The Massacre of Mankind

by Stephen Baxter

  It is an odd thing, looking back, how bright London had been made in the night, in those years between the Martian Wars. It was not quite Times Square, but the West End would ever be ablaze with electric lighting, and even the meaner districts to the east and south of the river would shine with electric, and with old-fashioned gas where the supply was kept up. All of it bright enough that the sky above was masked from sight - as if the British who had been threatened from the sky now wanted to shut out the night altogether, to pretend it did not exist.

  But in spite of the customary glare that night, at midnight, as Tuesday began, I saw green flashes, off to the north-west: the Martians coming down for the second night in a row, really not so far away from London, and right on top of my ex-husband. I heard a brief barrage, like a flash storm, far beyond the horizon, and thought I saw a few flickers of white light, like immense explosions. But it was over quickly – within a minute or so. Could the battle be concluded so soon? I refused to be drawn into the speculation of the anxious strangers around me, as ignorant as I was myself. But I stood, and waited, and listened.

  After perhaps half an hour of silence from the front, it might have been more, I went back indoors. Again the hotel had kept the bars open, though there were markedly fewer guests there than the previous night – and fewer staff too, and many of those still working wore armbands proclaiming their volunteer dedication to one service or another, and might not be around much longer. I took more sandwiches for my pockets, and a glass of hot toddy, and retired to my room. Of course there was no news to be had on the Marvin’s Megaphone, nothing but patriotic music, sad or uplifting. I turned it off and tried to nap.

  I was out again at dawn.

  That Tuesday was a fine, clear day, with a nip in the air although March was nearly done with us, and the sky was deep blue and streaked with low cloud to the west. I had my rucksack on my back, with all my worldly goods, for I did not know what the day might bring. None of us did. But I did not check out of my room at my hotel on the Strand – I had the key in my pocket; perhaps I would yet return. (I never did; I have the key still, before me as I write.) I walked to the river, the heart of the city.

  Though I do not count myself a Londoner I suppose it was an instinct to go there, at such a moment. The river could be a strange sight in the dawn light, even on days when Martians weren’t attacking, for you would see folk picking their way through the exposed mud of the banks, seeking treasures that might have been washed down the drains to this great natural sewer: coins, lighters, pens, cigarette and card cases, even bits of jewellery. These ‘mudlarks’ were a symptom of the return of extreme poverty under Marvin, a condition Dickens would have recognised.

  But that morning the water itself was crowded and noisy from engines, hooters, bells, and raised voices. There were some of the Navy boats I had seen the day before, gun platforms and torpedo rams among them. And I saw too a scattered host of civilian ships, ferries and yachts and quite grand river-boats, all making their cautious way downstream – towards the sea, and away from the fighting. Some of those on the yachts and cruisers stared curiously back at the mudlarks, and at me, and at the city’s great buildings. Some of them raised Kodaks to take photographs. I imagined great houses further upstream, at Marlow and Maidenhead and Henley, being abandoned for the season now that the noisy new neighbours from Mars had moved in.

  I remember distinctly that none of the mudlarks looked up to watch this grand procession of well-heeled refugees drift by.

  And nor did the mudlarks see the flying-machine.

  I saw it out of the corner of my eye at first, a shift in the light, off to the west. When I looked that way I saw a disc, flat and wide, a smooth profile – and very large, and evidently moving very rapidly, for it was greyed with distance, and rose up beyond the clouds. It was a Martian machine, of the kind which I had seen once before, in the sky over Essex, from the bobbing deck of the paddle-steamer on which I, Frank and Alice escaped to France during the First War. The great flyer moved smoothly and silently, with a grace that made it seem to belong to the realm of the air, like a cloud, like a rainbow, rather than to the dullness of the ground. But then it has long been remarked that all Martian machines have a sense of living grace about them, as if, sparked with electricity, they were alive themselves, in contrast to our own clanking, steam-driven, spatchcocked gadgets. I strained my eyes, trying to make out any details – any differences of form or operation from that glimpse thirteen years ago.

  It is a remarkable truth that of all the gadgets humans retrieved after the First Martian War, it was the flying-machine that was the first to be made operational. It flies, in fact, not by dragging its way through the air with propeller blades as our aeroplanes do, but rather it gathers in the air, raises it to a super-hot temperature, and then lets it expand explosively from an array of vents which may be swivelled and turned. It is as if the machine is fitted with a series of rockets, but rockets which can be directed and varied in their thrust, and which will not run out of propellant, since it is the air itself that replenishes them. As for the heating agent, this seems to be a development of the Heat-Ray technology; the energy generators used by a flying-machine seem to be closely related to those used in that weapon.

  According to Rayleigh, Lilienthal and others, the Martians’ flying-machines, in the First War, appeared to have been a design adapted to Mars’ air, so much thinner than ours, and of different composition. In thin air one would not use wings to rest on the air to support the craft, as our heavier-than-air aircraft designs have since the Wright brothers’ experiments. Rather, you would shape your craft to push the air out of the way, streamlining the ship like a stingray, a form to which the Martian machines have been compared.

  It had taken days in the First War before that flyingmachine had been spied. Everyone supposed that the Essex machine must have been constructed from components carried in several cylinders, brought together and assembled. But now I was seeing this new machine only hours after the Middlesex cylinders had landed. In addition there had always seemed an uncertain, experimental aspect to the flying-machines as observed during the First War; this beast seemed much more confident. I realised with unease that Walter was right, that the Martians must have learned a great deal from their first dealings with humans, and had come back far better prepared, for our thicker air and other terrestrial conditions.

  The machine came out of the west, following the line of the river – and thus heading for my position. I remembered that the Essex machine had been scattering the Black Smoke across the land, but there was no evidence of that dark agent this time. The machine passed directly over me; I ducked, but kept looking up. I saw that the hull was brazen, like the cowl of a fightingmachine, and its undersurface was grooved, perhaps for stability in the air, and its sharp rim was oddly feathered at the back. I imagined a battery of cameras trained on the machine as it passed over the city.

  And I saw that the flying-machine had escorts: biplanes, two of them, which swooped and darted like flies beneath the belly of the behemoth: human planes, challenging the Martian. I thought they must be Albatros, or another German design – or even Russian – rather than anything British. I wondered what harm even the Red Baron, hero of the Russian front, could do to the Martian machine, if he ever got close enough. Yet it was cheering to me to see that the invaders did not have the skies entirely to themselves.

  I watched the Martian and his escort pass on down the Thames, until I lost him in the glare of the rising sun. And then I heard the cries of the newsboys, for the day’s first specials were out.

  I hurried from the Embankment and back into the city. Though the sun was barely up the crowds were out, and I had to battle to get hold of a flimsy Daily Mirror, exorbitantly priced at a shilling:

  EXPLOSIONS IN MIDDLESEX

  MORE MARTIANS LAND

  BRIEF BATTLE WAGED

  FRESH CATASTROPHE FEARED

  And even as the newsboys made fresh fortunes, the government wa
s stirring, the bill-posters slapping fresh proclamations onto the lampposts, the loudhailer vans cruising the blockaded streets to issue fresh orders to the populace:

  LONDONER!

  SAVE YOUR CITY! GO TO THE KING’S LINE!

  This new directive was set out over a portrait of the King, who looked a bit bewildered in an elaborate military uniform, but a better choice to stir the soul than a picture of Marvin, I knew by now.

  I saw that ‘all able-bodied men between sixteen and sixty, not already engaged in vital war work’ were ‘encouraged’ to grab a pick and a shovel (bring your own; equipment not supplied) and to make their way to the ‘King’s Line’, which was to be a defensive perimeter cutting across the country between the Martians and the city. A map was appended, showing the Martian Cordon where it swept closest to the city to the northwest, near Uxbridge. Our Line would be a bow-shape five to ten miles back, I saw, and following the lines of the trunk roads – though advanced a little ahead of those highways, perhaps for ease of communication. Thus the Line would run from Ashford, north-east up through Twickenham and Richmond, then roughly north through Brentford, Ealing and Wembley to Hendon, and then north-west to Edgware – its terminus coming alarmingly close to Stanmore, where my sister-in-law might have returned, I noted. Tractors and digging machines both civilian and military were already drawing up to the Line, I read, which was being surveyed by the Royal Engineers and marked out by scouts; there would be a complex of trenches, earthworks, pillboxes and redoubts, manned by troops hastily deployed from Aldershot, and with artillery batteries reinforced by Navy guns. Then the British forces would be joined, in a gesture of friendship, by German detachments already being rushed across the Channel from occupied France.

  A woman close to me, middle-aged, well-dressed, sternlooking, read the poster through a pince-nez. ‘My husband fought the Boers, you know.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Died out there, in fact. They resisted like this, with entrenchments and tangled-up barbed wire so you couldn’t advance. I suppose we are now against the Martians as the Boers were against the British, rebels against a superior army.’

  ‘The Boers put up a good fight even so.’

  ‘That they did. But this defence line -’ She snorted. ‘“Ablebodied men”, indeed.’

  I smiled. ‘No women, you mean?’

  ‘They’d rather use a German than a British woman.’ She glanced at me, taking in my trouser suit, short hair and pack, not with any trace of disapproval. ‘And do you think this line of theirs will work?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘If the Martians kindly give us a chance to build it.’ She flicked the poster with a fingernail, and walked away.

  It was a morning of maps. On an inside page of my Mirror I found an extensive report on ‘The Flight From London’ during the Monday. The great trunk routes out of London to the south and east had been packed by civilians, making for Southampton and the West Country beyond, or for Portsmouth, Brighton, Hastings, Dover – even for Essex as Frank, Alice and I had once fled – all hoping for refuge from the Martians, and perhaps a boat out of England. The police and military contented themselves with setting aside lanes along the highways so that the walkers did not at least impede the flow of personnel and material into and out of the capital. And the Red Cross, with government approval, was hastily setting up reception camps at places like Canterbury, Lewes and Horsham. At least this time there was some order to it – so far, anyhow.

  As for myself, my own instinct was still to remain in central London. To be in the thick of it: Julie Elphinstone, War Correspondent! It had a ring to it. But I had my personal duty as well. I thought of Alice, helpless if she had returned to Stanmore – and just beyond the limit of the King’s Line, where you might expect the fighting to be worse if the Martians thought as the Germans would have, and tried to turn the British flank. Perhaps I should go to her. As I stood there undecided, another flock of newsboys came out, another set of specials, with the ink not yet dry on the first. This time there was news brought back from spotter planes who had been bravely flying over the Middlesex salient.

  The fighting-machines were already on the move, already pushing out of their huge Cordon.

  19

  THE FIRST HOURS WITHIN THE CORDON

  In the early hours of Tuesday, after the Martians’ lightning-fast scattering of the Army’s resistance, Frank and Verity and a handful of their staff, and a number of troopers detached from their units, had huddled in hastily improvised foxholes and trenches. And they watched through the rest of that night as the fighting-machines stalked across the broken landscape within their Cordon, probing at the wreckage of our military emplacements. The night was dark, but Frank was able to follow their movements from the light of the burning of vehicles and dumps of fuel and ammunition. He would see their legs, long, graceful, articulated, passing before a crimson glare. Once or twice a searchlight was opened up, pinning the Martians in brilliance, but the source once revealed was incinerated in an instant. Frank heard little gun fire, saw little evidence of any resistance, confused or otherwise.

  After a few hours of this, Verity whispered to Frank, ‘Anything that moves – anything mechanical – they fire on. Even if it isn’t a weapon, a gun. I imagine they’d fire on a field ambulance if we could get to one. But they are sparing the people, unless you’re silly enough to take a pot-shot. Just as your friend Bert Cook said – and, don’t worry, I do understand why. The Martians have to feed – as will we, in fact, at some point. Where is Cook, by the way?’

  ‘Long gone,’ Frank said, pointing west, towards Amersham. ‘To where the Martians are. Bert was always going to follow his own agenda, rather than the Army’s.’

  ‘I think it’s starting to get light.’

  ‘Hmm. I wish it wouldn’t.’

  Verity glanced around at their charges, the young medics and the VADs, many of whom were huddled up against each other for warmth, as innocent as small children. ‘Look at them. I envy them their ability to sleep.’

  ‘They’re all exhausted. No sleep on the Sunday night for most of us either, remember.’

  ‘True.’ Evidently hearing something, she twisted and looked out of the trench.

  Frank raised himself carefully, up on his elbows. In the gathering pre-dawn light, he saw yet another fighting-machine, picking its way with speed but apparent care through the ruined landscape. And at its feet scuttled something smaller, a fat body on multiple legs like a crab or spider, the whole the size of a small motor-car perhaps.

  Verity breathed, ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A handling-machine. It’s odd to see one outside a museum . . . If the handling-machines are out they’ll be bent on construction as well as destruction.’

  ‘Maybe they’re building a fortress.’

  ‘Something like that. A stockade, presumably all the way around this zone they conquered.’

  She glanced at him. ‘It really is a cordon, then.’

  ‘It seems so.’

  ‘With us on the inside . . .’

  ‘Just as well I’m here, then.’

  The woman’s clear voice, contrasting to their whispers, coming from behind him, startled Frank. He rolled on his back, scrambling for his revolver, and clumsily slipped down into the trench.

  A horse whinnied.

  Feeling foolish, and though it defied instinct to abandon his cover, Frank got to his feet. He found himself facing Mildred Tritton, who was seated on a battered old dogcart to which two sturdy horses were harnessed. ‘Good morning,’ she said cheerfully. ‘And as it is just about morning, the light ought to be good enough to tell you I’m not quite a look-alike for an invader from Mars.’

  ‘I apologise,’ Frank said, sheepishly holstering his gun. ‘We’ve had rather a bad night. What can I do for you, Mrs Tritton?’

  ‘Mildred, please. I have a feeling it’s more a question of what I can do for you just now. This is actually the third trip I’ve made out to the perimeter this night,
or morning – once I discovered, by means of a rather nerve-wracking experiment, that the Martians would not fire on a wagon pulled by a horse, not unless it’s loaded up with a howitzer I suppose. The Martians go for machinery. They did for old Bessie, you know. My tractor.’ Her face worked. ‘I find that rather hard to forgive.’

  Verity said, ‘The poor Martians! They’ve made a formidable enemy.’

  ‘You said three trips?’ Frank asked.

  ‘Yes, collecting up benighted souls like yourselves and taking them home.’

  ‘Home?’

  ‘I mean my own home – my farm is near Abbotsdale, which is a village some ten miles thataway,’ and she jerked her thumb over her shoulder, ‘in the vicinity of Amersham. First trip was out of the goodness of my heart. Second trip I picked up your Lieutenant-Colonel Fairfield. Pleasant chap, and one of the more senior officers to have survived - in this part of the Cordon, at least. And he told me that while the telephone and telegraph are out – the Martians seem to be busily cutting the wires – the field units have wireless telegraph, and that still works, and there’s some coordination going on among the survivors. Those caught within the Cordon are being withdrawn from the perimeter for now, and brought back to suitable rest stops - suitable meaning away from a Martian pit at least, for the cylinders fell throughout the cordoned-off zone, not just at the edge. I took Fairfield to Abbotsdale, and he requested I come back out for the rest of his unit – I think he was particularly keen to find you, Doctor Jenkins.’

  ‘Frank,’ he said heavily. ‘And we’re more than grateful that you did.’

  ‘Load up, then,’ she said briskly. ‘I can take a round dozen in the cart. Any of you who feel up to walking, you’re welcome to follow. I’ll come back for the rest, have no fear. I brought breakfast. I have hams, cheese, bread, and buckets of fresh milk – a couple of your strong lads can unload. Oh, and clean drinking water. Given what the Martian Smoke can do to the soil, you’re advised not to drink from streams and broken mains and such just yet.’