The Map of Chaos (60 page)

The Wellses also discovered that once a cronotemic had been sucked up by a Maelstrom he would remain bound in some way to that universe, doomed to return there again and again, and always through the same portal. As a result, some cronotemics became trapped in a crazed vicious circle made up of a few worlds, forced to appear in the same haunted houses, or through the same mediums, shedding with every jump an increasing number of molecules and memories. Many ended up in the thrall of the mediums, their virtual slaves, pathetic puppets who believed blindly everything the mediums said: that they were dead, and that their hazy memories were merely visions of the Hereafter, where they now belonged, and that was no doubt an exact replica of the world of the living. Until one day, during a jump, their delicate molecular structure would fragment into a million scattered apparitions. When that happened, the curse of the haunted house would be lifted, until another cronotemic took up the vacant post of resident ghost or a medium would lose contact with her enslaved spirit, believing that he or she had at last found the path into the light.

For five long years, the Wellses watched the epidemic spread, tormented by the terrible fate of their twins who had developed the disease and wondering anxiously how it would all end. Occasionally, eager to retain some hope amid that madness, they told themselves the situation might resolve itself: the day might dawn when those actively infected would end up disintegrating, including the evil Villain himself, leaving only the harmless carriers, who would develop some kind of immunity that they would then pass on to their offspring, and the universe would heal itself. But on the days when they were plagued with guilt, all they could tell each other was that Chaos, always inevitable, might come to that universe as predicted, but not for thousands of millennia, thanks to H. G. Wells and his wife.

T
HE ANSWER TO THEIR OMINOUS
musings came a few weeks later, when Wells infiltrated the mind of a twin who had just jumped for the fourth time in less than two months. His first jump had interrupted a peaceful stroll through the streets of London, leaving him stranded in the middle of a deserted plain, where, trembling behind a rock, he had heard the distant blast of hunting horns and the thunderous gallop of a hundred horses. But before he could take a look, he had been dragged back to London scarcely two years before his own birth. There he had stayed for almost two months before being plucked afresh, this time while crossing Grosvenor Square, and transplanted to a London reduced to a heap of rubble from which plumes of hot vapor rose. He was expecting any moment to be devoured by one of the monstrous creatures resembling giant crabs that were scuttling amid the ruins, when another jump had sent him back to Grosvenor Square. And that was where Observer Wells connected with him, just as he was wondering when that crazy journey through time would end.

The square had changed a lot—a few of the houses surrounding the garden in the middle had been replaced by more functional-looking buildings—but at least it was still standing. At that moment it was filled with people. A large crowd had gathered in the square, mostly youngsters sitting in rows on the grass or huddled in the corners, singing and playing the guitar and waving banners bearing the slogan “Make Love Not War' and other expressions Wells didn't understand. The youngsters' harangues were directed at an exceptionally ugly building on the west side of the square, in front of which was posted an army of policemen, many of them on horseback, who were observing the youths hostilely. For several minutes, Wells's twin was content to wander, dazed, through the noisy crowd, staring in astonishment at the youths' garish clothes and the flowers that seemed to blossom from their long, scruffy locks. Vaguely intoxicated by the sweet aroma of the cigarettes they were smoking, he accidentally bumped into one young lad.

“Hey, look where you're going, Teddy Boy!” shouted the youth, who was wearing a suede jacket, his hair almost down to his waist.

“I'm terribly sorry,” Wells hurriedly apologized, slightly intimidated.

The youth appeared to calm down and stared at him in silence, a vaporous smile clinging to his lips. Taking advantage of this inadvertent contact with one of the natives of that era, Wells asked the youth what year it was, but before he could reply, several anguished cries rang out from the far end of the square followed by gunshots. In the distance, the crowd rose to its feet, and Wells saw a tide of alarmed youths hurtling toward him like a wave rolling toward the shore, and before he had time to react he was swept away. He only just managed to glimpse at the far end of the square a dozen or more mounted policeman riding through the crowd without a care. Suddenly, there was a deafening explosion, and the human tide became a raging sea. A cloud of thick black smoke floated up over the terrified crowd. Pandemonium reigned as people started scattering in all directions. The mounted policemen lashed out indiscriminately, while the youngsters fought back with stones, which bounced off the policemen's helmets with an ominous crunching sound. Afraid of being trapped in the midst of that spontaneous battle royal whose logic he neither understood nor cared to understand, Wells tried to slip away through a gap in the crowd. He had no idea which way he was running, but he didn't care, providing he managed to get away from the heat of the skirmish. He passed several dazed youths with bloodied faces, crying and pleading for help, but he kept on running.

All of a sudden, an explosion went off dangerously close, and Wells fell to the ground, entangled in an unseemly heap of bodies. For a few seconds, he thought he couldn't hear, for the world seemed enclosed in a quilted cocoon of silence. He sat up as best he could and glanced about: through the smoke he saw some youths being helped up and starting to run about aimlessly. He felt an immense relief as the familiar dizziness came over him, heralding a jump. In a few seconds, he would be traversing the universe to another era, which, however inhospitable, could not be worse than this.

But before the giddiness intensified, Wells saw a huge figure wrapped in a black cape striding toward him through the smoke, apparently unperturbed by the uproar. With his cape billowing behind him, brandishing a cane with a glowing handle, his hat pulled down over his face, the figure seemed like something out of a dream. And yet he was more real to Wells than anything else around him. Was this Death coming for him? he wondered, petrified amid the turmoil. When the figure reached Wells, it took him by the arm, lifting him with a strength that could only be described as superhuman. Taken aback by the sinister apparition, the tide of youths seemed to part before him like the sea before Moses while the policemen's horses whinnied and reared up in terror.

When at last they came to a deserted alleyway, the stranger flattened him against a wall. Wells scarcely had time to rub his arm, which felt as if it had been clamped in a pair of blacksmith's tongs, when the figure seized his neck with a gloved hand, immobilizing him. Realizing with horror that a team of oxen couldn't drag him away from that powerful grip, Wells made no attempt to struggle free. He simply confronted the stranger's face, half-obscured by his huge, wide-brimmed hat. Swathed in shadows, barely illuminated by the strange bluish light seeping from his cane, the stranger's pale features resembled those of a beautiful, terrible deity. All at once, his lips seemed to vibrate faintly, and Wells heard a voice, distant and metallic, as if it were traveling through a long tube.

“I am Executioner 2087V and I've come to kill you. I feel pity for you, but I'm powerless to prevent your fate. Although if you want to know why you must die, you can find the answer by looking deep into my eyes.” Half-dazed, Wells instinctively sought out the stranger's gaze. “Look deep into my eyes! Don't stop looking, even if you feel fear or despair, even if you want to surrender. Keep looking into my eyes, until the last moment of your life in this world is over.”

Wells did as he was told, and while chaos reigned beyond the alleyway, he submerged himself in his executioner's eyes, where two eight-pointed stars shone with an increasingly blinding light before they finally exploded, shooting past him, expanding into infinity and breaking up into the millions of galaxies in a universe. Wells saw all the stars die, and he saw the most absolute darkness envelop the world. He saw a vanishing civilization curled up around the frozen embers of a black hole, waiting to escape its deadly fate, and he saw the face of Chaos and understood why his death was justified and necessary. He discovered that the Executioner felt guilt, and although he was unable to utter a word, Wells tried to tell him he forgave him, and he knew that his killer had heard him, and that in that instant of absolute communication each belonged to the other, and they were both overwhelmed by the ecstasy of the Supreme Knowledge. Despite the intensity of that final thought, Wells managed to keep staring into the eyes of his executioner until the last moment of his life in this world came to an end.

At the precise moment in which Observer Wells saw his twin expire, he opened his eyes and desperately gulped air into his lungs. His heart was hammering so hard against his chest he thought it would bore a hole through it, and his back was bathed in a cold sweat. Glancing about, wild-eyed, he discovered Jane kneeling beside him with a worried look on her face.

“They succeeded, my dear.” His voice was a faint whisper. She looked at him, confused. “They are here, they are here . . .”

“Who?”

Wells slumped back into his chair.

“The twin I connected with this evening . . . he met someone from our world.”

“Someone from our world is here!” exclaimed Jane.

“Well, actually, not so much as some
one
—some
thing
 . . . I mean, not a human, but not an automaton either. And . . . it killed my twin.”

Jane looked at him, aghast.

“Good Lord, Bertie. But . . . why?”

“Because that is his job,” sighed Wells. “Because that is why the Scientists from the Other Side created him: to exterminate all those infected with the virus. There are hundreds like him throughout the different worlds. They call themselves Executioners, and their mission is to detect the molecular trails left by cronotemics, hunt them down, and kill them.”

Jane raised her hands to her mouth to stifle a cry. Wells waited a few seconds for her to absorb the information before continuing.

“They classify cronotemics according to how infectious they are, and they call them Destructors: level 1 Destructors, level 2 Destructors, and so on . . .
Destructors,
Jane! Do you realize what that means? Cronotemics are destroying the universe!”

Jane nodded, increasingly pale. Her husband ran a trembling hand over his face as he tried to order the jumble of images the Executioner had transmitted to him through his dying twin, but it wasn't easy to express in words the thoughts of a creature that wasn't human. How could he begin to describe that madness? Begin at the beginning, then carry on until you reach the end, he told himself, harking back to the words of his old friend Dodgson all those years ago. And so he began at the beginning . . .

After the Wellses' mysterious disappearance, scientists of that and subsequent generations had continued to do research. But it would be hundreds of years before they achieved any notable results. And perhaps hundreds of years too late. Just as the Wellses had always suspected, their old world was moving at a faster pace than their adopted world, and the stars on the Other Side had already started to die, heralding the Dark Era. Time was running out, and in the distant future in which their world found itself, Chaos was imminent. That was why, when the Scientists succeeded in opening and stabilizing a magic hole, everyone understood that this was their final hope: they had used up their last reserves of strength on that achievement; they were exhausted, dying, and hadn't the energy needed to open another. And so they were relieved and delighted to find out that the tunnel led them straight into a young world during the Stelliferous Age, a world made up of infinite parallel worlds, many of which were capable of accommodating a homeless civilization. The same multiverse, the same theater with its infinite stages, that they, the Wellses, had ended up in. But, alas, when the Scientists began to scrutinize that multiverse in preparation for the Great Exodus, to their horror they discovered that it was desperately ill.

“The cronotemia epidemic . . . ,” Jane murmured.

Wells nodded gloomily.

“Yes, my dear. The cronotemia epidemic . . . Even so, they didn't give in. They began studying the strange epidemic to try to understand how it had all started. But the worst part was when they discovered the effect it had. You were right, my dear. You always are. This disease is going to destroy the multiverse. The molecular footprint left by the cronotemics each time they jump causes scarring in hyperspace: they shrink it, making it increasingly brittle and bringing the parallel worlds that make up this multiverse gradually closer together. If that shrinkage continues, those worlds will end up colliding, setting off a series of apocalyptic explosions that will lead to mass extermination . . . The infinite stages will collapse into one another, bursting into a gigantic ball of cosmic fire, and this theater itself will disintegrate.”

“Good God!” exclaimed Jane. Then, after a few seconds' silence, she added incredulously, “And is exterminating all the cronotemics the only solution they could come up with? I find that hard to believe. How could they be so cruel, Bertie?”

Wells shrugged wearily.

“They may simply be trying to gain time, dear. I expect they considered the death of a few innocents a small price to pay compared to saving two universes. For it isn't only about
this
universe, Jane. Unless they cure the disease in time for the Great Exodus—”