The Map of Chaos (Trilogía Victoriana #3)(48)

Once inside, having shed his warm clothes again, and pretending to shiver as he handed the damp garments to a solicitous attendant, he made his way with the same jaunty walk toward a table beside a large window, greeting with peremptory nods any members he passed. At the table, which stood next to the only unlit fire in the room, four gentlemen reclined comfortably in leather armchairs, smoking and chatting congenially among themselves. However, when they spotted Dr. Higgins walking toward them across the vast room, the four of them stopped conversing and watched him approach in expectant silence.

“Good day, gentlemen,” the doctor said gruffly as he took a seat among them and gestured impatiently to the nearest waiter.

“You’re late, Higgins,” one of the men chided, smiling.

“My dear Angier, perhaps we are all too late,” the doctor grunted, giving his goatee a few desperate tugs.

“Come, come, Higgins, what’s eating you?” another of the gentlemen retorted in a mollifying voice, which you will recognize if you have been paying attention, for it was none other than Doctor Theodore Ramsey, the eminent physician so fond of cracking his knuckles. “We thought you might bring good tidings.”

Higgins snatched the glass of brandy from the waiter’s tray before the man had time to place it on the table and greedily swallowed almost half of it, closing his eyes as he did so. Then he gave a sigh.

“Forgive me, my friends. Please accept my apologies, Angier. I’m at my wit’s end. My cooling system has been on the blink all morning,” he declared, pulling impatiently at his beard as if to prove it. “I’ve been insufferably hot for hours.”

The others gave him concerned looks.

“How ghastly! And you haven’t been able to repair it?” asked Angier, fiddling with his right earlobe, visibly alarmed.

“I haven’t had time. As you guessed, Ramsey, I bring tidings. I’m not sure yet if they are good or not, but I wanted to pass them on without delay. In any case, I expect I can hold out until this afternoon, and I think I have the means to fix the problem in my laboratory . . . I just wish it wasn’t so damnably hot!”

“Don’t grumble, Higgins. You’re lucky it’s the beginning of winter, the coldest season in their year. Imagine if this had happened during that inferno they call summer,” remarked a third gentleman, who every now and then crossed his eyes in a most peculiar fashion as he spoke. “And things could be worse. For example, you could be having trouble with the neuronal circuitry that allows us to suppress the anxiety of randomness.”

“You’re right, Melford,” Ramsey agreed vehemently, cracking his knuckles one by one. “The anxiety of randomness . . . A truly terrifying thing.”

“Quite so. But a malfunction in the cooling system is still an absolute nuisance. It happened to me last summer,” Angier added, flicking his earlobe gently, “and I had to beg them to send me a new mechanism as soon as—”

“Inferno? Did I hear you say ‘inferno,’ Melford?” the fourth gentleman, who had so far remained silent, interrupted in a soft voice.

He was a stout fellow with bushy grey whiskers that curled up like a bull’s horns, and he wore a plain dark suit livened up by a florid waistcoat. The other men looked at him in surprise.

“I . . . ,” stammered Melford.

“Inferno? Surely you aren’t serious, any of you . . . You grumble about the climate? It is so obvious you haven’t been to the Other Side recently! Have you forgotten what it is like there?” The fourth gentleman observed his companions one by one, his impressive whiskers quivering with rage, causing all of them, more or less swiftly, to lower their eyes contritely. “The minor discomforts we have to put up with here,” the man went on in a lecturing tone, “pale in comparison. I say this as someone who has just come back from there. From the place where we have no choice but to suffer the insufferable.” Satisfied with his admonishment, he settled back in his chair, relaxing slightly his harsh expression. “Gentlemen, I beg you not to trivialize such matters. On the Other Side, the Dark Time has begun. And they need us. Desperately.”

The five of them fell silent for a few moments, eyes vacant as they became lost in thought.

“How are things back there, Kramer?” Ramsey ventured at last.

“It is getting colder all the time,” the other man replied. “And there is no light now.”

They all groaned quietly.

“Perhaps Higgins was right when he said just now that we arrived here too late.” Melford squinted. “Perhaps nothing we do here has any meaning now.”

“There is still some hope. Recent calculations give us ten years,” said Kramer.

“By all the dead suns!” Angier gasped. “Ten years? I hardly think that is long enough.”

“Calm down, Angier. You know very well that period refers to their extinction, not ours,” said Kramer, gesturing with a nod at their surroundings. “Our torment could last a few more decades, but they don’t have that long. And they are our only escape route. We have ten years to prevent their destruction. Otherwise, we will be doomed as well.”

“And what do recent studies show about the possibility of opening other doors?” asked Melford.

“Nothing promising,” Kramer replied ruefully. “I fear that won’t be possible. Not in our current situation. This world is the only chance we have of saving ourselves.”