“You need plenty of rest,” said Dr Caldecott, wagging a finger at Sweet, “and plenty of water. You’ve been out in the sun a little too long, young man. I understand your mind’s been playing tricks on you.”
Sweet nodded.
“I’m sorry this has been quite the palaver,” Monty said softly, “but it is a matter of utmost importance.”
Monty unbuttoned his jacket, holding out his pinky as he did so—just as the ant-headed man had done out in the foothills—and reached inside. He pulled out an envelope, not a gun, but all Sweet could think was that it was a court order. The law had finally caught up.
“Now, look, I’m sorry,” Sweet said hitching himself up on his elbows. He wasn’t prepared for how sore his throat would be and almost choked on his words. “I’m real sorry,” he said with his hand on his throat. “If I could change a damn thing I would in an instant.”
“Oh, it’s really no bother,” Monty smiled, “it was just a matter of time.”
“I did some stupid things,” Sweet said, “probably hurt a lot of people, and I wish that I could take it all back.”
Monty frowned. He handed Sweet the envelope. “I’m not really here about any of that,” he said, “it just would make my life a good deal easier if we could avoid probate altogether.”
The envelope contained a copy of Leland Sweet Snr’s last will and testament. Since the publication of his book, he had amassed quite a sizeable fortune in royalties. It seemed that his stories of abduction had captured the attention of a lot readers who could only dream of the Martians coming to America. Montgomery Brown was L. Sweet’s lawyer.
“It’s all yours,” he smiled.
Leland Sweet Jr was sitting up now, looking at the contents of the letter in astonishment.
“He left it all to me?” Sweet said.
“Yes,” Monty said, “by survivorship it’s all yours… every penny.”
“He left it to me?”
“Yes, he left it to you.”
“What I mean is, he bequeathed it, or whatever the word is. He said, ‘I leave all my ill gotten gains to my dearest ‘Kid’… Leland Sweet Jr’… something like that?”
“Technically speaking,” Monty was looking for the right words, “something like that.”
“What do you mean, technically?”
“He didn’t stipulate, but the law stipulates. Your father’s estate is automatically devised to a surviving next of kin.”
“So, by default?”
“Yes.”
And there it was. His father hadn’t left him the money out of some consideration, some act of love for his only son, it was by default. Sweet’s father had never given him a damn thing except trouble. He hadn’t even bothered to give him his own first name. He could have been Mathew, Mark, Luke or John—something biblical, but no, he was Leland Sweet Jr, and Leland Sweet Jr did not want the goddamn money.
But he took the money anyway.
“You’ve gotta take what you can get,” he said.
But what Leland Sweet Jr didn’t do was spend a single dime of it on himself. Instead he mailed a number of cheques to the residents of Sun City, not only reimbursing them for the money he’d conned them out of but enough for each household to buy three or four vacuum cleaners if they felt the need—American or British. And for William T. Hunnicut he provided a large collection of books because knowledge is a valuable thing.
The rest he gave to the worker’s unions protesting the mechanicals.
As for what became of Leland Sweet Jr, nobody knows, but the last I heard was there was a guy bussing tables in a diner outside Boulder, Colorado, and his name was something Sweet.
The Martian Waste Land
an epic verse, by
ADAM ROBERTS
April is the cruellest month, bringing
Martians out of a dead world, mixing
Aliens and humans, feeding
Red weed with spring rain.
We tried our best to keep warm, hiding
There among the late snow, feeding
Our little life with dried tubers.
Tripods surprised us, coming over the Chilterns
With their gullshriek ulla! uulllaa!
My cousin, he took me out through the ruins,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
“MR THOMAS ELIOT?” said the official.
And Eliot was caught. He almost closed the door its grudged open-inch then and there, but, somehow, couldn’t bring himself to. Instead he opened the door slightly wider, almost to the full one-quarter, and peered through. Skin so pale it had a faintly greenish quality. Hair ruthlessly combed and oiled close and neat against the scalp. He wore a waistcoat, an old-fashioned pinned collar and a calmly coloured silk cravat. Respectable enough. The official glanced past him at the one-room apartment: its bed unmade, bottles and tins stacked against the wall. A single electrical light bulb descended, naked and unashamed, from the ceiling. The paint on the wall had seen better days. Uncertain-looking stalagmites of piled-up books on the floor.
“May I come in, sir?”
“If it is concerning,” Eliot began, peeping past the official at the two Security of the Realm constables behind him. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Though it might seem, to the casual reader, as if my support for Doctor Davenport Spry’s work is in some small sense qualified, I can assure you that, if one takes the larger perspective, my support for the government as a whole remains... ah, remains...”
“Mr Eliot?” the officer interrupted. “Please. Our visit has nothing to do with your Criterion articles. May we come in?”
Eliot sighed. “Not,” he said, with soft American precision, “that the authorities will have cause to worry about my little magazine much longer. Finances, having been precarious for a long time, have now tipped into utter desuetude. Come in, gentlemen, come in.”
There were only two chairs, only one of which still had stuffing in its seat. Eliot offered this latter to the official and took the shabbier one himself. “My gas only operates between five and seven,” he explained, “and, given the lateness of the hour, I regret I am unable to offer you or these other gentlemen tea.”
“One of them, Mr Eliot, is a lady.”
Eliot’s lugubrious face did not alter its expression, although his prominent, fleshy ears pinked a little. “I apologise,” he said, his accent skewing more American. “The helmets. And the padded coats. They mean I can’t necessarily discern—but, please, what may I do for you Mr—?”
“Smethwick.”
For a while nobody spoke. Eliot looked up at the helmeted guards. “You are perhaps wondering at the—I cannot avoid the word—squalor in which I live. I am not without means, family means, but nonetheless the money I can claim for my own comfort is insufficient. I have certain medical expenses relating to my estranged wife which I consider it my duty to honour. And the position I used to hold in the bank... well. We all know how hard the reconstruction has been on the banking world. When Lloyd’s closed I was left jobless.”
“They invested in the past,” said Smethwick. “They did not see how completely adapting Martian technology would alter the complexion of our world.”
“Banks are conservative institutions by nature,” agreed Eliot. “And I am a conservative individual. A humble poet, unrich and unambitious. Living a life obscure, dragg’d on, Even as those dead unepitaph’d, who lie In stone coffins at Orchomenus. To quote the,” and Eliot smiled shyly at Smethwick, as if checking to see if his shibboleth had reached the ears of a fellow aficionado, “ah!—famous poet. I wonder why you have come knocking at my humble door.”
Smethwick seemed to ponder this. “Sir,” he said, “I must tell you, I am not much of a reader.”
Eliot waited.
“But,” Smethwick went on, “I understand that you are a poet.”
Eliot nodded very slowly.
“In which case I must ask you to accompany me, sir,�
�� said Smethwick, getting to his feet. “I don’t pretend to know how, but it seems that your poetry may be what stands between us and extinction as a species.”
Eliot did not flinch. “I see,” he said.
“I am not given to exaggerations,” Smethwick added, surprised himself by the other man’s lack of surprise. “But I repeat: your poetry could be what brings peace to the solar system and save all of us.”
Eliot got to his feet, his knees joints snapping like twigs in a fire as he flexed them. “If I’m going out,” he said, in a distracted voice, “then I will need my hat.”
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubble? Sons of Mars,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A thicket of alien herbage, where the sun beats,
There is shadow under this red weed,
(Come in under the shadow of this red weed),
And I will show you something different from either
Your tripod at morning striding forward
Or its shadow at evening rising to meet it;
I will show you fear in an earthly germ.
Laut blies die Waffe
Der Heimat zu
Mein Marsmensch Gaffer,
Wo weilest du?
Ruined cities
And other withered stumps of time
London wrecked and deserted, desperate
Footsteps shuffling down rat’s alley
Under the night’s sky, as the aimed heat-ray
Spreads out into fiery points
Glows into noise, then is savagely still.
Oed’ und leer, der Mars.
ELIOT SAT STIFFLY in the rear of the staff car, only too evidently unused to such luxury. The vehicle’s legs flowed smoothly in their millipede motion. In a few minutes they had crossed the Thames and were heading south. The bulbs and towers of the rebuilt capital shimmered with light; aerial craft hummed and flew. The light turned Eliot’s glasses intermittently into flashing silver coins.
“Incomprehensible to me, really,” said Smethwick. “The changes I’ve seen. I’m guessing, sir, you didn’t witness the ninety-eight with your own eyes?”
“I was in the United States,” said Eliot, distantly. “And still in school. But I remember when I first came to this city. A patchwork of desolation and extraordinary industry.”
“Old-fashioned of me, I know,” said Smethwick. “But I wish we had been able to rebuild on our terms. Not to rely on the Martian technology and so on. Mr Eliot, I have been asked to bring to your attention the terms of the Official Secrets Act of 1889. What you are about to discover must not be disclosed to anybody. You understand, I am sure.”
“Oh, I say,” said Eliot, like a child, his face against the window. “A rocket!” The craft itself was too dark to be seen against the night-sky, but the orange-white flare of its exhaust made a brilliant bulb of light resting on top of a slender stem of gleaming exhaust gas. A moment later the rumble of the lift-off reached the car. The whole vehicle trembled with the reverberation, as if excited.
“Dartford Spaceport,” said Smethwick, matter-of-factly. “Mr Eliot, you follow the news, and are aware of the battles currently being fought between the troops of the empire and the last Martian legionaries?”
Eliot turned his wide face to look at the other man. His glasses flashed Morse-code as the car rushed past a set of irregularly-paced streetlights. “Of course.”
“And that the Martians launched a second invasion—of Venus?”
“There have been rumours of course,” said Eliot. “But it is alarming to hear them officially confirmed.”
“It puts us in a ticklish situation, rather,” said Smethwick. “Potentially facing an enemy on two fronts at once. So anything that gives us an edge—anything that we can use in our fight—could be vital.”
“Poetry,” said Eliot, in a low voice. “As a weapon.”
When Lil’s husband got re-mobilized, I said—
I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself,
BOWS AND ARROWS AGAINST THE LIGHTNING
There’s no way Albert should be fighting them sky-monsters
You got to know when you’re outclassed, I said
Discretion the better part of valour, and think of poor Albert,
Been in the army four years, he don’t want to face,
Tripods taller than St Pauls and firing all that heat?
Why I can’t even bear to hear their ulla, I said.
Oh can’t you, she said. Something o’ that, I said.
Then I’ll know who not to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.
BOWS AND ARROWS AGAINST THE LIGHTNING
If I don’t like it you can’t make me pick up a rifle, I said.
Let the men fight if they must but leave us out of it.
You ought to be ashamed, she said, to be so lily-livered.
You are a proper fool, I said.
Well, if Albert gets blasted to atoms, there it is, I said,
BOWS AND ARROWS AGAINST THE LIGHTNING
Well, that Sunday Albert was home, minus an arm,
And they asked me up to help ’im change his bandages—
BOWS AND ARROWS AGAINST THE LIGHTNING
BOWS AND ARROWS AGAINST THE LIGHTNING
Take cover Bill! Get down Lou. Gedown May. Gedown! Gedown!
Uulllaa.
Uulllaaaaaa.
THE END OF the journey was a large military compound, in woodland somewhere on the Surrey and Kent border. It was, according to a large illuminated clock hanging over the main building, midnight in London and six in the morning at Mars Olympus Base.
Once out of the car Eliot stretched his legs in front of himself; one, then the other, like a cat.
Inside, Smethwick waved his security clearance at the guard behind a desk, and hurried Eliot through double-doors, down a corridor and into a wide room, busy with activity. A large illuminated screen displayed the entire Mappa Martis, pink and white with darker red for the mountains. Blips and points of different-coloured lights displayed military emplacements and manoeuvres. Women in uniform passed back and forth with bundles of paper, or items of portable electrical equipment. Tobacco smoke thickened the air and lent a hazy softness to the lights.
A stocky man with a large head was standing staring at the display, hands on his ample hips. He was in pinstripe trousers, a pale green shirt and a waistcoat that matched neither cloth, and his tie had been loosened so far it was on the edge of being entirely undone. He turned an ugly visage on Eliot.
“This the poet-wallah?” he said, in a throaty rumble.
Eliot nodded and shook his hand, trying not to stare at the fat chickpea-shaped lump at the end of the man’s nose.
“Morgan is my name,” he said, “but I shan’t bore you with my rank and so on, since you’re not in the Army yourself. Good of you to come, Mr Habbakuk.”
“Eliot.”
“Quite so. My people will take you to your berth in a few minutes, but before you turn in I want to show you something.”
He stumped out of the room and Eliot, glancing at Smethwick, followed him. Morgan did not look behind himself as he stormed down the corridor and did not bother to return the salutes of the various guards and sentries he passed. “Looks like a command centre, that room,” he barked. It took a moment before Eliot realised he was being addressed.
“Somewhat,” he replied.
“Not, though. Mars is too far away for us to be able to command the assault from here. It’s just there to give us a picture of how things are going. In the war. Out of date as soon as it’s posted on the big screen. Here we are.”
They had reached a metal door, heavily studded with carbuncular rivets. “Now,” said Morgan, briskly. “Through here is a Martian—alright? Ugly beggar, so ready yourself.”
“A specimen, you mean?” said Eliot.
“Live one,” barked Morgan loudly. “Best medical science money can buy has kept him free o
f the Spanish flu, and kept him fed, and so on. We’ve been interrogating him.”
“Gracious me,” said Eliot.
“Quite,” said Morgan, and he nodded his head so vigorously his hefty jowls flapped and wobbled. “You’re not to speak of this. Not to speak of it at all to anyone, understand?”
Morgan inserted a key the size of a pistol into a keyhole, turned it like he was trying to break somebody’s neck. Then he heaved the door open. Inside it was cold—so chilly that feathers of breath became visible at Eliot’s mouth, and he clutched his coat around his neck. Two guards in winter gear stood to attention as Morgan entered.
In the centre of the room was the Martian, floating in a tank of some fluid that glowed pale white-green. Tubes ran into its fat black body. Its skin shiny as liquorish and grotesque, like a cancerous tumour come alive. Dish eyes turned to peer at Eliot as he entered, and the ghastly hooked beak opened and closed menacingly. Eliot gazed, appalled. It was infinitely more monstrous and upsetting to see a live Martian than he could ever have imagined. The three-quarters-preserved specimen in formaldehyde at the Natural History Museum—which he had visited many times—had none of the creeping dread and unheimlich hideousness of the live beast.
“Clever sort of kafir it is, really,” Morgan was saying. “Learned English remarkable quick. But its octopoid beak isn’t suited to pronouncing the words, so we’ve rigged up a sort of—what’s the word the boffins use? Interface. Like a typewriter keyboard, but much larger and more versatile. It operates it with those weedy-looking tentacles. Come on Flobbo,” Morgan shouted. “You’re not usually this reticent when it comes to joining in the conversation!”
The creature in the tank twitched, worked some of its tentacles and turned its eyes on Morgan. “General,” came a blandly uninflected voice through a loudspeaker. “How pleasant to see you again. And this is Eliot?”
“This,” confirmed Morgan, putting a hand on Eliot’s shoulder, “is Eliot.”
Scarlet Traces: An Anthology Based on H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds Page 7