Stephen Baxter - The Massacre of Mankind

I saw a swimming form, just under the surface, darting with remarkable speed and with scarcely a visible motion of hands or feet. This figure raced towards us, and then reared up out of the water, droplets spraying all around. I saw that it was Charlie, the crucifix still sparkling on his chest, just as before. Even as he rose he yelled , a weird ululation, and, in mid-air at the peak of his leap, he tapped his temple with his fist, and pointed beyond us, pointed to the east. Then he flopped on his back, hit the water, and vanished.

‘Head,’ Verity murmured. ‘He was trying to say – head. He’s warning us. For that is the Cythereans’ word for—’

Then the long shadow cast by the dawn light swept over us, and I saw its detail spread across the mere in front of me: the peculiar shape of the cowl, the three long legs, the blunt gun, the dangling net within which something squirmed.

Head. What is a Martian, but a disembodied head? The Cythereans had it right, I thought. And they had it right to flee.

Now the fighting-machine itself rose up above the house, gaunt and black against the dawn sky. We could only stand and stare. It was in a mood for collecting rather than killing, I saw; people had already been gathered up into its net where they lay like so many fishes, one on top of the other, some lying passive, others struggling, pulling at the net as if to climb out of there or to rip it open. I could hear their voices, sobs and cries and yells of rage, from high in the air, faint.

And now I saw there was another net, dangling below the hood itself a hundred feet in the air, just below the seat of the controlling Martian. Not a feature I recognised from previous images of the fighting-machines, it looked like a lobe of spittle, from a drooling mouth.

I had a hunch about that second net. I tried to hold my nerve as the thing bent towards us, and one long tentacle uncoiled from the hood, metallic, glinting, supple, like no mechanical device made by human hands.

Verity raged, ‘Stupid! Lazy! I’ve been here long enough to know. We should have kept watch, as the Cythereans must have; we should have taken it in turns. Well, no point running now. Unless you’d prefer the Heat-Ray to the exsanguination—’

I grabbed her hand. ‘No. Wait,.’

The tentacle descended further, as the Martian machine bent down with a kind of eerie grace; top-heavy as it was, it never looked like toppling. That tentacle! It was only yards over our heads now. I could see the rings that made up its articulated structure, the gaps between; there were faint puffs of green smoke as it reached for us. Its sinuous gestures looked almost tender.

And I peered again at that lesser net that dangled from the hood. Now was the time to throw the dice. I yelled, as loud as I could, ‘Cook! Albert Cook!’

Verity stared at me, astonished.

‘Albert Cook!’

The tentacle stopped, ten fighting-machine itself seemed feet above our skulls. The frozen. Even those already caught in its net seemed distracted now; I saw them shift and squirm, curiosity working – and perhaps they had a grain of hope, which my calls did not deserve to evoke.

That second net, the spittle-drop, began to descend, silently, smoothly, on a lengthening cable. Soon I could see that a single man rode in it, and not cast in like a landed fish; he sat in a cushioned seat, like the pilot of a biplane in his cockpit. He wore peculiar garments, what looked like an expensive leather coat, a white wig like a judge’s, and a heavy gold medallion like a mayor’s around his neck.

As he came closer, he could see my face, and I could see his.

‘You!’ I said.

‘You!’ said the artilleryman.

‘What are you doing ’ere?’

I shouted up, ‘I might ask you the same question.’ Verity must have been as terrified as I was to be so close to the Martian machine – feet away! And up close, as anyone with experience of active Martian technology will tell you, there was an ineffable sense of life about it, even though at rest it was more still than any living thing. Yet Verity stood there with one hand on hip, her bad arm in its sling, defiant. ‘Julie, aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?’

Cook glared down at her. ‘Don’t get lippy with me. I know you . You’re with that crew at Abbotsdale, aren’t you?’

‘What if I am?’

‘You want to be more respectful. Or else, the next time I’m a striding across the country on my fine steed ’ere, I might attract ’is attention to you, rather than make ’im look the other way.’

‘I don’t believe you have that much control – though you’ve evidently sold your soul for that seat.’

He shrugged; he seemed genuinely indifferent to that barb. ‘Believe as you like. You , though,’ and he turned again on me. ‘I ’aven’t seen you since –when was it? That dead astronomer’s gaff, before the cylinders started falling again. Came to find me, did you?’

‘Yes,’ I said bluntly, and that layer of truth held up, at least. ‘I’ve got a message.’

‘Who for?’

‘The Martians. You evidently have some kind of – relationship with them.’

He grinned at that. ‘Well, given as ’ow they ’aven’t killed me yet, or sucked out my blood, I suppose you could say that. A message? From ’oo?’

‘From Walter Jenkins.’

And from a grin, his face twisted immediately into a snarl. ‘That liar.’

I tried to suppress a laugh, incongruous as it might seem in such a situation. Here was a man dangling from the cowl of a Martian killing machine, and he was still smarting at the slights he perceived Walter had delivered him in the pages of a book, years ago. ‘Are you that petty, Bert? Even now? Even here ? Maybe we deserve to lose this war if we’re all so small as that.’

‘Oh, we deserve to lose the war all right – or most people do. Walter Jenkins does, anyhow. He’s such a weak fool. All that stuff about utopias, and a cleansing of society, before “moral advancement” becomes possible. Can’t you see, this is what ’e longed for? And other comfortable fools like ’im. An apocalypse to smash everything up. Well, I’m not so soft. I don’t look beyond the destruction and dream of golden cities full of, full of fairness . I embrace the apocalypse. It’s not a phase, it’s a destination. It’s an end. I live in it. I inhabit it.’ He grinned. ‘I’m ’ere, now, ain’t I? Look at me!’

I couldn’t deny it. ‘But will you help me? I’ve come a long way for this, Bert – all the way from Berlin, if you want to know. To see you. And we’ve known each other for – what, fifteen years?’

‘Well, that’s true.’ He grinned again, his mood mercurial as ever, and adjusted his judge’s wig. ‘ This is a step up from those days, though, ain’t it? Fine. You want to talk, we’ll talk. Do you know West Wycombe, the caves?’

‘I do,’ Verity said.

‘Very well. Go there. You’ll be on Shanks’s pony, for I can’t offer you a lift. This Martian’s hardly a London cabbie.’ His joke seemed to amuse him, and he cackled. ‘I’d cut across country if I was you, and keep to the ’edgerows.’ He jerked a thumb at the fighting-machine above him. ‘The lads are ’ungry, and they’re on the prowl for fresh blood – well, as you’ve seen. That’s why we came ’ere. Them fish-men like the flood, nice big stretch of open water for them to frolic about in. Easy pickings, and there’s always a fat old beggar amongst ’em who’s got too slow to swim away…’ He glared at us. ‘How did you get ’ere, anyhow?’

I looked at Verity. ‘Can’t be any harm telling him. Marriott won’t try it again for a while. Bert, we came because the local franc-tireurs thought they could blow the dam and flood the Redoubt, the big Martian pit.’