“One moment!” Wells interrupted him, slightly irritated. The young man raised his hand in a sign of peace. Wells turned to Jane, endeavoring to sound as composed as possible: “Jane, I implore you, regain your composure. We won’t be able to understand anything if we allow our emotions to get the better of us. We must calm our minds to allow knowledge to flourish in them.”
Jane nodded, her sobs beginning to subside. Wells rubbed the bridge of his nose and turned to face the young man, doing his best to appear as cordial and unthreatening as possible.
“Please forgive the inexcusable manner in which my wife and I have turned up in your home. I assure you there are reasons for it that are beyond our control, and we will gladly explain them to you. But, in order to do so, firstly I must beg you to answer a couple of questions. Preferably”—he gestured subtly toward the little girl—“alone. You have my word that it is absolutely necessary and that afterward we will be only too happy to answer any questions you may wish to ask us, Mr. . . . Dodgson. For you are Charles Lutwidge Dodgson . . .”
The young man looked at them inquiringly.
“D-Do I k-know you?”
Wells did not know how to reply. If all the current theories were incorrect, and they had in fact traveled back in time, then that twenty-something-year-old Charles still did not know them, because neither of them had been born yet . . . But time travel was not possible. Wells observed the young man attentively, studying his clothes, his hairstyle, and the tube he was clasping . . . Then, in a flash, what might have been the correct answer suddenly occurred to him. The young man would doubtless find it most odd, but if this Charles was anything like the Charles he knew (and Wells prayed he was), he was convinced he would accept it, because as well as strange it was also beautiful.
“Not in this world, Mr. Dodgson. But in the world we come from, another Dodgson identical to you taught me how to enjoy a golden evening.”
Jane looked at her husband, wide-eyed, as a spark of comprehension lit up her face. Wells smiled at her lovingly, proud of her quick mind, of having her as a companion on the long journey toward Supreme Knowledge. Dodgson cleared his throat.
“P-P-Please excuse me for a m-moment, if you would be so k-k-kind, er . . . Mr. and Mrs. Sprite,” he said, and then turned to Alice, prizing her gently from his leg. “My dear girl, I am afraid you must join your governess and your sisters in the garden and, er . . . ask them to take you home. We won’t be able to take any photographs today, because, as you can see, I must attend to these unexpected guests.” He spoke to her in a hushed tone, not in the way adults habitually speak to children, but with the more intimate manner they use among themselves and, oddly enough, with no trace of any stammer. “Is that all right?”
“No, it is not all right,” the girl protested rather crossly. “Look . . . I’ve dressed up as an urchin! I’ve even been practicing the pose you told me.” She ran to the nearest wall, which she leaned against, propping up one of her legs and extending a cupped hand before staring defiantly at the young man. “I might forget it by tomorrow,” she threatened gently.
“I am sure you will remember it perfectly tomorrow,” the young man replied, taking her by the shoulders and steering her gently toward the door. “Although I think you ought to sleep in that position all night just to be on the safe side.”
“But, but . . . you promised you’d take me into the darkroom to develop the plates!”
“A promise that will still be valid tomorrow. Providing it doesn’t rain starfish tonight. If that happens, I am afraid I shall be forced to break my promise, for as everyone knows—”
“But I want to stay and talk to the fairies! They’re so amusing . . .”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s a very good idea . . .” The young man glanced uneasily at the couple and lowered his voice. “Sprites are very particular, Alice, and there are few things they find more vexatious than naughty little girls. Except perhaps for the sight of human feet . . . Yes, now I remember, they can’t abide bare feet! It gives them insomnia, tinnitus, and terrible stomach cramps. Ah, and another thing they detest is orange marmalade; they only have to look at it and they come out in bumps . . . Luckily we didn’t eat orange marmalade for breakfast this morning and you aren’t a naughty little girl!”
“But, Charles . . . ,” the child whispered, “I’ve got bare feet!”
“Goodness gracious! Alice Liddell! Why didn’t you say so before?” The young man looked aghast at the girl’s feet. “Hurry, hurry!” He propelled her out of the room. “Run home and ask your mother to smother the soles of your feet in orange marmalade . . . tell her it’s a matter of life or death! I promise I will come to fetch you tomorrow . . .” And closing the door abruptly, he wheeled round, leaning his whole weight against it, as though afraid the little girl might break it down at any moment.
“W-W-Would you like a cup of tea?” he managed to ask. “Or p-p-perhaps some l-lemonade, or even some f-f-f—”
“Anything will do, thank you,” Wells cut in, too impatient to wait to discover what it was that started with “f.” “The journey here was rather long.”
“Er, yes, well . . . please, h-h-have a seat,” the young man said, pointing at the exquisite carved wooden table in the center of the room, accompanied by four Chippendale chairs. “I shall put the kettle on to boil,” he added. Before leaving the room, he rested the tube and the piece of cloth he was still holding on a corner of the table.
“Thank you,” Jane said, taking a seat.
Wells slumped onto the chair next to her, and they both sank into a determined silence, trying hard not to think about the infinite places where the young man could have left the tube and the piece of cloth, until he came back into the room.
“Allow us to introduce ourselves,” Wells said when the young man was standing before him. “My name is Herbert George Wells, and this is my wife, Catherine. As I already mentioned, for our tale to be credible as possible, first you must agree to resolve some of the doubts that are plaguing us, although I ought to warn you that many of our questions might surprise you, and I daresay you will find our own explanations somewhat . . . incredible.”
“Don’t w-worry,” said Dodgson, sitting down on one of the empty chairs opposite them. “Why, sometimes I’ve believed in six impossible things before breakfast.”
Wells smiled hesitantly, then exclaimed, “Oh . . . I see you have taken the chair on the right. Yes, I am almost sure of it . . . Although you might have taken the one on the left. What do you think, Jane?” Wells’s wife nodded, perplexed. “Anyway, let’s drop the subject . . . Where do I begin?”
“It is m-m-most usual to begin at the beginning,” Dodgson said encouragingly, “after which you carry on until you reach the end. And then you stop.”
“And yet,” Wells replied pensively, “an end can also be a beginning—”
“What year are we in? And where are we?” Jane asked abruptly, cutting short her husband’s circumlocutions.
Dodgson looked at her, slightly bemused.
“This is the year of our Lord 1858, and we are in Oxford, England, in the reign of H-H-Her Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria.”
“And what is your date of birth?” Jane asked again.
“The twenty-seventh of January 1832.”
“And your profession?”
“I apply myself to the thankless t-task of teaching ill-disposed young men who have no appreciation of knowledge: in other words, I am a p-professor of m-mathematics here at Christ Church, Oxford.”
“What mathematical research are you engaged in?”
“I am c-currently working on A Syllabus of Plane Algebraic Geometry.”
“I think that is enough, my dear . . . ,” Wells chipped in.
“Do you write poems and children’s books?” she asked, ignoring him.
“Y-Yes, I have been published in several magazines.”
“Do you ever use a pseudonym?”
“My most recent poems in The Train appeared under
the name Lewis Carroll . . .”
Jane looked significantly at Wells while Newton, who had decided that the man was not only harmless but also a terminal bore, jumped down off his mistress’s lap and began to explore the room.
“It’s incredible,” Wells whispered to Jane. “This universe is almost identical to ours . . . Dodgson has a twin here, as does Queen Victoria herself . . . I suppose everyone in our world must have a replica on this side. And so must we, of course! However, since we have arrived in 1858, our twins haven’t been born yet. And yet, scientifically speaking, our 1858 was far in advance of this world: this room, Charles’s mathematical studies . . . and have you seen that lens?” He pointed to the tube Dodgson had left on a corner of the table.
Jane nodded.
“Why, it’s positively prehistoric,” she declared.
“P-P-Prehistoric?” Dodgson said, completely taken aback. “But it belongs to the latest Sanderson camera . . .”
“Don’t be offended, Mr. Dodgson,” Wells said reassuringly. “I fear my wife was exaggerating slightly when she referred to it in those terms, though I confess that in our world that way of taking photographs is completely obsolete. You see, my wife and I come from . . . another world. It was 1898 when we left. I admit that I have no idea why we landed here forty years earlier, although I intend to reflect about that as soon as I can; but while I am no expert in history, I can assure you that in 1858 our photographers had long since stopped using the collodion wet plate, nor were they forced to carry out lengthy exposures or arduous developing processes . . . For over a century now we have been capturing images of the world around us using a matrix made up of thousands of tiny photosensitive elements that transform light into an electrical signal, storing it numerically so that . . .” Seeing the young man’s astonished face, Wells paused in midflow. “Never mind, I will tell you all about it when we have a quiet moment. What I am trying to say is that your world is very similar to ours . . .”
“So similar, in fact, that we feel quite at home here,” Jane went on. “The clothes, the furniture, you with the same age and appearance our Dodgson would have had in 1858 . . . all that made us believe for a moment that we had traveled back in time . . .”
“But time travel isn’t possible. And seeing that lens, which you don’t treat as an antique, but rather as an everyday object . . .”
“And seeing that there isn’t a single mechanical servant in here . . .”
“And that you are working with mathematical theories that have been obsolete in our world for a lot longer than forty years—for centuries, in fact . . .”
“In brief, seeing all that made us realize that we haven’t traveled back in time, but rather to another universe. A world very similar to ours, but with a few differences.”
The young man’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times before he managed to ask, “And h-how am I to know that you aren’t simply s-s-stark staring mad?”
“Mr. Dodgson . . .” Jane looked at him with infinite tenderness. “Does the poem The Hunting of the Snark mean anything to you?”
The professor went pale.
“I . . . well, I never. It’s an idea I’ve been mulling over for a poem, but I haven’t mentioned it to anyone yet . . . How can you . . . ?”
“You will write that poem,” Jane confirmed. “You will write it in a few years’ time, and it will be truly wonderful. It has always been my favorite. Our Charles once confided in me that the idea came to him when he was very young . . .”
Dodgson, whose pallor was taking on a greenish hue, leapt to his feet, although he immediately had to hold on to the back of his chair. He ran a trembling hand across his noble brow.
“Am I to u-understand that you come from . . . a-another universe?” he reiterated. “A world that is the same as this, aesthetically at least, b-but much more, er . . . evolved?”
Wells and Jane nodded as one.
“And h-how did you get here?”
“That is rather difficult to explain, Mr. . . . Charles, may I call you Charles?” Wells asked. “It feels more normal.” The young man nodded. “Oh, thank you . . . Perhaps it would help if you could imagine a kind of . . . rabbit hole that connects two different universes across hyperspace.”
“And where is that hole now?” asked Dodgson, gesturing toward their surroundings.
“It must have imploded after we came through it,” replied Wells, recalling the deafening noise he had heard shortly before he jumped. “I fear this was a one-way journey.”
He shot Jane a worried look, but she pressed his hand. After a brief silence, Dodgson ventured another question.
“And on the other side of that rabbit hole someone identical to me, w-with my name, is living a p-parallel life to mine?”
“That’s right, Charles,” said Wells proudly. “He was my teacher. A brilliant scientist. He created the hole that brought us here.”
“And why hasn’t he come with you?”
Wells and Jane looked at each other, this time with deep sadness.
“Well, you see . . . ,” Wells began.
“Because they killed him before he had the chance,” interrupted Jane.
She gave a brief summary of what had happened in his laboratory on the Other Side before they managed to jump. By the time she finished, Dodgson was looking at her aghast. Just then the kettle started whistling in the kitchen. Bobbing his head politely, the young man left the room swaying like a drunkard, moving his lips and shaking his head, as if he were talking to himself. And while he was away, the couple held the following hurried conversation in hushed tones:
“Why did you tell him he had died, Jane?” Wells asked. “Do you think that was a good idea?”
“Why should he care?” Jane said, surprised. “After all, he didn’t die, his other self did . . .”
“Yes, but if the two Charleses were born on the same day and have so many other things in common . . . don’t you think they might also die on the same day? And who wants to know the possible date of his own death?”
“You could be right . . . And yet, as you can see for yourself, they aren’t that similar. As far as I recall, our Charles was never keen on photography, nor do I think he cultivated the friendship of little girls when he was young . . . Wait a moment!” Jane squeezed Wells’s arm. “What name did he call that little girl?”
“Alice . . .” Wells searched his memory. “That’s all I remember.”
“Liddell,” Jane declared, her eyes flashing with excitement. “Alice Liddell. And what is our Charles’s wife called?”
“You know perfectly well, my dear, she was your friend: Pleasance Dodgson . . .”
“Yes, yes.” Jane nodded impatiently. “But her maiden name is Liddell! And can you guess what her middle name is?”
Wells, who was flabbergasted, didn’t reply.
“Her full name is Pleasance Alice Liddell . . . ,” Jane explained. “Do you see? Our Pleasance is that little girl! Although here it seems her parents have changed her names around. Lie down, Newton! Now it all makes sense . . . Our Charles was twenty years older than his wife, do you remember, and neither of them liked talking much about how and where they met. It was rumored that during his wedding preparations there were more inspections than usual, and that Charles had to make countless visits to his relationship advisor as well as go through his prenuptial reports several times . . .”
“Good grief! If the Church knew that Charles had spent years waiting for that little girl to grow up just so that he could marry her, it must have been terribly difficult to persuade the vicar that such an excessive love wouldn’t cause him to stray from the path towards Knowl—”
A timid cough made them look up. They had been so absorbed in their tête-à-tête that they hadn’t heard Dodgson come in. He was standing beside the table, holding the tea tray, and the expression on his face left them in no doubt that he had heard the end of their conversation.
“We English always manage to turn up in time for tea, even when
traveling between universes,” Wells tried to jest.
But that didn’t distract the young Dodgson, who murmured, his cheeks turning bright pink, “In your world, my twin married his Alice . . .” He placed the tea tray abruptly on the table and sat down as if he felt suddenly dizzy. He took several minutes to compose himself before asking, “Tell me, w-what was Alice like as a grown-up? What sort of w-woman did she turn into?”
“This time you sat down in the chair on the left . . . ,” Wells ventured.
“Why didn’t you sit on the same chair as before?” Jane asked.
“Well . . . I c-can change seats if you like,” Dodgson said solicitously, moving to the other chair with unexpected alacrity. “Very well,” he proposed, once he was ensconced, “now, t-tell me your story, and that of the o-other Charles . . .”
“Of course, of course . . . Now, in our world—” Wells began, but instantly broke off. “Forgive me, Charles, but did you actually change seats, or did you only have the intention of doing so?”
“For heaven’s sake!” the young man exclaimed. “What is your problem with the chairs? You appear to have a peculiar obsession with randomness . . .”
The couple looked at him in astonishment.
“What problem could we possibly have with a concept that is so completely theoretical and unreal?” Wells asked.
Now it was Dodgson’s turn in that improvised contest of flabbergasted expressions, and I must say he came out of it rather well.
“Do you m-mean that e-everything in your w-world is predetermined?”
“Predetermined? What the deuce does that mean?” Wells replied crossly. “In our world things simply happen the only way they can happen. It would never have occurred to me that it could be any other way . . . And yet, objects in this world have the tiresome habit of never staying still . . . It is like wanting to take something off a shelf only to find that it has moved to another shelf out of reach . . . And every decision is so . . .”
“So impossible, so uncertain . . . ,” murmured Jane.
“It is a peculiar and frustrating sensation . . . ,” Wells added, genuinely despondent.
The Map of Chaos Page 41
