The Massacre of Mankind

by Stephen Baxter

  On the far side, out of the Cordon, we were met by a junior Army officer – a Lieutenant Hopson waiting with a car, armoured and camouflaged, with a woman driver, a heap of blankets and flasks of coffee. Not for the first time I was impressed by the efficiency of all this, of the management of operations that spanned the Cordon from the huddling countryside outside to the zone of suppression within.

  Through Cook we had asked only to be reunited with Eric Eden, who I thought of as my principal conduit to the Army’s chain of command. It was Verity, in fact, who, as we drove away, first asked where we were being taken. It was only then that we heard we were heading for Thornborough and the ‘landship base’. I don’t believe I had heard that word before: landship. When Verity asked what it meant, the officer would not reply – or could not.

  So we were off again. I was content to huddle with Verity in the back, and clutch clean-smelling blankets around me, sip strong but rather stale coffee, and listen to the competent murmurings of the officer and his driver as they called ahead by wireless to their command stations.

  And I tried not to look up at the sky.

  Thornborough turned out to host an Army base, a couple of miles east of Buckingham – and so perhaps thirty miles northwest of Amersham, and the Martians’ Redoubt. The morning light was gathering as we were passed through the base’s fence.

  It was hard to see much, for of course the Army wished to stay out of sight of the Martians. There were no electric lights, and every building, every vehicle was painted or draped with camouflage green and brown. But still the landships, pointed out by Hopson, were unmistakeable, as we drove past them and into the base itself – unmistakeable, if unclassifiable. They were rows of mounds of different sizes, the smallest perhaps twenty feet long and ten tall – I guessed immediately that these were bulky vehicles of some sort – but the largest was immense, more than a hundred feet long and with turrets at front and back perhaps three times my height. It looked like a ship, in fact, though we could not have been further from the sea. All this glimpsed in shadows and silhouettes against a brightening dawn sky, the profiles obscured by camouflage blankets and netting.

  Verity’s hand crept into mine. ‘What frightful things.’

  I squeezed her hand. ‘At least these monsters are on our side.’

  We were escorted into the base by our tame lieutenant. The place was busy, bewilderingly so. It appeared to be disguised as a series of rambling farm buildings, all connected by tunnels of canvas and wood ply so as, I imagined, to be invisible from the air. Outdoors, in the ‘farmyard’, we saw soldiers in heavy combat gear forming up into groups of four or six or twelve, talking softly. They carried the customary tin helmets and gas masks and small arms, but, unusually, they also brought tools: bags of spanners and wrenches and the like. We were hustled inside through a doorway. Inside crudely partitioned rooms, we saw huddles of officers in discussion, and walls covered with maps, and plates of stale-looking sandwiches and cold cups of tea standing around. Meanwhile, uniformed staff literally ran between farmhouse and outhouse and stables and barns.

  ‘As if we’ve stepped into a wasps’ nest,’ Verity murmured to me as we were hurried through all this. ‘But the Martians aren’t coming down in England again, are they?’

  ‘No, they’re not, according to the astronomers and the spotters,’ Eric Eden said, approaching us – at last we had found him. Like the soldiers we’d already seen, he was in heavy combat gear, evidently preparing to take part in some mission. ‘But we’ve already heard of landings elsewhere . . . Come, we don’t have much time.’

  He hurried us into his office – everything was in a hurry that morning - and I, exhausted already and sleepless, found it difficult to cope. I glanced around at the maps on the walls. One of them was a world map, Mercator style, with two ugly Marsorange markers pushed into the sites of New York and Los Angeles. It was now after 8 a.m. The meaning was clear.

  ‘That’s the point of our own operations this morning,’ Eric was saying now. ‘The fact that we’re in the middle of another wave of landings, I mean. Tonight, as a new wave of cylinders come down – and the analysts are saying they expect landings all around the planet through the next twenty hours or so – surely the British complex is the nearest the Martians have to a command and control centre. And we intend to do something about it.’

  Verity nodded. ‘With those – cockroach things outside.’ He grinned. ‘The landships, yes. We’ve been saving them for a special occasion. When, if not now? And I, for my sins, am in command of the HMLS Boadicea, the nastiest cockroach of them all. So: while I’m very pleased to see you two safe and well, I’m far from impressed that you failed to fulfil your mission of the contaminated blood, Miss Elphinstone. But I’m sure the intelligence people will want to pump you dry of all you learned inside the Martian Cordon. Now if you’ll excuse me, I really must find my crew and get on -’

  I grabbed his arm. ‘Eric – we came here to find you, remember - you need to listen to me.’ I can imagine how I looked to him, still in the clothes I had worn in the Cordon, grimy, perhaps blood-splashed, smelling of mud and dirt and sweat and sheer fatigue, wild-eyed – but, I like to think, determined.

  ‘I really don’t -’

  ‘Sigils,’ I said.

  A junior officer called him. ‘Major Eden, we’re ready to load up . . .’

  He made to pull himself away. ‘Julie, I have a battle to fight.’

  ‘And I can tell you how to win the war – or at least, to end it.’

  He hesitated, clearly torn. ‘This is the Walter Jenkins stuff, isn’t it? The “messages” we were using as cover for the blood scheme. Are we back to that? All rather eccentric -’

  ‘Not eccentric, Eric. Look, I’m probably more sceptical than you are. But the things I saw in the Cordon . . . This isn’t like another war against some portion of humanity, the Germans or the Russians -’

  ‘Actually it’s generally been the French,’ he murmured with an irritating smile.

  ‘This war is interplanetary. It’s just as Walter has been saying all along – ever since the Narrative, even. And if we’re to prevail we have to think on that scale.’

  ‘And we do that with drawings, do we?’

  ‘Not the drawings, but their subject - sigils – symbols. Graphic geometry, Walter called it.’

  His junior officer coughed, one communication that wasn’t terribly subtle.

  But Eric hesitated for one more second, and I held his gaze. ‘All right. Barker, take the crew to the Boadicea. God knows Hetherington will be able to take you through the start-up; it’s his bloody design. I’ll be with you shortly.’

  ‘Sir.’ The man hurried away.

  Eric beckoned us into his office. ‘You’ve got five minutes and counting, Julie.’

  ‘Then shut up and let me talk.’

  I summarised in seconds Walter’s theories of interplanetary signalling. Eden had not been interested in thinking this through before, other than as a cover for his own scheme, but now I made him listen.

  ‘It’s an old idea, after all,’ I said. ‘You know there was a mania for signalling to other worlds decades before the Martians showed up and proved that there are civilisations elsewhere. People proposed digging Pythagorean triangles in the desert and setting them alight with oil to make them visible to Martian observers – that sort of thing. In the end, they were right!’

  Eric, to give him credit – and with the huge distraction of the forthcoming battle no doubt foremost in his mind – seemed to be thinking it through. ‘It all seemed a lot of silly nonsense, I suppose,’ he said slowly. ‘But then, after the ’07 war, there were those luminous markings the astronomers spotted in the clouds of Venus. “Sigils”, you say - the word Jenkins used in his book, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes! This was in 1913. And at the same time, similar markings were seen on Mars. Now we interpret that as a marker of the Martians’ successful invasion of Venus. These are communications between worlds, Eric. And comm
unications we can manipulate.’

  He nodded slowly. ‘Very well. But even if I buy all that what’s it got to do with the Martians in Buckinghamshire?’

  ‘Everything. Do you have a map of the ’07 landings? And maps, or aerial photographs, of the ’20 landings . . .’

  It took a minute of my five for him to retrieve relevant maps and photos from the clutter in his room, and another minute to find a thick wax pencil with which I defaced said sigils. Without needing to refer to the documents I carried, I remembered what Walter had shown me; with the pencil I connected the Martians’ landing pits, in Surrey in ’07, and in Buckinghamshire more recently – connected them with looping, sinuous swirls. I made these marks without comment, and let Eric make the last leap of induction.

  He held up the ’07 map, disfigured as it was. ‘But this symbol – it is the same as the astronomers saw on Venus.’

  ‘Exactly. You see it. It is the Martians’ brand of ownership, like a stock handler’s, burned now into the flesh of England herself. Over and over again. That was what they were building here even in ’07. And they’re doing it again, in Bucks – Marriott for one has maps that show exactly that, if you know how to look.’ I tapped my battered leather case. ‘These are Walter’s drawings of those sigils. He wanted me to show them to the Martians as proof of our intelligence.’

  ‘It was only to be a cover story; I didn’t pay much attention to the detail. But this set of symbols is what you wish to manipulate – is that the idea?’

  ‘Yes! But it’s not the Martian sigil that’s important here . . . And it’s more than a handful of drawings.’ And in a few words I sketched my idea, the what and the how and the why.

  Eric mused. Then he grinned. ‘It’s outrageous. It’s insane.’

  ‘I know. Even Walter Jenkins didn’t think this big, and that’s saying something., It might work, though. Look, I know you’ve been feeding explosives and weapons to the resistance units inside the Cordon. I met one contact– “Marriott”.’ He looked uncomfortable at that.

  ‘And you have hundreds of soldiers, trapped in there since the day of the invasion. I know you’re in touch with these people. What we need to do is to get to those groups, to tell them how to use those resources in a once-and-only exercise – to set their charges, to make some precise modifications on the ground -’

  He eyed me. ‘You realise you’ll have to do this yourself. I can control the Army element, but you’ll have to convince them – Marriott and his kind - as you’ve convinced me. Well, halfconvinced – and then see it through. Icouldn’t do it. It’s your vision.’

  I’d been expecting this, if not dreading it. ‘If I have to go back into that hell on earth -’

  Verity grabbed my hand. ‘I’ll be with you.’

  Eric considered. ‘What a war this is – what dilemmas you pose for me!’ He glanced at his wristwatch. ‘I’m not saying I buy all this – and at some point we’ll have to have a discussion about why you didn’t carry through your orders about the contaminated blood. But it’s worth a shot, and won’t cost much. Your five minutes is more than used up. And I’ll tell you this – if you’re to go back into the Cordon today, the only way you’re travelling is with me, in the Boadicea. I’ll take you to her via stores; you’ll need to be kitted out. I hope you’re adept at lacing up your boots on the run . . .’

  6

  AT LOS ANGELES

  Accounts of what has become known as the ‘Second War’ are multitudinous, but variable in quality and authenticity – most penned, if I am a judge, by ‘observers’ who were far behind the lines, and based on eye-witness accounts, if at all, only at second and third hand. What one needs for the truth is an account set down by a witness close enough to have seen the action, yet lucky enough to have survived the carnage of those May days – and, of course, a witness honest enough to tell it as she or he saw it, without spicing up the truth for the sake of sales or selfaggrandisement.

  Luckily for me and for future historians, such witnesses do exist.

  One such was Cherie Gilbert, then aged 24, who, at the time of the Martian landings near Los Angeles, had been employed in Hollywood Paramount as a personal assistant for a director of the movie company. Cherie’s skills extended well beyond the clerical, and such was the chaotic nature of the industry in those days that Cherie soon found herself used in a variety of roles, some of them quite technical. She had even served as a camera operator in the shooting of Griffith’s The Kaiser’s Lover in 1921, when influenza had laid waste to the workforce.

  ‘And that’s why you got to come with me,’ said Homer Girdner, as, panting, he led Cherie up Mount Lee, the greenclad hill that stands above Hollywood itself, and then higher into the San Gabriel Mountains.

  In L.A. it was only just after six in the morning of the Friday (it was already afternoon in England, and I was stuck in the carcass of a crawling landship, as I will describe). But the breeze, blowing off the land and towards the sea, already bore a faint tinge of burning, Cherie thought. They hadn’t climbed high enough yet to get a good view to the east. But everybody knew that was where the Martians had come down: inland, in the direction of San Bernardino. And the evidence of war was already apparent.

  It was just as in New York, it turned out. At local midnight the cylinders had landed in two waves, the first fifty-odd being dummies that had smashed a lifeless cordon into the ground to prepare the landing sites of the second wave, which carried crew and their war machines. But whereas in England two years before there had been a full day between these waves, the Martians had evolved their strategy again; now in America, in New York and here in LA, the two waves had come down just an hour apart, leaving the human forces even less time to respond. This would be the pattern repeated around the planet, in the next few hours.

  In Hollywood, it had seemed like everybody had stayed up to listen to scratchy accounts of the initial fighting on the radio stations. Units of the National Guard and the regular army had met the Martians as they broke out of their cylinders, to no significant effect. Then, a few hours later, at around dawn – again, just as they’d done in New York – the fighting-machines had broken out of their cordon and begun their advance.

  And now, on that fine early summer morning, high in the hills, just six hours after the first Martian cylinder had landed in California, there was a smell of burning above LA.

  Homer led the way up the trail, panting and sweating, his words broken by breathlessness – even though it was Cherie, she wryly noted, who was having to carry the damn camera itself, while he merely lugged a batch of film cans.

  ‘I knew you’d come,’ he said now.

  ‘You did, did you?’

  ‘Come on,’ said Homer. ‘You’re the bravest guy I know. Figuratively speaking.’

  ‘Kind of you to say so.’

  ‘I mean it. It was you who kept filming on the Nero set when it caught fire for real, and everybody else had high-tailed it to the bar, and the footage you got was great. And I saw how you punched out the last actor who grabbed your butt.’

  ‘I almost got canned for that,’ she said ruefully, panting herself now as the trail steepened. ‘Lucky for me the make-up covered up his split lip.’

  ‘He deserved it. Listen, Cherie, we’re going to witness history today – hell, we’re making it. We’re the ones who are going to film the Martians as they come to LA. It will make a hell of a picture, and some day they’ll make a movie about us.’

  ‘I suppose we’ll be starstruck lovers, in the story.’

  He had his back to her as he led the way up the trail, but she was pretty sure he blushed. Homer was a script editor with ambitions to make his own movies – hell, everybody around here had that ambition, if it wasn’t to appear in one – and she knew, too, that he had a crush on her. He said now, ‘Either way we’re going to make a pile of money.’

  But Cherie was distracted, as that smell of burning from the east intensified. And she thought she heard something new now, carried on the
rising morning air: a distant bellow, of triumph or rage, like a vast animal: ‘Ulla . . . Ulla . . .’

  Five years back, in her home town of Madison, Wisconsin, she had watched Griffith’s Martian Summer, the tenthanniversary epic of the English war, over and over. Starring Charlie Chaplin as his trademark lovable Cockney gunner, with Mary Pickford playing the American girl he rescued and fell in love with, it had been one of the great spectacles that had drawn her to Hollywood in the first place. Somehow, now, she had the feeling that the scenes Griffith had shot of stiff, tottering fighting-machines downed by plucky Brit troops (led by even more heroic American volunteers) weren’t going to turn out much like the reality. And somehow the thought of the world coming out of this new crisis just like it had been before, with movies and money and young people in love, seemed unlikely too.

  But she kept climbing. What else was there to do but see it through?

  At last they reached a spot Homer thought was going to be suitable; he’d scouted it out in advance, he said. While Cherie fixed her camera on its tripod, Homer dumped his film cans and unloaded the lightweight radio receiver he’d carried in a rucksack, and began elaborately tuning around, looking for a signal. They both rummaged in the rucksack for bottled water.

  And Cherie took a look at the view.

  It was indeed a fine spot. Los Angeles sits in a bowl cradled by mountains to the north and east, and from up here, high in those mountains, Cherie’s lens would take it all in: she could see the brash glitter of Hollywood below, and the grey sprawl of downtown LA itself. Directly beneath her was a pretty green splash that was Pasadena, a suburb of lawns and roses and climbing geraniums – she’d long fostered a dream of moving there some day. And off to the west, beyond the cityscape and still grey with morning mist, was the calm immensity of the Pacific Ocean. But that morning the ocean was littered with ships, small boats, what looked like passenger liners, and sleek grey shapes that might be warships.