The Map of the Sky (79 page)

A universe, it suddenly dawned on him, where it was possible no one had destroyed the Envoy. A shiver ran down Wells’s spine as he contemplated the cylinder and wondered whether it might not contain a real Martian after all.

At that moment, the lid of the object began to unscrew, and an awed silence descended on the crowd. Standing in the first row, Wells’s twin and the inspector broke off their conversation and stared intently at the cylinder. If he remembered correctly, Clayton had been informing his twin that in less than an hour the army would have surrounded the cylinder, and his twin had been trying to convince him that such a show of force was unnecessary. But perhaps it was not unnecessary, as it hadn’t been the first time, Wells said to himself, remembering the ray the machine had spat out, directly hitting four or five onlookers, who within seconds were enveloped in flames, turning Horsell Common into a slaughterhouse. Was this what was going to happen again? Had he destroyed the Envoy in vain? Wells watched the lid finally fall to one side with a clatter. He felt his heart racing wildly as he prepared to be burnt to a crisp by the heat ray.

For a few moments nothing happened. And then, from inside the cylinder a species of flare flew up into the early morning sky, only to explode with a gentle bang, sketching a brilliant red flower in the air. Almost immediately, there followed another, and then another, and another, until the sky turned into a garden filled with wonders. Wells contemplated it bewildered, and he scarcely had time to realize that the Martian cylinder was launching a stream of fireworks into the air before a flock of tropical birds emerged in a blaze of color, instantly scattering in all directions, flying over the hats of the amazed crowd. Then a lively melody started up, which at first everyone assumed was also emanating from the cylinder, until the sound became louder, and they turned as
one toward a cluster of nearby trees, from which a troupe of musicians emerged, decked out in colorful uniforms, and proceeded to advance across the grass toward the crowd, filling the air with a cheerful blare of trumpets, drums, and cymbals. Behind them, to everyone’s astonishment, there approached a troupe of a dozen horses with graceful ballerinas balanced on their backs. Before the audience had time to catch its breath, a handful of fire-eaters leapt out of the cylinder and began breathing balls of flame into the air.

Wells contemplated all this with a look of stunned disbelief, even as an immense wave of relief swept over him. Apparently, he was not going to die. No one there was going to die. He had ended up in a universe different than the one he had left, clearly a universe where the Envoy had never landed in the Antarctic but instead had crashed on a different planet or was still trapped in the ice, or perhaps another of Wells’s twins from a different parallel universe had killed him in the same way he had in the other world. In any event, the cylinder before him was entirely Murray’s work. The genuine Martian cylinders, if there actually were any in the world he was in now, must still be buried somewhere underground, where they would remain until corrosion and eternity eventually turned them to dust.

With a euphoric smile, Wells thrust these thoughts aside and tried to enjoy the spectacle taking place around him, though he scarcely knew which way to look, for a frenetic procession of marvels was streaming from every conceivable direction. And then, when it was far too late to cast fear into anyone, the Martian emerged from the cylinder. Its appearance was greeted with guffaws from the audience, for it was nothing more than a grotesque puppet, which immediately began to dance to the cheerful music with comical clumsiness. What really surprised the onlookers was the placard the Martian was clasping between its cloth tentacles, which in florid crimson letters said,
Will you marry me, Emma?
Amid laughter and applause, the crowd exchanged amused looks, trying to guess who this Emma in the message was, the woman for whom this
mysterious suitor had arranged all this merrymaking. But only Wells was watching the girl with the parasol standing awestruck at a distance from the crowd, contemplating this spectacle put on in her honor.

The music rose to a thrilling crescendo of drumbeats as everyone glanced about expectantly, contemplating the cylinder, the cluster of trees in the distance, even looking at one another in bewilderment, searching for what the drums were heralding with mounting frenzy. Suddenly an enormous shadow, such as a storm cloud might cast as it passed in front of the sun, spilled onto the common like a dreadful omen. Everyone raised their eyes, including Wells, only to discover to their astonishment a huge air balloon floating above their heads. It was still too high for them to see who was in the basket, only the bottom of which was visible, but the vast balloon, painted bright green, yellow, and turquoise, had a gilt “G” emblazoned on it, embossed with gleaming precious stones. Seconds later, to loud applause from the crowd, the balloon began to descend. When it was a dozen or so yards from the ground, a bunch of colored ropes fell from the basket, and down them cascaded tumblers dressed in livery, performing dizzying acrobatics in the air until their feet touched the ground and they began preparing for the vast balloon to land.

Gradually, the audience was able to make out the lone figure in the basket, who greeted the crowd with a beaming smile as the balloon alighted with the lumbering slowness of an elephant sitting down. When it had done so, the man in the balloon stepped down, assisted by the liveried tumblers. He was impressively tall, and slimmer than Wells remembered him. Indeed, the author had to admit that, several pounds lighter, and with that neatly clipped beard disguising his features, no one could ever have identified him as the Master of Time, tragically killed in the fourth dimension a couple of years before. As a finishing touch to this unreal vision, Murray was wearing a shiny purple suit, a bright yellow bow tie, and a blue stovepipe hat out of which billowed an orange-colored smoke, undulating in the air like a vaporous caterpillar. After one last dramatic drumroll, there was silence. The stranger appeared
to search for someone in the crowd. When he found her, he doffed his hat and gave a deep bow. The crowd understood, and parted, creating a passage leading from the stranger to the beautiful young girl, who was gazing dumbfounded at her suitor. Several tense moments passed, during which the crowd awaited the girl’s reaction, until at last Wells saw a smile appear on her lips, a smile that Emma tried at first to stifle, but that spread swiftly, lighting up her face, and everyone present could hear the most wonderful, limpid laughter their ears had ever perceived. Or at least this was what Wells romantically liked to think, for although he could not hear her laughter above the clamor of the crowd, he remembered it perfectly from the farm at Addlestone. While the band celebrated the girl’s gesture with gusto, breaking into another joyful tune, Emma walked with a beaming smile toward the man waiting for her beside the gigantic multicolored balloon. This outrageous, besotted man had somehow managed to see into her soul and to conjure up, with his ludicrous spectacle, the cosmic delight she had felt so long ago when she first saw the Map of the Sky. As she approached Murray, the excited crowd closed in behind her, surrounding the couple in a sea of cheers and applause, obscuring them from Wells.

But the author had seen enough. He knew the end of this tale better even than the protagonists themselves, for he had seen the girl curl up in Murray’s arms like a sparrow in its nest, ready to die with him. A love like theirs seemed destined to blossom in all of the universes, however infinite in number.

With a touch of his hat, Wells took his leave of the lovers. He turned and walked away from the hubbub toward where the coaches were parked, hoping to find a driver to take him back to Weybridge. He had seen all he wanted to. On his old man’s legs he struggled through the flood of people arriving to see the cylinder, surprised by the festive music emanating from where it had landed. Wells only hoped he could remain in this universe, where his old bones, tired of traveling between worlds, had finally come to rest.

Wells paused for a few seconds to rest his aging legs, dreaming of a
pleasant world where there were no mysterious forces intent on sucking him into the whirlpool of events he himself prophesied. Perhaps there were many such worlds, inhabited by his twins, who enjoyed peaceful lives without all these cosmic responsibilities. He felt not a little envious of them, and yet at the same time he also felt sad for all those Wellses who lived in universes similar to the one he came from, and who therefore suffered from the same disease, the same curse as he. How many of them found themselves exiled from their world, like himself, foreigners in other worlds, Flying Dutchmen who would never return to their place of birth, because they had been condemned to drift for eternity in the myriad oceans of time? Many, undoubtedly.

In fact, it was hard for Wells to pin down exactly which world he came from, for in the first journey in time he had made at the farm at Addlestone, he must have leapt into a different universe, and then returned to the past, but to the past of a third universe, which another of his twins had just abandoned, leaving the bed warm for him. There must be hundred, thousands of them. Wells shuddered to think how many had made some change in the universes they arrived in, and he was convinced not all of them could be as positive as the ones he had been able to carry out in that other world, and that, it had to be said, owed more to good fortune than to any skill on his part. He had pulled it off, yes, but God only knew how. Yet in other worlds he might have messed things up or made them worse, unleashing a disaster. Perhaps, he reflected with dismay, this was where his age-old, obsessive fear for the fate of the human race came from, his lasting conviction, even from before he had experienced a Martian invasion, that mankind would inevitably become extinct. Perhaps, thought the author, despite not being acquainted with any other of his twins (except for the Wells who was a native of this world, and with whom he had spoken on the pier at Southsea when he was still a boy), everyone shared a kind of collective awareness, a multilayered knowledge, intuitive and unconscious, that made them fear such a thing.

He could not be so rash as to believe he was unique, not even in the
matter of his accursed gift, for Clayton had already revealed that he himself had met other time travelers. So, there had to be many more who, like him, were infected with this strange disease, other unknown time travelers hidden among the branches of this tree of universes. Might they be at that very moment leaping between worlds, perhaps not always with honorable intentions? Wells shook his head slowly, perceiving through the fog of terror that familiar, yearned-for tingling in his fingertips: there was enough material there for a good novel. Undoubtedly. But he was no longer a writer, he told himself ruefully, as he moved off slowly again toward the carriages. He would soon be extinct himself, even if the human race survived.

Anything was possible in an infinite universe, he concluded, turning to contemplate for the last time the now distant balloon surrounded by the joyous hullabaloo. When he saw the lovers in the midst of the encircling crowd, Wells smiled once more, hoping that what he had thought moments before when he saw the smile appear on the girl’s lips was true: that the love between Murray and Emma was permanent and unchanging; that in each universe, each reality, each and every world where their eyes met, they could not help but fall in love.

AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I
WOULD LIKE TO
thank my publisher, Judith Curr, and my editor, Johanna Castillo, and the team at Atria Books in New York, from Mellony Torres onward, for their enthusiasm for my Victorian trilogy. Thanks for trusting in me and for bringing to the United States this humble homage to the books that made us dream as children.

I would also like to express my sincere indebtedness to my agents, Tom and Elaine Colchie, for their extraordinary work and support. It is thanks to them I can say that when I relinquish my work it passes into even safer pairs of hands. I thank Nick Caistor, too, for creating a wonderful translation of my work.

Yet, as anyone can see who leafs through the acknowledgments at the end of most novels, a book is read many times over before being published. Only a genius is capable of writing a novel entirely on his or her own, while the majority of us authors depend for guidance and advice on those to whom we entrust the reading of our manuscripts. In my case, Lorenzo Luengo is someone who, from the day we met, has been a tireless reader of everything that issues from my pen, helping me to hone my work with his ruthless sincerity, which in the long run is what always compels me to let him read my work in the secret hope that he will one day award a few of my drafts his seal of approval. I cannot thank him enough for his comments, and for the humor he injects them with to make them more palatable. Friends like him go a long way toward alleviating the crushing loneliness of being a writer.

And yet, I have discovered while writing this novel that it is possible to go even farther; that simply sharing this loneliness with another person can keep it at bay completely. Until recently I found this hard
to believe—as I did many things before I met M.J. She willingly took refuge with me in this novel, providing a warmth that helped ward off the cold spells that habitually threatened. I now know I will never be alone when I write, and since the thanks I give every day scarcely seem enough, I would like to acknowledge here how indebted to her I am, not just for the infinite patience she has shown in the face of my moodiness, anguish, and insecurity, all of which are an integral part of the creative process, but also for the steadfast gaze I have awakened to each day, the unwavering assurance telling me that if I ever got lost, she would know the way. And so, in some other universe where we never met, this novel might have turned out completely differently. But what does that matter? I am convinced no universe exists where that did not happen.