The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)(151)

And yet, although he tried not to dwell on the thought, Charles knew the scientists were not as he saw them. After their first visit, he had discussed their appearance with his fellow prisoners, only to find out to his astonishment that no two prisoners’ descriptions of them coincided. Everyone had their own idea of what the creatures looked like, and each assumed the others must be joking when they described them. This had led to an argument that had ended in a stupid brawl, from which Charles had prudently retreated. Back in his cell, he had reflected long and hard and had come to a conclusion. He would have liked to discuss it with someone intelligent like Wells to find out whether his idea was half-baked or not, but unfortunately there weren’t too many keen minds around him. The conclusion Charles had reached was that the Martians must be so different from anything Man knew that somehow mankind was unable to see them. Most of his fellow prisoners saw them as monstrous creatures, no doubt influenced by the hatred they felt toward the Martians. But Charles had always worshipped science, progress, and the marvels Jules Verne had described in his novels. Yes, Charles belonged to that brotherhood of visionaries who before the advent of the Martians had dreamed of ships that could sail the Atlantic in five days, of flying machines that could soar through the skies at great speed, of telephones without wires, of time travel. Perhaps this was why he saw the Martian engineers as beautiful long-legged angels, able to create miracles. And although he knew now that those miracles consisted in transforming his planet into a nightmarish world, he continued to see them as beautiful.

The sun finally disappeared, exhaling a burst of greenish rays into the sky and bathing in a ghoulish light the distant ruins of London, visible behind the dank forests that had slowly spread around the camp in a stealthy embrace of tangled branches. This planet belonged less and less to Man and more and more to the invaders. Before the invasion, when no one suspected the world as they knew it could change so suddenly, Charles would rail against it at the slightest opportunity, with wit or anger, depending on the weather. In his opinion, the empire was little less than a ship about to keel over due to the idiots at its helm, who were only versed in the arts of extravagance, inefficiency, and embezzlement. The useless and corrupt British government was responsible for more than 8 million subjects living and dying in the most shameful poverty. Charles, of course, did not share their miserable fate, and on the whole it could not be said of him that he worried unduly about those who did, but it was clear that human civilization, as such, had failed.

Charles gave a sigh and retrieved his diary from beneath the pallet, wondering once again what drove him to set down on paper those memories no one would ever read, why he didn’t just lie down and die. But he simply could not accept another defeat. And so this man, who had already begun to forget what sunsets on his planet looked like, sat at his table, opened his notebook, and resumed writing.

DIARY OF CHARLES WINSLOW

15 February, 1900

Before the Martian invasion, London was the most powerful city in the world, but not necessarily the most salubrious. It pains me to admit this, as it did my father before me, but before the city’s entrails were sliced open and installed with an artificial intestine in the form of a modern sewer system, Londoners stored their excrement in cesspits, which were cleaned out with a regularity that depended on the depth of the householder’s pockets. In these pits, it was not uncommon to come across tiny skeletons, because the stinking holes were ideal places for women to rid themselves of the fruits of their illicit unions. Each morning at dawn, a trail of brimming carts would leave London with their foul-smelling cargo. When at last it was decided, as yet another sign of progress, that all cesspits should be sealed off and all drains be connected to a rudimentary sewer system that emptied out into the Thames, the result was an epidemic of cholera that killed almost fifteen thousand Londoners. This was followed by another, five years later, which carried off almost an equal number of lives. My father used to tell me that in the hot, dry summer of 1858 the smell was so appalling that the curtains in the Houses of Parliament had to be daubed with lime in a desperate attempt to ward off the foul odor wafting in from the river, which had become an open sewer for the excrement of nearly 2 million people. As a direct result, and notwithstanding the exorbitant cost, Parliament passed an act allowing the civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette to remodel London’s entrails with his revolutionary new sewer system. I can still recall my father describing Bazalgette’s great work to me as though he had built it himself: nearly a hundred miles of interceptor sewers made of brick and Portland cement that would carry human waste mixed with ordinary drainage water fifteen miles downstream from London Bridge. This explained why now, beneath our feet, following the course of the Thames, were six interceptor sewers fed by another four hundred and fifty miles of mains sewers: the intricate maze that in the year 2000 would have the privilege of sheltering the last surviving members of our race. No doubt my father would have been pleased to know that what he considered one of the greatest technological achievements would still be of use in the distant future.

We descended into London’s sewers through one of the drain covers closest to Primrose Hill. We clambered down the rusty ladder attached to the wall and reached the ground without anyone slipping, which, given the almost total darkness, seemed nothing short of miraculous. Shackleton assumed the role of guide. After getting his bearings, he led us through a narrow, winding tunnel, where we were obliged almost to grope our way along. We came out into what, owing to its size, I deduced was one of the three main sewers to the north of the Thames. What first struck us was the shocking stench. Fortunately, this stretch of the tunnel was illuminated by tiny lamps hanging at intervals along the slimy brick walls. Their faint glow gave us some idea of the place where we would be walking for the next few hours, passing beneath the city to Queen’s Gate. The sewer was an endless gallery with a vaulted roof, from which opened out other, narrower tunnels. I assumed the majority of these side tunnels carried the raw sewage into the main tunnels, while many others led to depositories or pumping stations. A canal ran through the middle of the sewer we were in. We tried not to look at it, for the congealed evil-smelling slime flowing through it, besides carrying every kind of filth, brought other surprises. I saw a dead cat drift past us with its glassy, unseeing eyes, being swept along on the water down one of those mysterious pipes. Luckily on either side of the canal there were two brick paths wide enough for us to walk along in single file, if we didn’t mind sharing them with the rats, which would occasionally dart out to greet us, running alongside our feet before vanishing into the gloom. Nauseous from the insufferable stench, we set off in pairs, trying not to slip over on the layer of moss carpeting stretches of the walkway. The air was dank and cold, and the silence absolute, broken only by the sporadic rumble of the sewer’s watery insides. I have to say I found these sounds almost relaxing. At any rate, they were preferable to the deafening blasts and relentless ringing of bells we had endured aboveground.