The Map of the Sky (40 page)

“That thing’s going to shoot at us,” he shouted, grabbing Emma and forcing her to the floor of the carriage. “Get down!”

There was a loud explosion a few yards to their right. The blast shook the carriage so violently that for a few instants its wheels left the ground, and when it landed again the shock threatened to shatter it to pieces. Surprised to find he was still alive, Wells struggled up as best he could and tried to glance out of the rear window again. Steadying himself against the wild sway of the carriage, he wondered whether Murray was still up on the driver’s seat or had fallen off at some moment during the chase so that they were now speeding on in a driverless carriage. Through the window, Wells saw the small crater the blast had left in the roadside. Behind him, the tripod was still bearing down on them with
ominous leaps and bounds, rapidly reducing the twenty yards or so that separated it from the carriage. His heart leapt into his mouth as he saw the tentacle that spat out the ray snaking through the air in preparation for a new strike. It was obvious that sooner or later it would hit them. At that moment, the coach shuddered to a halt, throwing him forward onto the crumpled body of Inspector Clayton. Wells rose and helped the girl up from the floor before returning to his seat. He felt the carriage start moving again. Through the window he could see they were turning. Startled, he poked his head out of the left-hand window and found that Murray had swung round to face the tripod, which continued its ungainly advance toward them.

“What the devil are you doing?” he shouted.

The reply was a whiplash, urging the horses on. The coach rattled forward to meet the tripod.

“You’ve gone mad, Murray!” he cried.

“I’m sure that thing can’t turn as quickly as we can,” he heard the millionaire cry above the wheels’ infernal screeching.

As the coach began hurtling toward the tripod, Wells realized in astonished disbelief that Murray was hoping to pass beneath the colossus as if it were a bridge.

“Good God . . . the man is insane,” he muttered, seeing how the tripod had halted to take aim at them.

He fell back into the coach and held the girl as tightly as he could.

“He’s going to pass under its legs,” he explained in a voice choked by fear.

“W-what?” she stammered.

“He’s crazy . . .”

Emma clung to him desperately, trembling. Wells could feel her fragility, her warmth, her perfume, her womanly shape pressing itself into the hollows of his body. He could not help but lament the fact that the only chance a man like him would have to hold a woman like her was when they were fleeing a Martian invasion together, even though this was a fleeting notion that had no place at a moment like this, when both
of them were being thrown at high speed against this metal monster, which in a few seconds would reduce them to ashes with its heat ray. But while waiting for death, in those few seconds when their lives extended beyond any reason, Wells had time to realize that the quandary in which they found themselves could not only make one a hero or a coward but also drive one insane.

XXIII

A
ND WHILE THE REAL
W
ELLS
’
S HEART WAS
racing fearfully, that of the other Wells, of whose existence he was completely unaware, was beating calmly, like a gentle melody on a xylophone. For the invasion he was heading was going according to plan. In a couple of hours, the tripods would arrive at the gates of London, where the brave and admirable British army waited behind their Maxim guns, unaware they were about to be slaughtered. Studying the map of the planet pinned to the wall of his headquarters, the other Wells smiled as he imagined the coming massacre.

I hope that despite the time that has elapsed, you will not have forgotten about the creature that adopted Wells’s appearance and that, like the conductor of an orchestra, is currently directing the attack from his hiding place. How did he get there? you will ask. Let us go back a few weeks, to the point where we left our story to travel to the Antarctic wastes, and peer inside the copper-riveted sarcophagus lying forgotten in the basement of the Natural History Museum. There, amid the industrious sounds of shifting flesh and bone, a being from another planet is rearranging its physiognomy by taking on that of the author H. G. Wells. Wells has just been steered out of the chamber by another, less brilliant author named Garrett P. Serviss. Both authors left the building unaware of the fatal consequences of their actions, in particular Wells’s fleeting stroke of the extraterrestrial’s arm. That gesture of timid admiration deposited on the creature’s skin was the greatest gift Wells could ever have given it: a minuscule and insignificant drop of his blood, which
nevertheless contained everything he was. And everything the creature needed in order to come back to life.

And so, in the seclusion of its coffin, like a caterpillar in a chrysalis, the being from outer space slowly took on a human appearance, nurtured and guided by Wells’s blood. The creature’s spine had shrunk to the length imprinted in Wells’s blood, and while its skull was reforming at one end, at the other a narrow pelvis was sprouting two rather short femurs, brittle as twigs, which were instantly attached to two tibias and fibulas by a pair of knee joints. Gradually the creature fabricated the framework of a skeleton, cloaking it in a mantle of flesh, nerves, and tendons. Once the sternum and ribs were in place, the spongy lungs appeared, emitting through the narrow conduit of the newly installed trachea a puff of vapor that filled the urn with the moist novelty of breath. The liver and intestines were formed, while the deltoids, triceps, biceps, and other muscles threaded themselves around the bony frame, like armor plating. Through the intricate calligraphy of veins and arteries a furtive current of blood now flowed, fed by the heart, which was already pulsing in the chest cavity. From a blurry mass of skin on the thing’s face emerged the birdlike countenance of the author, an exact replica of Wells upon the carbon paper onto which the hazy features of a few sailors from the
Annawan,
and even those of another author, Edgar Allan Poe, had previously been imprinted. A freshly formed mouth gave an almost triumphant, fierce smile that betrayed a festering desire for revenge, decades old, while a slender pair of pale human hands clutched the chains binding it before snapping them with an otherworldly strength. Then the lid of the coffin lifted from inside with an ominous creak, shattering the surrounding silence. Yet had anyone happened to be in the room to witness the miraculous resurrection, they would not have seen a sinister creature of the Cosmos rising from its tomb, but rather H.G. waking up following a drunken spree that, God only knew how, had ended with him in that coffin. However, despite its ordinary appearance, what emerged from that box was a deadly creature, a fearful being, or, if you prefer, Evil incarnate. Evil in all its glory, bursting once more into the
world of rational man, as it had done before in the form of Frankenstein’s monster, or of Count Dracula, or any of the monsters with which Man had disguised the intangible horror that haunted him from birth; that unnerving darkness that began poisoning his wretched soul from the moment his nanny blew out the candle shielding his cradle.

Like a blind man suddenly able to see, the false Wells studied the place he found himself in, crammed with bric-a-brac that meant nothing to him, relics of a fantasy world that belonged only to Earthlings. He felt an enormous relief as he glimpsed something familiar amid the plethora of nonsensical artifacts: his vehicle, raised on a plinth, considered as miraculous as the other objects in the room. The machine appeared intact, exactly as he had left it in the snow when he infiltrated the Earthlings’ ship, though it was still no doubt out of action: it did not take much intelligence to see that the humans had not even managed to open it. He walked over to the machine, halting a few yards from the plinth, and he narrowed his eyes in concentration. A chink slowly appeared in the machine’s domed lid. The bogus Wells climbed inside. Seconds later, he emerged carrying an ivory-colored cylindrical box, smooth and shiny save for the tiny symbols on its lid that gave off a coppery glow. In the box was what had forced him to fly through space to Earth, that faraway planet almost 30,000 light-years from the center of the galaxy, which the Council had chosen as the new home of its race. And although he had taken longer to get there than predicted, at last he was able to continue his mission.

He opened the door of the chamber and left the museum like any other human, mingling with the late-afternoon crowd of visitors. Once outside, he took a deep breath and glanced around him, testing his newly acquired senses even as he tried to ignore the thrum produced by the mind of the man whose body he had replicated. The din of the real Wells’s thoughts surprised him, as it was far more intense than that emitted by any of the men he had replicated in the Antarctic. But he had no time to enter into that mind and rummage among its quaint ponderings, and so he tried to ignore them and to focus instead on perceiving
the world through his own senses, not the rudimentary ones of the Earthling he was inhabiting. And then, all of a sudden, he was filled with an intense feeling of well-being, a serene and tender melancholy such as a man might feel when evoking scenes of his childhood. He had discovered that he was in the place where the colony had been established. Yes, his last memory was the ice closing over his head like the lid of a coffin, and now, after floating in limbo for many years, outwitting death by lowering his energy requirements to enable his body to enter a state of hibernation, he had awoken in London, exactly where he had been headed when his vehicle came down in the Antarctic. He did not know whom he should thank, but, unluckily for the human race, someone had clearly rescued him from the ice and brought him here.

He climbed one of the turrets of the Natural History Museum and from that vantage point narrowed his eyes and sent out another signal. And that call, inaudible to any human, soared across the late-afternoon sky, riding on the warm breeze to spread through the city. Almost instantaneously, in a rowdy Soho tavern, Jacob Halsey stopped washing up glasses, raised his head to the ceiling, and for a few moments remained motionless, heedless of his customers’ requests, until, all of a sudden, tears began to slowly trickle down his face. The same happened to a watchman, Bruce Laird, who for no apparent reason stopped in the middle of a corridor in Guy’s Hospital, as though he had suddenly forgotten where he was going, and wept with joy. A baker in Holborn by the name of Sam Delaney repeated the gesture, as did Thomas Cobb, the owner of a clothier’s shop near Westminster Abbey; a nanny watching over some children playing in a Mayfair park; an old man hobbling down a street in Bloomsbury; Mr. and Mrs. Connell, a couple strolling in Hyde Park feeding the squirrels; and a moneylender who had a shop on Kingly Street. They all looked up at the sky in silent rapture, as though listening to a tune no one else could hear, before stopping what they were doing, eyes brimming with tears, leaving glasses in the sink, business premises unlocked, young charges unprotected, and walking out of their houses and places of work to march slowly through the streets like a
trail of ants. Gradually swelling in number, their ranks were joined by teachers, shop assistants, librarians, stevedores, secretaries, members of Parliament, chimney sweeps, civil servants, prostitutes, blacksmiths, coalmen, retired soldiers, cab drivers, and policemen, all moving in an orderly fashion toward the place to which the voice that had interrupted their thoughts was summoning them. It was a long-awaited call, heralding what their parents and their parents’ parents had yearned for: the arrival of the long-awaited one, the Envoy.

•   •   •

F
ATHER
N
ATHANIEL
W
RAYBURN, MINISTER
of a small parish church in Marylebone, contemplated himself solemnly in the looking glass in the sacristy. He had carefully shaved and slicked back his unruly hair, put on his collar and brushed his cassock, all with slow, ceremonious gestures as if he were performing a service—not because he was required to, but because of the solemnity of the occasion. He sighed with relief when he saw that the wrinkles furrowing his desiccated face gave him an air of dignity rather than decrepitude, and that while the body he had usurped was worn out and emaciated, at least he was blessed with bright blue eyes, much revered by mankind and more particularly by womankind. The Heaven you speak of is reflected in your eyes, Father, a member of his flock had declared. She was unaware that the promised Heaven was inhabited by creatures none of which, unfortunately, enjoyed the status of divinity—however much Father Wrayburn liked to toy with the idea that his race embodied the gods whom human beings venerated. But if that were true, they would not be planning to exterminate them, he said to himself with a pained expression. No god would treat his worshippers like that. He finished smoothing down his hair and walked toward the door of the sacristy, hoping the Envoy would be pleased with his appearance.

“Good evening, Father Wrayburn. Or would you prefer, at last, to be called by the traditional name of your race?”

The voice came from the doorway, where the figure of a small, skinny man was watching him, hands plunged into his trouser pockets.
The Envoy’s chosen appearance startled him, not so much because it lacked manliness but because this was no anonymous individual, but rather someone whom any discerning reader would recognize.

“I must admit, sir, that after five generations, we descendants of the first colonizers use the Earthling language and Earthling names even amongst ourselves. I fear that when the long-awaited time comes, we will have trouble habituating ourselves once more to speaking in our old, much-loved tongue, despite having conscientiously passed it on to our children, together with the ancient wisdom and knowledge of our race,” the priest replied.

Father Wrayburn uttered these words with head bowed and his hands composing a triangle above his head, a gesture that may seem absurd to us, but which for his race was a traditional mark of respect. He also spoke in his ancestral tongue, which to any human finding himself in the sacristy would have sounded like a muddled collection of grunts, whistles, and agonized wails, which for fear of wounding your sensibilities I have chosen not to reproduce.