The Martian Ambassador (2 page)

The late afternoon air was dank and chilly; a light yet cloying fog swathed the streets of the capital, and Blackwood raised his collar against it as he and Meddings descended the steps from his Chelsea apartment building. A hansom awaited them at the roadside, the driver hunched forward in a dark, bulky overcoat, his whip held still before him, giving him the appearance of a fisherman sitting on a bleak, silent riverbank.

Along the far side of the road stretched one of the new omnibus lanes, a shallow trench of grey concrete three feet wide and a foot deep, which ran parallel to the kerb. As Blackwood reached the street, the air began to tremble with a dull vibration, an intermittent
whump
which startled the birds from the nearby trees and sent them fleeing into the fading, watery light of the foggy sky. Blackwood looked up and saw the faint outline of an intercity omnibus making its way across central London to parts unknown. The omnibus consisted of a lozenge-shaped hull suspended between three multiple-jointed, insect-like legs which carried it high above the ground. Numerous windows, glowing with interior lights, dotted its gunmetal-coloured flanks, casting an eerie luminescence into the surrounding fog.

Blackwood gave a slight shudder as he watched the thing’s progress above the streets. Although the tripods were welcomed by most as a sign of the healthy economic relationship between Earth and Mars, and were already beginning to supersede the train and canal barge as the favoured method for the long-distance transportation of passengers and goods, Blackwood couldn’t get used to them. There was something uncanny and unsettling in their measured gait as they strode purposefully across the countryside between towns and cities, in the incessant
whump, whump
of their rubber-shod feet upon field and moor and the concrete omnibus lanes that threaded through London and the larger towns and cities. The machines’ components were manufactured on Mars and ferried to Earth by interplanetary cylinder, where they were assembled in a large factory in Wapping by Martian-trained engineers and craftsmen.

Progress
, thought Blackwood as he climbed into the cab.
I suppose one must accept the inevitable.

Meddings climbed in behind him and called up their destination to the driver, who roused himself from his melancholy pose and gave the horse’s hide a flick from his whip.

Blackwood opened the envelope the messenger had handed to him and read the contents.

To Thomas Blackwood, Special Investigator for Her Majesty’s Bureau of Clandestine Affairs:

You are to proceed without delay to Bureau Headquarters, to be briefed on the death of Lunan R’ondd, Martian Ambassador to the Court of Saint James’s.

You are to consider this case Top Priority, and are to place all other cases on which you are working in Pending Status.

Grandfather.

He smiled as he folded the piece of paper and returned it to the envelope. Short and to the point: a typical communication from Grandfather. Blackwood had read of the tragedy in
The Times
that morning and had wondered at the identity of the Whitehall source who had suggested that the cause of death might not be natural. He would, he supposed, find out soon enough.

It was a risky strategy, he mused as he watched streets made dreary by the fog drift by. On the one hand, such talk could upset the Martians, who might consider it both crass and alarmist if the Ambassador’s death proved merely to be from natural causes; yet, on the other hand, if he had been assassinated, it would do no harm for Her Majesty’s Government to be seen to have been ahead of the game, as it were, in their readiness to accept the possibility of such an unpalatable alternative.

Blackwood found his mind drifting from the tightrope walk of diplomacy to the motives an assassin might have for killing R’ondd. Was it because he was the Ambassador... or was it because he was a Martian? The alternatives were equally unpalatable; each presented its own problems and pointed towards divergent lines of enquiry, but the latter possibility made Blackwood feel far more uncomfortable.

The vast majority of people went through their lives without ever seeing a denizen of the Red Planet in the flesh: the difference in atmospheric conditions on the two worlds made it impossible for Martians simply to stroll around on Earth without elaborate and cumbersome breathing apparatus (and, of course, the same was true of human beings on Mars). As a result, most of the people of Earth gleaned their information on Mars and Martians from newspaper articles and popular magazines, and, regrettably, from the lurid pages of the penny dreadfuls. In those dire publications, supernatural ne’er-do-wells such as Spring-Heeled Jack and Varney the Vampire competed with Maléficus the Martian for the public’s attention; to Blackwood, at least, there were times when Maléficus’s nefarious exploits came perilously close to anti-Martian propaganda.

During the first few minutes of the drive to the Bureau’s headquarters in Whitehall, Blackwood and Meddings exchanged a few trivialities concerning the weather but said little more to each other. Blackwood was not in the mood for conversation, and his young companion was astute enough to notice the fact. However, as they turned into Parliament Street, they passed a newspaper boy on the corner, who was shouting at the top of his lungs,
‘Read all abart it! Spring-Heeled Jack strikes again! Anovver attack in the East End! Read all abart it!’

Blackwood chuckled to himself, and Meddings turned to him. ‘Do you not place any credence in those reports, sir?’

‘Most certainly not! Although I’ll admit that the business is somewhat interesting from a socio-anthropological point of view.’

‘I’m not sure I follow.’

‘Do you know anything of folklore, Mr Meddings?’

‘Not a great deal, Mr Blackwood, I’m bound to say.’

‘Most people, if they consider the subject at all, believe folklore to be little more than a collection of quaint beliefs from the past, with precious little relevance to the modern world. But that is not so: folklore – by which I mean the traditional tales and beliefs of a people, widely-accepted yet spurious – is in a constant state of development and modification. It is happening all around us, if we would but pause to take note of it. This business about Spring-heeled Jack is a case in point.’

‘How so, if I may ask?’

Blackwood turned to his companion. ‘Have you ever seen Jack?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Do you know anyone who has?’

Meddings shook his head. ‘However,’ he added, ‘a friend of the fiancée of my sister’s best friend’s cousin claims to have caught sight of him about a month ago, in Spittalfields, so I understand.’

Blackwood chuckled again. ‘My dear chap, you make my point for me! Spring-Heeled Jack is no more than a creature of modern folklore, with no independent existence of his own. He is the subject of tales told by those wishing to add spice to their otherwise mundane and dreary lives. No offence to the friend of the fiancée of your sister’s best friend’s cousin, I hasten to add.’

‘None taken, sir, I assure you.’

‘Thank you. I merely wished to impress upon you the point that creatures such as Spring-Heeled Jack may cavort through the pages of the penny dreadfuls, but they most certainly do not cavort through the streets of London.’

‘Creatures like Spring-Heeled Jack and Varney the Vampire.’

‘Precisely,’ Blackwood smiled.

‘And... Maléficus the Martian?’

‘Ah! I see your line of reasoning: Maléficus the Martian and Spring-Heeled Jack are both written about in the penny dreadfuls, and since Martians exist, Jack must exist also.’

‘Not the sturdiest of arguments, I suppose,’ said Meddings a little ruefully.

‘Indeed not,’ Blackwood replied, although his smile had faded at the mention of Maléficus.

Fortunately, he was spared any further unsavoury contemplations by their arrival at the Foreign Office. He stepped down from the cab while Meddings paid the driver, who tugged at his cap before spurring the horse away into the fog, and together they walked through the great arched doorway into the building.

Almost as soon as they had entered, Meddings made to take his leave of Blackwood, who asked, ‘Will you not be joining us, Mr Meddings?’

‘Ah, no sir: I was instructed merely to deliver the message to you.’

‘Very well. Then I’ll bid you good day.’

‘And to you, sir,’ replied the young man with a slight bow, before hurrying off to attend to his other duties, whatever they might be.

Blackwood’s footsteps echoed in counterpoint to the murmur of voices as he made his way across the vast, richly-decorated entrance hall. The designer of the Foreign Office, George Gilbert Scott, had described the building as ‘a kind of national palace or drawing room for the nation’, and Blackwood, who admired the ancient, the traditional and the permanent, never failed to appreciate the timeless elegance of the building’s classical design, even on a day like today, when he was here on urgent business. He now moved swiftly amongst the clerks and other functionaries who seemed to inhabit the place constantly, some carrying sheaves of papers between departments, others congregated in groups of varying sizes, discussing the issues of the moment.

The Special Investigator went straight to a nondescript door in a far corner of the room and unlocked it with a key selected from a small bunch that he withdrew from an inner pocket of his overcoat. He went quickly through the door and closed it behind him, then descended the ancient stone staircase that wound deep into the ground.

The bottom of the staircase gave onto a short corridor, also constructed of ancient and pitted stone and lit by flickering gas lamps, at the end of which was another door. A black-uniformed guard stood stiffly to attention at the door, and he watched Blackwood’s approach with unblinking eyes. He remained perfectly still, but the Special Investigator knew that he would fly instantly to violent action should the credentials Blackwood now displayed prove to be anything but perfectly in order.

The guard examined the leather wallet which Blackwood held open for him, then nodded once and stepped aside. Blackwood opened the door and stepped into an outer office whose walls were lined with heavy oak filing cabinets, and at the centre of which stood a large desk. An impeccably-dressed woman in her middle years looked up from the scrying glass of the cogitator which dominated the desktop.

‘Ah, Special Investigator Blackwood,’ she said in a quietly mellifluous voice.

‘Good morning, Miss Ripley,’ he replied, taking off his hat and overcoat and hanging them on the stand by the door.

‘He’s waiting for you. Please go straight in.’

‘Thank you.’ Blackwood crossed the room to the heavy oak door behind Miss Ripley’s desk, knocked once and entered the inner office.

The head of Her Majesty’s Bureau of Clandestine Affairs, who was known only by his codename of ‘Grandfather’, was pacing back and forth on his steam-powered artificial legs, clearly in a state of great distraction. As he stopped, turned and paced back the way he had come, tiny white clouds emerged from the knees of his black pinstripe trousers, accompanied by the faint but unmistakeable sounds of whispering pistons and gurgling water. Grandfather had lost his legs twenty years earlier during the Second Afghan War while serving with the Kabul Field Force under the command of Major General Sir Frederick Roberts. Although the British victory over the Afghan Army at Char Asiab had cost him dear, Grandfather looked back with great fondness on those days, and a portrait of Sir Frederick hung alongside one of the Queen on the wall behind his desk.

‘Blackwood!’ he said, turning with a faint hiss and clank. ‘Good of you to get here so promptly.’

‘Not at all, sir.’

‘Have a seat.’ Grandfather indicated one of the two burgundy leather chairs facing the desk.

‘Thank you,’ Blackwood replied, carefully refraining from looking at Grandfather’s legs. It was a shame, he reflected, how the pipes and miniature boilers in the thighs ruined the line of the man’s otherwise elegantly-cut trousers.
For Queen and Country
, he thought, philosophically.

Grandfather sat down heavily in his own chair and pressed a button on his desk. ‘Darjeeling?’ he asked.

‘Yes, please.’

The door opened, and Miss Ripley poked her head into the office.

‘Would you be kind enough to bring us a pot of tea, Miss Ripley?’

‘Certainly, sir,’ she replied, and closed the door again.

‘Although I dare say you’d prefer
coffee
, eh, Blackwood?’ Grandfather pronounced the word ‘coffee’ as if it were a particularly fulsome oath. Blackwood merely smiled. It was true that he had grown accustomed to the beverage during his previous assignment to America to investigate the case of the Wyoming Mummy. When Grandfather had overheard him confiding to a colleague upon his return that he was not absolutely sure that he didn’t prefer it to tea, he had informed Blackwood that he would have been only slightly more dismayed had his operative proclaimed allegiance to President McKinley over Her Majesty.

‘No, sir,’ Blackwood replied. ‘Darjeeling would be capital.’