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Stephen Baxter: The Martian in the Wood

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Stephen Baxter The Martian in the Wood

The Martian in the Wood: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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Stephen Baxter’s , a Tor.com Original In the aftermath of the First Martian War, in the interim between it and what was to come later, England seemed to once again become a green and peaceful place, if one haunted by the terrible events in Surrey that had happened in those early years of the century. Although people hoped and prayed peace had come, they were wrong. Across the gulf of space, plans were being drawn for a return, but before they could bear fruit a terrible discovery was made deep in Holmburgh Wood, one that would tear a family apart and shock the world. At the Publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

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She smiled grimly. “That’s another pretty broad hint about where you think we are, Mr Jenkins.”

“Or where we seem to be, at least.”

She looked further, seeking more detail. Beyond the building’s broad terrace was a roadway, itself roughly following the line of the valley, floored by broken stone.

And on this roadway, she saw now, sat a man, alone, cross-legged.

Her heart thumped.

He sat still, apparently at peace. A small pile of belongings was heaped up next to him, and behind him was a kind of frame from which another figure dangled, inert. Zena could not make this out clearly. She later told Walter it reminded her of the articulated human skeletons hanging from a frame that you might see in a teaching hospital – but inverted, with the skull at the bottom, the feet at the top. Understandably, given what she had seen before, she felt unwilling to look more closely for now.

Again that shadow flickered across the sun. She looked up, shading her eyes.

She made out the occluding object now. At first she thought it was a monstrous bird. Around a central, spherical mass, bat-like wings spread wide, flapping and folding; where the sunlight caught them she could see the wings were translucent, and were supported by ribs, like huge, splayed fingers. No, it was too big to be a bird, she realised now, but surely smaller and more graceful than the flying machines in America and elsewhere of which she had read.

And as she watched this object seemed to be circling closer, and lower.

“Whether or not that flyer has seen us, I believe it is descending, towards him.” She pointed to the man sitting patiently on the ground.

Walter studied her. “You know where we are, don’t you?”

“I believe so. And I know who he must be. I think we should get down to him before the flyer reaches him.”

“Agreed.” Walter picked up his pack, handed Zena her shotgun, and looked around for an easy way down to the valley floor.

Where they found that the man, sitting alone, was of course Nathan Gardner.

* * *

Zena and Walter approached cautiously, Zena for one keeping an eye out for the flyer.

But she faced her brother.

Sitting cross-legged, his hands open and resting on his knees, he seemed serene, at ease. Yet he was in rags, his hair and beard unkempt, and he was gaunt, as if he hadn’t been eating. She could see the shape of his skull under the skin of his face, the eyes bright, his teeth stained from bleeding from the gums when he smiled.

The wretched creature beside him, dangling from its frame, was long dead: human or at least humanlike, male, naked, and inverted. A kind of cannula, like a tap, was fixed to its neck.

Walter, briefly and with reluctance, examined the corpse; he took care not to touch it. “This is the creature you saw in the cave of the Neanderthals.”

Zena confirmed it.

“Yes, that looks like the Heidelberg jaw, though the body would have to be dissected by a competent anatomist to be sure… Tall as he is, I think this fellow was young when he died. A boy.”

Nathan spoke for the first time. “He was an animal, without mind. He could not understand. His suffering was brief.” His voice was scratchy, hoarse.

Zena knelt before him. “And what about yourself? What about your suffering, Nathan? You look scarcely better than he does.”

He shook his head, his smile ghastly. “I have all I need.”

Zena looked around, at the single building, the empty valley. The solitary figure of the flyer, still slowly descending – cautious in the thin air, perhaps. “What is it you have? There is nothing here.”

“Nothing material. But they live like this, or underground. Many of them live alone, physically – there are few of them, scattered over this world – though they like to congregate. For the benefit of their young, especially.”

They,” Walter said analytically. “You mean the Martians.”

Nathan only smiled.

“Well, it makes a certain sense.”

And Zena, apparently stranded on a slab of Mars – Mars! – stuck in the middle of the family estate, had to suppress a laugh that would have come out sounding deranged, she was sure. “Sense, Mr Jenkins? How can any of this make sense?”

Now the flying thing grounded, with surprising grace. Zena saw how the central mass, evidently a passenger, shrugged off the frame of wings, as a walker might shrug off an overcoat. The wings neatly folded themselves up, to a compact packet.

And the thing moved forward.

Zena had never seen a Martian close up, during their time on the Earth in ’07 (and nor had I). Few photographic records were made of them while alive; artists’ impressions were, according to eye witnesses, notoriously unreliable, giving no real sense of, for example, the graceful motion of their machines. Even the nearly intact specimen which would one day be pickled and put on display in the Natural History Museum had not yet been released from academic scrutiny. And besides, all the time the Martians had been on the Earth they had been oppressed by our planet’s heavy gravity, which distorted their very bodily form.

So, now, Zena had few preconceptions. She and Walter held their places as the thing scuttled closer.

It was big. Massive. The bulk of a Martian has been compared to a bear, and Zena could see that now. But it looked swollen, it was all but spherical and nearly featureless, with little of the articulation and detail of terrestrial animals. Its hairless hide was like glistening leather. It moved with surprising speed and grace, raised up on its limbs, which, sprouting from beneath the body, were more like extended hands, she thought: two clusters of long, powerful fingers, on which it scuttled like a crab. It had a mouth with a V-shaped upper lip, and large, apparently lidless eyes, almost luminous. There was no distinct face; it was as if these features were painted on a balloon. Zena – as I would, when I too came face to face with such creatures – had an odd, disorienting sense of infancy: this was like a baby’s face, hugely swollen and those lidless eyes wide with surprise.

And Zena saw now that it had a kind of plug in the side of its body, another cannula. This was its only equipment – save, Zena saw now, for a glassy object, egg-shaped, that it carried in two of its long fingers. It came to rest alongside the dangling corpse, and with a graceful flick, took the tube which hung from the body, and fixed it to its own cannula. When this arrangement was in place it gave a soft hoot, like a steam whistle, almost of satisfaction, Zena thought.

Nathan laughed.

It was an unexpected, jarring sound in a world that was still and silent. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just that I’m so happy. Happy to be here. Happy you’ve joined me at last, Zee-zee. It’s all so perfect. Can’t you see?”

Walter stood close to Zena. “How’s your shooting?”

“My father took me hunting. I didn’t like it, but –”

“Remember I told you what they found when they cleared out one of the cylinders? A crystalline artefact…” He pointed to the crystal egg that nestled under the Martian.

She saw it quickly. “That is how they communicate. That is how they project their dreams.”

“Perhaps.”

“And if it is destroyed, this ends. I know what to do.” She brought her gun around from its strap, cocked it, aimed.

“No!”

She jerked back, shocked. She lifted the gun away. “Mr Jenkins? What is it? This was surely what you were suggesting…”

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