The Map of the Sky (78 page)

But what of all the others, and their respective twins in the other reality; had he saved them, too? he wondered. Had that world disappeared, had it been erased when he destroyed the Envoy in the Antarctic, or had his action simply created a split, another branch on the leafy tree of time? Were his companions suffering the consequences of the Martian invasion in some other layer of the universe? Had the extraterrestrials captured them? Naturally, Wells liked to think they had not. He liked to think that his killing the Envoy had also made that branch of time wither to nothing. That if he pressed his ear to the walls of the universe he would not hear the cries of pain of those who had remained trapped in the adjacent Hell. In short, that none of it had ever happened.

But there was something that prevented this theory from being watertight: his memories, the memories of the invasion stored in his head. How could he remember something that had never happened? Wells had always fantasized about the possible existence of what he had called parallel universes, worlds that sprang from each choice Man took, however insignificant. If I decide to eat at home today nothing will happen, but if I have lunch at Coleridge’s Tavern, I will get food poisoning from eating something that is off, and this trivial decision will cause my life to
split into at least two different realities, which will exist simultaneously, parallel to each other, even though I will only experience one of them. But now Wells had no doubt that parallel worlds existed: if he had not destroyed the Envoy, the Martians would have invaded the planet, but by killing the Envoy he had prevented this from ever happening. Yet did this really mean that the other reality had ceased to exist? Was it not supremely arrogant to assume that because we could not see something, it simply did not exist? The world where the invasion had taken place had certainly existed. Wells had more than enough proof of this, so it was logical to assume that it continued to exist somewhere. Consequently, try as he might to feel reassured by reminding himself that he had saved his companions through his heroism, deep down, he knew this was only one way of looking at it, a viewpoint that was as biased as it was vindicatory. For those who had remained in the sewers after his disappearance, he had simply evaporated mysteriously, or had perhaps drowned in the basin and been washed out into the Thames. None of them would have known about his heroic deed, because it would not have affected them at all.

This appeared to be the sad truth, and Wells had to learn to live with it. He tried to console himself with the thought that at least he had managed to create a world in which the invasion would never happen. He closed his eyes, and, as was his custom since traveling in time, he abandoned himself once more to going over his store of memories about the invasion. He recalled with a fond smile how his opinion of Murray had gradually changed during the invasion, his hatred slowly turning into something he could only describe as respect. And it suddenly dawned on him that in a couple of days’ time, the other Wells would find a letter from Murray in his mailbox. He would open it with trembling fingers, just as in the past he had opened Murray’s invitations to travel to the future, trying to deduce the reason for this missive. But he could never have guessed it was a declaration of love, as Wells already knew. Yet he also knew that this perplexing discovery would make no difference to his twin, who would continue to be outraged by Murray’s brazen request
for his assistance in re-creating the Martian invasion described in his novel. He would read Murray’s letter several times with astonishment and disbelief but would never reply to it. He would simply slip it between the pages of his novel and forget all about it. He detested Murray too much to help him in any way, no matter how in love he claimed to be. But Wells no longer detested Murray. No, after what they had been through together, he bore him no grudge. Love had changed Murray, ridding him of his selfishness, transforming him into someone who was prepared to give his life to save his companions. When he said goodbye to him in the sewers of London, Wells had apologized for not replying to his letter.
If I received it now, I assure you I would,
he had told him.

This was exactly what was going to happen two days later: the younger Wells was going to receive it again. And so, arriving home, Wells laid a piece of paper out on his desk, placed his pen on top of it, and contemplated the fateful arrangement as he pondered his reply. Clearly he had no means to help Murray re-create a Martian invasion, and besides he did not deem it necessary. He remembered how, as they fled the Martians, Miss Harlow had begun to feel a mounting affection for Murray, and in particular he remembered her laughter, her spontaneous laughter when Murray was trying to milk a cow at the farm where they had stopped off on their way to London. This, quite simply, was what Murray needed to do. Wells leaned over the piece of paper, and with the crooked, rather childish writing he had developed after years of practicing with his left hand, so different from his previous spidery, hurried script with its rippling plateaus and sudden peaks, he began filling the page with his scrawl. Of all the pages he had written in either of his two lives, this was the one that would give him the greatest satisfaction:

My dear Gilliam,

Strange as it might seem, learning that you have fallen in love fills me with joy. And yet, I can do little to help you, except to suggest that, rather than endeavoring to re-create the Martian invasion,
you make her laugh. For if you succeed in making this girl laugh, if you make her laughter ring in the air like a fountain of silver coins cascading to the floor, you will win her heart forever.

Fond regards from your friend, George.

He placed the letter in an envelope and, three days later, posted it to Murray’s Time Travel. Back at his house, Wells could not help smiling as he imagined the look of astonishment on Murray’s face when he read it. He knew Murray would be confused by the friendly tone of his missive, and by Wells signing off so warmly, but he had not wanted to deny himself this pleasure. It might even teach Murray that while finding true love was one of the most wonderful things that could happen to you in life, finding a friend was equally splendid.

XLIII

O
N
A
UGUST
1, 1898
,
THE DAY THE
M
ARTIANS ARRIVED
, H. G. Wells went to Horsell Common very early in the morning to see the cylinder that had supposedly fallen from the sky the night before. The carriage dropped him in front of a gaggle of vehicles clogging the entrance to the common, and after paying the driver, Wells sauntered across the grass toward the crowd of onlookers in the distance, who were obscuring the strange object. On his first trip there, Wells had not been calm enough to observe things as closely as he would have liked, owing to the presence of Inspector Clayton. But this time he intended to savor every last detail of this scene, which he had already portrayed in his novel. With the contented smile of someone taking a carefree stroll, Wells made his way through the scores of people crowding onto the common, most of whom hailed from Woking and Chertsey, amused by some of the sensational newspaper headlines being cried out. He even cooled himself in the morning heat by taking a ginger beer at one of the many stalls dotted along the path, before approaching the cylinder.

When he at last reached the site where the cylinder had supposedly crashed, making an enormous crater in the sand, he could see that Murray had done an excellent job of re-creating the cylinder. The author stood for a long time, admiring the enormous ash-covered object, at which a few children were timidly throwing stones. Now it only remained to be seen what was inside, for if Murray had finally decided to drag the piece of junk all the way there, thus accepting Emma’s challenge,
it was because he was intending to surprise her in some way. Would he forget about the Martian and try to make her laugh as Wells had suggested in his letter? He did not know, but whatever emerged from the cylinder, Wells did not want to miss it.

Although it was unlikely they would have recognized the old man he had become with the passing of the years, Wells remained at a distance from the throng, close to where some of the more timorous onlookers had retreated, and from there he gazed contentedly around him. He caught sight of his thirty-one-year-old self, standing at the front of the crowd next to Inspector Clayton. Just then, the inspector pointed with his metal hand at the cylinder, and Wells’s twin, dressed in a garish plaid suit, shook his head with an air of skepticism.

A dozen yards to the right of them, he saw Emma, protected from the throng by the cocoon of her extraordinary beauty. The young American woman, who, unlike the first time he had seen her, was no stranger to Wells, was shielding herself from the sun with her parasol, solemnly watching the cylinder, forcing herself to hide how annoyed she was that Murray had accepted her challenge and organized all this simply to win her heart. The only person Wells could not see anywhere was Murray. He assumed he must be directing proceedings from somewhere, probably from behind the trees in the distance, waiting to make his entry.

But although everything seemed just as he remembered it, Wells felt a nervous flutter in his stomach. Suddenly, he had the unpleasant impression that something was not right, something was out of place, though he could not discern what it was. He surveyed the scene once more, in close detail this time, trying to discover what was amiss. A crowd had formed around the cylinder, Emma was watching from a distance, nervously twirling her parasol, Inspector Clayton was making his way through the onlookers to speak to the policeman in charge, exactly as Wells remembered he had the first time, and his twin remained dutifully in his place, grinning sardonically at the Martian cylinder, his plaid suit vibrant in the morning sun. Hold on! Wells said to himself, with a sudden pang of fear. That was it! It was the suit that was out of place.
The plaid suit his twin was wearing! With a shudder, Wells remembered seeing it in the window of the clothier’s where he usually shopped, and how, after reflecting at length whether this daring pattern would look elegant or ridiculous, he had decided to play it safe and purchase a dark brown suit similar to the ones he usually wore, which would not upset the harmony that reigned inside his wardrobe. He had sported his new purchase for the first time that very day, but his twin had bought the plaid suit, proving he was more daring than his original self and had had the effrontery to turn up in this garb to see the Martian.

Wells gazed at him, puzzling over this small act of rebellion by his double, who had improvised instead of keeping strictly to the script. He wondered how this was possible without the universe exploding into a thousand pieces, or at least suffering some kind of ripple effect, similar to that caused by a stone hitting water. Then the author remembered the scar on his twin’s chin, another anomaly, which to begin with he had considered unimportant. And these small differences, whilst changing nothing fundamental, disturbed Wells, for they showed that this was not his world. It was incredibly akin to his world, but certain details in it were different. He had already discovered two of these, but there were undoubtedly many more. All these years that he had been spying on himself, he had been so focused on the main events that he had paid scant attention to the details, which, like the scar on his chin, and now the garish plaid suit, had been whispering to him that this was not his universe.

But how could he not be in his world? He had traveled back in time to 1829, where he had made a change that had altered the future, and then had leapt forward to 1865, a year before his own birth, in the world that he himself had changed. He had thought that the only changes around him ought to have been those deriving from his destruction of the monster, and so he had difficulty believing that the purchase of a plaid suit by his twin was one of them. This could only mean that for some inexplicable reason, he had not come back to the same time line
he had left. No, he had come back to a different world, similar but not identical. Wells shook his head as he watched Clayton take his place once more beside his twin. His conclusions had come like a bolt from the blue. But perhaps he was right, after all. What if these leaps in time did not take place in the same time line? And what if these parallel universes, as he called them, did not arise from each change made, but rather were already there, had been created beforehand? Wells imagined a universe made up of infinite versions of the same reality superimposed on one another like layers of pastry, an inventory of everything that could happen or be imagined, where each layer, depending on its proximity to its neighbor, could differ in details as insignificant as a plaid suit, or as transcendental as the destruction of a monster from outer space. Yes, there could be worlds where the steam engine had never been invented, or slavery had not been abolished, or cholera was unknown, or Shelley had not drowned when his schooner the
Don Juan
capsized, but Darwin had when the
Beagle
sank, or simply where Jack the Ripper had not murdered Mary Kelly on the night of November 9 but two days before.

The possibilities were endless. And in each of these worlds he would have a twin, there would be a Wells: there would be a Wells almost identical to him, but allergic to oysters, a Wells who would not have been a writer but a teacher, and a Wells who would have written the insufferable novels of Henry James, and, of course, there would also be a Wells who could not travel in time. There would be hundreds, thousands, infinite numbers of Wellses spread throughout a universe that was also infinite. And he would be able to leap from one world to another, possessing this . . . talent? this disease? Or was it truer to call it a curse? And so, he had not traveled back to his past, but rather to another past, a past that belonged to a parallel universe. But one where the Envoy had also crashed his airship into the Antarctic, and in which the
Annawan
had also become icebound (because, of course, there were thousands of worlds where these two events had not happened). In short, a past that was identical to his, except for a few details so insignificant he had failed to notice he had
strayed into a different world. And then, after destroying the Envoy, he had traveled to another parallel future, to the future of a universe where his twin dressed with an audacity he had never possessed.