Stephen Baxter - The Massacre of Mankind

I had little interest in the Jovians. I pointed to another sketch. ‘But this other,’ I said. ‘I remember now.’ It was like a spiral, spread across the page, drawn with the right hand with clockwise loops – like a clock spring pulled out of shape. ‘This is the sigil the Martians made, on the surface of their own world, and on Venus—’

‘Not on Venus,’ he said pedantically, ‘but in the clouds of Venus, somehow – for the cloud-tops of that young planet are all that we can see of it. But this is not the Venusian sigil; it is my attempt to capture the mark the Martians had begun to make in Surrey. ’

‘What mark? In ’07, you mean? You spoke of this before, but I remember no such device.’

‘We weren’t looking at the time,’ he said with that twisted smile. ‘What with all the running and the screaming. The design became clearer after it was over, and the war could be more carefully mapped. I have a chart here…’

Tucked in the pages of his book, he had folded an ordnance survey map showing London, Surrey, Middlesex, Kent – the region across which the Martians had rampaged. ‘Can you see? With these orange flags I show where the Martians came down, starting with Horsell down in the south-west, and working up through what is now the Surrey Corridor past Kingston and Wimbledon, and across London to Primrose Hill, and then to Hounslow and Hampton Court and Merrow…’ He took his graphite and made a faint swirling line, an open spiral connecting these points. ‘Can you see it? We always marvelled at the closeness of the landing sites of the cylinders, after a journey of forty million miles. Now, I claim, the accuracy was rather better than that. The landing pits of the cylinders are the anchor points of—’

‘A sigil! Like the one on Venus.’

‘That’s it. I believe if they had had the time they would have finished the figure – how? With earthworks, or canals, or lanes of the red weed perhaps. And then, with the earth wholly conquered, they would have created an even greater form, sprawled across the Sahara perhaps, or the Antarctic ice. A symbol of their victory, visible across interplanetary space!’

I sat back. ‘Ah! And this is the “graphic geometry” of the war that you mentioned when you spoke to us in Ottershaw, is it not?’

‘Indeed. And when you think on it, that the one thing that unites us, ourselves and the Martians – perhaps the inhabitants of Venus – even the Jovians! Never forget the Jovians, Julie, never forget; before them we are like children squabbling at the feet of a fully armed soldier…’

But, my head full of the Martians, still I was not thinking about the Jovians just then. (I should have been! I should have been!) ‘What exactly am I to do, Walter?’

We turned to business. He had prepared a packet of drawings for me, he said – symbols, the interplanetary sigils and certain other geometric forms. He had even brought a light leather satchel for me to carry the drawings! All I had to do was to set these before the Martians, and… Well, it got a little vague after that.

It was hard to refuse him, so fragile was he. And besides, I rather grudgingly thought the plan was worth a shot. (I had yet, of course, to develop any suspicion about the true motives of Eden and those to whom he reported. That disillusionment came later.)

But the effort of discussing all this seemed to exhaust him.

‘I do miss it all, you know.’

The non-sequitur caught me off guard. ‘You miss what, Walter?’

‘My old life, before. Sometimes I look out my old work, you know. All foolish conjecturing, of course, but like the scent of a dead flower it brings back a mood, a time… My life then, the writers and thinkers with whom I corresponded and clubbed, the editors – the magazines! The Pall Mall Gazette , the National Observer , the Saturday Review . All gone now, and even the archives burned or flooded by the Martians, I imagine… I am not a strong man, I know. I remember, I remember – ah, Carolyne! Have you seen her? I do miss her…’

He went on in this manner for some time, in broken sentences, as if talking to himself, and forgetting I was there. He grasped his charcoal in one withered hand, and drew his sigils and circles over and over, striving for a perfection his damaged body could never deliver. I sat with him, but our conversation was effectively over.

After my return to my hotel I telephoned Eric Eden – who, I had been informed, was in Paris, on some errand of his own. I told him I would undertake his commission. He had been waiting for my response. The arrangements began immediately.

As per Eden’s instructions – he was polite but specific and left me in no doubt that I must obey to the letter – I made my own way, the next day, from Berlin to Bremen. I stayed one night in a small hotel, a short walk from the rail station; there, another phone call informed me to be ready for an early start the following day, for the inception of Operation Get Julie Across the Channel.

Early indeed. I was woken before three in the morning by a smart rap on the door. A young officer in khaki and flat cap stood there smiling at me.

‘Miss Elphinstone?’

‘Guilty as charged.’

He told me I’d be given a lift aboard a long-planned naval convoy, weather conditions and whatnot being favourable – and it was time to go.

Despite the hour I was all but dressed, and seeing him stand there in his spruce, carefully ironed uniform, I was glad of it. ‘You’d better come in while I finish up.’ I collected my boots and overcoat, and the last few items to stuff into the rucksack. I checked one more time that the leather-bound packet of papers Walter had given me was safely tucked away; from now on until I encountered the Martians themselves this would never leave my person.

Waiting, the officer stood just inside the door, hands clasped before his belt-buckle, eyes averted from the particulars of a female’s hotel room. ‘My name’s Ben Gray, by the way – Second Lieutenant for my sins.’ Clipped Harrovian tones, not unlike Eden’s. Slim, dark, his well-groomed face blandly handsome behind a rather weedy moustache, he might have been twenty-five. ‘My regiment—’

‘Save the biography; it’s all the same to me, Lieutenant.’ But it seemed unfair to dislike him, like taking against a puppy.

I was done in a minute. I caught a glimpse of myself in the room’s long mirror. I kept my hair cut short, and it was serviceable after a finger-brush. With a last glance around, I led him out, closed the door and locked it behind me.

‘Leave the key in the lock,’ Gray said. ‘The manager will take care of that.’

‘And the bill –’

‘Paid for.’ He guided me towards the lift.

‘How efficient. Look, Lieutenant Gray, I’m quite capable of putting myself on a train. Indeed on a boat.’

He laughed. ‘Major Eden predicted you’d say that, almost to the letter, Miss Elphinstone. “Orders is orders” – that’s what he told me to reply.’

‘Know him well, do you?’

‘Tolerably, given he’s my senior officer, and a fair bit older. When I was stationed at Inkerman he gave us briefings on his experience in the First War. He’s a clubbable sort of chap when off duty – well, you know that, Miss.’

‘Old Harrovians together?’

He grinned, sheepish. ‘As you put it, Miss – guilty as charged.’

We reached ground level, crossed a deserted lobby, and went out into the crisp air of a morning already growing lighter, and turned for the rail station.

‘And as to why you’ve been assigned me as an escort for the day, Miss – Major Eden is crossing too, but from Brest – which is—’