The Martian War (7 page)

Again Huxley remained serious. “I would not be surprised if the French themselves have an institution similar to this one, and no doubt their Jules Verne is an active part of it. However, Queen Victoria is more concerned with the Second Reich than with the French. That is why we must plan.”

T
hat night, Wells retired to his small but comfortable guest room in the secret wing of the Institute. He was no longer a penniless student living with A.V. Jennings in austere rented rooms; now he was a distinguished visitor of T.H. Huxley, accorded the hospitality of the Crown.

Exhausted both physically and mentally from all he had seen, Wells sat at a small desk under the flickering gaslight glow. He sharpened one of his lead pencils, then got out a clean sheet of paper. His imagination was fired with images, ideas, speculations; he wanted to share them all with Jane, who loved to debate with him and imagine possibilities. What would she think of the grand schemes of the Imperial Institute? Though
he’d been gone only a day, Wells had promised Jane a letter every night. He had so much to tell her that he didn’t know if he could get it all down on paper by dawn.

Though it was laughable to think she might be a German spy, he restrained himself from describing details of the Institute’s research. Still, he was good at speaking in broad generalities, a technique he had practiced in his
Pall Mall
articles, in order to seem like more of an expert than he actually was.

After he had jotted down only a few paragraphs, though, his thoughts turned toward Jane herself. Her face appeared before his imagination, and he smiled like a love-struck fool. Though she would have been much more interested to hear about the innovative scientific work, his letter quickly devolved into repeated and persistent declarations of how much he missed her. He told her that his guest room was large enough for two, and it seemed vast and empty without her.

He finished by filling the margins with amusing doodles of himself with a big frown on his face and hands clasping a clownishly large heart. Among his correspondents, Wells was famous for the imaginative cartoons that adorned his missives. He sealed the letter so it could be posted the following day.

Seeing that it was well past midnight, he turned down the gaslight and began to undress for bed. Before he could turn in, though, Wells heard noises from the other side of his door. A whisper, then a strange mixture of chuckles and moans, growing louder, quieter, then louder again.

Puzzled, he opened the door a crack and cocked his ear to listen. The eerie noises echoed up and down the shadowy corridors. He thought he heard the sound of bare feet slapping on the wooden floor.

Then, resoundingly clear, came cackling laughter that was either the giggling of a child or the raving of a lunatic. But as he stared up and down the hall, Wells saw nothing but the flickering gaslight from covered jets on the walls. None of the other doors were open; all the other guest scientists were asleep. He could discern no movement.

When he heard the rapid footsteps again, he whirled to his left, half expecting to see a ghost burdened with clanking chains like Jacob Marley from Dickens’s
A Christmas Carol.
Again, the corridor was empty.

The next noise was quite distinctly a startled indrawn breath. The footsteps stopped.

“Hullo?” Wells said in a quiet voice, not wanting to shout.

Accompanied by a faint chuckle, he heard running steps, bare feet receding toward the far end of the hall. Wells rubbed his eyes, but could see nothing.

Intrigued and determined to investigate this mystery, he stalked off in the direction of the footsteps. His stockinged feet were silent as he crept down the hall past closed doors. Wells followed the sounds into the wider corridors that led to darkened laboratories. Inside the enclosed research rooms he saw only low flames from gas jets on the walls. All of the labs appeared to be securely closed. Nothing moved inside the industrial bays.

He lost track of the footsteps and could hear no breathing except his own. His heartbeat pounded in his ears, but other than the hiss of gas jets, the night silence remained complete.

Perhaps he had dreamed up this hobgoblin, but he doubted it. Wells had a very vivid imagination, though it had always been at his beck and call. His wild fancies did not trick him with auditory hallucinations in the middle of the night. He
was sure he had been wide awake.

He reached the end of the research wing, finding nothing. Putting his hands on his hips, he let out a long, frustrated sigh. After waiting a few more moments, he walked back toward his room, shaking his head.

When he rounded a corner that led back to his guest room, he was astonished to come upon a man standing entirely naked in the middle of the corridor. He recognized the eccentric chemist, Dr. Hawley Griffin. Yellowish-orange light from the gas lamps shone on his pallid skin.

As Wells stood speechless with surprise, the stark-naked man sprinted up to him like a foolish prankster. Before Wells could react, the grinning chemist playfully slapped him on the top of the head—then dashed off.

“You can’t see me! I’m invisible!” Griffin sprinted away, chuckling as if he had played a very clever practical joke.

“Here now, Dr. Griffin! Wait!”

Griffin kept running, his bare feet slapping on the waxed wooden floor. He called in a singsong voice, “I’m invisible,
invisible!
Ha ha!”

Wells brushed his hair back into place, indignant that the unclothed man would do such a silly thing. He trotted after the nude scientist, following him down the hall, but Griffin picked up speed.

Rounding a corner, Wells saw the naked man skid to a halt. Barrel-chested Dr. Cavor stood in the middle of the hall, beefy arms crossed over his chest. Cavor’s lower lip protruded from his square jaw in an expression of great disapproval. “Hawley Griffin, what on Earth are you doing?”

The naked man snickered as if concocting a devious plan. He bobbed back and forth, then tried to dart around the other scientist, but Cavor reached out and snatched Griffin’s arms.

The chemist squawked. “Stop! You can’t catch me. You can’t even see me.”

“You’re having delusions again, Hawley.”

“No, I’m invisible! How did you catch me? You can’t know where I am.”

“Yes, we can, Hawley.”

Breathless and panting, Wells arrived. “Dr. Cavor, what is he doing?”

The materials scientist just shook his head. Griffin turned around, his bristly hair glistening with sweat. He tried to break away again, but Cavor held the man’s wrist with all his strength. Wells helped to keep Griffin steady.

“It’s rather like
The Emperor’s New Clothes,
you know,” Cavor muttered.

The naked man finally stopped struggling. His shoulders slumped as he looked around in dismal disappointment. “You … you can really see me? Both of you?”

“Yes,” Wells and Cavor said in unison.

With a deep sigh, Griffin surrendered. “Then it must have worn off.”

“I’m sure it did. Come now, Mr. Wells and I will escort you back to your room. You’ve had enough excitement for tonight, and you need some sleep. Our symposium starts in two days, you know.”

“Yes, yes, and I must perfect my formula by that time!”

“Does he have a … smoking jacket or something?” Wells asked.

“Yes, but it’s invisible, too!” Griffin insisted as the two escorted him back to his room.

O
n the day of the symposium, Wells arrived in the lecture hall early enough to get a spot in the front row. He wasn’t entirely sure what Huxley expected of him, but he did not intend to disappoint the professor. It was an unparalleled opportunity.

He settled himself in a varnished wooden chair and took out his papers and a lead pencil. He didn’t want to miss a word that was said. In the center of the oratory stage, a dark wooden lectern stood like a pulpit. Remembering Huxley’s showmanship when lecturing his biology students, Wells hoped the old professor still had his rhetorical abilities.

One by one, scientists filed in. Some still wore stained laboratory coats; many had tousled hair and bloodshot eyes, as if
they had continued working through the night and all morning, trying to squeeze out one more result. Several men wore formal jackets, as if they expected an audience with the queen.

Wells was surprised to note impressive representatives filing in on the other side of the room. He recognized Prime Minister Gladstone himself, who had served in his post four times since 1868 in an alternating dance with his conservative rivals, the Marquis of Salisbury and Benjamin Disraeli. Numerous admirals and generals of the Imperial armed forces sat beside the prime minister in stiff, formal uniforms.

Wells surveyed them with amazement. The presence of such people drove home the importance of what would be discussed here. Self-consciously, he straightened his brown hair and moustache, then brushed imagined lint from his sleeves. His mother would swoon if she knew where her “Bertie” was now—and probably try to shoo him out of the auditorium so that “his betters” could do their important work.

T.H. Huxley entered from a side door, full of confidence. He wore a fine new suit and a perfectly knotted cravat. As he passed Wells, he paused. “Sit quietly and listen. Take notes of what is discussed and, most importantly
—think
about it. I may ask you questions afterward. I will make up my own mind, of course, but I would appreciate your analysis.”

The whispering from the audience grew louder, then fell off as the old professor took long-legged steps across the lecture stage. Huxley bowed to his audience, then made a special show of recognizing Prime Minister Gladstone, the various lords, Members of Parliament, and military officers. When he was finished with the formalities, he grasped the lectern as if he were about to teach a class full of fresh students.

“The greatest minds of the British Empire serve this institute. Some arrived openly, some in the middle of the night. Each one knows the importance of what is discussed and developed here behind closed doors.”

The professor summarized the familiar threats to the Empire, including the growing danger of the German Second Reich and her unexpected alliances with Russia, and the always-unruly French. Huxley swept his gaze across every listener. “How, then, is the British Empire to prepare? By leading the march of progress, rather than allowing ourselves to be trampled by it!” He turned to the dignitaries. “Gentlemen, distinguished M.P.s, your Lordships, Mr. Prime Minister, I present to you the secret work of the Imperial Institute.”

While the symposium continued, Wells feverishly took notes and wondered how he could possibly help reshape the world.

The next two speakers, Professor Redwood and Mr. Bensington, were quite ordinary-looking fellows. Redwood cleared his throat, and Bensington did the same, only with more gusto, as if competing with his partner. Professor Redwood began, “We have created a food substance called
Herakleophorbia
—”

“I thought of the name,” Bensington said. “Sounds quite impressive, doesn’t it?”

“Though it’s the devil to spell!” Redwood retorted, then returned his attention to the talk. “When used as a food source, Herakleophorbia greatly promotes growth and increases the size of any living creature.”

Bensington leaned closer to the lectern. “Ideally, we will be able to create giant warriors who can overthrow any enemy army.”

Redwood held up a hand. “For now, though, our amazing foodstuff has been tested only on laboratory animals.”

“But with extraordinary success!”

Both men gestured to their assistants, who disappeared behind the stage and then returned, tugging two heavy wooden carts. In each cart rested a large cage that contained a snarling, ferocious-looking brown rat as large as a sheep, with a rope-thick pink tail, flashing eyes, and long sharp teeth. Their shrill squeaking could be heard all the way to the back of the lecture hall. The mammoth rodents clawed at the cages, gnawing on the criss-crossed bars with jaws powerful enough to sever an oak sapling in a single bite.

While some of the lords and generals stared wide-eyed, Prime Minister Gladstone applauded. “Bravo! With such a substance we could feed the hungry, grow crops and meat animals large enough to fill every need. The trade unions and syndicalists and downtrodden poor will no longer have anything to complain about.”

“Well, Mr. Prime Minister, that is certainly one application,” said Mr. Bensington. “Very astute of you to grasp that promoting social harmony is in itself a method of defending Britain.” Redwood scowled at his partner. Wells couldn’t understand how the two men could work together without coming to blows. “Unfortunately, sirs, there are still certain … inconsistencies in the formula. For instance, Herakleophorbia seems to promote a great deal of aggression in the subjects.”

Bensington would not be brushed aside so easily. “Yes, aggression—which is an advantage if we mean to create soldiers!”

“On the other hand, no one wants our pigs to become so vicious we cannot butcher them for their gigantic bacon!” Redwood added.

A few chuckles rippled across the audience.

With piercing squeaks, the enormous rats hurled themselves against the bars of the cages. One of the bars looked perilously loose, and Bensington signaled for the assistants to wrestle the swaying cages away. He sketched a quick bow to the prime minister and his cronies. “Nevertheless, you can certainly see the potential of Herakleophorbia.” He tugged Professor Redwood from the stage, beating a hasty retreat as the rats’ clamor grew louder.

For the next presentation, Dr. Hawley Griffin walked onto the stage. The eccentric chemist looked much tidier today: he was well groomed and wore a clean lab coat, but his expression shifted with extraordinary swiftness. Running hands through his bristly dark hair, Griffin presented his ideas about the military benefits of his experimental invisibility formula.

“Unseen soldiers could win every war, gentlemen. How could an enemy succeed in killing them, except by accident? Invisible spies could ferret out any secret, steal any document. Transparent assassins could slip in anywhere, kill any target. The possibilities are endless!” Griffin’s face was flushed. “He who possesses my invisibility formula could rule the world!”