Scarlet Traces: An Anthology Based on H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds

by Edited by Ian Edginton

  And if going back home meant returning to the plant and the punishing grind of the assembly line? Well, Sam thought, then maybe he wasn’t in such a great hurry to get back, either.

  Provided they could continue to avoid being in the line of fire, of course.

  “Well?” Eddie’s voice cut through Sam’s mental haze, sounding annoyed, and Sam realized that he’d tuned the corporal out again.

  “Sorry, Eddie, I was miles away.”

  “I said, I guess we may as well get over to the supply depot and fetch those medical supplies, right? Seeing as we’ve failed spectacularly to procure any suitable libations, that is.”

  Sam gave him a blank look.

  “Since we haven’t been able to find a bloody drink,” Eddie translated.

  “Right,” Sam replied with a nod.

  They made their way back to the juncture at Piccadilly Circus and then headed down the corridor to the supply depot. Everything was as they’d left it the last time they passed by this way, the truck still left unattended in the middle of the thoroughfare, litter and debris scattered everywhere.

  “Quiet as a tomb, eh?” Eddie said. When Sam grunted an assent, he added, “You know, we haven’t laid eyes on a single living soul since we left the medical bay.”

  “Except for them that’s out fighting,” Sam countered. “You can see them from the windows, if you squint.”

  “That’s close enough to the action for my liking,” Eddie answered.

  They reached the entrance to the supply depot a short time later. The counter where the quartermaster’s clerk was normally stationed with requisition forms was untenanted, which didn’t come as much surprise, but the reinforced gate which led to the storerooms was standing open and unlocked, which somewhat did.

  “I think those are the medical supplies we’re after,” Sam said, pointing out a crate with the Surgeon Major’s name printed on it sitting off to one side of the counter, on this side of the gate.

  “No doubt,” Eddie said, and stepped around the counter heading towards the storeroom gate. “But maybe we should just check inside, make sure there isn’t anything else we need?”

  Sam’s heart beat a little faster as he followed Eddie through the gate into the storeroom beyond. Getting caught pilfering supplies was a one way ticket to the brig.

  “Eddie, I don’t know if we should...” he began, but the corporal was already inside and clear across the room, examining equipment racks on the far side of the room.

  There was another lattice window inside, same as in the canteen and the officers’ mess, reaching from the floor to the ceiling towering high overhead. While Eddie rummaged around in supply crates, Sam walked over to the window and peered out through the latticework.

  He could see the front lines even clearer from here. Had the battle moved closer to the city, or was it simply that he had a better vantage from the supply depot than from the other windows he’d tried? Either way, he could clearly make out the infantry and the mechanized divisions, going toe-to-toe with the ranks of the Martian tripods. Green flashes of deathray blasts were matched with rising clouds of dust wherever artillery shells hit home, and even though sound didn’t travel far through the thin Martian atmosphere Sam fancied that he could feel the vibrations of the explosions through the ground beneath his feet.

  The flyboys of the Air Corps were nowhere to be seen in the ruddy skies overhead, but as Sam watched he saw lights glinting off little slivers that seemed to be falling towards the ground from somewhere high overhead. Some sort of aerial bombardment, maybe? Or perhaps even an orbital assault? But that didn’t make sense. How could they tell friend from foe at that altitude? Anything that struck the battlefield from that high up was as likely to hit their own forces as it was to hit the enemy.

  “Well, would you look at that!” Eddie said from across the room.

  But Sam was too occupied by what he was seeing out the window to turn around or answer. The little slivers that were falling from on high seemed to be opening up like flowers in bloom, and dark clouds were pouring out of each of them.

  “We’ve hit the jackpot!” Eddie shouted.

  As Sam watched, the dark clouds spread out into a hail of tiny black dots that rained down on the battlefield as far as the eye could see in either direction.

  “What the devil...?” Sam muttered, and then he fell silent, eyes widening.

  Everything that the black dots hit—the men and the machines, ally and enemy alike, even the rocks and soil itself—began falling up back into the sky.

  Soldiers in vacuum suits flailed their arms and legs helplessly as they tried to grab hold of anything steady and solid, and failed. Martian tripods writhed and twisted their mechanical limbs as they rose up like spiders blown away by gale force winds. Rocks as big as icebergs careened into one another as they rose like lost balloons into the sky.

  “I told you it was our lucky day!”

  Sam wheeled around, bewildered, to see Eddie holding a bottle of brandy in either hand.

  “It’s the good stuff, too,” Eddie added, a broad smile on his face, and tossed one of the bottles to Sam, who barely managed to catch it in a fumbling embrace. Then Eddie sat down with his back to the window and opened the other bottle.

  “But... but...” Sam stammered, scarcely able to form a thought.

  “Oh, stop worrying about getting caught and have a drink, Sam.” Eddie took a long pull straight from the bottle’s mouth, and then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “It’ll be a damned sight more enjoyable than anything you can see out that bloody window, that’s for sure. I’m already feeling a bit lightheaded, myself.”

  Sam looked down at the bottle in his hands, his fingers numb. He could feel the ground trembling beneath his feet, and the light from beyond the window began to fade to darkness.

  “I just knew today was going to be our lucky day,” Eddie repeated. “I could feel it in my bones.”

  The Mechanical Marionette Mob

  a diversion for all the family, by

  MAURA MCHUGH

  A HUSH FALLS as the crimson curtains rise.

  At the front of the small stage a motorised rooster perches. Painted shiny black and metallic orange, its head tilted to a starry sky, it opens its beak with a whirr of gears and emits a realistic crowing call for dawn. Above, the firmament shifts: the stars click shut, the colour shifts from midnight blue to azure bright, and a blazing sun sails upwards, lighting the stage and revealing it as a lurid, seething red: the awful Martian tendril tide sweeping across a rolling English landscape.

  In the cramped auditorium the audience shifts and issues a light hiss. The invasion is a scarred memory despite the gap of a generation.

  There is one hopeful spot untouched by the blight: a pool, shimmering. From it a jointed silver arm emerges holding a polished sword. It glows in the sunlight. A collective surge of hope rushes through the crowd, an awe-struck response to a mythic symbol of justice.

  A cunningly-made puppet knight, in full armour, clanks onto the stage—the cockerel, frightened, spins across the front and off-stage in an amusing flurry of wings. In the background choral music swells, piped in from a gramophone recording. The knight falls to its knees in a posture of prayer: the sword takes flight and glides towards the knight.

  Oooo gasps the audience, enchanted, wondering how the wires are not visible. The magic of the story remains intact.

  The knight stands, seizes the sword, and brandishes it three times in the air. The arm disappears into the pool, and the morass of bloody Martian infection recoils from the knight, who moves further into the stage, lit by glorious purpose; behind its metal feet green grass and flowers emerge.

  But a hideous cry rises, ULLA!, and a tall Martian tripod stalks onto the stage, pea-coloured smoke issuing from its articulated joints, glittering tentacles waving, and its baleful red eye fixed upon the small knight. Strapped to its back is a basket containing little people, their arms waving in distress.

  Get the
bastard! shouts one agitated man in a cracked, hate-filled voice.

  A flare flickers in the Martian eye but the knight raises its sword in a defensive movement. A sizzle and the sword’s blade glares as bright as the sun. The tripod staggers and one of its knees buckles, forcing its brazen hood closer to the earth.

  The knight makes a supernatural leap atop the Martian’s helmet. The tentacles whip at the champion but it swings its sword, and snap, the tentacles separate from the machine, to fall and flip on the ground like beheaded snakes. The knight plunges its sword into the head of the invader—it drops onto the ground and the red writhing carpet retreats completely. The basket snaps open and a man, woman, and child tumble out and stagger to their feet. They raise their arms to the sky in jubilation.

  The knight jumps lightly from the defeated machine and lands in centre stage.

  Its armour splits and falls off, revealing a beautiful woman with shining golden tresses—it is Britannia. The land itself has repelled the invader. An oak tree grows up behind her and blossoms into leaf.

  She lifts her sword and the music piped in changes to blast a familiar tune:

  Still more maje-e-estic shalt thou rise,

  More dre-e-e-e-eadful from each foreign stroke,

  More dreadful, dreadful from each foreign stroke,

  Loud blast above us, loud blast that tears the skies

  Serves but to ro-o-o-ot thy native oak.

  The audience leaps to its feet and join in at the chorus with fervent pride so the song booms throughout the space.

  Rule, Britannia!

  Britannia, rule the waves.

  Britons never, never, never will be slaves.

  Rule, Britannia!

  Britannia, rule the waves.

  Britons never, never, never will be slaves.

  Moments later the pleased crowd presses onto Soho’s bustling streets, past the illuminated sign stating: “The Mechanical Marionette Mob present: Britain Repels the Martian Invasion.”

  They chatter and laugh, buoyed by the singing, and disperse into the city lit by Martian technology by hopping into Black Crabs, nipping down to catch a bullet tube, or ascending for the Overground Monorail. Above them the shining towers of London stretch toward the stars.

  It’s as if Camelot has been erected anew.

  BACKSTAGE, BELSA WALKS carefully along the panels, wires and controls of the puppet show, finishing her tech check against a list on a clipboard. Her meticulous audit of the systems and the individual models adds thirty minutes to the reset period between each performance, but it has prevented any major failure during one of the Mob’s shows.

  Waldo waits by the entry to the narrow space behind the backdrop for Belsa to emerge. He’s wiping his hands with a cloth stained with grease. Since there’s no one about he’s using his unskinned prosthetic arm, with its joints and cogs clearly visible. His metal left hand moves deftly, cleaning the dirt off his warm right hand.

  “The smoke duct in Quilp’s back leg is blocked,” he says. Waldo has named all the Martian models after villains in Dickens’ novels.

  Belsa looks up and the light hits the livid scars on her jawline and long neck. Scars from being captured by a Martian vessel and thrown into one of their wire baskets, or so she told Waldo one time when she was working on an upgrade to his arm. She has similar lesions on her wrists, and perhaps elsewhere, but she always wears wide trousers, a waistcoat and shirt, and her trademark white lab coat. After all she is a doctor, but of what Waldo is unsure. She seems expert in many fields of science. He has worked with Dr Belsa Sullivan for ten years but she remains an enigma to him.

  “Swap him out for Heep,” she says. “I overhauled him completely last night.”

  He nods, pauses before adding, “The lights were burning in the workshop at five this morning. You getting enough kip?”

  Her lips tweak into a sardonic slant, “And why were you ambling by so early? Returning from a tryst?”

  He chuckles and looks away from her. “I might’ve been visiting a friend.”

  She passes by Waldo and lays a hand on his shoulder in a kindly manner. “We all need friends.”

  After the first year of working as Belsa’s assistant he put aside his first foolish crush on her. He had never seen her exhibit any interest in romance. For her there was only engineering experiments and constructing her shows.

  “Coo-ee,” a voice calls from the auditorium. The woman’s nasal tone and Austrian accent gives her identity away instantly.

  “Coming, Hedwig,” yells Belsa, whose face lights up.

  Bustling up the aisle the young woman with a mackintosh belted tightly at her waist exudes her usual magnetic energy. Her black framed glasses are beaded with rain. She pulls a Hermès headscarf off her neat black bob and snaps it so the water strafes off.

  “Liebling,” she declares, arms wide to greet Belsa, “entschuldige, bitte I missed the show. Is Britannia better today?”

  “She’s much improved,” Belsa says, and the two women kiss each other on the cheeks, European-style. Waldo thinks Belsa’s accent deepens with a Germanic tinge around Hedwig, but they often speak to each other in German so it may be by association. But London has become a gilded Babel, the centre of immigration for the world, as artists, creators, scientists and engineers rushed to be part of the massive rebuilding and unpicking of Martian secrets. The Empire has never been as strong as it is in 1937.

  Hedwig perches on the padded arm of an aisle seat, produces a silver case, and taps out a Sulima cigarette. She waves the case at them with a raised elegant eyebrow. Waldo takes one eagerly; the Turkish brand is a novelty, and Hedwig occasionally bribes him with them when she wants access to Belsa in her workshop. Normally, no one is allowed in, but Hedwig had a way of bending the world to her desires.

  “Waldo,” she said one day as they shared a cigarette over a cup of tea at the workshop. “I escaped a desperate cage once so now I refuse restrictions.” She crushed her cigarette into the cracked china saucer they used as an ashtray. “If I want something l get it.”

  Belsa dismisses the offered cigarette with a frown.

  “Oh bella Belsa,” Hedwig croons, “don’t be so self-righteous.”

  “They’re poison,” Belsa says flatly.

  “Ja, of course,” and she blows a stream of smoke through her nostrils, “but so is beer, and you drink that sometimes.”

  Belsa shakes her head, and her unruly crop of curls bounce. “I should know better.”

  “Indeed, you should.” Hedwig laughs, a rich throaty sound, and jumps up and hooks her arm into Belsa’s elbow crook. “Come, let us talk signal frequencies. So much safer! Have I told you my latest ideas?”

  At this they drop down seats at the front of the theatre, sit together, and lapse into German. Waldo likes to think they do so because it’s Hedwig’s native tongue, and not to ensure he cannot know their secrets.

  Waldo leaves the women and returns to his tasks, including collecting the cash from the front desk and tallying up the take. Despite the popularity of the picture houses, their shows continue to do well. Belsa believes that people still yearn for a visceral experience.

  “Theatre is the oldest form, Waldo,” she said to him once as they laboured over installing a new backdrop. “Everything else is flat. You can smell the smoke and see the mirrors in our magic. Despite all the marvels we have gleaned from the Martians people will always want to experience something tangible. Of the flesh.”

  He’d wondered at her contradiction. Someone so focused on understanding science and yet believing it has limits.

  “Not limits, Waldo,” she’d replied, when he said this to her. “Its purpose.” She rubbed her wrists in an unconscious movement she did sometimes. Feeling old scars. “We are building upon the technology of invaders. Will we enslave ourselves or be freed by the future we are rushing toward? I hope we aim for liberty, not tyranny.”

  Waldo grunted at that. “Don’t say that too loud. The Empire’s run on the sweat of the
oppressed.” His grandfather served in the Gurkha Rifles regiment and retired in London, his mother an Irish seamstress, and he was at heart a socialist, if a cynical one. “We just bow our heads to new masters.”

  She’d stopped and looked at him, and she seemed so sad. “Then we must raise them up, Waldo.”

  WHEN WALDO RETURNS an hour later the two women are standing, at the end of one of their famous long goodbyes.

  “Television is the future, Belsa. The BBC is snapping up smart people.”

  “Well they hired you!”

  Hedwig snaps a little bow. “Someone must improve their hotchpot technology, and they hire women.”

  Belsa laughs. “I noticed the spectacles.”

  Hedwig rolls her eyes in an exaggerated fashion. “Myopia makes you smarter.”

  She fishes a card from her pocket.

  “Please take the producer’s card. She asked for you expressly. They want a puppet show set in space. You are top of their list.”

  Belsa reads the card out loud. “Gisela Domin.”

  “You are too talented to scrape a living in this pokey hall.”

  Belsa places both hands in her coat pockets and sets her shoulders in a stubborn line. “I like my pokey hall.”

  Hedwig kisses her on both cheeks. “You were made for better.” She waves at them as she departs.

  As Waldo approaches he thinks he hears Belsa mutter, “I was made for far worse.” She stares at Hedwig’s retreating back with a strange expression of wariness.

  “Takings are up.”

  She nods in an absentminded way, and he notices she’s turning the card over in her pocket.

  “My Mam thinks the Martians spy on us through the telly. But she has some strange notions.”

  “I’ve met her before.”