The Map of the Sky

by Félix J Palma

  Needless to say, this new plan made me uneasy. How were we going to halt the invasion by fleeing London? Had Captain Shackleton traveled to our time only to run away from the Martians like a terrified maiden?

  “I’m afraid I can’t accept this plan, gentlemen,” I protested. “Naturally, I’m grateful to you all for wanting to accompany us to Queen’s Gate, and I’m aware that, given the way the invasion seems to be going, leaving London is the most sensible course of action, but I don’t think that’s what we should do.”

  The author was surprised. “And why ever not?”

  “Because in the year 2000 our problem is the automatons, not the Martians,” I said for the hundredth time, feeling I was telling an unfunny joke. “Clearly, this can only mean the invasion will fail. Someone will find a way of defeating the Martians, and I think that person will be Captain Shackleton. I don’t believe he came here by chance. I’m certain the greatest hero in the world will do something to turn the situation around, because the fact is, he already has.”

  Murray and Wells looked at each other doubtfully, then they observed the captain, who shrugged with annoyance, and finally they fixed their gaze on me, with a look of incredulity that exceeded even that of my own wife. This took me by surprise, because I was convinced my reasoning would appear obvious to someone with Wells’s intelligence.

  “Even if your theory is correct, Mr. Winslow,” Wells replied, “and the year 2000 is immutable, because, as you so rightly say, in a sense it has already happened, the invasion could still be stopped in a thousand different ways without our involvement. Furthermore, if we’re the ones destined to put a stop to it, then that will happen regardless of whether or not we stay in London. Consequently, I insist we go ahead with our plan to leave the city once we have been to Queen’s Gate.”

  “What if leaving the city is precisely what we shouldn’t do? What if by fleeing we change the future?” I looked imploringly at Shackleton. “What is your view, Captain? As a hero, isn’t your main concern to save the human race?”

  “I may be a hero, Mr. Winslow,” Shackleton said, looking straight at Murray, “but first and foremost I’m a husband, whose duty it is to rescue his wife.”

  “I understand, Captain,” I said, somewhat disgruntled by his stubbornness. “However, Claire and my wife will remain quite safe in my uncle’s basement, I’m sure, while we—”

  “I’m afraid Mr. Wells is quite right, Mr. Winslow,” Murray cut in impatiently. “I don’t think the captain can be of much help to us in this situation. Clearly he is out of his depth.” Then he leered at the captain: “I trust you won’t be offended, Captain, if, notwithstanding your celebrated victory over the automatons, we doubt your ability to defeat the Martians, but you see these machines of theirs are infinitely more powerful than a handful of toys with steam engines stuck to their backs.”

  “Of course I’m not offended, Mr. Murray,” Shackleton replied, with his thinnest smile. “At least I saved the human race. All you’ve managed to do so far is to empty people’s pockets.”

  Murray paled briefly, then gave a loud guffaw.

  “I made them dream, Captain, I made them dream. And, as everyone knows, dreams have a price. I don’t know how you traveled to our time, but I can assure you ferrying people across the fourth dimension to the empire of the future is expensive. But why not leave this agreeable discussion for another time, Captain, and concentrate on our predicament.” Murray put his arm around Shackleton, steering him gently to face the vista afforded by the hill. “As you can see, the city is overrun by Martians. How would a hero like you reach Queen’s Gate without running into the tripods?”

  Shackleton observed bleakly how the tripods were mechanically, almost indifferently, destroying London.

  “I thought as much,” Murray responded to Shackleton’s silence. “Even you can’t do that.” He moved away from the captain, shrugging at us to show his disappointment. Only I was aware of the smile that at that moment had appeared on the captain’s face. “As you can see, some situations are insurmountable, even to the greatest heroes,” Murray announced in a tone of mock regret. “However, I’m sure we’ll find a way to—”

  “You should have more faith in the heroes whose exploits line your pockets, Mr. Murray,” the captain interrupted him, his gaze fixed on the Martians’ progress. “We’ll go underneath the tripods to Queen’s Gate.”

  “Underneath them?” Murray said with astonishment, turning to Shackleton. “What the devil do you mean?”

  “We’ll use the sewers,” the captain replied without looking at him.

  “The sewers? Are you out of your mind, Captain? Are you suggesting these charming ladies should go down into the stinking sewers of London?” Murray declared, gesturing toward Emma and Jane. “I’ll never let Emma—”

  “Oh, take no notice of him, Captain,” the American girl chimed in, stepping forward and placing her hand gently on Murray’s arm. “Mr. Murray has the annoying habit of deciding where I should and shouldn’t go and doesn’t seem to realize that I have a tendency to do the opposite of what he says.”

  “But, Emma . . . ,” Murray protested, in vain.

  “Honestly, Gilliam, I think you should let Captain Shackleton explain his idea,” the girl said, so sweetly I found her quite disarming.

  If this beautiful girl was Murray’s beloved, I told myself, clearly the oversized braggart I had met two years ago had made excellent use of his death and subsequent resurrection.

  Murray gave an exasperated grunt but gestured to the captain to continue.

  “It’s the safest way,” Shackleton said, addressing the others. “There are hundreds of miles of tunnels below this city, spacious enough for anyone to move about in. Not to mention the cellars and underground storehouses. There’s a whole world down there.”

  “How do you know the sewers so well, Captain?” I asked, intrigued.

  Shackleton paused for a few moments before replying.

  “Er . . . because we hide in them in the future.”

  “So, you hid in the sewers, did you?” Murray scoffed. “Well, isn’t the quality of British plumbing extraordinary! I’d never have thought they would last a whole century.”

  The American girl was about to call Murray to order when someone preempted her:

  “You ought to have more faith in the empire, Mr. Murray.”

  We turned as one toward the owner of the sonorous voice, who was none other than the young man I had taken to be a drunkard when I first arrived on the hill.

  “Captain Shackleton, I’m Inspector Clayton of Scotland Yard,” he said, doffing his hat. “And from what I could gather while I was, er . . . recovering my strength, you think you can guide us through the sewers to Kensington, is that right?”

  Shackleton nodded with grim determination, as only a hero can, accepting responsibility for our little flock. Then I stepped forward, somewhat nettled that this peculiar fellow, who saw fit in such a situation to doze off under a tree, was unaware of my presence. Clearing my throat noisily, I caught his attention and thrust out my hand.

  “Inspector Clayton, I’m Charles Winslow, the . . .” I hesitated. To say “the man who discovered Captain Shackleton” suddenly seemed a trifle pompous, so eventually all I said was, “Well, let’s just say I’m the captain’s faithful shield bearer on this mission.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Winslow,” the inspector said, pressing my hand perfunctorily before turning back to Shackleton. “Yes, Captain, you were saying—”

  “Actually, while you were . . . taking a nap,” I interrupted the inspector once more, “I was saying I didn’t think we should leave London, because—”

  “Mr. Winslow, we’ve already established that we all wish to leave London,” Wells chimed in. “What we’re now discussing is how to go first to—”

  “Just so,” Murray reiterated, frowning, “but I continue to insist that the captain’s absurd idea of fleeing London through the sewers, as if we were rats, is not the mo
st appropriate way.”

  “If you have a better idea, Mr. Murray, go ahead and share it with us,” the captain retorted, his eyes flashing, “but I would point out that rats are usually the first to escape any catastrophe.”

  A moment later, we were all talking at once, caught up in a heated discussion. Until suddenly Inspector Clayton raised his voice above everyone else’s.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, please!” he cried. “I think we should trust Captain Shackleton and flee through the sewers this instant. Not only because of the captain’s impeccable credentials, but because the pair of tripods coming toward us is not planning a romantic picnic on Primrose Hill.”

  We all looked with horror at the two tripods crossing Regent’s Park toward us like a couple taking a leisurely stroll.

  XXXIV

  WHILE CHARLES RELAXED AFTER THE DAY’S hard toil, admiring from his cell the strange and unsettling sunset that had gradually supplanted the traditional earthly ones in the past few months, he reflected with deep sorrow that if anything around him indicated that Man had lost his home, it was without doubt the fact that the sun no longer set in the way it had in his childhood. With disgust he observed the dusky greens and purples congealing around the sun, giving it the appearance of a malignant growth. A sun stripped of its customary gold and orange haze, and that now, seen through the coppery veil of polluted air obscuring the sky, resembled one of those grimy, worn coins beggars would tap against the bar top to ask for a glass of ale.

  Just then, Charles glimpsed three Martian airships taking off from the port outside the camp: three shiny flying saucers that rose a few yards into the air with a melodious purr before soaring at impossible speed through the turbulent ocean of greens and purples and vanishing into unfathomable space. Their airships so patently demonstrated the gulf between human science and that of their jailers: the Martians had far outstripped the Earthlings when it came to conquering their own skies, which they had scarcely penetrated with their puny air balloons. But from the indifference with which Charles watched them disappear, no one would have guessed that, in the first few months, their arrivals and departures had provided a spectacle for the prisoners as exciting as it was terrifying.

  In addition, the airships usually brought Martian engineers, who unlike their fellow Martians were unable to replicate the appearance of humans and so moved about the camp in their normal state. The first time Charles saw them, he thought they were beautiful, a cross between men and herons. Although no one there explained anything to them, it wasn’t hard to work out that the engineers’ task was to design the tower and fill the camp, and doubtless the entire planet, with their technology. They would elegantly flutter about almost without stopping. Yet even more fascinating was watching them walk on extraordinarily slender, stiltlike legs, with multiple joints that allowed them to adopt the most extraordinary and varied postures, each more graceful than the last. Charles had tried to capture the beauty of their movements in his diary, comparing them to glass dragonflies or other equally beautiful and fragile objects, but had eventually given up: their extraordinary grace was impossible to put into words. The engineers remained in the camp for a while, fluttering hither and thither, until one day it seemed they had relayed all the instructions necessary to build the purification machine. After that, they would turn up every three to four months to supervise the works. Each time they left, for a few days Charles would be invaded by an absurd end-of-summer longing, the origins of which he never fully understood, though he suspected it had something to do with the comfort it gave him to contemplate those extraordinary creatures in a world where beauty had become a rarity.

  And yet, although he tried not to dwell on the thought, Charles knew the scientists were not as he saw them. After their first visit, he had discussed their appearance with his fellow prisoners, only to find out to his astonishment that no two prisoners’ descriptions of them coincided. Everyone had their own idea of what the creatures looked like, and each assumed the others must be joking when they described them. This had led to an argument that had ended in a stupid brawl, from which Charles had prudently retreated. Back in his cell, he had reflected long and hard and had come to a conclusion. He would have liked to discuss it with someone intelligent like Wells to find out whether his idea was half-baked or not, but unfortunately there weren’t too many keen minds around him. The conclusion Charles had reached was that the Martians must be so different from anything Man knew that somehow mankind was unable to see them. Most of his fellow prisoners saw them as monstrous creatures, no doubt influenced by the hatred they felt toward the Martians. But Charles had always worshipped science, progress, and the marvels Jules Verne had described in his novels. Yes, Charles belonged to that brotherhood of visionaries who before the advent of the Martians had dreamed of ships that could sail the Atlantic in five days, of flying machines that could soar through the skies at great speed, of telephones without wires, of time travel. Perhaps this was why he saw the Martian engineers as beautiful long-legged angels, able to create miracles. And although he knew now that those miracles consisted in transforming his planet into a nightmarish world, he continued to see them as beautiful.

  The sun finally disappeared, exhaling a burst of greenish rays into the sky and bathing in a ghoulish light the distant ruins of London, visible behind the dank forests that had slowly spread around the camp in a stealthy embrace of tangled branches. This planet belonged less and less to Man and more and more to the invaders. Before the invasion, when no one suspected the world as they knew it could change so suddenly, Charles would rail against it at the slightest opportunity, with wit or anger, depending on the weather. In his opinion, the empire was little less than a ship about to keel over due to the idiots at its helm, who were only versed in the arts of extravagance, inefficiency, and embezzlement. The useless and corrupt British government was responsible for more than 8 million subjects living and dying in the most shameful poverty. Charles, of course, did not share their miserable fate, and on the whole it could not be said of him that he worried unduly about those who did, but it was clear that human civilization, as such, had failed.

  Charles gave a sigh and retrieved his diary from beneath the pallet, wondering once again what drove him to set down on paper those memories no one would ever read, why he didn’t just lie down and die. But he simply could not accept another defeat. And so this man, who had already begun to forget what sunsets on his planet looked like, sat at his table, opened his notebook, and resumed writing.

  DIARY OF CHARLES WINSLOW

  15 February, 1900

  Before the Martian invasion, London was the most powerful city in the world, but not necessarily the most salubrious. It pains me to admit this, as it did my father before me, but before the city’s entrails were sliced open and installed with an artificial intestine in the form of a modern sewer system, Londoners stored their excrement in cesspits, which were cleaned out with a regularity that depended on the depth of the householder’s pockets. In these pits, it was not uncommon to come across tiny skeletons, because the stinking holes were ideal places for women to rid themselves of the fruits of their illicit unions. Each morning at dawn, a trail of brimming carts would leave London with their foul-smelling cargo. When at last it was decided, as yet another sign of progress, that all cesspits should be sealed off and all drains be connected to a rudimentary sewer system that emptied out into the Thames, the result was an epidemic of cholera that killed almost fifteen thousand Londoners. This was followed by another, five years later, which carried off almost an equal number of lives. My father used to tell me that in the hot, dry summer of 1858 the smell was so appalling that the curtains in the Houses of Parliament had to be daubed with lime in a desperate attempt to ward off the foul odor wafting in from the river, which had become an open sewer for the excrement of nearly 2 million people. As a direct result, and notwithstanding the exorbitant cost, Parliament passed an act allowing the civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette to remodel London’s entrail
s with his revolutionary new sewer system. I can still recall my father describing Bazalgette’s great work to me as though he had built it himself: nearly a hundred miles of interceptor sewers made of brick and Portland cement that would carry human waste mixed with ordinary drainage water fifteen miles downstream from London Bridge. This explained why now, beneath our feet, following the course of the Thames, were six interceptor sewers fed by another four hundred and fifty miles of mains sewers: the intricate maze that in the year 2000 would have the privilege of sheltering the last surviving members of our race. No doubt my father would have been pleased to know that what he considered one of the greatest technological achievements would still be of use in the distant future.

  We descended into London’s sewers through one of the drain covers closest to Primrose Hill. We clambered down the rusty ladder attached to the wall and reached the ground without anyone slipping, which, given the almost total darkness, seemed nothing short of miraculous. Shackleton assumed the role of guide. After getting his bearings, he led us through a narrow, winding tunnel, where we were obliged almost to grope our way along. We came out into what, owing to its size, I deduced was one of the three main sewers to the north of the Thames. What first struck us was the shocking stench. Fortunately, this stretch of the tunnel was illuminated by tiny lamps hanging at intervals along the slimy brick walls. Their faint glow gave us some idea of the place where we would be walking for the next few hours, passing beneath the city to Queen’s Gate. The sewer was an endless gallery with a vaulted roof, from which opened out other, narrower tunnels. I assumed the majority of these side tunnels carried the raw sewage into the main tunnels, while many others led to depositories or pumping stations. A canal ran through the middle of the sewer we were in. We tried not to look at it, for the congealed evil-smelling slime flowing through it, besides carrying every kind of filth, brought other surprises. I saw a dead cat drift past us with its glassy, unseeing eyes, being swept along on the water down one of those mysterious pipes. Luckily on either side of the canal there were two brick paths wide enough for us to walk along in single file, if we didn’t mind sharing them with the rats, which would occasionally dart out to greet us, running alongside our feet before vanishing into the gloom. Nauseous from the insufferable stench, we set off in pairs, trying not to slip over on the layer of moss carpeting stretches of the walkway. The air was dank and cold, and the silence absolute, broken only by the sporadic rumble of the sewer’s watery insides. I have to say I found these sounds almost relaxing. At any rate, they were preferable to the deafening blasts and relentless ringing of bells we had endured aboveground.