“You don’t have the book,” the Executioner interrupted again.
The weight of that solitary sentence was sufficient to flatten an anvil.
The old lady looked at him in silence.
“No, I don’t,” she said at last, a tear rolling down her wizened cheek, tracing the path of her wrinkles. “I jumped into this universe, having left it in the hands of a stranger, to whom I was barely able to explain its importance or what he had to do with it . . . And I swear I have been tormenting myself about it ever since! For the longest time I shed bitter tears and my sleep was haunted by nightmares in which my husband scolded me for not keeping his work safe. Believe me, not a day has gone by when I haven’t thought of ending it all. A thousand times I have asked myself what sense there was in continuing . . . But I always came up with the same answer: up until the very moment before Chaos, there is still hope. However slight. Perhaps one day an Executioner would find me, I told myself, and I could explain to him where the book was . . . And now here you are, taking tea with me in my kitchen.”
“But you don’t know where the book is.”
“Of course I do,” the old lady replied. “I told you who has it: Cornelius Clayton, from the Special—”
“No. One of his infinite twins has it,” the Executioner corrected. “And I need to know which.”
Jane looked at him imploringly.
“How could I possibly know that? Every night I trawl the multiverse using my twins’ minds to try to find the Clayton to whom I gave the book. But so far I have come up with nothing. All I know is that he had a metal hand, a broken heart, and—”
The Executioner swept the air with a movement of his hand that Jane only intuited, unable to discern whether it had been too fast or too slow for her to see.
“Many of his twins will share those same characteristics,” he said in a toneless voice. “But only one Clayton has the book. Assuming he has kept his promise and it is still in his possession.”
“He must have! I told you, the inspector is honest and—”
“Then, to be able to find it, I need to know the coordinates of that universe. That is how my detector works in the multiverse,” he said, pointing to his cane. “It calculates the coordinates from the trails left behind by the cronotemics. A mathematical map like the one your husband made would also suffice. But I need something. Possibly something unique to that universe. A single detail that would help me to differentiate it from all the other parallel worlds. If I have been there before, the coordinates will be recorded in my detector’s memory.”
“Something unique to that universe?” the old lady reflected. “Me! I am unique!” she exclaimed eagerly. “There is only one Observer Jane in the whole multiverse, and I have been in that world . . .”
The Executioner shook his head.
“That’s no good. You and I clearly never met in that universe . . . It has to be something that helps me identify that particular universe.”
“Hmm . . .” Jane chewed thoughtfully of one of her nails. “Something unique . . . Wait a moment! I invented the Mechanical Servant, so that has to be a unique invention and can therefore only exist in that world! Perhaps you saw it in one of the houses where you went to . . . er, carry out your mission.” The Executioner shook his head again, and Jane sighed, discouraged. “All right . . .” She went on thinking. “Let me see . . . They had some delicious biscuits there. Kemp’s biscuits, they were called. I have never tasted anything so exquisite! They did not exist in the first world my husband and I traveled to, and they don’t have them here either, so . . . well, perhaps they are unique.” The old lady observed the Executioner’s face. Was it sarcasm she saw there? “Oh, forgive me, you don’t usually eat, so that detail would not mean much to you . . . Well, I am sorry, but I can’t think of anything else that might be unique to that world . . . Buckingham Palace was in the same spot, the sun rose in the east, the river Thames flowed through the same places, fire burned if you touched it, and there were seven notes in the musical scale . . . Saints alive!” cried the old lady, exasperated. “We are in a multiverse, in case you hadn’t noticed,” she snapped at the Executioner. “Everything has a copy somewhere! Only you and I are unique. As Doctor Ramsey said, in that accursed séance where the Villain found me: every reality is an imitation of itself . . .”
The Executioner rose abruptly from his chair. His immense silhouette stood out against the wall, accompanied by an even bigger shadow.
“Did you say Doctor Ramsey?”
“Yes, I think that was his name.”
“Was he a professor at the Faculty of Medicine, a surgeon, chemist, biologist, a tall man with an infuriating habit of cracking his knuckles?”
“Yes, how did you know that?”
The Executioner was seized by a series of convulsive spasms. The old lady stood up, withdrawing a few paces, afraid he was suffering from some kind of short circuit and might explode at any moment.
“Are you all right?” she whispered.
“I feel mirth,” replied the Executioner, who after a couple more spasms seemed to calm down. “Doctor Ramsey is as unique as you and I, Jane. He’s a Scientist from the Other Side who is conducting field studies in this multiverse.”
Jane’s mouth was agape.
“There are Scientists here?” she managed to stammer. “Bertie and I thought that you kill . . . you Executioners . . . were the only ones.”
“And to begin with we were. When the Scientists opened the first wormhole, they sent us ahead. In those days, we weren’t killers, we were explorers. We arrived here, discovered the nature of this multiverse, set up communication antennae, recorded images, took all manner of samples back to the Other Side; we even designed our own canes . . . All so that the Scientists could study this universe from the Other Side in comfort and safety. However, when they discovered the epidemic, they modified us. They reprogrammed us to turn us into . . . ruthless killers. And finally, when they realized that studying from a distance wasn’t providing satisfactory results, they decided to send a few men and women to this multiverse to carry out field studies. It was a difficult decision, but they had no choice. For hundreds of years on the Other Side, humans had been genetically modified to withstand extremely low temperatures, and those chosen had to undergo urgent adjustments so they wouldn’t melt from the heat in this world. They received refrigeration implants and electro-neuronal circuits to inhibit the anguish of randomness. Only those with the most brilliant minds and resilient bodies were sent out to different worlds, but none of them obtained any results. The Scientists came from such a distant future that none of them had a twin in this multiverse. And so they never developed the miraculous gift you and your husband possessed, thanks to which you discovered where the first infection took place. Only you were able to see and know everything.”
“And yet we never saw them!”
“Don’t be angry, Jane. It is logical. There are only a few Scientists in this infinite multiverse, and their work is clandestine. They are extremely careful not to give themselves away. They don’t get their hands dirty. They leave that to us.”
Jane looked frantically around the room. Suddenly, she pummeled the table with every ounce of strength her feeble body possessed.
“Are you saying that during that séance I was sitting next to a Scientist from the Other Side, someone to whom I could have entrusted The Map of Chaos? Are you saying I could have ended that whole nightmare there and then and prevented all that suffering, all those deaths?”
“Yes.”
Jane opened her mouth to reply but instead slumped in her chair and, burying her face in her hands, started to cry.
The Executioner took a step toward her.
“Jane.”
The old lady shook her head weakly.
“Jane.”
“What, for goodness’ sake?” she said, looking up.
A bluish light had begun to emanate from the eight-pointed star on the Executioner’s cane, illuminating the enti
re kitchen. Jane looked around in awe. It felt as though they were at the bottom of an ocean from which all the fish had been banished.
“My detector is connected to the minds of all the Scientists from the Other Side in this multiverse,” the Executioner informed her in his distant, metallic voice. “It is part of my job. I can locate them and go to wherever they are. Generally speaking, they don’t like to have anything to do with us. They despise us. But occasionally one of them needs us to take him to another world to carry on his research there. Ramsey, however, has never moved from the first world he appeared in.”
For a few seconds Jane simply stared at him. Then the Supreme Knowledge sparked an idea. She summoned all her remaining strength and smiled.
The air around the Executioner smiled back at her.
31
AND SO, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, the dreaded Day of Chaos has finally arrived! The day when your world and all other possible worlds will end! But how can I begin to describe such an extraordinary day, especially when most of what I have to tell you will be happening simultaneously? Is it possible to explain Chaos in an orderly fashion? I doubt it, but despite my limited skills as a storyteller, I shall do my best. Allow me to disappear through the hidden trapdoor in Mrs. Lansbury’s kitchen and return to a stage with which you are more familiar, to the world where old Baskerville died, to a few days after the fire that burned Brook Manor to the ground. It is September 23 in this universe, a brisk wind announces the arrival of autumn, and dawn trembles before the night like an awkward young lover, afraid to divest her of her darkness, if you will excuse my purple prose.
Good, then it only remains for me to choose with which of the many actors who will take part in this performance to begin my tale. Although, for the moment, only three of them are awake, so that shouldn’t be too difficult. Wells is in the kitchen putting a kettle on the fire. A few seconds later, Inspector Clayton hurries down the corridor to take his kettle, which is whistling like mad, off the fire. Before long, the whistle of a third kettle begins to sound at Captain Sinclair’s house, causing his beloved wife, Marcia, to give a start in bed. Which of these tea-loving early risers should I decide upon?
I choose Wells, for no other reason than the fondness I have developed for him after narrating his adventures for so long. As I said before, although dawn has not yet broken, our author is already in the kitchen, having been woken by a loud bang from somewhere in the house. The window, the accursed attic window, he had muttered after recovering from the shock, and, still half-asleep, he had gotten out of bed to close it before the chorus of crashes woke up his wife. It was too early yet to listen to Jane nagging him again about his sheer idleness when it came to addressing minor domestic problems. However, when he reached the attic, he had found the window closed. He stood gaping at it for a few seconds. Then, as if one thing led inevitably to the other, he went down to the kitchen to put the kettle on.
Next, he headed for the sitting room, which he surveyed carefully from the doorway. Everything seemed in its place. Puzzled, he walked over to the window, where the garden was timidly revealing itself in the first light of day. Perhaps he had merely imagined the noise. Lately, he had been more nervous than usual, which was hardly surprising given that, only a few days before, his world had been turned completely upside down. He had encountered a twin of his from a parallel universe, in a state of surprising decrepitude, and had watched him die at the hands of an invisible man at Brook Manor. This had all obliged him to believe in more things than his brain seemed willing to accept in such a short space of time.
The whistling kettle interrupted his thoughts. He hurriedly removed it from the hob, praying this fresh uproar wouldn’t wake his wife. That cup of tea no longer seemed so urgent . . . It was then he noticed that on the kitchen table there were three cups, which he hadn’t put there. He stood gaping at them, wondering whether, for some absurd reason, Jane had put them out before going to bed. And yet, he could have sworn they weren’t there when he came in to put the kettle on. And there were three of them. Then one of the drawers in the dresser slid open slowly, and three teaspoons floated toward the table, landing gracefully next to the cups.
“Bertie?” his wife’s voice rang out from upstairs.
“Jane, whatever you do, don’t—”
But before Wells could finish his sentence, a knife rose from the draining board, arced through the air like a salmon leaping upstream, and pressed itself against his neck. This didn’t surprise him. Clayton had warned them that sooner or later they would all be forced to resume their duel with the Invisible Man.
“Oh, let’s invite your charming wife to join us for breakfast, George,” said the voice that for nights on end had plagued his dreams. “Why do you think I put out three cups?”
With the knife at his throat and his back arched over the stove, Wells heard his wife padding down the stairs. She walked into the kitchen, still half-asleep, wearing her nightdress, and with her hair hanging down her face.
“What are you doing, dear? Why don’t you go come back to bed?” she asked before noticing her husband’s strange posture, the pallor of his face, and the knife pressing against his throat, apparently with no one holding it. “Oh, B-Bertie . . . ,” she stammered. “He is here . . .”
“Good morning, Mrs. Wells,” said the knife, moving away from her husband’s neck and floating toward her. “What a pleasure to meet you again.”
Jane swallowed, unable to take her eyes off the hovering knife.
“And how considerate of you to come down without your hairpins; you’ve no idea how glad I am.” A chair slid out from under the table. “Be so good as to sit down, Mrs. Wells.”
Jane obeyed, and Wells saw an invisible hand gather up her hair, revealing her graceful neck and, in a flash, the knife pressing against it. The sharp blade made her shudder.
“Don’t hurt her, you son of a . . . ,” Wells cried, making as if to hasten toward her.
“Stay right there!” the voice commanded. “Don’t force me to kill you both again, George. I’ve done it so many times now that, quite frankly, it is starting to bore me.”
Wells looked anxiously at his wife, who was pursing her lips with the forced determination of someone trying desperately not to give way to panic. He tried to speak calmly, but the voice that came out sounded more like a pitiful howl.
“Please . . . I beg you. You are making a dreadful mistake. We don’t have what you want.”
“A dreadful mistake, you say?” A dark guffaw spread like a drop of ink through the air, darkening it. “No, George. I know you have the book somewhere. The old woman gave it to you. I am absolutely certain of that. H. G. Wells wrote The Map of Chaos. His wife took it away with her when I killed him and then gave it back to H. G. Wells, ingeniously completing the circle! I’ll grant her that, at least.”
“What?” Wells looked nonplussed.
“Don’t make me lose my patience, George,” the voice snapped. “I warn you, it is running out fast.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you are talking about!” Wells yelled, red with rage.
“You’re lying,” hissed the Villain. “And you don’t know how sad that makes me.”
The tip of the knife suddenly broke Jane’s skin, causing her to squeal. A shiny drop of blood began to trickle down her neck, like a stream meandering down a hillside.
“Please, no, please . . . ,” Wells implored. “I swear I don’t have the accursed book . . .”
“Really?” The tip of the knife crept up his wife’s neck and began circling her right eye menacingly. “Good. I’ve been looking forward to inflicting on your little wife the excruciating pain of having an eye plucked out.”
“Stop, stop!” cried Wells. “All right, you win! I’ll tell you where the book is!”
“Don’t, Bertie,” whispered Jane. “He’ll kill us anyway . . .”
“You are as intelligent as you are beautiful, my dear lady,” the Invisible Man hissed in her ear. “Yes, I might kill
you anyway. But, Jane, let me tell you that there are many different ways to die . . .”
Wells took a step forward, his hands raised in a gesture of surrender.
“The book is in the Chamber of Marvels!”
The knife paused.
“And where the devil is that?” growled the voice.
“I’ll take you there . . . ,” said Wells, “when you tell me who you are and why the book is so important.”
Behind Jane’s head, the silence hesitated for a few moments.
“Didn’t the old lady explain that when she gave it to you?” the Villain asked suspiciously. “I find that hard to believe, George . . .”
Wells looked with infinite weariness at the empty space looming behind his wife. Then he shrugged.
“I wasn’t given the book by any old lady . . . Why would I insist on lying to you? However, I know where it is. That is all I know, apart from the fact that you, once you have the book, will kill us. Which is why I don’t intend to plead for our lives. All I ask is that you do it quickly and that you grant us the right to know why we are going to die . . .”
The knife appeared to reflect.
“Very well, George,” the voice purred. “But I warn you, if you are trying to buy time, it won’t do you any good. I have all the time in all the worlds at my disposal!” Suddenly the knife moved away from Jane’s face, slicing through the air as if the creature had spread his arms in a theatrical gesture. “So . . . you want to know who I am!” the voice roared. “Are you sure you want to know? I am the most powerful being in all creation! I am the epilogue of mankind! When the universe comes to an end, only I will remain . . . presiding over all your accursed graves. My name is Marcus Rhys, and I am the God of Chaos!”
The Map of Chaos Page 51