The Map of the Sky

by Félix J Palma

  “Even so, I confess that you, Mr. Wells, possess an imagination far superior to that of most men,” said the Envoy, addressing the author. Then he stepped out of the shadows, at last exposing himself to the lamplight so that we could all see his face. “Or should I say we,” he added.

  We gazed with astonishment at the Envoy’s appearance, for it was none other than that of Mr. Wells. Seeing him standing there, hands in pockets, smiling at us with Wells’s familiar good-natured skepticism, we were suddenly confused. Not nearly as confused as the real Wells, of course, who stood staring at his double, pale and rigid as a statue, his face twisted in a grimace. Wells’s amazement was quite understandable, for as the reader will appreciate, he was seeing himself without the aid of a mirror, and from angles a mirror would never reveal. He was seeing himself in three dimensions, gesturing, talking even. He was seeing himself for the first time in his life from the outside, the way others saw him. Wells’s reaction made his reflection laugh.

  “I suppose you didn’t expect me to appear before you in the guise of Mr. Wells, given that he’s still alive.” The Envoy contemplated our bewilderment disdainfully. “I, too, was surprised when I discovered that the man whose appearance I had borrowed was asking to see me and had come all the way down here, to our humble refuge in the sewers of London.” The Envoy stroked his whiskers, the way the real Wells sometimes did, and gave a contented smile. “Though by describing them as humble I don’t wish to criticize this network of tunnels running alongside the real sewers, built by our brothers who infiltrated the teams of engineers and laborers of the period. A hidden world, secreted behind the other underground world that lies beneath London. As if your adorable Alice had followed the White Rabbit twice. A mirror behind another mirror, wouldn’t you say? I believe you humans are fond of such ideas and images.”

  Wells went on staring at the Envoy with the same contorted look on his face, as though he was about to faint.

  “How?” he managed to splutter.

  His question appeared to move the Envoy.

  “Forgive my rudeness, Mr. Wells. I expect you want to know how I managed to duplicate you,” he said, stroking his whiskers once more. “Very well, allow me to explain. I imagine you’ve realized by now that we can adopt the form of various living creatures. Thanks to this ability, my brothers have been able to live clandestinely among you all this time. Apart from when we’re born, of course, only in death is our true appearance revealed. Yes, death robs us of our disguise, which is why our ancestors decided to build a private cemetery down here. And in order to make the transformation, one drop of your blood is enough. After obtaining it we’re careful to get rid of the donor. We don’t wish to give ourselves away by producing a suspicious epidemic of twins.”

  “Good God,” murmured Emma. “And the children, are they, too . . . ?”

  “Naturally, miss,” the Envoy replied politely. “It isn’t the most suitable form for us, nor is it our first choice: a child’s body has few advantages, but we’ve occasionally been obliged to duplicate them. And yes, the original children die, of course. But their parents have no idea and therefore don’t lament their loss. They only think their children have become more intelligent, or more unruly.” The Envoy gave a much more sinister version of Wells’s familiar laugh. “However, in the case of Mr. Wells, he gave me his blood without my asking for it, and without my being able to kill him. This is why there are now two of us in this place that is so unworthy of him.”

  “He gave it to you?” Murray asked, seeing that Wells was still incapable of responding. “How the devil did he do that?”

  “By chance—to use an expression only employed by your race,” the Envoy replied, looking at Murray contemptuously. Then he turned his attention back to Wells. “But, as I just explained, the notion of chance doesn’t exist in the rest of the universe. And so, from a loftier point of view, we might say you gave it to me because you had to, Mr. Wells. Because it was written, to use another of your popular expressions.”

  “Stop philosophizing and tell me how I did it,” Wells demanded brusquely, rousing himself from his daze.

  “Can’t you guess?” Wells’s double sighed and shook his head, half disappointed, half amused. “Of course you can’t. Perhaps it would help if I told you I arrived on this planet sixty-eight years ago and spent the last eighteen years in an uncomfortable tomb in your Natural History Museum.”

  The Envoy’s words once again stunned Wells, but not Clayton.

  “I knew it! The creature wasn’t dead!” the inspector exclaimed, taking the opportunity of placing himself before the Envoy. “Our scientists were mistaken. But how did you do it? How did you wake up?”

  The Envoy raised his eyebrows, surprised by Clayton’s outburst, but immediately resumed his disdainful sneer.

  “I was about to tell you,” he replied, while Clayton withdrew his artificial hand behind his back, so the Envoy couldn’t see it. “Clearly I wasn’t dead, contrary to all appearances, as the shrewd inspector has just observed. I was in a similar state to what you call hibernation. They transported me to London in a block of ice from the Antarctic, where I had inadvertently crashed my spaceship, and they thought I was dead, but I only needed a little blood to bring me back to life. Mr. Wells supplied me with that, unintentionally, of course. I assume he must have had an open wound when he touched me. In any event it was more than enough. And so I was able to launch the invasion, as you have seen. An invasion that would have started long ago had it not been for my untimely accident.” He gave Wells a look of amused compassion. “Yes, Mr. Wells, thanks to you I was able to continue the mission that brought me to this planet. However, I’m not the only one who should thank you. All my people should thank you, in particular the brothers who have been living among you for centuries. Since the sixteenth century, to be precise, when the first volunteers arrived, charged with watching over the Earth and evaluating it as a possible future sanctuary for our race. A noble and often thankless task, in this case, because on this planet my brothers die.” The Envoy gave a theatrical grimace of sorrow. “Yes, the excess of oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere is detrimental to us, which is why we never considered Earth a viable home. However, we have used up all the ideal planets and must be content to colonize those we can adapt. With the suitable transformations, we will be able to survive on your planet for several generations. This is why I came, to organize the conquest of Earth and prepare it for the arrival of our race. So, you see, if it weren’t for your selfless gesture, Mr. Wells, I wouldn’t have woken up in time and the clandestine colony on your planet would have died out, perhaps in one or two generations. Earth would have survived, at least until it destroyed itself.”

  The Envoy’s words crushed Wells almost bodily, for he appeared to lean forward, suddenly pale and trembling. He stood there while Jane put her arms around him, and the rest of us gazed at him, more amazed than disapproving.

  “Don’t torment yourself, Mr. Wells!” I heard the Envoy say reassuringly, as I watched Inspector Clayton getting ready to unscrew his forefinger. “You aren’t to blame, not in the sense you humans give to the word anyway. It is simply that, whilst you are an extremely inferior race, some of you possess more developed minds than the rest. And such is the case with you, Mr. Wells. Put in a language you can easily understand, your mind is capable of communicating with the universe, of tuning in to what we might refer to as a higher consciousness, the nature of which is beyond your comprehension, of course. This is completely inconceivable to the rest of your fellow men, with a few rare exceptions. Although, naturally, you yourself are unaware of it.” The Envoy contemplated Wells, a tender smile on his face. “I know that you continually wonder why certain things happen to you, or why you make them happen. But you see, Mr. Wells, things don’t happen to you, or because of you—things happen through you.”

  “And what the devil is that supposed to mean?” exclaimed Murray, who must also have seen what Clayton was doing. “Are you insinuating that all
of us here who don’t look like H. G. Wells belong to an inferior race? Do you think we others don’t understand what you’re blathering on about? I think we all understand perfectly.”

  “Do you really?” The bogus Wells scowled at Murray, visibly irritated by his interruption. “You only understand me because I’ve lowered myself to your level, using concepts that are simple enough for you to comprehend. You could say I’m speaking to you in my sleep, or inebriated, if you prefer.”

  “And to what do I owe the honor of your wanting to talk to me, inebriated or not?” asked the real Wells in a feeble display of petulance.

  I gave Clayton a sidelong glance to see how he was getting on, and my heart nearly leapt into my throat. The inspector was unscrewing his fake forefinger and with mouselike steps was moving away from us and imperceptibly closer to the Envoy. Damn it, Clayton, do it now! I wanted to shout, incapable of containing my tension any longer.

  “I was curious,” I heard the Envoy say to Wells, even as Clayton began surreptitiously raising his mechanical arm. “Your mind is unlike that of any of my previous hosts, and not simply because you are more imaginative or intelligent than other men. No, I’m referring to the fact that your mind possesses a . . . how can I describe it? A mysterious mechanism, and I want to find out what it is for. Although, judging from your face, even you don’t know the answer.”

  Hearing the Envoy’s words, Clayton stopped what he was doing and gave Wells a meaningful look, which I couldn’t understand. Wells looked back at Clayton for what seemed like an eternity and then turned to the Envoy.

  “Why all the interest?” he said. “You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t afraid of what I might do with it.”

  The Envoy gave a look of surprise, which he instantly masked with a smile of amused admiration.

  “You’re an exceptionally intelligent human, Mr. Wells. And you’re quite right. Of course we’re not having this conversation because I’m curious about you, but rather because I’m . . . afraid of you.”

  We all looked at Wells in astonishment, but the author said nothing. He simply contemplated the Envoy solemnly, and for a moment, the pair of them looked like reflections.

  “Yes, Mr. Wells,” the Envoy went on. “You have the privilege of making me afraid, of instilling fear into a being infinitely superior to Man in every way. And do you want to know why? Because not only do I replicate the body of those whose blood I steal. I replicate their minds and everything in them: their memories, their abilities, their dreams, and their desires. An exact replica of the original. That is why I only need delve into the recesses of your brain to know more about your childhood than you yourself, to discover the tepid feelings you pass off to your wife as love, to unearth your most shameful desires, to reason, even to write as you do. Because I am you, everything that you are, everything that is great and sordid in you. And the brain inside my skull, which is identical to yours, also contains the mechanism I mentioned. And I don’t know what it’s for, and that terrifies me. How can I explain it? Imagine if you dissected a simple cockroach and discovered in its tiny body something unknown and completely incomprehensible. Wouldn’t it make you afraid, terribly afraid?”

  “I’m not sure whether to be flattered or insulted,” the real Wells retorted with icy calm.

  The Envoy gave a rueful smile.

  “I don’t know whether this mechanism can be used to make the tomatoes in your greenhouse grow bigger, or to kill off our race,” he said with a weary sigh. “But this doesn’t concern me, Mr. Wells; what concerns me is what it all means. There’s something inside your brain that no other species in the universe possesses. Something we know nothing about—we who thought we knew everything. This means the universe isn’t what we thought it was, that it still contains secrets unknown to our race—secrets that could destroy us. I’m not sure if you humans can conceive of what that means, given the difference between your place in the universe and ours.” The Envoy fell silent for a few moments, caught up in his own reflections, until finally he shrugged and sighed. “But perhaps I’m being unduly alarmist. Now that I’ve discovered you’re alive and have survived the invasion, we may be able to resolve the matter. As soon as the rest of our race arrives on Earth, our scientists will dissect your brain, and we’ll get to the bottom of the mystery. We’ll find out what is hidden in your head, Mr. Wells, and we’ll no longer be afraid of you.”

  As the color drained from Wells’s face, the Envoy studied each of us, one by one, like a general inspecting his troops.

  “As for you, I’m pleased to see you’re all healthy, robust specimens, as we’ll be needing slaves to help us build a new world on the ruins of the old one.”

  “In that case, I’m sorry to have to wreck your plans,” Clayton suddenly declared.

  We realized with a shudder that, like it or not, our mad escape plan was about to begin. We stiffened, ready to perform our role in it as best we could. The inspector raised his artificial hand, as if to stop a moving train, and a moment later, it spat out a stream of smoke into the face of the Envoy, who disappeared behind the opaque screen that fell between him and us.

  “Quick, get out!” Clayton commanded, shouting over his shoulder at us.

  As though we were carrying an invisible battering ram, we hurtled toward the door. First Shackleton, then Murray, who shielded the ladies with his bearlike frame, and behind them, Wells, Harold, and myself, relegated for differing reasons to a secondary role in this surprise escape: Wells owing to his fragile constitution, Harold because of his advanced age, and myself on account of my strong sense of self-preservation, which had always inclined me to avoid any physical combat outside of fencing classes. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of looking back, and, through the blanket of smoke, I was able to glimpse the Envoy’s transformation. This made me stop, as if I were bewitched. With a mixture of horror and fascination, I saw the false Wells’s body begin to swell up, distorting rapidly in a series of rhythmical convulsions. In a matter of seconds, he had changed into a monstrous four-legged beast the size of an elephant, with what appeared to be a long, thick tail. A thunderous roar showed me he also possessed a formidable throat. Suddenly, as I gazed in awe at the hideous transformation, the creature’s thick spiky green tail emerged fully from the veil of smoke spreading through the room and flailed around in the air. As though searching for something to hit, the tail struck Clayton, knocking him to the ground, then snaked toward me. Mesmerized as I was, I couldn’t even react. The tail wound itself swiftly around my throat, and, unable to comprehend what was happening, I felt my feet lift off the floor. The pressure of the tail around my throat made it difficult for me to breathe, and my vision became blurred.

  Kicking in midair, I struggled to free myself from the slippery noose but quickly realized that my efforts were in vain. Terrified, I understood I was on the verge of choking to death. But before that could happen, I saw Harold enter my field of vision, brandishing the letter opener that had been lying on the desk. With a well-aimed blow that must have taken all his strength, the coachman plunged the knife into the creature’s tail. The tail released me and thrashed around in the air while I fell to the ground with a thud, faint and gasping for breath, but able to see the tail now coil itself around Harold’s throat with such force that he dropped the letter opener. I tried to pull myself to my feet so that I could grab it and reproduce Harold’s exploit, but I felt too faint. And so, half kneeling on the ground, I could only watch as the creature dragged Harold inside the smoke cloud. There came the sinister crunch of bones, followed by a muffled scream, and all I could do was utter a curse. Harold had sacrificed his life for me, for someone who clearly didn’t deserve it. I looked around for Clayton through the smoke screen he himself had created, but was unable to see where he had fallen when the monster’s tail struck him. And so it was impossible for me to know whether he had been knocked unconscious and we were all still at the mercy of the Martian, or whether, on the contrary, at any moment a flash of light would illum
inate the inside of the smoke cloud, revealing that the inspector had executed his plan and that we would all be blown sky high in a matter of seconds. I decided not to stay to find out.

  I rose unsteadily to my feet, trying to overcome my dizziness, and stumbled toward the door, the swirling smoke blurring everything around me. Outside, it felt as though I had arrived at the theater after the start of the performance: Captain Shackleton was laying out one of the Martian guards with a fearsome blow. A few yards away, Murray was sitting astride the other, crushing him under his weight. He must have followed Clayton’s advice and jumped on him by surprise, and now both of them were wrestling frantically, and aiming clumsy blows at each other. But just then, before the creature was able to transform itself, Murray seized the Martian’s head and twisted it sharply, producing a snapping sound. Murray stood up, his back to us, gasping and reeling from the exertion. Flattened against one of the walls, Wells and the two women contemplated the scene, terribly pale, shocked by this dreadful display of violence. A quick glance told me there were no other guards, and I could only thank Heaven the priest had thought it enough to leave only two of them at the door.

  “Quick!” I cried, running toward them. “We have to get out of here.”

  We all fled back down the tunnel that had brought us there, Shackleton once more leading the way, afraid that at any moment we would hear the terrible explosion that would blow us into the air, hurling us against the walls like so many rag dolls. But instead, what we heard was a deafening animal roar filled with savage hate, and alarmingly close. I glanced over my right shoulder and saw the Envoy’s monstrous figure emerging through the doorway. Despite the dim lighting and the haze from the smoke, I was able to confirm the truly terrifying nature of his appearance. The powerful creature pursuing us looked like a dragon from a medieval bestiary: its skin was an iridescent green, it had a ridge of spikes along its back, and its mouth was crammed with huge fangs, from which hung shreds of bloody flesh.