The Map of Chaos (Trilogía Victoriana #3)(165)

Higgins replied with another question. “Have you looked out of your window recently?”

For a few seconds, Ramsey gazed uneasily at his colleague, who was tugging furiously at his little black beard.

“Yes, a moment ago. Why?”

“And you didn’t notice anything . . . odd?” Higgins inquired nervously.

Ramsey shook his head.

“Then take another look,” Higgins almost commanded him.

Ramsey lowered the hand in which he was clasping the fob and made his way tentatively over to the window, dragging Higgins’s face across the floor as if it were a dirty rag. He had no idea what he would find, but he was aware of what it would mean. His heart in his throat, he peered out, surveying the street from end to end: the two gentlemen were still calmly chatting, and at that moment a couple of mounted policemen were passing below his window, a nursemaid with a perambulator was buying a bunch of roses . . . It looked no different from any other morning, the same scenes as every day. What was it Higgins wanted him to see? Then, just when he was about to turn away, a deafening squawk tore through the air like a hacksaw. Everyone in the street raised his or her head to the sky, as did Ramsey. To his astonishment, he saw the silhouette of a gigantic pterodactyl, its membranous wings spread imposingly, circling the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

“Can you see it, Ramsey?” he heard Higgins ask in a frantic voice. “It has started! We must leave this multiverse immediately! I have summoned an Executioner, and Melford, too . . . We must go back to the Other Side. At least there we will enjoy an easy death . . . This multiverse is going to explode . . . Ramsey, can you hear me?”

Ramsey’s watch slipped out of his fingers and fell to the floor. He stepped on it, crushing its cogs under his shoe. Higgins’s puzzled face vanished abruptly. Ramsey leaned against the window frame and watched through eyes brimming with tears the policemen take off at a gallop, the nursemaid shriek, the two gentlemen wave their arms about and point up at the sky . . . “It has arrived,” he said. The Day of Chaos has finally arrived, as it had been written. And they had been unable to prevent it. All those worlds would vanish in the Great Annihilation, and the Other Side would freeze over. All their sacrifices, the attainment of the Supreme Knowledge, the terrible slaughter of innocents ordered by their superior civilization, had been in vain. They would all disappear, the learned and the ignorant, those who had known love and those who had not, victims and Executioners, and their only legacy would be their atoms floating in the endless void, tracing the symbol of barbarism for all eternity and for no one . . .

“Chaos is inevitable,” he whispered sadly.

“Chaos is inevitable,” a metallic voice rang out behind him.

Ramsey swung round knowing exactly what he would find. There, in the middle of the room, stood an Executioner, dark and shiny like a black flame. He recognized him.

“Why are you here, 2087V?” he snapped. “Did Higgins send you? Tell him I am not leaving. Go without me. Get out! I am tired. And in any case . . .” He shook his head, almost in despair. “What difference does it make dying in one world or another? What difference . . . ?”

Ramsey broke off his sad soliloquy. The Executioner was slowly spreading his arms, his cape rising like a curtain to reveal a cowering figure. When the light filtering through the window illuminated her, Ramsey saw an old lady, so frail she seemed to be made of fossilized tears. The woman stepped forward, rubbing her hands together nervously and gazing solemnly at Ramsey.

“Good morning, Doctor Ramsey. Do you remember me? I see you don’t . . .” She smiled at Ramsey’s unease. “We met a long time ago at Madame Amber’s house.”

Ramsey screwed up his eyes.

“Mrs. Lansbury . . . ?”

Jane nodded. “That was what I called myself, but my real name is Amy Catherine Wells. I am the widow of H. G. Wells, the famous biologist from the Other Side who synthesized the cronotemia virus.”

Ramsey stood gaping at her, fascinated and dumbfounded. He managed to nod. Then Jane took a deep breath. Here I go, Bertie, she said to herself.

“I am truly ashamed to admit that we were the ones who caused this epidemic. We brought the virus to this world, dooming it to destruction. However, fortunately, before he died, my husband . . . left a written account of how to save it.”





34


AND NOW, THE TIME HAS finally arrived for Cornelius Clayton to resume his prominent role in our story. We find him at the moment in a place he goes to whenever he does not want to be found, brooding over The Map of Chaos, which is lying on the table next to a cold teapot. He runs his fingers over the eight-pointed star embossed on its cover and then leans back in his chair, his eyes roaming sadly over the array of magic objects hidden in the Chamber of Marvels, that damp, dusty room that has served as his refuge over the years.

He sighed, glancing back at the book. It remained a mystery to him. A mystery that only grew, he thought, recalling Baskerville. A few months ago, the eccentric old man had turned up at his office and told him he came from a parallel world, a world where everyone had a twin, a potential variant of oneself. The old man himself, for example, was a variant of the author H. G. Wells, although rather more doddering than the one in Clayton’s world, as he could see, and that in the world he came from he and Clayton’s double had been friends. Any other police officer would have called him crazy and sent him packing, but the inspector’s job was to listen to people like him, and so he had told Baskerville to sit down, had closed the door, and within ten minutes he was persuaded that the old man was speaking the truth. How could he not have been, when Baskerville had told him that his twin from another world had lost his hand in a ferocious duel with the woman he loved, whose portrait was hanging in his cellar? For over half an hour, the inspector had listened spellbound to the adventures of the old man, who had sought his help because for the past two years he had been pursued by strange killers. Something about his description of them had made Clayton sit up in his chair: the weapons those Hunters carried bore the same star as the one on the cover of The Map of Chaos. Clayton had shown the old man the book, anxious that someone might finally be able to shed some light on that mystery. However, although they both recognized the symbol and acknowledged there must be some link between the book and the Hunters, neither could offer any fresh information.