The Map of Time (18 page)

Let’s kill the monster and save the girl!” Infected by this burst of enthusiasm, Charles took the cutting about Marie Kelly’s murder out of his bemused cousin’s pocket and approached Wells so that they could study it together.

“The crime took place on November 7, 1888, at about five in the morning,” he pointed out. “Andrew needs to arrive a few minutes earlier, lie in wait for the Ripper near Marie Kelly’s room, then shoot the ogre when he appears.” “It sounds like a good plan,” Wells agreed. “But we must bear in mind that the machine only travels through time, not space, which means it won’t move from here. Your cousin will need several hours” leeway to reach London.” Like an excited child, Wells leapt over to the machine and began adjusting the monitors on the control panel.

“There we are,” he declared, after he had set the date. “I’ve programmed the machine to take your cousin back to November 7, 1888. Now all we have to do is wait until two in the morning to begin the journey. That way he’ll arrive in Whitechapel in time to prevent the crime from being committed.” “Perfect,” exclaimed Charles.

The four of them looked at one another in silence, not knowing how to fill the time before the journey began. Luckily, one of them was a woman.

“Have you had supper yet, gentlemen?” asked Jane, showing the practical nature of her sex.

Less than an hour later, Charles and Andrew were able to discover for themselves that Wells had married an excellent cook.

Squeezed around the table in the narrow kitchen, tucking in to one of the most delicious roasts they had ever eaten was a most agreeable way of passing the time until the early hours. During supper, Wells showed an interest in the voyages to the year 2000, and Charles spared no detail. Feeling as if he were recounting the plot of one of those fantasy novels he was so fond of, Charles described how he and the other tourists had traveled across the fourth dimension in a tramcar called the Cronotilius, until they reached the ruined London of the future, where, hidden behind a pile of rocks, they had witnessed the final battle between the evil Solomon and the brave Captain Derek Shackleton. Wells bombarded him with so many questions that after he had finished his story, Charles asked the author why he had not gone on one of the expeditions himself if he was so interested in the outcome of that war of the future. Wells suddenly went quiet, and Charles realized during the ensuing silence that he had unwittingly offended the author.

“Forgive my inquisitiveness, Mr. Wells,” he apologized hurriedly. “Of course not everyone can afford a hundred pounds.” “Oh, it isn’t the money,” Jane broke in. “Mr. Murray has invited Bertie to take part in his voyages on several occasions, but he always refuses.” As she said this, she glanced at her husband, perhaps in the hope he might feel encouraged to explain his systematic refusals. But Wells simply stared at the joint of lamb with a mournful smile.

“Who would want to travel in a crowded tramcar when they can make the same journey in a luxurious carriage?” Andrew interposed.

The three others looked at the young man, exchanged puzzled glances for a moment then nodded slowly in agreement.

With renewed enthusiasm, Wells declared, wiping the grease from his mouth with a napkin, “But let’s get back to the matter in hand. On one of my exploratory trips in the machine, I traveled six years back in time, arriving in the same attic when the house was occupied by the previous tenants. If I remember correctly, they had a horse tethered in the garden. I propose that you climb down the vine quietly, so as not to wake them. Then jump on the horse and ride to London as fast as you can. Once you have killed the Ripper, come straight back here.

Climb onto the machine, set the date for today, and pull on the lever. Do you understand?” “Yes, I understand …” Andrew was able to stammer.

Charles leaned back in his seat and gazed at him affectionately.

“You are about to change the past, cousin …” he mused. “I still can’t believe it.” Then Jane brought in a bottle of port and poured a glass for the guests. They sipped slowly, from time to time glancing at their watches, visibly impatient, until the author said: “Well, the time has come to make history.” He set down his glass on the table and nodding solemnly steered them once more up to the attic.

“Here, cousin,” Charles said, handing Andrew the pistol. “It’s already loaded. When you shoot the swine, make sure you aim at his chest.” “At his chest,” echoed Andrew, his hand shaking as he took the pistol, quickly slipping it into his pocket so that neither Wells nor his cousin would see how terrified he was.

The two men each took him by one arm and guided him ceremoniously towards the machine. Andrew climbed over the brass rail and sat in the seat. Despite his feeling of unreality, he could not help noticing the dark splatter of blood on the upholstery.

“Now listen to me,” said Wells in a commanding tone. “Try to avoid making contact with anyone, even with your beloved, no matter how much you want to see her alive again. Just shoot the Ripper and come straight back the same way you went, before you meet your past self. I don’t know what the consequences of such an unnatural encounter might be, but I suspect it would wreak havoc in the fabric of time and could bring about a catastrophe that could destroy the world. Now, tell me, have I made myself clear?” “Yes, don’t worry,” murmured Andrew, more intimidated by the harsh tone of Wells’s voice than by the possible fatal consequences of his desire to save Marie Kelly if he made a mistake.

“Another thing,” said Wells, returning to the fray, although this time in a less menacing voice. “Your journey won’t be anything like in my novel. You won’t see any snails walking backwards. I confess to having used a certain amount of poetic license. The effects of time travel are far less exhilarating. The moment you pull on the lever, you’ll notice a surge of energy, followed almost immediately by a blinding flash. That’s all. Then, quite simply, you’ll be in 1888. You might feel dizzy or sick after the journey, but I hope this won’t affect your aim,” he added sarcastically.

“I’ll bear that in mind,” Andrew muttered, absolutely terrified.

Wells nodded, reassured. Apparently, he had no other advice to give him, because he then began to hunt for something on a shelf full of knickknacks. The others watched him without saying a word.

When at last Wells found what he had been looking for, he declared: “If you don’t mind, we’ll keep the cutting in this little box. When you come back, we’ll open it and find out whether you have managed to change the past. I imagine that if your mission has been successful, the headline will announce the death of Jack the Ripper.” Andrew nodded feebly, and handed Wells the cutting. Then Charles went over to his cousin, placed his hand solemnly on his shoulder, and gave him an encouraging smile, in which Andrew thought he glimpsed a hint of anxiety. When his cousin stepped aside, Jane approached the machine, wished Andrew good luck, and gave him a little peck on the cheek. Wells beamed as he watched the ritual, visibly pleased.

“Andrew, you’re a pioneer,” he declared once these displays of encouragement were over, as though he felt he must close the ceremony with a lofty remark of the sort carved in stone. “Enjoy the journey. If in the next few decades time travel becomes commonplace, changing the past will doubtless be considered a crime.” Then, adding to Andrew’s unease, he asked the others to take a few steps back to avoid being singed by the burst of energy the machine would give off as soon as its occupant pulled the lever.

Andrew watched them step back, trying to conceal his helplessness. He took a deep breath, struggling to control the panic and confusion overwhelming him; he was going to save Marie, he told himself, trying to feel emboldened. He was traveling back in time, to the night of her death, to shoot her killer before he had a chance to rip her guts out, thus changing history and at the same time erasing the eight years of suffering he had gone through. He looked at the date on the panel, the accursed date that had ruined his life. He could not believe it was in his power to save her, and yet all he had to do to overcome his disbelief was to pull that lever. Nothing more. Then whether or not he believed in time travel would become irrelevant. His trembling hand glistened with sweat as he grasped the handle, and the coolness of the glass lever in his palm seemed both unbelievable and absurd because it was such a familiar, commonplace sensation. He glanced at the three figures waiting expectantly by the attic door.

“Go on, cousin,” prompted Charles.

Andrew pulled the lever.

To begin with, nothing happened. Then he became aware of a faint persistent purring sound, and the air seemed to quiver slightly, as though he were hearing the world’s insides rumble. All of a sudden, the hypnotic drone was broken by an eerie cracking sound, and a bright flash of blue light pierced the attic’s gloom. A second deafening crack was followed by another flash of light, then another, with sparks flying in all directions as though they were trying to light up every corner of the room.

Suddenly, Andrew found himself at the center of a continuous burst of life-sized blue lightning bolts. On the far side of it stood Charles, Jane, and Wells, who had stretched his arms out in front of the other two, whether to protect them from the shower of sparks or to prevent them from rushing to his aid, Andrew could not tell. The air, perhaps the world, possibly time, or everything at once, disintegrated before his eyes. Reality itself fragmented.

Then, suddenly, just as the author had described, an intense light blinded him, making the attic disappear. He gritted his teeth to stifle a scream, as he felt himself fall through the air.

15

Andrew had to blink at least a dozen times before he could see properly again.

As the attic went back to apparent normality, his wildly racing heart began to slow down. He was relieved not to feel dizzy or sick. Even his panic had begun to subside once he realized he had not been burnt to a crisp by the flashes of lightning, which had left a smell of singed butterflies in the air. His only discomfort was that his whole body felt tense as a result of his anxiety, but in the end, he was even glad about that. This was no picnic he was going on. He was about to change the past, to alter events that had already taken place. He, Andrew Harrington, was going to shake up time. Was it not better to be on the alert, to be on his guard? When the effects of the flash had finally died away and he was able to see properly, he plucked up the courage to step down off the machine, as quietly as possible. The solidity of the floor surprised him, as if he had been expecting the past to be made of mist or fog or some other equally ethereal or malleable substance, simply because the time that corresponded to it had already been used up. However, as he discovered when he placed his foot tentatively on the ground, that reality was just as solid and real as the one he had left. But was he in 1888? He glanced suspiciously around the attic, still plunged into darkness, even savoring a few mouthfuls of air like a gourmet, looking for evidence, some detail to prove he was in the past, that he had indeed traveled in time. He discovered it when he peered out of the window: the road looked the same as he remembered it, but there was no sign of the cab that had brought them, and in the garden he saw a horse that had not been there before. Was a simple nag tied to a fence enough to distinguish one year from another? As evidence it seemed rather flimsy and unromantic. Disappointed, he carefully surveyed the peaceful backdrop of the night sky studded with stars, like rice grains randomly scattered. He saw nothing strange there either. After a few moments of fruitless search, he shrugged and told himself there was no reason why he should notice any significant differences since he had only traveled back in time eight years.

Then he shook his head. He could not waste time collecting evidence like an entomologist. He had a mission to fulfill, in which time was very much of the essence. He opened the window and, after testing the creeper’s resistance, followed Wells’s instructions and began climbing down it as quietly as possible so as not to alert the occupants of the house. This proved easy, and once he reached the ground, he crept towards the horse, which had been impassively watching him climb down the creeper. Andrew gently stroked its mane in order to allay any suspicions the animal might have about him. The horse had no saddle, but Andrew found one with stirrups hanging on the fence. He could not believe his luck. He tied it on the horse, avoiding any sudden gestures that might make the animal nervous, keeping an eye on the darkened house all the while. Then he took the animal by the reins and coaxed it out into the road with affectionate whispers. He was amazed at himself for taking everything so calmly. He mounted the horse, glanced back one last time to ensure everything was still as disappointingly calm, and set off towards London.

Only when he was far enough away, a fast-moving blur in the darkness, did it finally dawn on Andrew that soon he was going to see Marie Kelly. He felt a pang inside and became tense again.

Yes, incredible though it might seem to him, in the year he was in now, at this time in the morning, she was still alive: she had still not been murdered. She would probably be in the Britannia at that very moment, drinking to forget her spineless lover before stumbling back home into the arms of death. But then he remembered he was not allowed to see her, not allowed to embrace her, to nestle his head on her shoulder and breathe in her longed-for odor. No, Wells had forbidden it, because that simple gesture could alter the fabric of time, bring about the end of the world. He must limit himself to killing the Ripper and returning the way he had come, as the author had ordered. His action must be swift and precise, like a surgical intervention, whose consequences would only be visible when the patient came to, that is to say, once he had traveled back to his own time.

Whitechapel was immersed in a deathly silence. He was surprised at the absence of the usual hurly-burly, until he remembered that during those weeks Whitechapel was an accursed, feared neighborhood, in whose alleyways the monster known as Jack the Ripper roamed, doling out death with his knife. He slowed his mount as he entered Dorset Street, aware that in the intense silence its hooves hammering on the cobblestones must produce a din like a smithy’s forge. He dismounted a few yards from the entrance to Miller’s Court and tethered the animal to an iron railing, away from any streetlamps so that it was less likely to be noticed. Then, after making sure the street was empty, he darted through the stone archway leading to the flats. The tenants were all asleep, so he had no light to guide him through the pitch-darkness, but Andrew could have found his way blind-folded. The further he ventured into that powerfully familiar place, the more overwhelmed he was by a mournful sadness that culminated when he reached Marie Kelly’s room, which was also in darkness. But his nostalgia gave way to a feeling of profound shock when it dawned on him that while he was standing there, before the modest abode that had been both heaven and hell to him, his father was also slapping his face in the Harrington mansion. That night, thanks to a miracle of science, there were two Andrews in the world. He wondered whether his other self might be aware of his existence, too, in the form of goose pimples or a sharp pain in his stomach, as he had heard sometimes happened with twins.

The echo of footsteps interrupted his reverie. His heart began beating faster, and he ran to hide round the corner of one of the neighboring flats. He had thought of hiding there from the very beginning because, besides seeming to be the safest place, it was scarcely a dozen yards from Marie’s door, a perfect distance to be able to see clearly enough to shoot the Ripper, in case he was too afraid to get any closer to him. Once safely out of sight, back against the wall, Andrew drew the pistol out of his pocket, listening out for the footsteps as they drew nearer. The steps that had alerted him had an uncontrolled, irregular quality, typical of a drunk or wounded person. He instantly understood that they could only be those of his beloved, and his heart fluttered like a leaf in a sudden gust of wind. That night, like so many others, Marie Kelly was staggering home from the Britannia, only this time his other self was not there to undress her, put her to bed, tuck in her alcoholic dreams. He poked his head slowly round the corner. His eyes were accustomed enough to the dark for him to be able to make out the reeling figure of his beloved pause outside the door to her tiny room. He had to stop himself from running towards her. He felt his eyes grow moist with tears as he watched her straighten up in a drunken effort to regain her balance, adjust her hat, which was in danger of toppling off with the constant swaying of her body, and thrust her arm through the hole in the window, forcing the lock for what seemed like an eternity, until finally she managed to open the door. Then she disappeared inside the room, slamming the door behind her, and a moment later the faint glow from a lamp cleared part of the swirling gloom in front of her door.

Andrew leaned back against the wall. He had scarcely dried his tears, when the sound of more footsteps startled him. Someone else was coming through the entrance into the yard. It took him a few moments to realize this must be the Ripper. His heart froze as he heard the man’s boots crossing the cobblestones with cold deliberation. These were the movements of a practiced, ruthless predator, who knew there was no escape for his quarry.

Andrew poked his head out again and with a shudder of terror saw a huge man calmly approaching his beloved’s room, surveying the place with a penetrating gaze. He felt strangely queasy: he had already read in the newspapers what was happening now before his own eyes. It was like watching a play he knew by heart, and all that remained was for him to judge the quality of the performance. The man paused in front of the door, peering surreptitiously through the hole in the window, as though he intended to reproduce faithfully everything described in the article Andrew had been carrying around in his pocket for eight years, even though it had not yet been written, an article, which, because of his leapfrogging through time, seemed more like a prediction than a description of events. Except that unlike then, he was there ready to change it. Viewed in this light, what he was about to do felt like touching up an already completed painting, like adding a brushstroke to The Three Graces or The Girl with the Pearl Earrings.

After gleefully establishing that his victim was alone, the Ripper cast a final glance around him. He seemed pleased, overjoyed even, at the entrenched calm of the place that would allow him to commit his crime in unexpected, pleasant seclusion. His attitude incensed Andrew, and he stepped brashly out of his hiding place without even considering the possibility of shooting him from there. Suddenly, the act of finishing the Ripper off from a distance thanks to the sanitized intervention of a weapon seemed too cold, impersonal, and dissatisfying. His intense rage required him to take the man’s life in a more intimate way—possibly by strangling him with his bare hands, smashing his skull with the butt of his pistol, or by any other means that would allow him to take more of a part in his demise, to feel his contemptible life gradually ebbing away at a rhythm he himself imposed. But as he strode resolutely towards the monster, Andrew realized that however keen he was to engage in hand-to-hand combat, his opponent’s colossal stature and his own inexperience of that kind of fighting made any strategy that did not involve the use of the weapon inadvisable.

In front of the door to the little room, the Ripper watched him approach with calm curiosity, wondering perhaps where on earth this fellow had sprung from. Andrew stopped prudently about five yards away from him, like a child who fears being mauled by the lion if he gets too close to the cage. He was unable to make out the man’s face in the dark, but perhaps that was just as well. He raised the revolver, and, doing as Charles had suggested, aimed at the man’s chest. Had he fired straight away, in cold blood, giving no thought to what he was doing, as if it were just another step in the wild sequence of events he appeared to be caught up in, everything would have gone according to plan: his action would have been swift and precise, like a surgical intervention. But unfortunately, Andrew did stop to think about what he was doing; it suddenly dawned on him that he was about to shoot a man, not a deer, not a bottle, and the idea that killing someone was such an easy, impulsive act anyone was capable of seemed to overwhelm him. His finger froze in the trigger. The Ripper tilted his head to one side, half surprised, half mocking, and then Andrew watched as his hand clutching the revolver started to shake. This weakened his already feeble resolve, while the Ripper, emboldened by this brief hesitation, swiftly pulled a knife from inside his coat and hurled himself at Andrew in search of his jugular. Ironically, his frenzied charge was what released Andrew’s trigger finger. A sudden, quick, almost abrupt explosion pierced the silence of the night. The bullet hit the man right in the middle of the chest. Still aiming at him, Andrew watched him stagger backwards. He lowered the warm, smoking gun, no less astonished at having used it as he was to find himself still in one piece after fending off that surprise attack. This though was not strictly true, as he soon discovered from the sharp pain in his left shoulder. Without taking his eyes off the Ripper, who was swaying before him like a bear standing on its hind legs, he felt for the source of the pain, and discovered that the knife, although it had missed his main artery, had ripped through the shoulder of his jacket and sliced into his flesh. Despite the blood flowing merrily from the wound, it did not appear very deep. Meanwhile, the Ripper was taking his time to prove whether or not Andrew’s shot had been fatal.

After bobbing around clumsily, he doubled over, letting go of the knife dripping with Andrew’s blood, which ricocheted over the cobblestones and disappeared into the shadows. Then, after giving a hoarse bellow, he bent down on one knee, as though to acknowledge in his murderer the traits of nobility, and continued to moan with a few reedier, more staccato versions of his original grunt. Finally, just when Andrew was beginning to tire of all this display of dying and was toying with the idea of kicking the man to the ground, he collapsed in a heap onto the cobblestones and lay there, stretched out at his feet.

Andrew was about to kneel down and check the man’s pulse when Marie Kelly, no doubt alarmed by the skirmish, opened the door to her little room. Before she could recognize him, and, resisting the temptation to look at her after eight years of her being dead, Andrew turned on his heel. No longer worried about the corpse, he ran towards the exit as he heard her scream, “Murder, murder!” Only when he had reached the stone archway did he allow himself to look back over his shoulder. He saw his beloved kneeling down in a shimmering halo of light, gently closing the eyes of the man, who in a far-off time, in a world that had taken on the consistency of a dream, had mutilated her to the point where she was unrecognizable.

The horse was standing where he had left it. Out of breath from running, Andrew mounted and rode off as fast as he could.

Despite his agitation, he managed to find his way out of the maze of alleyways and onto the main road that would take him back to Woking. It was only when he had left London that he began to calm down, to acknowledge what he had done. He had killed a man, but at least he had done so in self-defense. And besides, it had not been any man. He had killed Jack the Ripper, saved Marie Kelly, changed events that had already taken place. He urged the horse on violently, anxious to travel back to his own time and discover the results of his action. If things had gone well, then Marie would not only be alive but would probably be his wife. Would they have had a child, possibly two or three? He drove the horse to the limit, as though afraid this idyllic present would dissolve like a mirage if he took too long to reach it.