The Map of Chaos (51 page)

“So it was you!” he cried, unable to restrain himself. “You replied to that accursed letter in my place! I told you all that it wasn't me! But . . . but . . . surely you and I must have the same handwriting!”

Feebly, the old man raised the hand with the two fingers missing.

“I never did learn to write properly with my left hand . . . ,” he murmured apologetically. All at once, he screwed up his face, as if he were trying to swallow a huge, burning ember stuck in his gullet. He opened his mouth and inhaled a few meager mouthfuls of air, which scarcely filled his lungs. His next words, spoken between gasps, were barely intelligible. “Gilliam, I'm so sorry your love affair ended so tragically in this world. But believe me when I tell you that in the world I come from, nothing came between you . . . Please, cherish that thought as long as you live.”

Murray lowered his head, his eyes brimming with tears. Jane began to sob loudly. Wells knelt down beside them and contemplated the old man, bewildered, trying to assimilate the fact that he was witnessing his own death.

“George, please,” he implored. “We need to know where
The Map of Chaos
is.”

Doyle, who had remained standing, and had been doing his best to stay silent, stepped forward. The old man's mouth was gaping open, and his chest was shaking convulsively as he contemplated Jane, trying to convey with his eyes how much he loved her. His eyelids fluttered momentarily and his gaze finally alighted on the younger Wells.

“Look for Inspector Cornelius Clayton, of the Special Branch at Scotland Yard,” he managed to whisper. “He has the book. And please, George, be extremely careful. I am afraid my curse is also latent in . . .”

The old man was unable to finish the sentence. His eyes opened very wide, and his chest arched upward. Jane let out a stifled scream. For a few seconds, the old man struggled to breathe in air that had suddenly grown immensely thick, but almost immediately his body collapsed and his eyes, staring vacantly, gradually clouded, until the brightness illuminating them went out. Doyle said a silent prayer, fully aware of the miracle he had just witnessed, of those bonds of love and friendship that had breached infinity to join two whole universes. The young Wells placed his fingers on the wrinkled eyelids that would one day be his, and with a gentle movement, as though he were turning a page of a missal, he closed them forever. At that precise moment, the old man's body vanished from view.

For a long time, in that place on the moor, the only sound to be heard was the crackle of the flames daubing the trees in the driveway with golden reflections. The glow dimly illuminated the four silent figures and the emptiness where the coachman had lain, an emptiness that spoke of other worlds besides the one they knew. Perhaps three worlds. Or hundreds, or thousands, or millions of worlds. Perhaps an infinity. And in one of them, on a moor similar to this one, the body of an old man suddenly appeared, as though emerging from the dark night, adding another mystery to that world.

I
S THAT THE SOUND OF BREATHING YOU HEAR BEHIND YOU?
C
OULD IT BE THAT SOMEONE IS READING THIS TALE OVER YOUR SHOULDER . . . ?

D
O NOT LET THAT DETER YOU, VALIANT READER, FOR WE HAVE REACHED THE POINT IN OUR STORY WHERE YOU WILL DISCOVER WHETHER OUR HEROES ARE ABLE TO SAVE THE WORLD, AND WHERE ALL YOUR QUESTIONS WILL FINALLY BE ANSWERED, INCLUDING THE MYSTERY OF MY IDENTITY.

P
OSSIBLY YOUR CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSE WILL CHANGE
. A
ND YOUR NIGHTMARES WON'T SEEM QUITE SO HARMLESS ON WAKING
. P
ERHAPS YOU WILL NO LONGER BE ABLE TO LOOK IN A MIRROR WITH THE SAME EQUANIMITY.

E
XECUTIONER
2087V
WOULD HAVE PREFERRED
not to suffer from the feeling of guilt that raged inside him, or to experience it acutely enough to force him to sabotage his own existence. If that were to happen—if he were audacious enough to disengage, to give up that dreadful mission for which he had been created—he would finally be able to rest in an eternal, guiltless peace. But, alas, his feelings weren't controlled by him, but rather by those who had implanted deep in the most inaccessible part of his memory that molecular code expressly designed to create the personality of the perfect killer. The Executioner had to acknowledge that the Scientists had done an excellent job, even in cases like his, where something went awry, where life prospered among the thicket of circuitry, and the orderly chains of neuropeptides rooted themselves in some cell or other, possibly in a hidden strand of soul, where they began to produce their own connections. And so, as with humans, when some emotion spilled over uncontrollably, the perfect programming implanted in his entrails would dutifully respond, attempting in some way to compensate for the malfunction. Thus his feeling of guilt at slaying innocents would be superseded by an even more intense feeling of guilt at the thought of not slaying them, of failing in his duty. Yes, those Machiavellian minds, worshippers of the Supreme Knowledge, had certainly done a first-rate job on them, a job as admirable as it was futile.

The Executioner smiled sadly, although it might be better to say that his mouth curled up gloomily. Keep calm, he told himself, nothing matters now, everything is about to end, we're all going to die . . . He felt reassurance, even a touch of serenity, and he gradually forced his vital signs to slow, to the point where when he slid like the ghost of a ghost past a cat dozing on a windowsill, the animal's ears didn't even twitch. It was something the Executioner was good at. Aware that when animals sensed them they became frantic, he knew the only way to prevent that was to attain a state close to hibernation, which rendered their movements imperceptible. That was the ideal emotional state to be in when stalking. Later, when the actual hunt was on, it was necessary to give way to other feelings: tension, longing, hatred, pleasure, melancholy, and guilt, above all guilt . . . But by that stage it would no longer matter if all the dogs and cats in the area began to howl and meow like mad, proclaiming his monstrous presence to the moon. When the victim was there with him, looking into his eyes, unable to understand why he or she had to die, it was already too late.

He reached the house and slipped across the tiny garden encircling it. Had the night not been so dark, and had the Executioner not blended so perfectly with it, I would be able to describe his movements to you, dear reader, but I can only imagine them: a series of silent, almost feline steps, followed by a fluttering cloak. He had no difficulty opening one of the downstairs windows and climbing into a small dark sitting room. The Executioner lifted his cane, and the eight-pointed star adorning its handle vibrated slightly, informing him that at present the house was empty. Even so, he decided to inspect the rooms one by one, partly because he did not trust his detectors, which were in a deplorable state, and partly due to an unhealthy need to know about the lives he was about to cut short. Who lived there? What were they like? What kind of carefree, tumultuous, or humdrum existence was he preparing to destroy? He didn't know. He only knew that whoever lived there had jumped at some point, although it was possible that his detectors had finally gone completely haywire and he wasn't just about to slay an innocent—for weren't they all in the end?—but an innocent who was perfectly healthy . . . That afternoon, while he was trailing a level 2 Destructor, he had thought he detected the residual aura of a Latent at the center of this house and had made a note of the coordinates in order to return there later. In fact, Latents weren't much of a catch for any Executioner, for they were former Destructors in whom, for some reason, the sickness had entered a dormant phase. That didn't mean they couldn't reactivate at any moment, but, compared to an active Destructor, trailing them was not a priority. However, gone were the days when the priorities of the hunt were clear. In the past, Executioners were fitted with perfectly calibrated detectors, so that in a single day they could locate an infinite number of trails whose coordinates were clearly traceable, easy to follow and to classify. But nowadays . . . nowadays they simply did the best they could.

Without the need for any light to see where he was going, the Executioner searched the downstairs until he was satisfied that it was indeed empty; then he went upstairs. There he entered the first room he came to, a small, cozy study that had a distinctly feminine atmosphere to it. He leaned over the bunch of roses sitting on a corner of the desk and inhaled deeply, letting the delicate fragrance flood his nostrils. Then he ran his hand gently over some of the objects on the table while he thought about all the times their owner must have handled them, whether with affection, indifference, or some other emotion, imbuing them with part of her soul. Wasn't he, too, like those objects? Hadn't his victims, before breathing their last, passed on part of their humanity to him? Yes, for as they dwindled before him he couldn't help looking in their eyes, and that was when he discovered whether their lives had been fulfilling or cruelly unsatisfactory; whether they left behind a trail of bitterness and misunderstanding or had known true love; whether they left that world filled with rage, fear, or a melancholy acceptance. And in that instant of absolute communication, like an object steeped in the soul of the other, the Executioner was overwhelmed by the ecstasy of Supreme Knowledge, but also by the devastating power of guilt.

Then his hand collided with what appeared to be three manuscripts. The first two were entitled, respectively,
The Map of Time
and
The Map of the Sky
, but it was the third that caught his attention. It was entitled
The Map of Chaos
, and on its cover the author had carefully traced in ink an eight-pointed star. The Executioner propped his cane against the table and seized the third manuscript, standing there in the darkness, reading with growing absorption what appeared to be a novel whose plot soon began to appear oddly familiar. He read without stopping up to the page where Mr. and Mrs. Wells, together with their dog, Newton, leapt through a wormhole in the laboratory of their deceased friend Charles Dodgson toward an unknown destination, leaving behind them the evil Gilliam Murray and his henchmen. When he reached that part, the Executioner paused. Raising his eyes, still clutching the pages, he stared into the distance. He remained so still that the darkness began to settle over him like a shroud of black butterflies, until he all but vanished. Then, pulling up the desk chair, he sat down and gathered up the remainder of the manuscript with what might have been a sigh. After all, he had to amuse himself somehow until his victim arrived.

And now allow me, dear readers, to tell you what the Executioner read in those pages, as if you yourselves were in that darkened room, reading over his shoulder—or, better still, through those very eyes that thought they had witnessed things beyond any of their victims' wildest imaginings.

•  •  •

A
BLINDING LIGHT SEEMED
to envelop the couple as they leapt through the hole, as though a circular ray were spinning around at breakneck speed, while a mass of contradictory sensations struck them: they felt that they were plunging headlong into a void, floating in zero gravity, and that a monstrous force was pressing down on them, flattening them until they believed they had been reduced to the ridiculous thickness of a hair . . . Then everything stopped abruptly, as if the river of time had suddenly frozen over.

Wells opened his eyes, which he had instinctively closed when he entered the tunnel, and he found himself falling down some kind of well, although he didn't have the sensation of falling, perhaps because the walls were going up, or possibly down, so that he was
falling
upward. In any event, he was moving (whether he in relation to the well or the well in relation to him it didn't matter) as the various objects rushing past him confirmed. Wells noticed several shelves lined with books (he even had time to take one out, leaf through it, and then leave it afterward on a subsequent shelf), his favorite armchair, several lamps and clocks, a sarcophagus, a gigantic deck of cards, the crown of Queen Victoria herself . . . And yet, among all that junk, he didn't see Jane, which might have worried him had he not felt so sleepy: his eyelids kept closing and he couldn't stop yawning. He thought perhaps he had been falling through that well for hundreds or thousands of years, but if that was so, then nothing mattered, and he might as well have a little nap while he continued his descent. But scarcely had he begun to snore when all of a sudden,
thump!
—down he came on something hard and cold. And he understood that this absurd, extraordinarily lengthy fall was over.

Wells kept his eyes closed, vaguely aware that he was lying on a solid surface. Resisting the desire to carry on sleeping, he tried to open his eyes, although he was afraid of confronting some nameless, or nameable, horror—or, worse still, of seeing nothing, having been blinded by the intense light at the beginning and having lost consciousness, so that everything that had happened afterward had been no more than an absurd dream woven by his unconscious. Then a couple of vigorous licks stoked his fears, forcing him to open his eyes. The horror confronting him was none other than Newton's cold, wet nose looming over him. When he managed to push the dog aside feebly, he discovered Jane sprawled beside him on the floor, whose black and white tiles resembled a checkerboard. Wells pulled himself up, overwhelmed by an unpleasant dizziness, and shook Jane's shoulder. After blinking a few times, she looked at him, somewhat bewildered, then flung her arms round Newton, glancing about uneasily.

“Bertie . . . Where are we?”

But her husband didn't reply. He was staring intently at the tile beneath his right hand, and he had such a strange expression on his face that Jane felt more scared by that than anything that had happened to them so far.