Chapter Fifteen
A REVOLUTION IS PLANNED
i
From the moment of our waking the following morning, Amelia and I were treated with deference and humility. Even so, the legends that were now directing our lives seemed quite emphatic that we were to work with the others on the weed-bank, and so much of our day was spent in cold mud up to our knees. Edwina worked with us, and although there was something about her bland stare that made me uneasy, she was undoubtedly useful to us.
Neither Amelia nor I did much actual weed-cutting. As soon as we were established at the bank we received many different visitors: some of them slaves, others overseers, all of them evidently anxious to meet those who would lead the revolt. Hearing what was said—translated earnestly, if not always entirely comprehensibly, by Edwina—I realized that Amelia’s talk of revolution had not been made lightly. Several of the overseers had come from the city itself, and we learnt that there elaborate plans were being made to overthrow the monsters.
It was an enthralling day, realizing that we might at last have provided the stimulus to these people to take revenge on their abhorrent masters. Indeed, Amelia reminded our visitors many times of my heroic deed the day before. The phrase was repeated often: the monsters are mortal.
However, mortal or not, the monsters were still in evidence, and presented a constant threat. Often during the day the weed-bank was patrolled by one of the immense tripodal battle-machines, and at those times all revolutionary activities were suspended while we attended to the cutting.
During one period when we were left alone, I asked Amelia why the weed-cutting continued if the revolution was so far advanced. She explained that the vast majority of the slaves were employed in this work, and that if it was stopped before the revolution was under way the monsters would instantly realize something was afoot. In any event, the main benefactors were the humans themselves, as the weed was the staple diet.
And the blood-letting? I asked her. Could that not then be stopped?
She replied that refusal to give any more blood was the only sure way the humans had of conquering the monsters, and there had been frequent attempts to disobey the most dreaded injunction on this world. On those occasions, the monsters’ reprisals had been summary and widespread. In the most recent incident, which had occurred some sixty days before, over one thousand slaves had been massacred. The terror of the monsters was constant, and even while the insurgency was planned, the daily sacrifices had to be made.
In the city, though, the established order was in imminent danger of being overthrown. Slaves and city-people were uniting at last, and throughout the city there were organized cells of volunteers; men and women who, when the command was given, would attack specified targets. It was the battle-machines which presented the greatest threat: unless several heat-cannons could be commandeered by the humans, there could be no defence against them.
I said: “Should we not be in the city? If you are controlling the revolution, surely it should be done from there?”
“Of course. I was intending to visit the city again tomorrow. You will see for yourself just how advanced we are.”
Then more visitors arrived: this time, a delegation of overseers who worked in one of the industrial areas. They told us, through Edwina, that small acts of sabotage were already taking place, and output had been temporarily halved.
So the day passed, and by the time we returned to the building I was exhausted and exhilarated. I had had no conception of the good use to which Amelia had put her time with the slaves. There was an air of vibrancy and purpose… and great urgency. Several times I heard her exhorting the Martians to bring forward their preparations, so that the revolution itself might begin a little earlier.
After we had washed and eaten, Amelia and I returned to what were now our shared quarters. Once in there, and alone with her, I asked her why there was such need for urgency. After all, I argued, surely the revolution would be more assured of success if it was prepared more carefully?
“It is a question of timing, Edward,” she said. “We must attack when the monsters are unprepared and weak. This is such a time.”
“But they are at the height of their power!” I said in surprise. “You cannot be blind to that.”
“My dear,” said Amelia, “if we do not strike against the monsters within the next few days, then the cause of humanity on this world will be lost forever.”
“I cannot see why. The monsters have held their sway until now. why should they be any less prepared for an uprising?”
This was the answer that Amelia gave me, gleaned from the legends of the Martians amongst whom she had been living for so long:
ii
Mars is a world much older than Earth, and the ancient Martians had achieved a stable scientific civilization many thousands of years ago. Like Earth, Mars had had its empires and wars, and like Earthmen the Martians were ambitious and for ward-looking. Unfortunately, Mars is unlike Earth in one crucial way, which is to say that it is physically much smaller. As a consequence, the two substances essential to intelligent human life—air and water—were gradually leaking away into space, in such a way that the ancient Martians knew that their existence could not be expected, to survive for more than another thousand of their years.
There was no conceivable method that the Martians had at their command to combat the insidious dying of their planet.
Unable to solve the problem directly, the ancient Martians essayed an indirect solution. Their plan was to breed a new race—using human cells selected from the brains of the ancient scientists themselves—which would have no other function than to contain a vast intellect. In time, and Amelia said that it must have taken many hundreds of years, the first monster-creatures were evolved.
The first successful monsters were completely dependent on mankind, for they were incapable of movement, could survive only by being given transfusions of blood from domestic animals, and were subject to the slightest infection. They had, however been given the means to reproduce themselves, and as the generations of monster-creatures proceeded, so the beings developed more resistance and an ability to move, albeit with great difficulty. Once the beings were relatively independent, they were set the task of confronting the problem which threatened all existence on Mars.
What those ancient scientists could not have foreseen was that as well as being of immense intellect, the monster-creatures were wholly ruthless, and once set to this task would allow no impediment to their science. The very interests of mankind, for which they were ultimately working were of necessity subordinated to the pursuit of a solution! In this way, mankind on Mars eventually became enslaved to the creatures.
As the centuries passed the demands for blood increased, until the inferior blood of animals was not enough; so began the terrible blood-letting that we had witnessed.
In the initial stages of their work the monster-creatures, for all their ruthlessness, had not been entirely evil, and had indeed brought much good to the world. They had conceived and supervised the digging of the canals that irrigated the dry equatorial regions, and, to prevent as much water as possible from evaporating into space, they had developed plants of high water-content which could be grown as a staple crop alongside the canals.