The Revolutions

by Gilman, Felix

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Mr Vaz, his head and shoulders already thickly layered with dust, sat on a rock and muttered about Hell and damnation. Sometimes he lowered his head until it was almost on his knees, so that he appeared to be praying; he was in fact struggling for breath.

  “Lord Atwood has brought us to Hell,” he said. “What else would you call this? He has damned us.”

  Atwood wasn’t there to hear this indictment of his character. He’d gone off to the edge of their camp some hours ago, to confer with Sun on their predicament.

  Dimmick squatted on his haunches, idly scratching with his knife in the dirt, staring into the distance. There was a haze in the air—dust, and something oddly twinkling that was not dust. It appeared to be twilight; at least, one would hope it wasn’t what passed for daylight on Mars. At the far horizon a row of tremendous mountains met a sky of black clouds, streaked with nightshade and lurid foxglove—a venomous sky. Clouds had covered both moons, the rose and the red. Thank God—it had induced a certain odd vertigo, to see those two moons chasing each other across the heavens.

  Between the expedition’s hasty and makeshift camp and the far horizon there were no signs of civilization, or greenery, or life. Green was an unknown colour here.

  “Hell,” said Mr Vaz.

  “Shut up,” Payne said.

  Dimmick stood, and sheathed his knife. “Let him talk. He’s right, ain’t he? Call it what you like—this is Hell.”

  Vaz laughed, then started to cough.

  Dimmick paced the boundaries of the camp. He was soon no more than a lumbering shadow in the haze. Among the many odd properties of the haze was that it distorted vision, unpredictably, like sea-water. He had no destination. He was keeping busy. Something in the atmosphere made joints stiffen quickly.

  They’d been on Mars for perhaps half a day—it was hard to be sure. Nobody’s watch had survived translation. They had not yet glimpsed the sun. They’d moved no more than a half-mile from the place they’d arrived, and set down what Atwood called a camp in a circle of rocks in the lee of a tall sweep of rock that gave no shelter from the cold. They grumbled, paced, quarrelled, prayed. Moods of religious horror passed over each of them from time to time, then moved on, like the shadow of a cloud, leaving them cold and drained. There was something unnerving in the air, something a little like the stillness and pressure that on Earth would precede a storm, but here seemed to precede nothing at all. This was a dead world.

  They’d arrived—manifested—in various states of weakness, disorientation, and dismay. Atwood and Sun had been up on their feet limping around within half an hour or so, but Arthur had been unable to stand for at least an hour, and one or two of the men had taken it worse. Like drowning, Vaz said, seeming to speak from experience—or like the sensations produced by the Work of Gracewell’s Engine. Just the thought of it—I am on Mars—was so strange that it made one’s legs go weak.

  There were eight of them. Archer’s son had not appeared, and it seemed likely that he would not. It was better not to think about what had happened to him—what might still happen to the rest of them, for all anyone knew. Martin Atwood and Sun were off by the edge of the camp, pacing, deep in conversation—there was an occasional violet flash as Atwood lit a cigarette. Dimmick was now kicking desultorily at rocks. Vaz was doubled over coughing. Then there was the military contingent—Messrs. Payne, Frank, and Ashton.

  Ashton was unwell. According to Payne, Ashton claimed to have learned magic from the feet of the Secret Mahatmas in Tibet, after deserting from the Army in India. Whatever secret learning he might or might not have acquired, it didn’t seem to have done him much good. He’d survived the transit, but only by the skin of his teeth. He lay on the ground, green at the gills and moaning softly, with his jacket wadded up as a pillow under his head. No one knew what else to do for him.

  Frank and Payne and Arthur investigated the supplies.

  The supplies had caught fire back in London, when Archer dropped her paraffin lamp; but now they were here. That was another thing that was best not thought about too closely. Otherwise one might begin to wonder if this really was Hell—if they weren’t, in fact, dead, and surrounded by the ghostly shadows of their former lives. But no good came of thinking that way. One could glimpse horror in a can of soup. The important thing was to keep busy. Arthur and Payne and Frank were conducting an inventory. “Keep warm, chaps,” Arthur said. “Keep moving, that’s the thing. Spirits up.” Frank and Payne, never a talkative pair, worked in grim silence. Wise of them, Arthur supposed. The thin air made talking hard work. Of course they were used to mountainous territory.

  After a while, Vaz came and joined them.

  “Are you well enough, Mr Vaz?”

  “Better to work than to think, don’t you think, Mr Shaw? Wasn’t that always our method back in Deptford?”

  Not all of the articles the Company had gathered had survived the transit; and some that had survived the transit had been lost, scattered all over the dunes as they moved to their current camp, through the dark and the wind, in a state of fumbling panic.

  There were three small folded tents, but one was torn beyond hope of repair. There was needle and thread. Three spare pairs of boots and a dozen pairs of socks. Three loaded Martini-Henry rifles. Six knives of varying sizes. Four walking-sticks. Four camp-stools, of which three were broken. A superfluity of spoons. Nine compasses, all of which spun uselessly, apparently unable to find north. Perhaps Mars didn’t have a north. Payne lost his temper and stamped on one. Tobacco. Three belts, two coats. Not nearly the right sort of clothing for the cold; they should be wrapped up like polar explorers. Two pairs of binocular field-glasses. A canister of paraffin, for the hurricane lamps, and a tin of creosote, for use as an antiseptic. Tonic of iron and strychnine (one bottle). Isinglass plaster, for open wounds. Opium, for diarrhoea. Opium for nerves. Cocaine, to maintain energy. Mescaline, and a small quantity of hashish, and God only knew what else; Atwood had packed such a quantity of drugs that it seemed to Arthur he might just as well have stayed home and taken his drugs and dreamed of whatever he wanted to dream.

  Food, water. Condensed milk, beef tea, hard tack, pea soup. Two shovels. Two short and narrow sleds, of polished hickory with steel-shod runners, and with the initials M.A. carved into the side. What Arthur wouldn’t give for a pack of dogs to pull them! But of course no animal could have performed the ritual. Perhaps you could train a parrot, Arthur joked, though no one laughed. Cruel anyway, he supposed. Ice-axes: four. Tin-openers: four. One pistol.

  Untrustworthy; it was hard to spark fire in the Martian air. One theodolite. One aneroid barometer, which appeared to be broken. Three first-rate telescopes and two boxes of lenses, cleaning supplies, and other spare parts. Eighteen boxes of John Redding & Co. matches, which were slow to light, quick to burn out; but at least they could smoke, a little. A bottle of champagne. Thank you very bloody much, Your Lordship, Frank said, that’ll be a lot of bloody use. Four thin blankets.

  Their climbing supplies were gone. Ditto their dynamite.

  Maps, but not useful ones. A map of London, a map of England, two maps of the world—Earth, that is … well, perhaps they could trade them with the natives. Two copies of the Bible and one of the Collected Dickens. Assorted toy soldiers. Powdered chocolate, snuff, and a tin of Lyle’s Golden Syrup. The snuff-case burst when Vaz picked it up, and he staggered off coughing again. Two pocket-watches, and one Modell 1890 folding knife. A case of fine artist’s paper, and another case of paints and variously coloured pencils. All intact. Frank confessed, somewhat embarrassed, that it had been his ambition to produce maps of Mars, or perhaps even watercolours. Seemed stupid now, he said. Magical supplies, sometimes hard to tell apart from the trading goods. Herbs and candles. Opium. A knife, thrice-blessed and edged with silver. Et cetera. Ritual paraphernalia—the painted cards, the metronome, the coloured candles. Pages and pages of calculations and observations; tables and logs.

  It was m
adness, that heap of clutter, all quite shockingly unnatural under that alien sky, that sinister light. Even saying the names out loud seemed blasphemous—Remington, Lyle’s, Taylors, Benson & Hedges. They worked through the night, laying out little piles, as if—Arthur thought—they were making a magic circle to keep out the darkness.

  With every moment that passed—with every moment that Atwood and Sun didn’t return—Arthur’s foreboding deepened.

  “Shaw,” hissed Vaz. “Shaw—what are we doing?”

  “I don’t know. Keeping busy.”

  “A vision of the heavens, Lord Atwood said. An opium-dream, I thought. Well, I will take His Lordship’s money. Since the fire I have been hard up, and London can be an unfriendly place.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr Vaz. I did look for you, after the fire. How did you escape?”

  “By the window. It’s the ordinary method, I think.”

  “Well, I’m glad.”

  “And now here we are.”

  “Yes. I hope Atwood’s paying you well.”

  “Well enough. My services are not cheap, I said—not after what happened at Mr Gracewell’s. Money is nothing, he said. I said that it was not nothing to me. He said, if you come with me on this voyage, Mr Vaz, you will never want for money again. The world and all its riches will be yours, if you still care for them. What would you want with money, he asked; all the money you could dream of, if you could have it? What would you say, Mr Shaw?”

  “A place by the sea, with Josephine. Leisure; peace.”

  “A ship, I said; a ship of my own.”

  “Yes. You told me. It sounds very nice.”

  “A fleet of ships, his Lordship said. Why not a fleet? If you want them. Why not? I believed him. Perhaps I still do. He never denied the danger. But I am not a coward. Mars, he said.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it true? You seem to know Lord Atwood. Is it true?”

  “In a manner of speaking. It’s rather metaphysical.”

  “Metaphysical?”

  “Spiritual.”

  “Spiritual? I am cold, Mr Shaw, and hungry. Does the spirit suffer from cold, or hunger?”

  “Shut up,” Payne interjected.

  “If this is a dream, Mr Shaw, why can’t I wake from it? What will happen to us here? What does Lord Atwood have to say for himself, now that we’re all here?”

  “He’s right,” Frank said.

  Ashton moaned.

  Dimmick returned from his wanderings. “Nothing,” he said, then sat in silence on the ground, toying with his knife.

  Arthur looked around for Atwood. He was off in the distance, huddled with Sun. Typical. Swanning off, leaving Arthur behind with the men—who were probably on the verge of mutiny. And who could blame them? He felt more than a little mutinous himself. Jumpy; paranoid. The cold was getting to him, and the weird light, and the awful sensation that someone, somewhere, was whispering, senseless and almost inaudible words carried on the cold wind.

  Well then. He made a small speech. Importance of morale. Keeping busy. Not the British thing (nor, he supposed, the way of Mr Vaz’s seafaring folk) to panic in adversity—now was it? Their return was a simple matter of calculation—of will. Atwood would see to it. Naturally. No cause for doubt. They’d soon be home, back in London, returning in triumph. The thrill of scientific exploration. The glory. First eyes to see. Et cetera. Even to him, it sounded cheap and threadbare. Frank and Payne eyed him with open contempt.

  Vaz found needle and thread and set about mending the tents. Arthur went off in search of Atwood. Behind him, Ashton started to whimper softly, like a child gripped by a nightmare, but the wind quickly swallowed the sound.

  * * *

  At one edge of their camp—call it south, why not—there was a rough circle of stones. They swam out of the haze as Arthur approached, looking at first rather like tree-trunks—tall, thin, jagged. If some natural process had deposited them, it was not one Arthur was familiar with. On the other hand, if they were the work of Martian Man, they looked at least as old as Stonehenge, and there was no sign of their makers now.

  Sun sat on the ground with his back against one of those stones. His legs were outstretched and his eyes half-closed. He looked the very picture of confidence and relaxation. Like Buddha, Arthur thought, asleep beneath the whatever-it-was tree.

  Atwood paced, still smoking. At that rate, he’d exhaust his supplies in no time. He tensed as he saw Arthur approach, then relaxed.

  “Shaw.”

  “Atwood. Sun.”

  Sun opened his eyes. “Join us, Mr Shaw. Lord Atwood and I are discussing our situation.”

  “So are the men,” Arthur said. “Frank and Payne are close to mutiny.”

  Atwood shook his head. “I don’t have time for that sort of idiocy. Where would they go? You read too much romantic fiction, Shaw.”

  “Ashton’s unwell.”

  “The terrain is inhospitable, I’ll admit. But, for God’s sake! The man was in Africa.”

  “Well, Africa wasn’t so bloody—” Arthur didn’t know how to finish that sentence. He waved a hand, to indicate everything in sight that was unearthly about the surface of Mars.

  Atwood wore something that vaguely resembled a military uniform—or at least the splendid regalia of some unknown Guards regiment. He wore a pistol at his waist. He was having a great deal of trouble relighting his cigarette. He cursed the thin Martian air.

  Sun closed his eyes again. He appeared to be meditating.

  “Well, Atwood?”

  “Well what?”

  “I’ve been taking an inventory of our supplies. I supposed you were thinking. Putting your genius to work. What have you determined? What happened?”

  “Archer! Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I say it would be disaster to invite her into our circle? Didn’t I warn everyone? Her and her bloody son. That—thing she calls her son.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The ritual, Shaw. Botched. I should have seen it! That thing, Shaw—scarcely human. One shudders to think how she made it. Mud and clay and bone. God! Soulless, you see—pure will. Her will. No wonder, then, that the ritual tore it apart. Cut its strings. Left it empty. No wonder it couldn’t survive the transit. And so, the whole sensitive experiment—botched! I could almost suspect she planned the thing. I could almost suspect she’s in league with the bloody Germans. I hope Jupiter cuts off her ugly old head.”

  “Speaking of Germans, I think I saw a pack of them sneaking up on the warehouse. Or someone up to no good, anyway.”

  “Yes. I know. Jupiter and Miss Didot are more than capable of dealing with them, I’m sure.”

  “Give me a bloody cigarette, will you, Atwood? God. Let’s see. Eighteen boxes of matches, counting the gifts—twenty matches to a box, does that sound right?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course it matters, Atwood. Our supplies are limited. I don’t know how long they’ll last. I don’t know how long they’ll need to last. Well—what’s the answer?”

  “Don’t be a fool, Shaw.” Atwood reached out and pinched Arthur’s shoulder. “Not flesh, not fat, not bone. Not really. Don’t you understand? This ill-fitting fleshly suit of yours, it’s made of nothing but your thoughts—your memories—your soul. What the Tibetans, wiser than us in these matters, call the tulpa—the thought-form.”

  Sun opened his eyes a crack, and looked at Atwood with what seemed to Arthur like suspicion.

  Atwood tapped his head with his fingers. He looked somewhat wild-eyed, as if he were struggling to convince himself of an impossibility. “Thus we are condensed from the stuff of the aether—poured as if into a vessel shaped by our will, a palpable materialization of the spirit. And so we bring with us the trappings of our daily life. The weaker minds will find it hard to say good-bye to them. Will find it hard to understand. To purify—to cut away what’s not needed. So, for the comfort of the men, no harm done. Morale. I don’t care what your inventory reports, Shaw. The true
adept needs no food, no water.”

  “True enough,” Sun said.

  “Let’s see you throw away your bloody cigarettes, then, Atwood.”

  “Calm down, Shaw. Keep a level head, for God’s sake.”

  “Answer me, then. What do we do now? How do we get home? Atwood? You promised we’d be here only an hour. We were to come here, show it could be done, and go back.”

  They had tried to perform the ritual in reverse, to relinquish their grip on Mars and pass backwards through the void, to wake in London. It didn’t work. They remained stubbornly Mars-bound.

  “That is what Lord Atwood said,” Sun agreed.

  “We’ve been here all night. What’s happened? Botched, you said. What do you mean by that?”

  Atwood smoked and stared at the horizon.

  “We do not know the way home,” Sun said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “We are too deep. We cannot merely wake, as if we were in a dream. We are here, Mr Shaw.”

  Arthur looked up. The sky was a haze of dark cloud.

  Sun shrugged.

  “I see.”

  Arthur smoked his cigarette down. He felt, frankly, a little numb. His hand shook—if it was his hand. It was almost a relief, after hours of foreboding, to have his fears confirmed. He could almost laugh. He’d done his best to save Josephine; no one could say he hadn’t given it his best go, could they?

  “Trial upon trial,” Atwood said. “That is the magician’s path. We will be the stronger for it.”

  Not for the first time, Arthur considered hitting him. Instead, he slumped down beside Sun.

  “Damn it!” He stood again. “We need a destination. Something to keep us busy. If we sit here much longer, we’ll go mad.”

  “I quite agree,” Atwood said. “Well said.”

  “Lord Atwood and I have spoken,” Sun said. “We have a plan. In fact, we have two plans; we are spoilt for choice, Mr Shaw.”

  “The stars,” Atwood said. “We need to begin again. To plan our course home. We must find high ground, from which to observe the stars.”