Stephen Baxter - The Massacre of Mankind

I got up and walked back and forth to get a better view of the monstrosity. ‘It’s big enough to be a Zeppelin hangar. But modern? It reminds me of Rome. Some of the great secular buildings: the market-places, even the huge bath-houses.’

He nodded. ‘A shrewd comparison. Secular: not religious, not a cathedral as our forefathers built; this is the spirit of our age. Certainly it is new. As is all of Berlin. Only fifty years ago, a couple of generations, this was nothing but the capital of Prussia; now we are in the capital of Mitteleuropa . And speaking of capitals, how is Paris?’

I shrugged. ‘Unhappy. There is muttering of strikes, of a new generation of charismatic leaders to drive out the Germans and restore national pride – Communists, perhaps.’

Walter nodded. ‘I am sometimes surprised that the modern Germans who built that ’ the AEG factory ‘—do not rise up and knock over the pompous princeling and his lascivious, sly son, who presume to govern them as if this were still medieval Prussia.

‘But do the Martians see any of us as civilised? Oh, they recognise our mechanical prowess, and its danger to them; even in the First War they hit powder stores and the like. But they may see our machines, our cities as the product of a kind of blind reflex; we might ourselves decide to stamp out an ant colony despite its apparent sophistication. They may not see this as a war at all. Why, they may not know the meaning of the word. You can see it.

‘From our new mountaintop eyries the astronomers have scrutinised the Martians as never before, even though the stargazers now work under global blankets of secrecy. We can see it for ourselves, a planet ordered on a global scale, its scarce resources managed by a unified civilisation – with the geometry of the canal system its finest single expression. Wallace points out that a water shortage need not be a drive for global unity so much as a source of division – he uses the British example in India, where the control of water led to the cementing of social inequality, with the water in the hands of an elite. Perhaps – but I would argue that any such conflict, any war, must lie in the deep past of Mars – the geological past!

‘You know that my idea is that the first wave, in ’07, were not soldiers at all. They were explorers – even farmers, perhaps. They came to deal with what they had seen as a wild world, a world of insensate animals – and they were armed with nothing more lethal than a farmer’s tools. Some have remarked that the Martians have not innovated since the ’07 War, as we have – with our aeroplanes, for instance. But of course the Martians would not advance their technology; their society is a million years old, and such devices as the Heat-Ray must have been perfected long ago. Adapt it for terrestrial uses, yes, as they have the flying-machine… But their strategy – surely we should have expected that to evolve. And so it has, all unforeseen by the strutting peacocks who rule us. All that nonsense of the nineteen hours!’ He glanced into the bright daylight sky. ‘And now the planets are swimming into alignment again. Another chance for them to cross that dark gulf.’

‘Umm. So what’s your big idea, Walter? What am I to do in England?’

‘Simple enough. Speak to the Martians .’

That startled me. ‘How? And why would they listen?’

‘How? With symbols, of course.’

And he hurried in before I could interrogate him over the significance of that blunt word!

‘As to why – well, there’s at least a chance they’ll be predisposed to listen. Why do you imagine this party of Martians are here in the first place? The damage they have caused to England, horrific though it may seem to us, is… incidental. It was intended only to secure their position. And after two years of occupation, they have learned of the ways of our earth – of us. Surely that is why they have come. Why, you only have to see their flying-machine pass by, a great eye over city and field—’

‘They are scouts,’ I said, seeing it.

‘That’s it. Gathering information to inform the greater invasions to come. So, you see, this lot at least, sent here to observe us, perhaps even trained to do so, may be predisposed to listen to our communications – or at least, to credit us with the capability of communicating.’

He opened his sketchbook now, and began to scribble once more as he spoke. It was a kind of reflex, I thought, as if he had forgotten I was still with him. I had imagined that he was sketching the AEG factory, but rather he was covering page after page with abstract symbols: circles, beautifully drawn, crowded in with wilder, spiral-like patterns.

I guessed, ‘So your idea is to parley? But what of the very first night they landed on Horsell Common back in ’07 – you were there, Walter – the Astronomer Royal with his white flag –’

‘Yes, with poor Ogilvy, and their reward was a dose of the Heat-Ray. But that’s not to say it’s not worth trying again. Oh, I admit it, to attempt interplanetary communication appeals to the utopian in me. I’ve been following this chap Wendigee who advocates sending wireless signals direct to Mars, to parley for peace direct. Churchill supports the scheme, you know, once he’d been given reports of my opened letters. But he sees wider possibilities. At the very least we can play for time, he thinks. Thus might a wily Inca have drawn the conquistadors into long negotiations, until the time came to slit a few throats, steal horses and guns and ships, and carry the war back to the monarchs of Spain.’

I rubbed my face. ‘Given the way it turned out for the Incas, it might have been worth a try. But why me, Walter? What have I got to do with it?’

‘There is a logic. Look – work backwards. We need to open some kind of a dialogue with the Martians; let’s take that as a given. Now – according to Eden and others – there’s only one man, one human being, deep inside the Cordon, who is at present coming into peaceful contact with the Martians – or at least non-lethal.’

I frowned. ‘I’m surprised there’s even one. Who?’

‘Cook. Albert Cook.’

‘Your artilleryman! Why, he’s a—’ I waved a hand ‘—a musichall turn.’

‘Never in his own head,’ Walter said solemnly. ‘And to be fair to him, according to the intelligence, he has been able to establish some kind of rapport with the Martian occupiers. Remarkable! As to how he maintains these contacts, and to what purpose, Eric Eden isn’t telling me, if he knows. Now, Cook won’t listen to the military, for they wouldn’t listen to him, so he believes, when after the war he expounded his theories on how we should prepare for a future rematch. No, it has to be another, a lone, self-motivated survivor as he was. You , you see, “Miss Elphinstone”, were one of the few characters I named in my account, the account that make Cook famous, or notorious.’

‘And that’s to be the reason he will speak to me? It sounds a little flimsy. And besides, why not you yourself, Walter?’

‘Well, he might be suspicious of me. He does feel I mocked him, traduced him and his theories. Never my intention. And besides—’ He raised a scarred hand; it shook.

‘Very well. And if, through Cook, I do get close to the Martians—’

He held up his scrawls. ‘Show them these.’

This seemed faintly insane, on first hearing. I essayed, cautiously, ‘I had thought you were sketching the turbine hall. These more abstract designs—’

‘Not abstract. You don’t recognise them? More images I find it hard to get out of my mind. Here, the circle – an eternal, perfect figure, and the one the Jovians use as their sigil, lifted in their mighty clouds, plastered over the faces of their moons. The Jovians! – of course they would use the circle, with its lucid perfection, its infinite number of axes of symmetry…’