The Martian Ambassador (6 page)

‘Such as?’

She gave him a broad smile. ‘Such as where this creature came from.’

Alsop regarded her in silence for a moment. ‘Where do
you
think it came from, Lady Sophia?’

‘I have my suspicions.’

‘Do you think it’s from another world? From Mars?’

Sophia hesitated and then held out her hand, saying, ‘I owe you a sincere debt of thanks, Mr Alsop. Now I must be on my way. Will you say good-bye to Sarah and Mary for me?’

‘Of course,’ he replied, shaking her hand. ‘If there’s anything else I can do, please do not hesitate to call again.’

Sophia’s smile grew broader as she replied, ‘When I call on you again, it will be to meet your daughter Jane and to give you a full and accurate explanation of the origin of Spring-Heeled Jack!’

And with that, she turned and walked away towards her waiting carriage.

As she closed the door and settled herself into her seat, the driver called down to her, ‘Where to now, your Ladyship?’

‘To Whitehall please, John,’ she replied, and added to herself,
To Her Majesty’s Bureau of Clandestine Affairs.

Thomas Blackwood had returned to his rooms the previous evening to find that an envelope had been slipped beneath his door, and he had felt a slight trepidation upon opening it and seeing that it was a summons to Buckingham Palace. The Queen wished to discuss Lunan R’ondd’s death and to receive a progress report on Blackwood’s investigation. That she wished to do so after less than a day was testament to the seriousness with which she viewed the situation, and Blackwood was immensely relieved that he had something to tell her – even if he was still unsure as to its ultimate meaning. Nevertheless, he had made a mental note to present a gift to Dr Cutter of a particularly fine Scotch at the earliest opportunity.

As he rose, washed and shaved, however, Blackwood could not shake himself free of the apprehension which he invariably felt on those rare occasions when his presence before the Queen was requested. There was something deeply unnerving about Victoria, an otherworldliness which, he supposed, was a combination of her own powerful personality and the Martian rejuvenation drugs with which she had been treated over the last few years, and which had gradually returned her from extreme age and infirmity to vibrant youth again.

It was perhaps unsurprising that Victoria had agreed to undergo the treatment, since she had always embraced the new scientific developments of her own race. She had enthusiastically sat for photographs when that technology was in its infancy; she had greeted the invention of the telegraph and, later, the telephone with undisguised glee, making extensive use of both instruments; she had even allowed chloroform to be administered to her during the birth of Prince Leopold in 1853, scorning the belief that it was a woman’s lot to suffer the pain of childbirth. The concept of life extension had immediately intrigued her, and had conjured seductive images in her mind of the simultaneous continuation of the era to which she had given her name.

The treatment produced a transformation which the masses had greeted with jubilation, and which had prompted the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, to declare that ‘the sun would set neither on the British Empire, nor the reign of Queen Victoria’. Blackwood had no idea what Salisbury thought in private, however (although there was a rumour at court that he considered anything which delayed the accession of that buffoon Bertie to be most welcome). Nevertheless, Blackwood sometimes wondered whether the Prime Minister felt as he did: that there was an unnatural light in Victoria’s eyes, the smouldering light of a red, alien world, containing all the strange secrets of that world and the technological geniuses who inhabited it.

Blackwood tried to push all such thoughts from his mind as he quickly breakfasted on the sausages, bacon and toast which had been prepared for him by his housekeeper, Mrs Butters, who knew better than to place any eggs on his plate. (Blackwood had developed a pathological fear of eggs following his involvement with the case of the Cosmic Spheres three years previously, and the very sight of them brought him out in a cold sweat.) He drank two large cups of the excellent Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee which he procured from a small and exclusive establishment in Knightsbridge and, thus fortified, left his apartment and took the carriage which had been sent from the Palace to collect him.

The mist and fog of the last few days had finally lifted, for which Blackwood was grateful, and he felt his mood lightening somewhat as the carriage passed through busy streets awash with bright sunlight. The cloying dampness of the air had also been banished, leaving a cool crispness which cleared his mind and lifted his spirits still further.

Away in the distance, high above the surrounding rooftops, he could see several intercity omnibuses, their metal hulls gleaming in the sunlight, the great pillars of their legs moving with a strange, languid elegance. He found himself staring at them, unable to look away, fascinated in spite of himself. They looked like small airships perched atop living, moving scaffolds. Each of their hulls was dotted with numerous portholes, while at the front, the single large, circular observation blister of the bridge gazed blankly across the cityscape, towards the horizon. And yet, as Blackwood continued to watch their progress, it seemed to him that they were not really like airships at all: they were more like colossal insect Cyclopses surveying a world which was not theirs.

Although only in his mid-thirties, Blackwood was old enough to remember a time when life on Mars was nothing more than an intriguing speculation. Then, in 1877, Giovanni Schiaparelli made his monumental discovery (later confirmed by Percival Lowell) of the global canal system which extended like a vast cobweb across the surface of the Red Planet, signifying the presence of a great civilisation. The scientific community was sceptical at first, of course, with many claiming that the ‘canals’ were no more than optical illusions caused by the human eye’s tendency to connect isolated and ill-defined features. They had assumed the matter to be settled, until the great inventor and engineer Nikola Tesla decided to use his giant Magnifying Transmitter in Colorado Springs to send a radio signal towards Mars on the 1st of April 1893, and was gratified to receive the honour of a reply just a few days later.

A few weeks after that initial tentative exchange, the first exploratory cylinders arrived, landing in all the capitals of the civilised world (the cylinder bound for London had evidently miscalculated its trajectory slightly and landed on Horsell Common near Woking instead, causing no small measure of alarm among the local inhabitants). After they had learned English and a few other European languages (a feat performed in an astoundingly brief time) the Martians stated that they had been observing the Earth through their telescopes for many years and had been waiting for Mankind to display a sufficient level of technological advancement to allow contact. Tesla’s radio transmission had proved to them that human civilisation was mature enough to receive visitors from another world.

The good people of Woking were not the only ones to express concern over these astonishing events, of course: all over the world, voices of fear and consternation were raised in response to the arrival of these strange beings from across the Æther. There were many who claimed that the Martians were conquerors who had come under the guise of friendship, and that Mankind should make ready to do battle for its very survival.

Thankfully (and unusually), however, reason prevailed: scientific institutions throughout Europe and the United States of America considered the situation, and quickly came to the conclusion that the Martians could have no conceivable reason for wanting to conquer the Earth. For one thing, they could not survive in the atmosphere without elaborate and cumbersome equipment; for another, the chemical constituents of Earthly food offered no nourishment to their alien metabolisms; for yet another, it was quite possible that there were certain germs and bacteria in the Earth’s atmosphere that would prove lethal to organisms which had evolved on another world, and which therefore had no natural defence against them.

And in any event, the scientists concluded, if the Martians had wanted to attack Mankind, they would surely have done so already, without first alerting Earth to their existence.

In the six years since first contact, it had become apparent that the scientific community was quite correct. It seemed that the Red Planet, so long associated in the human mind with violence and war, in fact wanted nothing but friendship and peaceful cooperation with the people of Earth. (It had amused many to learn that the Martian name for Earth,
Azquahar
, translated as ‘Blue Planet’.) Plans for an economic relationship between the two civilisations were carefully laid, whereby the Martians would purchase certain useful raw materials in which their own world was growing deficient, in exchange for granting Mankind access to some of their technologies.

Cultural bonds were likewise quickly established, with scholars from each world being invited to the other to learn of its history and to sample the vast range of its artistic endeavours. The results of these commercial and cultural exchanges could now be seen in the streets, drawing rooms and art galleries of many a city and town, in Great Britain and across the world.

And yet, in spite of the apparent cordiality of relations between Earth and Mars, there were many who still mistrusted their planetary neighbours, believing them to harbour secret designs upon Earth and to be waiting patiently for an excuse to bring to bear the full force of their technology against Mankind.

As his carriage made its clattering way along the Mall towards Buckingham Palace, Blackwood found himself wondering whether those people were justified in their suspicions. At the very least, their concerns were understandable: it was not easy to go blithely about one’s business, knowing that across eighty-million miles of space there was another inhabited world whose denizens possessed technology far superior to one’s own; it was not easy to have to rely for one’s continued existence on the benevolence of a superior civilisation.

For some, the very idea that there
was
a civilisation superior to that of the British Empire was difficult to accept, and it was for this reason, as much as any other, that the Martians were so heartily disliked and mistrusted by so many.

Blackwood tried to put these thoughts from his mind as the carriage entered the East Front of the palace, passing beneath the great portico and continuing on into the vast quadrangle beyond. Designed by Edward Blore and built by Thomas Cubitt in 1847, the East Front had been intended to provide more space for the court activities and growing family of Victoria and Albert, and yet, although the edifice possessed a certain monumental grandeur, Blackwood still considered it to be rather austere and foreboding, a vast and immovable barrier which prevented the people from appreciating the beauty of what he thought of as the palace proper.

As the carriage came to a halt, an immaculately liveried footman stepped forward and opened the door. ‘Good morning, sir,’ he said, as Blackwood stepped down into the crisp air.

‘Good morning. I believe Her Majesty is waiting for me.’

‘Indeed, sir. If you would be so kind as to follow me...’

The footman led Blackwood into the palace, up the Grand Staircase and along several long and opulently decorated corridors, finally coming to a halt before the door to the Queen’s Breakfast Room. He gently knocked three times.

A voice from within said, ‘Enter.’

The footman opened the door for Blackwood, who took a deep breath and stepped across the threshold. The room was richly appointed, the warm burgundy of the carpet echoed in the heavy drapes flanking the three tall sash windows. The ceiling was dominated by a single large crystal chandelier that hung eight feet above the floor, while the wallpaper displayed an elegant riot of gold intaglios in the Martian style.

These details were all but lost on Blackwood, however, as he surveyed the strange tableau at the far end of the room. Queen Victoria was seated at her breakfast table in front of the marble fireplace, while at her side stood a Martian, seven feet tall and skeletally thin, his bizarre head enclosed within the pipe-festooned glass bubble of his breathing apparatus, his narrow shoulders enveloped in an iridescent cloak of purple glowspider silk.

‘Mr Blackwood,’ said Victoria.

Blackwood bowed as the footman silently closed the door behind him.

‘Please join us.’ The Queen indicated the vacant chair at her breakfast table.

‘Thank you, Your Majesty.’ Blackwood walked the length of the room, forcing himself to take confident strides while trying to ignore the vague feeling of unease which was gradually increasing in his mind like the burgeoning glow of an alien sunrise.

Victoria was dressed in black, as she had been ever since the death of her beloved Albert in 1861, and Blackwood reflected sadly that her overpowering grief was the one thing that the powerful Martian rejuvenation drugs had been unable to ameliorate. As he approached her, he noted the smooth, white skin of her oval face, the bright petal-like fullness of her small lips, the youthful limpidity of her heavy-lidded eyes, the dark lustre of her hair, undiminished by the severity of the tight bun which she still favoured – and was astonished anew by the potency of the strange chemicals coursing through her veins.

Victoria indicated the Martian, who was still standing perfectly still beside the fireplace. ‘Allow me to introduce Petrox Voronezh, Assistant to His Excellency Lunan R’ondd.’

Blackwood bowed, noting the shapes of the metal braces beneath Voronezh’s clothing, which enabled him to withstand the higher gravity of Earth. ‘An honour, sir,’ he said. ‘May I offer you my sincerest condolences on the loss of Ambassador R’ondd?’

‘You may,’ replied Voronezh. ‘And they are gratefully received.’

Not for the first time, Blackwood was taken aback by the singular sound produced by the Martian vocal chords. It was a sort of lilting, high-pitched chirrup, not at all in keeping with the being’s imposing appearance and bearing. And yet, when one considered the fact that the dominant life form on Mars had evolved from flightless birds, similar in appearance to egrets, one was bound to admit that the sound possessed a certain logical aptness.

‘Please be seated, Mr Blackwood,’ said Victoria. ‘Would you care for some breakfast?’

Blackwood had already glanced at the table and was relieved to see that it contained only toast, butter and marmalade, along with a large silver teapot and two cups and saucers. ‘No, thank you, Ma’am. I have already breakfasted.’