The Martian War

CHAPTER FOUR


IMPOSSIBLE DISCOVERIES AT THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE

When he arrived at the Imperial Institute, Wells stood at the ornate wrought-iron gates with a small suitcase in hand and imagined himself a young student again, eager to learn but knowing so little. He lifted his gaze to the imposing brick structure that housed so many great educators under one immense roof, feeling that he couldn’t possibly belong in such an auspicious place. But he was no intruder here. He, Herbert George Wells, an invited guest of the great T.H. Huxley, was seizing an opportunity.

Holding his chin up, he stepped through the gate and into the well-manicured grounds.

Though he was eager to embark on something new, he wished the old professor had given him some hint as to why he’d been called here. What could Wells possibly offer this impressive institute?

He climbed the stone steps of the main building and stopped at the imposing front doors. Again, Wells felt terribly out of place in the echoing halls that smelled of oiled wood and polished stone.

Students hurried by, talking with one another and ignoring the shabbily dressed stranger. The upper-class young men carried new books under their arms and wore fashionable clothes that were far superior to the threadbare clothing Wells had been able to afford as a student ten years previous.

Wells drew a deep breath and reminded himself that he was here because of Huxley’s invitation, which he kept folded in his jacket pocket like a shield. Gathering his nerve, he marched directly to the school office and announced himself.

The male secretary behind the desk looked up, checked the appointment book, and nodded. “Yes, Mr. Wells, you are expected.” He rang a bell, and a young volunteer arrived, obviously a student working for the office. “Please take a message to Professor Huxley. Let him know that his visitor has arrived.”

Another young man came through a side door and relieved Wells of his small suitcase, which contained only a single change of clothes, as well as paper and lead pencils for taking notes or writing letters to Jane. “I will take this to your room, sir. Everything will be in order when you arrive.”

Before Wells could splutter questions or even a thank you, the student hurried away. The secretary returned in a bustle, carrying a tray with a pot of tea and an arrangement of biscuits. Wells ate everything in sight before realizing that he was showing his nervousness. He sat back and tried to relax as he sipped his second cup of tea.

Wells was bursting with curiosity by the time an imposing old man entered the room. He leapt to his feet as T.H. Huxley settled his eyes upon him. The professor loomed just as tall as Wells had remembered him from the lecture hall, his white sideburns as bushy, his eyes just as bright. “Mr. Wells, I’m so glad you accepted my invitation.”

“I could not do otherwise, sir. But … I thought you had chosen to remain out of the public eye. I heard a rumor that your health was poor.”

“Ah yes, young man, I supposedly retired, but do not believe every story you hear. Occasionally there are other reasons for what a person does.”

“Do you … do you have a teaching post for me, sir? Is that why you’ve called—”

“Not at all, Mr. Wells.” Not noticing his crestfallen expression, Huxley continued. “It is something much more important than that. Come with me. Observe and consider, and when you finally choose to speak, I hope you can be a bit more … articulate?”

“I will try my best, sir.”

The old man’s stride was careful but still surprisingly brisk for a person of his age, as if he was impatient to be at his destination. With barely a sideways glance, he led Wells past the hubbub of lecture halls and demonstration labs, beyond student rooms and inner courtyards lined with benches and chess tables.

Huxley took him into a completely separate wing that ended in a locked door. With a flourish, the professor removed a key and twisted it in the lock, swinging the door wide on well-oiled hinges. “You are about to enter the future, Mr. Wells. Here, away from the prying eyes of spies and the merely curious, we perform vital work for the queen.”

After Huxley conscientiously locked the door behind them, they walked past cavernous rooms with glass skylights and long tables covered with beakers and retorts of chemicals, long tubing, alcohol burners, and hand-cranked pumps. These laboratories were far more extravagant than the simple teaching studios the Institute allowed the students to use.

“These rooms look large enough for full-scale production … of something,” Wells commented.

“Indeed.”

Passing door after door, Wells smelled odd mixtures of chemicals and smoke, heard assistants chattering, saw chalkboards covered with equations. Intent men stood before designs and theorems, arguing over various consequences and derivations.

Huxley gestured proudly. “Mr. Wells, in this institute we have quietly gathered the greatest minds in the British Empire to pursue a high calling. We have chemists, engineers, mathematicians, biologists, architects. Not even Socrates ever encountered such a cadre of clever brains.”

Wells stood overwhelmed, but he remembered Huxley’s admonition to be articulate when he spoke. “But … why am I here, sir? I took only a single course from you, years ago. Surely, I could not have made such a lasting impression.”

“Ah, I’ve enjoyed your interesting articles in the Pall Mall Gazette, Mr. Wells. Many are simple diversions, but others contain glimmers of true insight. I wanted your objective view about a certain important matter.”

Wells cleared his throat. “What matter is that, sir?”

Huxley placed a strong hand on his thin, bony shoulder. “Very soon, we will hold a momentous conference here, a secret symposium.” He met Wells with his intense dark gaze. “The fate of the world is at stake.”

With a boyish delight, Huxley continued to show him the technological marvels quietly being developed behind the Institute’s closed doors. Wells felt as if he had followed Lewis Carroll’s Alice down the rabbit hole.

As the professor made his way down the halls, however, Wells noted that the old man’s movements had a slow fragility. His joints obviously gave him great pain, and his breathing had a labored quality. Wells remembered Huxley’s charisma and stentorian voice as he lectured about the wonders of biology or scoffed at the persistent challenges to Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Wells peered through broad hall windows into research rooms filled with experiments in progress. Voltaic battery piles flashed electrical arcs; purple, brown, and green smokes rose from various beakers. They paused to admire a long, bubbling train of distillation tubes and fractionating cylinders. “This all reminds me of Gulliver’s Travels—the third section, where the scientists of Laputa levitate their flying island by using a lodestone of prodigious size.”

Huxley frowned. “This is deadly serious work, Mr. Wells, not a satirical scheme to extract sunlight from cucumbers. Our laboratory facilities are the finest in existence. Our equipment is superior even to the best Prussian instruments. We will have to surpass the Germans, Wells, if we are to defeat them in the coming war.”

“War? War with the German Empire?”

Huxley cocked his bushy eyebrows. “Ah, surely you can read the newspapers and make obvious extrapolations?”

The recent unification of thirty-nine German states, including Austria and Prussia, had created the Second Reich, adding more strength to the historically aggressive Empire. This had raised concerns across Europe, especially considering the Reich’s direction under the firm statesmanship of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Then, four years ago, not long after the beginning of his reign, the new Kaiser Wilhelm II had ousted Bismarck, and many in Britain had heaved a sigh of relief.

Now, the British Empire was apparently making contingency plans, looking to the future and preparing for the worst eventuality. Wells was embarrassed that he had not previously grasped the seriousness of the situation.

Huxley explained, “When setting up this secret portion of the Imperial Institute, Queen Victoria told me to let no possibility go unexplored, no idea unconsidered, no possibility ignored. Without restrictions, our chemistry labs are developing new explosives and exotic materials.” He pointed to the heavy vault doors of yet another facility. “Behold our hermetically sealed germ laboratory where microbiologists study virulent diseases such as the bubonic plague and cholera.”

Wells peered at the earnest doctors inside the sealed lab. “If these geniuses are as talented as you say, Professor, they are sure to find a cure.”

Huxley raised his eyebrows. “Ah, but they are not seeking a cure, Mr. Wells—they are attempting to derive military applications. Think what weapons such bacilli could become, if the germs were trained to recognize the difference between an enemy uniform and a loyal British soldier!”

Wells chuckled at what he thought was a joke; Huxley did not. He moved on before the younger man could articulate his questions and skepticisms.

With a grand gesture, Huxley opened the door to the next lab, covering his nose against the potent stench of acrid fumes. Wells rubbed his moustache and blinked stinging tears from his eyes. A single window near the ceiling struggled vainly to exhaust the noxious smokes.

Waving to clear the air in front of his face, Huxley strode into the lab. “Allow me to introduce Dr. Hawley Griffin, one of our most brilliant, if unorthodox, organic chemists.”

A dark-haired man worked diligently alone amidst a forest of test tubes and bubbling retorts. He looked up, clearly annoyed at the distraction. His stiff hair stood up like a spiky boar’s-bristle brush. His reddened, chemically irritated eyes wavered from Huxley to Wells, then back again, as if looking for something interesting enough to seize his attention. “I’m on trial number fifty-six. As you can see, I have nearly achieved success.”

Huxley explained. “Dr. Griffin is devising an invisibility formula that can make anything completely transparent. Ah, imagine the opportunities for espionage, spies with perfect camouflage.”

Griffin interrupted him. “More than just spies. An invisible man could be a thief, an assassin, or a detective. A hero.”

Considering the bristle-haired chemist’s eccentricities and his disjointed thoughts, Wells wondered about the possible damage his brain might have suffered from breathing chemical mists all day long.

Huxley said in a mild voice, “We have finally acquired a sufficient supply of laboratory animals for Dr. Griffin so that he stops testing his formulas on himself.” Off in the corner, a cage full of white rats squeaked, as if complaining to the guinea pigs in an adjacent container about the conditions of their confinement.

“Numbers seven and twenty-one had particularly offensive flavors.” The chemist juggled various containers of powders and liquids, all of which were unlabeled and chaotically arranged. Wells didn’t know how Griffin could keep his precise mixtures straight and reproducible.

The scientist looked up again, as if surprised to find his visitors still there. “I have already conceived enough variations to attempt fifty different formulae. One of those concoctions will certainly prove effective!” Griffin drew a long sigh. “I hope the appropriate one tastes good enough to swallow.”

Huxley took Wells by the elbow. “We must not disturb Dr. Griffin’s researches further.”

They closed the lab door behind them, and Wells breathed deeply of the corridor’s fresh air. “Invisibility? Is he serious with his idea?”

“Oh yes, Wells. And he may actually have a chance at success, though I admit he is one of our more … unorthodox researchers. Next, allow me to show you a more traditional laborer, though his designs and discoveries are no less remarkable than Dr. Griffin’s.”

From directly ahead came the sounds of pounding and hissing, conversation and bellowed orders. The wide double doors were already open to an immense manufacturing bay where grease-smudged workers tended chemical furnaces, production benches, and intensely hot crucibles. In the center of the room, others hammered away at a large spherical framework supported by heavy braces.

“Unlike our friend Griffin, Dr. Cavor uses a team of assistants. He prefers to supervise the large-scale operation while others follow through on his ideas. That way, he accomplishes everything he can imagine as swiftly as his concepts occur to him.”

Cavor was a short, broad-shouldered man with thick eyebrows, a stout neck, and hairy forearms. He issued gruff orders, directing the installation of curved milky-white plates onto the armillary framework. The layers of translucent tile were attached like dragon scales to the spherical vessel.

Cavor noticed the visitors and turned, clapping his meaty hands and shouting to his team. “You! Keep up the work while I meet with Professor Huxley.” The squat man jumped down from his raised podium. Like worker bees, the assistants continued without interruption. Cavor stumped toward them on short legs, his puffy eyes alight. His extraordinarily square chin forced his lower lip to protrude slightly, as if he were about to pout. “An inspection tour, Professor? I assure you, I shall have substantial news to announce for the symposium.”

“Delighted to hear that, Selwyn. I am simply introducing a protege of mine, a student I taught back at the Normal School. He’ll be joining us for the meeting.”

Wells reached out, and Cavor’s grease-stained grip was strong and calloused; he wasn’t afraid to do hands-on work himself.

Glass-blowers pushed molding trays into orange furnaces that melted hard substances into a thick paste that was poured into shapes. He could not immediately identify the milky substance or its pearlish translucency; he had never seen a metal, glass, or porcelain with a similar construction. “Next you’re going to tell me that Dr. Cavor is creating invisible iron.”

“Oh, not invisible,” Cavor said, “but extremely lightweight. I intend to manufacture an incredibly effective armor with sufficient density to stop projectiles, yet virtually without mass.”

Huxley nodded toward squat Cavor. “Lighter than any substance known, Wells. Perhaps it can be made opaque to gravity itself.”

Cavor’s brows beetled with deep concentration. “The material remains in an unstable equilibrium state. Its crystalline structure needs to be shocked with an appropriate energy pulse to drive it beyond the structural boundary to that next level.”

Huxley continued, “With the doctor’s amazing ‘cavorite,’ the British Empire can manufacture feasible and effective ironclads for land or sea.”

The workers in the manufacturing bay shouted to each other and barely averted disaster as a pulley chain slipped and a section of shaped cavorite swayed unsteadily. Cavor spun in alarm, calling brusquely to his visitors. “I apologize for being impatient, gentlemen, but the symposium approaches and we are on a deadline. My crews have been working around the clock to finish this demonstration sphere. I must get back to work.” He hurried off.

Shaking his head as the professor led him out of the work room, Wells didn’t know whether to be filled with wonder or skepticism. “All of your people seem to have been reading too much of Monsieur Verne’s fiction.”

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.”