Stephen Baxter - The Massacre of Mankind

He glanced around with a soldier’s eye, sizing up the landscape from his elevated vantage. ‘’Adn’t thought of that. Not a bad idea, if it ’ad worked. What went wrong? Well, it doesn’t matter. You’re right, though, they won’t get close again, the Martians will figure out what they were trying to do and will keep a watch.’ He tapped his head. ‘Smarter than us, they is, and you always ’ave to remember it. Just expect them to out-think every step you take, and you won’t waste your time.

‘As for you, keep to the shadows, as I say. Watch out for the fighting-machines. And when you get to West Wycombe, wave an ’andkerchief or something and call out that Bert sent you. Got that? My Mary is a crack shot, or getting to be.’

‘Mary?’

‘You’ll see – if you live.’ He glanced at a wristwatch. ‘Oh, and keep the noise down. Baby’ll be having ’er afternoon nap by the time you get there.’

Iglanced at Verity, who shrugged. ‘The day could hardly get any stranger,’ she said.

‘Meanwhile, I got work to do. Them ’uman rabbits won’t chase themselves.’ He grinned, an uncomplicated, unpleasant expression. He had a tool, a heavy, rusted spanner, tucked under his seat; he rapped with this on the cable from which his net cage hung. ‘Piccadilly, driver, and don’t spare the ’orses!’

The cable reeled in, silently, smoothly, and he was whisked into the air. I remember him vividly in that seat, evidently purloined from some crashed aircraft, with his absurd garb, that legal wig, grinning down at us as he rose, until he was a detail against the tremendous structure of Martian technology above us.

And then the fighting-machine walked on, the cowl lifting, one great leg passing mere yards over our heads. The folk in the basket at the machine’s back grew agitated, and began to call to us. Hands even reached through the net. Perhaps they imagined we had somehow been negotiating with Cook for their release. It made no sense, of course, yet had I been trapped in that net of death I too would have begged and pleaded for my life.

In only moments the machine was too far away for us to hear their calls.

We headed roughly south-west, passing villages like Holmer Green and Hughenden and Naphill, before coming down into West Wycombe, which is on the main road west out of High Wycombe. We took Cook’s advice and avoided the main roads and open country; we skirted fields, stuck to the shadows of hedgerows, passed through clumps of trees. We made a hasty lunch of canned meat and rainwater in the shade of an ancient oak.

Our walk that day must have been seven or eight miles; it took us until mid-afternoon, and felt longer. We were both fit enough, but I was still recovering from my near-drowning, I suppose, and I think Verity’s arm hurt her more than she cared to admit, especially when we had to scramble or climb over walls. We got through it.

The caves themselves were not hard to locate. West Wycombe Hill is a local landmark, topped with a mausoleum and a church whose tower was once capped by a golden ball – it had been visible for miles around. Verity said she thought it was a folly, a relic of somebody’s Grand Tour to Venice. But when we came to it that day the church was tumbled and scarred, a ruin no doubt created by a careless swipe of the Heat-Ray, and the tower was a jagged splinter with the golden sphere vanished.

Anyhow all this was irrelevant unless we could get inside those caves safely.

The caves, I would learn, were another relic of a couple of centuries past. During a series of crop failures the local family, the Dashwoods, had showed uncharacteristic heart by employing local villagers to quarry chalk from the hill. The material was used to construct the road from West Wycombe into the main town – and, being a mercurial sort, the current Dashwood had made something of a monument of the resulting holes in his hillside…

We found a sort of courtyard. It was open to the sky but walled, with the doorway that was evidently the entrance to the caves themselves set in a flint facade with stained glass windows. The setting, eccentric, had something of the feel of an old ruined abbey, with the roof collapsed and the interior open to the rain. We came into this place with the caution you would imagine. We waved white handkerchiefs and kept our hands in the air, and we walked in the bright afternoon sunlight, keeping away from the shadows. We even called ahead: ‘Bert sent us! We’re friends of Albert Cook! Mary! We’re women and unarmed!’ The last word being a lie.

Even so, as we reached the middle of the courtyard, a rifle shot cracked out. We could not help but flinch, but we stood our ground, for my part making a supreme effort not to bolt.

Verity was made of sterner stuff. ‘We’re alone,’ she called. ‘Just the two of us. It’s true what we said, Mary. We met Bert—’

‘Dead, is he? Rifled his pockets?’

‘Not that,’ I said. ‘He found us – he was riding a fighting-machine.’

Verity managed a grin. ‘The Buffalo Bill of Mars.’

‘That sounds true enough.’

‘Can we come forward, then? Really, we mean no harm. Julie here has known Bert a long time. She’s in the Jenkins book too! Mary, we know you’ve a child to protect. Bert warned us you’d be cautious, and rightly so.’

She hesitated. ‘All right, then. Keep your hands where I can see ’em. One bad move and I’ll plug you. If anyone follows you trying to catch me on the hop I’ll plug them , and then you. I got all the angles covered here.’

Verity nodded. ‘Bert has trained you well, I can see that. We’re coming in now.’

We crossed the courtyard and got to the door. There was Mary, short, dark, solid-looking, dressed in a kind of coverall of dark blue serge. Behind her I saw a candle-lit tunnel, arched. She had been wielding a rifle, but now she propped that against the wall behind her, and held a revolver: a better weapon in close quarters and another sign of a bit of training. ‘Don’t come close. Turn around. Hands against the wall. And drop your packs, I’ll look in those too.’

I glanced at Verity, and she at me, and we turned around as ordered.

Verity sighed. ‘I have a revolver in a holster at my waist. You’ll find that.’

‘So you lied.’

‘Wouldn’t you? Safety’s on, though, but it’s loaded. More ammo in my pack.’

‘Fine.’ She rummaged in Verity’s pack, and took the pistol and ammunition.

‘May I have it back when I leave?’

‘Have to see what Bert says. If you leave.’

Somewhere, echoing, I heard a baby’s cry – an incongruous sound when you are braced against a wall having a conversation about guns.

‘I’ll take you to the Hall.’

I asked, ‘The what?’

‘You’ll find out. Walk ahead, side by side, where I can see you, there’s candles and lanterns lit. I’ll holster my gun but I got it right here and I’ve been practicing.’

‘You don’t need to worry,’ Verity insisted.

‘It’s you who should be doing the worrying. Go ahead, now,’ she said, as if commanding a pair of horses.

So we went ahead.

If you think about it, a cave is a natural shelter from a Martian. I would learn later that across the country systems of natural caves had been exploited by the authorities to provide concealment from the flying-machines, and cover in case of any Martian advance. And though the Martians routinely sent their machines to probe buildings, even cellars and such, they rarely went into caves.

It is a blind spot in their behaviour. The Martians, it is suspected, do not understand cave systems. Caves in middle England are ‘solutional’: that is, the product of running water acting on rock that is already in place. On Mars such spectacular effects of plentiful water, so obvious on the earth, are comparatively unknown. Save for the odd volcanic formation, caves must be an exotic mystery on Mars – but not on the earth, indeed not in Buckinghamshire.