The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)(161)
And then, in a corner of the tank, he saw her. The guards were distracted and so he was able to go up and look at her more closely, separated only by the width of the glass wall, against which his heart throbbed wildly. He recognized her, despite her long dark hair floating around her face like shreds of the night. He studied her elegant profile and recalled the adorable way she used to pout when she was alive, the delightful surliness that wrinkled her nose and curled her lips, the slight bashfulness that had made him feel strongly attracted to her the first time he saw her. That was when her friend Lucy introduced them, during the second expedition to the future, moments before they clambered aboard the Cronotilus like happy, excited children, on their way to see Captain Shackleton’s victory. And now he remembered her as she was the last time he saw her in his uncle’s basement, wearing an exquisite green silk dress she did not yet know would be the color of her shroud, standing on tiptoes, her arms around her husband’s neck, and whispering a farewell in his ear that would remain with them forever, the last words they ever spoke to each other. And here she was, joined to a child some stranger had fathered. Charles did not know if in that state of limbo she retained any vestige of consciousness, if she knew where she was, if she perhaps dreamed of the child attached to the other end of the cord, far from her embrace, or of the captain, of seeing him again one day. All he knew was that the Martians had turned her into a beautiful mermaid whose eternal torment powered their machine. It was clear that in such a state, death could only be a deliverance.
That night, back in his cell, Charles knew he would not survive another day in the depths of the pyramid. And so he forced himself to write, despite spattering the remaining pages with drops of blood that glowed a soft green, smudging his already illegible scrawl. He doubted whether anyone finding his diary would be able to make much sense of the final entries, yet he kept on writing, trying to thrust aside the question that assailed him each time he paused to rummage through his memories: would he tell the brave Captain Shackleton that he had found his Claire?
DIARY OF CHARLES WINSLOW
17 February, 1900
For several minutes, the Martians, with the priest at the fore, led us through endless galleries until we reached a place where the tunnels intersected. On one side there was a closed gate. The priest walked over to it, still beaming at us amiably. He opened the door and ushered us through into a spacious room furnished like one of our offices: in the middle, standing on a soft rug, was a heavy mahogany desk buried in books and files. Among these a sharp letter opener glinted next to a globe with a gilt base, and a desk lamp; covering the walls were maps of the Earth’s continents, and dotted about the room there were a few chairs in the Jacobean style, tables of varying sizes and shelves containing papers.
“Kindly wait here, please,” our guide asked politely. “The Envoy will arrive presently.”
After saying this, he gave Wells a look of profound admiration.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Wells, even in such circumstances as these,” he said courteously. “I’m a great admirer of your work.”
His comment surprised us almost as much as it did Wells, who, once he had recovered from his amazement, replied with as much bitterness as he could muster: “Then I hope that when my work becomes extinct, along with everything else, you’ll lament it as much as I.”
The priest paused for a few moments, looking at Wells pensively.
“It will be one of the things I most lament, I assure you,” he avowed at last, shaking his head sorrowfully. Then he contemplated Wells with a compassionate smile. “Grieving for the death of beauty is a very human idiosyncrasy. Do you know, Mr. Wells, when a star dies, the light from it goes on traveling through space for thousands and thousands of years? The universe remembers for a very long time whatever dies, but it doesn’t grieve. It is natural for things to die. Yet I’ll grieve for you when you’ve gone, for the beauty you are capable of creating, sometimes unconsciously.” He cast a pained eye over the group. “I’m sorry I can’t offer you greater solace, the solace a priest offers his flock. But all of us are subject to the laws of the Cosmos.”
He smiled a sad farewell and went out, closing the door quietly behind him as if he had just tucked us all into bed. We could hear him outside giving orders, presumably to the men who were to guard the door, how many we did not know.
“I don’t suppose you ever imagined you’d have such a universal readership,” Murray quipped once we were alone.
Wells didn’t laugh; in fact, none of us did. Instead, in what seemed like a rehearsed gesture, we all took a long, deep breath, as though testing our lung capacity, and breathed out in unison, in the form of a loud sigh. We all realized the game was up: we were shut in a room waiting for the Envoy, who was apparently in charge of the invasion and whom the others held in almost reverential esteem. We had no idea why he wanted to meet us, but we were clearly at his mercy. I wondered what he would look like, recalling the garbled description my companions had given me of the Martian they had seen. But I instantly realized any attempt to visualize his appearance was pointless, for he would certainly greet us cloaked in human form, especially if what he wanted was to talk to us.
“So, this is the hiding place used by those who had been infiltrated before the attack taking place aboveground,” said Wells. “That explains how the Martian who fell into the blind alley at Scotland Yard could have disappeared without a trace!”