The Map of Time (Trilogía Victoriana #1)(144)

With an amused grin on his lips, the time traveler began to climb the stairs. The writers hesitated for a moment, then followed him, escorted by his two henchmen. On the top floor, Marcus led them with his athletic gait to a room containing a bookcase on one wall filled with dusty books, a couple of dilapidated chairs, and a ramshackle bed. Wells wondered whether this was the bed in which Sir Robert Warboys, Lord Lyttleton, and the other plucky young nobles had boldly confronted the ghost, but before he had a chance to search the skirting board for signs of a bullet, Marcus pulled on a lamp attached to the wall and the fake bookcase opened in the middle to reveal a spacious room beyond.

The traveler waited for his henchmen to scuttle through the shadows and light the lamps in the room, before he beckoned the authors in. As James and Stoker seemed reluctant to do so, Wells took the lead and ventured into the mysterious place with cautious, mouselike steps. Next to the entrance he discovered two huge oak tables piled with books, annotated notebooks, and newspapers from the period; no doubt this was where the traveler examined the face of the century, in search of possible inaccuracies. But at the back of the room, he glimpsed something that aroused his interest far more. It was some kind of spider’s web made out of multicolored pieces of cord, hanging from which was a collection of newspaper cuttings. James and Stoker had also noticed the network of strings, towards which the traveler was now walking, jerking his head for them to follow.

“What is it?” asked Wells, drawing level with him.

“A map of time,” replied Marcus, beaming with pride.

Wells gazed at him in surprise, then stared once more at the shape the colored strings made, studying it more carefully. From a distance, it looked like a spider’s web, but now he could see the design was more like a fir tree or fish bone. A piece of white cord, approximately five feet above the floor, was stretched from wall to wall, like a master rope. The ends of the green and blue colored strings hanging from the white cord were tacked to the sidewalls.

Each string, including the master rope, was festooned with newspaper clippings. Wells ducked his head, venturing among the news items hanging like washing on a line, and began browsing some of the headlines. After Marcus nodded his approval, the two other writers followed suit.

“The white cord,” explained the traveler, pointing at the master rope, “represents the original universe, the only one that existed before the travelers began meddling with the past. The universe it is my task to protect.” At one end of the white cord, Wells noticed a photograph shimmering faintly. Surprisingly it was in color and showed a splendid stone and glass building towering beneath a clear blue sky. This must be the Library of Truth. At the other end of the cord hung a cutting announcing the discontinuation of the Restoration Project and the passing of a law prohibiting any change in the past. Between these two items hung a forest of clippings apparently announcing important events. Wells was familiar with many of these and had lived through some, like the Indian uprising and so-called Bloody Sunday, but as the cord stretched further into the future, the headlines became more and more incomprehensible. He felt suddenly dizzy as he realized these were things that had not yet happened, events that lay in wait for him somewhere along the time continuum, most of them strangely sinister.

Before resuming his examination, Wells glanced at his companions to see whether they were experiencing the same mixture of excitement and dread as him. Stoker appeared to be concentrating on one particular cutting, which he was reading, mesmerized, while, after an initial cursory glance, James had turned his back on the map, as though this frightening, incomprehensible future felt less controllable than the reality it was his lot to inhabit and in which he had learned to navigate like a fish in water. The American appeared greatly relieved to know that death would preclude him from having to live in the terrifying world charted on the map of time. Wells also tried to tear his eyes away from the rows of cuttings, fearing his behavior might be affected by knowing about future events, and yet a perverse curiosity compelled him to devour as many headlines as he could, aware he had been given an opportunity many would kill for.

He could not help pausing to read one news item in particular, concerning one of the first ever cases of spontaneous time travel, or so he deduced from the esoteric title of the journal. Beneath the sensationalist headline: “A Lady Time Traveler,” the article described how when employees at Olsen’s department store went to open the shop on the morning of April 12, 1984, they discovered a woman inside. At first, they thought she was a thief, but when asked how she came to be in the store the woman said she had just appeared there. According to the article, the most extraordinary thing about the case was that the unknown woman claimed she came from the future, from the year 2008, to be exact, as her strange clothes confirmed. The woman maintained her house had been broken into by burglars, who had chased her into her bedroom, where she had managed to lock herself in. Terrified by the battering on the door as her assailants tried to break it down, the woman suddenly felt giddy. A second later, she found herself in Olsen’s department store, twenty-four years earlier in time, stretched out on the floor and bringing up her supper. The police were unable to interrogate the woman because, following her initial, rather confused declarations, she mysteriously disappeared once more. Could she have gone back to the future? the journalist speculated darkly.

“The Government suspects it all began with this woman,” Marcus announced, almost reverentially. “Have you asked yourselves why some people and not others are able to travel in time? Well, so has the Government, and genetic testing provided the answer: apparently, the time travelers had a mutant gene, a concept still unknown to you. I think it will be a few years yet before it comes into use after a Dutch biologist coins the phrase.