The Map of Time Collection, page 187
Meanwhile, the detective Sherlock Holmes and his archenemy Professor Moriarty were engaged in a violent struggle above the Reichenbach Falls. Although seen from below by untrained eyes they might have looked like a pair of clumsy dance partners on the narrow path beside the falls, the two men were exchanging well-aimed punches, each trying to throttle his opponent by means of surprise chokeholds, demonstrating their skills in the art of wrestling. At some point, the rivals gripped each other tight and a vigorous tussle ensued, which took them to the edge of the abyss, over which they finally toppled. It took Holmes and Moriarty seconds to fall into the deep well past the eight-hundred-foot black escarpment down which the mass of water plummeted. A continual spray drifted up like smoke from its craggy edges, making the air look like iridescent glass. A few droplets splashed onto Arthur Conan Doyle’s face as he stood at the foot of the waterfall. He wiped them away with the back of his hand, his eyes fixed intently on the mighty cascade stretched like a gigantic liquid sheet between two buildings on Queen’s Gate.
“Good heavens . . . I’ll be damned if it isn’t the Reichenbach Falls!” said Murray, who was standing right beside him. “And that was Holmes, who just perished in front of us exactly as he did in your story. What the devil does all this mean?”
Doyle made no reply. He was still in shock after seeing the scene he had pictured in his mind’s eye seven years before acted out with a degree of realism that human imagination could never hope to create. Then, rousing himself from his stupor, he grabbed Murray by the arm and forced him to carry on running.
“Come on! It doesn’t matter now. We can think about it later . . . assuming we manage to reach the museum and save the world, of course.”
“Do you really think we can stop all this?” Murray said, panting loudly beside him.
“I don’t know,” Doyle admitted. “As I explained, Inspector Clayton has a book that can supposedly do so. But for all we know, the Invisible Man has already snatched it from him.”
“What of the brilliant plan you mentioned? The one you didn’t let me in on . . . ,” Murray reminded him, unable to prevent a note of resentment from entering his voice.
“For the love of God, I told you I tried calling you a hundred times! And I only went to your house today because no one answered . . . Otherwise I would have stayed at home watching the kettle and would be taking part in the ambush right now!”
Doyle suddenly came to a halt. They had reached the back of the imposing Romanesque building, but instead of walking round to the front, Doyle went over to a small door hidden discreetly down a narrow alleyway. Murray followed him with a disconcerted look.
“Clayton gave George and me a set of keys to all the doors in the building, so that we could enter the museum even when it was closed to the public. I think this is the one closest to the Chamber,” Doyle explained as he started trying all the keys in the tiny lock, cursing each time one didn’t fit.
“Well, he might have labeled them for you,” remarked Murray. “I don’t mean to sound pessimistic, but I think I detect a distinct lack of organization in your plan.”
“You aren’t being very helpful, Gilliam,” Doyle muttered, poking around angrily in the lock.
“What do you mean? May I remind you that I shot the Invisible Man with a bolt. Doesn’t that inspire you with some confidence?”
“It would if you had your crossbow,” grunted Doyle, just as one of the keys clicked in the lock, finally opening the accursed door.
On the other side, a maze of corridors awaited them. Doyle strode resolutely down one but had scarcely reached halfway when he spun round, walked back, and set off down another with equal determination. Murray tagged along, unconvinced it was the right way.
“This Chamber of Marvels seems rather hard to find . . . don’t you have a map or something?” He snorted. “The Chamber of Marvels . . . Who the devil thinks up the names for these places?”
Just then, they heard a clamor coming from somewhere among the maze of corridors. Doyle stopped in his tracks and Murray bumped into him.
“Blast it . . . ,” he muttered.
Doyle ordered him to be quiet and he pricked up his ears . . .
“It sounds like they are in trouble,” he whispered.
Following the noises, he changed direction and walked down another corridor. Murray followed behind, rubbing his bruised nose. As they advanced, the din grew louder: it was made up of desperate cries, deafening thuds, and, almost drowning everything else out, a familiar hurricane roar. At the end of the passage, they saw the door to the Chamber of Marvels flung wide-open. They hastened toward it, rushing into the room without stopping to think what they might find. But as soon as they entered they came to a halt. A rent in the fabric of the air similar to the one that had ended the skirmish between Captain Shackleton and the automatons had opened up inside the Chamber and was threatening to devour everything in it. The tear reached almost from the floor to the ceiling, widening slightly in the middle like the iris of some gigantic reptile. Its force field was spreading relentlessly through the enormous room. Close to the hole, where reality had already started to warp, they saw a handful of police officers clinging to crates or other heavy objects, which the whirlwind was unable to drag toward it, at least not yet. A few yards in front of the police officers, they saw Captain Sinclair holding on like grim Death to one of Crookes’s columns, the suction power pulling at him with such force that his stocky form was almost parallel to the floor. And finally they made out Inspector Clayton, sprawled unconscious on the floor, the whirlwind dragging his crumpled body along the ground, bringing it dangerously close to where the force field seemed strongest. If no one did anything, in a matter of seconds he would be sucked into the hole. Exchanging glances, Doyle and Murray rushed toward him with the admirable intention of grabbing him and dragging him away, but as soon as they entered the suction field they realized it would not be so easy. They immediately felt themselves pulled by a funnel of air, paltry in comparison to the one that had tried to suck them up on Cromwell Road, but strong enough to cause them to lose their balance. They fell on the floor and slid around as though riding on an invisible sleigh while Clayton’s body suddenly gained momentum as it neared the center of the hole. Meanwhile, Captain Sinclair, who had calculated that Clayton’s body would pass near him, extended his left arm as far as he could and managed to grab hold of Clayton’s metal hand. But the suction was so great, he was left holding only the prosthesis. One-handed and unconscious, Clayton’s body continued on its path toward the hole until it bumped into one of Crookes’s columns and became momentarily entangled in its wires.
Doyle, who had been following everything as he slid around on the floor, cried out to Murray, “Grab hold of the captain! Let’s form a chain!”
Murray, who at that moment was passing close to Sinclair, stretched out his arms and managed to seize Sinclair’s legs even as he felt Doyle’s viselike grip around his left ankle. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Doyle grab hold of Clayton’s collar just as the whirlwind wrenched him free from the tangle of wires. The four men remained like that, forming a kind of human snake of which Sinclair, clasping the column, was the head, and Clayton, unconscious and missing a hand, was the tail, while the hole pulled at them as if it were tightening the string on a guitar.
“The column is giving way!” Captain Sinclair announced, to their dismay.
• • •
A DRAGON WAS BLOCKING their way . . . He had never imagined that the course his life took might lead to any such situation, Wells told himself as they fled from the invisible creature. And yet it was true. The dragon was from another world, from a world in which dragons existed because in a universe made up of infinite worlds, everything was possible. Everything man could imagine already existed somewhere, like the myths and fairy tales full of captive princesses, brave knights, and angry dragons that breathed fire. That was why they had come across the beast folk, and why Martian tripods were razing London to the ground . . . It was the end of the world, of all possible worlds, of all the imaginable worlds. And the book he was clasping to his chest, the book he himself had written, contained the key to preventing that, even though for them it seemed like mumbo jumbo.
Still running, Wells and Jane entered one of the museum’s side galleries. They felt worn-out, but the sound of the Villain’s grunts behind them spurred them on. They ran through the whale room filled with skeletons and gigantic models of cetaceans, through another containing every species of plant, and finally they ventured into the fossil room, from which there was no exit. Gasping for breath, their faces bathed in sweat, the couple leaned against the end wall, too exhausted to regret their misfortune. The Villain’s watery form entered the room, found them propped against the wall, and sauntered toward them. He looked tired as well and eager to bring to an end this prolonged chase across so many worlds, in which Wells and Jane were the last relay. As the creature approached, they could see that the bluish substance had almost completely defined his figure, although a few patches still needed coloring in—for example, his left arm and part of his chest. His face, in contrast, was complete, although most of his head was still missing, so that his expression seemed to be floating in the air, as though painted on a crumpled cloth. He stopped a few yards from them and gave a sigh of genuine dismay.
“Was this absurd chase really necessary, George? What good has it done you?” He contemplated Wells at length. “Give me the book. You have no choice, George. You can’t fight me alone.”
Rhys extended his one visible hand, which looked as if it were made of glass. Wells stared at it with a distracted air, as though thinking to himself. Then, when it seemed he was about to hand over the book, he held it even tighter to his chest, shut his eyes, and bowed his head slightly, as he were praying. Jane looked aghast at her husband’s submissive posture, while the Villain contemplated his final eccentricity with amusement.
“As you wish . . . ,” he said sadly, as though regretting that things had turned out that way. “Then I will just have to take it from you by force.”
But before he could take a step, an unruly group of about a dozen men burst into the room from God knew where—among them a tram conductor and a couple of laborers.
“The Invisible Man!” one of them cried, pointing at the alarmed silhouette of the Villain.
A huge laborer stepped out from the group and, hurling abuse, lifted his spade and brought it crashing down on the creature’s head. Rhys fell to the floor and was instantly surrounded by the men. His body started to flicker, but before he was able to jump, an angry torrent of kicks and punches rained down on him. Anyone coming into the room might have thought that an exceptionally vicious game of rugby was in progress. Despite the continuing blows, the Villain managed to drag himself to his feet, but the tram conductor grabbed him by the neck and shoulders and forced him to the floor again, where his companions gave him another savage kicking. Wells and Jane watched the scene from against the wall, appalled by the display of brutality. Then, when it was clear the Villain was not going to be able to get up or jump into a parallel world, Wells took his wife’s hand and led her toward the exit, skirting around the group of men still engaged in that fearsome beating, until suddenly they all stopped. From the doorway, Wells and Jane saw the men step away with bloodied fists, panting for breath, and in the center of the circle they saw the inert figure of the Villain.
“G-Good God, B-Bertie, it happened exactly like . . . ,” Jane stammered, too bewildered and horrified to finish her sentence.
“Yes, exactly as at the end of The Invisible Man. Rhys died in the same way at the hands of the same people as the deranged Griffin.”
“But how can that be?”
“Because I imagined it,” replied Wells.
Jane looked at him, puzzled.
“Haven’t you seen everything that is going on around us? The Island of Doctor Moreau, The War of the Worlds . . . Those are my novels, Jane, but apparently they are also worlds that exist somewhere. And now they are colliding with ours, and I see that somehow my creations, if indeed they ever belonged to me, felt . . . drawn toward me.”
“And you thought that if you concentrated hard enough you could conjure the death scene from The Invisible Man,” Jane concluded admiringly.
Wells nodded and they both looked at Marcus Rhys’s body, the man from the future who had killed them so many times. Crookes’s substance had by now sketched his whole frame, which was gradually becoming more clouded and opaque. He resembled a normal man with an athletic build and harsh, rather crude features, half-obscured by a thick, unkempt beard. His clothes were spattered with blood and torn in several places. His bruised, battered face wore an expression of anger and dismay.
“The Map of Chaos is no longer in danger,” said Wells.
But the world was still coming to an end. They hurried back to the Chamber of Marvels, where they had been obliged to leave Inspector Clayton, Captain Sinclair, and his men at the mercy of the engulfing hole. As they passed the entrance, they avoided looking toward the main door. The cries and explosions from the street were enough to tell them that madness and mayhem were raging outside. Once they had reached the basement, they were guided to the Chamber by the roar of the black hole. They paused in the doorway, contemplating the human chain formed by Sinclair and Clayton, with the addition of Doyle and Murray, who must have arrived at some point. The relentless power of the hole was gradually squeezing reality, sucking up increasingly heavy objects, and tugging furiously at their friends. The only police officer who had so far escaped could hold on no longer: his fingers slipped from the crate they were clasping, and he went spinning toward the interior of the insatiable hole. At that moment, the column the captain was holding on to creaked threateningly.
“The column is giving way!” Sinclair cried.
“They are going to die, Bertie!” exclaimed Jane, clinging to the doorframe, her skirts and petticoats flapping in the air.
Wells nodded dejectedly and gazed wistfully at the book he was holding.
“Damn it! The key to stopping all this is supposed to be in here, but none of us knows how to use it,” he said despairingly.
“I wouldn’t be so sure, Bertie.”
At first he thought it was Jane’s voice. But his wife was standing next to him, looking at him imploringly and in silence. And the voice had come from outside the Chamber. Wells and Jane turned round. Halfway down the corridor they discovered a strange trio. A small, frail old lady was gazing at them in a kindly fashion. Beside her stood a lanky gentleman with a horsey face and the stuffy air of an academic. And finally, behind them stood a striking figure, over six feet tall, wearing a flowing black cape and a broad-brimmed hat that obscured his face. Stifling a shudder, Wells looked again at the old lady, who quickly smiled to put him at ease. And in a flash, he recognized those defiant, intelligent eyes.
“Jane . . .”
She nodded and gazed with sorrow at the book Wells was clutching.
“At last it is with you,” she said softly.
Wells nodded, standing erect in a dismal attempt to appear worthy. After all, he was the last Wells in that long chain of doubles, the Wells who had been entrusted to guard it with his life, to prevent the Villain of the story from destroying it.
“If you will allow me, Mr. Wells,” the well-dressed gentleman said, extending his hand to take the book. “We have to save the world and I don’t think there is much time.”
Wells gave it to him with a sense of relief rather than solemnity. The man began flicking through it with nimble fingers, nodding from time to time, which was more than anyone else had done and which led Wells to deduce that he might be a Scientist from the same universe as the old lady. Then he contemplated Jane’s aged twin, who was gazing at him with a wistful smile, and he felt a sudden surge of admiration. It was clear that despite everything she had been through since the Villain killed her husband, she had never given in, and now, at last, she had succeeded in handing the book over to those who came from the Other Side.
“I am proud of you, Jane,” said Wells, smiling back at her. “And I think I can speak for all the Wellses in the universe.”
The old lady’s smile grew a little broader. Then she stepped toward him and studied his face tenderly for a moment. Wells understood that she was simply contemplating the face of the man she loved, whom she had seen shot in the heart an eternity ago. Then she brought her face closer to his. Wells closed his eyes, expecting her to kiss him, preparing to become the depositary of that posthumous gesture, which, through the invisible threads that linked him to all the other Wellses, would reach the lips for which they were intended. But there was no kiss. Instead he felt the old lady press her forehead against his. She remained like that for a moment, as though listening to the sound of his thoughts, and then pulled away. Afterward, she clasped her twin’s hands and performed the same solemn gesture with her. For a few seconds, the two women remained in that position, one leaning against the woman she would become, the other against the woman she had once been.
Just then, the man poring over the book broke the spell with a triumphant cry. He showed the page to the Executioner, who nodded almost imperceptibly. His fingers touched the handle of his cane, which lit up instantly.
“We must leave,” he said without moving his lips. “I have a multiverse to save, and you a book with a happy ending to finish.”
The old lady nodded, bade the couple farewell with a smile, and placed herself next to the Executioner, who enfolded her in his cape like a conjuror. The air quivered slightly, and Wells and Jane found themselves alone with the Scientist. Then a loud crack made them turn toward the inside of the Chamber, in time to see the column Captain Sinclair was holding on to break in half and their friends fly toward the hole.
