The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)(150)
The American girl was about to call Murray to order when someone preempted her:
“You ought to have more faith in the empire, Mr. Murray.”
We turned as one toward the owner of the sonorous voice, who was none other than the young man I had taken to be a drunkard when I first arrived on the hill.
“Captain Shackleton, I’m Inspector Clayton of Scotland Yard,” he said, doffing his hat. “And from what I could gather while I was, er . . . recovering my strength, you think you can guide us through the sewers to Kensington, is that right?”
Shackleton nodded with grim determination, as only a hero can, accepting responsibility for our little flock. Then I stepped forward, somewhat nettled that this peculiar fellow, who saw fit in such a situation to doze off under a tree, was unaware of my presence. Clearing my throat noisily, I caught his attention and thrust out my hand.
“Inspector Clayton, I’m Charles Winslow, the . . .” I hesitated. To say “the man who discovered Captain Shackleton” suddenly seemed a trifle pompous, so eventually all I said was, “Well, let’s just say I’m the captain’s faithful shield bearer on this mission.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Winslow,” the inspector said, pressing my hand perfunctorily before turning back to Shackleton. “Yes, Captain, you were saying—”
“Actually, while you were . . . taking a nap,” I interrupted the inspector once more, “I was saying I didn’t think we should leave London, because—”
“Mr. Winslow, we’ve already established that we all wish to leave London,” Wells chimed in. “What we’re now discussing is how to go first to—”
“Just so,” Murray reiterated, frowning, “but I continue to insist that the captain’s absurd idea of fleeing London through the sewers, as if we were rats, is not the most appropriate way.”
“If you have a better idea, Mr. Murray, go ahead and share it with us,” the captain retorted, his eyes flashing, “but I would point out that rats are usually the first to escape any catastrophe.”
A moment later, we were all talking at once, caught up in a heated discussion. Until suddenly Inspector Clayton raised his voice above everyone else’s.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please!” he cried. “I think we should trust Captain Shackleton and flee through the sewers this instant. Not only because of the captain’s impeccable credentials, but because the pair of tripods coming toward us is not planning a romantic picnic on Primrose Hill.”
We all looked with horror at the two tripods crossing Regent’s Park toward us like a couple taking a leisurely stroll.
XXXIV
WHILE CHARLES RELAXED AFTER THE DAY’S hard toil, admiring from his cell the strange and unsettling sunset that had gradually supplanted the traditional earthly ones in the past few months, he reflected with deep sorrow that if anything around him indicated that Man had lost his home, it was without doubt the fact that the sun no longer set in the way it had in his childhood. With disgust he observed the dusky greens and purples congealing around the sun, giving it the appearance of a malignant growth. A sun stripped of its customary gold and orange haze, and that now, seen through the coppery veil of polluted air obscuring the sky, resembled one of those grimy, worn coins beggars would tap against the bar top to ask for a glass of ale.
Just then, Charles glimpsed three Martian airships taking off from the port outside the camp: three shiny flying saucers that rose a few yards into the air with a melodious purr before soaring at impossible speed through the turbulent ocean of greens and purples and vanishing into unfathomable space. Their airships so patently demonstrated the gulf between human science and that of their jailers: the Martians had far outstripped the Earthlings when it came to conquering their own skies, which they had scarcely penetrated with their puny air balloons. But from the indifference with which Charles watched them disappear, no one would have guessed that, in the first few months, their arrivals and departures had provided a spectacle for the prisoners as exciting as it was terrifying.
In addition, the airships usually brought Martian engineers, who unlike their fellow Martians were unable to replicate the appearance of humans and so moved about the camp in their normal state. The first time Charles saw them, he thought they were beautiful, a cross between men and herons. Although no one there explained anything to them, it wasn’t hard to work out that the engineers’ task was to design the tower and fill the camp, and doubtless the entire planet, with their technology. They would elegantly flutter about almost without stopping. Yet even more fascinating was watching them walk on extraordinarily slender, stiltlike legs, with multiple joints that allowed them to adopt the most extraordinary and varied postures, each more graceful than the last. Charles had tried to capture the beauty of their movements in his diary, comparing them to glass dragonflies or other equally beautiful and fragile objects, but had eventually given up: their extraordinary grace was impossible to put into words. The engineers remained in the camp for a while, fluttering hither and thither, until one day it seemed they had relayed all the instructions necessary to build the purification machine. After that, they would turn up every three to four months to supervise the works. Each time they left, for a few days Charles would be invaded by an absurd end-of-summer longing, the origins of which he never fully understood, though he suspected it had something to do with the comfort it gave him to contemplate those extraordinary creatures in a world where beauty had become a rarity.