The Map of Chaos (66 page)

“And yet we never saw them!”

“Don't be angry, Jane. It is logical. There are only a few Scientists in this infinite multiverse, and their work is clandestine. They are extremely careful not to give themselves away. They don't get their hands dirty. They leave that to us.”

Jane looked frantically around the room. Suddenly, she pummeled the table with every ounce of strength her feeble body possessed.

“Are you saying that during that séance I was sitting next to a Scientist from the Other Side, someone to whom I could have entrusted
The Map of Chaos
? Are you saying I could have ended that whole nightmare there and then and prevented all that suffering, all those deaths?”

“Yes.”

Jane opened her mouth to reply but instead slumped in her chair and, burying her face in her hands, started to cry.

The Executioner took a step toward her.

“Jane.”

The old lady shook her head weakly.

“Jane.”

“What, for goodness' sake?” she said, looking up.

A bluish light had begun to emanate from the eight-pointed star on the Executioner's cane, illuminating the entire kitchen. Jane looked around in awe. It felt as though they were at the bottom of an ocean from which all the fish had been banished.

“My detector is connected to the minds of all the Scientists from the Other Side in this multiverse,” the Executioner informed her in his distant, metallic voice. “It is part of my job. I can locate them and go to wherever they are. Generally speaking, they don't like to have anything to do with us. They despise us. But occasionally one of them needs us to take him to another world to carry on his research there. Ramsey, however, has never moved from the first world he appeared in.”

For a few seconds Jane simply stared at him. Then the Supreme Knowledge sparked an idea. She summoned all her remaining strength and smiled.

The air around the Executioner smiled back at her.

A
ND SO, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN
, the dreaded Day of Chaos has finally arrived! The day when your world and all other possible worlds will end! But how can I begin to describe such an extraordinary day, especially when most of what I have to tell you will be happening simultaneously? Is it possible to explain Chaos in an orderly fashion? I doubt it, but despite my limited skills as a storyteller, I shall do my best. Allow me to disappear through the hidden trapdoor in Mrs. Lansbury's kitchen and return to a stage with which you are more familiar, to the world where old Baskerville died, to a few days after the fire that burned Brook Manor to the ground. It is September 23 in this universe, a brisk wind announces the arrival of autumn, and dawn trembles before the night like an awkward young lover, afraid to divest her of her darkness, if you will excuse my purple prose.

Good, then it only remains for me to choose with which of the many actors who will take part in this performance to begin my tale. Although, for the moment, only three of them are awake, so that shouldn't be too difficult. Wells is in the kitchen putting a kettle on the fire. A few seconds later, Inspector Clayton hurries down the corridor to take his kettle, which is whistling like mad, off the fire. Before long, the whistle of a third kettle begins to sound at Captain Sinclair's house, causing his beloved wife, Marcia, to give a start in bed. Which of these tea-loving early risers should I decide upon?

I choose Wells, for no other reason than the fondness I have developed for him after narrating his adventures for so long. As I said before, although dawn has not yet broken, our author is already in the kitchen, having been woken by a loud bang from somewhere in the house. The window, the accursed attic window, he had muttered after recovering from the shock, and, still half-asleep, he had gotten out of bed to close it before the chorus of crashes woke up his wife. It was too early yet to listen to Jane nagging him again about his sheer idleness when it came to addressing minor domestic problems. However, when he reached the attic, he had found the window closed. He stood gaping at it for a few seconds. Then, as if one thing led inevitably to the other, he went down to the kitchen to put the kettle on.

Next, he headed for the sitting room, which he surveyed carefully from the doorway. Everything seemed in its place. Puzzled, he walked over to the window, where the garden was timidly revealing itself in the first light of day. Perhaps he had merely imagined the noise. Lately, he had been more nervous than usual, which was hardly surprising given that, only a few days before, his world had been turned completely upside down. He had encountered a twin of his from a parallel universe, in a state of surprising decrepitude, and had watched him die at the hands of an invisible man at Brook Manor. This had all obliged him to believe in more things than his brain seemed willing to accept in such a short space of time.

The whistling kettle interrupted his thoughts. He hurriedly removed it from the hob, praying this fresh uproar wouldn't wake his wife. That cup of tea no longer seemed so urgent . . . It was then he noticed that on the kitchen table there were three cups, which he hadn't put there. He stood gaping at them, wondering whether, for some absurd reason, Jane had put them out before going to bed. And yet, he could have sworn they weren't there when he came in to put the kettle on. And there were three of them. Then one of the drawers in the dresser slid open slowly, and three teaspoons floated toward the table, landing gracefully next to the cups.

“Bertie?” his wife's voice rang out from upstairs.

“Jane, whatever you do, don't—”

But before Wells could finish his sentence, a knife rose from the draining board, arced through the air like a salmon leaping upstream, and pressed itself against his neck. This didn't surprise him. Clayton had warned them that sooner or later they would all be forced to resume their duel with the Invisible Man.

“Oh, let's invite your charming wife to join us for breakfast, George,” said the voice that for nights on end had plagued his dreams. “Why do you think I put out three cups?”

With the knife at his throat and his back arched over the stove, Wells heard his wife padding down the stairs. She walked into the kitchen, still half-asleep, wearing her nightdress, and with her hair hanging down her face.

“What are you doing, dear? Why don't you go come back to bed?” she asked before noticing her husband's strange posture, the pallor of his face, and the knife pressing against his throat, apparently with no one holding it. “Oh, B-Bertie . . . ,” she stammered. “He is here . . .”

“Good morning, Mrs. Wells,” said the knife, moving away from her husband's neck and floating toward her. “What a pleasure to meet you again.”

Jane swallowed, unable to take her eyes off the hovering knife.

“And how considerate of you to come down without your hairpins; you've no idea how glad I am.” A chair slid out from under the table. “Be so good as to sit down, Mrs. Wells.”

Jane obeyed, and Wells saw an invisible hand gather up her hair, revealing her graceful neck and, in a flash, the knife pressing against it. The sharp blade made her shudder.

“Don't hurt her, you son of a . . . ,” Wells cried, making as if to hasten toward her.

“Stay right there!” the voice commanded. “Don't force me to kill you both again, George. I've done it so many times now that, quite frankly, it is starting to bore me.”

Wells looked anxiously at his wife, who was pursing her lips with the forced determination of someone trying desperately not to give way to panic. He tried to speak calmly, but the voice that came out sounded more like a pitiful howl.

“Please . . . I beg you. You are making a dreadful mistake. We don't have what you want.”

“A dreadful mistake, you say?” A dark guffaw spread like a drop of ink through the air, darkening it. “No, George. I know you have the book somewhere. The old woman gave it to you. I am absolutely certain of that. H. G. Wells wrote
The Map of Chaos.
His wife took it away with her when I killed him and then gave it back to H. G. Wells, ingeniously completing the circle! I'll grant her that, at least.”

“What?” Wells looked nonplussed.

“Don't make me lose my patience, George,” the voice snapped. “I warn you, it is running out fast.”

“I haven't the faintest idea what you are talking about!” Wells yelled, red with rage.

“You're lying,” hissed the Villain. “And you don't know how sad that makes me.”

The tip of the knife suddenly broke Jane's skin, causing her to squeal. A shiny drop of blood began to trickle down her neck, like a stream meandering down a hillside.

“Please, no, please . . . ,” Wells implored. “I swear I don't have the accursed book . . .”

“Really?” The tip of the knife crept up his wife's neck and began circling her right eye menacingly. “Good. I've been looking forward to inflicting on your little wife the excruciating pain of having an eye plucked out.”

“Stop, stop!” cried Wells. “All right, you win! I'll tell you where the book is!”

“Don't, Bertie,” whispered Jane. “He'll kill us anyway . . .”

“You are as intelligent as you are beautiful, my dear lady,” the Invisible Man hissed in her ear. “Yes, I might kill you anyway. But, Jane, let me tell you that there are many different ways to die . . .”

Wells took a step forward, his hands raised in a gesture of surrender.

“The book is in the Chamber of Marvels!”

The knife paused.

“And where the devil is that?” growled the voice.

“I'll take you there . . . ,” said Wells, “when you tell me who you are and why the book is so important.”

Behind Jane's head, the silence hesitated for a few moments.

“Didn't the old lady explain that when she gave it to you?” the Villain asked suspiciously. “I find that hard to believe, George . . .”

Wells looked with infinite weariness at the empty space looming behind his wife. Then he shrugged.

“I wasn't given the book by any old lady . . . Why would I insist on lying to you? However, I know where it is. That is all I know, apart from the fact that you, once you have the book, will kill us. Which is why I don't intend to plead for our lives. All I ask is that you do it quickly and that you grant us the right to know why we are going to die . . .”

The knife appeared to reflect.

“Very well, George,” the voice purred. “But I warn you, if you are trying to buy time, it won't do you any good. I have all the time in all the worlds at my disposal!” Suddenly the knife moved away from Jane's face, slicing through the air as if the creature had spread his arms in a theatrical gesture. “So . . . you want to know who I am!” the voice roared. “Are you sure you want to know? I am the most powerful being in all creation! I am the epilogue of mankind! When the universe comes to an end, only I will remain . . . presiding over all your accursed graves. My name is Marcus Rhys, and I am the God of Chaos!”

And he began to tell his story.

H
OWEVER, DEAR READER, UNLIKE THE
Wellses, you already know Rhys's story, and so in the meantime I will take the opportunity to scan the board in search of one of the other pieces in this game. What would you say if we jumped forward to dawn and took a look at Doyle, whose carriage has just this minute dropped him off outside Murray's London town house? Despite the early hour, Doyle already has his habitual air of contained energy, like a cup of coffee about to spill over. After taking a few deep breaths to allow the cold morning air to purify his lungs, he stepped through the ornate entrance gates. But he had scarcely taken a few steps when something made him come to an abrupt halt. He glanced uneasily down the drive leading to the house, as though unable to believe his own eyes. Yet they weren't mistaken: hanging from the branches of every tree bordering the path were hundreds of mirrors of all shapes and sizes, swaying in the breeze like a new species of fruit, stretching the boundaries of the world they reflected and creating fresh, dizzying perspectives. Doyle stood for several minutes, shaking his head in disbelief, before heaving a sigh and carrying on walking. So that was how Murray intended to find the Emma that existed on the other side of the looking glass. And it also explained why he hadn't attended the meeting with Inspector Clayton or returned any of Doyle's calls . . . How could he, if since their return from Brook Manor he had been trawling through all the stores and antique emporiums in London in search of that colorful assortment of mirrors. And that wasn't all. He had ordered his army of servants to keep watch over them, too, as Doyle discovered when he saw the maids, footmen, and other domestic staff dotted along the drive, sitting on chairs in front of their assigned trees, each holding a bell in his or her hand. No doubt they had been ordered to ring if Emma Harlow, their master's hapless fiancée, appeared before them in defiance of every law of physics. It was no surprise that their expressions alternated between bewilderment, tedium, and even superstitious fear. Unsure whether to be amazed or alarmed at this foolishness, Doyle continued down the path, his burly frame reflected from every conceivable angle.

When he reached the house, he discovered that the front was also plastered with mirrors, glittering in the sun like the scales of some enormous dragon. The front door was wide-open, so he walked in without ringing the bell. Doyle wandered round the hallway and the spacious main reception room, which were also infested with mirrors, calling out to Murray in his booming ogre's voice. In one of the rooms, he came across Murray's dog, Buzz, sitting very still in front of a huge mirror leaning against the wall, as if he, too, were convinced that sooner or later his mistress would appear there. Doyle snorted. This was ludicrous. He patted the dog's head resignedly.