The Map of Time (Trilogía Victoriana #1)(34)
The only answer was to move the hole to London. Was that possible? He did not know, but he lost nothing by trying. Leaving Kaufman and Austin to guard the Reed People, Murray returned to London, where he had a cast-iron box the size of a room built.
Together with a thousand bottles of whiskey, he took it back with him to the village, where he planned to strike a bargain that would change people’s perception of the known world. Drunk as lords, the Reed People consented to his whim of singing their magic chants inside the sinister box. Once the hole had materialised, he herded them out and closed the heavy doors behind them.
The three men then waited until the last of the Reed People had succumbed to the effects of the whiskey before setting off home.
It was an arduous journey, and only when the enormous box was on the ship at Zanzibar did Gilliam begin to breathe more easily. Even so, he barely slept a wink during the passage home. He spent almost the entire time up on deck, gazing lovingly at the fateful box which so upset the other passengers, and wondering whether it was not in fact empty. Could one really steal the hole? His eagerness to know the answer to that question gnawed away at him, making the return journey seem interminable. He could hardly believe it when at last they docked at Liverpool. As soon as he reached his offices, he opened the box in complete secret.
The hole was still there! They had successfully stolen it! The next step was to show it to his father.
“What the devil is this?” exclaimed Sebastian Murray, when he saw the hole shimmering inside the box.
“This is what drove Oliver Tremanquai mad, father,” Gilliam replied, pronouncing the explorer’s name with affection. “So, take care.” His father turned pale. Nevertheless, he accompanied his son through the hole and traveled into the future, to a demolished London where humans hid in the ruins like rats. Once he had got over the shock, father and son agreed they must make this discovery known to the world. And what better way to do this than to turn the hole into a business: taking people to see the year 2000 would bring in enough money to cover the cost of the journeys themselves and to fund further exploration of the fourth dimension. They proceeded to map out a secure route to the hole into the future, eliminating any dangers, setting up lookout posts and smoothing out the road so that a tramcar with thirty seats could cross it easily. Sadly, his father did not live long enough to see Murray’s Time Travel open its doors to the public, but Gilliam consoled himself with the thought that at least he had seen the future beyond his own death.
9
Once he had finished telling his story, Murray fell silent and looked expectantly at his two visitors. Andrew assumed he was hoping for some kind of response from him, but had no idea what to say.
He felt embarrassed. Everything his host had told them was no more believable to him than an adventure story. That pink plain seemed about as real to him as Lilliput, the South Sea Island inhabited by little people where Lemuel Gulliver had been shipwrecked. From the stupefied smile on Charles’s face however, he assumed his cousin did believe it. After all, he had traveled to the year 2000, what did it matter whether it was by crossing a pink plain where time had stopped? “And now, gentlemen, if you would kindly follow me, I’ll show you something only a few trusted people are allowed to see,” Gilliam declared, resuming the sort of guided tour of his commodious office.
With Eternal continually running round his master, the three men walked across to another wall. A small collection of photographs awaited them, and what was probably another map, although this was concealed behind a red silk curtain. Andrew was surprised to discover that the photographs had been taken in the fourth dimension, although they might easily have been taken in any desert since cameras were apparently unable to record the color of this or any other world. He had to use his imagination, then, to see the white smear of sand as pink.
The majority of the photographs documented routine moments during the expedition: Gilliam and two other men, presumably Kaufman and Austin, putting up tents, drinking coffee during a pause, lighting a fire, posing in front of the phantom mountains, almost entirely obscured by thick fog. It all looked too normal.
Only one of the photographs made Andrew really feel he was contemplating an alien world. In it Kaufman (who was short and fat) and Austin (who was tall and thin) stood smiling exaggeratedly, hats tilted to the side of their heads, rifles hanging from their shoulders, and one boot resting on the massive head of a fairy-tale dragon, which lay dead on the sand like a hunting trophy. Andrew was about to lean towards the photograph and take a closer look at the amorphous lump, when an awful screeching noise made him start. Beside him, Gilliam was pulling on a gold cord which drew back the silk curtain, revealing what was behind it.
“Rest assured, gentlemen, you will find no other map like it anywhere in England,” he declared, swelling with pride. “It is an exact replica of the drawing in the Reed People’s cave, expanded, naturally, after our subsequent explorations.” What the puppet theater curtain uncovered looked more like a drawing by a child with an active imagination than a map. The color pink predominated, of course, representing the plain, with the mountains in the middle. But the shadowy peaks were not the only geological feature depicted on the map. In the right-hand corner, for example, was a squiggly line, presumably a river, and close by it a light-green patch, possibly a forest or meadow. Andrew could not help feeling that these everyday symbols, used in maps charting the world he lived in, were incongruous with what was supposed to be a map of the fourth dimension. But the most striking thing about the drawing was the gold dots peppering the plain, evidently meant to symbolize the holes. Two of these—the entrance to the year 2000, and the one now in Murray’s possession— were linked by a thin red line, which must represent the route taken by the time-traveling tramcar.