The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)(188)

But how could he not be in his world? He had traveled back in time to 1829, where he had made a change that had altered the future, and then had leapt forward to 1865, a year before his own birth, in the world that he himself had changed. He had thought that the only changes around him ought to have been those deriving from his destruction of the monster, and so he had difficulty believing that the purchase of a plaid suit by his twin was one of them. This could only mean that for some inexplicable reason, he had not come back to the same time line he had left. No, he had come back to a different world, similar but not identical. Wells shook his head as he watched Clayton take his place once more beside his twin. His conclusions had come like a bolt from the blue. But perhaps he was right, after all. What if these leaps in time did not take place in the same time line? And what if these parallel universes, as he called them, did not arise from each change made, but rather were already there, had been created beforehand? Wells imagined a universe made up of infinite versions of the same reality superimposed on one another like layers of pastry, an inventory of everything that could happen or be imagined, where each layer, depending on its proximity to its neighbor, could differ in details as insignificant as a plaid suit, or as transcendental as the destruction of a monster from outer space. Yes, there could be worlds where the steam engine had never been invented, or slavery had not been abolished, or cholera was unknown, or Shelley had not drowned when his schooner the Don Juan capsized, but Darwin had when the Beagle sank, or simply where Jack the Ripper had not murdered Mary Kelly on the night of November 9 but two days before.

The possibilities were endless. And in each of these worlds he would have a twin, there would be a Wells: there would be a Wells almost identical to him, but allergic to oysters, a Wells who would not have been a writer but a teacher, and a Wells who would have written the insufferable novels of Henry James, and, of course, there would also be a Wells who could not travel in time. There would be hundreds, thousands, infinite numbers of Wellses spread throughout a universe that was also infinite. And he would be able to leap from one world to another, possessing this . . . talent? this disease? Or was it truer to call it a curse? And so, he had not traveled back to his past, but rather to another past, a past that belonged to a parallel universe. But one where the Envoy had also crashed his airship into the Antarctic, and in which the Annawan had also become icebound (because, of course, there were thousands of worlds where these two events had not happened). In short, a past that was identical to his, except for a few details so insignificant he had failed to notice he had strayed into a different world. And then, after destroying the Envoy, he had traveled to another parallel future, to the future of a universe where his twin dressed with an audacity he had never possessed.

A universe, it suddenly dawned on him, where it was possible no one had destroyed the Envoy. A shiver ran down Wells’s spine as he contemplated the cylinder and wondered whether it might not contain a real Martian after all.

At that moment, the lid of the object began to unscrew, and an awed silence descended on the crowd. Standing in the first row, Wells’s twin and the inspector broke off their conversation and stared intently at the cylinder. If he remembered correctly, Clayton had been informing his twin that in less than an hour the army would have surrounded the cylinder, and his twin had been trying to convince him that such a show of force was unnecessary. But perhaps it was not unnecessary, as it hadn’t been the first time, Wells said to himself, remembering the ray the machine had spat out, directly hitting four or five onlookers, who within seconds were enveloped in flames, turning Horsell Common into a slaughterhouse. Was this what was going to happen again? Had he destroyed the Envoy in vain? Wells watched the lid finally fall to one side with a clatter. He felt his heart racing wildly as he prepared to be burnt to a crisp by the heat ray.

For a few moments nothing happened. And then, from inside the cylinder a species of flare flew up into the early morning sky, only to explode with a gentle bang, sketching a brilliant red flower in the air. Almost immediately, there followed another, and then another, and another, until the sky turned into a garden filled with wonders. Wells contemplated it bewildered, and he scarcely had time to realize that the Martian cylinder was launching a stream of fireworks into the air before a flock of tropical birds emerged in a blaze of color, instantly scattering in all directions, flying over the hats of the amazed crowd. Then a lively melody started up, which at first everyone assumed was also emanating from the cylinder, until the sound became louder, and they turned as one toward a cluster of nearby trees, from which a troupe of musicians emerged, decked out in colorful uniforms, and proceeded to advance across the grass toward the crowd, filling the air with a cheerful blare of trumpets, drums, and cymbals. Behind them, to everyone’s astonishment, there approached a troupe of a dozen horses with graceful ballerinas balanced on their backs. Before the audience had time to catch its breath, a handful of fire-eaters leapt out of the cylinder and began breathing balls of flame into the air.

Wells contemplated all this with a look of stunned disbelief, even as an immense wave of relief swept over him. Apparently, he was not going to die. No one there was going to die. He had ended up in a universe different than the one he had left, clearly a universe where the Envoy had never landed in the Antarctic but instead had crashed on a different planet or was still trapped in the ice, or perhaps another of Wells’s twins from a different parallel universe had killed him in the same way he had in the other world. In any event, the cylinder before him was entirely Murray’s work. The genuine Martian cylinders, if there actually were any in the world he was in now, must still be buried somewhere underground, where they would remain until corrosion and eternity eventually turned them to dust.