Stephen Baxter: The Massacre of Mankind

‘And as every paper trumpeted,’ Harry put in, ‘including our own, that would work back to a launch date of February 27.’

More grim, memorised logic. In 1907 the opposition’s date of closest approach of the worlds had been on July 6. The landings had begun precisely three weeks and a day before that, and the firings of the great guns on Mars had begun four weeks and four days before that .

But we all knew that if the astronomers had seen anything untoward on Mars, none of us would have heard about it. Since the Martian War the astronomers’ work had been hidden, even internationally, under a blanket of secrecy by the governments. Supposedly this was to stop the panics that had been witnessed during the oppositions of 1909 and 1911 and 1914, witless alarms that had caused damage to business confidence and so forth, even some loss of life, without a single Martian peeping out of his cylinder – but it had led, in Britain at least, to the possession of an unlicensed astronomical telescope being a criminal offence. I could see the logic, but in my eyes such secrecy only induced more fear and uncertainty.

So, even now the cylinders might be suspended in space – on their way! Why else would Walter summon us all so? But Walter was Walter, never a man to get to the point; I knew that I faced hours, days of uncertainty before this sudden tension was resolved, one way or another.

Eden spread his hands. ‘I know no more than I’ve told you.’

‘Well, let’s take the call,’ I said, as bravely as I could. I linked his arm; Harry took my other arm, so we walked, as three, out of the lobby. ‘I think I can stand an hour or two of luxury in the Plaza.’

‘And I,’ Harry said, ‘look forward to meeting this Cook guy. Quite a character, if half of what he says is true!’

Eden, who seemed loyal to fellow veterans to a fault, looked embarrassed. I gave Harry a sly dig in the ribs with my elbow, and we swept out of the doors into the grey March day.

We took a cab to the hotel, which is on 58 thand 5 th. The main entrance, if you don’t know it, faces Grand Army Plaza, which used to commemorate feats of the Union Army in the Civil War. Since ’22 this has of course been supplemented by memorials to a different conflict. But it was a grand sight to see, in those times.

Eden’s suite contained the pampered luxury I expected, with overstuffed furniture and a magnificent view of the Plaza outside. A bottle of champagne stood on a low glass table, uncorked. The air was filled with the tinny tones of a ragtime band, emanating from a wireless set – not the compact government-issue People’s Receivers you would have found in every British home in those days, and known universally as Marvin’s Megaphones, but a big chunk of American hardware in a walnut cabinet.

And in this setting Albert Cook, in a housecoat, lounged on a sofa, idly glancing through a colour supplement. In my own first experiences with American hotels I had been all but overwhelmed by such luxuries as a private bathroom, a telephone in the room, and cereals for breakfast. But Cook evidently took to it all like a duck to water.

Cook was a little older than Eden, aged perhaps forty; he had neatly cut black hair peppered with grey, and a livid scar on his lower face (though I later heard gossip that he would touch this up for effect). And while there was no sign in the room of Eden’s work save a single, rather battered reading copy of his book on a side cabinet, the room was dominated by a poster on a stand, a photograph of Cook in ragged uniform and wielding a kind of club, and emblazoned:

Eden briskly introduced us. Cook did not stand. He grunted at Harry, and eyed me up and down, evidently disappointed to see a woman decently covered up in a trouser suit. For myself, I hope the look I gave him was withering. Since the First War my choice had been to reject any clothing in which I could not comfortably cycle – and not the prettied-up fashionable versions either, but the sturdy suits worn by the munitionettes and others – and Cook could like it or not.

He turned back to his magazine. ‘So a ’alf-hour until this blessed telephone call, Eric?’

Eden lifted the champagne bottle from its bucket; it was no more than a third full. He glanced apologetically at me. ‘If you’d like me to order some more—’

Harry and I both demurred.

‘Please, sit down, let me take your coats…’

‘And don’t let me embarrass yer,’ Cook said lazily. ‘I’ll get out of the way when the Prof calls from his foreign nut-’atch. I’ve nothing to say to ’im . I’ve had nothing to say to ’im since Putney, when ’e drank my booze, beat me at chess, and ran out afore the work was barely started.’

Harry laughed. ‘We’ve all read the book, man. What work? You’d barely started whatever grand scheme of tunnelling and sabotage you dreamed of—’

‘That’s as how ’e tells it. Pompous over-educated toff. I shoulda sued ’im.’

‘Just as you’ll be suing Charlie Chaplin, I suppose.’

Cook scowled, for this was a well-known sore point for him. Chaplin had built much of his cinematic fame on the success of one character, the ‘Little Sojer’, a comical, good-hearted gunner in ill-fitting uniform, who forever dreamt of being a general while his guns exploded in clouds of sooty smoke. You would have to be a lot thicker-skinned than Albert Cook not to have seen the source of that.

But it was an irony that Walter’s portrayal of Cook in his Narrative had rather damaged Walter’s own reputation, with Cook’s vision of a utopia of human rats coming across as a bleak, if comic, caricature of the lofty arguments for spiritual unity that Walter himself had tried to make in the wake of the War. Cartoons in the likes of Punch had often paired them, two inadequate dreamers, much to Walter’s chagrin – not that I would have expected Bert to grasp such subtleties.

Seeking to cover over Harry’s lack of tact, I interposed quickly, ‘I’m not sure any of us came out of Walter’s book very well. I’ve never quite lived down the way he introduced me to the world.’ The words Walter had used, as he described how his brother had helped my sister-in-law and myself fight off robbers during our own flight from the Martians, were burned into my very soul. ‘“For the second time that day this girl proved her quality.” Girl! And so on. I could have been drummed out of the suffragettes, before they were banned.’

Bert Cook was not listening, a trait I was to learn was typical of the man. ‘Should ha’ sued ’im, no matter what the lawyers said.’

Eden shook his head. ‘Don’t be a fool. He made you a hero! Inadvertently, granted. I’ve seen you talking in public – you know how folk respond to the detail – how, when the mob fled from the Martians, you alone ran towards them, calculating that was where the food would be…’

I remembered the passage, of course. ‘“Like a sparrow goes for man.”’

‘That’s me.’ Bert looked at me now, as if seeking to impress. ‘Though I ain’t no sparrow. I thought it through, see. As then, so now. And today, out the blue, ’e wants a nice chit-chat with you, does ’e? And what is it ’e wants to discuss? How ’e feels about getting a daily enema from Sigmund Freud, because ’e’s ’ad the wind up ’im since 1907?’ He looked more intent. ‘Or is it about Mars? Another opposition coming up, everybody knows that. What is it – does ’ e know something? He’s in a position to find out I suppose.’

I faced Cook. ‘You despise him for his learning and erudition, and his weakness as you see it, yet you want the information he possesses?’