The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)(20)

Earlier, while Foster and Doctor Walker were dragging him back to the ship, reeling with pain, Reynolds had regretted his recklessness, not simply because it made him look foolish in front of the crew, and would fuel the captain’s mockery, but because it had prevented him from exploring the surrounding area as he had been longing to do from the moment they became icebound. But now he was glad of his foolish act because, as Sergeant Allan had pointed out, it would have been impossible in that dense fog to find his longed-for passage to the center of the Earth unless he had fallen directly into it. Not to mention the threat posed by the creature from the machine, which had almost certainly ended the wretched lives of Carson and Ringwald. On hearing that, Reynolds decided that a burn seemed a modest price to pay for having avoided putting his life in peril.

However, he had to admit that the expedition was not turning out quite as he had expected, and after the recent events it was difficult to predict what would happen next. He remembered the series of obstacles he had been obliged to overcome in order to get this far and the enemies he had made because of his persistence. It had not been easy to find backers for such an expedition, owing to the fact that the vast majority of people gave no thought whatsoever to whether the Earth might be hollow. Needless to say, Reynolds did. Indeed, he could almost claim he had been inside it, albeit only in his dreams.

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IT HAD ALL BEGUN on a distant afternoon when, by sheer chance, one man had changed Jeremiah Reynolds’s fate. From that day on, he had ceased drifting and had set off along a single pathway, whose end was very clearly mapped out.

He had been passing by a public lecture hall in Wilmington, Ohio, when he heard loud guffaws coming from within. And if Reynolds needed anything after a disappointing day’s work at the newspaper he edited, it was laughter. To understand his state of mind that day, you would need to know a little more about him, and so allow me to interrupt our story to give you a brief tour of the explorer’s soul. Like many others before and after, Reynolds was born into abject poverty. He had been obliged to start work young to pay for all his needs, from resoling his boots to enrolling at university. From a tender age, although that may not be the most suitable expression in this case, he had been an avid reader. But he was more interested in accounts of voyages and discoveries than in novels. With astonishing zeal he had devoured Marco Polo’s tales, the flattering biography of Columbus written by the explorer’s own son, the heroic epics of those who first ventured to the North and South poles, and into darkest Africa.

Understandably, all these daring exploits had shaped Reynolds’s youthful fantasies, and he had grown up dreaming of emulating those men, who had carved their names on the tablet of History and, more important, had won untold wealth and fame for themselves and their descendants. Reynolds despised mediocrity and very early on had begun to feel superior to everyone around him, although even he was unable to define what exactly that superiority was based upon, for it was plain to see he had no outstanding talent, nor any extraordinary physical attributes, nor was he of above average intelligence. Up until then, Reynolds could not be said to differ much from other young men, not even in this persistent belief in his own superiority, so natural in Man. In what way, for example, was he any different from the accountant who lived in the same building and whom he looked down on scornfully whenever they met on the stairs? The thing that made him stand out from his neighbors was his belief in himself, the absolute conviction that he was destined for a life of grand, heroic exploits. For Reynolds sensed he had not come into the world to live such a shamefully dull life. And yet the years went by without anything happening to suggest he could unearth the astonishing secret destiny that awaited him. It is true that he soon stopped suffering hardship, since he managed to finish his studies and even became editor of a newspaper, but these worldly successes, within anyone’s reach, did not quench his thirst for glory. Deep down, Reynolds felt he was wasting his life, the only life he had, a life that, when it ended, he would care so little about that he might as well have been carried off as a child by the smallpox. In short, he was fed up with wallowing in mediocrity while relating the heroic deeds of others, recounting miracles that never happened to him. That was not why he had been born. He had been born so that his brave exploits would be splashed all over the newspapers, exploits that would make him the envy of his fellow men, causing their wives to swoon and their mothers to sigh with admiration; even their lapdogs would bark, for his extraordinary prowess would not go unnoticed even in the animal kingdom.

Unfortunately, he had no idea how to achieve his dreams, and it should therefore come as no surprise that his nights were as close to torture as it is possible to imagine. Lying in the dark, waiting for the oblivion of sleep, Reynolds would torment himself by recalling epic passages he had read in his books about explorers, and when he grew tired of that, he would puncture the gloom with what sounded like his last gasps, bemoaning the fact that everything worth discovering had already been discovered. For it was clearly not enough simply to discover something. What glory and riches could be gained from mapping out each cranny in the Antarctic’s frozen coastline, for example? None. It took far more ingenuity to be able to discover something that both changed History and guaranteed one immortality, while at the same time, if possible, lining one’s pockets. However, he had to proceed with great caution, for in the years between Marco Polo’s return in 1295 and Columbus’s departure in 1492, dozens of explorers had made important discoveries, and yet their names had been virtually forgotten, eclipsed by the discovery of the Americas. And what was worse, almost none of those brave adventurers had obtained more than a pittance and a lifetime of fevers. Who remembered Brother Oderico da Pordenone, for example, who fought his way into deepest China through India and Malaysia? Or the Arab Ibn Battuta, who explored Central Asia and North Africa? Not even the renowned Christopher Columbus had played his cards right. He managed to convince the royal court that the Earth was much smaller than the ancient Greek Eratosthenes’ calculations had suggested, and that he, Columbus, would discover a sea route to the East Indies that would assure a flourishing spice trade—although what most impressed Reynolds were the advantageous terms he had negotiated for himself. Unfortunately, in the wake of his fabulous success, he acquired some powerful enemies, who were quick to denounce his mistreatment of the native populations. In the end, the deplorable way he governed his viceroyalty had gradually meant the loss of his prestige and power. Yes, the profession of discoverer was clearly fraught with dangers, and not merely the ones lurking in the jungle undergrowth.