‘Then please take this opportunity to enlighten me,’ said George, ‘because I am surely all in the dark.’
‘The symbols,’ said Professor Coffin, ‘on the floor of the temple above – I told you that I felt I knew them from somewhere. That I had seen them before, but not in a temple.’
‘Go on,’ said George. ‘Please tell me.’
‘Recall, if you will, our dear old friend the pickled Martian,’ said Professor Coffin. ‘When I collected him from the London Hospital, there were various alien artefacts to be seen, which were being studied by the surgeon Sir Frederick Treves. Amongst these were what was believed to be the “user’s manual” for one of the Martian warships. The symbols were identical, George. This underworld is peopled by surviving Martians.’
George took in the enormity of this and then he said, ‘Hold on there. This is an ancient civilisation. The inlaid symbols on the floor of the temple above, the statue of the Goddess – all of this is ancient. Are you saying that the Martians were the original inhabitants of Lemuria?’
‘I can only speculate upon what my eyes are telling me,’ the professor replied. ‘Photographs of the cities of Mars were published in the press. Look at those towers, George, and those aircraft also. Martian in design. There is no doubt.’
‘I am well and truly confused,’ said George. ‘Are you suggesting that the original Martians were born on this planet? That they lived in Lemuria and when it sank beneath the waves, well, they sank with it and here they are?’
‘Something, if not similar, then precisely the same.’
‘I do believe,’ said George, ‘that as exhausting as it might be, we might retrace our steps and continue our search for Ada upon a higher level.’
‘I am right behind you there, young man. Or possibly even in front of you.’
Darwin now made squealing and squawking sounds.
‘Yes, I am sure you agree,’ said George, and sought to give him a pat. But Darwin was not to be patted. Darwin was backing away.
‘No need to be stand-offish,’ said George. ‘You know that I am your friend.’
But then George saw that Professor Coffin was also backing away.
And gazing into the strange dim light, George saw just why this was.
Something was approaching them. Something heavily armed.
It pointed its prodigious weapon at George and gargled something in an alien tongue.
Its alien tongue moved within a head resembling the shell of a crab, beneath which trailed and curled many tentacles. The creature gargled something more. Barked and gargled this also as an order.
George Fox dropped his weapon and slowly raised his hands as the Martian with the ray gun slid towards him.
31
‘Cough on him, George,’ cried Professor Coffin. ‘Give him some of your germs.’
George was about to reply that, in his opinion, these particular Martians had most likely long ago developed an immunity to Earthly bacteria. Further conversation between himself and the professor was, however, staunched by more urgent garglings from the Martian, accompanied by most violent wavings of its gun.
‘Yes,’ said George. ‘I understand – you would like us to come with you.’
The Martian now gargled very loudly and gestured towards the staircase.
‘And I think that means you too,’ called George to Darwin.
Darwin peeped out, hung his head and sidled over to George.
The Martian growled and gestured once more with his weapon. Two men and a monkey moved along before him.
‘So tell me, young George,’ Professor Coffin whispered. ‘What manner of plan are you hatching?’
‘Me?’ said George. ‘Plan?’ said George. ‘Hatching?’ said George also.
‘Of course, my boy. You are surely one blessed of the Almighty. You have followed where Fate led you. Fulfilled your destiny.’
‘I think that you are correct when you apply the word “followed”,’ said George. ‘I have been led. None of this is under my control.’
‘You will save us all,’ the professor assured him. ‘Did not that prophecy say that the fate of the planets would depend upon you?’
‘And I take little comfort from that.’ And George hung his head, with his striking chin on his chest.
The Martian slid and slithered along behind them, occasionally and unnecessarily poking them with his monstrous weapon.
‘They really do pong, don’t they?’ whispered the professor. ‘Alive or dead, they hum like a sewer in summer.’
‘Actually,’ George whispered back, ‘I wonder if this lot down here know that Mars is now a dead world.’
‘Best not to bring it up in conversation with them, I am thinking.’ Professor Coffin made a thoughtful face. ‘Now, if we could bring back one of these fellows alive to London – that might pull in the Rubes.’
George Fox raised his head and shook it. ‘Unbelievable, ’ he said.
‘I have faith in you, George. We will triumph, I am certain. We have not come so far to just—Oh dear . . .’
And George saw what the professor saw and George said, ‘Oh dear,’ too.
They had entered the city proper. Sleek towers loomed and soared to every side. There was something of a central plaza here, gained by shallow steps, as Martians, it appeared, moved in the manner of slugs. To the centre of this plaza rose a stepped pyramid of the Inca persuasion. But one not wrought in brick, but built from human skulls.
‘Now that I find most discouraging,’ said George.
Professor Coffin nodded thoughtfully. ‘The Martians’ eating habits have never been particularly endearing,’ he said. ‘It is to be hoped that Darwin will do what is expected of him and rescue you once more from the cooking pot in the very nick of time.’
But Darwin did not at present appear to have much of the liberating angel about him. He had a downcast and sorry slouch to his gait. Darwin looked a most put-upon monkey.
‘We will be fine,’ said Professor Coffin. ‘Somehow, we will be fine.’
‘Pardon me if I do not share your bundles of optimism, ’ said George. ‘I am not fine now and I have little confidence that I will ever be fine again.’
There were many Martians now upon the central plaza.
Gargling away they were and pointing with their tentacles and nips.
There were large and small ones too. And some quite in-between.
But all of equal nastiness.
And smelliness and ghastliness.
For they would eat a fellow up, as one might fish and chips.
George maintained a brooding silence as he moved along before the muzzle of the Martian’s monstrous weapon. Professor Coffin found that his feet had altogether lost their dance and Darwin grumbled in Neanderthal tones and scowled at all and sundry.
Onwards they plodded, happily past the skull-piled pyramid. Down broad streets they were urged at ray-gun-point, where curious vehicles, horseless and outré, moved with a silent whiz. Conveying Martians to whatever business it was that they were about.
‘One of those would cut a dash in the Mall,’ said the professor. ‘If we can somehow strike a deal with these fellows that does not involve us lining their stomachs, matters might be adjusted to our advantage.’
‘Ah,’ said George, as their Martian tormentor drew him, the professor and Darwin to a sudden halt. ‘It would appear that we have reached our destination.’
‘A hotel, perhaps,’ said the professor. ‘The prodding about with the ray gun might just be their way of leading us to a suite reserved for honoured guests.’
George had no comment to make.
A building tall and black rose up before them. The Martian urged them all in at the hurry-up.
Within was even dimmer than without, and the reek of Martian bodies overwhelming. George and the professor held their noses and squinted all about.
They stood within a vestibule, blackly walled and floored and ceilinged. Up ahead, a wall of glass and a wonderful machine.
It s
omewhat resembled a pumping engine, with many cogs and wheels and big ball governors. There was a big brass trumpet horn of a thing that strongly resembled the public address system of the Empress of Mars, with many knobs and dials and pressure gauges and all of this merrily in motion.
‘Quite a pretty thing,’ said the professor. ‘Assuming of course that it is not an instrument of torture.’
‘I like the champhered grommet mountings,’ said George.
‘And I the flanged seals on drazy hoops,’ said the professor, in an admiring tone.
Both agreed that the burnished housings of the knurdling gears had much to recommend them, aesthetically speaking, yet mourned for the lack of a rectifying valve that would have topped the whole off to perfection.
They would no doubt have continued their discourse on the merits of the gybo-straddling of the instrument panel, discussing the numerous features that indicated that this intricate contraption might well be powered by the now-legendary transperambulation of pseudo-comic anti-matter, had it not been for the Martian, who clobbered George on the head.
‘No need for that!’ cried George. ‘I was only admiring the piston fillets on the cross-threaded sprocket drive.’
‘I do believe,’ whispered Professor Coffin, ‘that the secret might well be in knowing when to stop.’
The Martian now tinkered at the remarkable machine with a tentacle or two and a couple of nips, which set further wondrous bits in motion, accompanied by the occasional puff of steam.
The Martian now gargled loudly into the brass trumpet horn affair and then paused as if awaiting some reply.
This came moments later, with less gargled words.
Professor Coffin listened hard. ‘Japanese,’ he said.
George looked on at the wonderful machine. ‘It translates language,’ he said.
‘I once exhibited a lesser version,’ said the professor, ‘a talking head that could enunciate most clearly, through the manipulation of air-pressure valves and the tuned reeds of woodwind instruments. The Cerebral Prognosticator it was called and—’
Professor Coffin received a buffet to the head that sent him staggering. ‘No need for that!’ howled he.
Creaks and groans now issued from the marvellous machine. Clickings of subtle readjustments, hints of finetunings and the rearrangement of things.
‘Good afternoon to you, sir,’ came a mechanised voice from the brass trumpet horn affair. ‘And how might I be of service?’
‘There,’ said Professor Coffin to George. ‘What did I tell you? We are to be welcomed as weary travellers and offered the best that there is.’
Professor Coffin now addressed himself to the machine. ‘My name is King Coffin,’ he announced. ‘Good King Coffin to my many subjects. I am here upon a trading mission, to share with you the abundant largesse of my lands, in return for a small trinket or two.’
A pause, then a whirring of wheels and a clicking of parts.
‘Papers,’ came the voice from the brazen trumpet.
‘Papers?’ asked Professor Coffin. ‘What is this talk of papers?’
‘Papers of indenture and permission to travel. An entry visa to Lemuria, accompanied of course by letters of recommendation sealed with the authorisation of at least three diplomatic envoys who can vouch for your honesty and good character and have known you for at least—’
‘Hold hard, please,’ said Professor Coffin. ‘I am of a royal household – I have no need for such trivial documents.’
‘I have not yet even begun to enumerate the trivial documents,’ replied the mechanical speaker. ‘You also require foodstuff importation permits, not to mention for the introduction into Lemuria of an unclassified hairy-boy.’
‘An unclassified hairy-boy?’ Professor Coffin asked.
‘I told you not to mention that.’
A tiny silence followed. Darwin broke it with a raspberry.
‘And where are your medals?’ asked the voice.
‘Back in my palace?’ Professor Coffin suggested.
‘A pilgrim without votive medals?’ The voice, although monotone and lacking all inflections, seemed somehow to take a graver turn.
‘Votive medals? Ah, I see,’ said the professor. ‘Naturally, as pilgrims, having travelled halfway across the planet to offer our devotions to the Goddess, we indeed had many votive medals. But our journey has been fraught with peril at every turn. We have been attacked and set upon time and again. All of our belongings were stolen.’
Had George been wearing a hat he would now have taken it off to Professor Coffin. The showman certainly knew how to ‘think on his feet’, as it were.
The Martian leaned past the professor and gargled once more into the machine.
‘Weapons?’ queried the voice. ‘We are informed that not only did you fail to pass through immigration control at the crater, but you were attempting to smuggle weaponry into Lemuria.’
‘Ah,’ said the professor. ‘There does seem to be some misunderstanding.’ Professor Coffin cast George a desperate glance.
‘Do not look at me,’ said George. ‘You were doing so nicely on your own. Carry on.’
Clickings, whirrings, cog-intermeshings, marvellous puffings of steam. Then more words issued in cold blank monotone.
‘The details of your neglect in providing correct and appropriate documentation, illegal entry to Lemuria, arms smuggling, unlicensed importation of an unclassified hairy-boy – these and numerous other misdemeanours and breaches of protocol, some genuine, others whimsical and unjust but prompted by the enormity and scale of the offences, are now being punched onto card and entered into the Patent Adjudicator.’
George Fox rolled his eyes about. ‘We do not require the services of a Cerebral Prognosticator to predict what is coming next,’ said he.
‘Execution,’ said the machine.
‘No surprise there then,’ said George.
‘Public execution, followed by ritual dismemberment and the dispersal of meat stuffs to the population.’
‘Hold hard there,’ cried Professor Coffin. ‘That is utterly outrageous.’
There was a pause, then the voice spoke once again.
‘Indeed,’ it said. ‘I do apologise. So many misdemeanours have overloaded the data operation system. The sentence should be prolonged torture, then ritual dismemberment, then execution and the dispersal of meat stuffs.’
‘I protest,’ Professor Coffin protested. ‘I demand a reappraisal, an opportunity to appeal against each separate charge before a jury of my peers. The representation of an accredited legal advisor. A—’
The gun butt caught him a terrible blow and felled him to the floor.
‘Carry your fellow criminal to the cell provided,’ the voice from the machine told George, ‘and counsel him upon reawakening to make no further protests or his tongue parts will be severed from his head.’
George Fox made a gloomy face and gathered up the professor. Things now looked impossibly hopeless. Which made George impossibly sad.
32
The accommodation, to say the least, was wretched. No full board with free drinks from the bar. Dark and dank and grim and glum and gloomy. Smelling rank and, if even listed in The Gentleman Traveller’s Guide to Prison Cells of the World, scarcely even rating half a star.
George sat fuming in the rank and murkiness. Occasionally puffings and blowings escaped his lips. All indicative of extreme irritation and fury.
Professor Coffin toyed with his gold pocket watch. He had acquired this whilst aboard the Empress of Mars to replace that of George’s which he had returned to the lad. This beautiful timepiece not only chimed the hour, but went for five whole days without winding.
There was absolutely no telling how long it would go for if you did wind it.
Inside the face cover were engraved the wordsToNikola Tesla
From all the Backroom Boffins
26th July 1895
Professor Coffin held the watch to his ear. ‘We have been in this cell fo
r nearly twelve hours,’ he said to George.
‘And I have hated every minute,’ George replied. ‘And,’ he added, ‘I had no idea that a single ape can go to the toilet quite so many times.’
‘He is a somewhat prodigious piddler,’ Professor Coffin agreed. ‘Which does not improve the ambience one little bit. But—’
‘Do not even begin,’ said George. ‘If you tell me one more time that all will be well, I will fall upon you and wring the life from your neck with my bare hands alone.’
The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions Page 21