The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)(11)
Some things I would rather see sober, Wells lamented to himself, stepping cautiously over the threshold. The Chamber of Marvels was exactly as the American had described: a vast room crammed with the most wondrous things in the world, like a vast pirate’s treasure trove. There was such an array of curiosities scattered about that Wells did not know where to look first, and the irritating little prods Serviss kept giving him to speed him along through the fantastic display did not help matters. He observed that a great deal of what was there had been labeled. One revelation succeeded another as Wells found himself gazing at a fin belonging to the Loch Ness monster, what looked like a curled-up kitten inside a glass jar marked FUR OF THE YETI, the purported skeleton of a mermaid, dozens of photographs of tiny, glowing fairies, a crown made of phoenix feathers, a giant bull’s head allegedly from a minotaur, and a hundred other marvels. The fantastical tour came to an end when, suddenly, he found himself standing before a painting of a hideously deformed old man labeled PORTRAIT OF DORIAN GRAY.
Still recovering from the shock, he noticed some familiar objects next to him: a chemical flask containing a reddish liquid, and a small sachet of white crystals. The label on it said: “Last batch of chemicals salvaged from the warehouse of Messrs. Maw, indispensable for making Doctor Henry Jekyll’s potion.” Almost without thinking, the astonished Wells grasped the glass beaker: he needed to touch some of these wonders simply to be sure they were not a figment of his drunken imagination, inflamed by Serviss’s storytelling. He needed to know they existed outside books, tales, and myths. As he held the beaker, he could smell the sharp odor of the blood-colored liquid. What would he change into if he drank the mixture? he wondered. What would his evil side be like? Would he suddenly get smaller, would he acquire the strength of a dozen men, a brilliant mind, and an overwhelming desire for wicked pleasures, as had happened to Stevenson’s Doctor Jekyll, in what he had always assumed was a made-up story?
“Hurry up, George, we haven’t got all day!” the American barked, yanking Wells’s arm and giving him such a fright that the beaker slipped from his hand and shattered on the floor. Wells watched the red liquid spread over the tiles. He knelt down to try to clean up the mess but only succeeded in cutting his hand on one of the shards of glass.
“I broke it, Garrett!” he exclaimed in dismay. “I broke Doctor Jekyll’s potion!”
“Bah! Forget about that and come with me, George,” Serviss replied, gesturing to him to follow. “These are nothing more than fanciful baubles compared to what I want to show you.”
Wells obeyed, threading his way through the hoard of objects as he tried to stanch the cut. Serviss guided him to a corner of the large room, where the flying saucer awaited. The machine rested horizontally on its stand, exactly as Serviss had described, like an enormous upside-down soup plate, tapered at the edges and crowned with a dome. Wells approached the object timidly, overawed by its sheer size and the strange shiny material it was made from, which gave it the appearance of being both solid and light. Then he noticed the peculiar carvings that dotted the surface and gave off a faint coppery glow. They reminded him of Asian characters, though more intricate. What did they symbolize?
“It doesn’t look like they’ve managed to open it yet,” Serviss remarked over his shoulder. “As you can see, there are no openings, and it doesn’t seem to have any engine either. Although it looks like it must be extremely easy to fly, and probably incredibly fast.”
Wells nodded absentmindedly. He had just noticed the large table piled high with papers beside the machine. This was where Serviss had told him he had found the files documenting the amazing discovery. He approached it, mesmerized, and began rummaging through the piles of notebooks and documents. Among them two thick albums containing photographs and newspaper clippings stood out. During his random search, Wells came across the burnt vessel’s logbook, kept by the captain, a man by the name of MacReady. The handwriting was plain, devoid of any flourishes, and suggested a man with a stern, no-nonsense character, in complete contrast to that of Jeremiah Reynolds, who had been in charge of that expedition to the South Pole, whose diary seemed much more rambling and unmethodical. Wells browsed through the numerous articles in one of the albums describing the terrible fate of what the press had nicknamed the IllFated Expedition, which had set sail from New York bound for the Antarctic on October 15, 1829. With some alarm, Wells read a few of the lurid front-page headlines, accompanied by bloodcurdling photographs of the sailors’ bodies and the remains of the vessel: “Who or what slaughtered the crew of the Annawan? What horrors are buried beneath the Antarctic ice?” Yet, as far as he could make out, none of the articles mentioned the two main discoveries: the flying machine and the Martian. In the second album, however, he found several photographs of the strange machine half buried in the ice, glistening against the menacing grey sky, as if a giant had dropped a shiny coin from a great height. Next to these was a pile of scientific reports, which Wells could scarcely make sense of, and which by all appearances were secret and consequently had been kept from journalists and the public alike.
“Don’t waste time on that, George. The important thing is in there,” Serviss declared, breaking Wells’s intense concentration and walking over to what looked like a wooden trunk covered in copper rivets, to which a small refrigerator had been attached. He placed his hands solemnly on the lid, turned to Wells, and said, with a mischievous grin, “Are you ready to see a Martian?”