot, ‘And these lines you’ve marked that connect the pits -’
‘Canals, we call ’em, but that’s our joke – Martians, see – they’re diggi
ng gullies between the pits. No water in ’em, however. No idea what they’re for.’
But I saw, inspecting his maps; the Martians were connecting their impact scars with lines and loops to make a sigil of just the kind Walter had discerned in the ’07 landscape, and had predicted now. He was right.
Marriott got out of his chair and stood by me; he smelled faintly of cigar smoke and body odour. ‘Yes, we know this landscape very well, after two years.’
Verity said, ‘And you’ve had the word, have you? You mentioned a “spectacular”coming up tomorrow.’
‘A particular opportunity we spotted. There’s a kind of flood, a dam the Martians created for themselves, where a small charge might do a lot of damage – yes, we’ve had the go-ahead to try it. Don’t do anything without orders, we’re soldiers in here and not a rabble, just as Captain Tolchard left us.’
I broke in, ‘Look – all I’m interested in is Cook. Do you know where he is or not?’
I could see pride and caution war in the man’s small face.
‘Yes,’ he conceded at last. ‘Yes, I know where he is. Tell you something. He’s no friend to mankind, that I can see – from what’s said of him. But at least he’s his own man, I suppose.’ Verity said, ‘Unlike the folk at Abbotsdale, you mean.’
‘Yes – not just sitting around, munching on home-grown spuds and ordering people about. Here,if you’re comfortable, if you’re well fed, what with the government and the rest cut out of the picture – it suits some folk, doesn’t it? So what if every now and then one of you disappears, plucked as if by some choosy god?’
I faced Marriott. ‘I’m asking again. Will you help me find Cook?’
‘Tell you what – help us tomorrow, and the day after that we’ll get you to Cook. How does that sound?’
I exchanged a glance with Verity. We had no right to demand, I saw. ‘Very well. But help you how? Shall we lug a few boxes of dynamite for you? As Jeff or Toby found out earlier, we’re stronger than we look.’
But Verity put her hand on my arm. ‘No,’ she said firmly.
‘Let’s leave that to the experts.’
23
WITH THE FRANC-TIREURS OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE
We spent a not uncomfortable night at the inn. We two had to share an upstairs room that must once have been let out to travellers; it had its own wash stand, though the taps did not run, and there was a chamber pot under the bed. I slept well enough.
Oddly, in this period of my life I rarely had trouble sleeping.
It was as if I had grown weary of being afraid, if you can imagine it. I saw it in my mother, when she knew she was dying of a lung condition. Nobody can be afraid all the time; it recedes to the back of your head, and your awareness fills up with the stuff of the mundane world, of the day. Besides, the bit of exercise I had had on the bicycle that day had helped wear me out. It is odd that veterans of those years often speak nostalgically of the cleanness of the English air, with human industry all but shut down across swathes of the southern counties.
In the morning, I woke relieved to find that nobody from Abbotsdale had tracked us down – not Frank, not Ted Lane. The scheme was still on, then. Over a breakfast of rabbit and potato, washed down with a decent nettle tea, we learned of Marriott’s plan – and we found that during the night he’d revised it, to include our active participation.
He brought up his maps from the cellar to the inn’s lounge to show us. In fact I had already glimpsed the scene of the action which Marriott indicated now; it was that flooded area I had seen to the west of Amersham. Marriott’s pale bank manager’s finger traced the lines on the map. ‘This is the course of the Misbourne. Very minor, as rivers go; it rises in Great Missenden, here, and flows east-south-east down the valley through the old part of Amersham, and eventually it joins the Colne near the Western Avenue bridge, here. Or it used to.
When the Martians came down on Amersham, all unknowing, they created a kind of dam with the earth their landings threw up.’
I remarked, ‘And we know that the Martians are rather innocent regarding water, which is a lesser element on their world, and long mastered.’
‘You’re right. That’s the intelligence.’ Marriott indicated a pencil shading. ‘The extent comes and goes with the rain and the seasons, but the result of the damming has been a flood, a permanent one, which has reached right back up the valley of the Misbourne, to beyond Little Missenden, here. And here is where the accidental dam lies right across the old river course.’
This was at a village called Mantles Green, near the junction of the Wycombe road, on which our inn stood, and the main road that ran through that part of Amersham towards Uxbridge. Verity nodded. ‘I get it. And that’s where you plan to plant your dynamite.’
‘Not I, but my men . . . We’ll smash the dam. As you say, Miss Elphinstone, the Martians are innocents when it comes to wild water. That dam has trapped behind it a great weight of water – which has, of course, three times the weight it would have on Mars. I am sure they do not realise the implication, which is why they have left their accidental blockage unguarded and without any deliberate reinforcement. Even though, downstream, squatting in the ruins of Amersham and sprawling east towards Little Chalfont, you have the Martians’ citadel – their headquarters in England, as far as anybody can tell.’ Verity nodded. ‘I can see why you’ve had the approval to proceed. You could indeed do a lot of damage to the Martians,’
and she glanced at ‘Toby’ and ‘Jeff’, ‘while risking not much.’ One of the fellows, the one who had grabbed me, looked offended; the other, a more cheerful sort, blew her a kiss. Marriott said, ‘The Martians are suspicious of any moving vehicle, we know that. But if you take it calm they might not go at you straight away, at least. Which is where you two might be useful.’
Verity snorted. ‘As cover?’
‘Well, it seems to be a fact that the Martians can distinguish between men and women . . .’
That was true enough, and a puzzle to the scientists who pointed to the sexlessness of the Martians themselves. ‘And they seem to know that an attack is more likely to come from a body of men than of women, or a mixed group.
You’ll be two couples out for a joy ride, you see? Might buy us that bit more time. Especially if you act a bit merry, full of champagne, like . . .’
That was the scheme. As Marriott went over details with his men, Verity drew me aside.
I murmured, ‘Seems to me we can’t honourably refuse. Not if we want them to help us with Cook. And it’s not actually a bad idea.’
Verity, with more military experience than me, was more sceptical. ‘True. But, stringing along with this pack of idiots, a bank manager and a couple of lecherous pot-men – we’ll do well to get out of this with our skins in one piece. Most likely the only harm we’ll do to the Martians will be if they split their sides laughing at us . . . Do Martians laugh?’
‘Scientific opinion is divided,’ I said with mock gravity. ‘I’m worried about that dynamite too. Look, just follow my lead . . .’
Within half an hour they had the cars ready - two of them. And what cars they were! I had been impressed by the Rolls with which Frank had picked me up after my passage under the perimeter. Now I recognised a recent-model Mercedes, and another Rolls, a Silver Ghost. But both these cars had been disfigured by having slabs of iron or steel welded and strapped to the body work, and the front windows had been knocked out and replaced by more steel plate with a fine slit for the driver to see through. And I could see that a box of dynamite had been stashed in the trunk of the Rolls.
Needless to say all three of the men looked inordinately pleased as we looked upon these toys.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Marriott said, almost bashfully. ‘What a way to treat these lovely cars! Especially the Ghost. We had to cut up a lot of old boilers to get the plate for all this.’
Verity snorted. ‘Why bother? The Heat-Ray would cut through this lot in a second.’
‘Ah, but that’
s a second more than you’d have otherwise. We go whizzing by the fighting-machines, at their very feet.’ He mimed driving, wrenching at the wheel. ‘The Martians fire the beam – sizzle! We take a lick, but live to fight another day, or another minute anyhow, and the armour has done its job. Whiz!
Sizzle!’
He was a bank manager, standing in the morning sunshine, playing at soldiers like a small boy. But I was not one to mock him for it, for, even if he wasn’t riding with us, he was showing more pluck than anybody I had met inside the Cordon, aside from Verity.
He said now, ‘You’d be better to ride with Jeff in the Rolls.’
By ‘Jeff’ he meant the bottom-pincher. ‘You’ll see the Merc has a lot of clutter in the back. We hope to make a gun turret that will rotate, for the Maxim, you see -’
‘We’ll ride in the Merc,’ Verity said firmly.
‘Are you sure? But -’
‘The Mercedes.’
Marriott shrugged, and instructed his men.
We shook hands one last time, and with some feeling. Then we clambered into our respective vehicles, Toby driving the Merc in the lead, with myself and Verity riding in the car with him, and Jeff in the Rolls following behind with its cargo of dynamite. It was this accidental disposition which would save my life and Verity’s – that and her foresight.
So we set off.
It was a surreal journey, the first half-mile or so, that drive along an empty road through a deceptively peaceful scrap of English countryside. The roofs had been left open, so that any passing Martian could make out we innocent holiday-makers, and at least we got the sunlight. But the very smell of the car’s interior was unusual, the customary fragrance of an expensive, well-valeted car, of polished leather and carpet cleaner, replaced by a more industrial stench of welded steel, and the tang of cordite. I fretted a little that we had had to leave behind most of our few belongings in the inn – though Verity had her small first-aid pack at her waist, and her revolver tucked into the back of her trousers. And I had Walter’s messages tucked safe in a pocket of my jacket.
The Massacre of Mankind Page 27
