The Massacre of Mankind

by Stephen Baxter

  We hadn’t even reached the flood water before it all began to unravel.

  Toby saw it first. ‘Martian!’ he hissed.

  We could all see the fighting-machine, striding boldly over the open country ahead of us, off to the north-west. It was the sheerest bad luck; he must have been coming back from a patrol, and happened upon us. But there was no doubt he saw us; he immediately increased his speed, using that strange loose-limbed gait to bowl along across the green towards us.

  Toby immediately slammed his pedal to the floor, and the car lurched forward. ‘Only chance is to get there before him,’ he shouted. ‘If we get those charges laid – even if we just throw the crate out of the Rolls –’

  Verity and I shared a glance of horror; this sounded like foolhardy madness to us. Better to abandon the car and take cover in a ditch than this flight towards our enemy! But we had no choice in the matter; we were not behind the wheel. And, glancing back, I saw that Jeff in the Rolls was following us, indeed more than matching our pace.

  So we tore down the hill, and now I could see ahead of us the rough earthwork of the Martians’ accidental dam, a mound two years old and thick with the bulbous growths of the red weed. The water behind, stretching off to our left up the valley, deceptively placid, was itself Martian and earth life mixed choked with red and green, together. I saw no Martians moving there, and had lost sight of the fighting-machine that had spotted us.

  But he had not lost sight of us.

  I thought I heard a crack like an electric spark, smelled an electric tang – perhaps I smelled the plasma that the Heat-Ray makes of the air as it passes through. That was how close it came, but it missed us, by a fraction. The Heat-Ray’s range is measured in miles, but its targeting is a matter of machinery, not miracles; even the Martians could miss.

  That errant bolt of energy had, however, slammed into the road surface behind us. I glanced back and saw a crater, bits of tarmac and bedrock still cart-wheeling in the air – and the Rolls following, with Jeff inside his box of steel, about to tumble into that new pit, with the dynamite crate in the back.

  Verity yelled, ‘Hold on!’ And she ducked down, her arms over her head.

  We pieced it together later. Verity had always known the danger, but had despaired of getting through to Marriott when we spoke to him in his cellar. Later guilt racked her, but that’s all hindsight; he would not have listened.

  Dynamite is not stable. It is three parts in four nitroglycerine, which is itself a strong explosive. Over time the dynamite will ‘sweat’; it leaks its nitro-glycerine, which will gather in the bottom of a containing box. That was why Verity had asked Marriott if he turned his boxes; an old hand will turn such a store repeatedly. Worse, the nitro-glycerine can crystallise on the outside of the dynamite sticks, leaving the whole assemblage still more sensitive to shock or friction. Most manufacturers will tell you that dynamite has a shelf life of no more than a year, under good storage conditions. In that cellar Verity had found boxes at least two years old and probably more; and the storage conditions were anything but proper.

  She told me later that even before the operation at the dam, if Marriott and his lumpen assistants had ever dropped a crate in that cellar – I watched the Rolls tip into the crater – My memory of what followed is not clear.

  The blast swept along the road and lifted up our car like a toy. I remember even in that instant a flash of concern about our driver Toby, but we worked out later that he, crumpled in the wreck of the car, must have been dead in an instant.

  And Verity and I were both thrown through the roof and out into the air, and bumped and banged as we flew helplessly in that cloud of debris. We both came down in the flood water lucky!

  I hit the water with a hard slap, and my fall was cushioned by the bed of vegetation which lay beneath the murky surface, some of it green and yellow, the colours of earth, much of it that ugly crimson that is the palette of Mars. At first I did not struggle. Bewildered, I suppose shocked, I almost welcomed the softness of the swollen vesicles and thick leaves under me, as if I was being cupped in some vast hand. I could see the surface above me, the sun’s distorted figure – and even then I thought I saw the slim form of the fighting-machine, looking down on me through the air with a dispassionate calm, as a biologist might look at a tadpole wriggling in a pond. I took a breath, or tried to – I suppose the air had been knocked out of me by the detonation – and the water was like a cold soup pushing into my throat, dense, suffocating, and now fear sparked, and at last I fought.

  My chest convulsed, but I could not empty myself of the water, and only dragged in more. I struggled against the grip of the red weed, but as in a nightmare the harder I fought the tighter it gripped me.

  I stopped fighting. I was going to die there – I knew it for a certainty. I tried to relax, to submit. I remember that I did not pray, and nor did memories and regrets flood me, as I have been told is common in such situations – instead I hoped only that the pain would be brief.

  And then I saw him before me.

  Him – he looked human, despite the sleek hair that coated his nude body, and the webbing that stretched between the fingers of the hands that reached for me, and the bubbles of air that leaked from the flaps of skin at the side of his throat – were they gills? And, though the hair covered his groin, his chest, yet I knew, somehow, he was male. He descended before me, upright in the water, swimming with the merest flick of his hands, his webbed feet. Even then I thought I saw a glint of gold at his chest: a cross shape - a crucifix?

  He took my face in his hands – cold fingers.

  And he kissed me. I felt his lips on mine – cold again – and then air, thick, hot, poured into my mouth. It made me cough, and the liquid pulsed up out of me, into his own mouth; but somehow he kept those lips locked onto mine while I heaved and convulsed. Meanwhile I was aware of his strong hands pulling away the weed that bound me, frond by frond.

  Suddenly I was free. He grabbed me under the armpits, flicked his feet once, and, with his lips still locked onto mine, we surged up into the light and the air, and I knew no more.

  24

  AN AWAKENING

  As I drifted upwards to consciousness, just as I had been lifted into the light from the murky flood, the world as it formed around me seemed normal, familiar: I was in a room with a door, windows. I woke in a bed, to the sound of rain on a roof. In the distance, thunder – not guns, not the detonations that accompanied a Martian advance, just a storm. But I clung to sleep, and the absence of responsibility.

  When I woke again the light was brighter but softer. Still the rain hissed, but the thunder was gone, the storm passed over. I became aware now that I was in an unfamiliar nightgown, all frills and tucks and more ornamental than comfortable, and that the sheets in which I lay were rather musty.

  I turned over, and saw a figure sitting by the window, looking out. ‘Verity?’

  She turned, smiling. ‘You’re awake. You turned once or twice, and muttered. I didn’t want to disturb you. No, stay there.’ She came across, and I saw that she had one arm strapped against her body by a clumsily applied bandage. The first aid kit she had worn at her belt was open on a bedside table, amid dusty clutter: a clock that looked as if it hadn’t worked since the nineteenth century, ugly ornaments, faded photographs in a silver frame. She pressed a hand to my forehead, stuck a thermometer in my mouth, took my pulse, and listened to my chest with a lightweight stethoscope. Then she handed me a glass of water, which I drank gratefully. ‘Don’t worry, it’s fresh – I set buckets out in the rain.’

  ‘I should be nursing you.’ My throat was scratchy, my voice hoarse when I spoke, and there was a vague ache about my chest. ‘What’s that, a broken arm?’

  ‘I managed to crack a bone, but you were the one who was underwater. If not for the Cytherean who saved you -’

  I remembered the incident in a flash now. ‘Yes. He – was it a he?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘A Cytherean?’ />
  ‘A man from Venus. That’s what the educated types are calling them. I heard as much from the BBC, on a crystal set.’

  ‘Almost an angelic figure, he seemed, in all that murk.’ Another shard of memory. ‘And he wore a crucifix, Verity!’

  She smiled. ‘Yes. Seems to be something of a fad among them. I blame the Vicar at Abbotsdale. They are semi-aquatic creatures – well, that’s obvious. Ideally suited to serve as swimming-pool lifeguards, I should think.’ She touched her bad arm with her other hand, wincing. ‘Not so cute when it comes to fixing broken bones, however. After all our skeletal structures vary – it seems that the very fabrics of our bones differ.’

  She was right about that. Studies on ’07 specimens had already shown that on Mars the humanoids have siliceous skeletons, perhaps because silicon is one of the most common elements in the rock and dust of that arid surface. By contrast the Cythereans’ bone structure has a reliance on strong forms of carbon – long molecules, which give the bones a kind of springiness. Not so optimised for walking upright in heavy gravity, but ideal if you’re flipping away through the water like a seal.

  ‘The Cythereans have their own medicinal remedies, which involve a lot of licking and chewing and packing in mud. But I wasn’t so confident that all that would work on my busted fin. So I resorted to more familiar techniques, a splint, a bandage. I had Charlie set the bone for me.’

  ‘Charlie?’

  ‘The fellow who saved you – the one with the crucifix. I have a feeling he’s spent more time with humans than some of the others.’

  ‘Why “Charlie”?’

  She grinned. ‘No doubt he has a name among his own kind. I called him for Charles Daniels, who won all those swimming medals in the ’04 Olympics – do you remember? Perhaps not; the Games were in St Louis, and my sister and I travelled over with our father for a summer jaunt -’

  ‘You had that humanoid set your arm?’

  ‘It was rough handling, I admit. As if a bright orang utan did it – more strength than kindness. But he got the idea – they are more bright than the great apes, if less so than humans – and once it was set the pain eased and I was able to fix a splint and bandage.’

  ‘Good grief, Verity, it would have been bad enough if those buffoons from the inn had had to do it.’

  ‘Both of them are dead now,’ she said simply. ‘The explosion – the dynamite – do you remember? You’ve been out for more than twenty-four hours.’

  I glanced at the grey skies visible through the window. ‘Long enough for a change in the weather.’ I did remember, but not clearly; the jigsaw was jumbled in my head and we would piece together the sequence of events, as I have set it down here, later. ‘People from Venus, though!’

  She smiled. ‘Even given the fix we’re in – marvellous, isn’t it? Would you like to see them?’ She stood up. ‘It’s about time for a late lunch. We’ve fallen on our feet with this house. It was evidently abandoned when the Misbourne flood rose – we’re on a sort of island here, as you’ll see. There’s a fair stock of tinned meat and such in the pantries, and we’ve the rainwater to drink, so that’s safe. I stoked a fire in the living room so there’s hot water, and I rinsed out your clothes – they should be dry by now . . . Would you like me to help you to the bathroom? I have had to keep you clean already, of course. Don’t be shy! I am a nurse – well, sort of . . .’

  I slept again, woke again.

  Once fully awake, or so I thought, I fretted about time. After all, as Walter had warned me, the next opposition was due in the summer - the next wave of Martian cylinders might already be in space. Surely I needed to complete my mission before the landings. But I had no idea of the present date, let alone when the Martians might fall.

  I got out of bed, a little groggily, and hunted for a calendar. No luck, but there was a diary, and I flicked through its pages, ignoring spidery elderly-lady notes about nieces’ birthdays and the anniversaries of various dead relatives, trying to think it through. How would Walter have worked it out? You had the opposition, the closest approach of the planets, in June, and the landings, if they happened at all, would be three weeks and a day before that . . . But when was the opposition, exactly? I thought it was June 10, but I wasn’t sure. And what was today, what was the date? . . . There was nothing in the room, no wireless set, that might let me find out.

  I started to feel ill again, faint. I made my way back to my bed, determined to ask Verity for the date when I awoke again. But I forgot, I forgot.

  I woke once more, nagged by another anxiety. I got out of bed and rummaged through my stuff until I found, sitting on a dresser, Walter’s drawings in their leather packet, which had proven waterproof as well as robust; they were safe. I slept again.

  25

  THE VILLA OF THE CYTHEREANS

  I woke again, later in the day, feeling much refreshed.

  It was a relief to shed a nightgown that felt as if it had recently been used by a lady several decades older than me, to climb out of sheets so musty that the dust I raised when I turned over started me sneezing. But I can’t blame Verity for not trying to change a bed for me with her broken arm – and, it seems, her ‘Cythereans’, while willing to help, would not venture into the house. And it was a relief to wash, with Verity’s help, to dress in my own clothes.

  Then I sat with her on a small veranda, gulping down Indian tea we found in a sealed caddy - delicious treat! – and corned beef and tinned peaches. The veranda itself, a paved area bounded by waist-high pillars and a couple of concrete lions, was the kind of pretentious but unremarkable feature you might have associated with such a property, a late addition to what I judged to have been originally some kind of gatehouse or lodge for a larger estate.

  The whole was quite ordinary – or would have been if not for the Misbourne flood. On our doors and walls you could see the stains of surges, and you could smell a kind of rotting dampness throughout the house, the carpets and rugs uniformly mouldy. But the house was set on a slight rise, as many old properties are, so that when the flood had risen much of the house itself was left on an island, set in a shallow lake from which protruded hedgerows and telegraph poles, and the upper floors of other, less favoured properties. It was a strange, wistful, oddly peaceful scene, as if from a romance of some distant future when our civilisation had decayed and its remnants were slowly subsiding into a life-choked marsh.

  But the colours of that landscape were odd – peculiarly Martian, as it turned out. The open water was uniformly choked by the red weed, which spread across its surface as would water lilies, while the ground, relatively uncolonised, retained the green of the earth, of the grass and the trees. Red lakes and oceans, green continents: just as the astronomers tell us they see of Mars.

  And if the landscape was unearthly, so were its inhabitants. As we sat there, for the rest of that day and into the evening, with faded blankets on our laps, eating tinned fruit and drinking tea, Verity and I watched the Cythereans at play. They would swim languidly, or rest, rolling on their backs with their hairy bellies tipped up to the clouds. And then they would dart away, flashing down into the water and emerging with a mouthful of the red weed. It was evident to me immediately that they had the power and quickness and acuity of senses of the natural hunter, but there was nothing palatable for them to hunt in the murky waters of the earth. Only the red weed, which had been brought with them in the cylinders from Mars, would fill their stomachs. But, oh! – what a sight it was to see those lean bodies flash through the water, so very like seals when they were swimming, but with those eerily human faces on their sleek, streamlined heads. The young, too, for there were a handful of those, darted with abandon, and when their tiny forms surfaced with some prize from their play-hunting, a vole or a halfdrowned rat, they would laugh with glee and clap their hands, and the two of us clapped with them – they were very like human children. When they rested they would gather in small groups, in couples or bands of three or four. The children would snuggle with th
eir parents, or they would clamber up on their backs and bellies; the very smallest suckled at their mothers’ small breasts, and with teeth sharp enough for the hunting that must have nipped painfully. I was tempted to label these groups as families, but the experts will tell you that one should not anthropomorphise. Those who have not seen Cythereans in the wild cannot know how graceful they are in their unfettered, uncontained state – how elegant at play. And if I use the word ‘play’, it is because that is how they seemed to me, with every motion, every gentle interaction having a sense of fun, just as you will see with otters and seals and perhaps dolphins, the intelligent aquatic mammals of the earth.

  Verity, having been a prisoner in the Cordon for two years, knew far more about her fellow captives than I did – and, of course, more than anybody else outside the Cordon. In the years since we have had time to study the Cythereans more fully, both in the wild and in captivity (in those nations where the imprisonment of evidently intelligent beings as laboratory specimens is tolerated), and it is the Swedish physical-chemist Arrhenius who has led a multidisciplinary study into the nature of these creatures, and of their origins.

  To begin with, we can be sure that the ‘Cythereans’ we saw in the Cordon were indeed from Venus. The most convincing evidence for me is the anatomical. The strength of a Cytherean’s skeleton is only a little less than a human’s, thus evidently adapted to Venus’s marginally lighter gravity. By comparison the skeletal structure of the Martian humanoids, adapted to a gravity of a third of earth’s, is enfeebled to the point of delicate. Nature makes us no more robust than we need to be. Meanwhile Venus is closer to the sun, and the brilliance of the daylight seems reflected in the smallness of the Cytherean eye, and a certain resistance of the skin to the sun’s rays. Conversely again, Mars is half as far again from the sun as the earth. To us, Mars would be twilit; the Martian humanoids have big receptive eyes and are easily dazzled.