I have always regarded myself as rational, but a wave of intense antipathy broke over me at that moment. I longed to destroy this thing, to expel it; it was a thing that did not belong on our earth, and I wanted it gone, down to the very cells of my being. More than disgust, it was a deep visceral revulsion - and a stab of savage despair too.
Verity’s good hand grasped mine. ‘Welcome to hell,’ she murmured.
Cook grunted, ‘And call me Virgil. Ha! Two snobs like you don’t expect a bloke like me to start quoting classic literature, do you? Just keep still. ’E wants to check you over, that’s all. Oi, pretty boy. It’s me!’ He held up the mayoral chain around his neck. ‘Good old Bert! You know me. Go on, you tell your bosses . . . They do it all by thought, you know. Reading minds.’
I said softly, hardly daring to move, ‘You believe that, do you?’
He snorted. ‘Not a question of believe. It’s obvious if you watch ’em for a bit, as I’ve done.’
Now, with grace but sudden speed, one of the machine’s handling tentacles uncurled towards us.
‘’Old still! I warned you – they’re checking you over! ’Old still!’
I was first. I stood there while the arm swept over me, its tip, its cold flank, running over my body. Its motions were smooth, clean, mechanical. I cannot believe it searched me merely by touch; perhaps it relied on some effect analogous to Roentgen rays to perform a deeper inspection. In only a second it was done, and I breathed again. Then it was on to Verity, and she held my hand tight, especially when the Martian probed her broken arm with its splint.
Then, with sudden abruptness, the machine backed away, turned, and walked off with its usual liquid grace, returning to whatever task it had abandoned to come to us.
Bert said, ‘There you are. Told you they’d check you up. I come up ’ere every now and again to let ’em ’ave a look and make sure they don’t forget ’oo I am. And I told you to leave your weapons behind. For if you hadn’t, they’d have been found and it would have been the drips for all of us.’
‘The drips?’ I asked.
‘You’ll see. Now, come on.’
He led us down the inner face of the perimeter rampart. The low, multi-legged Martian machine had passed down this rough slope easily, but we bipedal humans had to pick our way more cautiously.
On the floor of the Redoubt we walked forward, through a scene of industry. All around us excavating-machines, big, mole-like, dug into the earth and shaped it into pits and galleries, tunnels and canals around that deep central shaft. These secondary dimples were huge excavations in themselves, in some of which, amid puffs of green smoke, I saw handlingmachines working on the familiar process of the extraction of aluminium from the clay of the earth, as well as less recognisable tasks. And in other pits I saw machines working on the construction of other machines, handlers and excavators, working in pairs like surgeons, or midwives. In one great cavity I even saw them assembling a fighting-machine, the heavy handlers crawling over the great bronzed cowl, the articulated legs laid out in sections.
Martians and their machines moving everywhere, in the low dawn light, in near silence.
Unexpectedly Cook made us pause. ‘Wait a minute. They won’t interfere with us unless we do something stupid. Just look . . . Sometimes I stand on spots like this and sort of ’alf-close my eyes, so it gets dim and indistinct. It’s all industry, I suppose, but it ain’t like ’uman industry, is it? Just stand ’ere and take it in. Think of it not as a kind of factory or a quarry, but as a landscape . . .’
I stood, and tried to set aside my fear – and that instinctive loathing of all things Martian – and tried to see it as he had suggested.
It has long been remarked that all Martian machines have a certain living quality, thanks to their ingenious electric musculature, in sharp contrast to our own crude arrangements of wheels and gears and levers and rods. Now I saw that quality evident all around me. Excavating-machines ploughed in a group through the broken earth, as dolphins will plough through the waves of the oceans; and a herd of handlingmachines, of all sizes, gathered together, crossed an open area, en route from one task to another, the dawn light glistening from their metal hides as if from the backs of migrant beasts. And I saw a brace of fighting-machines on the move, off in the distance beyond the far rampart of the pit, tall, elegant, striding through the dusty air. Over it all hung the faint tinge of green, of the smoke that was emitted by Martian machines on the moves from joints and fixtures, and from the pits they dug in the ground.
‘I’ve never been to Africa,’ Cook murmured now. ‘Not even to Boer country. But I’ve seen pictures. When I look at it like this, I don’t see industry. I see a kind of savannah. They’re like animals on the move, big and small, individuals or in herds.’
‘Yes,’ Verity said, sounding surprised. ‘You’re right. I see it now. It all has that quality of life. The handlers like hornybacked herbivores, the fighting-machines like great giraffes perhaps – no! They are too aggressive for that.’
‘Like tyrannosaurs,’ I suggested. ‘Striding across some Cretaceous plain.’
‘Something like that, yes.’
‘See, I’ve read the books, or some of ’em,’ Cook said. ‘Some say there must ’ave been animals on Mars, once. Because you wouldn’t get ’umanoids, and then Martians, just showing up on a world without a whole zoo, plants and animals and such, evolving together. And others say that’s all gone now, because Mars is too dried out. The Martians ’ave ’ad to turn the whole world into one big city, or a factory, where there’s nothing but the canals and the machines and the pumping ’ouses, I suppose. Like the ’ole of Mars is a giant Birmingham – ha!
‘But what about the animals? Well, in my lifetime I’m seeing animals being replaced by machines. I trained in the ’orse artillery, and now the nags are being swapped out for motor wagons, for better or worse. A lot of us miss ’aving the beasts at our side. And maybe the Martians feel the same, see, and they’ve done something about it. Maybe they’ve got a few old bones in the museums, up there, a few of the last specimens, as we’d ’ave. But they’ve gone further, see. A motor lorry ain’t much like an ’orse – an ’orse doesn’t ’ave wheels for a start. But Martian machines ’ave legs, like animals . . .’
‘I see what you’re getting at,’ Verity said now. ‘Maybe the Martians modelled their machines more closely on their animals than we ever did.’
‘That’s it,’ said Cook. ‘As if we made mechanical ’orses and elephants and such.’
‘So what we’re seeing is a kind of diorama – it’s how Mars used to be. Impressionistically, at least. And it’s this way because the Martians, for all their apparent brutality, didn’t want to lose their own past. How - romantic.’ She sounded reluctant to say the word.
It was a fetching thought, and I grinned at the old artilleryman. ‘Bert Cook, you do have quite an imagination, don’t you?’
But he retreated into his shell of customary resentment. ‘Got no education to speak of – no respect from the toffs. But, ho yes, I always ’ad imagination. I imagined all this back in ’07, when the rest of you thought we was done with the Martians. I kept thinking. Now then – you two come with me and I’ll show you things that will beggar your imagination.’
We walked on.
He led us to the cage of the Cythereans first.
32
PRISONERS OF THE MARTIANS
It was not much of a cage, in fact. To hold their captives from Venus, the Martians had dug out a kind of tank, a shallow cylinder lined with some rubbery, impermeable material, and filled with water that was stained faintly crimson, the colour of the Martian weed. A handling-machine stood by, motionless, like a guard, but without a controlling Martian riding it. A containing net of a silvery mesh was stretched over the pit, and firmly fixed by a solid band anchored to the ground. This mesh was hexagonal, the holes the size of pennies, perhaps – enough to let in the sun and the rain, not enough to allow out a Cytherean, nothing larger th
an a digit on those webbed hands. But we could see the Cythereans, and they could see us, with their small black eyes set in those smooth faces.
My life had been saved by a Cytherean, and I had spent some time with them, but I could scarcely claim to be an expert in their psychology. But their mood was not hard to read. Most of the wretched creatures just lay in the water, floating, on their backs; some, heartbreakingly, had infants basking on their bellies. One big male swam back and forth, back and forth, a couple of firm strokes with hands and feet taking him from one side of his enclosure to the other, but no further. It was as you might see a tiger pace in a too-small cage in a zoo. And another adult, a female, was working at the net, picking at it with her fingers, gnawing at it.
Cook grunted. ‘She’ll get nothing but a broken tooth for ’er trouble. Can’t blame her for trying, though – I would.’
‘The water is stained red,’ I observed. ‘Are they given food?’
Cook shrugged. ‘You get that where you dump a Cytherean in clean water, I think – as you get greenish slime in a stagnant pond. They aren’t ’eld for long before they’re hoiked out and taken to the blood bank, or the drips.’ He did not elaborate on these terms. ‘The Martians can’t be bothered to feed ’em, but they like to get value out of their catch; they don’t want them burning up all that lovely juice in their veins. This lot will probably be gone by tomorrow, one way or another, and a fresh batch chucked in. Before they take ’em the Martians will pass a shock through the water – a kind of electric shock I think – it makes ’em malleable, but they’re still awake.’
Verity the VAD grimaced. ‘Are they aware of what becomes of them? Do they experience pain?’
Cook shrugged. ‘They aren’t ’eld for long,’ he repeated.
I shook my head. ‘I hope none of these are from Misbourne.’
‘Makes no difference,’ Cook said brutally. ‘Nothing we can do for them – never was. Come on now . . .’ And he led us on, deeper into the Martian complex.
In the next pit there were people.
One must be analytical about it. One must describe what one saw, not how one felt about it.
In general terms, you must imagine, the arrangement was similar to the holding of the Cythereans: the pit in the ground, the mesh net enclosing it anchored by a peripheral band fixed to the earth. This pit held no water, of course, and it had been dug deeper. Again an empty handling-machine stood by, like a prison guard.
And as we peered down, we saw faces looking back up at us, like coins at the bottom of a fountain: human faces this time, pale, dirty, some defiant, some fearful, some tear-streaked. I believe there were about a dozen people in that pit. Such was the arrangement of shadow, and so grimy were the occupants, that I could see little of their bodies. Only the faces stood out in my vision – and in my memory now, as I think back on it.
When they saw us approach, silhouetted against the dawn sky, I supposed, as seen from their point of view, they became agitated, naturally enough, and the calling started. ‘You – who are you?’
‘Can you help us?’ Some of the voices were quite cultured. ‘Please take my little girl, she’s only three . . .’ I saw the child held up into the light.
‘Don’t worry,’ Cook murmured to us. ‘They can’t reach you. The Martians dug this deep – they learned. We ’umans are wilier than Cythereans, and are more ingenious at doing damage. So they put the mesh out of reach of those clever monkey fingers.’
Verity seemed to have retreated into a shell of brittle selfcontrol. ‘It’s not myself that I’m concerned about, Cook. There are children in there.’
He looked at her, and laughed. ‘Well, you need to toughen up. There’s nothing we can do. And they won’t suffer. It’s the same as the Venus-men; they won’t be ’eld long. They’ll get the same treatment – paralysed, if not stunned, and pulled out like big floppy fish.’
I glared at him. ‘How can you be so heartless, Bert? Even you.’
‘What choice is there -’
‘Hey, it’s Cook! You monster, you betrayed us! Let’s do it, lads -’
And now there was a kind of surge from the depths of the pit. I saw one man, two, swarm at the earthen walls, and a third man climbed over the backs of his fellows and managed to reach the mesh, where he clung on. It was a rehearsed move, I think, and the rage at Cook was the trigger to try it. That third man, the climber, was rough-shaven, grimy - but I thought he seemed fine-featured, with a scholarly aspect: I may be snobbish, for looks are deceptive, but he looked like a thinker, a lawyer, a teacher, a writer. Yet that face was twisted in gut hatred, and I imagined he would tear open Bert Cook with his bare hands if he got the chance. But he could do nothing but shout insults from beneath the mesh.
The guardian handling-machine, alerted, rumbled forward. But Cook, nimbly, got in the way of the machine, standing between it and the pit. He dug a handful of black stones out of his jacket pocket, and began hurling them into the pit, aiming them at the climbing man. ‘Back in the ’ole, you brute. Back, I say!’ Some of his shots bounced off the mesh, others fell harmlessly into the dark - but one caught the climber fair in the forehead and he fell back, howling. Once again the yells of rage came, and more of those entreaties too, growing ever more desperate as Cook drew us away, and we passed out of their sight.
Verity grabbed my hand, squeezing it too tight for comfort.
Cook was grinning, evidently pleased with himself. ‘There’s more yet. You ’aven’t seen it all.’
‘Those pebbles you threw,’ I said to him.
‘Not pebbles.’
‘Can I see?’
He glanced around, as if to be sure no Martian was about, then dug his hand into the pocket again. The stones he withdrew were black, gleaming, shaped.
‘Flints,’ I said.
‘Not just any ol’ flint. Look at them. Look at that edge . . .’
Verity took one. ‘That’s been knapped.’ She looked at Cook. ‘By you?’
‘Not by me. I tried it - after all, flint is lying around in the ground in this peculiar part of the country - and all I did is smash my thumb. Maybe some day. No, I swiped these from the museum.’
‘The museum?’ I looked again. ‘These are ancient, then. Prehistoric. Hand-axes and arrow heads.’
‘That’s the idea. Tried it one day, carrying one in, under the noses of the Martians . . . They’ll stop you with a weapon, something obvious. Even a bow and arrow, once, a kid’s thing from a toy store, tried that just to see – they took it off me. But the stones, see, the shaped stones. They don’t recognise those for what they are.’
‘As tools,’ I said, wondering. ‘As weapons from the Stone Age. The only tools we had for almost all of our history.’
‘Huh. More recent than that. My Mary’s mum was a local girl, and Mary says ’er grandfather had tales of when ’e was a boy, and even then the workers, the woodsmen and such, would think nothing of picking up a flint, breaking off a slice and knapping it, if they wanted some job done quick and didn’t ’ave a knife to hand. One old fellow even shaved with them, so it was said.’
‘But the Martians don’t recognise them,’ Verity said. ‘Not as artefacts.’
I nodded. ‘Perhaps they have retained something of their own past, in the forms of their machines, the odd artificial ecology they make up. But they’ve forgotten their own Stone Age -’
‘If they ever had one, on Mars, if the geology permitted it,’ Verity said. ‘And you, Bert. There you were loudly complaining there was nothing to be done about the plight of the human victims here. And yet you’re chucking them flint blades, under the eyes of the Martians!’
‘It’s little enough,’ he said. He seemed almost embarrassed by the revelation. ‘It won’t cut that metal netting stuff – I know, I’ve tried, nothing we ’ave will cut it.’
‘Then I’m confused,’ I said. ‘What use is it, then?’
Verity said patiently, ‘The flint won’t cut metal. But it would cut human flesh, Julie.’
And I saw it.
‘Better way out,’ the old artilleryman said. ‘For them that’s got the guts to take it. Or to save your kids. Them that’s got the guts. I’m setting ’em a kind of test, see.’
I found this hard to absorb – maybe I am not as imaginative as Cook was, or indeed Walter. ‘You’re doing a good thing, then, Bert,’ I said.
‘’S much as I can do.’
‘You do have a heart -’
‘Don’t spread it around.’
‘I wouldn’t have seen it.’
He looked at me coldly. ‘The Martians can’t see it either, but maybe they will, eventually, and that little game will be up. They’re trying to understand us. They’re experimenting. You say you’re ’ere to talk with the Martians. Well, then, you need to see what they’re up to – all of it. Then you’ll know what’s what. And that’s what I’m going to show you now.’
33
A LABORATORY
He led us to a part of the compound littered with quite deep circular pits. Over each stretched the metal mesh, and beside each a handling-machine stood on guard, a motionless, tireless sentry. And I heard now a kind of whimpering, a weary crying – not from one voice, but from many.
The Massacre of Mankind Page 32
