The Map of Time Collection, page 181
“No,” Doyle replied in a placatory tone. “I came here to tell you about the meeting George and I had with Inspector Clayton after we got back from the moor, which incidentally you didn’t attend . . .”
“Inspector Clayton . . . Ah, yes, I remember.” Murray scanned the pile of mirrors and seized one with a frame that seemed to be made of solid gold. “A rather awkward one,” he added with a sigh, so that Doyle was unsure whether he was referring to the inspector or the mirror.
Making a huge effort, he resolved to maintain a friendly tone, at least for the moment. “Well, I won’t deny that this Clayton fellow is a little . . . impertinent. And I understand that you didn’t want to see him . . . Wells told me about how determined he was to investigate your time-travel company, and how he even accused Wells of orchestrating a Martian invasion at some point. But wasn’t Inspector Clayton the person Baskerville said we should see before he died, because he had The Map of Chaos? Who else could we have consulted regarding invisible killers, universal travelers, and mirrors that are portals between worlds? We had no choice, Gilliam. And, regardless of all that, you should have come, as it was an extremely interesting meeting,” he added mysteriously.
Murray indicated with a nod that he should pick up the other end of the mirror and help him carry it. Doyle gritted his teeth and did as Murray asked.
“After we had given him a summary of what happened at Brook Manor,” Doyle went on, gasping as they inched their way over to the circle of mirrors, “Clayton admitted that he had The Map of Chaos and told us he had already come across the creature at a fake séance in 1888.”
“Really?” Murray said, signaling with his chin the place where he wanted the mirror to go.
After resting it on the ground, Doyle, out of breath, explained to Murray that the Invisible Man had tried to steal the book from an old lady who had also been at the séance, but that Clayton had managed to stop him. However, he had failed to arrest the creature because he had vanished into thin air, exactly the way he did at Brook Manor when he, Murray, shot him with the crossbow. The old lady had also disappeared, but not before she gave Clayton the book, although she managed only to tell him it contained the key to saving this and all other possible worlds and that he must protect it with his life, for she was certain the creature would come back to destroy it.
“Do you realize what I am saying, Gilliam? The book has been in Clayton’s possession all this time, but for some reason the monster believes Wells has it . . .”
“Yes.” Murray nodded thoughtfully.
Encouraged, Doyle went on. “Good, good . . . So, if what the old lady said is true and the book contains the key to saving all the worlds, and the creature finds it, or if he finds Wells . . .”
“Yes.” Murray nodded again, directing his gaze at his circle of mirrors. “There: I think every corner is reflected now, and that is the most important thing, because she could be anywhere.”
“You aren’t listening to me, damn it!” exclaimed Doyle. “What I am trying to tell you is that your beloved friend George is in mortal danger, and possibly the entire universe to boot!”
Murray stared at him blankly for a few moments.
“Let’s go to the conservatory,” he said.
Once again, Doyle was forced to follow him. When they went in, he was surprised to find the place empty.
“Emma used to spend a lot of time in here tending her flowers,” Murray explained. “So I have taken everything out in order to fill it with mirrors. I am expecting another delivery from Bristol this afternoon, which Elmer ordered.”
“Splendid,” Doyle retorted. “Look, Murray, I sympathize with your obsess—I mean, your interest in finding Emma, but what I am telling you ought to interest you as well. If what the old lady predicted twelve years ago is true, and the end of the world is upon us, you won’t have much chance of finding Emma, will you? The quicker we sort out this mess, the better, because we don’t know how much time we have left. So, listen carefully: I think the key to it all lies in the story Baskerville told Clayton . . .”
“Baskerville?” Murray asked, looking at him in astonishment.
“Yes, Baskerville, Baskerville,” Doyle replied, trying not to lose his patience. “Apparently, your coachman went to see Clayton about six or seven months ago. It seems the old man had met one of Clayton’s twins in another world, and together they had tried to defeat a . . . Martian invasion. And so, when the Hunters came after him, he considered turning to Clayton. Wells hoped the Clayton in this world would be able to help him, the way his twin had in the other universe. Even so, for a while he refrained from going to see him—after all, he had been fairly successful in avoiding the Hunters for two years, and during the previous couple of months he thought he had finally given them the slip. But when Wells saw the watcher on the moor, he realized they had caught up with him again, and, too worn-out by then to continue facing the situation alone, he resolved to turn to Clayton, praying he would believe him and, more important, that he would offer some solution . . . Our Clayton did believe him, though he knew nothing about those killers. But when Baskerville described the symbol on their canes, he recognized it as the same eight-pointed star adorning the cover of The Map of Chaos! That is why he showed Baskerville the book, in the hope he might be able to give him some information about it, but the old man knew nothing . . . Although clearly the Hunters, the book, the invisible creature, and the journeys between worlds are all connected . . . We just have to find out how!”
Murray nodded as he glanced about thoughtfully.
“Hmm . . . how many mirrors do you reckon will fit in here, Arthur?” he said.
Doyle could contain himself no longer.
“But what the devil is the matter with you, Gilliam?” he exploded. “Do you care so little about what might happen to George and Jane? For God’s sake, man, they are your friends! And what about the universe? Don’t you care about the end of the world?”
Murray looked at him resentfully. “And what could I possibly do for the universe that you, our most eminent thinkers, aren’t already doing?” he said sarcastically. “Arthur Conan Doyle, Inspector Clayton, H. G. Wells, and his brilliant wife . . . With all of you working to solve the problem, I can sleep easily in the knowledge that the universe is in good hands. But meanwhile . . . who is bothering to look for Emma? No one!” he roared suddenly, pointing accusingly at Doyle, who contemplated him in astonishment. “And yet you promised you would help me find her! You swore to me at Brook Manor, before confronting the invisible creature, that if we came out of there alive, you would devote the rest of your life to solving that riddle. You told me if there was some way of getting to Emma, you would find it! And I believed you! I took you at your word! I believed your damnable chivalrous posturing!”
Doyle waited for Murray to calm down, looking at him sorrowfully, and then he said, “And I meant it, Gilliam. Otherwise, why would I be doing this? Or do you honestly believe this method of yours is going to work?” he exclaimed crossly, pointing at all the mirrors. “I am absolutely convinced that the only way to discover the path that leads to your beloved Emma is by understanding what is going on all around us. As I said before: everything is connected. Everything. If I manage to solve the case of this mysterious book, not only will I save Wells and probably the entire universe, I will also discover the underlying nature of things . . . Do you realize what that means, Gilliam? I used to toy with the idea of writing a book about Spiritualism, but what is that compared to a theory that explains everything we are and all that is around us? I shall call it the theory of manifold worlds. And, you see, Gilliam, once I have truly grasped reality, I will also understand how to travel between worlds and will be able to guide you to the Emma in the mirror, just as I promised.”
Murray looked skeptically at his friend, hesitating to show any enthusiasm. He was still angry, although he had to admit there was some sense in what Doyle was saying.
“Very well . . . ,” he muttered, “how can I help you?”
“In lots of ways. We have devised a plan, which I will explain later . . . but first of all, I need you tell me everything you discovered on your trips to the fourth dimension in the Cronotilus, because in light of what we know now, it seems increasingly clear that the pink plain is an antechamber between those parallel worlds. I am convinced it contains many clues, possibly even the solution of how to reach Emma.”
Murray looked at Doyle in disbelief and then smiled ruefully.
“Is that your plan for finding Emma?” he said, visibly disappointed. “Then I fear we never shall.”
“What makes you say that?” Doyle said, surprised. “I feel sure there is a doorway leading to her on the pink plain—probably very similar to the hole that you thought took you to the year 2000, and much easier to pass through than a mirror.”
Murray sighed.
“Do you want to know the whole truth about the fourth dimension?”
“Of course.” Doyle nodded excitedly.
“Very well.” Murray breathed another sigh. “Then I think you are in for a greater surprise than you bargained for.”
But wait a moment, dear reader! Whilst Murray and Doyle are embroiled in their discussion, oblivious to all that is happening around them, I can see everything willy-nilly, and I have just noticed that the hundreds of mirrors with which Murray has adorned his property have stopped reflecting what is in front of them. Instead of contemplating their own bored expressions in the looking glasses Murray had told them to watch over, the maids and footmen were seeing quite different images, strange worlds they could never have conjured in their own imaginations. One mirror revealed a valley of silky grass through which a herd of centaurs was galloping; another a huge amphibious creature, its back bristling with spikes as it bobbed on a greenish ocean; another a grey wilderness with thick, driving rain and dazzling lightning bolts, where enormous metallic beetles fought to survive; another a landscape of toadstools as tall as trees, on which caterpillars wearing waistcoats and frock coats conversed with one another; another a cluster of floating castles drifting through lilac clouds, with waterfalls flowing from them like fringes made of foam; another the dome of St. Paul’s, over which at that very moment flew a magnificent pterodactyl.
Of course, none of the servants were aware that these were the infinite stages of the theater collapsing and colliding, the myriad different worlds crashing against one another. The end of the world had begun, ladies and gentlemen. But instead of trumpets, it was heralded by the frenzied tinkle of a hundred bells.
33
FIFTEEN MINUTES EARLIER, DR. RAMSEY HAD gotten out of bed, unaware that this was the last day of the universe. He liked rising at a quarter to eight in order to perform his ablutions, which included, among other things, a perilous shave with the rudimentary razor from that world. Unlike his colleagues, who had brought electric shavers with them in their trousseaus of microscopic and sundry devices from the Other Side, Ramsey felt a sentimental attachment to that relic from the past. He considered that the slow, measured rhythm it required of him was the best way to help him adapt to the unhurried pace of that world. After managing to finish his conventional shave without slitting his throat, he went down to the dining room, unaware that behind him in the bathroom mirror an intricate maze had appeared, in the midst of which stood a bored-looking Minotaur. With his customary punctuality, Ramsey’s servant had just laid out his peculiar breakfast: a cup of coffee swimming in ice cubes, different types of fruit arranged on a thick bed of crushed ice, and assorted flavors of ice cream. After casting a doleful glance through the window at the sunny autumn day outside, Ramsey sat down at the table with a faint sigh, cracked his knuckles, picked up the newspaper, and began to read the headlines on that ordinary September 23, 1900, unaware that, as I have already told you, dear reader, in the world he inhabited at least, this was the dreaded Day of Chaos.
He turned the pages wearily, no news items drawing his attention, since most of the articles were still reporting on the powerful hurricane that had razed the city of Galveston, Texas, to the ground on September 8, with the loss of approximately eight thousand souls. Ramsey looked with vague curiosity at some of the photographs showing dozens of carts brimming with dead bodies and endless funeral pyres dotted along the beach, where they were incinerating the hideously bloated corpses that the ocean continued to disgorge onto the sand. Ramsey pulled a face and carried on thumbing nonchalantly through the newspaper. After all these years, he still couldn’t help being surprised at the dreadful fuss the humans on this side made whenever Nature flexed her muscles, as if they had never heard of the second law of thermodynamics. Chaos is inevitable, he muttered to himself. The same law had been discovered in the majority of worlds in that multiverse, and yet its inhabitants seemed to take great pains to ignore it. Tornados, earthquakes, meteorites, ice ages . . . such phenomena terrified and astonished them in equal measure, despite being as insignificant as a couple of mosquito bites that only affected their minuscule planet, nothing compared to the Dark Era, the frozen, black, irreversible end that awaited the entirety of the universes . . . and that he had seen with his own eyes.
He set the newspaper aside wearily, dropped a couple more ice cubes into his coffee, and, leaning back in his chair, began to stare into the distance, beyond the encircling walls, beyond the universe he found himself in at present, beyond all the worlds that coexisted in that room, recalling with sorrow the protracted war his civilization had decided to wage on chaos, which still wasn’t over.
Ever since the Victorian age, long before he was born, the inhabitants of the Other Side had been trying to find a way to flee their doomed universe. For thousands of years they had been trying, even as the stars gradually began to die out and the firmament grew darker every night, but without success. And currently they had to confront another, more urgent problem of an almost domestic nature: the extinction of their own Sun, which had gradually turned into a red giant star, filling the sky and forcing the Earth’s inhabitants to seek refuge beneath the sea. There they had built splendid underwater cities where the Church continued to guide the minds and hearts of its flock toward the Supreme Knowledge. Ramsey had no trouble imagining the giant squid that dwelled in the ocean’s depths, where they had implanted their new Palace of Knowledge, yawning at the innumerable debates they had to have before deciding what to do next, while above them the oceans boiled and the mountains melted. Fortunately, they reached a decision in time: by drawing a couple of asteroids into the Earth’s orbit, they managed slowly to steer the planet safely away from the raging ball of fire that had already swallowed Mercury and Venus. This ingenious solution bought them a little more time in which to carry on working on the only solution they considered ultimately viable: the Great Exodus to a different universe through a wormhole. However, successive generations failed to stabilize one of these holes, and after several more millennia as a red giant, the Sun finally exhausted its store of nuclear energy and cooled down, shrinking until it became a white dwarf, a tiny, pale speck that the cosmic winds eventually snuffed out, like a god blowing out a match. By that time, the universe had taken on a desolate air: most of the stars had burned out, and the planets orbiting around them had frozen over. The only surviving source of light and heat were the red dwarfs, tiny stars whose nuclear energy burned very slowly, giving off a weak, sickly light. The remarkable QIII civilization once more found a way of relocating the Earth’s orbit around one of those dying fireflies, the Proxima Centauri, only 4.2 light-years away, and in its meager glow, mankind continued its research, impervious to discouragement. Even so, there were many who started to lose hope. They thought they would never succeed, that they would never escape the cold, dingy vault they had been confined to since the Creator had shut out the last rays of light, plunging them into eternal darkness. But they did. When Proxima Centauri’s energy was almost expended, nearly all the other red dwarfs in the universe had expired. Mankind had remodeled the human body through genetic mutation, replacing most of the organs with mechanical parts in order to endure the freezing temperatures. Then they succeeded, managing to open a stable two-way wormhole, perfectly suitable for transmitting vast quantities of complex data, a passageway they could open and close at will and that led to a new universe, in a mid-stelliferous era, brimming with stars, trillions upon trillions of glistening bright lights illuminating the heavens from one side to the other. When they discovered that this was a multiple universe, consisting of infinite parallel universes, their joy was even greater, for it seemed that in a sudden gesture of magnanimity the Creator had given them the possibility of choosing, from among infinite worlds, which one they considered most suitable to be reborn in. The celebrations lasted for days and days. The Church of Knowledge declared holidays and bestowed praise and honors. Until, that is, they discovered that the multiverse was ailing, that the wormhole had taken them to a polluted paradise.
Ramsey placed his coffee cup on the table with a sigh and cracked his knuckles one by one. That awful discovery had been made three generations before, by his very own great-grandfather, the famous Scientist Timothy Ramsey. He was part of the team that had identified the epidemic after isolating the virus in the blood of a cronotemic the Executioners had captured and sent back to the Other Side for them to study. Of course, those poor wretches had lost their minds and died hours after their arrival in a world that must have seemed nightmarish to them, enveloped by a pitch-black sky, on whose horizon the only thing visible was an immense, terrifying vortex, darker than darkness itself, churning slowly and menacingly. Everything there seemed frozen, even time itself, and they had perished from exposure and from fear, clueless as to why they were dying or indeed where they were. But at least their warm blood had provided a few, albeit extremely discouraging, answers for that QIII civilization, which was almost out of options. When Proxima Centauri died, the inhabitants of the Other Side had used up all their remaining energy dragging the Earth into the orbit of a black hole, whose slow evaporation was one of the last, meager energy sources in the universe. This was another clever move, yet everyone knew there was nowhere else to go. When that source was extinguished forever, the temperature would reach absolute zero, the atoms would stop moving, the protons would disintegrate, and all intelligent life would be irremediably wiped out. Under such circumstances, the discovery of the epidemic was devastating. They no longer had the time or the energy to open up another magic hole to another universe. They realized then that there was only one possible solution: to try to cure the multiverse they had found, however small their hope of success.
