The Map of Time (19 page)

Woking was still bathed in the same serene calm that had so roused his suspicions a few hours earlier. Now, though, he was grateful for that tranquillity which would allow him to end his mission without further incident. He leapt off the horse and opened the gate, but something made him stop dead in his tracks: a figure was waiting for him beside the door to the house.

Andrew immediately remembered what had happened to Wells’s friend, and realized this must be some sort of guardian of time with orders to kill him for having meddled with the past. Trying hard not to give way to panic, he pulled the gun from his pocket as fast as he could and aimed it at the man’s chest, just as his cousin had suggested he do with the Ripper. The intruder dived to one side and rolled across the lawn until he was swallowed up by darkness. Andrew tried to follow the man’s catlike movements with his revolver, not knowing what else to do, until he saw him nimbly scale the fence and leap into the road.

Only when he heard the tap of his feet running away did he lower his weapon, calming himself by taking slow deep breaths.

Could that man have killed Wells’s friend? He did not know, but now that he had escaped, it did not matter very much. Andrew gave him no more thought and began climbing back up the creeper. This he was obliged to do using only one arm, as his wounded left shoulder had started to throb painfully at the slightest effort. Even so, he managed to reach the attic, where the time machine stood waiting for him. Exhausted and a little faint owing to the loss of blood, he collapsed onto the seat, set the return date on the contraption’s control panel, and after bidding 1888 farewell with a longing gaze, pulled on the glass lever without delay.

This time he felt no fear at all when the flashing lights engulfed him, only the pleasant sensation of going home.

16

Once the sparks had stopped flying, leaving wisps of smoke swirling in the air like feathers after a pillow fight, Andrew was surprise to see Charles, Wells, and his wife huddled by the door exactly as he had left them. He attempted a triumphant smile but only managed a weak grimace due to his light-headedness and his increasingly painful wound. As he prepared to climb down from the machine, the others were able to glimpse with horror his blood-soaked sleeve.

“Good God, Andrew!” shouted his cousin, leaping towards him. “What happened to you?” “It’s nothing, Charles,” replied Andrew, leaning on him to steady himself. “Only a scratch.” Wells took his other arm, and between them, the two men helped him down the attic stairs. Andrew tried to walk on his own, but seeing that they ignored his efforts, meekly allowed himself to be guided into a small sitting room, just as at that moment he would have let himself be carried off by a horde of demons to the depths of hell itself. There was nothing else he could do: the buildup of nervous tension, the loss of blood, and the arduous ride had completely drained all his energy. They sat him down gently on the armchair nearest the hearth, where a roaring fire was blazing. After examining his wound with what looked to Andrew like an annoyed twist of the mouth, Wells ordered his wife to fetch bandages and everything else necessary to stem the bleeding. He all but told her to hurry up before the gushing flow permanently ruined the carpet. Almost at once the fire’s healing warmth calmed his shivering, but it also threatened to send him to sleep. Luckily, it occurred to Charles to give him a glass of brandy, which he even helped raise to his lips. The alcohol took the edge off his giddiness and the crushing fatigue he felt. Jane soon returned and began seeing to his wound with the neat competence of a war nurse. She cut away his jacket sleeve with a pair of scissors, then applied a series of stinging potions and dressings to the knife wound. To finish off she bandaged it tightly, before stepping back to contemplate her handiwork. It was only when the most pressing issue had been resolved that the motley rescue team gathered eagerly around the chair where Andrew lay in a state of semicollapse. They waited for him to recount what had happened. As though he had dreamt it, Andrew remembered the Ripper lying on the ground, and Marie closing his eyes. That could only mean he had succeeded.

“I did it,” he announced, trying to sound enthusiastic despite his fatigue. “I killed Jack the Ripper.” His words triggered an outburst of joy, which Andrew observed with amused surprise. After pelting him with pats on his back, they flung their arms around one another, crying out their praise and abandoning themselves to wild excitement more suited to New Year celebrations or pagan rituals. Realizing how unrestrained their reaction was, the three of them calmed down and gazed at him again with a mixture of tenderness and curiosity.

Andrew grinned back at them, slightly embarrassed, and when it seemed no one had anything else to say, he looked around him for any telltale signs that his brushstroke had altered the present.

His gaze fell on the cigar box lying on the table, which he remembered contained the cutting. Their eyes followed his.

“So,” said Wells, reading his thoughts. “You threw a pebble into a still pond and now you are itching to see the ripples it made. Let’s not put it off any longer. It’s time to see whether you really have changed the past.” Adopting the role of master of ceremonies once more, Wells walked over to the table, solemnly picked up the box, and presented it to Andrew with the lid open, like one of the Three Wise Men offering his gift of incense. Andrew took the cutting, trying to stop his hand from shaking too much, and felt his heart miss several beats as he began to unfold it. No sooner had he done so than he found himself contemplating the exact same headline as he had been reading for years. Scanning the article, he realized the contents were also unchanged: as if nothing had happened, the news item related the brutal murder of Marie Kelly at the hands of Jack the Ripper, and his subsequent capture by the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee. Andrew looked at Wells, bewildered. How could this be? “But I killed him,” he protested, feebly, “this can’t be right …” Wells examined the cutting, thoughtfully. Everyone in the room gazed at him, waiting for his verdict. After a few moments absorbed in the cutting, he gave a murmur of comprehension. He straightened up, and without looking at anyone, began pacing silently around the room. Owing to its narrow dimensions, he had to be content to circle the table a few times, hands thrust in his pockets, nodding from time to time as if to reassure the others that his grasp of the matter was growing. Finally, he paused before Andrew and smiled at him dolefully.

“You saved the girl, Mr. Harrington,” he observed with quiet conviction, “there is no doubt in my mind about that.” “But, in that case … ,” stammered Andrew, “why is she still dead?” “Because she must continue being dead in order for you to travel back in time to save her,” the author declared, as though stating the obvious.

Andrew blinked, unable to fathom what Wells was trying to say.

“Think about it: if she had still been alive, would you have come to my house? Don’t you see that by killing her murderer and preventing her from being ripped to shreds you have eliminated your reasons for traveling back in time? And if there’s no journey, there’s no change. As you can see, the two events are inseparable,” explained Wells, brandishing the cutting, which with its original heading corroborated his theory.

Andrew nodded slowly, glancing at the others, who looked as bewildered as he.

“It isn’t all that complicated,” scoffed Wells, amused at his audience’s bewilderment. “I’ll explain it in a different way. Imagine what must have happened after Andrew traveled back to this spot in the time machine: his other self must have arrived at Marie Kelly’s room, but instead of finding his beloved with her entrails exposed to the elements, he found her alive, kneeling by the body of the man whom police would soon identify as Jack the Ripper.

An unforeseen avenger had stepped out of nowhere and murdered the Ripper before he could add Marie Kelly to his list of victims.

And thanks to this stranger, Andrew will be able to live with her happily ever after, although the irony is that he will never know he has you, I mean himself, to thank for it,” the author concluded, gazing at him excitedly, with the eagerness of a child expecting to see a tree spring up moments after he has planted a seed. Noticing that Andrew continued to look at him nonplussed, he added: “It is as though your action has caused a split in time, created a sort of alternative universe, a parallel world, if you like. And in that world Marie Kelly is alive and happy with your other self. Unfortunately, you are in the wrong universe.” Andrew watched as Charles nodded, increasingly persuaded by Wells’s explanation, then turned to look at him, hoping to find his cousin equally convinced. But Andrew needed a few more moments to mull over the writer’s words. He lowered his head, trying to ignore the others” enquiring looks in order to consider the matter calmly. Given that nothing in his reality seemed to have changed, his journey in the time machine could not only be considered useless, but it was debatable whether it had even taken place. Yet he knew it had been real. He could not forget the image of Marie, and the gun going off, and the jolt it had sent up his arm, and above all the wound to his shoulder— that nasty gash he had brought back with him, like an irrefutable mark that prevented everything that had happened from being merely a dream. Yes, those events had really occurred, and the fact that he could not see their effects did not mean there weren’t any, as Wells had quickly realized. Just as a tree’s roots grow around a rock, so the consequences of his action, which could not simply vanish into thin air, had created another reality, a parallel world in which he and Marie Kelly were living happily together, a world that would not have existed if he had not traveled back in time. This meant he had saved his beloved, even though he was not able to enjoy her. All he had was the comforting satisfaction of knowing that he had prevented her death, that he had done everything in his power to make amends. At least his other self would enjoy her, he thought, with a degree of resignation.

That other Andrew, who after all was him, his own flesh and blood, would be able to fulfill all his dreams. He would be able to make her his wife, to love her regardless of his father’s opposition and their neighbors” malicious gossip, and he only wished the other Andrew could know what a miracle that was. How during the past eight years while he had been tormenting himself, his luckier self had never stopped loving her for a single moment, populating the world with the fruit of all that love.

“I understand,” he murmured, smiling wanly at his friends.

Wells was unable to suppress a cry of triumph: “That’s wonderful,” he exclaimed, while Charles and Jane resumed again patting him on the back with encouragement.

“Do you know why during my journeys into the past I always avoided seeing myself?” Wells asked, without caring whether anyone was listening. “Because if I had, it would mean that at some point in my life I would have been obliged to walk through the door and greet myself, which thankfully for my sanity has never happened.” After embracing his cousin repeatedly in a renewed display of euphoria, Charles helped him up out of his chair, while Jane straightened his jacket with a motherly gesture.

“Perhaps those troubling sounds we hear in the night, the creaking noises we assume are the furniture, are simply the footsteps of a future self watching over us as we sleep, without daring to disturb us,” Wells mused, oblivious to the general rejoicing.

It was only when Charles went to shake his hand that he appeared to emerge from his reverie.

“Thanks awfully for everything, Mr. Wells,” said Charles. “I apologize for having burst into your house like that. I hope you can forgive me.” “Don’t worry, don’t worry. All is forgotten,” replied the writer, with a vague wave of his hand, as though he had discovered something salutary, revivifying about having a gun aimed at him.

“What will you do with the machine, will you destroy it?” Andrew ventured, timidly.

Wells gazed at him, smiling benevolently.

“I suppose so,” he replied, “now it has fulfilled the mission for which it was quite possibly invented.” Andrew nodded, unable to help being moved by his solemn words. He did not consider his personal tragedy the only one that warranted the use of the machine that had come into Wells’s possession. But he was grateful that the author, who scarcely knew him, had sympathized enough with his misfortune to have considered it a good enough reason to flout the laws of time, in order to change its very fabric and put the world in danger.

“I also think it’s for the best, Mr. Wells,” said Andrew, having recovered from his emotion, “because you were right. There is a guardian of time, someone who watches over the past. I bumped into him when I came back, in the doorway to your house.” “Really,” said Wells, taken aback.

“Yes, although luckily I managed to frighten him off,” replied Andrew.

With this, he clasped the author in a heartfelt embrace. Beaming all over their faces, Charles and Jane contemplated the scene, which would have been frankly moving were it not for the awkward stiffness with which Wells greeted Andrew’s affectionate gesture. When Andrew finally let go of the author, Charles said his good-byes to the couple, steering his cousin out of the house lest he throw himself once more at the alarmed author.

Andrew crossed the garden vigilantly, right hand in his pocket feeling the pistol, afraid the guardian of time might have followed him back to the present and be lying in wait for him. But there was no sign of him. Waiting for them outside the gate was the cab that had brought them there only a few hours before, a few hours which to Andrew seemed like centuries.

“Blast, I’ve forgotten my hat,” said his cousin, after Andrew had clambered into the cab. “I’ll be back in a jiffy, cousin.” Andrew nodded absentmindedly, and settled into his seat, utterly exhausted. Through the cab’s tiny window he surveyed the encircling darkness as day began to dawn. Like a coat wearing thin at the elbows, night was beginning to unravel at one of the farthest edges of the sky, its opaqueness gradually diluting into an ever paler blue, until a hazy light slowly began to reveal the contours of the world. With the exception of the driver, apparently asleep on his seat, it was as if this stunning display of golden and purple hues was being performed solely for his benefit. Many times over the past few years when Andrew had witnessed the majestic unveiling of dawn he had wondered whether that day he would die, whether that day his increasing torment would compel him to shoot himself with a pistol like the one he was now carrying in his pocket, the one he had removed from its glass cabinet the previous evening without knowing he would end up using it to kill Jack the Ripper. But now he could not watch the dawn and wonder whether he would be alive to see it again tomorrow, for he knew the answer: he would see the dawn tomorrow and the day after and the day after that, because he had no way of justifying killing himself now that he had saved Marie. Should he go ahead with his plan out of sheer inertia, or simply because, as Wells had pointed out, he was in the wrong universe? This did not seem like a good enough reason. In any event, it felt less noble, not to mention that it might imply a fundamentally absurd jealousy of his time twin. After all, he was the other Andrew, and he ought to rejoice in his good fortune as he would his own, or failing that, that of his brother or his cousin Charles. Besides, if the grass in next door’s garden was always greener, how much more luxuriantly verdant must it be in the neighboring universe? He should feel pleased at being happy in another world, to have at least achieved bliss in the adjoining realm.

Reaching this conclusion threw up another unexpected question: did knowing that you had achieved the life you wanted in another world absolve you from having to try to achieve it in this one? At first, Andrew did not know how to answer this question, but after a few moments” thought, he decided it did: he was absolved from being happy; he could be content to lead a peaceful existence, enjoying life’s small pleasures without the slightest feeling of inner frustration. For, however trite it might seem, he could always console himself with the happy thought that he was living a full life in another place that was both nearby and at the same time far away, a place that was inaccessible, uncharted, because it was on the reverse of any map.