The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)(7)
At this, he took a swig of beer, with the nagging impression that what he had just said was no more than harebrained nonsense.
“Yes,” agreed Serviss, giving no sign that he considered Wells’s disquisition outlandish. “Our na?ve rulers will quite possibly end up believing that evil beings from outer space have filled our subconscious minds with these imaginings, by means of ultrasonic rays or hypnosis, perhaps in preparation for a future invasion.”
“In all likelihood!” Wells burst out laughing, at which Serviss began slapping the table once more, to the despair of the waiter and the nearest customers.
“Consequently, as I was saying,” Wells resumed after Serviss stopped making a din, “even if there is life on Mars or on some other planet in our vast solar system . . .” He made a grandiose gesture toward the sky and seemed annoyed to encounter the tavern ceiling with its plain wooden beams. He gazed at it in dismay for a few moments. “Damnation . . . what was I saying?”
“Something about Mars . . . I think,” Serviss added, looking up at the ceiling with equal misgivings.
“Oh, yes, Mars,” Wells remembered at last. “I mean, assuming there was life there, it would probably be impossible to compare it with life here, and therefore envisaging spaceships engineered by Martians is absurd.”
“All right. But what if I told you,” Serviss said, trying to keep a straight face, “that you’re mistaken?”
“Mistaken? You could not say I am mistaken, my dear Garrett.”
“Unless I was able to back it up, my dear George.”
Wells nodded, and Serviss leaned back in his seat, smiling enigmatically.
“Did you know that as a youth I was obsessed with the idea of life on other planets?” he confessed.
“You don’t say?” Wells retorted, a foolish grin on his face.
“Yes, I hunted through newspapers, treatises, and old essays looking for”—he pondered the best word to use—“signs. Did you know, for example, that in 1518 something described as ‘a kind of star’ appeared in the sky above the conquistador Juan de Grijalva’s ship, before moving away leaving a trail of fire and throwing a beam of light down to Earth?”
Wells feigned surprise: “Heavens, I had no idea!”
Serviss smiled disdainfully in response to Wells’s mockery.
“I could cite dozens of similar examples from my compilation of past sightings of flying machines from other worlds, George,” he assured him, the smile still on his lips. “But that isn’t why I’m convinced beings from the sky have already visited Earth.”
“Why then?”
Serviss leaned across the table, lowering his voice to a whisper: “Because I’ve seen a Martian.”
“Ho, ho, ho . . . Where, at the theater perhaps? Or walking along the street? Perhaps it is the queen’s new pet dog?”
“I mean it, George,” Serviss said, straightening up and beaming at him. “I’ve seen one.”
“You’re drunk!”
“I’m not drunk, George! Not enough not to know what I’m talking about at any rate. And I tell you I saw a darned Martian. Right in front of my very eyes. Why, I even touched it with my own hands,” he insisted, holding them aloft.
Wells looked at him gravely for a few moments before bursting into loud peals of laughter, causing half the other customers to jump.
“You are a terribly amusing fellow, Garrett,” he declared after he had recovered. “Why, I think I might even forgive you for writing a novel in order to profit from—”
“It was about ten years ago, I forget the exact date,” Serviss said, ignoring Wells’s banter. “I was spending a few days in London at the time, carrying out some research at the Natural History Museum for a series of articles I was writing.”
Realizing that Serviss wasn’t joking, Wells sat up straight in his chair and listened attentively, while he felt the pub floor rock gently beneath him, as though they were drinking beer on a boat sailing down a river. Had this fellow really seen a Martian?
“As you know, the museum was built to house an increasingly large number of fossils and skeletons that wouldn’t fit in the British Museum,” Serviss went on dreamily. “The whole place looked new, and the exhibits were wonderfully informative, as though they really wanted to show visitors what the world was about in an orderly but entertaining fashion. I would stroll happily through the rooms and corridors, aware of the fact that numerous explorers had risked life and limb so that a handful of West End ladies could feel a thrill of excitement as they watched a procession of marabunta ants. A whole host of marvels beckoned from the display cases, stirring in me a longing for adventure, a desire to discover distant lands, which, fortunately, my affection for the comforts of civilization ended up stifling. Was it worth missing the whole theater season just to see a gibbon swinging from branch to branch? Why travel so far when others were willing to endure hammering rain, freezing temperatures, and bizarre diseases to bring back almost every exotic object under the sun? And so I contented myself with observing the varied contents of the display cases like any other philistine. Although what really interested me wasn’t exhibited in any of them.”
Wells gazed at Serviss in respectful silence, not wishing to interrupt him until he had heard the end of the story. He had experienced something similar himself on his first visit to the museum.