The Map of Chaos

by Félix J Palma

  The Villain’s lower jaw and mouth had started to appear, and a savage cry of rage issued from his lips. Then the outline of his body, which was gradually becoming whole, began to flicker, as though intermittent pulses of forgetfulness were racing through it.

  “He is going to jump to another world!” Wells cried out.

  Just then, Captain Sinclair lowered the lever to a second position. The gentle hum of the columns gave way to a deafening roar, and hundreds of lights flashed through the encircling cables at an incredible speed. A blinding light filled the room, forcing everyone to screw up their eyes. Marcus Rhys’s body stopped hovering between the real and the imaginary and resumed its solid shape, which was beginning to look more and more like an irate ice sculpture.

  “I left out the most important part!” Clayton cried as he walked toward him, straining to make his voice heard above the roar of the columns. “These masts also give off a very special kind of radiation. We commissioned them from Sir William Crookes, one of the greatest scientists of our time . . . I met him at that séance at Madame Amber’s and took an instant liking to him, which wasn’t the case with you. I have a sixth sense that allows me to see people’s true natures; it is a gift that has failed me only once in my life . . . but not with Sir William. When I went to see him a few days ago to tell him about an outlandish theory of parallel worlds, and to ask whether he could design some sort of machine to stop people from jumping between them, he didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow. And yesterday he sent us these splendid columns. Just in the nick of time, it would seem. Obviously, he didn’t have time to test them, but he thought there was a good chance they would work. And judging from your expression, Mr. Rhys, and more important from the fact that you are still here, I don’t think Sir William was boasting.” Clayton had walked right up to the Villain, who was roaring like a caged animal, baring his teeth and clenching his fists. The inspector knelt down, picked up his pistol, and put it back in his jacket. Then he took a book out of one of his pockets and dangled it in front of the watery silhouette into which the Villain had been transformed. “This is the real book, Mr. Rhys, The Map of Chaos! I have kept it safe from you for twelve years, knowing that one day you would come back for it! And now, finally, it is all over. You have lost, Mr. Rhys. You will spend the rest of your life in a miserable cell specially designed for you, from which you will never be able to escape. The book is no longer in danger, and all its mysteries have been unraveled,” he said, almost to himself, unable to hide his satisfaction. “It only remains for me to find those for whom it was intended, those who come from the Other Side, and I will have fulfilled the promise I made to Mrs.—”

  Inspector Clayton broke off suddenly, his eyes glazed, the blood draining from his face. He staggered back a few paces, murmuring softly, “No, please, not now . . .”

  Then he fainted.

  38

  BY THIS TIME, GILLIAM MURRAY and Arthur Conan Doyle were hastening down Cromwell Road toward the Natural History Museum. They had passed through a Kensington in uproar, with streets overrun by transparent ghosts. Doyle was maneuvering the carriage with difficulty through the terrified crowd fleeing in all directions, trying not to be distracted by the translucent figures all around him. Murray wasn’t helping much.

  “Would you believe me if I told you I had just seen a white rabbit in a waistcoat looking at his watch?” he said with the same amazement he had been expressing ever since they left the house.

  “In any other situation, no. But in this one I will believe anything you tell me, Gilliam,” muttered Doyle.

  He tried to concentrate on the road ahead, dodging the real carriages and letting the translucent ones pass through them with a shudder while Murray enumerated each preposterous apparition that popped up, like a child in a safari park.

  “Good God, Arthur! Was that a Cyclops?”

  Doyle ignored him. If, as he suspected, the troupe of fantastical creatures Murray was describing ceased to be harmless mirages and became flesh and bone, they would be in serious trouble. They had to reach the Chamber of Marvels before that happened, although he wasn’t sure what awaited them there. If Clayton’s idea of setting a trap had been successful, they would find the Invisible Man caught in the device Crookes had invented. Wells and Jane would also be there, and between them all they might come up with a solution. It was conceivable the creature knew how to use the book to put a stop to this mayhem and could be persuaded to reveal its secrets. Doyle knew how to help the creature overcome any reluctance he might have; all he needed was a few minutes alone with him and a heavy stone to crush his hands with. And if that got them nowhere, it was still possible they could find the solution on their own, in a flash of collective inspiration. Human beings rose to the occasion in moments of great crisis, and he doubted there could be a greater crisis than this . . . He breathed a sigh. Who was he trying to fool? According to Clayton, the most celebrated mathematicians in the land had pored over the book and had not been able to decipher a single page, so what chance did they have? They were doomed to perish along with the rest of the universe . . .

  When they reached Marloes Road, they found the street blocked by a barricade of rubble. Doyle pulled up the carriage and observed with irritation the obstruction they would be forced to climb. The museum was not far, but this would certainly delay them. Stepping wearily down from the carriage, he began to scale the hillock, with Murray following him. When they reached the tiny summit, they saw that the rest of the street revealed the same devastation; as far as the eye could see it was littered with a layer of rubble and chunks of masonry. Treading gingerly, they started to make their way along it.

  “How odd,” Doyle murmured, noticing that the buildings along either side of the street were intact.

  Where did all that rubble come from? It was as though someone had brought it there simply to pave that stretch of Cromwell Road. They had scarcely walked a few yards when, on the corner of Gloucester Road, they glimpsed the clock tower of Big Ben lying at the end of the street like a severed fish head, flattening several buildings. Murray contemplated it with a mixture of suspicion and melancholy, which Doyle couldn’t help noticing. They proceeded to pick their way among the mounds of debris, and as they walked past the remains of a staircase sticking out of the rubble, a sound of clanking metal reached their ears on the breeze. The two men stopped in their tracks and squinted. Emerging from a cloud of black smoke at the end of the street, they saw a group of strange, vaguely human metallic creatures walking with a sinister swaying movement, propelled by what appeared to be miniature steam engines on their backs. Four of them were bearing a throne, on which another automaton sat stiffly, a crown on his iron head.

  “My God . . . It can’t be,” murmured Murray: “It’s Solomon!”

  Doyle said nothing. He was speechless with shock. Then Murray began to walk with open arms toward the cortege, as if to greet them.

  “I can’t believe it!” he cried. “I can’t believe it!”

  The convoy came to a halt as it spotted the human being. The automaton heading the procession took one step forward, opened a little shutter in its chest from which a tiny cannon emerged, and opened fire at Murray. The shot glanced off his shoulder, causing him to howl in pain. Astonished that the apparitions were no longer harmless, Murray watched as the automaton prepared to fire a second time. Transfixed, Murray grinned uneasily before Doyle fell on top of him, flinging him to the ground. The projectile cleaved the air where a second before Murray’s head had been.

  “They hit me, Arthur!” wailed Murray, more out of resentment than pain.

  Still sprawled on top of him, Doyle examined his wounded shoulder.

  “Don’t worry, Gilliam, it’s only a scratch,” he pronounced.

  He surveyed the cortege. Two of the automatons, the one that had fired and one of his companions, were clanking slowly toward them with that unnerving sway of inebriated children, pointing the weapons in their chests at them.

  “Curses, t
hey’re going to shoot us!” Doyle declared, having already worked out they wouldn’t have time to get up and make a run for it.

  He gritted his teeth, defying his killers, while Murray looked terrified. But before the automatons were able to fire, a shadow leapt over them. From where they lay, almost level with the ground, they saw a pair of black boots with bronze buckles planted on the ground. The shadow was between them and their killers, so they could only see him from behind, but he struck them as an impressive figure. Whoever it was, he was clad in an intricate suit of riveted armor and a complicated-looking helmet, beneath which only his powerful chin was visible. They watched him draw his sword from the scabbard round his waist with one swift movement. Then they heard a swish of metal, and one of the automaton’s heads rolled across the ground. Doyle took the opportunity to sit up and to help Murray to his feet. He clutched his wounded shoulder, watching their savior execute a series of two-handed thrusts as he charged the second automaton.

  Murray laughed nervously. “It’s the brave Captain Shackleton!”

  “Whoever he is, he’s real, Gilliam. They’re all real! And so are their weapons!” exclaimed Doyle, grabbing him by the arm. “We have to hide!”

  He dragged Murray over to a mound of rubble large enough to shield them both. They reached it just as, in response to an order from their captain, four soldiers emerged from beneath the mound, encircling the startled automatons. They opened fire as one. Crouched behind the debris, Doyle and Murray were observing the skirmish in openmouthed astonishment, when all at once, a few yards away, the air seemed to rip open like a canvas slashed by a knife. The tear was accompanied by a deafening explosion that split their eardrums. Taken aback by that seemingly monstrous howl, the automatons and Shackleton stopped fighting. Then, with an equally earsplitting roar like a hurricane, the hole started sucking in everything around it. The reality around it crumpled like a bunched-up tablecloth. The bulky automatons quivered for a moment before being uprooted and dragged toward the tear by the suction force that had also overpowered the captain. Flabbergasted, Doyle and Murray saw them disappear inside the hole, which contained a throbbing, primeval blackness. From their hiding place, they seemed to be contemplating the first darkness—or rather, what was there before darkness was created, before any god appeared onstage to endow the world. Inside the hole was nothingness, nonexistence, whatever was there before the beginning, for which no one had invented a name. Then Solomon’s support was torn abruptly off the ground and sucked through the orifice, too. The debris between them and the tear were gradually swept away as the suction field around the hole expanded. The air, and the reality painted on it, puckered into infinite folds around the opening. A few seconds later, the huge chunk of masonry they were crouched behind began to quake.

  “My God!” exclaimed Doyle. “We have to get out of here!”

  They started running back the way they had come but soon felt the suction power of the hole pulling them toward it, rolling up everything behind them. Doyle grunted with frustration. Running was like climbing an impossibly steep hill or swimming in a turbulent sea. Each step they took required a titanic effort, and they had the impression they were making less and less headway.

  “We won’t make it!” Murray declared, giving a strangled cry.

  He was struggling forward, teeth clenched, face bright red, body tilted forward. Doyle realized that Murray was right. The greedy mouth of nothingness would soon swallow them up. Within seconds they would be pulled off the increasingly concave ground, following the captain and the automatons into the orifice, where a blackness awaited them that would obliterate their minds and shrivel their souls. With great difficulty, Doyle turned his head to the right and saw that they were only a few yards from Gloucester Road.

  “Follow me, Gilliam!” he shouted, changing direction.

  Murray obeyed, realizing that if they managed to veer off to one side they might free themselves from the force that was making their every movement an excruciating torment. Walking as though buried waist-deep in quicksand, and praying they wouldn’t be hit by any of the smaller bits of rubble transformed into lethal projectiles by the terrible suction, they managed to gain a few agonizing yards. Finally, they reached the intersection and immediately noticed they could move more freely. It no longer felt as if they were sheathed in leaden armor. As soon as they were outside the suction field, they collapsed in an exhausted heap.

  From the relative safety of Gloucester Road, they watched as the piece of masonry that had been their shield finally rose off the ground and flew toward the hole, into which the whole world seemed to be spiraling. The building on the corner of Gloucester Road and Cromwell Road was gradually beginning to tilt over, and Doyle and Murray realized that the strange fissure was not only sucking in whatever was around to it, but that its force was expanding, forming a semicircle in which everything was turning into an undulating carpet of bumps and hollows. Soon the street they were in wouldn’t be safe either.

  “What the devil is happening?” exclaimed Murray when he finally caught his breath.

  Doyle gave a sigh of despair before replying. “I suppose we are witnessing the beginning of the end.”

  39

  AND WHILE DOYLE WAS REACHING that ominous conclusion, in the vaults of the Natural History Museum, Wells was gazing with astonishment at Clayton’s tall, thin body curled up in a ball on the floor after he had collapsed in front of them. While Captain Sinclair rolled his eyes, Wells and the creature fixed theirs on the book the inspector had dropped as he fainted, which now lay on the floor a few steps from Wells. Thinking about it only for the length of time a man as indecisive as he needed to think about anything, Wells took those few steps forward and snatched the book.

  “I have it!” he announced unnecessarily, stepping back again until he was once more standing beside Jane.

  The watery bluish silhouette of the Invisible Man shook with rage, trapped in his radiation prison.

  “That book is mine! Mine! No one deserves to have it more than me! I have crossed deserts of time to find it! I have waded through oceans of blood! I have strewn the vast expanses of the void with the ashes of my soul! You can’t take it from me now! You can’t!” he cried frantically, ending his torrent of words with a howl of pain that seemed to cleave the air.

  After this angry outburst, he fell to his knees sobbing.

  “Well, I think this has gone far enough,” said Captain Sinclair, unimpressed, putting his gun away. “Summers, McCory, take Inspector Clayton and leave him somewhere where he won’t be in the way. And you, Drake, tell them to bring round the carriage with Crookes’s special cage, and park in front of—”

  An almighty crash drowned out the rest of what Sinclair was saying. A dozen or so yards behind the line of detectives, something tore the air as if it were a piece of paper. They turned as one toward where the earsplitting noise had come from, only to see a strange rent in the surface of reality reaching from the floor up to the high ceiling. A draft as cold as all the winters in the world issued from it, where a pristine darkness reigned. Before anyone had time to react, Professor Crookes’s columns began to explode one by one amid a deafening hum, hurling lightning bolts in all directions. Horrified, Wells and Jane flattened themselves against the nearest wall as the lightning flashes zigzagged around the room, searing the air and striking many of the piles of objects. Sinclair and his men broke ranks, scattering in all directions, dazzled and half-deafened. Then the intense light filling the room was abruptly extinguished. Rhys stood up, took a few tentative steps, smiling triumphantly as he realized he was no longer a prisoner. His head, becoming visible around its one empty eye socket, swiveled round, searching for Wells. It found him pressed up against the wall a few yards away, pale and trembling.

  Wells looked imploringly toward the police officers, but one glance was enough for him to see that none of them was in a fit state to help. Captain Sinclair was on his knees, momentarily blinded and dazed, and his men didn’t look any
better. The lightning bolts had done quite a lot of damage: the bones from the alleged mermaid’s skeleton were strewn all over the floor, a werewolf costume was engulfed in flames, the Minotaur’s head had been reduced to a handful of ashes, and everywhere crates had burst open, revealing their mysterious contents. Thick plumes of smoke and clouds of ages-old dust darkened the room. After casting an approving eye over all that destruction, Rhys approached the defenseless Wells, half a languid smile traced in the air.

  “Hand over the book, George,” he said, almost wearily, “and let’s put an end to this. Can’t you see that even the universe itself is on my side?”

  Wells did not answer. Instead, clasping the book tightly to his chest, he grabbed Jane by the hand and started to run toward the Chamber door. Rhys breathed a sigh.

  “All right,” he muttered to himself resignedly, “let’s play catch one last time.”

  However, scarcely had he taken two steps after them, when some of the objects around him began to vibrate, as though announcing an earthquake. Suddenly, the smallest and lightest ones rose into the air and flew toward the hole like a flock of birds released from a cage. Transfixed by the strange phenomenon, Rhys didn’t notice the heavy bronze chalice, labeled “The Holy Grail,” hurtling through the air toward his head. The impact knocked him to the ground, leaving him dazed. Still running, Wells looked back over his shoulder at the scene. On the far side of the room, he saw Captain Sinclair, who had just stood up, flailing around for a handhold as the sudden rush of air threatened to pull him toward the hole. The whirlwind was also starting to drag Inspector Clayton’s inert body across the floor, toward the lethal opening. Alas, Wells couldn’t help any of them. The book was now in his possession, and he had to protect it from the creature, who had already come round and was rising to his feet, shaking off his dizziness. Without losing any more time, he and Jane slipped out the Chamber into the maze of corridors before the mysterious force could reach them.