The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)(131)

The young man approached timidly and gave them a smile that was meant to be reassuring.

“Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce the brave Captain Shackleton.”





PART THREE

DEAR READER, OUR EXCITING ADVENTURE IS DRAWING TO A CLOSE.

CAN OUR HEROES DEFEAT THE MARTIANS, OR DOES THIS TASK SEEM AS IMPOSSIBLE TO YOU AS WINNING A PROUD LADY’S HEART? I TRUST YOU HAVE ENJOYED OUR CURIOUS TALE, THOUGH IT IS FILLED WITH INCIDENTS SO ALIEN TO OUR HUMAN EXPERIENCE THAT IT MAY HAVE OBLIGED YOU ON MORE THAN ONE OCCASION TO RAISE AN EYEBROW. I DO NOT BLAME YOU, ALTHOUGH I FEAR THAT WITH THE PASSAGE OF TIME THESE EVENTS WILL, ALAS, BE ROBBED OF THEIR STRANGENESS.





SHACKLETON CAUGHT ME LOOKING AT HIM, AND, ARCHING HIS EYEBROWS SKEPTICALLY, HE SPREAD HIS ARMS TO ENCOMPASS ALL THIS DESTRUCTION.

“AS YOU SEE, MR. WINSLOW, WE CAN’T POSSIBLY TRAVEL TO THE YEAR 2000.”

I SHRUGGED, AMUSED BY WHAT WAS UNDOUBTEDLY NOTHING MORE THAN A MINOR SETBACK.

“IN THAT CASE, I’M AFRAID WE’LL JUST HAVE TO DEFEAT THE MARTIANS ON OUR OWN, CAPTAIN,” I REPLIED, GRINNING.





XXXI

CHARLES WINSLOW WOULD HAVE LIKED TIME TO BE A river whose banks offered a quiet haven in an unchanging landscape of stately, chiseled mountains, of lakes where the evening would descend softly, of undulating hills, or something similar. Its actual makeup did not concern him so much as its permanency. For this landscape had to stay the same not only when he paused to contemplate it, but also when he decided to leave, rowing upstream in his little boat or letting himself drift downstream. No matter what he did, it must remain unchanged, a place of tranquil repose, tied with unbreakable threads to the banks of the river.

But, apparently, time did not resemble a river at all, and it was a mistake to think that if one went away everything stayed the same. Thanks to Murray’s Time Travel, Charles had traveled to the year 2000, had witnessed the bloody war of the future where mankind did battle with the evil automatons for control of the planet, and had subsequently returned to the year 1898, when automatons were still considered mere toys. But that present had carried within it, like a latent disease, the seeds of the future. And two years later, events had so substantially altered the present that it could no longer lead to the future Charles had once considered immutable. The world he lived in now in 1900 had taken a different path and was no longer headed for the year 2000 as shown to them by Murray. Charles did not know where it was headed, but certainly not there, he said to himself, as he stood up from his straw pallet and stumbled jerkily toward the cell door. From there, he peered despondently at the outside world and gave a sigh: another morning and he had still not awoken from the nightmare in which he seemed to be living. As if to remind himself of this fact, he ran his fingers despairingly over the iron collar around his neck.

Dawn had not yet broken, but night was beginning to fade on the horizon, and a dim, faintly coppery light was slowly spreading over the plain where the gigantic metal construction built by the Martians stood. By now, everyone was aware the invaders did not come from Mars, but since their true origin was unknown, most people went on calling them that, possibly because they believed it was insulting to the invaders. Charles contemplated the tower with a rage deadened somewhat by the profound exhaustion that had seeped into his bones until it became part of his being. It was rumored that the pyramid was a machine that, once finished, would convert the Earth’s atmosphere into an element less harmful to the invaders. This transformation was one of many the Martians were carrying out on the planet in preparation for the long-awaited arrival of their emperor, who would be accompanied by the other members of their race, crossing space in a convoy of vast airships, their whole world packed into its holds. The handful of invaders that had conquered the Earth with such ease had in fact been no more than a small advance guard.

Farther away, close to the ruins of what until two years ago had been the greatest city in the world, stood the Martian camp, a jumble of randomly positioned globular tin shacks that housed the tiny task force in charge of the work camp where Charles was a prisoner. He had no idea where the extraterrestrials that had led the invasion lived, but he knew there were camps all over England and throughout the rest of the world, because now, two years after the invasion had begun, it could be said that the conquest of Earth was complete. After reducing London to rubble, the invaders had attacked other British cities, as their counterparts had done in Europe and on other continents, encountering nothing more than the token resistance offered by the mighty British Empire. And so Paris, Barcelona, Rome, Athens had all fallen. The entire planet had been subjugated, millions of humans had perished during the great war, and the few who had survived, among whom Charles had the dubious fortune to be counted, had been turned into slaves, into a labor force that the invaders had no qualms about working to death.

How could this possibly have happened? Charles asked himself again and again as the familiar feelings of despair and disbelief stirred within him. He had seen the future, a future that was clearly no longer going to happen. And there was something strange, something not quite right about all of it. No one else seemed to think so, not even Captain Shackleton, who was in the same camp, and whose cell Charles would visit as often as he could, perhaps because he hoped Shackleton might be able to answer all these questions. Most of the time, the captain would simply shrug or look at Charles with sympathy when he brought the subject up, when he insisted this couldn’t be happening. Well, it had been happening for two years, damn it! Shackleton would occasionally exclaim angrily when Winslow’s ceaseless questions tried his patience. The conversation would usually end there.