The Map of the Sky (2 page)

The author had been so wrapped up in his own thoughts that when he returned to reality he discovered his feet had taken him into Greek Street, where he found himself standing in front of the old, forgotten theater at number twelve. But do not be taken in by the look of surprise on Wells’s face: this was no coincidence, for in his life every action had a purpose; nothing was left to chance or impulse. However much he now tried to blame his innocent feet, Wells had gone there with the precise intention of finding that very theater, whose façade he now contemplated with what could only be described as somber rage. Consider yourselves welcome, then, and prepare for a tale packed with thrills and excitement, both for those ladies of a sentimental nature who will enjoy the romantic exploits of the charming and skeptical Miss Harlow, to whom I will have the pleasure of introducing you later on, and for the more intrepid gentlemen, who will undoubtedly tremble at the weird and wonderful adventures of our characters, such as this thin little man with a birdlike face, solemnly contemplating the theater. Observe him carefully, then. Observe his thin blond mustache with which he attempts to impose a more adult appearance on his childlike features, his finely drawn mouth and bright, lively eyes, behind which it is impossible not to perceive a sparkling intellect as sharp as it is impractical. In spite of his ordinary, less-than-heroic looks, Wells will play the most important role in this
tale, the exact beginning of which is difficult to pinpoint, but which for him (and for our purposes) begins on this quiet morning in 1898, an unusually glorious morning, in which, as you can see, there is nothing to suggest to the author that in less than two hours’ time, he will discover something so astonishing that it will forever alter his deepest-held beliefs.

But I will stop beating about the bush and reveal to you what you have no doubt been puzzling over for the past few minutes: why has Wells paused? Is he perhaps regretting the closure of the venue where he had spent so many nights enjoying the best stage plays of the time? Not a bit. As you will discover, Wells was not easily prone to nostalgia. He had come to a halt outside that old theater because, some years earlier, it had become home to a very special company: Murray’s Time Travel. Do the smiles playing on the lips of some of you mean the aforementioned establishment is already familiar to you? However, I must show consideration to the rest of my readers, and since, along with the knowing smiles, I noticed more than a few raised eyebrows, no doubt occasioned by the company’s curious name, I must hasten to explain to any newcomers that this extravagant enterprise had opened its doors to the public with the intention of realizing what is perhaps Man’s most ambitious dream: traveling in time. A desire that Wells himself had awoken in the public with his first novel,
The Time Machine
. Murray’s Time Travel’s introductory offer consisted of a trip to the future: to the twentieth of May in the year 2000, to be precise, the day when the decisive battle for the future of the world would take place, as depicted on the billboard still attached to the side of the building. This showed the brave Captain Shackleton brandishing his sword against his arch enemy Solomon, king of the automatons. It would be a century before that memorable battle took place, in which the captain would succeed in saving the human race from extinction, although, thanks to Murray’s Time Travel, almost the whole of England had already witnessed it. Regardless of the exorbitant cost of the tickets, people had thronged outside the old theater, eager to watch the battle their wretched mortal existences would have prevented
them from seeing, as though it were a fashionable new opera. Wells must have been the only man on Earth who hadn’t shed a tear for that oversized braggart, in whose memory a statue had been erected in a nearby square. There he stood, on a pedestal shaped like a clock, smiling self-importantly, one huge paw tickling the air, as though conjuring a spell, the other resting on the head of Eternal, his dog, for whom Wells couldn’t help feeling a similar aversion.

And so, Wells had come to a halt there because that theater reminded him of the consequences he had already unleashed by giving someone his true opinion of his novel. For, prior to becoming the Master of Time, Gilliam Murray had been a young man with somewhat more modest pretensions: he had wanted to become a writer. That was the time when Wells had first met him, three years earlier. The future millionaire had petitioned Wells to help him publish a turgid novel he had written, but Wells had refused and, unable to help himself, had told Murray perhaps rather more bluntly than necessary what he thought of his work. Not surprisingly, his brutal sincerity had turned the two men into enemies. Wells had learned a lesson from the experience: in certain situations it was better to lie. What good had come of telling Murray what he thought? And what good would come of telling Serviss the truth? he now wondered. Lying was undoubtedly preferable. Yet while Wells was able to lie unhesitatingly in many situations, there was one thing he couldn’t help being honest about: if he didn’t like a novel, he was incapable of pretending he did. He believed taste defined who he was, and he couldn’t bear to be taken for someone whose taste was appalling enough for him to enjoy
Edison’s Conquest of Mars.

•   •   •

L
OOKING DOWN AT HIS
watch, the author realized he had no time to dawdle at the theater or he would be late for his appointment. He cast a final glance at the building and made his way down Charing Cross Road, leaving Soho behind as he headed for the Strand and the pub where he was to meet Serviss. Wells had planned to keep the journalist
waiting in order to make it clear from the start he despised what he had done, but if there was one thing Wells hated more than lying about his likes and dislikes, it was being late for an appointment. This was because he somehow believed that owing to a cosmic law of equilibrium, if he was punctual, he in turn would not be made to wait. However, until then he had been unable to prove that the one thing influenced the other, and more than once he had been forced to stand on a corner like a sad fool or sit like an impoverished diner in a busy restaurant. And so, Wells strode briskly across the noisy Strand, where the hurly-burly of the whole universe appeared to be concentrated, and trotted down the alleyway to the pub, enabling him to arrive at the meeting with irreproachable punctuality, if a little short of breath.

Since he had no idea what Serviss looked like, he did not waste time peering through the windows—a routine he had developed to establish whether whomever he was meeting had arrived or not: if he hadn’t, Wells would rush off down the nearest street and return a few moments later at a calm pace, thus avoiding the need to wait inside and be subjected to the pitiful looks of the other diners. As there was no point in going through this procedure today, Wells entered the pub with a look of urbane assurance, pausing in the middle of the room so that Serviss might easily spot him, and glanced with vague curiosity about the crowded room, hoping the American had already arrived and that he would be spared the need to wander round the tavern with everyone staring at him. As luck would have it, almost at once, a skinny, diminutive man of about fifty, with the look of someone to whom life has been unkind, raised his right arm to greet Wells, while beneath his bushy whiskers his lips produced a wan smile. Realizing this must be Serviss, Wells stifled a grimace of dismay. He would rather his enemy had an intimidating and arrogant appearance, incapable of arousing pity, than this destitute air of an undernourished buzzard. In order to rid himself of the inevitable feeling of pity the scrawny little fellow inspired, Wells had to remind himself of what the man had done, and he walked over to the table in an alcove where
the man was waiting. Seeing Wells approach, Serviss opened his arms wide and a grotesque smile spread across his face, like that of an orphan wanting to be adopted.

“What an honor and a pleasure, Mr. Wells!” he exclaimed, performing a series of reverential gestures, stopping just short of bowing. “You don’t know how glad I am to meet you. Take a seat, won’t you. How about a pint? Waiter, another round, please; we should drink properly to this meeting of literary giants. The world would never forgive itself if our lofty reflections were allowed to run dry for lack of a drink.” After this clumsy speech, which caused the waiter, a fellow who unequivocally earned his living in the physical world, to look at them with the disdain he reserved for those working in such airy-fairy matters as the arts, Serviss gazed at Wells with his rather small eyes. “Tell me, George—I can call you George, right?—how does it feel when one of your novels makes the whole world tremble in its shoes? What’s your secret? Do you write with a pen from another planet? Ha, ha, ha . . .”

Wells did not deign to laugh at his joke. Leaning back in his chair he waited for Serviss’s shrill laughter to die out, adopting an expression more befitting a pallbearer than someone about to have lunch with an acquaintance.

“Well, well, I didn’t mean to upset you, George,” Serviss went on, pretending to be put out by Wells’s coldness. “I just can’t help showing my admiration.”

“As far as I am concerned you can save your praise,” Wells retorted, resolving to take charge of the conversation. “The fact that you have written a sequel to my latest novel speaks for itself, Mr. Ser—”

“Call me Garrett, George, please.”

“Very well, Garrett,” Wells agreed, annoyed at Serviss for forcing this familiarity on him, which was inappropriate to an ear bashing, and for the jolly air he insisted on imposing on the conversation. “As I was saying—”

“But there’s no such thing as too much praise, right, George?” the American interrupted once more. “Especially when it’s deserved, as in
your case. I confess my admiration for you isn’t an overnight thing. It began . . . when? A couple of years back, at least, after I read
The Time Machine,
an even more extraordinary work for being your first.”

Wells nodded indifferently, taking advantage of Serviss having stopped his salesman’s patter to take a swig of beer. He had to find a way of breaking off Serviss’s incessant prattle to tell him what he thought of his novel. The longer he waited, the more awkward it would be for them both. But the American was unrelenting.

“And what a happy coincidence that just after you published your novel, someone found a way of traveling in time,” he said, bobbing his head in an exaggerated fashion, as though he were still recovering from the shock. “I guess you took a trip to the year two thousand to witness the epic battle for the future of mankind, right?”

“No, I never traveled in time.”

“You didn’t? Why ever not?” the other man asked, astonished.

Wells paused for a few moments, remembering how during the days when Murray’s Time Travel was still open for business he had been forced to maintain an impassive silence whenever someone alluded to it with an ecstatic smile on his or her face. On such occasions, which occurred with exasperating regularity, Wells invariably responded with a couple of sarcastic remarks aimed at puncturing the enthusiasm of the person addressing him, as though he himself were above reality, or one step ahead of it, but in any event unaffected by its vagaries. And wasn’t that what the hoi polloi expected of writers, to whom by default they attributed loftier interests than their own more pedestrian ones? On other occasions, when he wasn’t in the mood for sarcasm, Wells pretended to take exception to the exorbitant price of the tickets. This was the approach he decided to adopt with Serviss, who, being a writer himself, was likely to be unconvinced by the former.

“Because the future belongs to all of us, and I don’t believe the price of a ticket should deprive anyone of seeing it.”

Serviss looked at him, puzzled, then rubbed his face with a sudden gesture, as though a cobweb had stuck to it.

“Ah, of course! Forgive my tactlessness, George: the tickets were too dear for poor writers like us,” he said, misinterpreting Wells’s remark. “To be honest, I couldn’t afford one myself. Although I did begin saving up in order to be able to climb aboard the famous
Cronotilus,
you know? I wanted to see the battle for the future. I really did. I even planned mischievously to break away from the group once I was there, in order to shake Captain Shackleton’s hand and thank him for making sure all our prayers didn’t fall on deaf ears. For could we have carried on inventing things and producing works of art had we known that in the year two thousand no human being would be left alive on Earth to enjoy them—that because of those evil automatons, Man and everything he had ever achieved would have been wiped away as though it had never even existed?” With this, Serviss appeared to sink back into his chair, before continuing in a melancholy voice. “As it is, you and I will no longer be able to travel to the future, George. A great shame, as I expect you could more than afford it now. I guess it must have pained you as much as it did me to find out that the time travel company closed down after Mr. Murray passed away.”

“Yes, a great pity,” Wells replied sardonically.

“The newspapers said he’d been eaten alive by one of those dragons in the fourth dimension,” Serviss recalled mournfully, “in front of several of his employees, who could do nothing to save him. It must have been awful.”

Yes, thought Wells, Murray certainly engineered a dramatic death for himself.

“And how will we get into the fourth dimension now?” asked Serviss. “Do you think it will remain sealed off forever?”

“I’ve no idea,” Wells replied coldly.

“Well, perhaps we’ll witness other things. Perhaps our fate will be to travel in space, not time,” Serviss consoled himself, finishing up his pint. “The sky is a vast and infinite place. And full of surprises, isn’t that right, George?”

“Possibly,” Wells agreed, stirring uneasily in his seat, as though his
buttocks were scalding. “But I’d like to talk to you about your novel, Mr. Ser—Garrett.”

Serviss suddenly sat bolt upright and stared at Wells attentively, like a beagle scenting a trail. Relieved to have finally caught the man’s attention, Wells downed the last of his beer in order to give himself the courage and composure he needed to broach the subject. His gesture did not escape Serviss’s notice.