The Map of Time (Trilogía Victoriana #1)(162)

Cracks of light would soon begin to appear in the dark sky as dawn broke through, and there was nothing to stop him dallying for a few moments to witness the colorful duel before going to Henley’s office.

In fact, any excuse was good enough to delay his meeting with his editor, for he felt certain Henley would not be overly pleased with the new manuscript. Of course, he would agree to publish it, but this would not spare Wells from having to listen to one of Henley’s sermons aimed at steering him into the fold of authors destined to pass into the annals of literary history. “And why not accept his advice for once?” he suddenly thought. Why not give up writing for na?ve readers easily convinced by any adventure story, or any story that shows a modicum of imagination, and write for more discerning readers, those, in short, who reject the entertainments of popular fiction in favor of more serious, profound literature that explains the universe to them and even the precariousness of their existence in the centuries to come. Perhaps he should resolve to write another kind of story altogether, one that would stir his readers” souls in a different way, a novel that would be nothing short of a revelation to them, just as Henley wanted.

Immersed in these thoughts, Wells turned down Charing Cross Road and headed for the Strand. By that time, a new day was slowly dawning around him. The black sky was gradually dissolving, giving way to a slightly unreal dark blue that instantly paled on the horizon, taking on a soft violet tint before turning orange. In the distance, the author could make out the shape of Waterloo Bridge growing more and more distinct as the darkness faded, slowly invaded by the light. A series of strange, muffled noises reached his ears, making him smile contentedly. The city was beginning to stir, and the isolated sounds hanging in the air would soon be transformed into the honest, relentless flow of life, an earsplitting din which might reach the outer reaches of space transformed into a pleasant buzz of bees, revealing that the third largest planet in the solar system was very much inhabited.

And although as he walked towards the bridge Wells could see nothing beyond what was in front of him, somehow he felt as though he were taking part in a huge play which, because every single inhabitant of the city was cast in it, seemingly had no audience. Except perhaps for the clever Martians, busy studying human life the way man peered down a microscope at the ephemeral organisms wriggling around in a drop of water, he reflected. And in fact, he was right, for as he threaded his way along the Strand, dozens of barges loaded with oysters floated in eerie silence along the ever more orange-tinted waters of the Thames, on their way from Chelsea Reach to Billingsgate Wharf, where an army of men hauled the catch onto land. In wealthy neighborhoods, fragrant with the aroma of high-class bakeries and violets from the flower sellers” baskets, people abandoned their luxurious houses for their no less luxurious offices, crossing the streets that had begun filling up with cabriolets, berlins, omnibuses, and every imaginable type of wheeled vehicle, jolting rhythmically over the paving stones, while above them, the smoke from the factory stacks mingled with the mist rising from the water to form a shroud of dense, sticky fog, and an army of carts drawn by mules or pushed manually, brimming with fruit, vegetables, eels, and squid, took up their positions at Covent Garden amid a chaos of shouts. At the same hour, Inspector Garrett arrived before finishing his breakfast at Sloane Street, where Mr. Ferguson was waiting to inform him rather anxiously that someone had taken a potshot at him the night before, poking his pudgy thumb through the hole it had made in his hat. Garrett examined the surrounding area with a trained eye, searching among the bushes around Ferguson’s house, and could not prevent a tender smile spreading across his face when he discovered the charming kiwi bird someone had scratched in the dirt.

Looking up and down the street to make sure no one was watching, he quickly erased it with his foot before emerging from the bushes, shrugging his shoulders. Just as he was telling Ferguson with an expression of feigned bewilderment that he had found no clues, in a room at a boardinghouse in Bethnal Green, John Peachey, the man known as Tom Blunt before drowning in the Thames, embraced the woman he loved, and Claire Haggerty let herself be wrapped in his strong arms, pleased he had fled the future, the desolate year 2000, to be with her. At that very moment too, standing on top of a rock, Captain Derek Shackleton declared in a grating voice that if any good had come of the war it was that it had united the human race as no other war had ever done before, and Gilliam Murray shook his head mournfully, telling himself this was the last expedition he would organize, that he was tired of fools and of the heartless wretch who kept smearing his building with dung, that it was time to stage his own death, to pretend he had been devoured by one of the savage dragons that inhabited the fourth dimension, dragons between whose razor-sharp teeth Charles Winslow was that very instant being torn to ribbons in his dreams, before waking up with a start bathed in sweat, alarming the two Chinese prostitutes sharing his bed with his cries, at the same time as his cousin Andrew, who was just then leaning on Waterloo Bridge watching the sun rise, noticed a familiar-looking fellow with birdlike features coming towards him.

“Mr. Wells?” he called out as the man drew level.

Wells stopped and stared at Andrew for a few moments, trying to remember where he had seen him before.

“Don’t you remember me?” said the young man. “I’m Andrew Harrington.” As soon as he heard the name, Wells remembered. This was the lad whose life he had saved a few weeks before, preventing him killing himself thanks to an elaborate charade that had allowed him to confront Jack the Ripper, the murderer who had terrorized Whitechapel in the autumn of 1888.