Stephen Baxter - The Massacre of Mankind

‘But they may not land in any kind of neat sequence,’ Walter said. ‘Oh, there will be constraints of graphic geometry.’

It was a remark that baffled me at the time – but it turned out to be key to the whole issue, as I will relate in its proper place.

‘But we know ,’ Walter went on, ‘that even last time the cylinders did not simply drop from the sky. We know they must have slowed at least, to avoid being smashed against the ground like so many falling meteorites. Most observers saw green flashes as they fell – I did myself. Tsiolkovsky and others speculate this is some kind of motor, a rocket perhaps, which slowed and directed a cylinder’s trajectory.’

‘That’s a nasty thought,’ Cook said softly. ‘So we can’t predict anything from the dates of the launch. They could land anywhere, any time they liked.’

‘That’s it,’ Walter said. ‘And though they fired off ten cylinders per night, there’s nothing to stop them joining up in space. We can only wait and watch. There’s a global network of spotter ’scopes watching the skies, international and highly secret. We might have a few hours’ notice, at best.’ He sighed. ‘But to me their destination is obvious, and I’ve made my case as forcefully I can to the authorities. They must return to England. ’

The six of us absorbed that dread but oddly authoritative warning in a brief silence. I think I had expected it – the Martian on the Hill! Even so it was a shock.

Eden said, ‘Walter, I still don’t see it all. As I understand the way you’ve explained it, they came to Britain last time because we had been first into the Industrial Revolution – yes? London the largest city. All of which you could see from Mars. And if you believe, as the Martians seem to, that we must be a unified civilisation, as they may be, then you come to the World Capital for a quick decapitation. Fine. But, look, they could land anywhere on the earth. Why England again?’

‘Because of what I saw at Shepperton. Bert, I thought you saw it too. When Marvin’s guns downed a fighting-machine, and the battle was done, the others came back for it , and carried it back to the pit at Horsell. You know, it’s easy to speak of the Martians as evil and unethical and so forth. We should not judge their ethics on the way they behave towards us, for we are vermin – farm animals at best – to them. No, we must judge them on how they behave to each other. They talk, they cooperate – they come back for their fallen. And that’s why they’ll come back to England.’

I thought with a shudder of the pickled specimen of a Martian, on display in the entrance hall of the Natural History Museum in Kensington. I myself had viewed it many times.

At last Philip said, ‘So this is why you called us.’

‘I am aware have called some of you, Julie, back from places of relative safety.’

But I was already thinking ahead, planning. I would call on my sister-in-law, she with whom I had fled the Martians last time. ‘Never mind that. You did the right thing, Walter,’ I said as firmly as I could.

Eden glanced at Cook. ‘I think I’ll go back to my old regiment, at the Inkerman barracks. What about you, Bert?’

Cook’s eyes narrowed. ‘Oh, if the Martians come again I know just where I want to be.’

Frank stiffened. ‘And I’ll get my wife and son to safety, and I thank you for that, Walter. But as to myself – if the Martians do come, I will have my duty as a doctor and a soldier, of the Fyrd at least.’

‘Of course you will,’ I said coldly.

Walter whispered, ‘And – Carolyne?’

She looked up. ‘Now you think of me?’

‘Always. You know that I – before – that I had counted you among the dead…’

‘Oh, Walter—’

‘Philip?’

Walter’s cousin looked up. ‘I’m here.’

‘I must ask you to care for her, as you did before—’

‘Oh, you fool, Walter.’ Carolyne snatched the telephone handset, and yelled into it, ’You bloody fool!’ And she slammed it down into its cradle.

Marina Ogilvy took her hands.

Philip shook his head. ‘You’re right, he is a fool. And so indirect . Always was. But I wonder if all of this – never mind the babble about Jupiter – was all, really, about saving you, Carolyne.’

I said cautiously, ‘He does love you. He always did.’

‘I know,’ said Carolyne bleakly. ‘I read about it in his book.’

We all stayed over in Ottershaw that night.

Marina took one more call from Walter, in the small hours, and then she woke the rest of us. He was able to confirm the likely date of the landings. It would be at midnight, Greenwich Mean Time, the morning of Monday March 29. The logic made some sense; the landing would be four weeks, four days after the final gun firing, just as with the sequence of 1907. Still there had been no public announcement.

Monday, then. Our meeting at Ottershaw had been on the Thursday. We had little time. On the Friday morning, after a breakfast and hurried farewells, we scattered to our various destinations.

That morning, as a first stop, I intended to get to Stanmore to my sister-in-law’s home. Since the death of her husband, my brother George, on whom she had always depended, Alice had become more distracted, more vague, reliant on friends and relatives on whom she would inflict silly, selfish, neurotic talk that was ever laced with phrases like, ‘If only dear George were here it would all be all right.’ For better or worse, part of my motivation for my flight to America had been to get away from her cloying dependency. She was only five years older than me, but it was like having to care for a somewhat dotty aunt. But I had returned a few times to help Alice through various genuine crises – illnesses and such. And, I admit, there had been times when she had supported me in turn.

Frank approved my plan readily enough, for he had seen Alice crumble in many a crisis, beginning with the greatest of all, when we had met during our flight from London during the First War. But it was a question of, ‘Sooner you than me.’

Frank himself still lived at our old house in Highgate, north of London, the base of his practice and now home to his second wife and their son; he had bought me out. Now Frank intended to drive back to Highgate, and he offered me a lift to Stanmore not much of a diversion for him. I agreed, though we haggled until I forced him to accept half the petrol cost. It was a playful fight but with an edge; that’s as good an outcome as you can expect from the most amicable divorce, I suspect.

So we said our goodbyes to Ottershaw and our friends. Frank’s cousin Philip was heading back to his own family, who had settled on the south coast after the destruction of their home at Leatherhead during the First War. Bert Cook and Eric Eden asked only for a lift to the station for a train to London, from where they would find a way to their respective regiments. Though neither of them was any longer a serving officer, they were confident they would be taken back in the course of the new emergency. London, Cook said, would soon be like a ‘great clearing ’ouse’ for troops and equipment, to be deployed wherever the Martians finally decided to come down.

As for Marina Ogilvy, she decided to stay put in Ottershaw, only a few miles from the Horsell pit where the first of the last wave of invaders had fallen to the earth, on the basis that ‘lightning doesn’t strike twice’. I hope she was right. I never heard from her, or news about her, again.

So we drove, Frank and I, heading for the north of London.

We decided to avoid the direct route which would have taken us through the militarised Corridor with all its complications, and took a wide detour. We went west as far as Bagshot, and crossed the river at Windsor. I remember the drive through towns and villages going about their regular business, a very ordinary scene, even if there were rather more Union Jacks and military uniforms in evidence than in the old days. Windsor, with the royal castle at its core, bristled with security.