The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)(145)

“Stop staring at me like that, Mr. Winslow,” Shackleton said with a certain irritation, which I instantly attributed to the tenseness of the situation.

“Captain, what you just did was the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever seen. What a strategist, and what presence of mind. Captain, you’re a true hero,” I replied, in raptures.

“I was lucky, nothing more . . . ,” he said brusquely, shrugging aside my comments.

I shook my head, amused at Shackleton’s modesty, and ordered Harold to turn the carriage around. I told him we were continuing our journey to Soho, confident that nothing bad could happen to us while we were with this exceptional fellow. Although he himself had seen what the brave Captain Shackleton had done, the coachman looked at me doubtfully, as if the captain’s exploits had not impressed him in the slightest. Nonetheless, he climbed onto the driver’s perch and drove the horses on without demur.

After skirting the funeral rubble beneath which the tripod was buried, we entered the stretch of road it had just passed through and saw the havoc it had wreaked. We came across numerous fallen buildings, but the real horror, the Martians’ boundless contempt for our race, was illustrated by the scores of dead bodies strewn all over the place, and more than anything, the survivors: a woman weeping on her knees before the trampled body of a child of three or four, a man wandering in a daze, cradling a severed head, another crying in vain for help, half trapped beneath his horse. As we contemplated this parade of horrors, even the captain was shocked, despite hailing from a future where London had also been reduced to rubble. He was no doubt thinking how meaningless all our efforts were, because even if we did succeed in halting the invasion and rebuilding the city, another equally horrific devastation awaited it just around the corner. In the same vague way we had learned of their tragedy thanks to Murray’s Time Travel, future generations would learn of ours through commemorative crosses and monuments. Only the brave Captain Shackleton would see the greatest city in the world twice razed to the ground.

We spent most of the journey plunged in a gloomy silence, until, as we entered Soho, Harold brought the carriage to an abrupt halt. Peering out of the windows to try to discover the reason, Shackleton and I glimpsed through the veil of mist some fifty yards ahead of us a half-dozen tripods leaving the area where we were heading, walking side by side like an eerie herd. We stayed motionless, pretending we were one of the many carriages abandoned in the streets, and only when they had disappeared toward the Strand did Harold urge the horses on once more.

Soho was unrecognizable. The column of tripods had reduced it to a smoky wasteland where scarcely a building was left standing to serve as a landmark. Faced with this horrific devastation, I realized no force as destructive as that of the Martians had ever existed on Earth. Wandering among the ruins, like castaways who have lost their minds, groups of the wounded were helping one another, or turning over the dead bodies in search of their loved ones. I gazed at them for a while as if under hypnosis, aware that even if we won this war, for many it was already lost. The carriage rolled to a halt, and we heard Harold’s voice speaking to us from the driver’s seat.

“I think this is number twelve, Greek Street,” he said, pointing at nothing.

Shackleton and I stepped down from the coach and made our way, dazed, through the wreckage to the place where Murray’s Time Travel had once stood. Harold followed a few paces behind. Somewhere amid that sea of rubble we came across the Cronotilus, brutally crushed beneath a heavy layer of girders and sections of roof. How would we travel to the future now? I wondered, pondering the battered time tram. Besides, even if it had been intact, there was no sign of any hole in time, and the fact was I had no idea what the opening into the year 2000 looked like. I felt a creeping sense of failure. Had I been wrong all along? Would we play no part in saving the world? It was then I stumbled on the poster announcing the expedition to the year 2000, to the day of the final battle that would decide the fate of the planet. It had always hung next to the entrance, like an unreal yet captivating lure, in the days when Murray’s Time Travel was still open for business. In it Captain Shackleton was pictured raising his sword against the king of the automatons, whom Shackleton had defeated in a fabulous duel, which, thanks to Murray’s magic, I myself had witnessed. I cast my eyes around for the hero himself, who at that moment happened to be talking to Harold while pointing to the top of a section of wall. With arm outstretched, each leg planted on a huge rock, and his noble chin jutting out in a gesture of unquestionable authority, Shackleton looked as if he were doing his best to replicate the warrior-like pose in the poster I was holding. I felt a surge of optimism as I looked again from the poster to the brave Captain Shackleton, who was here, in our time, and moments before had single-handedly destroyed one of the Martian machines. The fact that the tripods had ruined the Cronotilus only meant we weren’t going to save the world by traveling to the future. We would do it some other way, but we would do it. Shackleton caught me looking at him, and, raising his eyebrows skeptically, he spread his arms to encompass all this destruction.

“As you see, Mr. Winslow, we can’t possibly travel to the year 2000.”

I shrugged, amused by what was undoubtedly a minor setback.

“In that case, I’m afraid we’ll just have to defeat the Martians by ourselves, Captain,” I replied, grinning.





XXXIII