Golden Age of Science Fiction Vol VIII

by Various

  Yet my feeling was not one of joy at my escape. Strange mind of man!--instead, even with the Wenuses' victims lying all around me, my heart went out to the Crinoline and its astral occupants. I, too, wished to be mashed. And suddenly I was aware that my wife knew that I was thinking thus. With an effort I turned and began a stumbling run through the Park.

  IV.

  HOW I REACHED HOME.

  I remember nothing of my flight, except the stress of blundering against trees and stumbling over the railings. To blunder against some trees is very stressful. At last I could go no further: I had run full tilt into a gasworks. I fell and lay still.

  I must have remained there some time.

  Suddenly, like a thing falling upon me from without, came--Beer. It was being poured down my throat by my cousin's man, and I recollect thinking that he must have used the same can with which he filled the lamps. How he got there I cannot pretend to tell.

  "What news from the park?" said I.

  "Eh!" said my cousin's man.

  "What news from the Park?" I said.

  "Garn! 'oo yer getting at?" said my cousin's man. "Aint yer just been there?" (The italics are his own.) "People seem fair silly abart the Pawk. Wot's it all abart?"

  "Haven't you heard of the Wenuses?" said I. "The women from Wenus?" "Quite enough," said my cousin's man, and laughed.

  I felt foolish and angry.

  "You'll hear more yet," I said, and went on my way.

  Judging by the names of the streets, I seemed to be at Kennington, and it was an hour after dawn, and my collar had burst away from its stud. But I had ceased to feel fear. My terror had fallen from me like a bath towel. Three things struggled for the possession of my mind: the beauty of Kennington, the whereabouts of the Wenuses, and the wengeance of my wife. In spite of my cousin's man's beer, which I could still taste, I was ravenously hungry; so, seeing no one about, I broke into a chemist's shop and stayed the pangs on a cake of petroleum soap, some Parrish's food, and a box of menthol pastilles, which I washed down with a split ammoniated quinine and Condy. I then stole across the road, and dragging the cushions from a deserted cab (No. 8648) into the cab shelter, I snatched a few more hours of restless sleep.

  When I woke I found myself thinking consecutively, a thing I do not remember to have done since I killed the curate in the other book. In the interim my mental condition had been chaotic, asymptotic. But during slumber my brain, incredible as it may seem, stimulated and clarified by the condiments of which I had partaken, had resumed its normal activity. I determined to go home.

  Resolving at any cost to reach Campden Hill Gardens by a sufficiently circuitous route, I traversed Kennington Park Road, Newington Butts, Newington Causeway, Blackman Street, and the Borough High Street, to London Bridge. Crossing the bridge, I met a newspaper boy with a bundle of papers, still wet from the press. They were halfpenny copies of the Star, but he charged me a penny for mine. The imposition still rankles.

  From it I learned that a huge cordon of police, which had been drawn round the Crinoline, had been mashed beyond recognition, and two regiments of Life Guards razed to the ground, by the devastating Glance of the Wenuses. I passed along King William Street and Prince's Street to Moorgate Street. Here I met another newspaper boy, carrying the Pall Mall Gazette. I handed him a threepenny bit; but though I waited for twenty minutes, he offered me no change. This will give some idea of the excitement then beginning to prevail. The Pall Mall had an article on the situation, which I read as I climbed the City Road to Islington. It stated that Mrs. Pozzuoli, my wife, had constituted herself Commander-in-Chief, and was busy marshalling her forces. I was relieved by the news, for it suggested that my wife was fully occupied. Already a good bulk of nursemaids and cooks, enraged at the destruction of the Scotland Yard and Knightsbridge heroes by the Wenuses' Mash-Glance, had joined her flag. It was, said the Pall Mall, high time that such an attack was undertaken, and since women had been proved to be immune to the Mash-Glance, it was clearly their business to undertake it.

  Meanwhile, said the Pall Mall, nothing could check the folly of the men. Like moths to a candle, so were they hastening to Kensington Gardens, only to be added to the heap of mashed that already had accumulated there.

  So far, the P.M.G. But my mother, who was in the thick of events at the time, has since given me fuller particulars. Notwithstanding, my mother tells me, the fate of their companions, the remainder of the constabulary and military forces stationed in London hastened to the Park, impelled by the fearful fascination, and were added to the piles of mashed.

  Afterwards came the Volunteers, to a man, and then the Cloth. The haste of most of the curates, and a few bishops whose names have escaped me, was, said my mother, cataclysmic. Old dandies with creaking joints tottered along Piccadilly to their certain doom; young clerks in the city, explaining that they wished to attend their aunt's funeral, crowded the omnibuses for Kensington and were seen no more; while my mother tells me that excursion trains from the country were arriving at the principal stations throughout the day, bearing huge loads of provincial inamorati.

  A constant stream of infatuated men, flowing from east to west, set in, and though bands of devoted women formed barriers across the principal thoroughfares for the purpose of barring their progress, no perceptible check was effected. Once, a Judge of notable austerity was observed to take to a lamp-post to avoid detention by his wife: once, a well-known tenor turned down by a by-street, says my mother, pursued by no fewer than fifty-seven admirers burning to avert his elimination. Members of Parliament surged across St. James' Park and up Constitution Hill.

  Yet in every walk of life, says my mother, there were a few survivors in the shape of stolid, adamantine misogynists.

  Continuing my journey homewards, I traversed Upper Street, Islington, and the Holloway Road to Highgate Hill, which I ascended at a sharp run. At the summit I met another newspaper boy carrying a bundle of Globes, one of which I purchased, after a hard-driven bargain, for two shillings and a stud from the shirt-front of my evening dress, which was beginning to show signs of ennui. I leaned against the wall of the Highgate Literary and Scientific Institute, to read it. The news was catastrophic. Commander Wells of the Fire Brigade had, it stated, visited Kensington Gardens with two manuals, one steam engine, and a mile of hose, in order to play upon the Crinoline and its occupants. Presuming on the immunity of persons bearing his name during the Martian invasion, the gallant Commander had approached too near and was in a moment reduced to salvage.

  Pondering on this news, I made for Parliament Hill, by way of West Hill and Milfield Lane. On the top I paused to survey London at my feet, and, to get the fullest benefit of the invigorating breeze, removed my hat. But the instant I did so, I was aware of a sharp pain on my scalp and the aroma of singed hair. Lifting my hand to the wounded place, I discovered that I had been shaved perfectly clean, as with a Heat Razor. The truth rushed upon me: I had come within the range of the Mash-Glance, and had been saved from total dissolution only by intervening masonry protecting my face and body.

  To leave the Hill was the work of an instant. I passed through John Street to Hampstead Road, along Belsize Avenue and Buckland Crescent to Belsize Road, and so to Canterbury Road and Kilburn Lane. Here I met a fourth newspaper boy loaded with copies of the St. James' Gazette. He offered me one for seven-and-sixpence, or two for half a sovereign, but it seemed to me I had read enough.

  Turning into Ladbroke Grove Road I quickly reached Notting Hill, and stealthily entered my house in Campden Hill Gardens ten minutes later.

  BOOK II.

  London under the Wenuses.

  I.

  THE DEATH OF THE EXAMINER.

  My first act on entering my house, in order to guard against any sudden irruption on the part of my wife, was to bolt the door and put on the chain. My next was to visit the pantry, the cellar, and the larder, but they were all void of food and drink. My wife must have been there first. As I had drunk nothing since I burgled
the Kennington chemist's, I was very thirsty, though my mind was still hydrostatic. I cannot account for it on scientific principles, but I felt very angry with my wife. Suddenly I was struck by a happy thought, and hurrying upstairs I found a bottle of methylated spirits on my wife's toilet-table. Strange as it may seem to the sober reader, I drank greedily of the unfamiliar beverage, and feeling refreshed and thoroughly kinetic, settled down once more to an exhaustive exposure of the dishonest off-handedness of the external Examiners at University College. I may add that I had taken the bread-knife (by Mappin) from the pantry, as it promised to be useful in the case of unforeseen Clerical emergencies. I should have preferred the meat-chopper with which the curate had been despatched in The War of the Worlds, but it was deposited in the South Kensington Museum along with other mementoes of the Martian invasion. Besides, my wife and I had both become Wegetarians.

  The evening was still, and though distracted at times by recollections of the Wenuses, I made good progress with my indictment. Suddenly I was conscious of a pale pink glow which suffused my writing-pad, and I heard a soft but unmistakable thud as of a pinguid body falling in the immediate vicinity.

  Taking off my boots, I stole gently down to the scullery and applied the spectroscope to the keyhole. To my mingled amazement and ecstasy, I perceived a large dome-shaped fabric blocking up the entire back garden. Roughly speaking, it seemed to be about the size of a full-grown sperm whale. A faint heaving was perceptible in the mass, and further evidences of vitality were forthcoming in a gentle but pathetic crooning, as of an immature chimæra booming in the void. The truth flashed upon me in a moment. The Second Crinoline had fallen in my back garden.

  My mind was instantly made up. To expose myself unarmed to the fascination of the Wonderful Wisitors would have irreparably prejudiced the best interests of scientific research. My only hope lay in a complete disguise which should enable me to pursue my investigations of the Wenuses with the minimum amount of risk. A student of the humanities would have adopted a different method, but my standpoint has always been dispassionate, anti-sentimental. My feelings towards the Wenuses were, incredible as it may seem, purely Platonic. I recognised their transcendental attractions, but had no desire to succumb to them. Strange as it may seem, the man who succumbs rarely if ever is victorious in the long run. To disguise my sex and identity--for it was a priori almost impossible that the inhabitants of Wenus had never heard of Pozzuoli--would guard me from the jellifying Mash-Glance of the Wenuses. Arrayed in feminine garb I could remain immune to their malignant influences.

  With me, to think is to act; so I hastily ran upstairs, shaved off my moustache, donned my wife's bicycle-skirt, threw her sortie de bal round my shoulders, borrowed the cook's Sunday bonnet from the servants' bedroom, and hastened back to my post of observation at the scullery door.

  Inserting a pipette through the keyhole and cautiously applying my eye, I saw to my delight that the Crinoline had been elevated on a series of steel rods about six feet high, and that the five Wenuses who had descended in it were partaking of a light but sumptuous repast beneath its iridescent canopy. They were seated round a tripod imbibing a brown beverage from small vessels resembling the half of a hollow sphere, and eating with incredible velocity a quantity of tiny round coloured objects--closely related, as I subsequently had occasion to ascertain, to the Bellaria angelica,--which they raised to their mouths with astonishing and unerring aim in the complex Handling-Machines, or Tenticklers, which form part of their wonderful organism.

  Belonging as they undoubtedly do to the order of the Tunicates, their exquisitely appropriate and elegant costume may be safely allowed to speak for itself. It is enough, however, to note the curious fact that there are no buttons in Wenus, and that their mechanical system is remarkable, incredible as it may seem, for having developed the eye to the rarest point of perfection while dispensing entirely with the hook. The bare idea of this is no doubt terribly repulsive to us, but at the same time I think we should remember how indescribably repulsive our sartorial habits must seem to an intelligent armadillo.

  Of the peculiar coralline tint of the Wenuses' complexion, I think I have already spoken. That it was developed by their indulgence in the Red Weed has been, I think, satisfactorily proved by the researches of Dr. Moreau, who also shows that the visual range of their eyes was much the same as ours, except that blue and yellow were alike to them. Moreau established this by a very pretty experiment with a Yellow Book and a Blue Book, each of which elicited exactly the same remark, a curious hooting sound, strangely resembling the ut de poitrine of one of Professor Garner's gorillas.

  After concluding their repast, the Wenuses, still unaware of my patient scrutiny, extracted, with the aid of their glittering tintackles, a large packet of Red Weed from a quasi-marsupial pouch in the roof of the Crinoline, and in an incredibly short space of time had rolled its carmine tendrils into slim cylinders, and inserted them within their lips. The external ends suddenly ignited as though by spontaneous combustion; but in reality that result was effected by the simple process of deflecting the optic ray. Clouds of roseate vapour, ascending to the dome of the canopy, partially obscured the sumptuous contours of these celestial invaders; while a soft crooning sound, indicative of utter contentment, or as Professor Nestlé of the Milky Ray has more prosaically explained it, due to expiration of air preparatory to the suctional operation involved in the use of the Red Weed, added an indescribable glamour to the enchantment of the scene.

  Humiliating as it may seem to the scientific reader, I found it impossible to maintain a Platonic attitude any longer; and applying my mouth to the embouchure of the pipette, warbled faintly in an exquisite falsetto:

  "Ulat tanalareezul Savourneen Dheelish tradioun marexil Vi-Koko for the hair. I want yer, ma honey."

  The effect was nothing short of magical. The rhythmic exhalations ceased instanteously, and the tallest and most fluorescent of the Wenuses, laying aside her Red Weed, replied in a low voice thrilling with kinetic emotion:

  "Phreata mou sas agapo!"

  The sentiment of these remarks was unmistakable, though to my shame I confess I was unable to fathom their meaning, and I was on the point of opening the scullery door and rushing out to declare myself, when I heard a loud banging from the front of the house.

  I stumbled up the kitchen stairs, hampered considerably by my wife's skirt; and, by the time I had reached the hall, recognised the raucous accents of Professor Tibbles, the Classical Examiner, shouting in excited tones:

  "Let me in, let me in!"

  I opened the door as far as it would go without unfastening the chain, and the Professor at once thrust in his head, remaining jammed in the aperture.

  "Let me in!" he shouted. "I'm the only man in London besides yourself that hasn't been pulped by the Mash-Glance."

  He then began to jabber lines from the classics, and examples from the Latin grammar.

  A sudden thought occurred to me. Perhaps he might translate the observation of the Wenus. Should I use him as an interpreter? But a moment's reflection served to convince me of the danger of such a plan. The Professor, already exacerbated by the study of the humanities, was in a state of acute erethism. I thought of the curate, and, maddened by the recollection of all I had suffered, drew the bread-knife from my waist-belt, and shouting, "Go to join your dead languages!" stabbed him up to the maker's name in the semi-lunar ganglion. His head drooped, and he expired.

  I stood petrified, staring at his glazing eyes; then, turning to make for the scullery, was confronted by the catastrophic apparition of the tallest Wenus gazing at me with reproachful eyes and extended tentacles. Disgust at my cruel act and horror at my extraordinary habiliments were written all too plainly in her seraphic lineaments. At least, so I thought. But it turned out to be otherwise; for the Wenus produced from behind her superlatively radiant form a lump of slate which she had extracted from the coal-box.

  "Decepti estis, O Puteoli!" she said.

  "I beg you
r pardon," I replied; "but I fail to grasp your meaning."

  "She means," said the Examiner, raising himself for another last effort, "that it is time you changed your coal merchant," and so saying he died again.

  I was thunderstruck: the Wenuses understood coals!

  And then I ran; I could stand it no longer. The game was up, the cosmic game for which I had laboured so long and strenuously, and with one despairing yell of "Ulla! Ulla!" I unfastened the chain, and, leaping over the limp and prostrate form of the unhappy Tibbles, fled darkling down the deserted street.

  II.

  THE MAN AT UXBRIDGE ROAD.

  At the corner a happy thought struck me: the landlord of the "Dog and Measles" kept a motor car. I found him in his bar and killed him. Then I broke open the stable and let loose the motor car. It was very restive, and I had to pat it. "Goo' Tea Rose," I said soothingly, "goo' Rockefeller, then." It became quiet, and I struck a match and started the paraffinalia, and in a moment we were under weigh.

  I am not an expert motist, although at school I was a fairly good hoop-driver, and the pedestrians I met and overtook had a bad time. One man said, as he bound up a punctured thigh, that the Heat Ray of the Martians was nothing compared with me. I was moting towards Leatherhead, where my cousin lived, when the streak of light caused by the Third Crinoline curdled the paraffin tank. Vain was it to throw water on the troubled oil; the mischief was done. Meanwhile a storm broke. The lightning flashed, the rain beat against my face, the night was exceptionally dark, and to add to my difficulties the motor took the wick between its teeth and fairly bolted.