The Martian War

CHAPTER TWO


PERCIVAL LOWELL AND DR. MOREAU SEND A MESSAGE TO MARS


1893

In the sweltering Sahara, Percival Lowell stood at the open flap of his tent. Though the constant dust and unrelenting heat were bothersome, he reveled in his vast construction site, glad to be far from Boston and civilized industry.

The excavations extended beyond the vanishing point of the flat horizon. Thousands of sweating laborers—mostly illiterate Tuaregs and sullen French prisoners exiled here to Algeria— moved like choreographed machinery as they dug monumental trenches according to Lowell’s commands, scribing deep lines in the sand. It was like a tattoo on the Earth’s skin, a huge design that went nowhere and served no purpose, as far as most people could see. But Lowell had never made his decisions based upon the opinions of “sensible people.”

As a boy on his rooftop in Boston, and later under the clear skies of Japan, Lowell had used his best telescopes to see similar marks on ruddy Mars. Long canals extending thousands of miles across the red desert. Straight lines, networks, intersections, all obviously of artificial origin. His observations and his imagination had convinced him that such markings must be indicative of life, an intelligent civilization. What were the canals? Why had they been constructed across the vast waterless continents? Were the Martians perhaps building great works—irrigation systems and pumping stations—to enable their race to survive on a dying world?

Lowell wanted to send them a message that intelligent life had sprung from the womb of the Earth as well, that the Martians were not alone in the universe.

Other astronomers claimed not to see the canals at all. It reminded Lowell of the trial of Galileo, when high church officials and Pope Paul V had refused to admit seeing the moons of Jupiter through the astronomer’s “optick glass,” denying the evidence of their own eyes. Lowell couldn’t decide if his contemporaries were similarly bullheaded, or just plain blind. But he would show them, provided the work could be completed according to the rigid schedule he had imposed.

When he took a deep breath, the fiery heat and dust and petroleum stench curled the hairs in his moustache. He fished inside the pocket of his cream jacket and withdrew his special pair of pince-nez with lenses made of red-stained glass. Through the oxide tint, he could look out at the blistering Sahara, imagining instead the scarlet sands of Mars. Mars. Dr. Moreau, his new colleague in this undertaking, had given him the spectacles. They were a very effective tool, especially out here.

In such a great desert, how could one not intuitively understand? Water covered sixty percent of the Earth’s surface, while Mars was a vast planetary wasteland. The Martians must have found it necessary to construct the magnificent canals as their parched world withered with age. By now, those once-glorious minds must be desperate, ready to grasp at any hope … .

Lowell strolled from the encampment to the long ditch his army of workers had cut through the shifting sands. From atop a crate, barrel-chested Moreau bellowed at the laborers. “Dig! Dig, you bastards! It’s only sand.”

If Lowell’s calculations were correct, they had little time. The Martian emissary would be on its way, but lost, forging toward the wilderness of Earth. In the whole civilization of humanity, Lowell believed only he maintained an open mind. Only he was a legitimate and acceptable emissary for dignitaries from another planet in the solar system. Unless he sent his signal, the Martian would not know where to go. The alien emissary would become lost in a bureaucratic tangle of skeptics and Luddites.

If the approaching Martian craft saw Lowell’s signal, then it could alter its course, go to a welcoming ear, someone who could become a champion for two planets. Lowell had exorbitant plans, but he did not believe he had delusions of grandeur. He wanted to do this for the betterment of humanity, not for his own glory, but because it was the right thing to do.

Lowell would bring the Martian emissary to the halls of Earthly government. He would accept his kudos, nod to his rich father and see if the old man might be proud. Then he would change the course of history.

But only if he could transmit his message in time.

Lowell prayed his workers would do their jobs swiftly enough, or his signal to the Martians would be in vain.

Months earlier, freshly returned from his sojourn in mysterious Japan, Lowell had spent a frustrating night at the Harvard Observatory. The skies were not far enough from the smoke of men, thus the seeing had been murky. But it was the best telescope currently available to him.

Lowell paid for his private observing time here with large donations from his family fortune, but he had already decided that he must fund a new observatory in a location chosen for its seeing, weather, and altitude—not for the convenience of Harvard astronomers. Most important, his new observatory must be completed in time to study the upcoming 1894 opposition of Mars.

A young Harvard assistant, Andrew Ellicott Douglass, stood inside the echoing dome, waiting for Lowell to relinquish the eyepiece. The wooden-plank walls exuded a resinous scent. From where he sat, pork pie hat turned backward on his head and sketchpad in his lap, Lowell could sense the young man’s impatience. But he did not remove his eye from the wavering ruddy disk, where fine lines appeared and disappeared.

“Mister Lowell, sir, I understand your eagerness to use the refractor, but I have the proper qualifications—”

Lowell looked down from his seat on the padded ladder. “Qualifications, Mr. Douglass? I have exceptionally keen eyesight—and an exceptionally large fortune. Therefore I am also fully qualified.” Tact was a commodity that served little purpose as far as Lowell was concerned, but now he made a half-hearted attempt. “You are welcome to devote any other night to the study of the heavens, but this is Mars and it is near opposition. Please indulge an unworthy amateur.”

Within moments Lowell had become totally engrossed in the view again. With his hands guided by the image in the eyepiece, Lowell deftly sketched Mars, copying the lines he saw. He had never been an armchair astronomer and would go blind before he allowed himself to be considered one. He had already recorded over a hundred of the canals he saw on Mars.

After midnight, his eyes burning, he flipped to a fresh page in his sketchpad where earlier in the day he had already scribed a circle as the outline for another drawing of the red planet. At some time in the past hour, Douglass had left. Lowell hoped the young man was at least doing work at one of the other telescopes, since this evening’s seeing was so extraordinary. He oriented his pencil on the map pad, then looked through the eyepiece again.

A brilliant green flash leaped from the surface of Mars, a jet of vivid emerald fire as of a great explosion, or some kind of cannon shot. A huge mass of luminous gas trailed a green mist behind it.

Once previously, Lowell had seen the glint of sunlight on the Martian ice caps, which had fooled him into seeing a dazzling message, but it had not been like this. Not so green, so violent, so prominent.

He noted the exact time on the pad in his lap, and his excitement grew as he formulated an explanation. The phenomenon was obviously a stupendous launch, a ship exploding away from the gravity of Mars into space!

Where else would they go, but to Earth? The Martians were coming!

Naturally, no one believed him … but Lowell didn’t care.

Laying plans for a great project to signal the Martians, he calculated the largest possible excavation, then set off immediately to Europe on his way to French Algeria, and thence down into the deepest Sahara … .

In order to generate support and receive the blessing of a man he revered, Lowell traveled by way of Milan, Italy. Though he was not easily intimidated, he found himself stuttering in awe when he met the great Giovanni Schiaparelli, original cartographer of the canals of Mars and director of the Milan Observatory since 1862. Using only an eight-inch telescope, he had discovered the asteroid Hesperia and created original maps of the Martian canali in 1877, only a year after Lowell graduated with honors from Harvard.

“When I made my drawings,” the old astronomer said, struggling with his English, “I was meant for those lines to represent only channels or cracks in surface. I, myself, never thought of canali as more than blemishes. I am told that the word canali suggest a different thing to non-Italian ears, maybe man-made canals—”

“Not made by men,” Lowell interrupted, “but by intelligent beings. Geometrical precision on a planetary scale? What else can it be but the mark of an intelligent race?”

The old astronomer poured from a bottle of Chianti on a side table. He took a sip and blinked his rheumy eyes. His rooms were filled with books, oil lamps, and melted lumps of candles in terra cotta dishes. A pair of spectacles lay on an open tome, while an enormous magnifying glass rested within easy reach. Lowell felt a rare flash of sympathy—losing one’s eyesight must be the worst hell a dedicated astronomer could imagine.

“I wish you could see what I have discerned, Signore Schiaparelli. Think of a dying world inhabited by a once-marvelous civilization. The very existence of a planetwide system of canals implies a world order that knows no national boundaries, a society that long ago forgot its political disputes and racial animosity, uniting the populace in a quest for water. The dark spots are pumping stations, obviously. Or oases.”

Schiaparelli took a quick swallow of his Chianti, only to begin a brief coughing fit. Outside on the open balcony, pigeons fluttered in the sunlight. “But if Mars is so arid, Signore Lowell, surely all water must evaporate from the open canali … if the temperature is above freezing, of course—and it must be in order for the water to stay in its liquid state.”

Lowell paced the room. “What if the lines we see are aqueducts, with lush vegetation thriving in irrigated soil, much as the Egyptians grow their crops in the Nile flood plains? I estimate the darkened aqueduct fringes to be about thirty miles wide. Vegetation would not only emphasize the lines of the canals, but would also shield the open water from rapid evaporation. Simple, you see?”

The old astronomer seemed more amused than captivated by the concepts. Lowell came closer to his host, barely controlling his enthusiasm. “My proposed plan in the Sahara follows a similar principle, Signore, but on a much smaller scale, since I am only one man and, alas, our own Earthly civilization has no stomach for such dreams. But someone must send a signal to our star-crossed brothers.”

“And how will you accomplish this?”

“I have already dispatched surveyors and work teams to southern Algeria. I will excavate three canals, each one ten miles long, across an otherwise featureless basin, to form a perfect equilateral triangle. A geometrical symbol impossible to explain by random natural processes. Therefore, it will be a clear message that intelligent life inhabits this world. I will emphasize my puny canals with lines of fire, filling the trenches with petroleum products and igniting them under the cloudless desert skies. It will be a brief but dramatic message, blazing into the night. But I am confident the Martians will see it.”

His eyes sparkled, his voice rose in volume. Based on his own celestial calculations, Lowell had estimated how much travel time the Martians would require to reach Earth. He lowered his voice. “I believe the Martians have already launched an ambassador to us.”

Schiaparelli appeared surprised at such a bold assertion, but Lowell spoke with absolute confidence. “We must show them where to land. The Martian representative will receive an open-hearted welcome from us. Signore Schiaparelli, I intend to lead that party. I will be the first man to shake hands with a Martian.”

He first met Dr. Moreau in an Algerian coffee shop, of all places.

The beefy man sat alone, drinking a glass of sweet mint tea and taking apart an orange as if preparing to perform an autopsy on it. When he finished with the juicy sections, he turned to a plate of almonds and proceeded to crack the shells with his bare fingers, methodically eating one nut at a time.

Entering the cafe to escape the North African heat, Lowell waved his hat in front of his face to cool the sweat. He took another chair at the bar, cautiously nodding to the large Englishman. Outside, from the minarets of the mosques, mullahs let out warbling calls, like territorial songbirds competing with each other.

Lowell had just learned of delays at the Sahara construction site: Tuareg digger crews that had wandered off, French prison workers who had escaped, even supervisors who had taken money earmarked for wages and run off to Cairo. Here in Algiers, one Foreign Legion commander had accepted a retainer fee with the promise of finding Lowell other workers, but had never returned at the appointed meeting time.

Lowell was disgusted, impatient, and growing desperate. “If a work ethic exists on this continent, I’m damned if I can find it,” he said aloud so the other man could hear him. “No wonder they’re all so frightfully poor.”

The bearish man did not seem interested in conversation, but Lowell continued to vent his frustration. “When a man agrees to do a job, and accepts money for it, I should be able to count on him. Lazy bastards. They do bad work, they leave the site, they simply vanish—and there is not enough time to do it all over again!” He set his hat on the counter.

The other man’s eyes were a piercing blue, set in pale skin that had been subjected to the rigors of much sun but had never achieved more than the blotchy coloring of repeated burns. His hair was reddish gold, as was his beard; the matted strands on his forearms were thick enough to be called a pelt. In a gruff voice he said, “They abandon you because they are not afraid of you.”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“Just a matter of incentive … and terror.” He paused, as if considering. “My name is Moreau. A medical doctor by trade, at least where I’m still allowed to practice.”

He cracked another almond and continued to stare across the tiled counter. The Algerian waiter asked in Arabic if he wanted another tea. Moreau motioned to Lowell as well, and the waiter stuffed two glasses with fresh green mint leaves then poured boiling sugar water over the top. The smell made Lowell dizzy.

“You’re Lowell, right? I heard about your massive project out in the desert.” Moreau did not even glance at him. “No one can understand why you are doing it.”

“No one attempts to understand. They prefer to scoff.”

“Then explain yourself. I am a man of some education.”

Lowell sipped his tea, made a face at the syrupy sweetness, then told the broad-shouldered doctor everything. He had nothing to gain by keeping a secret about something so vast and ambitious.

Moreau didn’t commiserate, but his broken-ice eyes showed true understanding. “I know how it feels to be ridiculed for one’s passion. I am a researcher into anatomy and physiology. I, too, have my ignorant detractors.”

Lowell had heard horrific tales of aspiring surgeons who paid grave robbers to provide fresh corpses for dissection. “I see. You are a … resurrectionist? Or a vivisectionist?”

“Neither, or both. In my time, I conducted … extreme investigations into the fundamental differences between humans and animals, and the mutability of the physical form. I was a colleague of the outspoken Darwinist T.H. Huxley in London, but my work was too extraordinary even for his comprehension. He called it ‘unethical,’ when it was really no more than unorthodox.” He cracked another almond. “Ethics! What do ethics have to do with pure discovery?”

Despite himself, Lowell was interested in this man. Moreau’s personality seemed as overpowering as his own. “And why are you here, in this godforsaken place?”

“Because Huxley discovered my work before I was ready to present it to the Imperial Institute. Damn him! I barely escaped England without being arrested. I am a wanted man there, probably reviled in all the newspapers, called a monster.”

“Oh. I think I read something about it. In the Hong Kong Post?”

Moreau swept the crushed almond shells onto his plate with surprising delicacy. He turned to Lowell so abruptly that it startled the other man. “If I help you accomplish this strange task, will you promise me one thing?”

“I haven’t asked for your help, sir.”

“Nevertheless, you need it. If your scheme turns out to be true, if creatures from the planet Mars do arrive here, then I must be the one to study them, physiologically.” For a moment, Moreau looked vulnerable. “It will restore my reputation in the scientific community.”

Lowell finished his tea, then rubbed his teeth with his monogrammed handkerchief, removing bits of bright green leaf. “Just like that? You don’t think I’m mad?”

“I have been called that myself.” Moreau extended his hand. “Remember, I will be the one to study the Martian. Agreed?”

Lowell reached out to grasp the hand of the criminal vivisectionist.

Tuareg work crews and criminal laborers toiled day and night to move the sand. Some complained; some were happy for the meager pay or a reduction in their penal sentences; some shook their sweat-dripping heads at the insanity of this wealthy American’s incomprehensible obsession, and the bearded doctor who drove them as fiercely as if they were animals.

The florid-faced surgeon allowed no slacking in the construction, and he was not above whipping the men if necessary. “Savages!” He often left Lowell behind in the camp, riding a horse up and down the miles of diggings.

Shovels tossed sand up over the ditches; half-naked boys ran back and forth with ladles and buckets from camels that strained to drag barrels of water along the dry canal that went from nowhere, to nowhere. Every third day, Lowell himself went to inspect the other two straight-line trenches that were moving with excruciating slowness to intersect with this one.

For the past month, when the teams grew too tired to continue, he had sent word to any oasis, tribal camp, or village, as far as Timbuctoo and Tripoli to hire more workers. Lowell had spread his inexhaustible funds as far as Alexandria, Tangier, and Cairo. He had bribed port officials and paid for the construction of a new railroad spur from Algiers out into the stark heart of the dunes, so that a private train could deliver supplies and workers directly to the diggings.

Blown sand hissed in the breeze. A drummer pounded a cadence to give the workers a steady rhythm, like galley slaves. Moreau had suggested the technique, and it seemed to be working. “They’re being paid for this labor, Lowell, and they volunteered. Don’t feel sympathy for them.”

Smoke curled into the air, carrying an acrid, sulfurous stench as French convicts dumped wagonloads of hot bitumen into the trench. The sticky black flow would seal the sands with a thick, flammable mass that would also hold fuel. Even so, the walls still shifted, and the tarry bitumen ran soft and smelly in the heat of the day.

If one of the great dust storms of the Sahara swept across the dunes, God could erase all of Lowell’s handiwork with one mighty breath. But he needed his luck to hold until he sent his signal. By now, the Martian vessel had to be close.

Moreau strutted up and down, a dusty bandanna wrapped across his face. The immense line in the sand stretched into a shimmer of mirage. Just a ditch, many miles long, extending to meet two others in what his surveyors guaranteed would be a perfect equilateral triangle … .

Looking at the plans in the tent with Moreau on their first night, he thought their symbol looked laughably small when viewed in perspective against the backdrop of the whole African continent. Lowell despised the thought that his work might prove to be insignificant. “Even if we achieve our goals, Moreau, we have accomplished little more than a gnat, compared to what the Martians have done.”

“Nonsense!” Moreau always talked too loudly, as if he had never learned a normal conversational tone. “Their task would have been much simpler, given that Martian gravity is only a third of Earth’s.” He thumped his fingers on the top of the small worktable. Moreau’s numerous notebooks lay around the tent. “Based on current theories of evolution, such Martians could be twenty-one times as efficient and have eighty-one times the effective strength of an Earthman.” He held the kerosene lamp closer to the map. “For such a species, the project of planetary canals seems neither difficult nor unlikely.”

Lowell had done the excavation mathematics himself, letting the engineers double-check his work. Three trenches, each ten miles long, five yards wide, filled with liquid to a depth of an inch or so, equaled thousands and thousands of gallons of petroleum distillate, naphtha, kerosene. Convoys traveled endlessly across the Sahara.

Although it was a huge investment, what better way could Lowell spend his money, than to make a mark upon the Earth itself—and upon history?

But they had to hurry. Hurry.

Finally.

Finally. Lowell had never been a man of extraordinary patience, but the last week of waiting for the trenches to join at precise corners had seemed the most interminable time of his life.

Now, under the starlight and residual heat that wafted off the sands, Lowell stood with torch in hand like a tribal shaman, ready to send a symbol of welcome to aliens from another world. Moreau would be standing at a second distant corner of the triangle, along with his work crew supervisor.

The stench of petroleum distillates stung his eyes and nostrils. The convict workers had all been shipped back to Algiers or distant Saharan outposts. The chemical smell had driven off the camels and most of the workers. A few European foremen had stayed to watch the spectacle, and curious Tuaregs gathered by their tents to observe. This would be an event their tribal storytellers would repeat for generations.

Lowell turned to the telegraph operator beside him. Miles of overland cable had been run to the vertices of the great triangle. “Signal Dr. Moreau and Mr. Lewisham at the intersections. Tell them to light their channels.”

The telegraph operator pecked away at his key, sending a brief message. When the clicks fell into silence, Lowell stepped to the brink of his canal in the sand. He stared into the bitumen-lined trench at the foul-smelling black mass that was now pooled with kerosene and gasoline.

Lowell tossed his torch into the fuel, then watched the fire rush down the channel like a hungry demon. The inferno devoured the petroleum, its flames hot enough to ignite the sticky bitumen liner so that the triangular symbol would burn for a long time.

Across the desert night, rifle shots rang out, signaling to torch-bearers stationed along the miles of each canal, who also tossed their burning brands into the ditch.

Lowell’s family had amassed its fortune in textiles, in landholdings, in finance. His maternal grandfather was Abbott Lawrence, minister to Britain. His father, Augustus, was descended from early Massachusetts colonists. But Percival Lowell himself would make the greatest mark—on two worlds instead of one.

An unbroken wall of flame roared into the night. He prayed the Martians were watching. He had so much to say to them.

Even long after the inferno had died down, Lowell found it difficult to sleep. He lay on his cot, smelling the dying smoke and harsh fumes, listening to the whisper of sand sloughing into the trench from the burned walls. Far off in the Tuareg camp a pair of camels belched at each other.

Lying awake on his cot, he spoke aloud to the apex of his tent. “I am an experienced ambassador to foreign cultures. I have diplomatic credentials. How could Martians be stranger than what I have already seen?”

If only they would arrive … .

Days later, the cylinder screamed through the air with the wailing of a thousand lost souls, trailing a flaming banner from atmospheric friction and a bright green mist from outgassing extraterrestrial substances.

Lowell scrambled out of his shaded tent to see the commotion. A burnt smudge smoldered like a scar across the ceramic-blue sky. Booms of sound came in waves as the gigantic projectile crossed overhead.

Moreau was already outside. “It’s the emissaries from Mars, Lowell!” He raised his hands in the air. “The Martians!”

The cylinder crashed into the desert, spewing a plume of sand and dust. Lowell felt the tremor of impact in his knees. He and Moreau both laughed aloud and pounded each other on the back.

After the burning of the enormous triangle, the place had rapidly turned into a ghost town, but Lowell and Moreau had remained here to wait. Now, as the dust settled in the distance, Lowell cried, “We are vindicated!”

Moreau clapped him on the shoulder. “It is a very good feeling, Lowell.”

The last Tuareg helpers retreated in panic, thrashing their camels to an awkward gallop across the dunes to a safe distance. Fools. They did not realize the magnitude of what was happening here.

“The world as we know it is about to change, Moreau. Come, we must welcome our visitors from space.”

Together, they set off toward the pit.

PART I



SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE