And I remembered the dinner party in the farmhouse in Abbotsdale, when Mildred Tritton had told me country-life anecdotes, and we had all ignored an empty place at the table. ‘You’re right, Bert,’ I said. ‘Though I hate to admit it.’
‘And not for the first time, eh?’ He grinned. ‘Well, now, I sees all this, the ’ealthy sheep running and leaving the lame sheep behind, but all of them sheep, and I thinks, these folks is worthless, miserable, pointless. The stock is improved if they’re cut out of the blood line. In a way they’re doing their duty to the race by letting themselves be culled. Do you see? But not me – not men like me. I was roaming around, alone, trying to figure the angles. How I could profit from the set-up.’
‘Profit?’ Verity sounded disgusted.
He shrugged. ‘They was going to die anyway. Well, one day I got my chance. I was foraging in a village outside Chesham, not much more than a pub and a farmhouse –when ’ere they come, the fighting-machines, one, two, three of them bowling along with their keep-nets dangling – quite a sight of an autumn afternoon! . . .’
As he told us this story he continued to eat his meal, cutting up the bacon and mixing it with cold spud, steadily consuming his food with the discipline of the habituated soldier.
‘Well, I saw them – a ’andful of sheep – they was bolting down into this inn’s cellar, and pulling down the delivery ’atch behind them. So I dashed over and got my fingers under the ’atch – just! – and begged for ’em to let me squeeze in. It was a crowd down there, and they was pushing and shoving and complaining. Well, they let me in, I got inside and I was near the top of the pile, by the ’atch, and through a crack – it was one of those big metal lids – I could see a fighting-machine bowling down the road, heading towards Chesham. Well, thought I – Bert, ’ere’s a chance.
‘And I pushed open that lid, and I ’opped out onto the road, and I took off my ’at and waved at the machine and the Martian who rode it, and I yelled and pointed. Who knows what the Martian made of it! But ’e saw me, and bent down – and for a moment I was braced for the Heat-Ray myself, or the caress of a tentacle – and the fellows in the ’ole behind me were pulling and banging at the lid to get it closed again, but I kept it propped. Well, I suppose the Martian saw the easy meat inside that cellar. So ’e bent down, and opened that lid with a metal tentacle, delicate as a surgeon -’
Verity couldn’t hide her disgust. ‘You gave up your fellow humans to the Martians.’
‘You can put it like that. But they’d ’ave died anyway. D’ye see? If not that day, then the next, or the next. For the Martians only take a tithe – even then I think they were trying to keep breeding populations intact. Better off dead, that sort.
‘That was ’ow it started, see. The Martians can see a lot from up on ’igh, in their aircraft and their fighting-machines. Oh yes, a lot. But this isn’t their world, not yet. And a man on the ground, with a trained eye, can spot a lot more. Places people are ’iding, for instance.’
‘A man such as you,’ I said. ‘You became a scout for the Martians.’
‘You can’t talk to a Martian,’ he said. ‘Least ways, I don’t know ’ow. But you can – communicate. I do this for you, you leave me be, and the next day I’ll do it again: that sort of show. I started to wear my gear, the chain and the wig and so on – colourful rubbish I found – for the Martians must ’have trouble telling us one from the other, I reasoned, so let me make it easy for ’em to spot me. And when they saw me they would know they could rely on me to root out a nest or two for them, no trouble. Eventually they fixed up for me – well, you’ve seen it my spotting seat on a cable so I can travel with ’em. Took some guts to climb into it the first time, I can tell you.’
Verity said coldly, ‘But if you are obvious to the Martians, you must also be to the people in the regions you cover.’
‘That’s so – but I try to be discreet – all you ever ’eard of me is rumour, I bet?’
I said, ‘But it’s rumour that’s spread outside the Cordon, Bert. Which is why I’m here in the first place. You ought to take care. Somebody might take a pot-shot at you in your sling. And if the authorities ever got hold of you -’
He just laughed. ‘You know as well as I do, Julie Elphinstone, that the only authorities that count on this world, now and for the future, are the Martians.’ The kettle began to whistle. He turned and yelled, ‘Mary! Tea!’
She came through briskly, and poured hot water into a big battered pot, sluiced it around and served us tea in tin mugs.
Verity watched Mary with a kind of disgust. She said now, ‘And what relation are you to the great survivor? A trophy?’
Mary slammed a mug down on the table and slapped Verity across the face, hard. ‘Don’t you speak to me like that, you stuck-up cow. You don’t know nothing about me – nothing. What do you think I am, some tart?’
Verity, shocked, held her face. ‘I didn’t mean . . .’ But she let it tail off, for I suspect that that was exactly what she had meant.
Mary pointed at Bert. ‘He saved my life. I was with friends – we’re from Chorleywood, we was workers in the munitions factory, and we was on a couple of days out in the car, I grew up around here, see. And we woke up one morning and the Martians had come, and we was stuck, and when the petrol was gone, well, we was like vagabonds. We lasted for a bit – nobody helped us, nobody, but the soldiers made comments, like yours. About what we could do if we wanted a share of their rations. You know. Then down came a Martian one day, and we scattered and the Heat-Ray was firing, and I lost my friends, and I was under the Martian and I thought I was a goner. And then he came.’
‘I managed to distract it,’ Bert said. ‘Led it to a barn full o’ farming folk. Come, Mary, sit down, let’s eat; don’t let ’er bother you.’
‘He saved me,’ Mary said stubbornly. ‘Where the government and the Army and that lot did nothing. I didn’t have to come with him, but I did.’
Bert grinned. ‘Couldn’t get rid of ’er.’
‘And now here we are, like this. Living. With a baby. Some day we’ll get it properly done – I mean, married. But for now we’re surviving. As to the rights and wrongs of what he does, I don’t know. But I don’t see many others being brave and bold about these Martians, do you?’
‘No,’ admitted Verity. ‘And I’m sorry. I jumped to conclusions. We’re all doing what we can to stay alive, that’s all. I hope you’ll let me look at little Belle for you.’
For a moment we ate in silence.
Then, cautiously, I essayed, ‘But if you're right, Bert – what’s your long game? If we never can get rid if these Martians -’
‘Ah, but that’s what I don’t accept, see. Never ’ave. I just don’t think we’re going to do it with guns and Zepps and such. The government’s no use in ’ere, nor the Army. And now there’s another opposition due, and I just bet there’s more cylinders on the way – why, given the dates, they might be ’anging in the sky above us now, for all the gov’ment tells us - and pretty soon it will be as if a Cordon’s being thrown around the whole blessed world.’ He belched and picked a bit of bacon from his teeth. ‘And where will we be then - eh? It’ll be just the Martians, and us, and we’ll be a world of rabbits. That’s what we are – not sheep, not rats like I used to think – rabbits. For what are rabbits but vermin when they’re in the vegetable patch, but you’ll pot the odd one for supper, won’t you?’
‘Then you’re a rabbit too, Bert.’
‘True. But I’m the smart rabbit. The rabbit who’s got close in with them, who’s seen ’ow they work their machines, the fighting-machines and the handling-machines. I’m the rabbit who’s learning, about them. And soon enough I’ll find others of a like mind, and we’ll come and go in the very face of the Martians, until one day – bang. We’ll make our move, all unexpected.’ His voice was softening, his expression growing dreamy.
Mary scoffed, fondly. ‘He does like to dream. Should see him playing at fighting-machines with little Belle
– Zip! Sizzle! Stamp! It’s a fair spectacle.’
And, looking around at that hole in the ground, I wondered if Bert Cook was any closer to realising such dreams than when my brother-in-law had given him up as a fool and a fantasist on Putney Hill, in the First War. But that wasn’t my concern.
I leaned forward. ‘Bert, I want you to get me into the Redoubt. The big Martian nest.’
30
A STRANGE NEGOTIATION
Cook regarded me steadily.
I pressed him, ‘Can you do it?’
‘Yes,’ he said bluntly. ‘Why do you want to go there?’ I told him the surface lie. ‘It’s Walter’s idea. My brother-inlaw -’
‘ Him again.’
‘He thinks there are ways to communicate with the Martians. Well, you’ve proved that, in your way. I’ve brought images to show them – drawings Walter made himself. They might mean something to the Martians. And even if not, if we can show we’re at least intelligent enough to try to speak to them, then perhaps they will spare us.’
He forked up more spud. ‘Waste of time,’ he said around the mouthful. ‘A sheepdog communicates with its master, but it’s still just a dog. Spouting poetry wouldn’t get it sent to Eton or Harrow! – just back out into the fields. Walter Jenkins always was a dreamy idiot.’
‘But it was he who suggested you, Bert. Knowing of your exploits in here. You’re the one man who might build a bridge, make it work – or give us the chance to try, at least. The world’s at stake, Bert. The future. You might think Walter a fool. But isn’t it worth a try, at least?’
‘Hmm. What do you think, Mary?’
She shrugged. ‘I want to know – what’s in it for us?’
He nodded, and eyed me.
I was at a loss. ‘I don’t see what I can offer you that means anything. Money, treasures -’
‘One thing.’ He glanced across to the passage leading to where the baby slept.
I guessed, ‘You’re concerned about Belle? Her future?’
‘Concerned she might not ’ave a future.’ He looked at me intently. ‘Listen. I ain’t seen it with ’umans yet, but it’ll come. But I seen ’em with the fish-men.’
‘The Cythereans? Seen what?’
‘When the Martians hunt. They’re not simple predators. A Martian isn’t a lion. He won’t go just for the weakest of the group, and let the strongest get away. He’s husbanding, see. Some day ’e wants to be a farmer, a herdsman, not a ’unter.’
Verity said, ‘You mean they want to domesticate the Cythereans. Domesticate us.’
‘Look what they did to their own stock, the human types from Mars! Not a flicker of defiance left in any of them wretched creatures. That is what they want in the long run.’
I nodded. ‘And so with the Cythereans -’
‘They cull the weakest. You may as well, easy pickin’s. But they cull the strongest too.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘That’s what I seen, and I’ve worked it out. Don’t want that powerful blood being passed on down the line, see. Selective breeding. So they watch, see ’oo fights back the ’ardest, is the most ingenious escaper.’
I began to see it. ‘And when it comes to us -’
‘I think they’ll be more systematic, like, in the future. Maybe they’ll pit us against each other, make us fight like dogs or cocks – like gladiators. How about that? Those Martians with their big eyes around the pit, ’ooting and braying and laying bets on the winner, for all I know. What a spectacle! Or maybe they’ll set us to ’unting each other down. Either case they’ll keep the winners fattened up as long as they’re entertaining or useful, but they won’t let them breed. Eliminating the strong from the blood lines, see. Now, to the present: of the ’uman pack in this great Buckin’-hamshire warren, ’oo will they see as the strongest?’
‘Ah.’ Verity nodded. ‘You’ve certainly brought yourself to their attention. You fear they’ll let you live, but they’ll extinguish your blood-line. Which is why you’re hiding your baby down in this hole on the ground. It’s not just from people. You fear for Belle.’
‘Wouldn’t you?’ He looked me square in the face. ‘I’ll do what you ask. But in return I want you to promise me that you, ’ooever is backing you, will get Mary and Belle safely out of ’ere.’
If anywhere is safe, I thought.
Mary grabbed his hand. ‘No, Bert! Not without you.’
‘I’ll survive,’ he said with that grin of his. ‘You know me. But this -’ He gestured at me. ‘What a gift, to drop into our laps! And if we can get our little girl safe . . .’
Verity and I talked it over in private, briefly.
‘That’s Bert Cook for you,’ I said. ‘Likes to make everyone dance to his tune. But there’s a certain truth to his speculations, don’t you think? A brutal rationalism. There always was; Walter saw it in him.’
‘But I wonder how the military and the politicians will regard him. The traitor who seems to have exposed hundreds to the Martians . . . What charges could be brought if they got their hands on him? They’d probably have to invent a whole new category of law. Crimes against the species.’
‘Verity, do you think we should do this? Deal with Cook, I mean.’
‘If it will get you into the Redoubt.’ She smiled. ‘And it’s in the little girl’s interests to get her out of here.’
‘Agreed.’
We went back to Cook and Mary. Verity asked bluntly, ‘Bert, do you have access to a telephone? . . .’
Of course he did.
It took twenty-four hours to set up.
The scheme involved a Zeppelin flight over the Cordon area, close to where we were, while Bert set up a diversion in the north, hopefully to distract the attention of the Martians. A squad of marines would drop from the Zepp, retrieve Mary and Belle from the caves, and lift them away. That was the arrangement. It took most of those twenty-four hours before Cook was happy with the promises he’d received, including a personal assurance from Churchill himself.
Of course neither Cook, nor Mary, nor even Verity knew the true purpose of it all – knew of the weapon I carried in my veins. No doubt Mr Churchill was aware, but he didn’t drop it into the conversation.
For our second night in the caves, as he had the first night, Cook offered us heaps of blankets, and suggested we tried to nap. I for one did not sleep.
We left the caves at midnight. It was, I would learn later, May 19, a Friday. Cook assured us it was safer for us to come upon the Redoubt in the small hours, for the Martians were calmer at the dawn than at other times of the day. We carried weapons in the countryside, but would stash them in a ditch before we reached the Martian base. I had with me, however, Walter’s pictures, in their battered leather case, carried all the way from Berlin.
So we walked through the silent dark towards the pit of the Martians. With every step closer I felt a gathering dread, as I had been travelling for twelve, thirteen days already. And in the silence and the dark I thought I could feel the agent in my blood, the poison. If the Martians were a canker in the earth, there was a canker in my own blood, as if my body were a mirror of the whole infected planet.
We arrived at the Redoubt a little before four a.m. Albert Cook grinned at us in the grey light, and it was as if he had read my thoughts. ‘You’ve ’eard of Darkest Africa. Welcome to Darkest England, ladies.’
31
INTO THE REDOUBT
The Martian city at Amersham was in essence a tremendous earthwork perhaps a mile across. Its beginning had been the infall of three cylinders close together, whose overlapping impact craters had since been greatly extended and deepened by the patient work of the Martians’ excavating-machines. Now it was one vast bowl surrounded by an earthen rampart, which we climbed, Verity and I, with Bert Cook at our side. And at the crest, we stood on a frozen wave of broken tarmac and brick and shards of glass, and we looked into the Redoubt.
It was the space cylinders that first drew my eye. They were like great tilted pillars stuck in the ground: three Pisas
of heatscarred metal, in the grey dawn light. And even from here I could see, at the very centre of the earthwork, a shadow in the earth, enigmatic, dark. I knew this was a deep shaft, visible to spotter planes, that the Martians were cutting straight down into the ground. Similar efforts had been started in the pits they had excavated during the First War, especially at Horsell Common, site of their first landing, and on Primrose Hill.
That was the essential layout - the three great cylinders, each perhaps a hundred yards long and stuck in the ground at the corners of a rough equilateral triangle, and the vast pit at the centroid of that triangle. Fighting-machines stood tall and inert, at rest looking a little like the water towers you see in some American states – dozens of them, in loose groups. And, all around these tremendous monuments, the Martians and their machines worked, glistening and rustling in the gathering light, emitting soft hoots, and hisses where the green smoke escaped from limbs and apertures.
Even from here I could see people – what looked like a crowd of them - sitting passively on English soil, or in the foundations of ruined houses. Perhaps they were recent captives, yet to be processed.
‘Don’t move,’ Cook said softly.
My attention snapped back to my own situation. Now I saw that a handling-machine had, all but silently, clambered up the inner face of the rampart on which we stood.
The machine stopped dead before us. It had five articulated legs, as they all do, and long manipulative tentacles composed of the usual metal rings, and a set of fine specialised tools fixed to its front. I wondered what delicate task it had been pursuing. The Martian riding it was the usual leathery sack, from a distance rather like a bear curled up to hibernate – but there was no fur on that glistening hide, and those gruesomely long, bony fingers were folded beneath the carcase. Evidently we were being inspected.
And so I faced the Martian. I had seen pictures; I had read accounts, including my brother-in-law’s. I had not been so close to any Martian before, save for the pickled specimen they had put on display in the Natural History Museum – and save for the beast that had attacked us in the perimeter tunnel, and even then there had been no time for cold contemplation. It gazed back at me with those huge, oddly bright eyes, from that enormous smooth head with the huge eyes, the disturbing, beakless mouth – a head fully four feet across. I knew there was a logic in this strange morphology. From ape to Neanderthal to human you can see a progression, a growth of the forebrain, a regression of the protective brow that shelters the eyes, a shrinking of the jaw and the great muscles used to chew coarse food. In this Martian those trends had been progressed to their limit. But it was not evolutionary logic that struck me in those moments of encounter. That strange round head with its small features, that pinched mouth, the eyes widened as if in perpetual surprise, oddly gave it the look of a monstrous infant, which shard of familiarity made it all the more repulsive.
The Massacre of Mankind Page 31
