The Martian Ambassador (13 page)

Crosse’s enthusiastic expression collapsed into a downhearted frown. ‘No, they didn’t. They concluded that I had allowed my apparatus to be contaminated, that my discoveries were spurious. And yet, I didn’t hold it against them...’

‘No?’ said Blackwood.

Crosse shook his head and offered them a sad smile. ‘Such is the way of humankind. The first discovery is often dismissed by those who have not witnessed it with their own eyes, and such is their prejudice that they will not even countenance an attempt to reproduce the discovery themselves. It is human nature to fear and mistrust the new, the unknown, the unexpected or unexplained. The Akashic Records, for instance, were once dismissed as Oriental fantasy, and the realm of Faerie was likewise considered to be no more than medieval superstition... until their existence was verified and gave rise to the science of artificial cogitation. One day, perhaps, my own work
will
be reproduced and verified... although I wouldn’t lay a bet on whether I am still alive when that day comes.’

‘And yet,’ said Blackwood, moving to stand directly in front of Crosse, so that their faces were mere inches apart, ‘
someone
took your research seriously, didn’t they?’

The enthusiasm which had galvanised the scientist’s explanation of his work was now completely at bay. His gaze fell away from Blackwood’s, and to Sophia it appeared that he shrank a little in on himself, as if the vital forces which animated his own body had diminished.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘About two weeks ago, a man came to see me. He told me that he had read of my work, in particular my paper “The Creation of Life from Lifelessness”, and that he was interested in developing my process for the purpose of improving the lot of humanity. He claimed to represent an association of entrepreneurial individuals who were profoundly concerned with philanthropy and ethics, and who felt it was their duty to divert industry and technology away from the dehumanising path they have taken for the last hundred years. He said that this branch of human endeavour has become our master, rather than our servant: a statement which can be verified by anyone who walks through the tenements of any industrial city and sees the utter squalor, degradation and human misery which afflict them.

‘Human beings, he said, have become fuel for the machines which they themselves created, and as such have been reduced to the status of mechanical components in that much larger and subtler machine called Progress. But progress is not what most people see, whose lives are blighted and shortened by disease and fatigue. What
they
see is hardship beyond endurance; meanness of spirit, the total absence of human compassion. The world is becoming a mass of seething activity, frenetic, trivial and pointless. Our bond with the world is being broken; the air is becoming thick with pollution and decay while we blindly continue, stoking the fires of our new cathedrals of metal, praying to an idiot deity that exists only in the sullied minds and cold hearts of our fallen species.

‘He said many things like this – he was very persuasive. He convinced me of the altruistic intentions of the group which he represented: how they wished to turn aside this great, dehumanising tide and divert it into channels that would lead to the betterment of human life, rather than its degradation. He said that I could help, if I chose, and added that he was in the process of gathering likeminded individuals into the fold – scientists, teachers, philosophers, engineers, artists. He begged me to allow him to take away a sample of
Acarus galvanicus
, so that his group might analyse the creatures and formulate ways in which they might be applied to the grand scheme.’

‘And so you complied and gave him the sample,’ said Blackwood.

Crosse shook his head helplessly. ‘I believed him.’

‘What was this fellow’s name?’

‘He called himself Indrid Cold.’

Blackwood frowned at the strangeness of the name. ‘Did he say where he was from? His nationality?’

‘No.’

‘Can you describe his appearance?’

‘He was tall and powerfully-built; his bearing was utterly confident – I might almost say there was something aristocratic about him. But his face...’ Crosse hesitated.

‘What about his face?’

‘There was something strange about it. His skin was pale and seemed to be stretched very tightly across his skull. And his eyes... there was something hypnotic in them. I had the feeling that when I looked into his eyes, I was looking upon the profoundest depths of Space and Time. There was something otherworldly in those eyes, although I can’t define it any more accurately than that. When he had gone, I was left with the feeling that I had been in the presence of something more than a man.’

Blackwood glanced at Sophia and was momentarily stunned by the expression of shock and fear on her face. He recovered himself immediately, and without commenting, turned back to Crosse. ‘You have been very helpful, sir. I thank you.’

‘Please understand, Mr Blackwood,’ pleaded the scientist, ‘I gave Indrid Cold those samples out of a desire to do good. He assured me that once his own people had analysed the organisms and begun to develop an application for them, he would contact me again to offer me permanent membership in his group. I have not heard from him, however...’

‘Nor will you, I am sure. I now believe that your only crime was naivety – and that, in truth, is not a crime. However, we may need to talk to you again, and so I would appreciate it if you didn’t leave the area for the next few days.’

‘I assure you I have no intention of doing so, and of course, I will do all in my power to help.’

‘Then we shall take our leave of you.’

Blackwood and Sophia left Crosse in his laboratory. The late afternoon air was cold; the day had begun to gather its cloak of twilight in preparation for its descent into night. As they walked back across the courtyard, their boots crunching on the gravel, Blackwood said, ‘What do you think?’

‘I think he is telling the truth,’ Sophia replied quietly.

‘As do I. But tell me: back there, I noticed a curious expression on your face when Mr Crosse described this fellow Indrid Cold.’

Sophia said nothing, and so Blackwood persisted. ‘I had the impression that it was not merely shock at the singular description of his appearance.’

‘It wasn’t,’ said Sophia.

‘Then what was it?’ ’

‘I have heard that description before, Thomas – or at least, something very like it.’

‘Indeed?’

‘Yes.’ As she glanced up at him, Blackwood saw that same look of profound trepidation return to her eyes. ‘I believe that Mr Crosse was describing Spring-Heeled Jack!’

Crouching upon the vast dome of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, the creature known by many as Spring-Heeled Jack, and by a few as Indrid Cold, gazed up at the infinitely greater dome of the night sky, at the stars flickering like gas lamps in the pitch blackness of the firmament. One star in particular caught his attention, and his strange eyes narrowed in contemplation, as if they would pierce the countless leagues of Space, carrying his mind through the endless dark, carrying it... home.

Indrid Cold’s pale, tight-skinned face twisted into a grimace of pain and dread, for the star at which he gazed was
not
a star, but a world, distant and dying: once verdant and beautiful, but now barren and desiccated, on the edge of a planetary catastrophe from which recovery would be impossible.

Unable to bear the sight any longer, Indrid Cold turned away from the flickering pinpoint of light and directed his attention downward towards the labyrinthine swathe of London. With inhuman elegance, he stepped across the glass panes of the dome’s light well, through which the sun illuminated the interior of the great edifice where the humans worshipped their strange god.

He looked south, at the glinting band of the River Thames threading through the heart of the city – how beautiful the water was! How sublime the subtle stirring of its crystalline surface! How terrible the crime of its pollution! – and his gaze took in the ugly spans of Blackfriars Bridge and Southwark Bridge, which offered insult to the gently flowing river beneath. He turned his eyes to the east, to the Bank of England, and then to the northwest, towards Holborn and Bloomsbury. Finally, his attention settled upon Whitehall and the Houses of Parliament to the southwest, and his smile returned – but it was not a smile of affection: it was a grimace of hatred and contempt for the arrogant buffoons who directed the course of their paltry empire from within those walls, all in the name of a bitch queen who should have been in her mausoleum by now...

No matter, for that would come soon enough. Death would come soon enough for all of them!

With a rasping hiss of foul anticipation, Indrid Cold began his evening’s work.

Like a slender white ape in a jungle of concrete, stone and glass, he leaped from the dome to the roof of the cathedral, and then across Ludgate Hill to the rooftops opposite. His frightful, piercing eyes scanned the streets below, looking for victims.

On the Charing Cross Road, he spied a man and woman walking together, and jumped to the street in front of them. The woman screamed, and the man placed himself between her and the apparition that had suddenly descended before them. But his gallantry was to no avail, for the creature opened his mouth and belched blue fire into both their faces before taking hold of the man and dashing his head against the pavement. Too terrified now even to scream, the woman gazed disbelievingly at the fiend, her mouth wide open in shock and terror. With a single swipe of his metal-taloned hand, he turned her face to ribbons of dripping flesh, while fearful onlookers shouted, ‘
It’s Spring-Heeled Jack! He’s here. Oh, God, he’s here!
’

With a single leap, Indrid Cold gained the roof of a town house and looked down at the gathering crowd. ‘Mars will triumph!’ he shouted at them. ‘
Mars will triumph!
’ And then he was gone, bounding across the rooftops.

In the filthy slums of Bermondsey, he descended upon a young prostitute, lifted her bodily above his head and flung her into one of the stinking open sewers which blighted that unfortunate district. Drawn by her frantic screams for help, a crowd of people quickly gathered, and some tried to climb down the embankment to reach her – but there was no hope: the filth-clogged sewer was like quicksand. The poor waif struggled and cried for a few more moments, before vanishing into its depths. Men and women alike turned away in grief from the horrible sight, in time to see the murderer leaping up into the sky, screaming at them, ‘
Mars will triumph!
’

For the next hour, Indrid Cold sowed new terror through the streets of the capital. In a storm of unnatural blue fire and flashing talons, he stabbed and sliced and pummelled victim after victim, taking no heed of their social standing, for he offered violent outrage to rich and poor alike – all the while crying, ‘
Mars will triumph!
’ as he went about his horrible business.

He headed west, out of the night-time heart of London, leaving blood and screams in his wake, into open countryside, where he attacked a pair of wagoners whom he encountered in the lonely darkness, leaving them battered and bloody in a ditch.

His last port of call was the army barracks in Aldershot in Hampshire, where he descended upon the roof of a sentry box and reached down to slash the face of the hapless soldier who was manning the post. The man screamed in agony, alerting two officers who were passing, and they arrived in time to see the ghost-like figure hurtling into the distance. One officer grabbed the injured sentry’s rifle and loosed a couple of shots after him, but if the bullets found their target, they did not slow the fiend’s escape.

*

Indrid Cold left Aldershot far behind, heading once more into the dark Hampshire countryside, bounding across fields and over hedges on powerful, tireless limbs. Eight miles from the town, he came upon a high stone wall bordering a large estate, over which he leaped with ease.

With his great strides, he ran towards a vast manor house that stood resplendently in the midst of a wide, elegantly tended lawn. A warm, orange glow emanated from many of the leaded windows. One in particular, on the first floor, was open, and it was towards this that Cold directed his course.

Without even breaking his stride, he launched himself at the window, and with cat-like elegance landed neatly upon the sill. Through narrowed eyes, he regarded the room – a luxuriously appointed office – and its single occupant. The man was standing with his back to the window, looking down into the flames dancing in the maw of a huge marble fireplace.

Cold stepped silently into the room and slowly approached the man, who was dressed in a burgundy velvet smoking jacket and dark grey trousers.

The man turned, regarded him, and smiled. ‘Welcome, my friend. Have you delivered your message?’

Indrid Cold nodded. ‘Verbal
and
physical.’

‘Mars will triumph!’ whispered the man and gave a low, soft chuckle.

‘Do you really think it will work?’ asked Cold. ‘Are humans really so gullible?’

‘Oh yes,’ replied the man as he walked across the room to a large Louis XIV cabinet containing several crystal decanters. He selected one and poured some of the rich, amber liquid into an elegant tulip glass, which he raised to his guest. Cold shook his head. ‘Are you sure? It’s a Delamain,
Reserve de la Famille
. One of the finest cognacs – quite exquisite.’

‘I’m sure it is,’ replied Cold. ‘But as you know, Lord Pannick, alcohol does not sit well with me – however exquisite.’

Lord Pannick chuckled again. ‘I pity you your alien metabolism, my friend.’ He took a delicate sip of the cognac. ‘Yes... humans really are that gullible: they will believe what their newspapers tell them, and their politicians... and since I own so many – newspapers
and
politicians – I am in the perfect position to fill their heads with whatever I choose.’

‘Including that I am a Martian terrorist, an
agent provocateur
sowing the seeds of war between Earth and Mars?’

‘That, too.’

‘I still find it hard to believe that their thoughts can be guided so easily, and down such unlikely avenues.’

‘When words are combined with violence and the threat of more violence, people sit up and take notice. They
listen
, and they look to their leaders for guidance, for explanations, and remedies. This has always been so, throughout the history of this world. “Mars will triumph!” Ha! You have no idea how powerful a simple phrase can be. And soon, that particular phrase will be repeated throughout the city, and then the country, and then the Empire! And then the Martians, already feared and mistrusted by a few, will be feared and hated by all.’

‘And war between your worlds will come a large step closer,’ said Indrid Cold.

Lord Pannick laughed. ‘As large as one of your own singular leaps, Mr Cold!’

‘What about Blackwood? Your plan failed; he is still alive and sane.’

Lord Pannick waved this aside. ‘Don’t worry about Mr Blackwood. It’s true that it would have been more convenient for us had he been removed from the picture, but even if he discovers our plan, he will not succeed in preventing its conclusion. And when
that
happens, my friend, it will not be Mars which triumphs... it will be Venus!’