Stephen Baxter - The Massacre of Mankind

I promised I would, and it’s a promise I have endeavoured to keep in these pages.

‘I was ’ere when the cylinders fell. Two years back. You know that much, I was with your ’usband Frank, then , with the sojers who’d been sent to greet ’em . When everybody else ran away from the Cordon, I ran in . Because I knew that’s where the Martians would be, where the drama was going to be staged.

‘In the beginning it was just like ’07 over again.’ He sounded nostalgic, as if those terrible days after the collapse of humanity in the south of England had been the finest of his life – and perhaps they were. ‘Just like ’07. Refugees on the roads going this way and that with their babbies and old folk and carts of luggage, but most of ’em too dim to ’ave grasped that we already were in a big cage with invis’ble bars that cut across every single road you might try. I saw the soldiers fighting back, and generally they put up a better show than in ’07 – they were brave enough, and we ’ad learned something from that matinee performance, but it made no difference in the end.

‘But while they was running around, I was watching, and listening, and calculating. Straight away I could see what the Martians was up to – well, they started with the same routine last time. They was knocking out the soldiers and the rail lines and the telegraph lines and the cars on the road and anything else that might pose a threat – they did the same in ’07, they understand that we organise, see, they know we’re civilised to a degree, even if we’re a rung or three below them but they were letting the people go free. Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it? We know what they want us for. And if you came on a flock of sheep with a machine gun, what would you do? Why, you’d knock out the gun and settle down to a feast of mutton, that’s what. And that’s exactly what the Martians were doing.’

‘Hunting us down,’ Verity said.

‘’Unting now. Farming in the future, perhaps.’

Verity and I exchanged glances at that chill remark. ‘And I ’id out as the days went by, and I watched ’em do it.

How they’d swoop down in their fighting-machines on some sheep-fold like Abbotsdale, and they’d scoop up the slow and the lazy and the stupid and the weak, and drop ’em in those nets of theirs, for the consumption of, later. And I watched the people who skedaddled at their feet, turning their backs on those ’oo had been taken. As if they’d never existed. For that’s a way to cope with it, see, if the other fellow is taken and not you, and you go on living, to pretend like ’e never were at all. People become accustomed, like. As if they were being trained.’

And I remembered the dinner party in the farmhouse in Abbotsdale, when Mildred Tritton had told me country-life anecdotes, and we had all ignored an empty place at the table. ‘You’re right, Bert,’ I said. ‘Though I hate to admit it.’

‘And not for the first time, eh?’ He grinned. ‘Well, now, I sees all this, the ’ealthy sheep running and leaving the lame sheep behind, but all of them sheep , and I thinks, these folks is worthless, miserable, pointless. The stock is improved if they’re cut out of the blood line. In a way they’re doing their duty to the race by letting themselves be culled. Do you see? But not me – not men like me. I was roaming around, alone, trying to figure the angles. How I could profit from the set-up.’

‘Profit?’ Verity sounded disgusted.

He shrugged. ‘They was going to die anyway. Well, one day I got my chance. I was foraging in a village outside Chesham, not much more than a pub and a farmhouse –when ’ere they come, the fighting-machines, one, two, three of them bowling along with their keep-nets dangling – quite a sight of an autumn afternoon!…’

As he told us this story he continued to eat his meal, cutting up the bacon and mixing it with cold spud, steadily consuming his food with the discipline of the habituated soldier.

‘Well, I saw them – a ’andful of sheep – they was bolting down into this inn’s cellar, and pulling down the delivery ’atch behind them. So I dashed over and got my fingers under the ’atch – just! – and begged for ’em to let me squeeze in. It was a crowd down there, and they was pushing and shoving and complaining. Well, they let me in, I got inside and I was near the top of the pile, by the ’atch, and through a crack – it was one of those big metal lids – I could see a fighting-machine bowling down the road, heading towards Chesham. Well, thought I – Bert, ’ere’s a chance.

‘And I pushed open that lid, and I ’opped out onto the road, and I took off my ’at and waved at the machine and the Martian who rode it, and I yelled and pointed. Who knows what the Martian made of it! But ’e saw me, and bent down – and for a moment I was braced for the Heat-Ray myself, or the caress of a tentacle – and the fellows in the ’ole behind me were pulling and banging at the lid to get it closed again, but I kept it propped. Well, I suppose the Martian saw the easy meat inside that cellar. So ’e bent down, and opened that lid with a metal tentacle, delicate as a surgeon—’

Verity couldn’t hide her disgust. ‘You gave up your fellow humans to the Martians.’

‘You can put it like that. But they’d ’ave died anyway . D’ye see? If not that day, then the next, or the next. For the Martians only take a tithe – even then I think they were trying to keep breeding populations intact. Better off dead, that sort.

‘That was ’ow it started, see. The Martians can see a lot from up on ’igh, in their aircraft and their fighting-machines. Oh yes, a lot. But this isn’t their world, not yet. And a man on the ground, with a trained eye, can spot a lot more. Places people are ’iding, for instance.’

‘A man such as you,’ I said. ‘You became a scout for the Martians.’

‘You can’t talk to a Martian,’ he said. ‘Least ways, I don’t know ’ow. But you can – communicate . I do this for you, you leave me be, and the next day I’ll do it again: that sort of show. I started to wear my gear, the chain and the wig and so on – colourful rubbish I found – for the Martians must ’have trouble telling us one from the other, I reasoned, so let me make it easy for ’em to spot me . And when they saw me they would know they could rely on me to root out a nest or two for them, no trouble. Eventually they fixed up for me – well, you’ve seen it my spotting seat on a cable so I can travel with ’em. Took some guts to climb into it the first time, I can tell you.’

Verity said coldly, ‘But if you are obvious to the Martians, you must also be to the people in the regions you cover.’

‘That’s so – but I try to be discreet – all you ever ’eard of me is rumour, I bet?’

I said, ‘But it’s rumour that’s spread outside the Cordon, Bert. Which is why I’m here in the first place. You ought to take care. Somebody might take a pot-shot at you in your sling. And if the authorities ever got hold of you—’

He just laughed. ‘You know as well as I do, Julie Elphinstone, that the only authorities that count on this world, now and for the future, are the Martians.’ The kettle began to whistle. He turned and yelled, ‘Mary! Tea!’

She came through briskly, and poured hot water into a big battered pot, sluiced it around and served us tea in tin mugs.

Verity watched Mary with a kind of disgust. She said now, ‘And what relation are you to the great survivor? A trophy?’

Mary slammed a mug down on the table and slapped Verity across the face, hard. ‘Don’t you speak to me like that, you stuck-up cow. You don’t know nothing about me – nothing. What do you think I am, some tart?’