The Map of the Sky (67 page)

After breakfast, the Martians led them back inside the pyramid. The other prisoners in his work detail were all suffering the effects of having been exposed to the green liquid the previous day. Scarcely looking at one another, ashamed, perhaps, of their deplorable condition, or for fear of seeing their own wraithlike appearance mirrored in the others, they began trudging down the familiar long tunnel, though at one point Charles thought they took a different turning, which seemed to lead them deeper into the bowels of the Earth. He felt terribly weak and dizzy, but he knew this was not entirely due to the nosebleed or the occasional stabbing pains in his damaged lungs. The atmosphere inside the pyramid polluted his soul as well as his body. But he must conserve what little strength he had to keep walking, to stay in the line with his wretched companions as they marched forward in gloomy silence. Charles wondered where the Martians could be taking them now, what fresh atrocities awaited them after the terrible vision of the day before,
an example of pure evil, of insane cruelty. What fresh nightmare of ingenious aberration could the Martians show him today to batter his benumbed soul further?

They reached the room at the end of the tunnel, and once more the green light flooding it forced them to close their eyes. When at last they opened them, shielding their smarting eyelids with their hands, they saw tanks that stretched up to the dark, distant ceiling, like those they had seen the day before. But the bodies they contained were not those of babies. This was when Charles understood that the nightmare was unending.

Floating inside the tanks, stacked one on top of the other in rows and columns like human bricks, were the bodies of hundreds of women. They were mostly young and tightly packed together to form these macabre layers, their heads brushing against the feet of the women in the next column. They looked as if they were sleeping, suspended in a disturbing limbo, their hair floating like seaweed in the abominable fluid, their flesh spongy and pale, their eyes closed. Their mouths were slightly open, yet he saw no sign of breathing to suggest a flicker of life. The most ghastly aspect of all was the tubes snaking out from between their legs, which seemed exactly like the cables he had seen sprouting from the babies’ navels and descending into the holes in the base of their tank. This was where those cables ended up, he now realized, snaking between the legs of these women and defiling their sex, until they reached their dormant bellies. Hundreds and hundreds of cables descended from above, undulating in the infernal ocean like monstrous sea snakes wriggling their way into the silent interior of these slumbering women.
O Lord, why hast thou forsaken us?
Charles whispered, overwhelmed with horror as he stumbled toward the awful tanks. The women were floating motionless, their bodies rigid and pale, as though ready for embalming. He felt as though he was going to black out and made a superhuman effort to collect himself. He refused to let them send him to the funnel, not until he’d finished his diary, or at any rate until his heart burst, unable to
take any more horror. He managed not to collapse as he listened to the Martians who had begun giving orders.

From what he could gather in his confusion, they were to carry out the same task as the day before: changing the liquid in the tanks. Driven on by the Martians’ cries, the prisoners began trudging toward the storeroom containing the barrels. The hours passed with exasperating slowness. Working mechanically for what seemed like an eternity, Charles felt so dizzy and confused he kept thinking he was seeing himself from the outside. At one point he had a violent coughing fit and everything momentarily went black, making him fear he’d lose consciousness and collapse in front of the monsters’ impassive faces. When he recovered, he stood contemplating a pool of greenish blood at his feet with two more of his teeth floating in it.

One of the guards ordered him to resume working with a sharp push that almost sent him flying. He took the barrel he had begun moving and rolled it down the passageway. But the coughing had left him weak and he felt feverish, and as he pushed, random thoughts began to assail him: snatches of memory, fragments of dreams, bizarre images that flashed through his delirious mind as in a half sleep. A chance connection in his subconscious transported him to the Chicago World’s Fair, which he had visited in his youth, during the so-called Battle of Currents between Edison’s General Electric, which advocated direct current, and Westinghouse Electric, whose founder believed passionately in the superiority of the alternating current as conceived by Nikola Tesla. The thrilled young Charles had marveled at the generators and engines that would illuminate the world, banishing forever the empire of darkness.

Electricity, Charles said to himself, pausing beside the tank, another of the great scientific advances that was to make Man master of all Creation. He gazed dolefully at the cables in the tanks reaching up to the ceiling and wondered whether this room really was beneath the one containing the babies’ tanks. Were these women hooked up to their offspring in a kind of insane electrical circuit, transmitting energy-charged
particles from one to the other like a diabolical multiple human dynamo? Had the Martians created a gigantic human battery, using the energy supposedly transmitted by their brains, by the age-old maternal bond, to drive their machines? Charles choked back sobs as he realized that what he had been thinking during his delirium might be true, that these parasites were robbing them of their purest essence. The Martians were forcing human women to conceive and give birth, then submerging mother and baby in this green liquid, locking them into an eternal cycle of flowing particles that might poison the world with its corrupt love. He wept silently as he worked the levers that emptied out the tanks, unaware that the tears rolling down his cheeks were green.

And then, in a corner of the tank, he saw her. The guards were distracted and so he was able to go up and look at her more closely, separated only by the width of the glass wall, against which his heart throbbed wildly. He recognized her, despite her long dark hair floating around her face like shreds of the night. He studied her elegant profile and recalled the adorable way she used to pout when she was alive, the delightful surliness that wrinkled her nose and curled her lips, the slight bashfulness that had made him feel strongly attracted to her the first time he saw her. That was when her friend Lucy introduced them, during the second expedition to the future, moments before they clambered aboard the
Cronotilus
like happy, excited children, on their way to see Captain Shackleton’s victory. And now he remembered her as she was the last time he saw her in his uncle’s basement, wearing an exquisite green silk dress she did not yet know would be the color of her shroud, standing on tiptoes, her arms around her husband’s neck, and whispering a farewell in his ear that would remain with them forever, the last words they ever spoke to each other. And here she was, joined to a child some stranger had fathered. Charles did not know if in that state of limbo she retained any vestige of consciousness, if she knew where she was, if she perhaps dreamed of the child attached to the other end of the cord, far from her embrace, or of the captain, of seeing him again one day. All he knew was that the Martians had turned her into a beautiful mermaid
whose eternal torment powered their machine. It was clear that in such a state, death could only be a deliverance.

That night, back in his cell, Charles knew he would not survive another day in the depths of the pyramid. And so he forced himself to write, despite spattering the remaining pages with drops of blood that glowed a soft green, smudging his already illegible scrawl. He doubted whether anyone finding his diary would be able to make much sense of the final entries, yet he kept on writing, trying to thrust aside the question that assailed him each time he paused to rummage through his memories: would he tell the brave Captain Shackleton that he had found his Claire?

D
IARY OF
C
HARLES
W
INSLOW

17 February, 1900

For several minutes, the Martians, with the priest at the fore, led us through endless galleries until we reached a place where the tunnels intersected. On one side there was a closed gate. The priest walked over to it, still beaming at us amiably. He opened the door and ushered us through into a spacious room furnished like one of our offices: in the middle, standing on a soft rug, was a heavy mahogany desk buried in books and files. Among these a sharp letter opener glinted next to a globe with a gilt base, and a desk lamp; covering the walls were maps of the Earth’s continents, and dotted about the room there were a few chairs in the Jacobean style, tables of varying sizes and shelves containing papers.

“Kindly wait here, please,” our guide asked politely. “The Envoy will arrive presently.”

After saying this, he gave Wells a look of profound admiration.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Wells, even in such circumstances as these,” he said courteously. “I’m a great admirer of your work.”

His comment surprised us almost as much as it did Wells, who,
once he had recovered from his amazement, replied with as much bitterness as he could muster: “Then I hope that when my work becomes extinct, along with everything else, you’ll lament it as much as I.”

The priest paused for a few moments, looking at Wells pensively.

“It will be one of the things I most lament, I assure you,” he avowed at last, shaking his head sorrowfully. Then he contemplated Wells with a compassionate smile. “Grieving for the death of beauty is a very human idiosyncrasy. Do you know, Mr. Wells, when a star dies, the light from it goes on traveling through space for thousands and thousands of years? The universe remembers for a very long time whatever dies, but it doesn’t grieve. It is natural for things to die. Yet I’ll grieve for you when you’ve gone, for the beauty you are capable of creating, sometimes unconsciously.” He cast a pained eye over the group. “I’m sorry I can’t offer you greater solace, the solace a priest offers his flock. But all of us are subject to the laws of the Cosmos.”

He smiled a sad farewell and went out, closing the door quietly behind him as if he had just tucked us all into bed. We could hear him outside giving orders, presumably to the men who were to guard the door, how many we did not know.

“I don’t suppose you ever imagined you’d have such a universal readership,” Murray quipped once we were alone.

Wells didn’t laugh; in fact, none of us did. Instead, in what seemed like a rehearsed gesture, we all took a long, deep breath, as though testing our lung capacity, and breathed out in unison, in the form of a loud sigh. We all realized the game was up: we were shut in a room waiting for the Envoy, who was apparently in charge of the invasion and whom the others held in almost reverential esteem. We had no idea why he wanted to meet us, but we were clearly at his mercy. I wondered what he would look like, recalling the garbled description my companions had given me of the Martian they had seen. But I instantly realized any attempt to visualize his appearance
was pointless, for he would certainly greet us cloaked in human form, especially if what he wanted was to talk to us.

“So, this is the hiding place used by those who had been infiltrated before the attack taking place aboveground,” said Wells. “That explains how the Martian who fell into the blind alley at Scotland Yard could have disappeared without a trace!”

“Yes, he escaped down a drain hole,” said Murray.

“Good, we’re exactly where we wanted to be!” exclaimed Clayton, who, during what to me was Murray and Wells’s incomprehensible exchange, had been pacing obsessively round the office, inspecting everything. “There couldn’t be a more ideal venue for our plan.”

“What plan, Inspector?” Murray asked. “If my memory serves me correctly, our plan was to flee London.”

“It was, Mr. Murray, it was,” replied the young man, jabbing a finger at him. “However, the paths we choose don’t always take us where we want to go. Sometimes they take us where we
need
to go.”

“Would you mind getting to the point, Inspector?” said Wells, before we all lost our patience.

Clayton nodded and gave a sigh, as though our continual demands were beginning to weary him.

“Naturally I was referring to the plan I devised while those adorable children were leading us here,” he replied, beckoning us over while he glanced warily at the door. Once we had gathered round him, intrigued, Clayton raised his metal hand, pulling back his sleeve with the other one, like a magician wanting to prove he had no aces hidden up there. “Observe. This hand contains a bomb powerful enough to destroy the whole room if detonated.”

The rest of us exchanged startled looks, wondering whether the inspector was intending to blow us all up forthwith, to spare us any possible suffering.

“Oh, don’t worry. My plan isn’t to kill you,” he reassured us. “My hand also has a smoke capsule built into the forefinger. When the
Envoy arrives, I’ll unscrew it, creating a smoke screen that will allow you to escape. Once you’re safely out of the room, I’ll detonate the bomb, killing the Envoy and myself.”

A stunned silence descended on the room. In the end it was Murray who broke it, capturing everyone’s bewilderment in a single question.

“Are you out of your mind, Clayton?”

“On the contrary, Mr. Murray,” the inspector replied, unruffled.

Murray having opened the way, we all began expressing our doubts about this monstrous idea.

“For the love of God . . .”

“He’s not serious, is he, Bertie?”

“Did he say he’s going to create a smoke screen?”

“Of course he isn’t, Jane. Honestly, Clayton, this is hardly the time for jokes!”

“I’m afraid he did, sir. And in my humble opinion, I don’t think it’s—”

“And he’s going to sacrifice himself in order to kill the Envoy?”

“—a very good idea, because the smoke will get in our eyes and—”

The inspector suddenly raised his hands.

“Quiet, everyone! You heard me. I’ll explode the bomb, killing the Envoy and myself instantly,” he repeated, with an alarming display of disregard for his own life.