by Eric Brown
Where to begin? “That the embassy will have some detection device that will see through the batteries we carry. That something about us, detectable only to the Martian eye, will give us away. That the ambassador will address me in Martian, expecting a reply, and I shall collapse on the floor in a gibbering heap.”
“In that case leave the speaking to me, Watson.”
“Thank you, I certainly will.”
Holmes reached across the table and tapped my arm. “My friend, have faith. Would I ever drag you into a situation where I was without a strategy of escape?”
“Hm… I suppose not,” I allowed.
“Good,” he said. “All will be well, believe me. Oh, I sent a runner with a note to Miss Hamilton-Bell at first light, saying that to the best of our knowledge Baro-Sinartha-Gree had not been apprehended, and that our guise as simulacra was still intact – and wishing her good luck on her voyage to Mars.”
“She’s a girl in a million,” I opined. “She ought to be made a dame when all this is over.”
“And I for one will be having a quiet word in the king’s ear when the Martians have fled with their tails between their legs – if, of course, he hasn’t been replaced by a simulacrum! Now drink up, Watson, and let’s be off.”
Ten minutes later, with the batteries stowed discreetly within our jackets, we hailed a cab for Grosvenor Square.
The day was gloriously sunlit, as Holmes had mentioned at breakfast, but I took little delight in the fact as the cab ferried us to the embassy. The crowds thronging the thoroughfares of the capital, going about their daily business, served only to remind me of the singular and perilous aspect of our mission.
We reached the square and were about to make our way up the gravelled drive to the embassy when a car of impressive dimensions, with jet-black coachwork and a union flag fluttering on its bonnet, swept past us and entered the grounds.
It drew to a halt outside the building and two security personnel in bowler hats leapt out, one scanning the environs for danger while the other smartly opened a rear door. A stooped, grey-haired figure clambered out and stood blinking in the sunlight.
“None other than Asquith, our exalted prime minister,” Holmes said. “Or rather his mechanical double, no doubt fulfilling an appointment with his Martian controllers.”
We watched as, escorted by his minders, he made his sedate way up the steps and into the embassy.
“To think, Holmes, that a puppet of the Martians has been in power since his triumphal return from the red planet.”
“And to think,” he said, “that what happened to Asquith is but one example in thousands.” He consulted his watch. “One minute to eleven. We should be making our way inside.”
During the cab ride, Holmes had issued murmured instructions as to how we should comport ourselves. We were to be silent until addressed, and maintain fixed stares ahead; at no point should we exhibit idiosyncratic mannerisms that might denote us as human. He reminded me of the simulacra of ourselves we had seen on Mars: they had been like soulless automata and would remain so, he said, until called upon to play the part of themselves in human company. We should comport ourselves likewise as we entered the lion’s den.
We paused before climbing the steps, and Holmes murmured, “You recall the phrases I had you commit to memory, Watson?”
He had thought it prudent, after breakfast, to teach me a few basic Martian phrases, such as “Yes, certainly,” “No,” “I understand,” and “That will be done,” in case the ambassador addressed me in his own tongue. So that I would know what to reply to the Martian, Holmes would discreetly display an outstretched finger: one finger for “Yes, certainly,” two for “No,” et cetera… I fervently hoped that I would not be called upon to make a reply.
We entered the building and Holmes led the way across the marble floor to a human seated behind a desk, stating that we had an appointment with Grulvax-Xenxa-Goran at eleven.
The flunky replied that we might have to wait a while as the ambassador was in an important meeting, then summoned a bellboy – another human – who escorted us up a curving flight of stairs and left us in an anteroom. A pair of gold-painted doors led to the ambassador’s office at one end of the chamber, and at the other a window gave a view of trees to the rear of the building. We settled ourselves on a padded bench to await our summons.
At one point I began to speak, but Holmes silenced me with a raised finger. I subsided into a sweating silence, conscious of my heartbeat and my mounting apprehension.
Perhaps fifteen minutes elapsed, though it seemed more like an hour.
At last, some thirty minutes after the time of our appointment, the double doors opened and the figure of H.H. Asquith appeared, clutching a folder of documents under his arm. He shuffled past us without a glance and descended the staircase.
If anything, my heartbeat increased and my mouth was infernally dry: I hoped that my distressed manner would not give me away.
Then Grulvax-Xenxa-Goran appeared at the door, uttered a brief command in his own tongue, and trotted back into his office.
We followed him inside.
The Martian seated himself behind his desk and gestured with a tentacle to a pair of seats.
We sat down. The ambassador spoke in Martian, and my friend replied in kind. I stared nervously through the window behind the alien, wishing that I could understand the exchange taking place. Ignorance, in this instance, was not bliss but served only to heighten my apprehension. Any one of the Martian’s guttural utterances might have intimated, for all I knew, his suspicion of our duplicity.
Holmes later detailed the dialogue verbatim, and I have set it down as follows.
“We approach a critical juncture in the taming of this world…” the ambassador had said.
Holmes had deemed it prudent to remain silent. He reported that the tone of the ambassador’s words suggested that he was musing to himself rather than addressing minions.
“We have stepped up the duplication programme, and will soon move on to the next phase. Not all humans are amenable to our presence here. Indeed, there is a growing resistance movement.”
“So I understand,” said Holmes.
The Martian raised a tentacle and tapped a sheaf of papers on the desk. “I have here a list of targets, some fifty-odd. All are engaged in stirring up anti-Martian sentiment, disseminating propaganda and propounding pro-independence rhetoric. These people will be replaced over the course of the next few weeks, and I assign you to the task of overseeing their abduction and replacement. Here is the list.”
The ambassador picked up the sheaf and passed it across to me. I took it with a trembling hand and scanned the first page, then turned it and perused the remainder of the list. It was in Martian, of course, and meant nothing to me. After a suitable interval, I passed the document to Holmes.
He read the list, then looked up at the ambassador. “Are we to pursue the abductions in the order listed here?”
“Exactly as set down therein,” said the Martian. “Come.”
He rose, shuffled around the desk, and led us from the room. I exchanged a look of mystification with Holmes, who rolled up the document and slipped it into his pocket.
I was still sweating profusely, but had shed some of my initial fear. There was nothing in the ambassador’s attitude so far to suggest that he thought us anything other than the simulacra employed to impersonate Holmes and Watson.
We followed him from the office and into a lift.
Holmes stood to attention at my side, staring ahead, and I maintained a similar posture as we descended. At such close quarters with the alien – he was standing at my side, his puckered integument almost brushing my sleeve – I was aware of his musky body odour, a little horsey with spicy undertones, and the fact that he was constantly muttering to himself.
The lift bobbed to a halt and the doors parted.
The ambassador led the way into a whitewashed basement stacked with timber crates. He ushered us over to t
wo such, placed side by side. Each was perhaps six feet long, and they resembled coffins. He reached out a tentacle and lifted the lid of the first, and I found myself holding my breath as I waited to see what might be revealed.
A body lay within a nest of straw – or rather not a body, but what I took to be an immobile simulacrum.
The personage was of considerable girth, with triple chins and a straggling walrus moustache. I had seen the original in Hyde Park a few weeks ago, on the day of my first meeting with Freya Hamilton-Bell: none other than the writer G.K. Chesterton.
The ambassador shuffled to the next crate and lifted the lid, and I was not in the least surprised to behold, nestled in the straw, the simulacrum of George Bernard Shaw, as thin and wiry as Chesterton was corpulent, his ginger beard trimmed to a neat point.
I felt my anger rising. Of course, I knew that the Martians were casually eradicating and replacing the great and the good of our world, but to have the evidence of their crime displayed so flagrantly before us brought a rush of blood to my face.
Grulvax-Xenxa-Goran reached into the pocket of a belt he wore around his midsection, just below his arrowhead mouth, and produced a vial in the sucker at the end of his tentacle.
He held it out to me and gargled a few meaningless words.
I opened my mouth, feeling dizzy. Behind the alien, Holmes was holding up four fingers…
Four fingers? Now what the deuce did that signify?
I thought, for a second, that I was about to pass out – and then I had it. Four fingers: That will be done…
I recalled the throat-achingly complex series of sounds required to speak these words, and uttered them while taking the vial from the Martian. To my ears, I sounded like a man gargling with hot oil while being beaten with a cricket bat. How could a simple phrase like ‘That will be done’ translate as a speech that lasted at least fifteen never-ending seconds?
My hand was shaking and I was aware that I was stuttering like an imbecile. I expected the Martian to speak again, to ask what the blazes was wrong with me, and I think I closed my eyes in dread at his reaction.
Imagine my relief, not to say incredulity, when I opened my eyes to see the Martian turning to address Holmes, who later translated the following exchange.
“A harmless sedative,” said the Martian, “two drops to be added to a glass of water for each man. Chesterton and Shaw will be speaking in Hackney this evening, as usual spouting their anti-Martian rhetoric – it seems the only thing that they can bring themselves to agree upon! I understand that both writers are acquainted with the original Sherlock Holmes.”
“That is so.”
“In which case the process should be simple. Invite the pair back to Baker Street after the meeting, and then sedate them. We will have transport standing by at ten o’clock to take the unconscious bodies to the institute at Woking, where the duplication will take place. We will arrange the disposal of the bodies in due course, you need not concern yourselves with that side of the operation.”
“I understand.”
“And then the double-act of Chesterton and Shaw will go about their lives as before our arrival here, penning their banal fictions and abstaining from criticism of our regime. Whereupon the final phase of the subjugation of planet Earth, and the mass migration of our people, can begin.”
At this point Holmes later told me that he was tempted to ask Grulvax-Xenxa-Goran about the ‘mass migration’, but resisted the urge for fear of arousing the alien’s suspicion.
We followed the ambassador back into the lift.
“Tomorrow you will proceed to sedate and arrange for the collection of the next subjects on the list,” said Grulvax-Xenxa-Goran as we ascended.
The lift doors parted and we stood outside the ambassador’s office.
“That will be all,” he said in dismissal.
I offered up a silent prayer of thanks as we descended the staircase and hurried from the embassy.
Never had I felt a greater relief upon leaving a building, nor greeted the sunlight with such exultation. I felt like a man reprieved from a death sentence, and I admit that I was a little light-headed as we hurried along the street.
“There is a coffeehouse just around the corner,” said Holmes. “There we can relax and discuss the situation.” He stopped in his tracks and stared into the sky.
“Observe,” he said, taking my arm.
I looked up. Rising high above the capital – a dark, dart-like speck in the clear blue heavens – was a Martian interplanetary ship.
“The midday flight from Battersea,” he said, “aboard which will be Miss Hamilton-Bell.”
I stared at the hurtling craft, the dazzling sunlight bringing tears to my eyes.
“Godspeed,” I murmured to myself.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Conversation at Willow Avenue
Such was my relief at having extracted ourselves from the embassy – from the very jaws of the enemy – that I was little short of jubilant as we settled ourselves at a corner table in the coffeehouse. The imminent danger, I thought, was over: we would discharge our duties to Chesterton and Shaw this evening, then lie low until Miss Hamilton-Bell’s plans of rebellion came to fruition. Our duty done, we could relax in the knowledge that our lives were safe.
These were my naive assumptions on that sunlit summer’s morning. Little did I foresee the trials and tribulations that lay in wait.
Holmes lost no time in providing me with a word-for-word translation of the dialogue that had occurred in the embassy, and its sobering ramifications.
“So the top and the bottom of it,” I said when he had finished, “is that we must inform Chesterton and Shaw of the mortal danger they face.”
“Succinctly stated, Watson. On the face of it, a simple task, given the pair’s animosity towards the Martians. However, I know that Shaw is a stubborn character and might need some persuading of our story. Although I have met him on one or two occasions, he does not know me well, and will be suspicious.”
“And Chesterton?”
“I am better acquainted with that worthy, having joined him in many a drink at the Cheshire Cheese, and he might be more easily convinced by our fantastical story. I noted in yesterday’s Times that the public meeting at which they are due to speak commences at eight this evening. We will go along to Hackney and buttonhole them before the event.”
“And then,” I said, “we can attend to the business of finding a suitable bolthole for the interim.”
Holmes fixed me with his piercing grey eyes. “You forget one thing, Watson,” he said, whipping the Martian document from his inside pocket and spreading it on the tabletop before us. “The list of innocent people whom the Martians wish to duplicate and then eradicate.”
I stared down at the strange Martian script – the individual letters resembling the stick-like characters of ancient runes – as Holmes produced his propelling pencil and fell to work translating the names into English.
After Chesterton and Shaw, next on the list were the suffragettes Emmeline Pankhurst and Emily Davison. They had set aside their quest for women’s equality of late and thrown in their lot with Chesterton, Shaw and the other more vocal opponents of the Martian presence on Earth. Next came the politicians Winston Churchill and Stanley Baldwin, followed by Virginia Woolf and Rudyard Kipling – unlikely bedfellows, those two, I reflected – the painters Ursula Wood and Walter Sickert, and a number of prominent army generals.
The list went on, the famous and feted of British public life – and many names I did not recognise – all of whom had been vocal, to a greater or lesser degree, in their denunciation of the Martian presence. Some had merely questioned Martian policy in newspaper interviews, while others had written trenchant articles denouncing the alien presence: and for these supposed sins the Martians had seen fit to sentence them all to death. I could think of no greater symbol of the evil of the Martians’ regime than the document that now lay before us.
Holmes finished wr
iting out the names, some fifty-five all told, and stared down at the result.
“At least now we know those they wish to target,” said he. “It’s also useful to know that none of these have been duplicated already, and so they can be trusted implicitly.”
“But how do we go about warning them all?”
“It is a pity that Miss Hamilton-Bell has already departed.” He shook his head in self-censure. “What am I thinking, Watson? I am growing mentally lax in my old age. Didn’t she say that she would have someone stay with Miss Fairfield in Barnes? This ‘someone’ will obviously be a sympathiser. This afternoon we will take the list to Barnes and apprise them of what transpired at the embassy.”
“And then?”
“Then and only then, Watson, once we have warned Chesterton and Shaw this evening, will we go to earth, change our appearances, and then assist the sympathiser in Barnes in alerting those worthies on the list. This will occupy us until Miss Hamilton-Bell returns from Mars in a fortnight.”
“Never has two weeks seemed so far away,” I said.
“I think, once we are busy with the list, time will fly. Tempus fugit, Watson. Also,” he went on, draining his coffee and gesturing for me to do the same, “Melius festinatione faciet.”
“Meaning,” I said, “we’d better make haste and head to Barnes.”
“But not before calling in at Baker Street and packing what we might need. I will inform Mrs Hudson that we’ll be away for a while, or else she might worry unduly.”
We took a cab thither, and while Holmes went below stairs to inform Mrs Hudson of our indefinite absence, I packed a bag and armed myself with my Webley and the electrical gun. I had taken to wearing the battery about my person at all times, though after tonight its use would be redundant: it would be a great relief to no longer play the part of a Martian simulacrum.
* * *