Stephen Baxter - The Massacre of Mankind

Against this background, trouble overseas meant little. So what, if the Germans had whipped up a storm of flags and guns in Europe – if they seemed to be developing ambitions for a global empire? These were remote problems that could be dealt with in the future. Even the Martian invasions of England seemed fantastical and distant – something detached from the normal processes of the world.

But now had come the drizzle of predictions of a new wave of Martian invaders. What if they had come to Boston or New York this time, not London? Harry suspected that most Americans rather looked down on the British response to the invasion of 1907, and even that of two years ago. Surely the American military would have put up a better fight than the British; surely the American character, tested, would have fared better. It was this intuition about his native culture that had prompted Harry to pen his own Edisonades, about heroic resistance and jut-jawed counter-invasions. His sales told him, and his publisher, that he had hit a nerve.

Tonight, though, Harry, picking up on the gossip and chatter, had looked for an unusual angle. If the Martians did come to America there would be a million eyewitness accounts of military manoeuvres and the defence of the cities and the fleeing masses – but who would tell the story of the privileged rich? What would they do? Long Island would be something of a refuge, he had figured, where you could watch the Martians be wiped out in Manhattan while you drank champagne… and then return to the ruins, like so many precious birds. Martians of the Jazz Age: that was the book he’d write about this some day. He’d publish under his own name too.

Now, hideously, that fantasy seemed to be coming true; and it was no comfort to Harry, that glittering night, that his story instincts had been good. Because the Martians weren’t playing ball.

Woodward glanced up at the trails in the sky. ‘I’m no expert on Mars, but I have been under artillery fire. And I don’t figure those shots are heading for Manhattan. Sure looks to me like those cylinders are heading for a spot on the Island. Here. And a spot not so far away from where we stand.’

Marigold said, ‘So much for a safe refuge. I think I’d better call Mr Edison.’

Inside, the house was a cave of light. Harry waited with Bill Woodward, both of them smoking, while Marigold went in search of a phone to call Edison’s residence. The band was playing, right now a rather sad waltz that Harry recognised, called ‘Three O’Clock in the Morning’ – badly timed, it wasn’t yet one a.m. There were plenty of people still there, plenty of champagne and claret still to be poured, plenty of noise from the bright chorus of voices. And yet, it seemed to Harry, there was a certain brittleness about the scene. Harry accepted a mint julep from a passing waiter – but then he caught Woodward’s eye, who nodded, and Harry thought it was as if an unspoken message passed between them: We stay sober. Kane took one sip of the mint julep and set it aside.

Woodward asked softly, ‘You have a car?’

‘Not here. My house is a short walk away.’

‘I have mine here. Beat-up Dodge, but it does the job; I don’t hold with this habit of changing up every year just to keep up with the fashion in interior colour schemes… Maybe I ought to go check up on it, there was a lot of traffic a little earlier.’

‘I heard it, after midnight. A lot of drunken drivers.’ Harry found himself looking for Marigold, a little anxiously, as if the three of them had formed a bond, a unit. ‘But where were they going?’

‘If cylinders have come down on the Island, there would have been wireless broadcasts, even police messages. Phone calls from anybody nearby the landing site.’

‘So people drove out to see it.’ Harry imagined it, the beautiful people, already drunk, clutching bottles of champagne and brandy, bowling in their expensive cars along the dirt-track roads towards the Martian pits with their walls of smashed earth and wisps of green smoke rising in the American air… ‘We figured the Martians wouldn’t come to the Island because it’s a dumb place for them to land. Right? And yet they came, it seems. Why?’

‘I can think of two reasons,’ Woodward said. ‘One is just to do precisely the opposite of what we would expect, to catch us wrong-footed. A human general might think that way; you don’t walk into the other guy’s punch. But, from what I’ve read of them – which isn’t much aside for those Edisonades – I don’t think they care much what we do or think, we just can’t hurt them enough. Or we haven’t so far.

‘So my second possible reason is that it suits them. Given the accounts from England, they’re less vulnerable in that period just after landing than they were, but must still be somewhat; even a few minutes to get your weapons out of those cylinders is an opportunity for your opponent. My guess is they looked at the geography, saw the Island as a place where we’d give them no trouble for the first few minutes or hours – and then they can march on the mainland, the city, in good order. Anyhow, whyever they did it, I guess it worked. We don’t have much to oppose them on the Island. The National Guard, the police – maybe the guns from a couple of Navy boats if they can be brought in fast enough.’

‘Soldiery isn’t my line. We’re going to stop them – right?’

Woodward eyed him. ‘Look, Harry, the US Army isn’t the force you might think it is. After all, most of the fighting we’ve done since the Revolution has been small-scale stuff against the Indians out west, or in Mexico, or against the Spanish in ’98. We don’t have the kind of big conscript army you get over in Europe, the Germans, the Russians – even the British since the Martians came. The only time we had millions in uniform, they were the conscripts from North and South during the Civil War. Maybe if we’d gotten involved in that big European war in ’14 it might be different. As it is, I believe we have a hundred thousand regulars right now, plus the Guard and the state militias. And most of those are nowhere near the east coast. Or the west, come to that.’

Harry didn’t like the sound of any of this. ‘Then where are they?’

‘In our garrisons on Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Philippines: the possessions we won in the Spanish War. Keeping the Germans and others at bay. Some on the Mexican border. And a lot of the rest are out west – the old Indian country. Of course that threat has subsided now, but the Army bases are all out that way for historical reasons.’

‘Historical reasons. Holy cow! It’s a shame the Martians ain’t coming down in the wild west, then. Maybe Hopalong Cassidy could save the day.’

‘Take it easy,’ Woodward murmured gently.

‘Sorry. But the federal government must have prepared for the Martian threat. They must have got some warning from the astronomers, even if it wasn’t released to the public.’

‘Sure. But how do you plan for an attack that might hit you anywhere, on the continental US and beyond – an attack coming down from the sky? Anyhow don’t ask me. I’m injured and on leave, remember?’

‘Hey, can you hear cars? Sounds like they’re all coming back…’

Out front of the house, the traffic noise had got a lot louder. The driveway was, Harry supposed, one of the Bigelow mansion’s more elegant features, long and brilliantly lit by elegant electric lamps and carpeted with crisp pink gravel imported from England at huge expense, the gravel was the same stuff they had used on the Mall in London, or so rumour had it. When Woodward and Harry walked out, the driveway was still crowded with cars, Dodges and Fords and even some station wagons. There was one magnificent Rolls Royce with a green leather interior.