He paused.
Very likely these Martians will make pets of some of them; train them
to do tricks who knows? get sentimental over the pet boy who grew up
and had to be killed. And some, maybe, they will train to hunt us.
No, I cried, that s impossible! No human being
What s the good of going on with such lies? said the artilleryman.
There s men who d do it cheerful. What nonsense to pretend there
isn t!
And I succumbed to his conviction.
If they come after me, he said; Lord, if they come after me! and
subsided into a grim meditation.
I sat contemplating these things. I could find nothing to bring against
this man s reasoning. In the days before the invasion no one would have
questioned my intellectual superiority to his I, a professed and
recognised writer on philosophical themes, and he, a common soldier;
and yet he had already formulated a situation that I had scarcely
realised.
What are you doing? I said presently. What plans have you made?
He hesitated.
Well, it s like this, he said. What have we to do? We have to invent
a sort of life where men can live and breed, and be sufficiently secure
to bring the children up. Yes wait a bit, and I ll make it clearer what
I think ought to be done. The tame ones will go like all tame beasts;
in a few generations they ll be big, beautiful, rich-blooded,
stupid rubbish! The risk is that we who keep wild will go
savage degenerate into a sort of big, savage rat. . . . You see, how I
mean to live is underground. I ve been thinking about the drains. Of
course those who don t know drains think horrible things; but under
this London are miles and miles hundreds of miles and a few days rain
and London empty will leave them sweet and clean. The main drains are
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