The Map of Chaos (Trilogía Victoriana #3)(57)

The letter, the accursed letter . . . He had opened it tentatively when he saw the sender’s name, but after he finished reading it, an almost savage fury had erased any other sensation.

Dear George,

I imagine it will come as no surprise to you to receive a letter from a dead man, for we are both aware that you are the only man in all England who knows I am still alive. What will doubtless surprise you is the reason for my writing, and that is none other than to request your help. Yes, that is right, I am sending you this letter because I need your help.

Let me begin by not wasting time dissembling. We both know that our distaste for each other is unmitigated. Consequently, you will understand the humiliation I feel at having to write you this letter. However, I am willing to endure that humiliation if it means obtaining your help, which gives you some clue as to how desperate I am. Imagine me kneeling and begging at your feet, if it pleases you. It is of no consequence to me. I do not value my dignity enough not to sacrifice it. I realize the absurdity of asking for help from one’s enemy, and yet is it not also a sign of respect, a way of admitting one’s inferiority? And I fully recognize my own: as you know I have always prided myself on my imagination. But now I need help from someone with a greater imagination than mine. And I know of none comparable to yours, George. It is as simple as that. If you help me, I will happily stop hating you. Even though I don’t suppose that is much of an incentive. Bear in mind I will also owe you a favor, and, as you know, I am a millionaire now. That might be more of an incentive. If you help me, George, you may name your price. Any price. You have my word, George.

And why do I need your help? you must be wondering. Well, at the risk of rekindling your hatred of me, the matter relates to one of your other novels, this time The War of the Worlds. As your brilliant mind has no doubt already deduced, I have to re-create a Martian invasion. However, this time I assure you I am not attempting to prove anything to you, nor do I intend to profit from it. You must believe me. I no longer need either of those things. This time I am driven by something I need more than anything in the world, and without which I will die: love, George, the love of the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. If you have been in love you will understand what I am referring to. I daresay you will find it hard, perhaps impossible, to believe that a man like me can fall in love, yet if you met her it would seem strange to you if I had not. Ah, George, I was unable to resist her charms, and I assure you her immense fortune is not one of them, for as I told you, I have enough money to last several lifetimes. No, George, I am referring to her charming smile, her golden skin, the savage sweetness of her eyes, even the adorable way she twirls her parasol when she is nervous . . . No man could be immune to her beauty, even you.

But in order to have her, I must arrange for a cylinder to land on Horsell Common on August 1, and for a Martian to emerge from it, just like in your novel, George. And I don’t know how! I have tried everything, but as I told you, my imagination has its limits. I need yours, George. Help me, please. If I pull it off, that woman will be my wife. And if that happens, I promise I shall no longer be your enemy, for Gilliam Murray will be finally laid to rest. Please, I beg you, I implore you, assist this lovesick soul.

Yours,

G. M.

Unbelievable! How could Murray have the effrontery to ask him to help reproduce the Martian invasion from his own novel? Did he honestly believe there was the remotest possibility that he would agree? That was too much to expect, even for one as presumptuous as Murray. He went to throw the letter away, but before doing so decided to show it to Jane, assuming she would be overcome by the same anger as he and that the two of them could fulminate to their hearts’ delight against Murray’s pride and ingenuousness, over a glass of wine, perhaps, as the sun set lazily behind the trees. But no. Jane had considered Murray’s idea one of the most romantic gestures anyone could make and had even encouraged Wells to help him. People change, Bertie, she had said. You are a very inflexible person, but the rest of humanity is more malleable. And it is obvious Murray has changed. For the sake of love! Wells burst into a cynical laugh. For the sake of love! Murray couldn’t have chosen a better argument with which to convince Jane of that dubious conversion from Hyde to Jekyll. If Wells deigned to reply, it would merely be to inform him that nothing could expunge the loathing he felt for Murray, much less that outpouring of sentimental drivel. But he had no desire to embroil himself once more in a contest that brought him only bad memories, and so in the end Wells had decided it was best not to reply at all, convinced that indifference would be the greatest insult he could inflict upon Murray.

Indifference . . . Perhaps that should have been his posture three years earlier when that upstart had asked for his opinion about the little novel he had written. As some readers will recall, at that time Murray had not yet become the famous Master of Time but was an aspiring novelist with more delusions of grandeur than genuine talent, who sought the approval of the man he considered one of England’s greatest authors. And the fact is that Wells could have talked his way out of it with a few pronouncements as affable as they were vague. But instead he had opted for overrated honesty, not just because he didn’t think that ill-tempered ogre deserved any efforts at dissimulation, but because Murray’s whole being was clamoring for a dose of humility, which he himself had given Wells the wherewithal to administer. Who could resist such an invitation? Clearly not Wells, who with unnecessary brutality had told the poor aspiring author what he thought of his novel, curious to see his reaction, and had thus unwittingly thrown down a challenge that would ensnare the two men in an absurd duel for years to come. Murray’s attempt at a novel was a na?ve futuristic love story set in the year 2000, where automatons had taken over the Earth and only a small group of humans led by the brave Captain Shackleton had the courage to defy them. The plot was preposterous and Wells had no trouble finishing off his merciless dissection of it by arguing that the future it described was totally improbable, and the work therefore a futile, forgettable pile of nonsense. Imagination was a gift that should always be at the service of truth. Any fool could imagine impossible things, but only a true genius could imagine the infinite possibilities that reality offered, and clearly Murray wasn’t one of them. After that dressing-down, Murray had vowed to himself as he left Wells’s house that he would show the author how wrong he was, and a few months later Murray’s Time Travel had opened to the public, offering the inhabitants of the nineteenth century a chance to visit the future, which, to Wells’s astonishment, was exactly as Murray had imagined it in his novel. And for two years afterward, Wells had been subjected to that humiliation, receiving regular invitations from an increasingly wealthy, powerful, and (if there was any truth in the rumors circulating in the stevedores’ taverns) dangerous Murray, to embark on one of his expeditions to the improbable future. Until one day the Master of Time decided to stage his own death, and at last Wells was able to breathe easily and try to pretend that the whole thing had been a bad dream.