The Map of Time

by Félix J Palma

  “How could this fellow have had the same ideas for his novels as we did?” he asked, completely baffled.

  James gave him the contemptuous look he would give a performing monkey.

  “Don’t be so naïve, Mr. Stoker,” he chided him. “What our host is trying to tell us is that Mr. Frost didn’t write these novels.

  Somehow he stole them from us before we published them.” “Precisely, Mr. James,” the time traveler affirmed.

  “But how will he stop us from suing him?” the Irishman persisted.

  “I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that, Mr. Stoker,” replied Marcus.

  Wells, who had managed to thrust aside his despair and take an interest in the conversation again, was suddenly struck by a ghastly thought.

  “If I’m not mistaken, what Mr. Rhys is trying to tell us,” he explained, with the aim of dispelling the fog the others were in, “is that the best way to silence a person is by killing him.” “By killing him?” declared Stoker, horrified. “Are you saying this fellow Frost is going to steal our works and then … kill us?” “I’m afraid so, Mr. Stoker,” Marcus confirmed, accompanying his words with a solemn nod. “When, after arriving in your time, I came across the news item about a mysterious fellow named Melvyn Frost who had published these novels, I hastened to learn what had become of you, their real authors. And I’m sorry to have to tell you this, gentlemen, but all three of you are going to die next month. You, Mr. Wells, will break your neck in a cycling accident. You, Mr. Stoker, will fall down the stairs of your theater.

  And you, Mr. James, will suffer a heart attack in your own home, although, needless to say, your death, like those of your colleagues, will also be murder. I don’t know whether Frost plans to carry out the deeds himself or to hire someone else, although judging from Frost’s frail physique, I would incline towards the latter. In fact, Frost is a typical instance of a time traveler who, afraid to return to his own time, chooses a particular time in the past in which to settle down and build a new life. All perfectly understandable and legitimate. The problem arises because the majority of these time exiles consider earning a living in the traditional sense, by the sweat of their brow—utterly absurd when their knowledge of the future could make them rich. Most give themselves away when they modify the past in order to implement their moneymaking schemes, like this fellow Frost. Otherwise, it would be impossible for us to trace them. But I didn’t bring you here to torment you with tales of your imminent demise, gentlemen, rather to try to prevent it from happening.” “Can you do that?” Stoker asked, suddenly hopeful.

  “Not only can I, but it is my duty, for your deaths represent a significant change to the century I have been assigned to protect,” replied Marcus. “My sole aim is to help you, gentlemen, I hope I’ve convinced you of that. And that includes you too, Mr. Wells.” Wells gave a start. How did Marcus know he had come to the meeting filled with misgivings? He found the answer when he followed the direction the traveler and his two henchmen were looking. All three of them were staring at his left shoe, where the knife he had strapped to his back was peeping out. It seemed the knot he had tied had been a little precarious. Shamefaced, Wells picked up the knife and slipped it into his pocket, while James shook his head disapprovingly.

  “All of you,” the traveler went on, attaching no further importance to the matter, “will live for many more years in your original universe and will continue delighting your faithful readers, of whom I consider myself one, with many more novels. Forgive me, though, if I refrain from telling you any details about your future, so that once we have resolved this small matter, you will continue to act naturally. In fact, I ought to have intervened without revealing myself to you, but this fellow Frost is devilishly clever and will eliminate you so stealthily that the information I need in order to prevent your deaths, such as the exact time you were pushed down the stairs, Mr. Stoker, will not appear in the newspapers. I only know the days on which you will suffer your respective accidents, and in your case, Mr. James, I won’t even know that, because no one will notice you are dead until a neighbor discovers you body.” James nodded ruefully, perhaps aware for the first time of the utter loneliness enveloping his life, an entrenched loneliness that would make of his death a silent act, unseen by the world.

  “Let us say that bringing you here was a desperate measure, gentlemen, for I could think of no other way to prevent your deaths than by asking for your cooperation, which I feel sure will be forthcoming.” “Naturally,” said Stoker, hastily, apparently physically ill at the thought he could be dead in a few days. “What do we have to do?” “Oh, it’s quite simple,” said Marcus. “Providing this fellow Frost cannot find your manuscripts, he won’t be able to kill you.

  I therefore suggest you bring them to me at the first opportunity.

  Tomorrow, if at all possible. This simple act will create another bifurcation in the timeline, because Frost will not have killed you. Once I am in possession of the novels, I shall travel forward to the year 1899, and take another look at reality in order to decide what to do next.” “I think it’s an excellent plan,” said Stoker. “I shall bring you my manuscript tomorrow.” James agreed to do the same, and although Wells had the impression they were mere pawns in a game of chess between Marcus and this fellow Frost, he had no choice but to consent.

  He felt too disoriented by events to try to think of a better way than the one Marcus was proposing. And so, like the others, he agreed to bring him his manuscript the next morning, although if Marcus finally apprehended Frost and unraveled the muddle of the future, it did not guarantee him being able to ride his bicycle in complete safety without first resolving the matter pending with Gilliam Murray. And to do this he had no choice but to help Inspector Garrett catch Marcus, the very man who was trying to save his life.

  But if there was a more difficult undertaking than captur-ing a time traveler, it was undoubtedly catching a cab in London in the early hours of the morning. James, Stoker, and Wells spent almost an hour trawling the area around Berkeley Square without success. Only when they decided to walk towards Piccadilly, shivering with cold and cursing their luck, did they catch sight of a berlin. They gave a start as it emerged from the thick fog that had settled over London, rolling along the street towards them almost solely thanks to the horse’s own efforts, because the driver was half-asleep on his perch. It would have passed straight by them, like a visitation from the beyond, had the driver not finally noticed the redheaded giant blocking the street and waving his arms wildly. After the cab came to a hasty halt, the three men spent what seemed like an eternity trying to explain their itinerary to the driver: first, he would take Stoker to his house, then drop James off at his hotel, and finally leave London for Woking, which was where Wells lived. When the driver signaled that he had understood the route by blinking a couple of times and grunt-ing, the three men clambered into the carriage, flopping onto the seat amid loud sighs, like castaways having finally reached shore after spending days in a lifeboat.

  Wells longed for some peace and quiet so that he could reflect on the events of the past few hours, but when Stoker and James launched into a discussion about their respective novels, he realized he would have to wait a little while longer. He did not mind them leaving him out; in fact, he was relieved. Apparently, they had nothing to say to a writer of escapist literature who in addition came to meetings with a kitchen knife strapped to his back.

  He was not in the slightest bit interested in what they had to say either, and so he tried to stay out of the conversation by gazing through the window at the turbulent swirls of mist, but he soon realized Stoker’s voice, when not cowed by fear, was too loud to ignore even if he wanted to.

  “What I’m trying to achieve with my novel, Mr. James,” the Irishman explained, waving his arms in the air, “is a deeper, richer portrayal of that elegant embodiment of Evil, the vampire, whom I have attempted to divest of the burden of the romantic aesthetic that turned him into little more than
a grotesque sex fiend incapable of inspiring anything more than a sensual frisson in his victims. The protagonist of my novel is an evil vampire, whom I have endowed with the original attributes found in the myth of folklore, although I confess to having added a few of my own, such as him not having a reflection in mirrors.” “But if you embody it, Mr. Stoker, Evil loses most of its mystery, and its potency!” exclaimed James in an offended tone that took his fellow writer by surprise. “Evil should always manifest itself in the subtlest way. It must be born of doubt, inhabit the shadowy realm between certainty and uncertainty.” “I’m afraid I don’t really understand what you mean, Mr. James,” murmured the Irishman once the other man appeared to have calmed down.

  James let out a long sigh before agreeing to expand a little more on the sensitive subject, but Wells could tell from the bewildered look on Stoker’s face that the Irishman was growing more and more confused as the other man spoke. It is no surprise, then, that when they stopped in front of Stoker’s house, the red-haired giant had the air of someone punch-drunk as he stepped out of the cab. The situation only grew worse after Stoker’s desertion (for this is precisely how Wells experienced it) as the two men found themselves brutally exposed to silence. A silence that the urbane James naturally felt obliged to break by engaging Wells in a shallow discussion about the different kinds of material that could be used to upholster carriage seats.

  When Wells was finally alone in the coach, he raised his arms to heaven in thanks, then eagerly became lost in his deliberations as the cab gradually left the city behind. He had many things to think about, he told himself. Yes, matters of great import, ranging from the future he had glimpsed in the clippings, which he was unsure whether to forget or to commit to memory, to the exciting idea that someone had thought of charting time as though it were a physical space. Only this was a region that could never be properly charted, because there was no way of knowing where the white cord ended. Or was there? What if the time travelers had journeyed far enough into the future to discover the edge of time, the end of the thread, just as the traveler in his novel had tried to do? But did such a thing exist? Was there an end to time, or did it carry on forever? If it did end, then it had to happen at the exact moment when man became extinct and no other species was left on the planet, for what was time if there was no one to measure it, if there was nothing to experience its passing? Time could only be seen in the falling leaves, a wound that healed, a woodworm’s tunneling, rust that spread, and hearts that grew weary. Without anyone to discern it, time was nothing, nothing at all.

  Although, thanks to the existence of parallel worlds, there would always be someone or something to make time believable.

  And there was no doubt that parallel worlds existed. Wells knew this for sure now: they sprouted from the universe like branches from a tree at the minutest change to the past, just as he had explained to Andrew Harrington in order to save his life less than three weeks earlier. And discovering this gave him more satisfaction than any future success of his novel, because it spoke of his powerful intuition, the effective, even precocious workings of his brain. Perhaps his brain lacked the mechanism that enabled Marcus to travel in time, but his powers of reasoning set him apart from the masses.

  He recalled the map the traveler had shown them, the figure made of colored strings representing the parallel universes Marcus had untangled. It suddenly struck him that the map was incomplete, because it only included worlds created by the travelers” direct interventions. But what of our own actions? The parallel universes not only grew from their wicked manipulations of the hallowed past, but from each and every one of our choices. He imagined Marcus’s map with this new addition, the white cord weighed down by a sudden flowering of yellow strings representing the worlds created by Man’s free will.

  Wells emerged from these reflections as the cab pulled up in front of his house. He climbed out, and, after tipping the driver generously for having made him leave London in the small hours of the morning, he lifted the latch, and entered the garden wondering whether it was worth going to bed or not, and what effect it might have on the fabric of time if he decided to do one thing or the other.

  It was then he noticed the woman with the fiery red hair.

  40

  Thin and pale, her reddish hair glow ing on her shoulders, like embers escaped from a fire, the girl looked at him with that peculiar gaze that had caught his attention a few days before, when he had noticed her among the crowd of onlookers milling around the scene of Marcus’s third crime.

  “You?” exclaimed Wells, stopping in his tracks.

  The girl said nothing. She simply walked over to where he was standing as silently as a cat and held something out to him. The author saw it was a letter. Puzzled, he took it from the girl’s lily-white hand. To H. G. Wells. To be delivered on the night of November 26, 1896, he read on the back. So, this girl, whoever she might be, was some sort of messenger.

  “Read it, Mr. Wells,” she said, with a voice that reminded him of the sound of the early afternoon breeze rustling the net curtains. “Your future depends on it.” With that, the woman walked away towards the gate, leaving him motionless in the doorway, his face frozen in a frown.

  When he managed to rouse himself, Wells turned and ran after the woman.

  “Wait, Miss … ” He came to a halt halfway. The woman had disappeared: only her perfume lingered in the air. And yet Wells could not recall having heard the gate squeak. It was as though after handing him the letter, she had literally vanished without trace.

  He stood stock still for a few moments, listening to the silent throb of night and breathing in the unknown woman’s perfume until finally he decided to enter the house. He made his way as quietly as possible to the sitting room, lit the little lamp, and sat down in his armchair, still startled by the appearance of the girl, whom he could have mistaken for one of Doyle’s fairies had she measured eight inches and worn a pair of dragonfly wings on her back. Who was she? He wondered. And how had she suddenly vanished? But it was foolish to waste time surmising when he would no doubt find the answer in the envelope he was holding.

  He tore it open and took out the pages it contained. He shuddered when he recognized the handwriting, and, his heart in his mouth, began to read: Dear Bertie, If you are reading this letter, then I am right, and in the future time travel will be possible. I do not know who will deliver this to you, I can only assure you she will be a descendant of yours, and of mine, for as you will have guessed from the handwriting, I am you. I am a Wells from the future. From a very distant future. It is best you assimilate this before reading on. Since I am sure the fact that our handwriting is identical will not be enough to convince you, as any skilled person could have copied it, I shall try to prove to you that we are one and the same person by telling you something only you know about. Who else knows that the basket in the kitchen full of tomatoes and peppers is not just any old basket? Well, is that enough, or must I be crude and remind you that during your marriage to your cousin Isabel, you masturbated thinking about the nude sculptures at Crystal Palace? Forgive me for alluding to such an upsetting period of your life, only I am certain that, like the secret meaning the basket has for you, it is something you would never mention in any future biography, proving beyond doubt that I am not some impostor who has found out everything about you. No, I am you, Bertie. And unless you accept that, there is no point in reading on.

  Now I shall tell you how you became me. The three of you will be in for a nasty surprise tomorrow when you go to give Marcus your manuscripts. Everything the traveler has told you is a lie, except that he is a great admirer of your work. That is why he will be unable to stop himself from smiling when you deliver his precious haul to him in person. Once this is done, he will give the order to one of his henchmen, who will fire at poor James. You have already seen what their weapons can do to a human body so I shall spare you the details, but it is not hard to imagine that your clothes will be sprayed with a grisly spatter
of blood and entrails. Then, before either of you have a chance to react, the henchman will fire again, this time at a stunned Stoker, who will suffer the same fate as the American. After that, paralyzed with fear, you will watch as he takes aim at you, except that before he pulls the trigger, Marcus will stop him with a gentle wave of his hand. And he will do this because he respects you enough not to want to let you die without telling you why. After all, you are the author of The Time Machine, the novel that started the vogue for time travel.

  At the very least he owes you an explanation, and so, before his henchman kills you, he will go to the trouble of telling you the truth, even if it is only to hear himself recount aloud how he managed to outsmart the three of you. Then he will confess to you, as he bounces round the hallway in that ridiculous way of his, that he is not a guardian of time, and that in fact, had it not been for a chance encounter, he would have known nothing of the existence of the Library of Truth or that the past was being guarded by the State.

  Marcus was an eccentric millionaire, a member of that select group of people who go through life doing only what they wish to, and who had been obliged to let the Government study him when they opened the Department of Time. He had not found the experience too objectionable, despite being forced to rub elbows with people from all walks of life. It was a small price to pay for finding out the cause of his ailment (which is what he assumed it was after suffering a couple of spontaneous displacements at moments of extreme tension) and above all if he could discover the exciting possibilities it opened up. When the department was closed down, Marcus decided to hone the skills he had already learned to control remarkably well by doing some sightseeing through time. For a while, he devoted himself to traveling back into the past at random, wandering through the centuries until he grew tired of witnessing historic naval battles, witches being burnt at the stake, and fecundating the bellies of Egyptian whores and slave girls with his seed of the future. It was then it occurred to him to use his talents to take his passion for books to the limit. Marcus had a fabulous library in his house containing a fortune in sixteenth-century first editions and incunables, but suddenly his collection of books seemed to him ridiculous and utterly worthless. What good was it to him to own a first edition of Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage if in the end the verses he was reading could be perused by anyone else’s eyes? It would be quite different if he possessed the only copy in the world, as if the poet had written it exclusively for him. With his newly discovered abilities this was something he could achieve quite easily.