The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)(27)
“What do you suppose that thing is, Allan?”
The swaddled lump that was the sergeant’s head went on gazing at the ice for a few moments.
“I don’t know,” he replied at last, with a shrug.
Not satisfied with his answer, Reynolds tried to formulate the question in a different way. “Do you think it comes from . . . the stars?”
This time the gunner responded instantly: “I do, my friend, probably from Mars.”
The young man’s precision took Reynolds aback. “Why Mars?”
The gunner nodded and turned round, staring at him with his huge eyes, those grey eyes Reynolds always avoided looking at for fear they would suck him in like a whirlpool.
“It is the simplest explanation,” said Allan, almost apologetically. “And the simplest explanations are almost always the truest.”
“Why?” the explorer asked, without clarifying whether he was questioning Allan’s first or second statement, or both.
“Because Mars is the planet that has most in common with ours,” Allan explained, his gaze wandering back to the ice. “Have you read the Royal Society’s reports based on studies carried out by William Herschel, the astronomer royal, with his telescope?” Reynolds shook his head, inviting to Allan to go on, which he did immediately: “They maintain that Mars has a thick atmosphere, similar in many ways to ours, which means it is probably inhabited.”
“I see you haven’t considered the possibility that the creature and its machine could be part of a military experiment carried out by some foreign power, for example.”
“Of course I have. However, it seems inconceivable that a foreign power could possess scientific knowledge so disproportionately superior to our own,” said Allan, “and that they could have managed to keep it quiet until now, don’t you agree? Therefore I am dismissing the idea that the creature comes from Earth, which only leaves outer space. And if we accept that premise, we may not be far wrong in supposing that our visitor comes from Mars, the planet that is both nearest to ours and most able to support life out of all those around us.” Allan shot him a glance. “Of course, I could be mistaken, and I may even be distorting the facts to fit my theory, a common tendency in deductive reasoning. But until someone disproves it, this seems to me the simplest and therefore the most logical explanation,” he concluded emphatically.
Allan raised his penetrating gaze toward the sky, appearing to look in a specific direction, perhaps toward the red planet itself. Shivering with cold at his side, Reynolds watched him with a mixture of disquiet and fascination, struck dumb by his analysis of the creature’s origins. The extent of the gunner’s knowledge never ceased to amaze Reynolds. He had not met anyone so seemingly informed in such a variety of subjects, or who was capable of such categorical and exhaustive analysis. Not for nothing had the gunner enrolled in the prestigious University of Virginia at the age of seventeen. Although, according to what he had told Reynolds during one of his drunken rants, he had immediately incurred impossibly high gambling debts, and with no one willing to pay them off for him, he had been summarily expelled, but not before setting fire to every stick of furniture in his room. Another message that his stepfather, whom Allan reproached for having educated him as a rich boy without giving him any money, had failed to interpret.
“Do you know something, Reynolds? I have always thought it was only a matter of time before they paid us a visit,” the gunner suddenly added with an air of somber reflection, as he continued to gaze up at the star-studded sky.
“A Martian,” Reynolds repeated, still incredulous.
The sergeant’s words had made him feel elated and terrified at the same time. The man beside him, whose intellect was as keen as his own, believed, as he did, that the creature came from outer space. Overwhelmed once more by all the ramifications of this, Reynolds felt his head start to spin. A Martian had fallen out of the sky . . . And they would be the first humans to establish contact with it, the brave crew of the Annawan, the members of the Great American Expedition organized by the famous explorer Jeremiah Reynolds. The first man to communicate with a being from the stars, the man who would possibly never be appointed viceroy of the subterranean world, but who might go down in History as Earth’s ambassador to outer space.
“Yes, a Martian,” reiterated the gunner, who was by now looking at Reynolds, eyes shining, as if the brightness of the stars he had been contemplating were glinting in them. “And his existence changes everything, don’t you think? How could Man go on believing in God now, for example?”
“Well,” replied Reynolds, “I wouldn’t be so sure. According to Genesis, God is the Creator of all things, of Heaven and Earth, of all that is visible and invisible: of everything, Allan, including the Martian. I think God will appear even more powerful to us for having been able to invent beings beyond Man’s imagining.”
“And what makes you so sure?” Allan gently replied. “Consider the Annawan for a moment. She is a relatively modern vessel, and yet after almost four hundred years, the main thing that differentiates her from a simple galleon is that she is powered by coal as well as wind. And only a few miles away from her is a machine from another world, something so incredibly advanced it is beyond the grasp of our most brilliant minds. Try to imagine what kind of civilization could have created such a thing and what other marvels a society like that might reveal to us. A vaccine against aging? A cure for our most terrible afflictions? Creatures made in our image that could carry out the most backbreaking or the simplest chores for us? Immortality perhaps? Tell me, Reynolds, who will believers look to after this? I am afraid that when it all comes to light, no one will care what God and His Heaven have to offer,” declared the sergeant.