IS THAT THE SOUND OF BREATHING YOU HEAR BEHIND YOU? COULD IT BE THAT SOMEONE IS READING THIS TALE OVER YOUR SHOULDER . . . ?
DO NOT LET THAT DETER YOU, VALIANT READER, FOR WE HAVE REACHED THE POINT IN OUR STORY WHERE YOU WILL DISCOVER WHETHER OUR HEROES ARE ABLE TO SAVE THE WORLD, AND WHERE ALL YOUR QUESTIONS WILL FINALLY BE ANSWERED, INCLUDING THE MYSTERY OF MY IDENTITY.
POSSIBLY YOUR CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSE WILL CHANGE. AND YOUR NIGHTMARES WON’T SEEM QUITE SO HARMLESS ON WAKING. PERHAPS YOU WILL NO LONGER BE ABLE TO LOOK IN A MIRROR WITH THE SAME EQUANIMITY.
23
EXECUTIONER 2087V WOULD HAVE PREFERRED not to suffer from the feeling of guilt that raged inside him, or to experience it acutely enough to force him to sabotage his own existence. If that were to happen—if he were audacious enough to disengage, to give up that dreadful mission for which he had been created—he would finally be able to rest in an eternal, guiltless peace. But, alas, his feelings weren’t controlled by him, but rather by those who had implanted deep in the most inaccessible part of his memory that molecular code expressly designed to create the personality of the perfect killer. The Executioner had to acknowledge that the Scientists had done an excellent job, even in cases like his, where something went awry, where life prospered among the thicket of circuitry, and the orderly chains of neuropeptides rooted themselves in some cell or other, possibly in a hidden strand of soul, where they began to produce their own connections. And so, as with humans, when some emotion spilled over uncontrollably, the perfect programming implanted in his entrails would dutifully respond, attempting in some way to compensate for the malfunction. Thus his feeling of guilt at slaying innocents would be superseded by an even more intense feeling of guilt at the thought of not slaying them, of failing in his duty. Yes, those Machiavellian minds, worshippers of the Supreme Knowledge, had certainly done a first-rate job on them, a job as admirable as it was futile.
The Executioner smiled sadly, although it might be better to say that his mouth curled up gloomily. Keep calm, he told himself, nothing matters now, everything is about to end, we’re all going to die . . . He felt reassurance, even a touch of serenity, and he gradually forced his vital signs to slow, to the point where when he slid like the ghost of a ghost past a cat dozing on a windowsill, the animal’s ears didn’t even twitch. It was something the Executioner was good at. Aware that when animals sensed them they became frantic, he knew the only way to prevent that was to attain a state close to hibernation, which rendered their movements imperceptible. That was the ideal emotional state to be in when stalking. Later, when the actual hunt was on, it was necessary to give way to other feelings: tension, longing, hatred, pleasure, melancholy, and guilt, above all guilt . . . But by that stage it would no longer matter if all the dogs and cats in the area began to howl and meow like mad, proclaiming his monstrous presence to the moon. When the victim was there with him, looking into his eyes, unable to understand why he or she had to die, it was already too late.
He reached the house and slipped across the tiny garden encircling it. Had the night not been so dark, and had the Executioner not blended so perfectly with it, I would be able to describe his movements to you, dear reader, but I can only imagine them: a series of silent, almost feline steps, followed by a fluttering cloak. He had no difficulty opening one of the downstairs windows and climbing into a small dark sitting room. The Executioner lifted his cane, and the eight-pointed star adorning its handle vibrated slightly, informing him that at present the house was empty. Even so, he decided to inspect the rooms one by one, partly because he did not trust his detectors, which were in a deplorable state, and partly due to an unhealthy need to know about the lives he was about to cut short. Who lived there? What were they like? What kind of carefree, tumultuous, or humdrum existence was he preparing to destroy? He didn’t know. He only knew that whoever lived there had jumped at some point, although it was possible that his detectors had finally gone completely haywire and he wasn’t just about to slay an innocent—for weren’t they all in the end?—but an innocent who was perfectly healthy . . . That afternoon, while he was trailing a level 2 Destructor, he had thought he detected the residual aura of a Latent at the center of this house and had made a note of the coordinates in order to return there later. In fact, Latents weren’t much of a catch for any Executioner, for they were former Destructors in whom, for some reason, the sickness had entered a dormant phase. That didn’t mean they couldn’t reactivate at any moment, but, compared to an active Destructor, trailing them was not a priority. However, gone were the days when the priorities of the hunt were clear. In the past, Executioners were fitted with perfectly calibrated detectors, so that in a single day they could locate an infinite number of trails whose coordinates were clearly traceable, easy to follow and to classify. But nowadays . . . nowadays they simply did the best they could.
Without the need for any light to see where he was going, the Executioner searched the downstairs until he was satisfied that it was indeed empty; then he went upstairs. There he entered the first room he came to, a small, cozy study that had a distinctly feminine atmosphere to it. He leaned over the bunch of roses sitting on a corner of the desk and inhaled deeply, letting the delicate fragrance flood his nostrils. Then he ran his hand gently over some of the objects on the table while he thought about all the times their owner must have handled them, whether with affection, indifference, or some other emotion, imbuing them with part of her soul. Wasn’t he, too, like those objects? Hadn’t his victims, before breathing their last, passed on part of their humanity to him? Yes, for as they dwindled before him he couldn’t help looking in their eyes, and that was when he discovered whether their lives had been fulfilling or cruelly unsatisfactory; whether they left behind a trail of bitterness and misunderstanding or had known true love; whether they left that world filled with rage, fear, or a melancholy acceptance. And in that instant of absolute communication, like an object steeped in the soul of the other, the Executioner was overwhelmed by the ecstasy of Supreme Knowledge, but also by the devastating power of guilt.
Then his hand collided with what appeared to be three manuscripts. The first two were entitled, respectively, The Map of Time and The Map of the Sky, but it was the third that caught his attention. It was entitled The Map of Chaos, and on its cover the author had carefully traced in ink an eight-pointed star. The Executioner propped his cane against the table and seized the third manuscript, standing there in the darkness, reading with growing absorption what appeared to be a novel whose plot soon began to appear oddly familiar. He read without stopping up to the page where Mr. and Mrs. Wells, together with their dog, Newton, leapt through a wormhole in the laboratory of their deceased friend Charles Dodgson toward an unknown destination, leaving behind them the evil Gilliam Murray and his henchmen. When he reached that part, the Executioner paused. Raising his eyes, still clutching the pages, he stared into the distance. He remained so still that the darkness began to settle over him like a shroud of black butterflies, until he all but vanished. Then, pulling up the desk chair, he sat down and gathered up the remainder of the manuscript with what might have been a sigh. After all, he had to amuse himself somehow until his victim arrived.
And now allow me, dear readers, to tell you what the Executioner read in those pages, as if you yourselves were in that darkened room, reading over his shoulder—or, better still, through those very eyes that thought they had witnessed things beyond any of their victims’ wildest imaginings.
• • •
A BLINDING LIGHT SEEMED to envelop the couple as they leapt through the hole, as though a circular ray were spinning around at breakneck speed, while a mass of contradictory sensations struck them: they felt that they were plunging headlong into a void, floating in zero gravity, and that a monstrous force was pressing down on them, flattening them until they believed they had been reduced to the ridiculous thickness of a hair . . . Then everything stopped abruptly, as if the river of time had suddenly frozen over.
Wells opened his eyes, which he had instinctively closed when he entered the tunnel, and he found himself falling down some kind of well, although he didn’t have the sensation of falling, perhaps because the walls were going up, or possibly down, so that he was falling upward. In any event, he was moving (whether he in relation to the well or the well in relation to him it didn’t matter) as the various objects rushing past him confirmed. Wells noticed several shelves lined with books (he even had time to take one out, leaf through it, and then leave it afterward on a subsequent shelf), his favorite armchair, several lamps and clocks, a sarcophagus, a gigantic deck of cards, the crown of Queen Victoria herself . . . And yet, among all that junk, he didn’t see Jane, which might have worried him had he not felt so sleepy: his eyelids kept closing and he couldn’t stop yawning. He thought perhaps he had been falling through that well for hundreds or thousands of years, but if that was so, then nothing mattered, and he might as well have a little nap while he continued his descent. But scarcely had he begun to snore when all of a sudden, thump!—down he came on something hard and cold. And he understood that this absurd, extraordinarily lengthy fall was over.
Wells kept his eyes closed, vaguely aware that he was lying on a solid surface. Resisting the desire to carry on sleeping, he tried to open his eyes, although he was afraid of confronting some nameless, or nameable, horror—or, worse still, of seeing nothing, having been blinded by the intense light at the beginning and having lost consciousness, so that everything that had happened afterward had been no more than an absurd dream woven by his unconscious. Then a couple of vigorous licks stoked his fears, forcing him to open his eyes. The horror confronting him was none other than Newton’s cold, wet nose looming over him. When he managed to push the dog aside feebly, he discovered Jane sprawled beside him on the floor, whose black and white tiles resembled a checkerboard. Wells pulled himself up, overwhelmed by an unpleasant dizziness, and shook Jane’s shoulder. After blinking a few times, she looked at him, somewhat bewildered, then flung her arms round Newton, glancing about uneasily.
“Bertie . . . Where are we?”
But her husband didn’t reply. He was staring intently at the tile beneath his right hand, and he had such a strange expression on his face that Jane felt more scared by that than anything that had happened to them so far.
“What is it, my dear?”
“I—I . . . ,” Wells stammered, “I can’t tell whether the tile my hand is resting on . . . is black or white.”
Jane contemplated him in silence for a few seconds, without understanding what he was talking about, until she followed her husband’s astonished gaze toward the tile beneath his hand.
“It’s black,” she assured him, but a moment later she blinked, confused. “No, wait . . .” She examined the tile with a frown. “It’s white! . . . No, no, it’s definitely black, but . . . how strange: it keeps changing to white . . .”
Closely scrutinized by Jane, Wells raised his hand and lowered it again, placing it very carefully on the same tile.
“I put my right hand down on the black tile. That is what I did, nothing else. You saw me, didn’t you, Jane?” Wells asked anxiously.
“I think so,” she replied uneasily, “and yet . . . oh, goodness me, Bertie, I don’t know. Perhaps not. After all, you could also have placed your hand on the white tile. Why did you choose the black one? And . . . wait, are you sure that is your right hand? You could also be leaning on your left hand.”
Wells looked at her in amazement and raised his left hand level with his eyes, scrutinizing at it as though he were seeing it for the first time.
“This is my left hand, and I am leaning on the floor with my right hand . . . Although, indeed, it could be the other way around . . .”
“Or you could be standing up . . .”
“Or unconscious . . .”
A singsong voice interrupted their fascinating debate: “Who are you?”
Wells and Jane stopped examining the tile whose color they were unable to agree upon and lifted their respective heads only to discover a charming little girl a few feet from where they were kneeling. She was about six years old, dressed in a ragged tunic and barefoot. They were instantly struck by her casual beauty: a mop of dark chestnut hair framed her heart-shaped face, and bangs fell over her keen, inquisitive eyes, and her lips, set in a pout, held the promise of a radiant smile for anyone sufficiently deserving. Newton scampered over to her, wagging his tail, and lay down, splaying his tummy, which she stroked with her bare foot.
“Are you sprites?” she asked.
While she waited for an answer, she took a sip from the glass she was holding, which appeared to contain lemonade. Wells rose to his feet, helping Jane up, and tried not to think that the girl could be drinking milk, not lemonade, or playing with a spinning top or juggling while she waited for them to answer.
“Er . . . why should we be sprites?” asked Wells.
“There’s no reason why you should be sprites. I only thought you might be because of the way you appeared, though I hope my question didn’t offend you.” Clearly, despite being dressed in rags, the little girl had impeccable manners. “You came out of nowhere,” she explained sententiously, with a touch of impatience, like a diminutive schoolmarm addressing a couple of not-very-bright pupils. “A hole suddenly opened in the air and a very, very, very bright light came out of it, so bright I had to close my eyes. When I opened them again, there you were on the floor, staring at a tile as if you had never seen one before in your lives. You are very funny sprites,” she added earnestly.
Wells and Jane exchanged glances. So Dodgson’s hole had brought them here . . . but where were they? Had they landed in another universe? They examined their surroundings more closely and saw that they were in a room that seemed familiar, despite looking old and fusty. The flowery wallpaper, the music boxes, the children’s drawings—all gave them a clue as to where they might be. And yet there were a few details missing from the picture, which made it not quite recognizable. Hard as they looked, they found no trace of a communication screen, or a food warmer, or any other sort of technical device. It was as if the room had been divested of every artifact man had invented over the past hundred years, including dust-eating mice. But before either of them could express those thoughts, a voice somewhere behind them rang out.
“Come along, Alice! I am ready to take the photograph now . . . What is keeping you?”
Wells and Jane turned around just as a young man entered the room, cradling what looked like a metal tube, the end of which he was polishing carefully with a piece of cloth. When he caught sight of the two strangers, and the dog suddenly barking at him frantically, he stood stock-still in the doorway. Alice put her glass of lemonade down on the table and ran over to him, passing like a ghost between the two intruders.
“Charles, Charles, these two sprites appeared through a hole in the air!” she announced excitedly.
She flung her arms possessively around one of the young man’s legs, and he instantly placed a protective hand on her shoulder while examining with trepidation the supposed pair of sprites who had just materialized in his house, as if he were wondering whether sprites would also interpret human greetings as a gesture of welcome. For their part, the supposed fairy couple contemplated the newcomer with bulging eyes, as though unwilling to accept that he really was who he appeared to be . . . And doubtless, dear reader, you will wish to know exactly what the young man was like. Well, he was approximately twenty-five years old, tall and as thin as a stick insect, and he possessed one of those faces whose features seem to take pleasure in contradicting one another: if his pronounced forehead and receding chin gave him a bovine air, this was belied by eyes brimming with intelligence and his nobly proportioned skull; and if his eyebrows, like two horizontal sea horses above his drooping eyelids, gave the impression of a man prone to melancholia, the mocking expression on his lips betrayed both a keen sense of humor and the spirit of a dreamer. As for his clothes, h
e wore an elegant velvet jacket, a pair of overly tight trousers, a hat with a turned-up brim, and a dazzlingly white bow tie. However, in spite of his eccentric attire, he gave the overall impression of extreme neatness, as extreme as the overpowering perfume enveloping him. The young man opened his mouth, but for a few moments no sound emerged. Then the words came out in a rush, tumbling over one another, in a stammer that was as familiar to the Wellses as the room. They had no choice, then, but to accept the impossible.
“F-F-Forgive me, but, w-w-who are you and w-w-what are you doing in my h-house?”
“It’s him . . . ,” Wells whispered to Jane, who nodded vehemently, holding on to Newton to try to calm him down. “Well, I’ll be damned, it’s him all right. Only he’s much younger . . .”
“But how is that possible? Have we traveled back to . . . the past?”
“Time travel is impossible, Jane. It has been proven . . . and for God’s sake, hold on to that dog and make him shut up!”
“But I am!
“Well, then let go of him.”
“But I already have, haven’t I?”
“F-F-Forgive me . . . ,” the young man interrupted timidly.
“Oh, no . . . ,” Jane wailed, ignoring the young man and looking at Newton, bewildered. “In fact I’ve been holding him all along. By the Atlantic Codex! Have we lost our minds? Is it an effect of time travel?”
“Jane, I told you we haven’t traveled in time!”
“But it’s him, Bertie, it’s him!” she protested, pointing at the young man while Newton started barking again. “And he can’t be older than thirty . . . And yet when we jumped through the hole he was sixty-six. Moreover, he was . . .”
Unable to finish her sentence, Jane buried her face in Newton’s fur to muffle her sobs, at which the dog instantly stopped barking, surprised at this new role as a pillow.
“F-F-Forgive me . . . ,” the young man ventured again.
The Map of Chaos Page 40
