The Martian Ambassador Read Free Page B

Frederick Roberts. Although the British victory over the Afghan Army at Char Asiab had cost him dear, Grandfather looked back with great fondness on those days, and a portrait of Sir Frederick hung alongside one of the Queen on the wall behind his desk.
    ‘Blackwood!’ he said, turning with a faint hiss and clank. ‘Good of you to get here so promptly.’
    ‘Not at all, sir.’
    ‘Have a seat.’ Grandfather indicated one of the two burgundy leather chairs facing the desk.
    ‘Thank you,’ Blackwood replied, carefully refraining from looking at Grandfather’s legs. It was a shame, he reflected, how the pipes and miniature boilers in the thighs ruined the line of the man’s otherwise elegantly-cut trousers. For Queen and Country , he thought, philosophically.
    Grandfather sat down heavily in his own chair and pressed a button on his desk. ‘Darjeeling?’ he asked.
    ‘Yes, please.’
    The door opened, and Miss Ripley poked her head into the office.
    ‘Would you be kind enough to bring us a pot of tea, Miss Ripley?’
    ‘Certainly, sir,’ she replied, and closed the door again.
    ‘Although I dare say you’d prefer coffee , eh, Blackwood?’ Grandfather pronounced the word ‘coffee’ as if it were a particularly fulsome oath. Blackwood merely smiled. It was true that he had grown accustomed to the beverage during his previous assignment to America to investigate the case of the Wyoming Mummy. When Grandfather had overheard him confiding to a colleague upon his return that he was not absolutely sure that he didn’t prefer it to tea, he had informed Blackwood that he would have been only slightly more dismayed had his operative proclaimed allegiance to President McKinley over Her Majesty.
    ‘No, sir,’ Blackwood replied. ‘Darjeeling would be capital.’
    Grandfather eyed him suspiciously. ‘Hmm...’ He turned his attention to a buff-coloured folder on his desk, which he opened slowly, almost tentatively, as if he half expected something profoundly unpleasant to jump out of it into his lap. ‘A dreadful business, this.’
    Blackwood assumed he was referring to the death of the Ambassador rather than his taste in beverages. ‘Indeed, sir.’
    ‘The press has got the jump on us, which is never a good thing.’
    ‘It’s difficult to imagine otherwise, in view of the seriousness of the event. Someone attending the function obviously notified them at the first opportunity. Do we know yet how Ambassador R’ondd died?’
    Grandfather rested an index finger on the contents of the folder. ‘I have here the report on the preliminary post-mortem, which was conducted by Dr Felix Cutter, a forensic pathologist attached to the Foreign Office. It does not make for comfortable reading.’
    ‘How so?’
    At that moment, there was a discreet knock at the door, and Miss Ripley entered bearing a silver tea tray. The two men lapsed into silence while she set the tray down on Grandfather’s desk and retreated.
    ‘Thank you, Miss Ripley.’
    ‘You’re most welcome, sir.’
    When the door had closed once again, Grandfather handed the top sheet of paper to Blackwood. ‘Read this.’
    While Grandfather turned his attention to the tea things, Blackwood read the report, his eyes skimming along the lines quickly, taking everything in. ‘Good grief,’ he said quietly when he had finished. ‘I’m no expert on Martian physiology, but this doesn’t look like a natural death, even for our singular cousins across the Æther.’
    ‘Quite so,’ replied Grandfather, placing a cup before Blackwood.
    ‘These things that were discovered in the Ambassador’s oesophageal tract...’
    ‘Tracts,’ Grandfather corrected. ‘All four of them.’
    ‘The pathologist likens them to larvae of some kind.’
    ‘Of a kind not seen on Earth... or Mars.’
    Blackwood glanced at his superior. ‘But they must have come from Mars. The Martians are incapable of breathing our atmosphere: it’s too rich for them. Their Embassy is hermetically