The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)(157)

“Pleased to meet you, Curly,” Emma replied, shaking his hand.

Jane repeated the gesture. “Pleased to meet you, Curly.”

The other children clustered behind the eldest boy, eyeing us suspiciously.

“My name’s Hobo,” chirped the youngest, a small blond boy whom one of the older girls was holding by the hand.

The rest of us were huddled behind Emma and Jane, more due to our scant experience at dealing with children than because of the lack of room. We grinned at Hobo in a way that we intended to be friendly, but which he probably found disquieting.

“And I’m Mallory,” said the girl with plaits who had been playing skipping rope.

The others felt encouraged and began tentatively introducing themselves. Emma and Jane beamed at each of them as they stammered their names. When they had finished, Emma and Jane began introducing us. The children nodded apathetically as they recited our names, except when Jane pronounced Wells’s name. This elicited a few sniggers, which the author responded to by pulling a face. I assumed their reaction was due to the contrast between Wells and the other men in the group, all of whom were taller, more muscular, and, why not say it, more handsome than he.

“Good,” Emma declared, once the introductions were over. “Now that we all know one another’s names, and we’re friends, tell me: what are you doing down here on your own?”

The boy called Curly stared at her in surprise.

“We were playing,” he said, as though stating the obvious.

One of them gave a chortle, amused at Emma’s ignorance.

“What about your parents? Are they up there?” Emma asked, voicing all our curiosity.

Curly shook his head emphatically.

“No? Where are they, then?”

“Near,” the child said enigmatically.

“Near? You mean they’re down here?”

Curly nodded, and Emma exchanged surprised looks with us.

“There are other people hiding down here . . . ,” I heard Murray murmur beside me.

“It would seem so,” I said eagerly.

“We must make contact, see how many there are,” Clayton whispered to us, excited, I assumed, at the prospect of meeting up with other people to form a larger group and pool information about the invasion.

Clayton stepped away from us and approached the children, keeping his artificial hand out of view in his jacket pocket.

“That’s wonderful, children, wonderful,” he said, gently pushing Emma aside. “So, your parents are nearby. Can you take us to them?”

The children glanced at one another. Then Curly said, “We can.”

Clayton turned to us, raising his eyebrows in amazement. “They can.”

He turned back to the children with a satisfied smile; for a few moments everyone exchanged looks again in silence.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Clayton said at last in a tone of theatrical enthusiasm, as though nothing in the world could have given the children greater pleasure.

The children began conferring amongst themselves with surprising seriousness, until, with an imperceptible gesture, Curly motioned to them to start walking. They filed higgledy-piggledy into one of the side tunnels. He then invited us to follow them with a nod of his head, which Clayton replicated, like an image in a hall of mirrors. We all obeyed, and for several minutes we walked four or five yards behind the children, who were skipping and hopping and singing songs, as though being guides bored them so much they had to amuse themselves somehow. Their shrill voices ricocheted off the walls of the tunnel, producing a babble as incongruous as it was soothing, a kind of charm evoking the world from which the Martians had evicted us, a world of bustling streets teeming with carriages and parks full of children laughing. Our world. A world we never imagined anyone might covet from outer space, let alone fly across the Cosmos to snatch from us. I tried to cheer myself up with the thought that they hadn’t succeeded yet, that there were many more of us hiding in the sewers, ready to defend ourselves, perhaps waiting for a man who could show us how to fight, and I looked at Shackleton, who was walking glumly beside me.

“Isn’t it exciting, Captain?” I said, trying to cheer him up, too. “There are people hiding in the sewers, exactly as you did—I mean will do in the future.”

Shackleton nodded unenthusiastically but said nothing, and I did not insist. We continued walking in silence until, suddenly, the children told us to stop beside the entrance to a small side tunnel in the wall. To our horror they began filing into it, and we had no choice but to follow, stooping so as not to bang our heads. It seemed like a disused pipe from the old sewer network and turned at right angles, as in a maze. At last, just when we were beginning to think it would never end, we came out in a large storeroom, filled with building materials. At the far end of it, concealed behind some bundles, was a vertical ladder descending into the darkness. The children began clambering down it fearlessly, giggling at their own jokes.

“Where the devil are they taking us?” I muttered, tired of the endless walking and beginning to feel increasingly sweaty and grimy.

But no one had the answer. Presently, we came to a dank, cold hall with a vaulted ceiling. The room was lit by a few lamps hanging from the walls and pillars, but they scarcely made a dent in the darkness, and it was difficult to see exactly how big it was.

“We’re here,” Curly announced.