Stephen Baxter - The Massacre of Mankind

‘ Ulla! Ulla!… ’ The Martian cry was heard around the world, in the Americas, in Australia, in Asia – and in Africa.

It was in the early morning of that Saturday, high above Durban on a foothill of the Drakensberg Mountains – and with the Martian walking machines still ravaging the city below – that Gopal Tilak came upon the Zulu woman. She sat alone, a small pile of belongings at her side, the morning light on her rather expressionless face.

I met Gopal Tilak much later, when I visited the ruins of Bombay, only to happen, by chance, upon this eyewitness to the destruction of Durban. By the time I met him Gopal had become a prominent lawyer advising a newly independent Indian government on the proper application of the human rights legislation imposed by the Federation of Federations in Basra. In the calm environs of a very English tea shop on the outskirts of Bombay, Gopal would tell me of that dreadful morning, and his accidental meeting in the foothills.

He had judged the woman to be perhaps thirty years old, more than ten years younger than himself. She did not seem to have noticed him coming. The world was quiet, up there; the detonation of the buildings and the screams of the people of the city were whispers on the wind. He could still make out, however, rising from a dozen places, the ugly, discordant cry of the Martians: ‘ Ulla… ’

He coughed, so as not to alarm her; the sound seemed magnified.

She turned her head, glanced at him, turned away with no apparent interest.

He said to her, in English, ‘May I join you?’

She looked at him again and shrugged. ‘I do not own hill.’

‘Quite so.’ In fact, he knew, the native folk were allowed to own land in only seven per cent of the territory of the Union of South Africa. And here he was thinking like a lawyer, even now; on such a morning as this, surely it was only common humanity that mattered.

Moving stiffly, he sat beside her. He wore a suit, dusty now and the tie long loosened, and his patent leather shoes, meant for carpeted city offices rather than rough hikes, were badly scuffed. He was not unfit, he played tennis and a little cricket, but he was new to the way of life of the refugee. This woman, he instinctively felt, presumably after a life of toil, was more sturdy than he.

‘I have water,’ he said.

‘I too.’ She looked at him again. ‘We can share if one is short. Water is scarce just here.’

‘Thank you. And food? I have some biscuits…’

‘Are you hungry?’

‘No.’ He sighed. ‘Though I should be, I suppose, it is a long time since I ate.’ He carried a satchel; long emptied of books and other weighty objects, now it held little but the identity papers which had to be carried throughout the British Empire, a few biscuits, a flask of water. He took the flask, sipped from it, and offered it to the woman. ‘I was on a train coming into Durban. I have been advising on employment rights for the Indian population here. I have been trying to leave this country since the news of the Martian attacks in America. I wished to travel home, to Bombay. But the Martians fell there some hours ago. And now the Martians are in Durban too!’ He laughed bitterly. ‘I am a lucky man. Before we reached the city my train stopped, the crew wished to turn back. But I need to get to the coast, to the ships…’

‘You walked.’

‘Yes,’ he said. He hesitated. ‘My name is Gopal Tilak.’

She nodded. She said her name was Nada, and a surname that he would later not recollect.

‘“Nada.” Is that an unusual name?’

She shrugged. ‘My mother, worker on a farm. The farmer’s wife, she give me name. Nada. Name from a book. Means “nothing” in some tongues. Thought that was funny. Later I read book.’

‘You speak English—’

‘Afrikaans better.’

‘You read and write.’

‘And count. Family workers on farm, in the country. I work in a company in the city. Exports diamonds.’

Diamonds, and the gold of the Transvaal, Gopal reflected: the huge mineral wealth of this country that flowed out into the world, mostly benefiting the British who owned the mining rights.

She said now, ‘When Martians came—’

‘You decided to walk home? Just like me. It’s just that we’re walking in opposite directions.’

She looked at him. ‘Know Durban?’

‘Not well. My work mostly took me inland, to the towns, the villages. That’s where most of the problems are in this strange stitched-together country, of Afrikaners, Indians – and Zulus like yourself.’

‘Zulus here first. Now, everything taken away.’

‘I know,’ he said with some passion. ‘Ten years ago, more, I worked with Mohandas Gandhi. Do you know of him? Englishtrained lawyer who led campaigns for the rights of the Indians here. Passive resistance – that was his tool; we call it satyagraha in our language. You just down tools and refuse. But even as we won our small victory, a much greater injustice was being legislated into existence – I mean, the institutionalised discrimination against the native majority.’

He regretted his rather complex language, but she seemed to understand. ‘Gandhi? Where now?’

‘Went back to the Raj, to advance the rights of our countrymen on our own soil.’

‘In Bombay?’

‘I hope not.’ He closed his eyes then, and tried to imagine Bombay as it must be now. Gopal came from a well-to-do family from Delhi, but as a young man he had moved to Bombay for the commercial possibilities of a city that had grown huge under the British, and he had grown to love it: the sprawling old quarters, the giant cotton mills of the industrial zones, even the great administrative buildings of the British. And then there was the scent of it, of the spices of cooking, of the sandalwood burned at the festivals. Well, more than sandalwood would be burning in Bombay this terrible morning.

‘Can’t fight Martians,’ Nada said now. ‘Just wait until go away. What was word?’

‘What word? Oh – satyagraha. ’

She repeated it with relish, syllable by syllable. ‘ Satyagraha . Wait until go away. Then take land back.’

She was right, Gopal thought. But even if the Martians could be beaten, they would leave human affairs everywhere stirred up, as if with a giant spoon. Nothing would be the same, anywhere in the world, he supposed.

Nada stood. ‘Now I go home.’

He stood with her. They scrupulously shared out the water they carried between them, then shook hands rather gravely, and she walked away, deeper into the hills.

Gopal waited until the Martians’ main attack seemed to be over. Then he worked his way towards the outskirts of Durban.

As it happened the Martians themselves withdrew before Gopal reached the city. And he was intrigued to learn later, so he would one day tell me, that they had been seen heading north, a great ambulatory army of them, making steadily, it seemed, for the forested heart of Africa.

‘ Ulla! Ulla!… ’

Heard in every continent, that day, from east to west, and south to north – from southernmost Africa to the far north of Russia…

‘ Ulla! Ulla!… ’

At midnight the Martians had landed at Tosno, some thirty miles south-east of St Petersburg. In retrospect Andrei Smirnov would reflect that the day Martians came to Mother Russia ought to have been strange enough. But, for him, it got stranger.

In his barracks in the city, Rifleman Andrei Smirnov had happened to be awake, and had seen for himself the cylinders pass across the sky, streaks of light like so many green shootingstars. Most of the men in the barracks, sleeping as best they could, had missed it. Even when the word got around, and those who woke were told the strange news, most of them didn’t care. Martians were England’s problem; Germans were Russia’s.