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

Brushing aside these thoughts, he entered the dressing room, the tiny space where he must spend the last few minutes before walking out onstage. He stood in the middle of the room, choosing not to sit on any of the chairs. The door opposite led to the auditorium. Through it filtered the excited roars of the crowd and the voice of Abraham Frey, the celebrated moderator, who at that moment was welcoming the various dignitaries attending the event. Soon they would announce his name, and he would have to go out onto the stage. Wells ruefully contemplated the right-hand wall. He knew that on the other side of it, in the adjoining dressing room, his rival was doubtless listening to the cries of the audience resounding through the amphitheater with the same feigned determination.

Then Wells heard his name and the door opened, inviting him to abandon his sanctuary. He took a deep breath and strode forth onto the back of the stage. Seeing him, the crowd burst into feverish applause. A couple of the recording orbs floating above the auditorium whirled over and began circling him. Wells raised his hands in greeting as he gave his most serene smile, imagining it being reproduced on the communication screens in millions of homes. He walked over to his lectern, which bore the stem of a voice enhancer, and spread his hands over its surface. One of the spotlights located above the stage bathed his puny figure in a golden glow. Five or six yards to his right, his opponent’s lectern stood empty. While acknowledging the applause, the biologist took the opportunity to examine the stalls, separated from him by the pit, where a mechanical orchestra had started to play an evocative melody. Music creates order out of chaos, he thought, recalling the words of a famous violinist who had received the Church’s blessing. Amidst the audience, Wells noticed banners and signs sporting his image as well as some of his famous sayings. Up above the rows of seats, beneath an enormous pennant with an eight-pointed star emerging from two concentric circles, Queen Victoria sat on her wheeled throne, in which she traveled everywhere of late. Next to her, on a less sumptuous throne, sat Cardinal Violet Tucker, the highest authority in the Church of Knowledge, who would preside over the debate. Her entourage sat in a cluster on her left, a flock of bishops and deacons with stern, embittered faces, who, together with the cardinal, made up the Budgetary Commission. That gaunt old lady, dressed in a black robe with gold silk buttons, and a sash and beret likewise gold, the color of Knowledge, would ultimately decide his fate. Wells noticed the goblet cupped in her right hand, which if the rumors were correct contained her anti-cancer medicine. On either side of the theater stood the boxes reserved for the authorities and prominent attendees, most notably Jules Verne, the French entrepreneur; Clara Shelley, the heiress to Prometheus Industries, a leading manufacturer of automatons; and various members of the scientific community. Wells could see Jane in the VIP box. She was talking to Doctor Pleasance, the wife of his rival, a handsome woman of about forty who, like Jane, worked as project director in her husband’s laboratory.

Pacing up and down the stage between the orchestra pit and the lecterns was Abraham Frey, who wore a bronze helmet that had a voice enhancer projecting from its right side, leaving his hands free to perform their characteristic gestures. At that moment, he was introducing Wells’s opponent, listing his many achievements over a long life devoted to the service of Knowledge. Inundated by this torrent of information, Wells was able to make out the words “Knowledge Church College,” in Oxford, where his rival had given his celebrated lectures in mathematics and physics, and where Wells himself had studied. There, conversing between its ancient walls and strolling across its verdant meadows, the two men had forged an inspiring teacher-pupil relationship, and although Wells had finally chosen biology over physics, they had continued to meet regularly, incapable of renouncing a friendship they had both deemed fruitful enough to pursue. No one could have imagined that, in years to come, fate would make rivals of them. While in private this was a source of amusement to them, it in no way diminished the ferocity with which each defended his position during the many debates they had engaged in prior to the one taking place that evening, in which the Church would decide which of their projects was most likely to save the world.

“And now, Your Majesty, Your Eminence, leaders of the Church of Knowledge, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the distinguished physicist and mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.”

Followers of Wells’s rival broke into loud cheers as their idol’s name was announced. The tiny door to his dressing room opened, and an elderly gentlemen of about sixty emerged, waving to the public as he approached his lectern, just as Wells had done moments before. He was tall and thin, his white hair meticulously groomed, and his face possessed the languid beauty of a weary archangel. As he watched him, Wells couldn’t help feeling a sense of compassion. Clearly, Charles Dodgson would have preferred to be spending that magnificent, golden evening on one of his habitual boating excursions along the Thames rather than arguing with his former pupil about how best to save the world, yet neither man could shirk his responsibilities. They greeted each other with a stiff nod, and each stood quietly at his lectern, waiting for the moderator to begin. Frey called for silence, stroking the flank of the air with his hand.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he exclaimed in the baritone voice for which he was famous. “As we all know, our beloved universe is dying. And it has been for millions of years. Ever since the universe burst forth amidst a blazing cataclysm, it has been expanding at breakneck speed, but it has also been cooling. And that same cooling process that once nurtured life will eventually snuff it out.” He paused, plunging his hands into his jacket pockets, and started pacing up and down the stage, staring at the ground, like a man on a stroll daydreaming. “Subject to the three laws of thermodynamics,” he went on, “the galaxies are flying apart. Everything is aging. Wearing out. The end of the world is near. Stars will burn out, magic holes evaporate, temperatures will descend to absolute zero. And we humans, incapable of continuing our work in this frozen landscape . . . will become extinct.”