The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)(163)

“We won’t simply be killing a few Martians, Mr. Winslow. Among them will be the Envoy. Oh, please . . . Weren’t any of you listening to what the children said? They’ve been waiting for him, for generations. The invasion didn’t start until he arrived on our planet. Or should I say until he . . . woke up,” he said mysteriously. “But that’s not important now. What’s important to us is that his presence is vital to the invasion. Therefore, we must assume that after his death the Martian army will be in sufficient disarray for any rebellion you might lead to succeed, Captain Shackleton.” With these words, the inspector turned to me once more and, with what struck me as the smile of a madman, said, “This will be how we defeat the Martians, Mr. Winslow. And we both know my plan will succeed, because it already has.”

I looked at him, bewildered. What could I say, when my own words and arguments sounded like the ramblings of a madman when issuing from his mouth?

“Inspector Clayton,” Wells cut in, addressing him with infinite calm, “I admire your altruism, but we can’t possibly allow you to sacrifice your life in order to save ours. I’m sure if we study the situation carefully we’ll find another way to—”

Clayton interrupted him with equal equanimity. “Mr. Wells, that night in my refuge, I could have chosen any one of my prostheses. As you’ll recall, I have many of them, all with their particular advantages. And yet I specifically chose this exploding hand I had made a couple of years ago, because with my experience I knew that sooner or later my enemies would place me in a situation where I’d rather die than fall into their hands. I now see clearly why I had it made, and why I decided to use it today of all days. All our actions have a purpose; nothing is random, as Mr. Winslow has so rightly understood,” he said, gesturing toward me with both hands, as though I were part of a freak show. “In fact, he’s the only one of us who has seen our destiny clearly from the beginning. You’ve been an inspiration to me, Mr. Winslow.” I shifted awkwardly under my companions’ accusing gaze. “The fact we are here is no accident. I don’t know what role each of you will play. You’ll have to discover that for yourselves. But I know what I must do: clearly I must destroy the Envoy. And, as in chess, the game is over when the king falls. If I don’t do this, the invasion will continue, and then I’m afraid no one will have the power to stop it. See for yourselves.”

With these words, Clayton pointed at a pair of maps hanging on a wall. Mystified, we went over to take a look. One was of London and showed the advance of the tripods marked by numerous red crosses. This chart confirmed what we had already glimpsed from Primrose Hill: they had taken the entire city. But the other one terrified us still more, for it was a map of the world. Here the crosses spread like a red rash over the entire planet. The Martians hadn’t only conquered the British colonies of Australia, India, Canada, and Africa, where the sun never set, but a host of other countries, too. Within a few weeks, they would have taken over the entire planet, and as Clayton had said, no one could stop them then. Paralyzed with horror, we stared at the map in silence. The Martians were destroying our planet. And I think this was when it really struck me. Despite all that I’d been through, despite seeing the mighty tripods spitting out their rays only yards from me, destroying buildings, ships, and people with preposterous ease, nothing made me more aware of what was happening than seeing that simple piece of paper. We were all going to be exterminated, wiped off the face of the Earth. The human race was going to vanish as if it had never existed.

Clayton contemplated us solemnly, as though defying us to continue raising objections to his plan, or possibly to come up with a better one, but we simply stared back at him forlornly. To some extent he was right. Yes, his plan was preposterous, but what else could we do? The inspector called our attention to a strange contraption on the far side of the room, and we all walked over to it, intrigued. On a small oak table lay a rectangular object, approximately the size of a book, from which a bluish mist arose, like smoke from a bonfire, forming a kind of vaporous egg. We gazed in awe at the shimmering indigo sphere, unable to believe our eyes, while inside it particles of light and strange phosphorescent squiggles darted about.

“What is it?” I asked.

“A map of the universe, if I’m not mistaken,” Clayton said, still possessed by the blaze of inspiration that had come upon him since he entered the office.

We looked with amazement at the inspector and then studied the shimmering image. We were awestruck to discover that this wasn’t simply a globe made of beautiful, ever-shifting smoke, but a replica of the Cosmos. Each speck of light inside the bluish vapor represented a galaxy with its thousands of millions of stars floating in rows or clusters. They were shaped like wondrous whorls of light, radiant purple roses, luminous sea snails, and some even looked like hats or cigars. Mesmerized, Wells stroked the object tentatively with his forefinger, and the gaseous map grew in scale. Suddenly, the firmament enveloped us like a glistening veil. We gazed at one another, our shoulders sprinkled with constellations, as we let ourselves be gently pierced by comets. I saw Emma balance a nebula on the palm of her hand like a sparkling butterfly, Jane with a star cluster snarled in her hair, Murray’s jacket speckled by the Perseids. Like a curious child, Wells moved his finger in the opposite direction, and the map suddenly shrank, curling up like a frightened animal, until it reached a size that allowed us to admire the Cosmos in all its splendor and detail. I noticed our solar system, with its brightly colored planets orbiting round the sun, mere specks of dust dancing around a ball of light. And there we were, on the third speck nearest the Sun, in a backwater of the universe, believing ourselves to be the masters of something whose dimensions exceeded our imagination. I confess that when I saw the vastness of space, the immensity of the garden stretching beyond my window, I felt suddenly insignificant. Then Wells, apparently unable to keep still, stroked the object again, and a red line, like a silky crimson thread, emerged from the mist, joining each of the planets, which lit up, then dissolved before our eyes. We realized that this line traced the passage through the universe of the invading race as it conquered and consumed planet after planet in what seemed like an endless migration. A cosmic exodus, which, to our horror, ended on a small blue planet in our own solar system.