Stephen Baxter - The Massacre of Mankind

Cook grunted. ‘She’ll get nothing but a broken tooth for ’er trouble. Can’t blame her for trying, though – I would.’

‘The water is stained red,’ I observed. ‘Are they given food?’

Cook shrugged. ‘You get that where you dump a Cytherean in clean water, I think – as you get greenish slime in a stagnant pond. They aren’t ’eld for long before they’re hoiked out and taken to the blood bank, or the drips.’ He did not elaborate on these terms. ‘The Martians can’t be bothered to feed ’em, but they like to get value out of their catch; they don’t want them burning up all that lovely juice in their veins. This lot will probably be gone by tomorrow, one way or another, and a fresh batch chucked in. Before they take ’em the Martians will pass a shock through the water – a kind of electric shock I think – it makes ’em malleable, but they’re still awake.’

Verity the VAD grimaced. ‘Are they aware of what becomes of them? Do they experience pain?’

Cook shrugged. ‘They aren’t ’eld for long,’ he repeated.

I shook my head. ‘I hope none of these are from Misbourne.’

‘Makes no difference,’ Cook said brutally. ‘Nothing we can do for them – never was. Come on now…’ And he led us on, deeper into the Martian complex.

In the next pit there were people.

One must be analytical about it. One must describe what one saw, not how one felt about it.

In general terms, you must imagine, the arrangement was similar to the holding of the Cythereans: the pit in the ground, the mesh net enclosing it anchored by a peripheral band fixed to the earth. This pit held no water, of course, and it had been dug deeper. Again an empty handling-machine stood by, like a prison guard.

And as we peered down, we saw faces looking back up at us, like coins at the bottom of a fountain: human faces this time, pale, dirty, some defiant, some fearful, some tear-streaked. I believe there were about a dozen people in that pit. Such was the arrangement of shadow, and so grimy were the occupants, that I could see little of their bodies. Only the faces stood out in my vision – and in my memory now, as I think back on it.

When they saw us approach, silhouetted against the dawn sky, I supposed, as seen from their point of view, they became agitated, naturally enough, and the calling started. ‘You – who are you?’

‘Can you help us?’ Some of the voices were quite cultured. ‘Please take my little girl, she’s only three…’ I saw the child held up into the light.

‘Don’t worry,’ Cook murmured to us. ‘They can’t reach you. The Martians dug this deep – they learned. We ’umans are wilier than Cythereans, and are more ingenious at doing damage. So they put the mesh out of reach of those clever monkey fingers.’

Verity seemed to have retreated into a shell of brittle selfcontrol. ‘It’s not myself that I’m concerned about, Cook. There are children in there.’

He looked at her, and laughed. ‘Well, you need to toughen up. There’s nothing we can do. And they won’t suffer. It’s the same as the Venus-men; they won’t be ’eld long. They’ll get the same treatment – paralysed, if not stunned, and pulled out like big floppy fish.’

I glared at him. ‘How can you be so heartless, Bert? Even you.’

‘What choice is there—’

‘Hey, it’s Cook! You monster, you betrayed us! Let’s do it, lads—’

And now there was a kind of surge from the depths of the pit. I saw one man, two, swarm at the earthen walls, and a third man climbed over the backs of his fellows and managed to reach the mesh, where he clung on. It was a rehearsed move, I think, and the rage at Cook was the trigger to try it. That third man, the climber, was rough-shaven, grimy – but I thought he seemed fine-featured, with a scholarly aspect: I may be snobbish, for looks are deceptive, but he looked like a thinker, a lawyer, a teacher, a writer. Yet that face was twisted in gut hatred, and I imagined he would tear open Bert Cook with his bare hands if he got the chance. But he could do nothing but shout insults from beneath the mesh.

The guardian handling-machine, alerted, rumbled forward. But Cook, nimbly, got in the way of the machine, standing between it and the pit. He dug a handful of black stones out of his jacket pocket, and began hurling them into the pit, aiming them at the climbing man. ‘Back in the ’ole, you brute. Back, I say!’ Some of his shots bounced off the mesh, others fell harmlessly into the dark – but one caught the climber fair in the forehead and he fell back, howling. Once again the yells of rage came, and more of those entreaties too, growing ever more desperate as Cook drew us away, and we passed out of their sight.

Verity grabbed my hand, squeezing it too tight for comfort.

Cook was grinning, evidently pleased with himself. ‘There’s more yet. You ’aven’t seen it all.’

‘Those pebbles you threw,’ I said to him.

‘Not pebbles.’

‘Can I see?’

He glanced around, as if to be sure no Martian was about, then dug his hand into the pocket again. The stones he withdrew were black, gleaming, shaped.

‘Flints,’ I said.

‘Not just any ol’ flint. Look at them. Look at that edge…’

Verity took one. ‘That’s been knapped.’ She looked at Cook. ‘By you?’

‘Not by me. I tried it – after all, flint is lying around in the ground in this peculiar part of the country – and all I did is smash my thumb. Maybe some day. No, I swiped these from the museum.’

‘The museum?’ I looked again. ‘These are ancient, then. Prehistoric. Hand-axes and arrow heads.’

‘That’s the idea. Tried it one day, carrying one in, under the noses of the Martians… They’ll stop you with a weapon, something obvious. Even a bow and arrow, once, a kid’s thing from a toy store, tried that just to see – they took it off me. But the stones, see, the shaped stones. They don’t recognise those for what they are.’

‘As tools,’ I said, wondering. ‘As weapons from the Stone Age. The only tools we had for almost all of our history.’

‘Huh. More recent than that. My Mary’s mum was a local girl, and Mary says ’er grandfather had tales of when ’e was a boy, and even then the workers, the woodsmen and such, would think nothing of picking up a flint, breaking off a slice and knapping it, if they wanted some job done quick and didn’t ’ave a knife to hand. One old fellow even shaved with them, so it was said.’

‘But the Martians don’t recognise them,’ Verity said. ‘Not as artefacts.’

I nodded. ‘Perhaps they have retained something of their own past, in the forms of their machines, the odd artificial ecology they make up. But they’ve forgotten their own Stone Age—’

‘If they ever had one, on Mars, if the geology permitted it,’ Verity said. ‘And you, Bert. There you were loudly complaining there was nothing to be done about the plight of the human victims here. And yet you’re chucking them flint blades, under the eyes of the Martians!’

‘It’s little enough,’ he said. He seemed almost embarrassed by the revelation. ‘It won’t cut that metal netting stuff – I know, I’ve tried, nothing we ’ave will cut it.’

‘Then I’m confused,’ I said. ‘What use is it, then?’

Verity said patiently, ‘The flint won’t cut metal. But it would cut human flesh, Julie.’

And I saw it.

‘Better way out,’ the old artilleryman said. ‘For them that’s got the guts to take it. Or to save your kids. Them that’s got the guts. I’m setting ’em a kind of test, see.’

I found this hard to absorb – maybe I am not as imaginative as Cook was, or indeed Walter. ‘You’re doing a good thing, then, Bert,’ I said.