by Eric Brown
Shaw leaned forward. “While the betterment of the material lot of humankind is a moot and debatable point,” he said, “I am sure that my friend, G.K., will agree with me when I state that the invasion of our world by unwanted extraterrestrials has had untold psychological, not to mention physical, consequences. Ever an opponent of imperialism, whose evil is that it imposes a foreign regime upon peoples and subjugates the true indigenous spirit of those peoples, I put it to you that the oppression of the Martians has likewise yoked the spirit of the human race.”
The crowd broke into spontaneous applause and cheering, and when the noise abated the military attaché said, “You speak of spiritual oppression, and yet we are at pains not to trample upon your beliefs, your religions…”
Holmes turned to me and whispered, “So much sententious claptrap, Watson. So many meaningless lies. We know the truth, and what is frustrating is that we cannot speak it!”
The debate went on, the Martian’s spurious claims rebutted by Shaw and Chesterton’s counter-arguments. The audience grew restive, and more vocal, with the occasional shout greeting the military attaché’s claims, and as the hour wore on and the debate grew more and more heated, I genuinely feared that the meeting might erupt into violence.
I consulted my watch. It was approaching nine o’clock – high time the event was drawing to a close.
“We need to be moving, Holmes,” I said. “If they go on any longer…”
Chesterton rose to his feet and cleared his throat. “Now, it is all very well for the attaché to claim his kind came in the spirit of peace, bearing gifts for the natives, gaudy beads and gewgaws as it were. But can we take these clamorous claims of peace at face value, my friends? Do the rumours of villainous violence, even murder, stand upon a foundation of fact?”
The audience was on its feet by now, shouting and launching screwed-up pamphlets at the Martian, who said into the microphone, “Murder? Violence? Who speaks of such…?”
He was shouted down. At the back of the hall, the Martian who had accompanied the military attaché turned and departed the chamber. A member of the audience stood and hurled a seat cushion at the attaché, only narrowly missing him. Shaw was on his feet, waving and calling for calm. The bowler-hatted official spoke into the microphone, “Please, if everyone would be so good as to…” but was shouted down by the angry crowd.
Amid the mayhem, Holmes rushed onto the stage and grabbed Chesterton by the arm, dragging him into the wings by main force. Shaw followed, with the Martian shuffling in his wake.
I took Shaw’s arm as he stumbled. The auditorium was in chaos, with cushions and other projectiles, among them bottles, raining down on the stage.
As I hurried with Shaw and Chesterton along the corridor, the military attaché caught up with Holmes and took his arm with a tentacle. The Martian spoke, and my friend replied and shrugged him off.
“What did he want?” I asked as we left the attaché in our wake and emerged into the evening twilight.
“He is cognisant of the ambassador’s plan, Watson, and asked if we had matters in hand. To wit, the drugging of…” He nodded to where Chesterton and Shaw were standing on the pavement, hailing a cab. “I assured him that all was well. Would that it were, Watson!”
We hurried to join the writers as a taxi pulled in to the kerb.
Shaw and Chesterton climbed into the rear of the cab, followed by Holmes and myself.
“The Cheshire Cheese, my good man,” wheezed Chesterton, but Holmes leaned forward and in a tone that brooked no argument said, “Make that Baker Street, driver, 221B Baker Street.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Confrontation at Baker Street
“The infernal cheek of it, sir!” Chesterton protested. “Calumny to the person who keeps an honest man from his beer! Driver—”
“Driver,” said Holmes, “221B Baker Street, and I will hear no more on the matter.”
I twisted in my seat and was in time to see the military attaché emerge from the side door and stare up and down the street. As we turned the corner, the second Martian was clambering into a cab on the High Street. I was confident that neither was aware of our getaway, though I feared that they might send their people to Baker Street before the appointed hour.
“I think we should hear what Holmes has to say, G.K.,” Shaw said in an undertone, so as not to be heard by the cabbie. “You mentioned earlier that our lives were in imminent danger, Holmes. Might I ask for amplification?”
“You are to be drugged and transported to the Martian Institute at Woking,” Holmes murmured. “What would then follow would be unbelievable even to me, had Watson and I not had experience of the procedure on two occasions.”
“Procedure?” Chesterton harrumphed like a bad-tempered walrus coming up for air.
“I will demonstrate the truth of our claims when we reach our rooms,” said Holmes.
“But if the Martians had us killed,” Shaw said, “then that would be playing into the hands of the opposition movement. Why, surely the Martians wouldn’t be so stupid.”
“Oh, the Martians are far from stupid, my friend. In fact they’re diabolically clever. You see, they would have you murdered – as they have so cold-bloodedly murdered hundreds, even thousands of humans already – and then replaced with mechanical copies.”
A sudden silence reigned within the confines of the cab, and then Chesterton spluttered, “Mechanical copies? Have you taken leave of your senses, man? Why, I’ve never heard such hogwash. Mechanical copies indeed!”
Shaw looked at Holmes with a glinting eye. “Elucidate, my friend,” said he.
“I know this to be a fact from first-hand experience,” Holmes said, “and Watson will corroborate. A fortnight ago, on Mars itself, Watson and I were copied.”
He outlined our imprisonment by the Martians, and our subsequent escape from Mars aboard a Korshanan interplanetary ship. He went on to outline our travails since returning to Earth, the destruction of our own simulacra, and our ensuing adventures at the Martian Institute in Woking.
Chesterton and Shaw sat in silence, the former for once lost for words.
“And you say that the Martians have already murdered and replaced countless prominent humans?” Shaw said in hushed tones.
“That is so,” Holmes replied. “And just yesterday the ambassador handed us a list of over fifty opponents to their regime, with instructions to abduct them and have them delivered to Woking for the duplication process. And your names were at the top of the list.”
“It’s a tall tale,” Chesterton said. “And, to be frank, I’m not sure I believe a dashed word.”
“Perhaps,” Shaw put in, “we should maintain an open mind until we have received the evidence that Holmes promised?”
“Which I shall be happy to carry out in a matter of minutes,” Holmes said as the cab turned the corner and pulled up outside 221B.
I paid the driver and followed the others up the steps, but not before glancing up and down the length of the street to ensure that we had not been followed. To my immense relief, there were no other vehicles in evidence save the horse and cart of a rag-and-bone man.
Once safe within our rooms, Holmes waved our guests to the armchairs before the hearth and disappeared into the adjoining bedroom. I poured three brandies and a cordial and soda for Shaw.
Holmes entered the room bearing a sorry, sagging simulacrum integument in each hand. They hung like human hides that had been deboned and flensed. Their faces were particularly gruesome, with sucked-in cheeks and staring eye-holes.
“Good God, man!” Chesterton exclaimed.
Shaw took the simulacrum that had so recently parodied myself, turning the floppy integument over and over and exclaiming as he did so.
“And on the workbench,” Holmes said, pointing across the room, “you will observe the mechanical innards that gave these automata the semblance of life.”
I moved to the table, fetched a handful of circuitry, and offered it to Shaw, w
ho stared at the tangled mass and then passed it to Chesterton.
“As I live and breathe,” said the latter. He looked up at Holmes, suddenly sober. “And you say that many a prominent worthy has been murdered and replaced?”
“The most prominent of which is our prime minister, Asquith, as well as Lloyd George and Balfour, to name but three.”
“They began the systematic slaughter and replacement of our people by luring them to Mars,” I said. “There they were duplicated and then killed, with the simulacra returning to Earth in their place. Just recently the Martians have begun duplicating humans at Woking, and no doubt at locations in other countries around the world.”
“But…” Shaw began, shaking his head. “But just last year Henry James was invited on a lecture tour of the red planet, to which he acceded.”
“And in all likelihood succumbed to the depredations of the Arkana,” Holmes said quietly.
“I wondered why he has fallen silent on the matter of the Martians – he was a vocal opponent, as you probably know.”
Holmes tossed his own simulacrum skin into a corner of the room. “Our main concern now is to ensure your continued safety. To that end I will summon a cab.”
He crossed to the telephone and spoke briefly into the mouthpiece.
“They will send a car within minutes,” he reported.
“That’s all very well, Holmes,” Chesterton said, “but where the blazes will we go? Why, if the Martians want us dead – or rather, if they want to abduct us in order to carry out their infernal duplication – then we can hardly return to our homes. Why, what the deuce will I tell Frances?”
“If you give me your home telephone number,” Holmes said, “I will arrange for a member of the Resistance to contact Frances and have her join you. For the time being we’ll stay at a safe house in Barnes. You’ll be in good hands. The Resistance will keep you safe, along with others on the Martian death list.”
I heard the purr of an electrical engine outside and moved to the window. A cab beetled in to the side of the road and halted.
“Our cab,” I said, and consulted my watch. “And not a moment too soon. It’s a quarter to ten – the Martians said they’d send a car for you at ten. With luck we’ll give them the slip and miss them by minutes.”
Holmes hurried us from our rooms.
Twilight was falling as we stepped into the street, and from Regent’s Park came the haunting double-note of the Martian tripod, “Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla…” I cursed the noise, recalling the time, not that long ago, when I had been beguiled by the plangent melancholy of the otherworldly sound.
The nearby tripod ceased its threnody, and it was taken up by another further to the west, and then another and another.
“Look sharp, Watson!” Holmes cried, grabbing my arm. “Quickly,” he called to Chesterton and Shaw. “Into the cab! No. 22 Willow Avenue, Barnes.”
The pair needed no second telling. They crossed the pavement as fast as they were able, Shaw almost pushing Chesterton into the back of the vehicle.
We were about to join them when the crackle of an electrical gun sounded loud in the air, and Holmes pushed me to the ground. A car had drawn up in the middle of the road not ten yards away. As I watched, transfixed, three Martians tumbled out and one of their number fired again.
We scrambled towards the cover of a pillar box, and Holmes called out, “Go!”
Shaw slammed the cab door after him and the vehicle jerked into motion.
A cry came from the Martians, followed by another shot. A bolt of electricity flashed over the departing cab. I drew my Webley and fired at the leading Martian, ducking back behind the pillar box as I did so. The Martian dodged and returned fire, the jagged charge missing my head by inches. Beside me, Holmes had drawn his electrical gun and was firing at the alien.
“Good shot!” I cried as the Martian squealed in pain and hit the ground.
I looked up, alerted by a sound, and stared along the street in horror. Beyond the Martian pair, standing tall a hundred yards away, was the menacing figure of a tripod.
“This way,” Holmes said, almost dragging me along the pavement from the pillar box and into the more substantial cover of a council dustcart.
I peered along the street in the direction of the departing cab just as a second tripod appeared before the vehicle, two of its stanchion legs planted in the road. To the eternal credit of the driver, he avoided almost certain collision by swerving first right and then left in quick succession, careering around the pillars and turning the corner at speed. I almost cheered with relief, then turned my attention to the two remaining Martians.
They had taken cover behind a dustbin, perhaps ten yards further along the moonlit street. I fired off a shot from time to time, curbing their enthusiasm but only temporarily halting their advance: they darted from the dustbin and pressed themselves into a concealing doorway.
“It’s only a matter of time before they are joined by others,” Holmes said, and even as he spoke I heard the unmistakable sound of a tripod’s elevator plate. I turned towards the tripod at our backs, and my stomach lurched sickeningly as I apprehended what was on the platform: two Martians armed with large firearms.
“You spoke too soon, Holmes,” I said. “What do we do now?”
The tripod to the east was likewise disgorging its complement of Martians and they, too, were armed.
“We appear, Watson, to be trapped in a pretty pincer movement,” said he. “But all is not lost.”
“It isn’t? Then I wish you’d tell me just how the blazes you hope to get us out of this one,” I said as I fired again.
Little by little, half a dozen Martians were now advancing along the street from the east, the closest two pinned down by our fire. They now cowered behind a vehicle just ten feet away. I took the opportunity to reload the Webley.
“I’ll keep these fellows busy,” Holmes said, “while I suggest you turn about and halt the progress of those behind us.”
Crouching, my knee joints protesting, I drew the electrical gun and, with it in my left hand and the Webley in my right, I fired off a volley of bullets and volts at the advancing Martians perhaps thirty feet away. They skittered on their multiple limbs and disappeared down a flight of basement steps.
With Martians advancing along the street from both ends, it would be only a matter of time before we succumbed.
“You said all is not lost,” I reminded my friend. “Do you still maintain such optimism?”
“Indubitably, Watson. On the count of three, we lay down a barrage of fire, fore and aft, lasting for five seconds – and then we run.”
“Run?” I asked. “Run where?”
“Where else? Back up the steps, through the house, and exit through Mrs Hudson’s rear window. You never know, Watson, the Martians might not have the back street covered.”
I readied myself, gripping a weapon in each hand.
“One,” said Holmes, “two, three!”
Together we lay down a pattern of fire, east and west, fit to stop an advancing army. I counted five seconds, then followed Holmes as he charged from the cover of the postbox and raced up the stairs.
As plans go, it was commendable in theory but somewhat lacking in practice. It possessed the singular disadvantage of placing us out in the open for the duration of perhaps three seconds, during which we were sitting ducks.
Ahead of me, Holmes arched in pain and fell to the ground, and then I felt the bolt of an electrical charge slam into the small of my back. I stumbled head-first against the stone steps and rolled, groaning in pain.
There I lay, cursing the Martians and staring up at a most wonderful full moon sailing through the clouds high above.
My very last thought, before consciousness slipped away, was that at least Chesterton and Shaw had managed to escape.
Part Three
The Deeds of Professor Moriarty
Chapter Twenty-Nine
En Route to Pentonville
If truth
be told, I had no expectations of surviving the Martian attack. As I lay staring up at the moon, I assumed it would be the very last thing I would ever see. As ultimate visions went, I thought, it could be a lot worse: there was something majestic and eternal about the full globe staring down on planet Earth, as it had since time immemorial. I was filled with a serene sense of peace, which gradually replaced the resentment I felt towards my killers.
Only then did it come to me that I was no longer lying on the steps of 221B, nor staring up at the full moon. Instead, I was imprisoned in the back of some moving vehicle, looking up at the weak illumination of a covered light bulb.
I was alive. They had not killed me, but rather were transporting me from Baker Street. The vehicle was rattling through the city at a fair clip, the sound of its engine loud in my ears.
“Holmes,” I said, struggling into a sitting position despite the pain in my back. I was cheered to see that my friend appeared unaffected by the Martians’ attack, and was sitting opposite me with his knees drawn up to his chest.
I pulled the shirt from my waistband and touched the small of my back experimentally. The flesh was tender, but I was relieved to find that I had suffered no burns. My vision seemed unaffected, though I did have a pounding headache.
“Where were you hit?” I asked.
He lifted his right arm and indicated his ribcage. “It is sore, but not burned. I think the padding of my waistcoat and topcoat prevented that.”
“How’s your vision?”
“No worse than it was,” he reported, swaying from side to side with the motion of the vehicle.
I rubbed the circulation back into my tingling limbs and took a few deep breaths.
A quick inspection of my pockets told me that the Martians had taken my Webley, the electrical gun and the battery.
“I must admit, Watson, that I’m surprised to find ourselves in the land of the living.”