by Eric Brown
Miss Hamilton-Bell strode across the chamber and stood over the prostrate form of Professor Challenger, staring down at him with neither pity nor revulsion on her face. Businesslike, she slipped the handgun under her belt and drew a knife.
She knelt before the professor and, as I watched in horror, thrust the blade into his throat. With a savage downward motion, she opened the man’s torso from pharynx to abdomen.
I expected blood, of course, and was wholly unprepared for what did emerge from the gaping wound – which was precisely nothing.
Holmes left my side and joined Miss Hamilton-Bell, kneeling to closer examine her handiwork. I struggled to my feet and joined them, still reeling from the after-effects of the electrocution.
Miss Hamilton-Bell took a firm grip on the flesh to either side of the gaping wound and ripped open the chest cavity.
I stared, disbelieving, and attempted to work out quite what I was looking at.
Not blood and bone, or glistening musculature or adipose tissue, no – but masses of wires and circuitry and silver anodes.
“What the…?” I began.
She smiled up at me. “Not Professor Challenger,” she said, “but an ingenious simulacrum.”
“And thus the sola topi is explained,” Holmes said under his breath. “I thought it odd that Challenger did not have it with him this morning, and yet did so now.”
Miss Hamilton-Bell climbed to her feet, dusting her palms together and staring down at what I still thought of as Professor Challenger. “The Martians scanned you at the museum and created what they call ‘cognitive copies’ – in other words, copies of your minds, your personalities, which they then downloaded into mechanical simulacra, designed to resemble you in every detail.”
Holmes nodded. “And then they switched the real professor for this copy in order to carry out their scheme to entrap you and your comrades?”
“Precisely,” she replied, indicating the simulacrum. “My colleagues and I received intelligence that somewhere amid all that machinery is a beacon, relaying to the Martians its precise whereabouts.”
“But what became of the real Challenger?” I asked.
“Our agents reported that the professor met his end shortly after he was scanned,” she said. “Apparently he came round and attacked a Martian, and was summarily despatched.”
I hung my head at the thought of the death of such a brave man. “May his death not have been in vain,” I murmured.
“I second that sentiment,” said Holmes, adding, “but if Challenger were an exact copy of the original, then how was it that he admitted to being on the side of the Martians?”
“The copies are exact,” she said, “but overlaid on an autonomous mind, programmed to do the bidding of the Martians.”
“Fiendish,” I said.
Holmes regarded Miss Hamilton-Bell. “But something puzzles me,” he went on. “Tell me, do the Martians know that you have these devices capable of detecting the simulacra?”
“We are confident, Mr Holmes, that they do not.”
My friend frowned. “Then the mystery deepens. If the Martians assumed you could not detect a simulacrum, then why did they not simply kill Watson and me at the museum, as they did poor Challenger, and replace us here with our simulacra?”
Miss Hamilton-Bell shook her head. “Yes, that is odd. Perhaps it’s something as simple as the possibility that your simulacra were not quite ready at the time, and they satisfied themselves by sending Challenger’s copy, which was.”
Holmes nodded to himself, but I could tell that he was far from convinced by the explanation.
“And now,” said Miss Hamilton-Bell, “if you would be so good as to help me drag the simulacrum to the first vehicle…”
We bent and took hold of the unholy creature, and I must admit that the sensation of gripping its clammy ersatz flesh – fabricated from some kind of lifelike rubber compound – was altogether sickening.
Miss Hamilton-Bell and I took a foot each and, with Holmes gripping its arms, we hauled the body towards the arched opening and dropped it over the edge, then jumped down and dragged the thing across to the first air-car. Miss Hamilton-Bell opened the pilot’s door and we heaved the bulk of the fake Challenger into the front seat.
Panting with exertion, she mopped sweat from her brow and stared about the cloudless sky. “Now,” she said, “to send our enemy on a wild goose chase.”
She ducked into the cockpit of the air-car, ran an expert hand across the control console, then stepped back smartly and slammed the door. We retreated as the engine powered up and the vehicle rose into the air, banked and accelerated in a westerly direction. Soon it was but a dwindling dot in the alien sky.
We crossed to the second air-car, and a minute later were speeding towards the northern fastness of the Martian rebels.
Chapter Ten
Miss Hamilton-Bell Explains
I woke with a start sometime later, astounded that I had managed to fall asleep after so much excitement. Miss Hamilton-Bell called from the pilot’s seat, “My apologies. We hit a little turbulence back there.”
“That’s quite all right,” Holmes replied. “I was awake, though I think the good doctor’s slumber was disturbed.”
“I feel well rested,” I said, stretching in my seat. “I say, how long have we been aloft?”
“A little over six hours,” she said. “We should arrive at Zenda-Zakan in approximately fifteen minutes.”
Holmes repeated the name. “The city of the rebels?”
“That’s right – one of the few still inhabited.”
I peered through the window to my left. Far below, the red sands stretched to the curved horizon, the only interruption being a low range of mountains to the west and, straight ahead, a lake similar to that I had witnessed from the Valorkian two days ago. However, as we flew over the ‘lake’ I saw that my vision had been tricked. The shimmering silver expanse was a vast plain of glass like the roof of a gigantic hothouse. Here and there across its scintillating surface I made out dark jagged gashes or rents where the glass had been smashed.
“What the blazes is that?” I asked, pointing.
“That is the abandoned city of Kalthera-Jarron,” she said. “It was once the second largest city of the Korshana people, until the Arkana’s attack. You see the damage where the atom-missiles struck? The chaos caused far below, in the city itself, and the loss of life occasioned, was truly horrific.”
“But why were the Arkana and the Korshana at war?” Holmes asked.
She smiled sadly. “For the same reason that wars occur on Earth,” she said. “The two peoples are ideologically opposed. This was not a war over territory, though that did come into it, so much as two implacably opposing views on how to manage the future of the Martian people.”
“Intriguing,” Holmes murmured. “And what were these mutually exclusive ideologies?”
“For you to fully understand that,” she said, “first I must explain something about the cosmological situation of the red planet. You see, for as long as the Martian race has been technologically ‘civilised’ – that is, for the past five hundred years – scientists have been aware that Mars is moving slowly but inexorably away from the sun. This has the effect of making the surface of the planet ever cooler, while the atmosphere has become thinner. For a few hundred years, the ability of Martian scientists to do anything to effect a change in the situation was scant. However, with the advance of their science, methods have been devised whereby the future of the planet and its people was made secure – for a few millennia, at any rate. Engineers from the northern university at Zenda-Zakan came up with a means of making many of their cities hermetic by covering them with glass roofs, such as you saw back there. Also, scientists devised machines which could extract oxygen from the very rock itself, and in so doing employ the planet as ‘lungs’. The northern cities underwent a transformation; it helped that many of them were already ensconced in rift valleys or fissures, so that they could be co
vered by the great glass ‘lids’. The cities of the equator were built upon flat plains, however, and moving them and their populations to vast, prebuilt underground domiciles proved somewhat problematic, as well as costly. So the politicians of the Arkana came up with an alternative solution.”
Holmes nodded sagely. “Allow me to hazard a guess – not something I am usually wont to do,” said he. “The Arkana suggested that a wholesale removal of their people to the neighbouring world, namely Earth, might prove a more practical solution to their problems?”
“Exactly so,” said Miss Hamilton-Bell. “They saw that Earth was an ideal refuge. It possessed just the right mix of oxygen and nitrogen in its atmospheric make-up, had bountiful supplies of raw materials, with vast uninhabited tracts of land, and a population that was technologically unsophisticated. So the peaceful solution of the northerners was abandoned, and preparations were made for the invasion of Earth.
“At the same time as the first armadas set sail in ’94, bent on the bloody invasion of Earth, the Arkana resumed hostilities with the states of the north, in a bloodlust fuelled, no doubt, by the prospect of their imminent victory over we humans. But their triumph on Earth was premature. Little did they think that their invasion would be thwarted by humble Terran pathogens.”
“And all on our planet duly rejoiced!” said I.
“In the years that followed,” she went on, “the Arkana succeeded in creating antibodies to combat terrestrial diseases, and in due course they set off again for Earth. Since the first invasion, however, the Martians had taken the time to reconsider the modus operandi of their invasion. Rather than expend money and valuable resources on conquering Earth militarily, it was decided that they would occupy our planet by ostensibly peaceful means, and so they came masquerading as our altruistic benefactors – a ruse that pulled the wool over the eyes of the leaders of our planet.”
She paused to point through the glass. “There, on the horizon, is what remains of the city of Zenda-Zakan. We will make landfall nearby and head for a system of tunnels where my rebel comrades have their base.”
The air-car banked, and I held on as we swooped through the air towards the surface of the desert.
“And the ultimate aim of the equatorial Martians,” Holmes said, “is to take control of our world until such time as all opposition has been wiped out and they can effect the mass transfer of their citizens to Earth?”
“That is the situation in a nutshell,” said Miss Hamilton-Bell. “Already they are moving their efforts away from the war against the Korshana, and concentrating on Earth. Now we will land, take sustenance, and plan the next leg of our journey.”
“The next leg,” I echoed. “To where, exactly?”
“Back to Glench-Arkana,” she said.
She frowned in concentration as she brought the air-car in low over the dunes, decelerated, and landed on a featureless swathe of sand. As we climbed from the vehicle, emerging into the warmth of the evening sun, I saw a dark patch in the side of a nearby dune, and no sooner had I set eyes upon this feature than a dozen or more small, dark-skinned Martians emerged from the mouth of the tunnel and scuttled across to the air-car. Amid much waving of tentacles and high-pitched Martian greetings we found ourselves surrounded by the Korshana people, and Miss Hamilton-Bell bent to embrace certain individuals and speak to them in their staccato tongue.
She laughed and turned to us. “They are overjoyed to see us,” she explained, “as they feared that we’d been captured and killed. This way.”
Buoyed along by the crowd, we followed her across the sand and into the shade of the tunnel. When my vision adjusted, assisted by globe-lighting that illuminated the tunnel at intervals of twenty feet, I saw that we were hurrying down what looked like a steeply sloping mineshaft shored up by metal girders. Soon the sandy surface underfoot gave way to ringing metal, and as if by some miracle – for surely we had descended a hundred yards beneath the surface of the planet already? – daylight shone ahead of us. We came out onto a great gallery running around the edge of a vast chasm, and I looked up to see an extensive honeycombed awning of glass, through which the setting sun cast its rufous rays. We were in the bomb-blasted city of Zenda-Zakan.
I glanced to my left, over the gallery rail, and wished that I had not given in to my curiosity. The chasm seemed bottomless, and my head swam with vertigo. Far below, I made out the ruins of gallery after fire-blackened gallery.
Miss Hamilton-Bell turned down a wide, burned-out corridor. She came to a double door and pushed it open, standing aside so that we could enter. The room was large and sunlit – its far wall comprised a single floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the chasm and was illuminated by sunlight slanting in through the glass roof high above.
“You will find hot running water,” she said, pointing to an arrangement of brass pipes and a large water tank. “I suggest that you refresh yourselves and meet me next door in thirty minutes. We have much to discuss.”
With this, she took her leave.
I stripped to the waist, ran a tank full of hot water, and proceeded to wash myself with a great scouring sponge no doubt designed for tough Martian skin. Holmes, for his part, merely paced back and forth, lost in introspection.
I dried myself on a towel, donned my old and somewhat sweat-stained clothing, and joined Holmes at the window.
He was gazing down at the wreckage with a lugubrious expression.
“A race which can visit such death and destruction on its own kind,” he said, “will have no qualms about wiping out the entirety of mankind when it suits them. The ‘second wave’ have treated us with kid gloves so far, Watson, but judging by what Miss Hamilton-Bell has told us, that will not continue. As soon as they have gathered sufficient materiel and turned their attention from subjugating their own…”
A communicating door opened, and a Martian appeared. He fluted something, to which Holmes replied in kind. “Miss Hamilton-Bell is ready,” he said, “and a council of war has convened.”
We followed the Martian into a large room dominated by a low, oval brass table. Around it, on cushions, were seated a dozen dark-skinned Martians, and as we crossed the room and took vacant cushions beside Miss Hamilton-Bell, twenty-four huge eyes charted our progress in silence.
As soon as we were seated, half a dozen voices spoke up, seemingly conversing across each other in high passion. It was a wonder that any sense could be made of the din, but Miss Hamilton-Bell pitched into the debate in the Martian language and held forth for long minutes, and a silence descended as all those around the table listened to what she had to say.
At last she gestured, and others spoke in turn, and she turned to us and murmured, “They are debating how we should proceed – they have two or three different proposals. I think it is only a matter of time before an agreement is reached.”
“Which brings me back to my earlier question,” Holmes said. “What are the Martians’ motives in making copies of Watson and myself?”
“It is all part of their masterplan, Mr Holmes. To smooth the way for their ultimate invasion, they need the assistance of the human race itself – and how better to achieve that than to ‘copy’ certain individuals of influence?”
“You mean…?”
“Over the course of the past few years,” she said, “many world leaders have travelled to Mars.”
At her words, a great weight settled in my stomach, and an even greater weight upon my soul.
“I would venture to say,” said Holmes grimly, “that almost every leader of note has at some point made the journey.”
“And not returned,” she said, glancing from Holmes to myself. “Oh, to all intents and purposes they come back to Earth with great tales of the scientific wonders they have beheld, and highfalutin notions of peace between our peoples, but…”
“But these are copies,” Holmes said grimly, “simulacra of our leaders, planted to do the bidding of their masters.”
My senses swam at the very idea, and at
length I brought myself to ask the question, “But what became of the originals? Why, just last year Asquith made the journey.”
Miss Hamilton-Bell gazed down at her hands on the tabletop. “What do you think became of our prime minister, and all the others, Doctor?” she murmured. “Like Professor Challenger, they were copied and then despatched.”
“But presumably,” said Holmes, “the mechanical simulacra do not age? So how then might the Martians maintain the conceit?”
“By the simple expedient of periodically recalling the simulacra,” she said, “and making adjustments to their appearance.”
I closed my eyes briefly, sickened. Holmes, not usually given to profanity, swore quietly to himself, then leaned forward and said, “You mentioned earlier that we would return to Glench-Arkana.”
Miss Hamilton-Bell held up a hand. “One moment, please.”
She spoke in Martian, silencing the noise around the table. She fired off what sounded like questions to various individuals, and nodded at their replies.
Minutes later she turned to us and said, “As we speak, the Arkana are preparing to send the simulacra of yourselves back to Earth on the next ship, scheduled to leave Mars less than a day from now. Once arrived on Earth, your doubles will take up your old life in 221B Baker Street as if nothing untoward has occurred – conveying information to their masters and awaiting the call to assist the ultimate invasion.” She looked from Holmes to myself, with steel in her bright blue eyes. “We must ensure that they do not succeed in transporting your simulacra to Earth. To this end, we will apprehend them and make the switch – insinuating yourselves in their place – without their guards suspecting a thing. We will then disable the simulacra, and you can proceed to Earth as double agents, so to speak.”
“A tall order,” Holmes opined.