Miss Stone stepped forward, right hand outstretched confidently. “Mr Carter, I presume,” she said.
He accepted the proffered hand, losing himself in those limpid blue eyes for a moment. “The pleasure’s all mine.”
“Miss Stone is my assistant,” Professor Langford said, breaking the moment between them. “She has been studying the Martians’ language with me for some time and has made some significant breakthroughs in translating aspects of it.”
“Really? You must tell me more, Miss Stone,” Carter said.
“Gladly,” she replied coyly.
UNSURPRISINGLY, IT WAS the images locked within the ancient murals that were the key. While the symbols employed by the alien alphabet were not hieroglyphs, such as those of Pharaonic Egypt, they had been used to repeatedly annotate the paintings in what Professor Langford referred to as the Cydonian Tapestry—not that it was a tapestry, of course, but then neither was its namesake in Bayeux. But what it did have in common with the Norman embroidery, commemorating the Battle of Hastings, was that it told a story through the pictures that had been meticulously painted upon it countless aeons before.
By trial and error, Miss Stone had managed to link certain combinations of symbols—he hesitated to call them letters—with images repeated throughout the massive frieze.
Carter imagined the original inhabitants of this world slaving to create this secret masterpiece, just as the kings of Upper and Lower Egypt had set their people to decorating their magnificent tombs with their notable achievements in life as well as their as yet un-travelled journeys into the afterlife.
What Miss Stone lacked was an understanding of the detail, but with another agile mind to bounce ideas off, and sometimes to provide alternative suggestions, between them they were able to unlock the meaning behind other sections of the frieze and the blocks of bordered text that Carter liked to refer to as cartouches, for want of a better word.
At times, in order to make any progress at all, they were forced to take wild flights of fancy, which more often than not led to dead-ends. But every once in a while they would result in the cryptographers tapping into seams of hieroglyphic gold. And as their understanding of the alien language grew so did their deeper mutual understanding of each other.
So they continued to work together to decode the secrets of the aeons-old Martian tongue, while Lord Carnarvon supervised their team of diggers as they continued to clear the detritus left by the invaders when this place had been one of their hives, revealing yet more of the astonishing frieze in the process. But there were still gaps in their knowledge of the alien language, and not so much gaps as great gaping holes.
But then, one day, when the Egyptians were busy clearing rubble and other rubbish from one of the other chambers within the Head, Lord Carnarvon, accompanied by Professor Langford, joined Howard Carter and Miss Stone in the Cydonian Tapestry chamber and said, “So what wonderful things have you uncovered this time?”
Carter stepped back from the lamp-lit section of the great curving wall they had been concentrating on for the last two days, surveyed the great work of the alien ancients, and saw their story as clearly as he had seen the truths hidden within the treasures of Tutankhamun’s tomb.
“This was once a vibrant, fertile world,” he began, losing himself in the tale, becoming the narrator of a story set down millions of years before, “until the invaders came, bringing with them war on a planetary scale. The cataclysm followed fast on their heels. The invaders’ home was destroyed and the resulting planetary shift robbed Mars of its atmosphere.”
“That cosmic consequence of the birth-world’s destruction wiped out the indigenous species before they could be assimilated,” said Miss Stone, taking up the tale. “Our plan remained incomplete and we were trapped here. All we could do was watch and wait, until your kind had evolved into something we could use.”
Carter looked at her, consternation write large upon his face. There was a distant look in her eyes, as she waxed lyrical about the Mars that once was, rather than Mars as it was now, in 1923. The way she spoke about that former age, it was as if she were recalling her own memories of that time, almost as if she had been there to witness what was laid out in the mural first-hand.
As she continued to reminisce about the end of days, the archaeologist’s assistant began to advance towards him.
“Miss Stone?” he managed, perturbed by this unexpected turn of events.
“It was so beautiful,” she said, her glittering sapphire eyes glazing over, “the comet-tails of the meteorites turning pink in the planet’s atmosphere as pieces of our broken world fell upon this one.”
She continued to move towards him, and began to unbutton her blouse as she did so.
“What are you doing?” Carter yelled at her. “Keep your clothes on, please, Miss Stone!”
But then his protests died in his throat as, backed up against the bowl of the mural wall, unable to take his eyes from her chemise, he noticed something moving beneath the cotton, independent of the action of her fingers. And as she pulled open her blouse the full horror of her true form was revealed.
Her torso was little more than a hideous alien face. What he had taken to be the bulge of her breasts beneath the fabric were in fact the protruding orbits of the face’s sunken eye-sockets. Eyes, as black as obsidian pearls, blinked at him, as if just coming to full wakefulness. Below the eyes, a beaked mouth champed, without making a sound, while emerging from her ribcage on either side were myriad stunted pseudopods, the very same that had helped push open the blouse.
In his panic, as the thing—he could no longer think of it as Miss Stone—reached for him with half-formed tentacles, he shouted to Lord Carnarvon for help. But his sponsor had problems of his own. Out of the corner of his eye, Carter saw the lord wrestling with Professor Langford. The archaeologist had Carnarvon’s hands gripped tightly in his, and was pressing himself upon the old man, a nest of tentacles rippling from between the popping buttons of his waistcoat.
It was all too much for Carter. At least when he had opened the tomb of Tutankhamun, despite all the talk of curses, the Pharaoh’s mummy hadn’t tried to kill him! As the thing that had been Miss Stone came for him, seizing the initiative, he went for her instead. Before she could lay her hands upon him, he grabbed her wrists, hooked a leg behind hers, and forcibly pushed her backwards, sending her tumbling to the ground.
Leaving her sprawled on the ground, the alien face in her chest mewling pathetically with its tentacles clutching ineffectually at the empty air, Carter sprinted between the piles of debris, heading towards the grappling Carnarvon and Langford and the way out of the Cydonian Tapestry chamber.
Reaching the wrestling pair, he delivered a violent chopping blow to the back of Langford’s neck. The Professor immediately went limp, his legs buckling beneath him and his hold on Carnarvon’s hands going slack. Carnarvon kicked himself free of his attacker and, without a word, followed Carter as he made for the exit.
As the things that had been masquerading as Miss Stone and Professor Langford struggled to their feet, Carter sprinted out of great vaulted chamber and ran slap-bang into Major Gordon.
“Ah, Major!” he gasped, his heart racing. “You have to help us! Miss Stone and Professor Langford are not human.”
The Major smiled. “Not entirely, anyway.”
“What are you talking about, man?” Lard Carnarvon exclaimed, joining them.
“You could call them prototypes, I suppose. Martian-human hybrids. The next stage in our evolution,” the officer explained calmly.
“Our evolution?” Carter repeated. “Then you’re...”
“One of them? Yes.” The two men stared at this officer of the British Army. “Try not to take offence, gentlemen, but you were merely test subjects in an experiment.”
“To see if you could pass for human,” Carter said grimly.
“That is correct. If we are to conquer Earth, we must become more like you. Our early failures taught us that.
”
“Then my suspicions were correct.”
“Your suspicions?” A look of pure human bewilderment passed across Major Gordon’s face.
“Yes. When we were ‘recruited’ back on Earth, we were told the original archaeological team had gone missing.”
“By Jove!” Carnarvon gasped. “So we were.”
“As soon as we were greeted by Professor Langford I wondered if something was wrong. And when nobody even remarked upon the disappearance, or offered a reason as to why the Professor and Miss Stone were no longer missing, I realised something was definitely amiss. I just wasn’t sure what.”
Both Major Gordon and Lord Carnarvon were staring at him now, dumbfounded.
“So I continued to play along with your little charade to see how much I could find out about what was really going on.”
“Charade?” protested Major Gordon.
“You almost had me fooled, too. I was ready to believe I had been mistaken and that the Professor and Miss Stone had come through whatever ordeal had befallen them and returned unscathed. Until just now, in fact, when Miss Stone could contain herself no longer.” And when their contact in the British Army also said nothing of Langford and Stone’s disappearance or otherwise, Carter knew he must be part of the mystery too.
“What good are your suspicions to you now?”
Carter started as Professor Langford and Miss Stone joined them in the shadowy passageway, waistcoat and blouse pulled closed again to hide their hybridised deformities.
“They are suspicions no longer,” Carter corrected the Professor. “Now we have evidence, I intend to tell our masters in the British Government all that we have learned here.”
“You really think we’ll just let you walk out of here?” Miss Stone laughed, a cruel smile playing about her artfully rouged lips.
“Yes.”
The hum of a blaster powering up had them all looking at Carter’s hand, the same hand that was holding the weapon, the weapon that he had snatched from Major Gordon’s holster when the two had collided in the corridor.
“You can’t escape,” Major Gordon said, taking a step forward.
“Run, George!” Carter hissed at Carnarvon.
The aging lord didn’t need to be told twice. As he took off at a breathless dash, back through the chambers of marvels, Major Gordon made his move and sprang at Carter.
The blaster fired and the beam of brilliant emerald energy hit the Major in the stomach. He gave a weak cry as he fell but the shriek of pain that came from the vicinity of his ribcage was much louder and more protracted.
Screaming like a banshee, Miss Stone came for him again, the Professor lumbering after his more agile assistant.
Carter picked his target and fired, but he had been too eager to take down the Major and, not being used to how such weapons worked, had kept his finger on the trigger for too long, draining the charge in one shot. It would be some moments before the blaster would be charged enough to fire again.
He turned and ran instead. He could hear the echoing footfalls and the inhuman hissing of his pursuers as he headed back through the magnificent halls of the Head. He didn’t once look back, pushing over the tripod stands of arc-lights as he passed them, creating obstacles at every arched entrance, anything to slow the creatures’ pursuit. Catching up with Lord Carnarvon, he supported the old man as they passed through one alien-formed gallery after another.
Ahmed, leader of the excavator gang, looked up in surprise as they entered the grand hallway at a stumbling run. The Egyptian was wearing a galabeya and had a threadbare fez on his head. “Mr Carter?” he said.
“It’s time, Ahmed,” Carter gasped as he and the panting Lord Carnarvon stumbled to a halt, hands on knees as they desperately tried to recover their breath.
Ahmed didn’t ask what it was time for; he simply started shouting loudly and rapidly in Arabic. In response, his ten-strong team hurriedly donned their environmental suits and grabbed what tools and other possessions they could, as Carter pulled on his own suit while also helping a sweating Carnarvon into his.
Carter ushered Ahmed and his crew into the pressurisation chamber, two of the Egyptians taking Lord Carnarvon by the arms and almost carrying him into the airlock.
The Professor and his assistant—whatever they were now—had caught up with them again.
He wondered what had become of the real Professor Langford and Miss Stone. Had their bodies been invaded by their alien hosts? Or were these forms merely duplicates, created by who knew what unholy science; able to mimic the originals in every way, down to the slightest gesture or subtlest inflection of the voice?
But at the end of the day, the details did not matter. What he was about to do would avenge them both—the people they had been, if not the false Martian-hybrids they had become.
Stood at the entrance to the airlock, he picked up the wooden box with the wires trailing from it and pressed down hard on the plunger, sticking out of it.
As the crump of a distant detonation reached him from the far sides of the great entrance hall, with the two hybrids charging towards him, still hissing, he turned and entered the airlock himself, slamming the door shut behind him and spinning the wheel before fleeing the Head altogether.
Ahmed and the Egyptians were already fleeing across the flat plain before the ancient edifice, carrying Lord Carnarvon with them. Carter kept running, his own panting breath loud inside the hood of his environment suit, but not so loud that he couldn’t hear the boom of the explosives going off, one after another.
Before long he felt them too: the trembling of the ground beneath his feet; the gust of sudden dust-storm suddenly beating at his back; the intense pressure of the concussive waves agonisingly painful inside his ears.
Only when Ahmed and the others stopped running did he turn and survey the consequences of his actions.
Dust hung in great ochre clouds above the mesa. Where the grand processional avenue had once stood, now there was nothing but a colossal pile of collapsed rock, half a mile high, where the walls of the gully had subsided as the explosions inside the Head caused the roof to cave in. He could only imagine the damage that had been done to the priceless treasures they had been forced to leave behind.
Major Gordon, Professor Langford and Miss Stone might not have let Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon out of their sight while they worked within the Cydonian Head, but they had been less careful when it came to Ahmed and his team of Egyptian excavators.
The setting of the explosives had been a precautionary measure. Carter had genuinely hoped they wouldn’t prove necessary. But when his worst fears were confirmed, no matter the cost, he knew what had to be done. After all, there was a war on.
And so he watched the dust cloud drift over the plain, carried by the Martian breeze, as the ancient chambers of the Cydonian Head were buried beneath millions of tons of rock, the tears running down his cheeks and into his moustache.
IT HAD BEEN Lord Carnarvon who pointed out that they didn’t know who else within the Stellar Expeditionary Force had already been replaced by replicants.
As far as anyone on Mars was concerned, Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon had died along with Professor Langford, Miss Stone and Major Gordon. Not knowing who they could trust on Mars, and with no one searching for them—there was a war on, after all—they were able to smuggle themselves off planet thanks to liberal applications of Lord Carnarvon’s great wealth, and return to Earth before anyone knew they had actually survived the destruction of the Cydonian Head.
It was only once they were back home that the two men felt confident enough to report their findings to the authorities without also having to fear for their safety.
But it turned out that what they had learned on Mars was a curse more real than that associated with any pharaoh’s resting place.
Not long after they had returned to Earth and made their report, Carter read in the paper over breakfast, one April morning, that Lord Carnarvon had died suddenly, as a resu
lt of a mosquito bite he had acquired in Egypt—or so The Interceptor had it—and in the very same article the two-bit hack who must have written it wondered if he had been a victim of the Curse of Tutankhamun.
Their trip to Mars had never made public, and Carter realised then that it never would be. If all Lord Carnarvon’s wealth and status hadn’t been able to protect him, then Carter knew it could only be a matter of time before a mosquito—or a runaway taxi cab—did for him too. He resolved to get as far away from the British authorities as possible. He would escape to America.
And so it was that, a fortnight after he and Lord Carnarvon had passed on all that he had learnt during their brief sojourn on the red planet to their masters in Whitehall, Howard Carter arrived at the Crystal Palace Aerodrome in London and joined the queue to board the next flight to New York.
All manner of other people—men and women of all ages and different backgrounds, not to mention skin tones—continued to join the queue behind him, fumbling with their papers and boarding passes. As he shuffled along, keeping his place in the line, his racing pulse began to slow and a smile spread across his face. He had almost made it. As soon as he was on board he would be able to relax properly for the first time in weeks.
As he made his way closer and closer to the boarding gate, two men—dressed in dark suits, unsuited to warmer climes, and one of them wearing a Homburg—watched from the shadows beneath the departures board until there were a dozen or more people behind Carter, before taking their place in line.
Red Frame, White Heat
a remarkable case, by
ANDREW LANE
STANDING ON THE observation deck of the passenger submersible HMS Iolanthe, in front of the thick glass windows that had protected us from the ocean’s perils for so long, I stared out at the bustling New York harbour. The contrast between the Martian-provided technology of the British Empire and the dowdy self-produced machinery of the American democracy was clear. On the one hand I could see several sleek British flying machines gracefully approaching or leaving the city in the cloudless blue skies, while our passenger submersible cleaved cleanly through the waves below them, its multiple articulated metal oars—which had powered us tirelessly through the passage from Southampton—now held upright as sails, catching the wind and pushing us gently towards landfall. The American vessels, by contrast, were dirty, steam-driven things with massive, clumsy wheels on their sides or at their sterns, looking like something a giant hamster might have used for recreation. The few local aircraft I could see seemed like they were held together by wires, spit and sawdust. They had several wings, teetering above each other in a stack and separated by fragile spars, whereas the British aircraft had just one triangular wing each, perfectly formed for its function. It was like comparing swans with ducks, or cheetahs with tabby cats.
Scarlet Traces: An Anthology Based on H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds Page 26