The Map of Chaos (Trilogía Victoriana #3)(172)
“I fear it isn’t going to be easy finding him,” the old lady said despondently.
“Hmm . . . There might be a way,” Ramsey reflected. “Let’s find somewhere a bit quieter.”
He opened a nearby door, which happened to lead to an empty office, and they took refuge in there. After blocking the door with a chair so that no one—from that world anyway—could disturb them, Ramsey turned to the Executioner.
“Special Inspector Cornelius Clayton is a mental jumper,” he told him.
If this was a revelation to the Executioner or a simple affirmation, no one could have guessed.
“What is a mental jumper, Doctor?” the old lady asked.
“An individual who is infected by the virus, but for some as-yet- unknown reason cannot jump physically, only mentally,” explained Ramsey. “Until now, we haven’t detected any other jumper of this type, even among Clayton’s twins. The majority of them, including those bitten by the creature he had the misfortune to fall in love with, suffer from simple narcolepsy, which is completely unrelated to the incident in which they lost their hand. The symptoms appear sooner in some than in others, and some even die without ever developing them . . . However, the appearance of the disease in the Clayton existing in our world coincided with the attack by the natural jumper. And for some reason, which we still don’t understand—perhaps because his emotions were the strongest emotions possible, or due to some other peculiarity of his—his mind uses his disease to visit his beloved. In other words, he has become a mental jumper. Whenever he travels, his body is left behind like an abandoned shell, but his mind is able to reach her. And it so happens that his trail is the most luminous of all. Our Executioners have never hunted him down because he doesn’t cause any damage to the universal fabric and is therefore harmless. But they know his trail well. It resembles a shiny, golden flash of lightning . . .” His face took on a dreamy expression. “It is the molecules of the imagination, the ability to dream . . . those qualities that make this multiverse so special and that may be its only hope of salvation. After all, it was thanks to the blood of this mental jumper that we succeeded in synthesizing an effective vaccine! And his gift might help us to locate him now and so find your husband’s book. Do you think that would be possible, 2087V?”
“I feel hope,” murmured the Executioner without moving his lips. “His trail is very clear and powerful. It’s possible that, despite the chaos, I might be able to follow Clayton to the world he visits and then retrace his trail to where he has left his body.”
“Good, then all we need is for Clayton to suffer one of his fainting fits, although there is no guarantee that will happen before the universe—”
“Excuse me, Doctor Ramsey,” the old lady broke in, her face lit up with excitement. “Did I hear you say they had found an effective vaccine?”
“Yes. Except that we won’t need it now: thanks to your husband’s map, we could arrive a minute before the first infection and simply prevent it—”
“And use the vaccine on Newton!” the old lady interjected. “Then he wouldn’t need to be killed . . . would he?”
Ramsey smiled benevolently.
“We can try . . . ,” he replied cautiously. “The serum is certainly very effective. But you must understand, Mrs. Lansbury, that if there is the slightest sign that the virus has remained in the animal’s body . . . well, we wouldn’t be able to risk a repetition of all this.”
“Oh, of course not, I quite understand . . . but it would make a wonderful ending for my book,” said the old lady, and then, turning to the Executioner, she added, “And you could leave me, and my beloved Newton, in some tranquil world where I could finish it in my own time.”
After a moment, the Executioner nodded imperceptibly.
“Well, what are we waiting for?” said the old lady. “We must find the lovesick inspector.”
Ramsey nodded and asked the Executioner to proceed. Placing himself at the center of the cramped office, 2087V waited for Ramsey to pull down the blinds and then raised his cane aloft with the solemnity of a king showing his scepter to his subjects. A moment later, a faint bluish spark flickered up and down the cane, growing in intensity, and the sapphire glow finally began to illumine the encircling darkness, spreading round the room inch by inch, like a piece of paper unfolding, until it enveloped them all. Then, when it had filled almost the entire office, red lines began to emerge on its surface, like a network of veins, mapping out the geography of the multiverse. Before the Day of Chaos, those crimson lines, which represented each of the infinite worlds, had been arranged in parallel, like the strings of a harp, but now they were rippling and bending toward those next to them, touching in places or becoming entangled or even fusing together, producing continuous explosions and purple-tinged rents in the seemingly smooth blue surface that was the fabric of the universe. That chaotic tangle was a faithful replica of what was going on outside, a blueprint of devastation. But among the mass of lines were also hundreds of greenish trails hopping between them, pulling them together like the strings of a corset. Those were the cronotemics, jumping desperately between worlds, as if they thought they could flee that ferocious, unexpected Chaos. But Chaos was inevitable. There was no escape from it. And all the cronotemics achieved with their demented leaps was to make more holes in the beleaguered tapestry of life.