The Map of Chaos (49 page)

“What did you hear?” Doyle asked, increasingly excited.

“Well, I . . .” Murray faltered.

“For God's sake, Gilliam, tell me what you heard!”

“ ‘Reichenbach.' I heard the name ‘Reichenbach,' ” Murray said at length, ashamed not to have picked up a more significant thought than a single foreign name.

Doyle burst out laughing.

“My God, it worked. It worked!” Calming down a little, he looked at Murray, who still could not believe it. “That's exactly what I was thinking, Gilliam: that I hadn't fallen into the abyss—that I'd escaped the way you wanted me to have Holmes escape from the Reichenbach Falls. And you heard me! My God! Do you know what this means? We have communicated telepathically!”

Murray sighed as he replaced the sacking Doyle had dislodged with all his gesticulating. When he thought they were as ready as they would ever be, he clapped Doyle on the shoulder.

“My dear Arthur, I once challenged you to make me believe in all the things I didn't believe in,” he said, wheeling round and heading for the door. “Well, I promise I won't ever challenge you to do anything again.”

“Well, Gilliam, perhaps one last challenge would be good . . .” Doyle grinned. “What do you reckon? Can we can get out of a burning building alive?”

I
'M GOING IN AFTER THEM!”
cried Wells.

He moved away from Jane and took two steps toward the front door, but once again the sinister fronds of flames visible behind the windows made him pause.

“Please don't go in there, Bertie,” Jane implored. “How could you possibly help two strapping men like Arthur and Monty?”

“I don't know! I don't even know what's going on in there. Perhaps the Invisible Man has killed our friends and is coming for us,” said Wells, glancing around them, a look of fear and shame on his face. “We should have done what Doyle said! If we had left fifteen minutes ago, we would have reached the village by now and help would be on its way! But by now it's probably too late. And all because of me.”

“Don't torment yourself for carrying out a dying man's last wish, Bertie,” whispered Jane, looking out of the corner of her eye at the coachman, who lay sprawled on the gravel driveway. “You aren't to blame if—”

“But if he is to blame, then I am to blame, aren't I?” Wells interrupted, pointing at the old man and letting out a hysterical guffaw that caused his wife to recoil. “Of course I am!”

He strode over to Baskerville, but when he knelt at the old man's side, his childish fury gave way to deep sorrow. The coachman's eyes were closed and had sunk back into his head, which was resting on Wells's overcoat, From his ashen-colored face, his nose, suddenly sharper, stood out, pointing up at the sky like the prow of a sinking ship. Wells lifted the rug they had covered him with, which now had a big dark stain on it, and, after peering beneath, replaced it again.

“He's still breathing, albeit very faintly. I don't think it will be long before . . .” His words hung in the air as he stood up. Jane began to sob quietly. “Don't cry, my dear, he is no longer suffering, and he'll soon be at peace. He was able to tell us what he wanted. There is nothing more we can do for him. We must think of ourselves now, and of our friends and . . . God, I wish we hadn't heard what he had to say!”

“Do you mean that?” Jane exclaimed, astonished. “Would you honestly have preferred not to know?”

“Yes! No! I suppose . . . Oh, Jane, of course I prefer to know! It is so incredible . . . But what if the price of knowing turns out to be the lives of Arthur and Monty?”

“They are all right, Bertie, I am sure of it,” Jane said, looking toward the house and striving to lend her voice a certainty she was far from feeling. “Any moment now they will come rushing through that door.”

“How can you be so sure?” asked Wells. He gave a sigh of despair, took his wife by the arms, and announced firmly: “Jane, I think you should go for help while I . . . go inside the house.” His perfect imitation of an assertive husband lost some of its plausibility as his voice quavered on his last words.

“Don't even consider it, Herbert George Wells!” Jane was adamant. “I won't have you burned alive in some stupid haunted house! Do you want me to be the only woman in the world to be widowed twice in the same day?”

Before Wells could reply, the front door swung open and two bodies enveloped in flames burst upon the night, rending the darkness like two wavering human torches.

“Well, I never!” exclaimed Wells.

As if in a choreographed routine, Murray and Doyle tore off the flaming sacks and flung themselves on the ground, where they rolled around amid cries of pain and whoops of joy. After recovering from their shock, Wells and Jane hurried to help their two friends, unsure of what they might find. But by the time they reached Murray and Doyle, the two men were already struggling to their feet, joking as if they had just come back from a sleigh ride instead of having escaped from an inferno. Their hair was singed and whiffs of smoke rose from their clothes, but apart from Doyle's ear, his hand, which was covered in blood, and a few superficial burns, they seemed unscathed. For several minutes, the four of them exchanged emotional embraces, clapping one another on the back so excitedly that Murray even went as far as to plant a kiss on Jane's lips. Amid all the rejoicing, Wells approved of the gesture, although he made sure that Doyle did not express his excitement in a similar manner. After the embraces came the explanations, somewhat disjointed due to the two men's euphoria at being alive: the Invisible Man had been hit probably by the best crossbowman those ancient walls had ever known, but unfortunately, before they could apprehend him, the creature had vanished, taking with him the mystery of his unimaginable wickedness.

“But have no fear, George, I doubt your invisible man will be bothering you again in a hurry,” Murray declared theatrically as a series of random explosions inside the house solemnly underlined his pronouncements.

Doyle begged to differ: “I wouldn't be so sure if I were you. I don't think the story ends there. I suspect we shall be hearing from him again very soon . . . and I shan't deny how eagerly I await that day! I want to find out who that evil creature is who knows you so well, George, and what the devil he wants from you . . . I refuse to add another mystery to the world!”

Wells and Jane exchanged looks, which did not escape Doyle's eagle eye.

“What's going on?” he asked suspiciously. The couple opened their mouths, but neither spoke. Doyle became alarmed. “Did something happen while we were in there? Why didn't you go for help? And how is Woodie?”

“Oh, don't worry, he is fine,” Wells replied, content to be able to provide a straightforward answer to at least one of Doyle's questions. “He's in the carriage. He hasn't come round yet, but his pulse and breathing are normal. I think he is severely concussed, that's all.”

“What about Baskerville?” Murray asked sadly. “Is he . . . ?”

Jane let out a cry that made everyone jump.

“Oh, no! I forgot all about my beloved Bertie!” she exclaimed, hurrying toward the body sprawled under the rug.

They all watched as she knelt down beside the old man and clasped his hand with infinite tenderness.

“Is he still alive?” asked Murray.

“I think so . . . ,” replied Wells.

Doyle looked at Wells askance.

“Just a moment,” he said. “Why did Jane call Baskerville ‘my beloved Bertie'? And why the devil didn't you evacuate the wounded and go for help? My orders were clear, George,” Doyle barked as he fashioned a makeshift bandage for his injured hand with his handkerchief.

“I didn't realize we were in the army, Arthur,” Wells retorted, with more weariness than sarcasm. “Besides, we were going to, but Baskerville refused to let us put him in the carriage.”

“And you listened to an old man's ravings, George?” said Murray, taken aback.

“I assure you he wasn't raving,” protested Wells. “He implored us not to take him anywhere, because he doubted he would survive the journey, and he had something to tell us before he died, something terribly important, for us and for . . . the whole of humanity. And so we laid him on the ground, covered him with a rug, and . . . well, we let him tell us his . . . extraordinary story.”

Doyle and Murray gazed at him intently while Wells wondered where to begin that rambling tale.

“Arthur, Gilliam,” he said at last, “I know you will have difficulty believing this, but that dying old man over there . . . well, he is me.”

There was an astonished silence.

“Baskerville is you?” Murray exclaimed, at a loss.

“Yes, although not exactly.”

“Not
exactly
 . . . What the devil does that mean?”

“He is a Wells from another world.”

Murray shook his head doubtfully, while Doyle remained silent, casting a skeptical eye over first Wells and then the coachman.

“That Wells comes from a world that exists parallel to ours,” Wells explained, and before Murray was able to express his unease anew, he traced two parallel lines on the ground with the toe of his shoe. “A world that is almost an exact replica of ours, identical in many ways, but different in others. And each of the inhabitants of that world has his or her twin in ours, or, if you prefer, each of us has an exact copy in that world: a twin who lives the same life we live, sometimes with tiny variations, sometimes not, and who is as oblivious to our existence as we are to his or hers.” He paused for a moment, and then, looking at each of his friends in turn, he went on: “In that other world there is a Gilliam Murray, and certainly an Arthur Conan Doyle . . . unless of course,” he reflected, addressing Doyle, who was listening quietly to Wells's explanation, “your mother in the other world had a miscarriage and your twin was never born. Or if he was, he died from malaria during that trip to Africa you made when you were young. But, like you, he could also have escaped death and become a writer, although his famous detective might be called Sherringford Holmes. Or perhaps in that other world Arthur Conan Doyle is simply an honest medic, a dreamer who is addicted to books of chivalry and hopeless at cricket. As you can see, the possibilities are endless.”

“I doubt any twin of mine could lack my talent for cricket,” Doyle solemnly interjected.

“Who knows, Arthur, who knows?” Wells grinned. “But one thing is for sure: my twin and I have lived almost identical lives, at least up until the moment when the path he was on came to an abrupt end.” To emphasize what he was saying, Wells made another line with his foot through one of those he had traced in the dirt. “Just like me, he wrote
The Time Machine, The Invisible Man,
and
The War of the Worlds . . .
and he married Jane, or should I say, Jane's adorable twin. And yet there are a few minor differences between our two lives: as a child he was bitten by a dog, but I wasn't; he traveled to the Antarctic and lost two of his fingers, but I didn't; he is gifted, or cursed, depending on how you look at it, with the ability to jump between worlds, and I . . . well, clearly I don't possess that talent.”

“But you do have an undeniable gift for making us believe far-fetched stories,” said Murray.

“And how do you know these aren't simply the ravings of a dying man?” Doyle asked with almost professional interest, ignoring Murray's remark.

“Because he told me things only I could know: thoughts, dreams, youthful longings I never shared with anyone, not even with Jane, and that only someone who had . . . lived the same life as I could know about.” Wells sighed, motioning with his chin toward where the old man lay. “That man is me. He is my self from another world. You have to believe me.”

Doyle contemplated the crestfallen Wells and, after reflecting for a few moments, said, “All right, George, supposing he is. You said he came here because of a gift he has for, er . . . jumping between worlds?”

Wells nodded, slightly encouraged by the attitude Doyle had chosen to adopt.

“Yes. But he doesn't seem to have any control over it,” he added. “It is more like a sort of latent ability he possessed without knowing it, until it was triggered by some calamity that occurred in his world. And that is how he crossed over to our world. Except that when he arrived here it was 1829, and he was almost as old as I am now, which explains why he is an old Wells, and why I didn't recognize him the first time we met.”

“You two had met before?” Doyle exclaimed.

“Yes, when I was fifteen, on the pier at Southsea. It was he who came to me . . . In fact, since I was born he had been secretly watching over me from a distance. Bear in mind that when he arrived in this world, none of the people he loved had been born yet . . . and it would be thirty-seven years before my birth! As a result, this man spent most of his life as an exile, alone and lost. Can you imagine what he must have gone through? In the beginning, he tried to forge a new life for himself here that was as serene as possible, afraid that another intense emotion might provoke a fresh jump. It seems that is what triggers them. And, naturally, not wishing to encroach in any way on my legitimate future, he changed his name and his profession. After all, in this world I was the genuine Wells. And when finally I was born, he promised himself he would resist any temptation to interfere in my life, because the consequences that would have were inestimable. But when I reached the age of fifteen, he couldn't help breaking his promise. Back then, my mother had sent me to work as an apprentice at a confounded draper's shop in Southsea, and I felt so wretched with my lot in life that each afternoon I would go down to the pier with the intention of jumping into the sea and ending it all.”