The Map of the Sky (34 page)

Murray sat down once more at his desk, took out a sheet of paper, and paused for a moment. Did he have the nerve to do it? No. Yes. Of course he did; he had no choice. He was a man who knew how to read the signs. But above all he was a man at the end of his tether. And such men are capable of anything. Hunched over the blank page, Murray began writing the most humiliating letter of his life:

Dear George,

I imagine it will come as no surprise to you to receive a letter from a dead man, for we are both aware that you are the only man in all England who knows I am still alive. What will doubtless surprise you is the reason for my writing, and that is none other than to request your help. Yes, that is right, I am sending you this letter because I need your help.

Let me begin by not wasting time dissembling. We both know that our hatred of each other is unmitigated. Consequently, you will understand the humiliation I feel at having to write you this letter. However, I am willing to endure that humiliation if it means obtaining your help, which gives you some clue as to how desperate I am. Imagine me kneeling and begging at your feet, if it pleases you. It is of no consequence to me. I do not value my dignity enough not to sacrifice it. I realize the absurdity of asking for help from one’s enemy, and yet is it not also a sign of respect, a way of admitting one’s inferiority? And I fully recognize my own: as you know, I have always prided myself on my imagination. But now I need help from someone with a greater imagination than
my own. And I know of none comparable to yours, George. It is as simple as that. If you help me, I will happily stop hating you, even though I don’t suppose that is much of an incentive. Bear in mind I will also owe you a favor, and, as you know, I am a millionaire now. That might be more of an incentive. If you help me, George, you may name your price. Any price.
You have my word, George.

And why do I need your help? you must be wondering. Well, at the risk of rekindling your hatred of me, the matter relates to another of your novels, this time
The War of the Worlds.
As your brilliant mind has no doubt already deduced, I have to re-create a Martian invasion. However, this time I assure you I am not attempting to prove anything to you, nor do I intend to profit from it. You must believe me. I no longer need either of those things. This time I am driven by something I need more than anything in the world, and without which I shall die: love, George, the love of the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. If you have been in love you will understand what I am referring to. I daresay you will find it hard, perhaps impossible, to believe that a man like me can fall in love, yet if you met her it would seem strange to you if I had not. Ah, George, I was unable to resist her charms, and I assure you her immense fortune is not one of them, for as I told you, I have enough money to last several lifetimes. No, George, I am referring to her charming smile, her golden skin, the savage sweetness of her eyes, even the adorable way she twirls her parasol when she is nervous . . . No man could be immune to her beauty, even you.

But in order to have her, I must arrange for a cylinder to land on Horsell Common on August 1, and for a Martian to emerge from it, just like in your novel, George. And I don’t know how! I have tried everything, but as I told you, my imagination has its limits. I need yours, George. Help me, please. If I pull it off, that woman will be my wife. And if that happens, I promise I shall no
longer be your enemy, for Gilliam Murray will be finally laid to rest. Please, I beg you, I implore you, assist this lovesick soul.

Yours,
G.M.

Murray sank back in his chair and gazed at the humiliating letter, at the flowing lines of fresh ink covering the white page. Would his words achieve anything? He reflected that it might be wiser to threaten Wells, to warn him that Jane could be the victim of a cycling accident, for instance, but he instantly rejected the idea. He would have stooped that low once, but now that he was in love he dared not consider it. The thought was abhorrent to him. He could not bear the idea of Emma being hurt and so could therefore easily understand what Wells would feel if he received such a threat. Besides, he had no need to resort to his old thuggish ways, for he was convinced Wells would help him, for the simple reason that he believed himself superior to Murray and was eager to prove it. That kind of ploy always worked with people of integrity, which, rightly or wrongly, is what Wells undoubtedly considered himself. And he, Murray, had only sacrificed his dignity, which was no great loss. From now on, with Emma by his side, he would remodel himself, he would be reborn as a better person, a new man, uncorrupted, redeemed by love. He blew on the ink, placed the sheet of paper in an envelope, and sealed it.

The following day he posted the letter. And he waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Until at last he realized that Wells would never reply. Apparently, the author had no intention of helping him. Wells’s hatred was stronger than he had imagined; it clouded his mind, poisoned his thoughts. For a few days, Murray toyed with the idea of sending Wells a second, more servile letter, or even of calling on him, hurling himself at the author’s feet and clutching his skinny knees until Wells had no choice but to help him if he wanted to carry on with his life. But Murray soon dismissed those
ideas as futile; a shrewd businessman such as he knew when someone was impervious to civilized methods of persuasion. Clearly, Wells would never help him. And so, if he wanted to produce a convincing Martian, he would have to do it without Wells’s help. And sooner rather than later; otherwise, on August 1 Emma would be smiling triumphantly as she contemplated the grass gently swaying in the summer breeze on Horsell Common, whose delicious earthly peace was undisturbed by any alien presence.

XIX

I
N A COTTAGE ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF
L
ONDON, IN
Worcester Park, on the exact day Murray had chosen for the Martians to arrive, Herbert George Wells was sleeping soundly in the belief that the day awaiting him beyond the rising curtain of dawn would be the same as any other. He slipped out of bed carefully, so as not to rouse Jane, who was still sleeping beside him, her breath imitating the ebb and flow of the surf. He left the bedroom, had a strip wash, and began his habitual pilgrimage through the house, which was plunged into a dense silence at that time of the morning. Wells liked to get up before dawn, when the world had not yet arisen, and, free of any obligations, creep around the house like an intruder before his working day began. Like a field marshal strutting proudly over the battleground strewn with his enemy’s remains, he surveyed each room, making sure no one had invaded the territory he had struggled so hard to conquer. Everything appeared in order: the furniture was in its proper place, the dawn light was streaming in through the windows at the correct angle, the wallpaper was the same color. The Wellses’ house was far from luxurious, but was bigger than the one they had in Woking and infinitely bigger than the warren they had inhabited in Mornington Crescent. For Wells the steady increase in the size of his sanctums reflected better than anything else the measure of his success. Ranged on a special shelf in the sitting room were his five published novels to date, the palpable fruit of his imagination. The renown those few works had won him in England had recently spread to America. He plucked from the end of the row the
copy of
The War of the Worlds,
recently published by Heinemann, and cupped it gingerly in his hands, as he might a batch of eggs. “
The War of the Worlds,
” he murmured solemnly in the gloom of the sitting room, “by H. G. Wells.” He liked to whisper the titles of his books, as though somehow that brought them to life. Then he noticed a letter sticking out from between its pages. He grasped it between his thumb and forefinger, as though with revulsion. The letter had arrived well over a month before and was from Gilliam Murray, the person he most hated in the whole world. Yes, he bore that man a deep and abiding grudge, which in Wells’s case was quite an achievement, because from the earliest age he had shown an unerring inability to sustain any emotion, even hatred.

Wells remembered the shiver that had run up his spine when he discovered Murray’s letter in his mailbox, a reminder of the old days when he was plagued by Murray’s invitations to travel to the future. Wells had torn it open with trembling fingers, unable to stop his mind from inventing a hundred reasons why Murray might have written to him, each more alarming than the last, before his eyes finally absorbed its contents. When he had finished reading, he gave a sigh of relief, and his fear gave way to loathing. Murray had apparently emerged from his lair and returned to London, where he had the nerve to ask for Wells’s help for nothing less than to re-create the Martian invasion the author had depicted in his novel. Murray had no qualms in his letter about acknowledging the limits of his imagination, and he hinted at a reward if Wells agreed to help him and even appealed to Wells’s sentiments by confessing that his motives this time were far from pecuniary, and that he was driven by the noblest feeling of all: love. If he was able to make a Martian cylinder appear on Horsell Common on August 1, the woman he loved would agree marry him. Why would anyone devise such an outlandish test? Wells wondered. Had the mysterious woman whom Murray loved set him a challenge she knew he could not meet? But more importantly: did such a woman even exist, or was this all a cunning ruse to secure his aid? Whether Murray’s story was true or not, Wells had decided to refuse his request. He had slipped Murray’s letter between the pages of his
novel and thought no more of it until that morning. He loathed Murray too deeply to want to help him, regardless of how much in love the man was or pretended to be. Placing the book back on the shelf, Wells realized that if his story turned out to be true, then the deadline was this very day. Had Murray pulled it off? he wondered with vague curiosity. Had he actually managed to make a Martian cylinder land on Horsell Common? He doubted it. Even for a man like Murray, who could apparently achieve anything, it was an impossible feat.

Wells went into the kitchen to make his morning cup of coffee, assailed by a tormenting thought: had he refused to help Murray simply because he was his enemy? Perhaps it was time he answered the question. No, he reflected, assembling the percolator. Of course not; there had been other equally important reasons. Such as the fact that for the past six weeks he had been a different man. A bewildered, terrified man. A man forced every day to convince himself he had not taken leave of his senses, for, ever since he had entered the Chamber of Marvels in the basement of the Natural History Museum, where the unimaginable was stored, where he had beheld wonders no one knew existed, extraordinary things that made the world a miraculous place, Wells had wondered how he was to live. For days afterward, he had been plunged into a state of confusion similar to the incomprehension he had felt when, as a child, he discovered that the world extended beyond the British Isles, the only focus of the geography class at school. It seemed incredible, but the world did not end at the coast. Beyond it loomed the Colosseum, the Taj Mahal, the Pyramids. Thus Wells had gained a notion of the Earth’s size, just as a visit to the Dinosaur Court at the Crystal Palace to see the plaster reconstructions of, among others, the megatherium, had enabled him to establish its age, the beginning of time, before which existence was a mere euphemism. Thus, from an early age, Wells had believed he lived in the world that was, and always had been, a world whose coordinates in time and space had been carefully mapped out by science. Yet he knew now that those coordinates were wrong, that there was a world
beyond the fictitious boundaries that their rulers, who determined what they ought to know about and what not, were intent on drawing up. On leaving the museum, Serviss had told Wells it was up to him whether or not he believed in the authenticity of the wonders in the Chamber of Marvels. And Wells had decided to accept as true the existence of the supernatural, because logic told him there was no other reason why it should be kept under lock and key. As a result he felt surrounded by the miraculous, besieged by magic. He was aware now that one fine day he would go into the garden to prune the roses and stumble on a group of fairies dancing in a circle. It was as though a tear had appeared in every book on the planet, and the fantasy had begun seeping out, engulfing the world, making it impossible to tell fact from fiction.

However, as the days went by, Wells had managed to overcome his bewilderment, since in the long run knowing that miracles existed changed nothing, for perhaps the fairies only danced in his garden while he was asleep. Life went on as before, and he had no choice but to continue existing within the confines of the tangible world, the dull, quantifiable, inhospitable world. The rest was fantasy, fables, and old wives’ tales. Even so, Wells could not help feeling a tinge of resentment, the uncomfortable impression of being in a farce on a miniature stage designed by those in power who determined which props remained in the wings. What right did those men have to limit the world? Like him, they were mere specks of dust in the universe, a moment in time. But as the museum’s head curator had explained to Serviss, there were boundaries not all men were ready to cross. And Wells had paid the price, for he was clear about one thing: he would never write another fantasy novel. How could he, now that he knew there were more impossible things in the world than any writer could ever imagine? He had written a book speculating about the existence of Martians because he had never touched one before with his own hands. But that had changed: now he had, he had touched the arm of a genuine Martian, a Martian that had hurtled through space in a flying saucer, and that looked more like a moth than
an octopus. With that in mind, what sense was there in helping Murray to re-create a Martian invasion as preposterous as the one he himself had described?