The Map of Time (Trilogía Victoriana #1)(27)
He was nearly eighty when he finally received the prize money.
Fascinating, don’t you think? At the heart of each invention lie one man’s efforts, an entire life dedicated to solving a problem, to inventing an instrument that will outlast him, will go on forming part of the world after he is dead. So long as there are men who aren’t content to eat the fruit off the trees or to summon rain by beating a drum, but who are determined instead to use their brains in order to transcend the role of mere parasites in God’s creation, science will never give up trying. That’s why I am sure that very soon, as well as being able to fly like birds in winged carriages, anyone will be able to get hold of a machine similar to the one Wells dreamed up and travel anywhere they choose in time. Men of the future will lead double lives, working during the week in a bank, and on Sundays making love to the beautiful Nefertiti or helping Hannibal conquer Rome. Can you imagine how an invention like that would change society?” Gilliam studied the two men for a moment before replacing the box on the table, where it sat, lid open, like an oyster or an engagement ring.
Then he added, “But in the meantime, while science is busy looking for a way of making these dreams come true, we have another method of traveling in time, although unfortunately this one does not enable us to choose our destination.” “What method is that?” Andrew enquired.
“Magic,” declared Gilliam, in a booming voice.
“Magic?” echoed Andrew, taken aback.
“Yes, magic,” repeated his host, waving his fingers in the air mysteriously and making a sound like wind whistling down a chimney, “but not the conjuring tricks you see in music halls, theaters, or the sort those frauds from the Golden Dawn claim to perform. I’m talking about genuine magic. Do you believe in magic, gentlemen?” Andrew and Charles paused, a little confused by the direction the conversation was taking, but Gilliam needed no reply.
“Of course not,” he grumbled. “That’s why I avoid mentioning it. I prefer my clients to believe we are traveling through time by means of science. Everybody these days believes in science. It has become far more credible than magic. We live in modern times.
But I assure you, magic does exist.” Then, to Andrew’s and Charles’s surprise, he rose deftly from his seat and gave a shrill whistle. The dog, which had been lying on the carpet all this time, stood up at once and trotted gaily over to its master.
“Gentlemen, I’d like you to meet Eternal,” he said, as the creature circled round him excitedly. “Do you like dogs? It’s quite safe to stroke him.” As though this were some sort of requirement they must fulfill for Gilliam Murray to be able to continue his discourse, Charles and Andrew stood up and ran their hands over the soft, well-brushed coat of the highly strung golden retriever.
“Gentlemen,” Murray declared, “be aware that you are stroking a miracle. For, as I just told you, there is such a thing as magic.
It is even tangible. How old do you think Eternal is?” Charles had no difficulty in answering the question, because he had several dogs on his country estate and had grown up with them. He examined the animal’s teeth with a knowledgeable air, and replied confidently: “A year, two at the most.” “Spot on,” confirmed Gilliam, kneeling and scratching the dog’s neck affectionately. “You look a year old, don’t you, that’s your age in real time?” Andrew took this opportunity to catch his cousin’s eye, anxious to know what he thought about all this. Charles’s tranquil smile put his mind at rest.
“As I already told you,” Murray went on, rising to his feet, “I didn’t decide to set up my company on account of Wells’s novel. It was a complete coincidence, although I won’t deny I have greatly benefited from the hidden longing he stirred up in people. Do you know why time travel is so attractive? Because we all dream of journeying in time, it is one of man’s oldest desires. But would you have considered it possible, gentlemen, before Wells wrote his book? I don’t think so. And I assure you neither would I. What Mr. Wells has somehow done is to make an abstract craving real, to articulate this latent desire ever-present in man.” Murray paused, giving his summary the opportunity to descend on his visitors, like dust settling on furniture after a carpet has been beaten.
“Before setting up this company, I worked with my father,” he resumed a moment later. “We financed expeditions. We were one of the hundreds of societies sending explorers to the farthest corners of the world with the aim of gathering ethnographic and archaeological data to publish in scientific journals, or finding exotic insects or flowers for the showcases of some science museum eager to display God’s wildest creations. But, regardless of the business side of things, we were driven by a desire to get to know as accurately as possible the world we lived in. We were, to coin a phrase, spatially curious. However, we never know what fate has in store for us, do we, gentlemen?” Again without waiting for a reply, Gilliam Murray gestured for them to follow him. Eternal at his heel, he led them through the obstacle course of tables and globes towards one of the sidewalls. Unlike the others, which were lined with shelves crammed with atlases, geographical treatises, books on astronomy, and numerous other works on obscure subjects, this wall was covered in maps, arranged according to when the regions on them had been charted. The collection covered a journey that started with a few reproductions of Renaissance maps inspired by Ptolemy’s works, which made the world look alarmingly small, like an insect with its legs chopped off, reduced to little more than a shapeless Europe. Next came the German Martin Waldseemüller’s map, where America had broken away from the Asian continent, and finally the works of Abraham Ortelius and Gerardus Mercator, which showed a much larger world, similar in size to that of the present day. Following this chronological order from left to right as guided by Murray, the cousins had the impression of watching the petals of a flower open or a cat stretch its body. The world seemed to unfurl literally before their eyes, to grow incredibly slowly in size as navigators and explorers extended its frontiers.