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

When Serviss sent Wells his novel, together with a letter praising Wells’s work with nauseating fervor and almost demanding that he give the sequel his blessing, Wells had not deigned to reply. Nor had he responded to the half dozen other letters doggedly seeking Wells’s approval. Serviss even had the nerve to suggest, based upon the similarities and common interests he perceived in their works, that they write a novel together. After reading Serviss’s tale, all Wells could feel was a mixture of irritation and disgust. That utterly childish, clumsy piece of prose was a shameless insult to other writers who, like himself, did their best to fill the bookshop shelves with more or less worthy creations. However, Wells’s silence did not stanch the flow of letters, which if anything appeared to intensify. In the latest of these, the indefatigable Serviss begged Wells to be so kind as to lunch with him the following week during his two-day visit to London. Nothing, he said, would make him happier than to be able to enjoy a pleasant discussion with the esteemed author, with whom he had so much in common. And so, Wells had made up his mind to end his dissuasive silence, which had evidently done no good, and to accept Serviss’s invitation. Here was the perfect opportunity to sit down with Serviss and tell him what he really thought of his novel. So the man wanted his opinion, did he? Well, he’d give it to him, then. Wells could imagine how the luncheon would go: he would sit opposite Serviss, with unflappable composure, and in a calm voice politely masking his rage, would tell him how appalled he was that Serviss had chosen an idealized version of Edison as the hero of his novel. In Wells’s view, the inventor of the electric lightbulb was an untrustworthy, bad-tempered fellow who created his inventions at the expense of others and who had a penchant for designing lethal weapons. Wells would tell Serviss that from any point of view the novel’s complete lack of literary merit and its diabolical plot made it an unworthy successor to his own. He would tell him that the message contained in its meager, repugnant pages was diametrically opposed to his and had more in common with a jingoistic pamphlet, since its childish moral boiled down to this: it was unwise to step on the toes of Thomas Edison or of the United States of America. And furthermore he would tell him all this with the added satisfaction of knowing that after he had unburdened himself, the excoriated Serviss would be the one paying for his lunch.

The author had been so wrapped up in his own thoughts that when he returned to reality he discovered his feet had taken him into Greek Street, where he found himself standing in front of the old, forgotten theater at number twelve. But do not be taken in by the look of surprise on Wells’s face: this was no coincidence, for in his life every action had a purpose; nothing was left to chance or impulse. However much he now tried to blame his innocent feet, Wells had gone there with the precise intention of finding that very theater, whose fa?ade he now contemplated with what could only be described as somber rage. Consider yourselves welcome, then, and prepare for a tale packed with thrills and excitement, both for those ladies of a sentimental nature who will enjoy the romantic exploits of the charming and skeptical Miss Harlow, to whom I will have the pleasure of introducing you later on, and for the more intrepid gentlemen, who will undoubtedly tremble at the weird and wonderful adventures of our characters, such as this thin little man with a birdlike face, solemnly contemplating the theater. Observe him carefully, then. Observe his thin blond mustache with which he attempts to impose a more adult appearance on his childlike features, his finely drawn mouth and bright, lively eyes, behind which it is impossible not to perceive a sparkling intellect as sharp as it is impractical. In spite of his ordinary, less-than-heroic looks, Wells will play the most important role in this tale, the exact beginning of which is difficult to pinpoint, but which for him (and for our purposes) begins on this quiet morning in 1898, an unusually glorious morning, in which, as you can see, there is nothing to suggest to the author that in less than two hours’ time, he will discover something so astonishing that it will forever alter his deepest-held beliefs.

But I will stop beating about the bush and reveal to you what you have no doubt been puzzling over for the past few minutes: why has Wells paused? Is he perhaps regretting the closure of the venue where he had spent so many nights enjoying the best stage plays of the time? Not a bit. As you will discover, Wells was not easily prone to nostalgia. He had come to a halt outside that old theater because, some years earlier, it had become home to a very special company: Murray’s Time Travel. Do the smiles playing on the lips of some of you mean the aforementioned establishment is already familiar to you? However, I must show consideration to the rest of my readers, and since, along with the knowing smiles, I noticed more than a few raised eyebrows, no doubt occasioned by the company’s curious name, I must hasten to explain to any newcomers that this extravagant enterprise had opened its doors to the public with the intention of realizing what is perhaps Man’s most ambitious dream: traveling in time. A desire that Wells himself had awoken in the public with his first novel, The Time Machine. Murray’s Time Travel’s introductory offer consisted of a trip to the future: to the twentieth of May in the year 2000, to be precise, the day when the decisive battle for the future of the world would take place, as depicted on the billboard still attached to the side of the building. This showed the brave Captain Shackleton brandishing his sword against his arch enemy Solomon, king of the automatons. It would be a century before that memorable battle took place, in which the captain would succeed in saving the human race from extinction, although, thanks to Murray’s Time Travel, almost the whole of England had already witnessed it. Regardless of the exorbitant cost of the tickets, people had thronged outside the old theater, eager to watch the battle their wretched mortal existences would have prevented them from seeing, as though it were a fashionable new opera. Wells must have been the only man on Earth who hadn’t shed a tear for that oversized braggart, in whose memory a statue had been erected in a nearby square. There he stood, on a pedestal shaped like a clock, smiling self-importantly, one huge paw tickling the air, as though conjuring a spell, the other resting on the head of Eternal, his dog, for whom Wells couldn’t help feeling a similar aversion.