The Martian War (20 page)

The town had no more than a handful of buildings: a whitewashed church with a single steeple, a general store, shacks, saloons, and boarding houses. According to reports, Flagstaff even had a hotel that was “nice enough for a lady to stay in.” (Apparently, this was unusual in the West.)

Flagstaff’s main business was the lumber industry; tree cutters and sawmill workers settled in squalid camps that ringed the hills. The men cut down the ponderosa pines, and wood products were shipped on the Santa Fe railroad to construction sites back east.

Once we disembarked from the train, our primary challenge was to transport the Martian, now fully recovered from its surgery. We cloaked the cage again with a tarpaulin so that no curiosity seekers could peer inside.

Men lounged around the train yard, looking for jobs of work, and Lowell decisively hired two of them. One of the burly men casually spat tobacco onto the ground and looked at the covered cage. “What’s in there?”

Lowell stood stiffly. “My colleague and I are transporting an unusual animal specimen caught in the wilds of Africa.”

“Circus just came through here last month. Saw a lion, a dancing bear, even an elephant.”

“This is … something like that.”

“Let’s have a look, then.”

The man stepped forward, but I stepped between him and the tarpaulin. “Mr. Lowell’s paying you well, but your wages don’t include free admission.” As far as these uneducated men were concerned, the Martian might be an item of interest rather than horror and revulsion. Still, we did not want our secret exposed.

The man grumbled, more incensed by my attitude than at being rebuffed. “Suit yourself. I wasn’t never a customer for the freak show tent anyway.”

The second carter guided his wagon up to the cargo car, and the two men loaded our restless cargo on the wagon bed. Lowell rode on the buckboard next to the driver, while I remained in back with the cage, watching the curious worker.

The horse plodded without enthusiasm up a rutted dirt road that took us away from the train yards to a higher
elevation above Flagstaff. Douglass had selected the round-topped rise as the site for the new observatory. Appropriately, Lowell had dubbed it “Mars Hill.”

Most of the construction crew lived in shacks closer to town, where they could go to saloons and provision houses, but a few men who had little desire to trudge up and down the steep path each day made their campfires on the hill.

I saw the lights of the construction area as we approached. Several buildings had already been completed, with glass in the windows and kerosene lamps burning inside. Lowell had wired ahead to Douglass, informing him of our imminent arrival. Fabricating a story about having captured a new species of bear, Lowell insisted that Douglass arrange for utmost privacy so that I could study the beast. By the time we arrived, the young Harvard astronomer had prepared rooms for us and fitted an outbuilding to serve as a secure holding pen.

Hearing the wagon arrive, the young man emerged from the main house to welcome his benefactor. “Mr. Lowell, welcome back to Mars Hill.” Douglass had short brown hair, glasses, and a thin, uneven beard. His eyes were intent and intelligent, his movements fidgety, and he appeared to be a meek person, a follower of orders—not an actual leader like Lowell or myself.

Douglass gave me a quick appraising glance. “And this is your companion? Mr.—?”

I shook his hand, and the strength of my grip surprised him. “It’s
Doctor,
actually. Dr. Moreau. I am a surgeon and a biological specialist, an experimental physician, if you will.” I gave no further details and neither did Lowell,
though the assistant’s curiosity was plain.

“Is there a new project of which I am not aware, Mr. Lowell?” Douglass took off his glasses and vigorously wiped them clean with a handkerchief. “Why does an astronomical observatory require an … experimental physician?”

Lowell frowned at him. “Mind your place, Andrew. Dr. Moreau is a world-renowned expert. There is no one comparable to him. I require his assistance and advice on a matter so important that it may even supersede our work with the telescopes.”

The young astronomer was astonished, but I could see that he was familiar with Percival Lowell’s changing passions; he surrendered his objections like an animal baring its throat to a dominant predator.

Just then the Martian stirred in its canvas-shrouded cage. “I trust you have arranged for a quiet and secure place to store our specimen?” Lowell said. “I want it to be inside a building where no one can see. I must be confident that no one will disturb it, not even you, Andrew.”

Douglass was affronted at being kept from this new discovery, but Lowell makes a very clear distinction between colleagues and underlings. Though he trusted the young astronomer to choose the observatory site, manage the construction, and handle all the workers, Lowell did not wish to let Douglass share in our private triumph.

Similarly, I had long kept my vivisection research confidential from faint-hearted colleagues and subordinates. In London I used the services of a drunken lout named Montgomery; despite his unreliability and rude behavior, he was a talented surgical assistant, and many of my experiments
succeeded because of his efforts. But Montgomery was killed in Borneo by a surgically modified puma. The pain-maddened beast got loose and tore the man to shreds as he lay in a gin-induced stupor, after which the puma fled into the jungle, where it bled to death from its torn incisions.

Having experienced the destructive meddling and ineptitude of a poorly prepared assistant, I did not question Lowell’s decision to keep this young man in the dark.

Douglass led us to a secure outbuilding made of wooden planks with two small windows that had been boarded up, per Lowell’s telegraphed instructions. “This was to have been our equipment shed. I believe it is sufficient for your needs, Mr. Lowell.”

Lowell brushed his moustache and peered inside, holding up the lantern to reveal a large empty space with a dirt floor and a few unused shelves on the walls. “This is acceptable, Andrew.”

After inspecting the wall boards and sturdy hinges on the shed door, I whistled for the wagon driver to pull up to the outbuilding. While the two burly men unloaded the shrouded cage, Douglass produced a padlock and chain with which we could secure the door. Lamplight reflected from his glasses. He was keenly interested, but too cowed to defy Lowell’s strict instructions.

After the cage was moved into the shed, Lowell paid the wagon driver and the carter, then sent them away down the hill. Gruff and preoccupied, he dispatched Douglass to prepare our beds and see to it that we had a good meal waiting for us in the main house.

Alone again with the Martian, we removed the canvas
covering. The creature sat motionless inside its cage, staring into the dimness and assessing its new surroundings. Searching for a way to escape? The sutures had healed, leaving jagged scabs across its brown-skinned back. Thankfully, I observed no suppuration, no oozing pus or gangrene. Rarely had my surgical work been so perfectly successful, and I was pleased. The Martian was now strong and healthy—though still entirely unresponsive.

When Lowell opened the cage door to let the captive out into the shed, the Martian barely stirred. “Let us leave it to become accustomed to this place,” I suggested. “It is best not to provoke an animal we do not understand. It will leave the cage when it wishes to.” We slipped outside, then closed, chained, and padlocked the door. Lowell kept the only key.

Inside the main house, we dined on some rather bland and stringy venison. Douglass did not eat with us, but stayed to share a conversation. I listened with detached interest as the young man gave Lowell a full report of his work on the observatory.

Douglass seemed a competent administrator, guiding teams of workmen, following the blueprints and architectural sketches for the construction. The large dome was nearly ready to house the site’s main refractor telescope, whose lenses were currently being ground and assembled by Alvan Clark & Sons in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Clark refractor would be the showpiece of the observatory, the instrument by which Lowell hoped to make many discoveries. Douglass had already set up two smaller personal telescopes on tripods on the veranda. He had been making nightly observations and sketches of Mars, which he
showed to Lowell, who approved of most of them, criticized only a few.

Watching the two men interact, I saw that A.E. Douglass was the calm counterpoint to brash Lowell. I also detected friction between them. Douglass was talented, but Lowell refused to give him free reign. He questioned the young man’s decisions and made him defensive about obvious points. How would Douglass respond when he learned of our creature from another planet?

We went to bed early. I slept soundly, my thoughts preoccupied with dreams of Martians and deserts and telescopes … .

* * *

The next morning as we drank our coffee and ate hot biscuits and fried eggs, Lowell dumbfounded Douglass by sending him away from Flagstaff.

“I can manage the work at the observatory, Andrew. I want you to return to the telescope factory of Clark & Sons. Supervise the completion of my great instrument. If it is humanly possible to install the refractor in time for the opposition of Mars later this year, I want it accomplished. Urge them to all possible haste.”

Douglass accepted his new marching orders with bad grace. “But Mr. Lowell, there is so much activity here, so much I have not yet completed. The work crews, the carpenters and blacksmiths, the lumber that must be shipped from the forest, the sawmill owners, the—”

“My father trained me to run a large textile industry, Andrew. A simple construction site should not tax my capabilities.”

Douglass’s shoulders sagged, and his teeth were clenched as if to hold his anger inside. “But what is the purpose of this, sir? Have I disappointed you in some way?”

“Not as of yet,” Lowell said coldly, “unless you continue to question my orders. I deem my reasons for secrecy to be sufficient, and I’m sure Dr. Moreau will agree with them.”

“I do agree,” I answered, affirming my superiority over his rank and position. “Beyond that, it is none of your concern.”

Clearly, Douglass’s inquisitive mind would have threatened our secrecy and stifled our continuing efforts with the Martian. The local laborers might be frightened or curious, but our explanation of some exotic animal from Africa would satisfy them. Douglass, though, was far too bright for that. Upon glimpsing the Martian, he would know that this was not a creature born of Earth. Lowell was correct: we had to get the young man away from Mars Hill.

Later that day, his feathers ruffled but his bags packed, Douglass descended to the rail yards in Flagstaff, where he caught the next eastbound train.

* * *

Inside its shed, the Martian settled in. Now that I had time to experiment more comfortably, I practiced by giving it samples of fresh animal blood obtained from Flagstaff’s butcher shop; though this seemed to nourish it sufficiently, the Martian was not pleased, as if the life fluid of inferior animals was simply not acceptable. Also, the butcher began
to ask many unwelcome questions, and so I returned to regularly giving our specimen vials of my own blood, injecting sustenance into the creature’s veins, just enough for it to survive. By now, Lowell had become accustomed to the ghastly feeding ritual, and when I grew weak from loss of blood, he volunteered to donate a pint or two for the Martian’s continued existence.

Lowell always kept his distance from the creature, remembering the hideous sight of the redheaded crewman aboard the steamer, his neck snapped like kindling. But I approached the Martian without fear. I felt we had an unusual sort of understanding, and I knew it would not harm me.

During my attempts at communication, the creature would twitch its tentacles and meet my gaze with its large eyes. “We are making some progress, Percival, though this is going more slowly than I had hoped. We have no common ground, no point of comparison with which to begin a conversation.”

Lowell took out the lovely crystal egg we had removed from the crashed cylinder. He held it in the light, turning the object in his hand. “I wish it could explain this to us.”

Seeing the crystal egg, the Martian once again perked up. Its tentacles brushed briefly in the air and then one extended forward tentatively, then insistently, as if it wanted to touch the object. I was excited. This was the clearest reaction I had seen so far from this creature, much stronger than its previous reactions. “Let him have it, Percival.”

He extended his hand with the crystal egg in it. With one tentacle like a lover’s fingertip, the Martian caressed it,
then reached out second and third tentacles to cradle the crystal egg. It held up the cloudy ellipsoid and somehow found unseen controls in its surface. When it activated a mechanism or energy source within, a faint shimmer of light glowed from the crystal egg.

“What has it done?” Lowell asked.

The Martian extended the crystal egg again, encouraging me to take it. I felt a surge of smug pride. Lowell may have been its financial benefactor, but the Martian realized that
I
had saved its life.

But then, what it showed me!

The crystal egg felt warm and tingly in my hand, as if it were connected to a voltaic pile. When I looked down, I saw astonishing images of an incredible world more exotic than all the Arabian wonders Scheherazade had ever described to Sir Richard Burton. Lowell crowded closer, and the two of us stared at an amazing stereoscopic image of an alien place.

The sky was greenish instead of blue. The landscape of red rock and towering cliffs was scored with breathtaking canals, watercourses distributing a liquid lifeblood to grand cities strung across otherwise dry continents. Never had I seen towers stretch so high, or arches so ethereal and delicate, poised in a gravity lower than our Earth’s. The architecture, the building materials, the streets paved with gems and tiles of jade—I am not a man prone to hyperbole, but even I found myself transfixed.