Stephen Baxter - The Massacre of Mankind

‘He answers to the Duma now. The convention of 1917—’

‘Is that the one where they locked up all the Bolsheviks?’ Smirnov’s grasp of politics was poor. ‘Who?’

‘Never mind. And as for your army, you have millions of men in arms, but they are poorly trained, poorly equipped…’

‘So poor are we that our city is not yet named “Wilhelmsburg”, as your Kaiser boasted it would be years ago.’

The German laughed. ‘I give you that. Even if we fight together, the Martians may defeat us. Then what?’

Smirnov grinned. ‘Then we retreat, as before Napoleon. No conqueror in history has taken the whole of Russia. It is impossible. As the Martians too will find.’

‘Hah! Well, I must take your letter to my commander, who will give it to his commander, and then to the generals, who are probably speaking by field telephone to Brusilov already… I look forward to marching down the Nevsky Prospekt side by side with you, my friend.’

‘What is your name?’

‘Voigt. Hans Voigt.’

‘I am Andrei Smirnov. Farewell, Hans Voigt.’

‘Farewell, Andrei.’

They saluted each other, each in their styles, turned on their heels, and parted.

By the time of Smirnov’s meeting, the Martians had indeed fallen on Berlin, or close to it.

Walter Jenkins, huddled in his nest of communications gear and charts, maps and calculations, took some time to establish that the Martians had come down on the north bank of the Elbe, near the town of Dessau, some forty miles south-west of the city itself. Walter did not drive – he had always felt, he said, that his nerves were not up to it – but, having been a refugee once, he travelled with a motorist’s pocket atlas of local roads tucked into his overcoat pocket. A glance at this was sufficient to show that the Martians’ obvious line of attack on central Berlin would be a straight advance to the north-east – which would bring them close to Dahlem, or even through it, and other suburbs at this south-western corner of the conurbation.

Therefore Walter had to flee.

He did not leave in a panic, as he might once have done; he always said he remembered the lessons of his time with Albert Cook fifteen years earlier, when the two of them had sought to cross a Martian-infested Surrey. Having tidied away his notes in a stout fireproof box, he donned his coat and cloth cap and heavy walking boots, and he filled his pockets with bread and cheese, and matches, an electric torch, a pocket knife – and a pack of cigarettes with which to win friends. He had his pocket atlas, and a German phrase book to back up his own faulty grasp of the language. And he had a notebook and pencils; he never travelled without a means of recording his adventures, or more specifically his inner musings.

He washed his face, splashing cold water to try to induce wakefulness. Part of him regretted now his lack of sleep for so long. He scribbled a quick note to the villa’s owners and left it on the kitchen table, weighed down by an empty coffee mug. Then he glanced around once more with some regret at his maps and calculations and logs.

An outside observer would have thought him leisurely over these preparations. It will always be a puzzle to me how conscious Walter was or not of his own decision-making at such times – for, of course, every hour wasted brought peril closer to his door.

It was seven a.m. by the time he emerged from the house, under a clear, brightening sky. He locked the door carefully behind him, pocketing one key and hiding a spare on a lintel. Then he dug his bicycle out of its shelter at the side of the villa, near the potting sheds. This was a Raleigh, a solid English make which he had had imported at considerable expense; only two days before he had oiled the chain and checked the tyres.

Here was Walter Jenkins, caught for the second time in his life between an advancing Martian force and a vulnerable human city.

It was already an hour since, to the south-east – if they had kept to the timetable that they had used around the world – the Martians had left their pit, and they must already have been on the move; already humans must be dying as they flung themselves in the face of that advance. If he were rational, he knew, he would get out of the way altogether – head west or east, to Wustermark or Schonefeld perhaps. But if Freud and his disciples had taught Walter one thing about himself, it was that whatever drove him at times like this was deeper than the rational. Once he had walked straight into a London he believed the Martians still occupied. Fifteen years later, so it must be again.

In that German dawn, curiosity and dread warred in him; not for the first time, curiosity won. To the heart of Berlin!

He told me he grinned as he climbed aboard that bicycle, and pedalled away.

He headed towards the Rheinstrasse, one of the great highways that leads to the centre of the city.

Long before he got to the junction with the main road he was panting, his legs and backside aching. When the Martians had first come to England he had been forty-one years old; now he was in his late fifties and he felt a lot more used up. But he pedalled grimly, sweating inside his heavy coat.

He saw nothing unusual about the morning, at first. Cars and motor-cycles passed in an orderly fashion, and people came and went, many of them in smart office clothing. He was passing through a suburb of commuters; people would travel by motor-car, tram and bus to jobs in the offices and department stores in the centre of the city. He saw no schoolchildren heading for their classes – but then this was a Saturday; Walter was not sure of the local routine, but maybe lessons had been suspended. Perhaps the alarm had not yet spread. Perhaps the Kaiser’s government was still giving out reassuring messages: Work as usual! – the menace will be contained .

He came upon the first soldiers at the junction with the Rheinstrasse.

Vehicles, trucks and armoured cars and motor-cycles, and a few small artillery pieces, had been gathered at the side of the road. Landsers – German tommies in grey greatcoats – stood around smoking and talking quietly, while field wireless sets crackled. In a small park opposite, others were digging, hastily constructing a complicated earthwork. Walter got off his bicycle to see better; it would be a star-shaped formation surrounded by a trench, with machine guns placed at the corners, and a big Howitzer at the centre.

Walter approached a couple of men beside a batteredlooking artillery piece, drawn by a couple of patient horses. Walter chose these men because they weren’t smoking; now he produced the pack he had brought for this very purpose. In his clumsy German, he asked, ‘You are going to meet the Martians? I heard they landed near Dessau.’

One of the men took Walter’s cigarette with no apparent interest in conversation. The other was a corporal, smaller, darker, more shrewd-looking. He said, ‘That’s what we heard. Waiting for more units to get their backsides out of bed and form up here, and then we advance. Air cover as well, we’re promised that.’

‘They’re on the move, then. The Martians.’

‘Out of the Dessau pit, yes.’ The German word he used for ‘pit’ was Adlerhorst , ‘eagle’s nest’. ‘We already put up some resistance at Brueck, Treuenbritzen. Quite a force coming, apparently. Nobody knows quite how many. The scouts were too busy running away to count, probably. But it’s said that some of the Martians have peeled off to head for Brandenburg and Potsdam.’

There was a droning noise, high in the sky. Walter glanced up to see a brace of high-flying aeroplanes, heading back the way he had come: scouts, perhaps. ‘Soon there will be better information.’