The Map of the Sky (51 page)

“Of course, Miss Harlow. Please, make yourselves comfortable,” Clayton replied, motioning to the armchairs. Then he looked at the author and said, “As for you, Mr. Wells, follow me. I want to show you something I think will interest you greatly.”

Wells followed him reluctantly, vexed because not only would he now be forced to conceal a need as pedestrian as hunger from those lofty souls, but because he was going to be obliged to endure another ordeal before he could rest his weary bones in one of those sumptuous armchairs. Clayton led him along a passageway flanked by doors on either side, until they reached a small padlocked iron gate. The inspector began fumbling with the padlock, clutching it in his battered metal hand, but
Wells was in no mood to wait until he had succeeded in inserting the tiny key, and so he snatched it from him impatiently and opened the lock himself. Then he stood aside and ushered Clayton in with the theatrical gesture of a hotel porter. Slightly put out, the inspector stepped into the gloomy interior.

Once the two men had finally disappeared, Murray could not help feeling secretly pleased to be alone with the girl in these relaxed surroundings. Emma asked him to sit down on one of the chairs, which he did eagerly. They needed a moment alone together, in a place they did not have to flee from at any second. As he watched her open the kit and lay out bandages, dressings, and scissors on the nearby small table, Murray smiled indulgently, feigning a lordly indifference to the wound on his shoulder.

“You needn’t concern yourself, Emma, really,” he said affably. “I can scarcely feel it.”

“Well, it looks like a nasty wound,” she replied.

“How nasty?” Murray said, alarmed.

Emma grinned.

“Don’t worry, it’s only a scratch,” she assured him. “It won’t kill you.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” the millionaire replied, a mischievous smile on his lips.

“Or, should I say,” Emma corrected, suddenly serious as she began disinfecting the wound, “it won’t kill you a second time.”

The millionaire bit his lower lip and cursed under his breath.

“I suppose I owe you an explanation,” he acknowledged, sorry not to be able to spend this peaceful interlude discussing more intimate matters.

“Yes, that would be nice,” she said with a hint of sadness as she dressed the wound. “Then at least I won’t die with so many unanswered questions.”

“You aren’t going to die, Emma, not if I can help it,” Murray blurted out. “You have my word.”

“Don’t waste time trying to reassure me, Gilliam.” The girl gave a resigned smile. “We don’t have much left.”

“What do you mean, Emma? We have all the time in the world! Good God, I’m the Master of Time!” Murray objected fervently. “Besides, you and I are only just getting to know each other. We have our whole lives ahead of us!”

“Gilliam, the Martians are invading the Earth at this very moment, remember?” she said, amused by his naïveté. “Hasn’t it occurred to you that this might interfere with our plans a little?”

“I suppose it might, yes,” Murray admitted, vexed. “Now of all times, damn it.”

Murray was of course fully aware of the situation they were in. He knew the Martians were invading the planet, and yet it was as if, until this moment, that had not mattered. He was so overjoyed at their blossoming relationship that the Martians seemed like an annoying hindrance he would be able to deal with later. The importance Emma gave to the invasion bothered him. He realized then that if she had accepted his promises of salvation earlier, it was not because she believed in them, but rather because she wanted to please him, and this thought excited and distressed him in equal measure. But in the end he had to admit Emma was right: the invasion had thwarted everyone’s plans, including his, and he knew full well it would be difficult for them to come out of it alive.

“Yes, it’s a nuisance, isn’t it?” he heard Emma say, and then, gazing at him gently, the way a mother might her disappointed child, she added playfully, “You won’t have time to make me fall in love with you.”

Murray grinned.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” he said. “How long do you think I need?”

She shrugged.

“I don’t know. I wish I could tell you, but I’ve never fallen in love,” she lamented. “And I’m afraid I’ll die without ever having done so.”

At this, she fell silent, surprised at her own candor. This was the first
time she had shown her vulnerability to a man. In fact, it was the first time she had shown her vulnerability to anyone. As vulnerable as a little girl. And she didn’t care. On the contrary, it gave her a pleasant feeling of relief. In the current situation, there was no point in continuing to pretend, but if she had taken off the mask she wore to protect herself from the world, it was not only because it was meaningless to do so in a world that was about to be destroyed. It was also because this giant of a man before her had shown he loved her, her and only her, in spite of who she was. Yes, this man who treated others with contempt and even cruelty, and yet spoke to her so gently, this man who had even tried to milk a cow in order to quench her thirst, had won that privilege. She did not want to go on pretending to him. She was probably going to die a gruesome death quite soon, and she did not want to meet her end pretending to be someone she was not. If she was going to die, she wanted at least one man on the planet to know who she really was. A vulnerable little girl, who would have liked the world to be the way her great-grandfather had described it, and who would have liked to fall in love just once. This was the real Emma Catherine Harlow.

And this man, the man destined to see her as no one else had ever seen her, opened his mouth to tell her once more that he would not let her die, but then stopped himself. No, he thought, I must not lie to her. What good would it do when it was obvious they were all going to die? And just then, as though confirming this, a loud explosion resounded above their heads. They both looked up at the ceiling, terrified. The blast had sounded very close, which could only mean the tripods were in Bloomsbury. They might even be coming down the Euston Road at that very moment, marching victoriously on three legs, firing randomly at buildings, wreaking destruction as they advanced, ruthlessly mowing down everyone, without considering for a moment that these humans falling beneath their ray were more than just cockroaches, they were beings with dreams and desires, and he himself had one desire in particular: to go on living in order to make the woman he loved fall in love with him.

“Tell me what I can do to make you fall in love with me,” Murray asked gently, once the echo of the blast had died away. “I might have time to make it happen before we die.”

Emma smiled, grateful to Murray for not having lied to her one last time by assuring her they would come out of this alive, or something of that sort, as anyone else would have done. And she liked the fact that this great bear of a man also differed from the others in that way.

“Well, I already know you’re capable of killing for me, even of hurling a monster through a window on my behalf,” she said, grinning. “That might be enough for any other woman, but I need something more, even though I can’t tell you what that is. In any event, there isn’t time for you to do much more.” She gazed at him with a mixture of tenderness and resignation even as she clasped his hands in hers. Murray acquiesced with a downcast look that made Emma sigh. Suddenly, her eyes lit up. “You’ll have to make me fall in love with you because of something you’ve already done! Yes, that’s it! What have you done in your life that could make me fall in love with you, Gilliam?”

Murray sighed. He loved hearing her say his name. In her mouth it sounded like a slice of cake or a segment of orange.

“Nothing, I’m afraid,” he replied with bitterness. “If I’d known I would have to make you love me by my actions, my life would have been very different, believe me. But I never thought I’d have to impress a lady that way, not a lady like you, at any rate.”

He leaned back in his chair and looked at her despondently. He loved her, and perhaps for that reason he knew her while scarcely knowing her. And he would go on loving her, even if she told him she had robbed or killed someone in the past, because he loved her and nothing she did would ever make him see her in a bad light. His love for her was so intense and irrational it even prevented him from judging her. He loved her for what she was, regardless of what she did or did not do. He loved her for her beauty, even though that would be a feeble way of putting it. Perhaps it was truer to say that he loved her way of being in the world, he loved her eyes, her smile, her mannerisms, the gentle way she would
have robbed or killed. In contrast, she did not love him for who he was. How could she? he told himself, glancing at the reflection of the lumbering giant in the mirror opposite. His way of being in the world was worse than that of a cactus. She could only love what he was inside, what he was capable of doing, or perhaps what he had done, but unfortunately there was not much more he could do now, nor was there in his stockpile of memories any noble gesture of which he could be proud, no selfless act that he could now use to his advantage to conquer this woman’s heart.

“What must a man do to make you fall in love with him?” he asked, more out of curiosity than anything else, for he assumed that, whatever it might be, he could not have done it, even unintentionally. “Has any man ever done anything that made you feel you could fall in love with him?”

Emma’s eyes narrowed, her face expressing a quiet intensity, which made the millionaire wish he had mastered the difficult art of painting in order to be able to capture it on canvas. But since his skill with a paintbrush was, to put it politely, practically nonexistent, he could only memorize each detail of her face, carefully storing them away among his other memories.

“My great-grandfather,” the girl pronounced at last.

“Richard Locke . . . the hoaxter?” Murray was surprised.

“Don’t call him that!” Emma protested. “I know he pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes, including mine.” She paused, smiling absentmindedly. “You know, it used to amuse me that he had outwitted everyone. Yes, I was proud to be related to someone who was superior to the stupid, gullible majority. But that’s only one way of seeing it. I see things differently now. Now I believe I could love someone who did what he did . . . simply because all he did was to make the world dream.”

For a few moments, Murray stared at her in silence. And then, very slowly, a smile began to spread over his features. To make the world dream . . . Yes, why not? As the girl had said, everything could be seen in a different light. It was all a question of perception.

“In that case, Emma, I’m going to tell you a story. Something nobody knows. And then you’ll have no choice but to fall in love with me.”

“Really?” said the girl, with a mixture of amusement and surprise.

Murray nodded. “What do you know about Murray’s Time Travel?”

“Well, only what was in the newspapers,” she replied, intrigued. “And that it closed down just when I’d managed to convince my mother to go with me to London and join the third expedition to the year 2000. They said the closure was due to your demise.”

“Well, then, you’re in for a surprise . . . ,” Gilliam began.

•   •   •

F
ORGIVE ME FOR BREAKING
off at such a tantalizing moment, but although the conversation is taking a fascinating turn, I, like you, am very curious to know what is happening at this very moment inside the little room where Wells and Clayton went a few minutes earlier. “I want to show you something I think will interest you greatly,” the inspector had said to Wells. Was this simply an excuse to leave the lovebirds alone? Knowing the inspector’s perceptiveness in such matters, I doubt it. Perhaps it was a subtle way of taking Wells aside without offending the others? More likely.

The room turned out to be smaller than the chamber but bigger than the pantry, and at first sight, Wells was unable to make out whether Clayton used it as an armory, a laboratory, or a simple junk room, for it was filled with an assortment of strange machines, weapons, and objects pertaining to the occult, witchcraft, necromancy, and other dark arts, which the author had always viewed as pure superstition.

Clayton walked over to a glass cabinet standing in a corner of the room, where Wells could make out a neat display of at least a dozen artificial hands. They were made of diverse materials, mostly wood or metal, and while some attempted to reproduce as realistically as possible the inspector’s missing appendage (these were the ones he would no doubt wear when he went to a gala dinner or similar event, where he would need to use cutlery, or hold a cigarette, or, if he was lucky, a woman’s
hand), others looked like lethal weapons: one had razor-sharp stiletto-like fingers, one looked like a hand crossed with a pepper-box revolver, and a couple resembled outlandish devices the purpose of which Wells was unable to fathom. Clayton unscrewed his smashed prosthesis and laid it carefully to one side. Then he pored at length over his collection of artificial hands, which, resting on their fingers, gave the impression of hairless tarantulas. He pondered which one best suited the predicament they found themselves in.

While he was deciding, Wells took a desultory stroll around the inspector’s eccentric emporium. Next to a medieval bestiary with fabulous illustrations of griffins, harpies, basilisks, dragons, and other magical creatures, in whose margins Clayton had made several minute annotations, on one of the tables he came across a Ouija board.

“I didn’t know you practiced spiritualism, Inspector,” he remarked, fingering the alphabet fashioned into the exquisite wooden board.

“It shouldn’t come as such a surprise,” Clayton replied without turning round. “Ghosts are a policeman’s best informer: they see everything, and they don’t charge anything, even though they occasionally ask you to carry out some absurd task they never got around to completing when they were alive.”

“I see . . . ,” Wells said cagily, unsure whether or not Clayton was pulling his leg.