“Oh, nothing of any interest,” Jane replied, quickly hiding the sheets of paper in her desk drawer, the lock of which Wells had unsuccessfully tried to force open. “I’ll let you read it once it’s finished.”
Once it was finished . . . That meant nothing. What if it was never finished? What if for some reason she decided not to finish it? What if the world came to an end first? If it did, he would never know what Jane had been doing during the three or four hours she spent in her study every day. Was she writing a diary? Or perhaps a recipe book? But why be so cagey about a recipe book?
“One of the things I most hate in life is couples who keep secrets from each other,” Wells said, being deliberately dramatic.
“I thought what you most hated was the fact that no one has invented an electric razor yet,” Jane chuckled. She went on talking to him as she took his arm and led him toward the door, trying not to give the impression she was getting rid of him. “But don’t be such a grouch. What does it matter what I write? Your work is the important thing, Bertie, so stop wasting your time spying on me and get writing.”
After shrugging a few times, Wells went down to the ground floor, where he hid away in his study. There he contemplated the sheaf of blank pages before him, where he had proposed to record all his hard-earned wisdom, everything he had seen. He reached for his pen, ready to begin his “crowning work,” as Jane had called it, while the sounds from the street and the neighboring park seeped in through his window, noises from a world that went by immersed in the smug satisfaction of believing it was unique . . . and safe from harm.
• • •
IT TOOK WELLS ALMOST a year to finish the book, which—after several prunings that extended even to the pretentious title—ended up being called simply The Map of Chaos. By the time Jane had revised the final pages and given her husband’s mathematical extravaganza her approval, the year was 1897 in their adopted world. They had arrived there four decades ago, and a lot had changed since then. The two sprites now looked like an elderly couple approaching a hundred (although Wells had just turned seventy and Jane sixty-five), and indeed that is what they felt like: extremely old and tired. The past year had been very difficult for them both. Neither had connected with any of their twins during those many months, for nearly all their time and energy had been devoted to the colossal task of creating The Map of Chaos. Besides, neither Wells nor Jane wanted to see how the epidemic and the cruel extermination of those infected was running its course. It would only have made them more anxious. If the end of the world took place before they finished the map, they would soon know about it, for they doubted whether the cosmic explosions caused by infinite worlds colliding would go unnoticed. But finish it they had. And, for the time being at least, the universe was still in one piece.
Wells then decided that the completion of the work that contained the key to saving that and all other possible worlds called for a celebration, and that they both deserved a rest. And so they lit the fire, poured themselves a drink—only a drop, as alcohol no longer agreed with them very well—and slumped into their respective armchairs with a contented sigh and a creaking of elderly joints. It was time to enjoy one of their soothing, magical sessions by the fire that they had so missed. But before starting they agreed they would connect with only happy twins that evening, not with those poor wretches who had developed the disease, or those fleeing Martians, or the Invisible Man, or any other equally disturbing threat. No, they had had enough thrills and shocks. That evening they would savor the dull but peaceful existences of those twins who were simply minding their own business, because fortunately, in a universe made up of infinite parallel worlds, it was still possible to live a normal life.
But Wells cheated. He could not resist the temptation to take a peek at the first person infected. He wanted to know what had been going on in his life since he had stopped watching him, although what he might find was as daunting as Jane discovering his small deception. At first, he had difficulty locating his twin, because after not using his gift for a year he was somewhat out of practice. But at last he found him: that Wells was now an old man, and by leafing back through the pages of his memory he discovered everything that had happened to him since he last ventured into his mind. He was pleased to see that at the end of an eventful life his twin had attained a measure of peace. After an exciting adventure in the Antarctic, where he had lost a couple of fingers on his right hand, he had jumped into the universe in which he currently found himself, where his disease had entered a dormant phase, allowing him to rebuild his shattered life as best he could. Alas, just when he thought that his last days would be spent calmly preparing for death, an Executioner had picked up his trail, and for months he had been forced to live in hiding, escaping only narrowly and by sheer luck on a couple of occasions, like that time in front of the Royal Opera House. He had moved residences, changed his name to Baskerville, and adopted a different profession . . . Wells couldn’t help smiling when he saw that he had ended up as coachman to Gilliam Murray, who in that universe called himself Montgomery Gilmore. Just as Wells infiltrated his mind, the twin with the scar was holding a conversation with the original Wells from that universe.
“So you have no scar on your left hand . . . ,” Baskerville was saying to him. “But you do have one on your chin, whereas I don’t . . .”
“When I was fifteen I fell down some stairs,” replied the other Wells.
“I see. Whereas I didn’t. I was always very careful with stairs.”
“I’m very happy for you,” his young twin sighed.
Observer Wells chuckled to himself in his armchair in front of the fire, his eyes still closed. He felt tremendously proud of Baskerville, who was no less unique than he, not merely because he had succeeded in defeating a Martian invasion single-handedly, but because it seemed that he, too, had worked out the true nature of the universe, and of his disease, all by himself . . . Contented, he silently bade him farewell and let that world vanish slowly into the magic hole at the center of his mind. Then he opened his eyes.
Jane’s eyes were still half-closed, and so he sat gazing at her affectionately as he waited for her to wake up. He had no idea what his wife was seeing, but, judging from the sweet smile on her face, she must have been enjoying it. Ten minutes or so later, Jane opened her eyes to find Wells observing her with a rapt smile.
“Where have you been, my dear? You were grinning like a little girl on a merry-go-round.”
“Oh, I connected with a young twin of mine who was about to fall in love with her biology teacher.” She smiled significantly as she remembered. “As in many parallel worlds, they, too, were in the habit of walking to Charing Cross station together to catch their respective trains. But if the majority of your twins used the time to impress mine with their sparkling wit, this Wells was much . . . bolder. As we walked past a little gated garden, we slipped inside, and there, hiding behind a hedge in the moonlight we . . . Oh, Bertie, it was wonderful . . .” Jane noticed her husband gaping at her and thought it best not to go into any more detail. “And what about you, dear?”
“Er . . . well, I’m afraid the twin I connected with wasn’t up to such exploits.”
• • •
BUT THE FACT THEY had finished The Map of Chaos did not mean their work was done. On the contrary, the most difficult part remained: to make sure the book found its way into the hands of one of the Executioners. But how? Those ruthless killers weren’t in the habit of strolling through the city, smelling flowers in the park, or traveling by tram, nor did they leave a visiting card after eliminating cronotemics. The only way Wells and Jane could see Executioners was when they were hunting down one of their twins, and even then they couldn’t communicate with them. Nor could they wait for one to come looking for them, since they weren’t Destructors. They might develop the disease in the future, but equally they might not. However, they were convinced there had to be at least one Executioner on their adopted stage who was pursuing a cronotemic, or the
re would be at some point. And a book called The Map of Chaos, especially if it had the same eight-pointed star on its cover that adorned their cane, was bound to catch the attention of any Executioner. Therefore, all they had to do was to ensure that the book became popular enough to appear in every bookshop window and newspaper in England for as long as possible. Yes, it had to enjoy the same success as Dodgson’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or the novels of Wells’s own twin or, better still, the adventures of that pompous detective Sherlock Holmes.
However, after two weeks traipsing round London, knocking on every publisher’s door, they were forced to admit defeat. Regardless of whether it contained the key to saving the world, no one wanted to publish a complicated mathematical treatise entitled The Map of Chaos that was impossible to make head or tail of. Wells had to be satisfied to have his rejected manuscript bound in fine leather with the silver Star of Chaos embossed on its cover. He had devoted a year of his life to the absurd task of writing an indecipherable book, a map that would only make sense if a pair of inhuman eyes alighted on its pages, which seemed most unlikely.
Back home, they placed the one existing copy of The Map of Chaos on the table and sat down in their armchairs to try to think up some other way of making sure it reached an Executioner. But the problem seemed insoluble.
“Maybe we should turn the search on its head,” Jane suggested after a few moments’ reflection.
“What do you mean?” asked Wells.
“Instead of trying to find an Executioner in order to give him the book, we should let them come to us. We could find a twin who has become a Destructor and give him the book.”
Wells looked at her in astonishment.
“You mean . . . entrust our mission to them?”
Jane nodded, although she didn’t seem all that convinced either.
“Yes, I suppose we could . . . ,” Wells mused. “But it would have to be a cronotemic who is active enough to attract the Executioners but whose mental and molecular decline hasn’t set in and who is young and healthy enough to pass the mission on to another twin when the initial symptoms of degeneration start. In short: we would have to find the Perfect Twin. He or she would be the only one to whom we could safely entrust the book.”
They both agreed they needed to find the Perfect Twin, but how? They could look for as many as they wanted without moving from their chairs, but that would be of no use. They had no way of communicating with them, and if they accidentally jumped into their world, they would lose all trace of them immediately, because they were incapable of infiltrating the mind of any double occupying the same stage as they. That would mean searching all over London, as they doubted the poor wretch would stay put wherever they appeared, waiting for them to turn up. And that was assuming they arrived at the same place they had left from, for there was always the possibility they might be sucked up by a Maelstrom Coordinate and spat out in the Himalayas or the Sahara Desert or some other equally remote corner of the universe . . . It was then that the Supreme Knowledge illuminated their minds as one.
“The Maelstrom Coordinates!” they exclaimed.
Why hadn’t they thought of it before? There was no need for them to tramp blindly around the city. They only had to wait beside one of those whirlpools for a cronotemic twin to land in their world and hope that he or she was the Perfect Twin. Then they would hand him or her the book, explaining that it contained the key to saving the universe. They trusted they could convince him or her without too much difficulty. After all, they should know their own doubles better than they knew anyone. It would be like convincing themselves, or so they hoped. But they would worry about that later. First of all they had to find a Perfect Twin.
“I’m afraid, my dear, that we will have to become devotees of spiritualism,” said Wells.
They both smiled at that, remembering how they had pitied people who went to séances to communicate with their dead relatives.
Throughout the following year, Wells and Jane visited every medium practicing in England at the time, as well as with any who included the British Isles in their European tours. They attended séances conducted by C. H. Foster, Madame d’Esperance, William Eglinton, and the Reverend Stainton Moses, to name but a few. In rooms plunged into a reddish gloom, they sat around tables touching fingers with those next to them while the medium of the day levitated above their heads, held up by wires concealed beneath his or her tunic or conjured some ectoplasmic materialization made from a painted chiffon veil. They also visited several supposedly haunted houses in England. But the results of their exhaustive search were less than encouraging. Among all those charlatans it was hard to discover a genuine medium who also contained a Maelstrom Coordinate, and on the rare occasions that they did, none of the cronotemics that emerged from their bodies were the Wellses’ twins, but instead some half-translucent wretches whose minds had gone and who simply recited pathetically whatever the medium had told them. Only once they thought they recognized a boy of six or seven who materialized in the middle of a séance looking sadly neglected and grubby, like an Oliver Twist of the multiverse, and crying out that he wanted his mummy. At Borley Rectory they also found a demented eighty-year-old twin of Jane’s whose appearances were responsible for the rector’s daughters’ claims that the house was haunted. Those futile encounters were all they had managed to achieve with their desperate plan.
And so it was no wonder that, as the months went by, each became secretly convinced that this strategy wasn’t going to work either. However, neither of them dared to put it into words, so as not to demoralize the other completely. But then, one afternoon, events took over. They were on their way home after attending a séance conducted by a medium who had turned out to be a fake, and as they walked Wells railed continuously against that bunch of charlatans who used their cheap tricks to take advantage of other people’s unhappiness.
“They are wasting our precious time!” he fumed. “Not to mention our money!”
Jane felt equally angry, but as they entered Charing Cross station she told her husband to keep his voice down.
“Return to a state of calm, Bertie, unless you want to draw attention to yourself with your shouting.”
But that only incensed Wells more, and he repeated his vociferations as they descended the stairs to the concourse. All of a sudden, Wells came to a halt, pallid and stiff as a snowman. After struggling for breath for a few seconds, he raised a clawed hand to his chest and fell in a heap on the steps, on the exact same spot where dozens of his consumptive twins had collapsed in various parallel worlds. However, Wells’s diagnosis was very different: his frustration and rage over their fruitless search had formed a ball of anguish that had blocked one of the arteries in his heart.
Had he had access to drugs from his own universe, Wells would have made an instant recovery. However, medicine was still in its infancy in his adopted world, and he was prescribed only an extract of the herbaceous perennial digitalis and several weeks’ rest. Laid up in bed, stymied by that rudimentary medicine, Wells felt more powerless than ever. What further could he and Jane do? They had found the solution to the problem, but that didn’t seem to be enough to atone for his sins.
For her part, Jane momentarily forgot the fate of the universe, as she was far more concerned with that of her husband. Seeing him collapse like that while walking along, she had feared the worst, and afterward she devoted herself to caring for him as tenderly as ever, infinitely grateful that her husband had resisted death’s first approach. She prepared vinegar compresses for him and occasionally in the afternoons she would read him adventure novels by authors from their adopted universe who simply invented things with words, such as Stevenson, Swift, or Verne. When he had fallen asleep, she would begin to weep silently. Jane knew that this first attack was only a stab in the dark and that very soon another, possibly fatal thrust would come. And although she had often thought about death, it had never crossed her mind that she and her husband might die separately. They had alw
ays done everything together, by mutual agreement; why change things now? But Bertie apparently planned to precede her in that final adventure, and she found it inconceivable, shameful almost, that she should carry on living in a world without him. She found devastating not only the pain but above all the shock of no longer being two. She and Bertie had been together for longer than she could remember, and she did not think she could go on living with such a wound to her heart. But she would have no choice, for if that happened, then, frail and diminished as she was, there would be no one else standing between the universe and its annihilation.
Fortunately, as the days went by, Wells appeared to recover. His cough was gradually abating, and some color returned to his cheeks. However feebly, he still clung to life. One afternoon, when he was feeling stronger, he called out to Jane. She entered that room reeking of old age, medicaments, and deferred death and sat down in the armchair beside his bed. Wells tried to speak but instead began to whoop joyously, as though ascending the musical scale. Jane took his hand and waited for the coughing fit to subside, contemplating him with a tenderness that time had smoothed, as water polishes pebbles on the riverbed. She couldn’t bear to see the man with whom she had shared her life so vulnerable, so exposed to death, that man who had loved her with the rationality decreed by the Church of Knowledge and with the passion dictated by his heart, and who had been responsible for offering her whatever happiness life had allotted her.
“I’ve been thinking, my dear,” she heard Wells say in a reedy, almost childlike voice when she had regained her composure, “and in my opinion we shouldn’t go to any more séances. It is getting us nowhere.”
Jane was taken aback. She had assumed that when her husband recovered they would resume their search, no matter how unpleasant they both found it, incapable of shirking the responsibility they had taken on.
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