The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)(51)

XI

I IMAGINE THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE BEEN FOLLOWING my tale at all closely will have realized that despite my precautions I have made a mistake in my choice of where to begin. Obviously, if the sailor called Griffin destroys the Martian, as he has just done in so startling a manner, no expedition will be able to find it years later entombed in the ice, nor take it back to the Natural History Museum, where Wells will stumble upon it. I fear that when going back in time I must have chosen the beginning of another story similar to this one, but with a very different ending. I cannot apologize enough! However, permit me to try to make amends for my clumsiness.

How can I make this story fit with the prologue I have already narrated? Clearly there is only one possible way: by having Griffin not kill the demon from the stars. Let us imagine, then, that this curious sailor did not make an opportune appearance. Furthermore, let us imagine, to be on the safe side, that he never boarded the Annawan at all. You will agree that the story would have evolved very differently if we had dispensed with any of the other crew members, although not all of them would have had such a dramatic effect on the course of events. Say, for example, we had omitted the cook, an ugly, potbellied brute who answers to the resonant name of Dunn; there would be no change to the main events, beyond those relating to the crew’s daily meals, or how much rum the aforesaid individual filched from the store cupboard each day, something I have not referred to until now, for, unless it is absolutely necessary, I prefer not to sully the image of the human race by describing the dissoluteness of some of its members. Nor would it have produced any substantial change in the story had Potter and Granger boarded the Annawan and not Wallace and Ringwald; the former pair arrived when the crew was complete and signed up on another vessel, where Potter ended up stabbing Granger over a game of cards. For Potter and Granger would have behaved in exactly the same way as their predecessors, of that I am sure, because, as I have already told you, I am able to see all the other possibilities beyond the veil of our universe, the flowers that grow in the neighboring garden. However, in the tale that concerns us, Griffin’s appearance could not have been more relevant. Would the Martian have ended up frozen in the snow if the sailor had not turned up and skewered it with his harpoon? Would Reynolds really have had the guts to shoot himself in the head, or would he have scraped the bottom of the barrel of life, despite knowing it would condemn him to a horrific end? Would they have been saved thanks to some other unforeseen miracle not of their making or, on the contrary, would a blaze of inspiration have allowed one of them to perform a checkmate in extremis on that chessboard made of ice?

Let us discover the answers to those questions by making the sailor in our story disappear, as one might remove a cuckoo’s egg from the nest, thus restoring the natural course of things. Imagine that, as we have decided, Griffin never joined the crew of the Annawan and that the ship therefore set sail on her deadly mission with one less sailor on board. This did not simply mean that Dunn had to prepare one less meal a day, or that the waste bucket needed emptying less frequently. Without Griffin, for example, no one would have noticed that the object that hurtled through the sky and crashed into the mountain was being steered; Reynolds would have had no one to talk to on the way over to the flying machine; another sailor would have helped him back on board the Annawan after he stumbled on Carson’s body; and no one would have intervened when Captain MacReady placed a pistol to Reynolds’s head and threatened to kill him because he might be the creature. But first and foremost, and this is what should most concern us, no one would have harpooned the Martian just as it was about to end the lives of poor Reynolds and Allan. What would have happened then? How would the hunt have continued had Griffin never boarded the Annawan to escape a woman’s clutches, only to end up confronting the demon from the stars?

Ignore my mistake, which is almost certainly due to my failings as a narrator, and travel back with me a few moments in time, to when the monster has fought off the dogs and is lurching toward Reynolds and Allan, spreading its claws, and let us see how things turn out.

The explorer, pressing the pistol to his head, watched the powerful, inhuman, enormous creature approaching and noticed that a strange calm had come over him. He no longer felt fear, euphoria, or defeat. He felt nothing. He had used up his supply of emotions during the drama of the past few hours. Now he was empty, save for a flicker of terrible indifference about his own fate. None of this seemed to be happening to him. It was as if he were watching it from a great distance, as might a bird sailing overhead, only vaguely interested in the strange goings-on below, where usually nothing much happened. The explorer stroked the trigger, pressing it lightly. He looked up at the Martian, which, as though sensing that Reynolds was about to deprive it of its satisfaction, had quickened its pace. The explorer smiled, watching the creature approach, its gaze fixed on him. He wanted to keep his own eyes open until the moment he pulled the trigger, so that he could take with him to the afterlife the look of defeat that would no doubt register on the Martian’s face when it realized he had escaped its claws by taking the shortcut of suicide. Reynolds tried to swallow the lump in his throat. Would it hurt, or would he feel nothing when the bullet made his brain burst into a spray of thoughts, scattering his dreams over the snow? How easy it is to destroy a man and all he brings with him! Reynolds thought. And how na?ve of them to imagine they could destroy with their pathetic weapons that powerful being, whose superiority far outstripped Man’s wildest dreams! That creature was Evil incarnate, indestructible and eternal. It had survived repeated shootings, as well as the explosion. The cold did not affect it. He knew now that even the bullet encrusted in MacReady’s skull would not have killed it. Everything had failed. All that was left to him was the pyrrhic victory of taking his own life.