Chapter 3

“Pregnant?” I asked. I must have said the word at least five times while Tjen crossed her legs beneath her, my seed still flecking her thighs and gleaming from her sex. Tjen nodded mutely.

“But how?” I asked.

“The means seems obvious,” she said, her voice flat.

I put my hands over my face. A foot trod on the ground before the cellar window, showing that people were walking past the abandoned Socialist Headquarters that we were sheltering in. I tried to not imagine all of them becoming aware of me and my hideous mistake. I brushed my hands along my face again, feeling the rough stubble of my unshaven face. I preferred to go without whiskers or beard, a style that had caught on during the Great War, when the desperate countermeasures against the black smoke had required a clean seal to the cheeks and face.

Thought of a hideous black fog rolling through town, suffocating all in its path did not seem quite seemly when it came to my future child. And yet, that was the image that stuck as I imagined all the things a child needed. At least, a child like me. My father might have had to flee England like the rest of our united kingdom, and but he had found a place to settle himself in New York. His writing had been deemed seditious and dangerous in the wake of the Great War by the King in Exile and his government, and so he had chosen to remain in the states. There, he had been supported by the socialist party and by an avaricious readership. In the topsy turvy culture that followed such hideous death and senseless slaughter, such overturning of many accepted human conditions ... his ideas had brought some measure of sanity.

And now he was dead.

His funds were so much molten slag.

And here I was, a longshoreman whose only education had been spurned as disinterested. I had professed some idea of going to university – maybe Harvard or Red League, to become a Darwinist of some make or another. But those dreams were dashed. Instead, I had a child and a target on my back. I shook my head, then sprang to my feet.

“Who am I?” I snarled to the air.

“George Wells,” Tjen said, simply.

“Exactly,” I said, then turned to her. “I’m no son of a gun whose going to leave you in high and dry. I don’t know how, but I will make sure you’re safe, and this child too.” I knelt beside her, squeezing her hand. “Please, though, tell me. What is a Red Martian childhood like?”

She sighed. “Well.” Her face grew set. “For two months, I will swell up a great deal. Larger, more sensitive breasts, a growing belly. And then I will lay my egg.” She nodded – ignoring my completely flummoxed expression. “Two months after, the egg shall hatch, and my child will be born. But I do not know how you being a human will alter this.”

I blinked. “Why do ... do you ... milk? With eggs?”

She cocked her head. “Of course. It takes some time for the milk to attain the right properties. I do not see why this would be confusing to you.”

I shook my head slowly, then lifted my hands. “Well. Ah. Will it make it hard to ... to ... uh ... do things?”

She smiled. “We shall be able to enjoy making love until right before I lay my egg. Afterwards, I shall be-”

“No, I mean, running, jumping, climbing. We are being chased by the bloody KKK,” I said, grinning shakily.

Tjen nodded. “Yes.”

“All I needed to know. Lets get dressed. We have a flying machine to catch,” I said, grinning at her – trying to seem jaunty and ready. Yanks seemed to act like they could take on the whole world, if they had the right motivation. I remembered the famous last words of the 76th Rifles: These dumb bastards came an awful long way just to die. Those words had been transcribed by the only survivor of the attack on the Washington infestation as several dozen regiments marched into heat rays and black smoke. But the thing that gave those words their heft?

That had been the fifteenth battle of the American front of the Great War.

Bravado, pure and simple. And yet, the 76th had dynamited three Tripods before their last was burned to the boots. If they could march cheerfully that way, I sure as well could charge cheerfully into the rest of my life – baby or not, KKK or not.

Once Tjen had dressed in what I would be charitable and call clothes, I tossed on my own shirt, wishing that I had kept hold of the stolen service revolver. Even if it had been hotter than hades, it would have been useful in a pinch. As it was, I poked around the abandoned place and found a machining tool that had been built to lever the printing press open. Somewhere between a crowbar and a T-junction, I hefted it, swung it a few times, then tucked it into my belt, adjusting my jacket to ensure it was covered. I smiled at Tjen and she smiled back at me. Together, we headed for the door. Feeling a crackling nerves along my scalp. Sure I would feel nothing but a searing blast of superheated plasma through my forehead, I peeked out.

Instead, I saw nothing but an open stairwell.

Tjen and I emerged, and together, we walked down the sidewalk. The police had cleared out the wreckage from down the block, and I could see the trams were already running again. The pedestrians we were walking past didn’t seem to notice us – they were all New Yorkers, and were focused entirely on getting to their next place of work, their next hustle. Tjen hunched her shoulders and walked with me as I looped an arm around her arm, hooking us together. I didn’t know if someone might judge us, but ... well, I was a male, and she was a female Red Martian. At least we’d be excused.

“We just need to get to the flying machine port,” I whispered. “Just another few blocks. We just need to avoid attracting any attention.”

We walked past an alleyway, and there, I could see a huddled figure being kicked by a few ruffians. There were three of them, and they had the nasty look of men ... well ... of men that I would work with normally. Smudged faces, heavy clothing. One of them even had a puffy, half healed burn along his cheek, the kind one could get from careless use of a flamer. The person they were kicking was too hard to make out, but I didn’t care if they were white, black, red or green. That kind of kicking could kill, remarkably quickly. I sighed and stepped forward.

“Gentlemen,” I said, trying to sound as posh as I could.

“Ah yes, this is a sound way to evade attention,” Tjen whispered. But I could hear pride in her voice.

The three toughs turned to face me. One of them, a puffing, round faced man whose cheeks had gone red and flushed with his sport, spoke up first: “What are you looking at, limey?”

“Well,” I started.

But before I could continue – and I was not entirely certain what I had planned to do, beyond distract them long enough for the prone figure to escape or scramble away. But the prone figure it seemed had a different plan. From the mass of cloth and tattered rags, a green arm thrust forth – long and muscular. It grabbed onto one of the men’s arms. A second arm thrust out, grabbing onto the man’s leg as the figure pushed itself up and up and up, standing to an easy seven, maybe eight feet tall. Another two arms, bringing them to a total of six limbs if one counted their legs, came out and grabbed onto another ruffian.

Those four arms flexed and muscle that looked as hard as iron bunched and the two ruffians were smashed together with a crash. The last man turned, gaping – and then the lower right fist snapped out, cracking across the man’s jaw. He sprawled to the ground, blood flecking against the wall.

I blinked, somewhat nonplussed.

“You did this,” a gruff and yet still feminine voice spoke, pointing at me with the upper left hand, then down at the three groaning bodies. “A human, fighting humans. Not a Thark, fighting humans. Yes?”

I blinked. “Yes?”

“Good.”

The robes of the green martian – for that was what the woman was – fell aside as she rolled her four shoulders. She was quite a sight. Definitely eight feet, as she topped me quite a bit. Her belly was flat with hard muscle, and her shoulders were lined with it – not thick slabs, but rather, lean tautness. She moved with a predators grace, and her form maintained more femininity than I had heard tell was common in green martians. Her breasts were larger than Tjens – larger than my head, to be quite honest – but they were perky and full, tipped with emerald green nipples. Her sex was large and inviting, as hairless as most Martians were, and her head was topped not by hair, but rather by a pair of antenna that coiled above her forehead. She had a pair of tusks, yes, but they thrust out only minutely against her lower lip. An accent of teeth, rather than the overpowering grotesqueness one might see in a political cartoon.

One, unfortunately, chose that moment to fill my mind: A white woman, being grabbed by a pair of green martians, with a ribbon proclaiming: Oh, what a terrible fate! And the two martians were labeled as Socialism. Behind the green martians were, of course, a hoard of equally unflattering caricatures. A leering Chinese, skin as yellow as jaundice, buck toothed and scrawny. A large nosed, flappy lipped black man. And, of course, the insidious tentacles of the Tripod Builders as if to say ‘look at what their dire minds have wrought!’. Absurd, considering how the Tripod Builders were all dead. But I wasn’t about to look for logic from a rag like The Native American. I shook my head to dispel the image as the woman crossed her lower arms over her belly, her upper arms over her breasts.

“W-What is your name?” I asked.

“I can see you looking at her breasts,” Tjen said, conversationally.

I turned as red as her. “I am not.”

“You are lying, I can see you looking at my breasts as well,” the green said, snorting. “As if I would be interested in a puny earth man.”

Oh, no. Now I was as red as Tjen. “Name? Please? Madame?”

“Not madame.” The woman sniffed, then spat. “My name is Yalen, of the Thark Hoard.” She sniffed. “Such as it is.”

The greens, like the reds, had been brought to Earth as part of the invasion. But unlike the reds, they had not been brought for their otherworldly power. Looking at those muscles, that height, I was not entirely surprised. In the time between the Tripod Builders arriving and the construction of their terrifying war machines, the greens had served as the initial shock troops and construction thralls. They had adapted to Earth gravity better than their masters. But I had not read much of their culture – beyond, of course, publications on the same caliber as that political cartoon.

“Mine is George Wells. But I-”

Yalen’s entire stance shifted. Her eyes widened. “Wells? As in H.G? As in the author of The Time Machine? The Invisible Man? The Island of Doctor Moreau?” Her eyes shone as she stepped forward. “The Green and the Red? Oh! Oh! Oh! Please, tell me, when is the next chapter of the Sleeper Awakens coming out?” She clutched her hands above where her heart was. “I sometimes wish I could have some of the inventions from his books, but reading of them is more than enough! Oh. I ... I do hope you are a relation. Wells is a familial name? And your accent, it...”

I blinked slowly. “You’re a fan of my father’s works?” I asked, and despite everything my father had taught me, skepticism dripped from my words.

“Of course.” Yalen’s chuckle was bitter. “Being so weak and small, I needed to find some escape from my broodmates and their teasing.”

Tjen put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed as I felt my own heart seem to go chill. I shook my head – then found a great deal of relief in the men on the ground groaning and starting to shift. They were rousing to themselves, and I took hold of that chance. “I am sorry, Yalen, but we must go.”

“May I walk with you?” she asked, brightening.

I opened my mouth, then smiled. “No. Sorry. But we really must be going.”

Yalen opened her mouth, then closed it. She bowed her head to me – and I noticed she had not a single bruise on her greenish body. But being tough and strong didn’t mean I could drag her in on danger and death without so much as a qualm. So, as she bowed, I took Tjen by the arm and together, we hurried off. Tjen leaned her head against my shoulder, her voice husky.

“That was a good deed you did,” she murmured.

“Thank you,” I said, quietly.

“You were looking at her breasts, though.”

I flushed. “I’m male!”

“I’m not jealous...”

And I spent the rest of the hurried walk to the flying machine port trying to figure out what on god’s green Earth and red Mars that meant.

The flying machine port of New York City was built on an out-thrusting spit of artificial land that looked out over the bay. Truly hideous in its modernity, it was an example of everything that architecture had lost in the transition to the 20th century. No decoration, beyond what posters could be slapped up by underpaid workmen. Nothing but hardened concrete and blisters of metal that protected the MPUs that powered the defenses that surrounded the port. Though primarily civilian in operation, the port did have several of the smaller, sleeker flying machines built by the Wight Corporation. I had seen them flying overhead while at work, and felt nothing but appreciation of their wedge-shaped hulls and bristling armaments.

The civilian flying machines were also made of cobbled together technology. The Martians had left behind vast stores of cavorite and other antigravitic materials. They had coated the inside of their terrible cylinders with cavorite, to protect them from the intense acceleration of their launch. Now, salvage teams stripped the material and sold it to the highest bidder, while a race that sometimes became dramatic enough to make front page news crackled between Edison and his rival Tesla to see who might craft Earth made cavorite first. As cavorite was expensive but never needed to be replaced, there were two different kinds of flying machines.

The first used vast gas bags filled with anything that might float – helium or hydrogen – but were thrust through the air via cavorite engines and MPU powered propellers. The second kind were far more intimidating. They looked for all the world like cylinders of our very own: Black metal, polished to monolith smoothness, drinking in the light as they floated above their mooring pylons. The only openings on their smooth hulls were where doors had happened and stairs had extended to allow passengers and cargo come aboard.

Something about the shape of a cylinder made the cavorite lining the inside not only make it buoyant, but it also made the interior a kind of mad house, where ones feeling of “down” came from the edges of the cylinder, rather than the natural pull of our mother world. The interiors looked not like the deck of a ship, but rather, a series of onion layers, growing closer and closer to the center. As the rings of the deck grew further from the cavorite hull, gravity itself grew lessened, until the wealthiest members of the passengers could dance in a lack of gravity only normally experienced by astros in the star navy.

I looked across the bay at the bridges that led to the flying machine port, then looked at Tjen. She was considering.

“So, I’m thinking we cannot afford a cylinder,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.

“I do not believe we can afford a blimp,” she said, simply.

I sighed. “So. We stow away?” I shook my head, then pushed myself to my feet. “That’s going to be tricky.”

“So long as we evade the eyes of the crew, it will not be hard,” Tjen said, smiling. “It’s not as if they’re searching every man or woman who comes aboard. People wouldn’t stand for that kind of slowdown. In the confusion and the excitement of boarding, we’ll get inside and be on our way to Berlin.”

We started for the bridge. Once there, though, I tensed. A police officer was putting up a poster on one of the light posts that loomed near the corner. Several passers by paused to look – and I waited until the officer had walked away before I and Tjen approached. She drew her cloak around her shoulders, to conceal her near nudity and her own red skin, as if she worried about being watched. I did notice a few men and women shooting her curious looks – but they were too busy getting to the flying machine port itself.

The poster was of a snarling, scarred man. Beneath it was a legend, proclaiming a reward for the discovery of ‘the criminal, wanted for the theft of a police walker and the destruction of a tram.’ I looked at Tjen, whispering.

“That looks nothing like me.”

Tjen smiled, somewhat shyly. “There is a reason why I punched the officer. It is not just that it knocked him unconscious. I also may have...” She paused.

“Altered his memories,” I asked. A shiver ran through me that had nothing to do with the weather. Tjen nodded and together, we started across the broad, flat, ugly bridge. Soon, we were at the port itself. I swept my gaze around, looking for any sign of danger. Tjen did likewise, though she kept her shoulders hunched and her cloak tugged forward. There were several large kiosks, where smiling women in fine uniforms took tickets and punched them through great, clicking machines, pointing people to head for the proper berths for the flying machines. Several men in army gray-green walked by, laughing and speaking to one another in boisterous voices. They were clearly off duty and heading to the city for a good time.

There were several doorways leading away from the main room – each one labeled with a letter and a number. The place to go to get aboard a flying machine, it seemed.

Tjen took my arm, shaking me. “Gipp. Gipp. Do my eyes deceive me?”

I looked where she was looking – then quickly turned her to face me, my hands on her shoulders. The man she had spotted was the man who had used the Tesla gun with such vim and vinegar last night. He looked tired and irritated, sipping a cheap cup of coffee contained in a cardboard cup. His eyes scanned the crowd, looking – I was sure – for any flash of a red face. Or a cloak. His eyes had settled on Tjen and he tossed his cup into the trash. I took her arm and together, we started for the kiosk. I knew there was nothing the man could do while we were in public, but I could feel his eyes boring down on mine.