The Map of Chaos

by Félix J Palma

  “And then there were three.”

  “Damn you, you son of a bitch,” Wells spluttered, feeling his rage burning in his throat. “I hope you pay for all your crimes.”

  “I very much doubt it, Professor.” The creature grinned. “Well, the time has come to hit you where it hurts most,” he said, training the pistol on Jane.

  Seeing his wife threatened was enough to make Wells lose any semblance of calm, and the book’s destruction and that of the multiverse itself paled into insignificance. He made as if to grab Jane’s bag, but she clasped it to her chest. The Villain understood.

  “Ah, so that is where it is. Then you are no longer of any use to me, Professor.” His pistol swept through the air until it was pointing at Wells. “This is between your charming wife and me.”

  Wells looked at the muzzle of the pistol trained on him and then at Jane. It broke his heart to see her face contorted with fear, her cheeks damp with tears. He gave her a tender smile, to which her lips responded instantly. There was no need for words. During their many years together, they had learned to communicate with their eyes, and so Wells let all his feelings for Jane flow out from them. Their life had been extraordinary, an adventure worth telling, and he had enjoyed sharing it with her—the best possible traveling companion he could have had on the path toward Supreme Knowledge. I love you, he said to her silently, I love you in all the possible and impossible ways imaginable, and she replied the same . . . but Wells felt that she was speaking to him from very far away. He gazed intently at her beloved face, and he had the impression it was no longer there in front of him but was more like a memory. Then he saw that Jane’s eyes were clouded by a kind of giddiness and instantly realized what was happening to her: he knew those symptoms well. He knew that she, too, had understood, and with one final smile, brimming with pride and encouragement, he bade her farewell, wishing her all the luck in the world. Then he turned to face the Villain, who at that precise moment (only a second after Wells had turned to his wife, because a second was all they had needed to tell each other everything I have just told you, dear reader) pulled the trigger. The bullet ripped through Wells’s heart, where he kept his love for Jane, as she started to fade, and everything went black.

  Jane had to stifle a cry when the man she loved collapsed at her feet. She was grateful not to be able to see the expression on his face because the giddiness was clouding her vision. She wanted to cling to that last look Bertie had given her, the memory of which she would need in order to confront the sinister fate threatening her. She straightened up, turning to face the Villain’s pistol. She clutched the bag to her as tightly as she could, so she would not lose it during the jump. Her gesture appeared to amuse Rhys: he was not expecting to have any difficulty wrenching it from her.

  “Good-bye, Marcus,” said the old lady.

  “Good-bye, Mrs. Lansbury.” The Villain smiled politely.

  He pulled the trigger. But the bullet never hit her. With nothing to hinder it, it flew through the air, slamming into one of the framed photographs on the wall at the level of Jane’s heart. The impact caused the glass to shatter into a dozen pieces. It was no longer so easy to identify Wells and his wife in that little boat, he rowing cheerfully while she sat behind, gazing at him with infinite tenderness, as if reality were no more than what they could see and touch and they had all the time in the world to enjoy it together, always together.

  30

  EXECUTIONER 2087V FINISHED READING AND left the bundle of papers on the desk. He remained motionless, and his sphinx-like figure, modeled from the first darkness that enveloped the world, merged into the shadows.

  After a while, he heard a key being inserted clumsily into the front door, but he did not stir. He was content to trace the movements with his auditory sensors: he heard his victim open the door, light the oil lamp in the hall, hobble through to the kitchen, open the pantry door, and put away a meager bag of groceries. Finally he heard the sound of footsteps slowly climbing the stairs to where bedroom was, and the tiny study, inside which Death lay in wait. When the footsteps reached the top of the stairs, they turned toward the bedroom before halting abruptly. The Executioner understood that the Latent had just noticed that the study door was ajar. There followed a moment’s silence, in which the ruthless killer could feel his victim’s fear firing through his circuits. Had someone opened the study door, his victim must have been wondering, petrified in the middle of the corridor. Then he heard the footsteps moving cautiously toward where he sat, wrapped in darkness. A shaft of light seeped into the study as his victim stood in the doorway. Although the sound it made was barely audible, the Executioner could hear his victim’s hand resting on the door, pushing it open gently, letting the lamplight trace the contours of the furniture in the study, including the huge shadow waiting for his victim in the chair. The Executioner rose to his feet, tall and dark, like an archangel of death, and victim and slayer exchanged looks for a moment, recognizing each other. The Executioner fingered his cane almost imperceptibly, but Mrs. Lansbury said, “Since you have invited yourself in, I hope you will at least be kind enough to share a cup of tea with me before killing me.”

  • • •

  “ER . . . DO YOU TAKE milk?”

  The Executioner and Mrs. Lansbury were sitting at the tiny kitchen table, lit only by the flickering flame of the oil lamp. On the table sat a chipped teapot, two steaming cups, and the little porcelain jug, which the old lady had just picked up with trembling fingers.

  Executioner 2087V’s lips quivered slightly.

  “Will I feel more pleasure?”

  “Oh . . . well, I think there are differing opinions about that. Personally, I prefer it without, but, alas, this cheap brew is all I can afford, and since I have no biscuits to offer you as an accompaniment, I suggest you take a drop of milk.”

  There was silence. Followed by more silence.

  “All right.” The Executioner focused on the diminutive old lady, and she saw something fleeting in his eyes that made them seem for a few moments less terrifying. “Thank you very much, Mrs. Lansbury . . . or should I call you Mrs. Wells?”

  The old lady smiled.

  “Call me Jane. And I suppose that because I am still alive you must be Executioner . . . 2087V.”

  The air around the killer nodded imperceptibly. Jane also nodded, serving herself milk after pouring some into the Executioner’s steaming cup. Her movements were quick and efficient, despite her hands shaking with old age. She closed her eyes and sipped her tea. As the hot liquid scalded her lips and ran down her throat, she felt her strength renewed. She was alive, she told herself, she was still alive . . . She had succeeded. Her broken old body had survived the onslaught of the years, the torments of loneliness, and here she was at the meeting she and her husband had eagerly awaited for so long. She had only jumped twice, but some deity had heard her prayers, it seemed, and her level of infection had been enough to attract one of those ruthless killers. And not just any one: the one who had opened his mind to Bertie, the one riddled with guilt because of his ghastly mission, the perfect Executioner to whom to entrust The Map of Chaos and the salvation of the world. If it weren’t for the fact that she no longer had it, of course . . . Jane cursed to herself, then, with a sigh, replaced the cup on the saucer and opened her eyes, only to find the Executioner staring at her fixedly. She couldn’t help thinking, despite the immense sadness she felt, that her former world had created one of the most beautiful deaths imaginable. With scientific curiosity she observed the pale hands of that phenomenon, lying inert on the table like two mythical birds left there by some hunter, and then she regarded his face, whose features seemed to have been shaped out of the soft light of dawn and the primeval darkness of night. Well, I never! she reflected, fascinated. And to think we marveled at the automatons created by Prometheus Industries!

  “Can you eat and drink?” she inquired with interest, pointing at the cup of tea she had poured for him, which was still untouched.


  The Executioner smiled, although it would be more precise to say that his mouth curved like the neck of a dying swan.

  “I don’t need to, but I can.”

  The old lady extended a trembling hand toward one of his and caressed it gently, marveling like a child.

  “Oh, it is warm . . . I don’t think I could tell the difference between that and real skin . . .”

  “It is skin,” the Executioner informed her. “Most of my body is made of synthetic bio-cells.”

  “But, then . . . what are you?”

  “I’m a cybernetic organism. I was made by the best bio-robotic engineers on the Other Side.” He paused. “There was a time when I felt proud to say that . . . But not any longer.”

  “Well, you should try to recapture that feeling,” Jane said, looking straight at him. “You are a wonderful . . . creation. I would have given my right arm if we had possessed the technology capable of creating something like you in my generation! Besides, pride is a good thing. It keeps guilt and despair at bay. Believe me, I know. Sometimes, when you have lost everything, pride is the only thing you have left—” The old lady’s voice snapped like a dry twig. She raised a wrinkled hand to her lips and blinked a few times until she took hold of herself. “The day my husband was . . . murdered,” she went on with sudden vehemence, “I jumped into a parallel world, as I assume you must have read in my manuscript . . . There I was, washed up on a strange shore, only this time I was alone, widowed, racked by grief and persecuted by a deranged killer . . . I imagine the easiest thing would have been to admit defeat, to take my own life in the most painless way possible, to let the eternal night of Chaos descend on the universe without caring in the slightest . . . But I realized that not only was the fate of all possible worlds in my hands, but also that of my husband’s magnum opus, for which he had sacrificed his life, and for which he should be remembered. And so I swore to myself that one day humanity would be as proud of H. G. Wells as I am.” She sighed, smiling sadly at the ruthless killer. “You see, it was pride that made me decide to carry on.”

  For several seconds another silence fell upon them. Then Jane nodded absentmindedly.

  “Bio-robotic engineers . . . ,” she said, savoring those words, which evoked the exquisite, distant pleasures of scientific research. “I’d like to know what they would have done, faced with the same terrible circumstances as I . . .”

  “And what did you do, Jane?”

  The old lady looked at him in astonishment. She thought she had perceived in that metallic murmur a curiosity that was so . . . human, almost childlike; she even thought the Executioner’s cheeks had turned a subtle shade of pink. Or perhaps they hadn’t. Possibly that creature merely reflected his victim’s feelings. And she was his victim, she reminded herself.

  “Oh, you want to know what happened next in the story you read. Well, after escaping with the book, I carried on with our original plan; what else could I do? True, as an active cronotemic, I could have simply waited for an Executioner to pick up my trail. But I had to bear in mind that I had only jumped once, and there was too much at stake for everything to depend on that, so I saw no harm in continuing to go to séances. At least until I came up with a better idea. I won’t go into how I managed to survive in that new world; suffice it to say I didn’t fare too badly. In less than a year I had amassed a small fortune thanks to the Mechanical Servant, an invention that revolutionized the wealthiest households in London. It was more of a clever contraption than a serious scientific innovation, and I tried to play it down so as not to draw too much attention to myself, because I hadn’t forgotten that the Villain was trailing me. Even so, it made me the richest, most mysterious widow in all London . . .”

  Jane smiled as she recalled those days, but something in the Executioner’s face—a flicker of impatience, perhaps—made her continue quickly.

  “Well, I might tell you that amazing story some other time. The main thing is that money allowed me to spend nearly two years attending hundreds of séances and visiting dozens of haunted houses. Alas, I never bumped into any of our cronotemic twins. I saw a Jane roaming round a graveyard once, but she was in the final stages of the disease, so almost invisible and utterly mad, and therefore of no use to me. The months flew by, and I felt increasingly weak and tired. I began to think that by the time I found a Perfect Twin to whom I could entrust The Map of Chaos it would be too late, and yet, even so, I was reluctant to seek out our twins in that world. I couldn’t forget the charming couple who had died because of us. I didn’t want any more deaths on my conscience . . . And so I decided to revert to my original plan and publish The Map of Chaos—not the one my husband had written, but rather my own version. The story I had started writing as a gift for Bertie, in which I narrated in detail how H. G. Wells saved the world, tried at the same time to redeem him from the fact that in order to do so it was necessary for him to first put it in mortal danger. It had begun as a simple pastime in the first world I washed up in, where I experienced the pleasure of boating on the river with the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland himself. But when the Villain murdered Bertie, forcing me to leap, I was unable to take my manuscript with me and had to start over again. However, this time my intention was to publish it; I thought that if an Executioner were to see my book in a shop window with the Star of Chaos embossed on the cover, he would undoubtedly read it and instantly begin searching for the author. Then, at last, I would be able to give him the real, the genuine MAP OF CHAOS. That is why I chose a male author to narrate my story, because in the backward society I was living in, it would have been much more difficult to publish a book written by a woman (even if she was the inventor of the Mechanical Servant) and I needed that to happen as quickly as possible and in as many different countries as possible. I even thought of publishing it under the pseudonym Miles Dyson—the bioscientist who designed the original prototype of the Executioner. My idea was as ingenuous as attending séances in search of the perfect twin, but I could not think of a better one. Unfortunately, before any of my plans bore fruit, the Villain caught up with me again. That happened on 12 September 1888. At the residence of the famous medium known as Lady Amber, the evil Rhys materialized and recognized me instantly. Naturally, he demanded I hand over The Map of Chaos. Then he tried to strangle me. Thanks to the intrepid Inspector Cornelius Clayton of Scotland Yard’s Special Branch, I managed to escape his clutches. But I no longer had any doubt about what I must do. The Villain had caught up with me. Out of all those infinite parallel universes, he had found the one I was hiding in. And he wouldn’t leave until he succeeded in taking from me what he believed was his, and so the moment I arrived home, I wrote a note to the Wells from that world—I chose him because my own twin was still only sixteen at the time—and I can tell you those were the most difficult few lines I have ever written in my life. I had to redraft the note several times, because in my excitement I couldn’t find the right words to convince a young man of twenty-two that he must come urgently to the house of a strange old woman in the middle of the night, as a matter of life and death . . . Finally, I finished the note and sent it with my faithful maid, Doris, to Fitzroy Road, where Wells was living with his aunt. Even though I knew there were no walls or doors that could keep the Villain out, I locked myself in my study and waited up all night, shivering with fear and clutching my beloved book, which was all I had left of Ber—”

  “I am aware of M’s strength,” the Executioner interrupted. “He is a powerful level 6 Destructor. None of us has ever been able to catch him.”

  Jane nodded sadly and continued: “The Wells from that world didn’t answer my cry for help. And Doris never returned. I don’t know what became of her, or whether my note ever reached its destination . . . In any event, whether it did or not, the Villain found me first. Thankfully, the young Inspector Clayton was with me again when he attacked a second time . . . The detective had come to my house at dawn to ask me about the mysterious events at Madame Amber’s the previous ev
ening . . .” Jane smiled almost tenderly. “As soon as I opened the door and saw his pale, solemn face, it struck me that this eccentric young man was the answer I had been waiting for all night. Why not? I told myself. I could trust him. I knew him well . . . or I knew one of his twins, at least. I had seen him fighting off the Martians, and he had seemed like an honest, brave young man . . .” The Executioner’s eyebrows arched subtly in what would have been an ironical gesture had it materialized. “Besides, I was desperate!” the old lady defended herself furiously. “And people were not exactly queuing up outside my door to save the world . . . However, I had just begun to explain the situation to Clayton when Rhys broke into my house. I scarcely had time to entrust the inspector with The Map of Chaos and beg him to guard it with his life. Clayton slipped the book into his pocket, ordered me to lock myself in my study, and went out to confront the Villain. Soon afterward, I heard crashing from upstairs, followed by the monster’s roars, his violent pounding on my study door, and finally a gunshot. Then, for the second time in my life . . . I jumped. Thanks to the fact that I was in my own study, I was able to take the manuscript of The Map of Chaos with me. However, as you can see, publishing it in this backward world was impossible. The printing press hadn’t yet been invented, and to all appearances wouldn’t be for several more centuries. If I went on writing, it was only to stop me from taking my own life. As you can imagine, life here hasn’t been exactly easy for me. I was forced to earn my crust by working in arduous, insecure jobs that undermined my already frail health. In this world of lanterns and superstitions, inventing the Mechanical Servant would have been tantamount to an act of witchcraft. And, needless to say, no one held séances. And so, when I reached the point in The Map of Chaos where I could no longer go on writing, because I didn’t know how the adventure Bertie and I had embarked upon when we leapt through the magic hole ended, I decided to narrate those experienced by my husband’s favorite twins. I entitled them respectively The Map of Time and The Map of the Sky, and I assure you they have been a true balm for my—”