The Map of Time. Felix J. Palma

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СКАЧАТЬ that he was departing this world for another, which was only one of the many that existed.

      By that time Murray had begun working in his father’s company. Although Tremanquai’s story still seemed to him sheer madness, but perhaps for that very reason, without his father’s knowledge he sent two explorers to Africa to search for the apparently non-existent Reed People. Samuel Kaufmann and Forrest Austin were a couple of numbskulls, partial to showing off and drunken sprees, whose every expedition ended in disaster. But they were the only men his father would not miss, and the only two who would nonchalantly set off to the Dark Continent in search of a tribe of singing witches with the power to open doorways to other worlds. They were also the only men to whom, because of their glaring ineptitude, he dared assign a mission so hopeless, which was really only a modest tribute to the memory of the hapless Oliver Tremanquai.

      Kaufmann and Austin left England almost in secret. Neither they nor Gilliam Murray could have known that they would become the most famous explorers of their day. Following instructions, as soon as they set foot in Africa they sent telegrams giving news of their progress. Murray read these cursorily before placing them in his desk drawer with a sad smile.

      Everything changed when, three months later, he received one telling him they had at last found the Reed People. He could not believe it! Were they playing a joke on him in revenge for his having sent them on a wild-goose chase? he wondered. But the details contained in the telegrams ruled out any possibility of deceit because, as far as he remembered, they tallied entirely with those embellishing Oliver Tremanquai’s story. Astonished though he was, he could only conclude that both they and Tremanquai were telling the truth: the Reed People did exist.

      From that moment on, the telegrams became Gilliam Murray’s reason for getting up in the morning. He awaited their arrival with eager anticipation, reading and rereading them behind the locked door of his office, unwilling for the time being to share the amazing discovery with anyone, not even his father.

      According to the telegrams, once they had located the village, Kaufmann and Austin had no difficulty in being accepted as guests. In fact, the Reed People were apparently incapable of putting up any form of resistance. Neither did they seem particularly interested in the explorers’ reasons for being there. They simply accepted their presence. The two men asked for no more and, rather than lose heart when faced with the difficulty of carrying out the essential part of their mission (which was to discover whether or not these savages could open passageways to other worlds), they resolved to be patient and treat their stay as a paid holiday. Murray could imagine them lounging around in the sun all day, polishing off the crates of whisky they had sneaked with them on the expedition while he had pretended to be looking the other way.

      Amazingly, they could not have thought up a better strategy, for their continual state of alcoholic stupor, and the frequent dancing and fighting they engaged in naked in the grass, drew the attention of the Reed People, who were curious about the amber liquid that generated such jolly antics. Once they began sharing their whisky, a rough camaraderie sprang up between them, which Murray rejoiced in back in his office, for it was without doubt the first step towards a future co-existence. He was not mistaken, although fostering this primitive contact until it grew into a common bond of trust and friendship cost him several consignments of the best Scotch. To this day he wondered whether so many bottles had really been necessary for such a small tribe.

      At last, one morning, he received the long-awaited telegram, in which Kaufmann and Austin described how the Reed People had led them to the middle of the village and, in a seemingly beautiful gesture of friendship and gratitude, had opened for them the hole through to the other world. The explorers described the aperture and the pink landscape they had glimpsed through it, using exactly the same words as Tremanquai had employed five years earlier. This time, however, the young Murray no longer saw them as part of a made-up story: now he knew it was for real.

      All of a sudden he felt trapped, suffocated, and not because he was locked away in his little office. He felt hemmed in by the walls of a universe he was now convinced was not the only one of its kind. But this constraint would soon end, he thought. He devoted a few moments to the memory of Oliver Tremanquai. He assumed that the man’s deep religious beliefs had prevented him from assimilating what he had seen, leaving him no other course than the precarious path of madness. Luckily, that pair of oafs, Kaufmann and Austin, possessed far simpler minds, which should spare them a similar fate.

      He reread the telegram hundreds of times. Not only did the Reed People exist, they practised something that Murray, unlike Tremanquai, preferred to call magic, rather than witchcraft. An unknown world had opened itself up to Kaufmann and Austin, and naturally they could not resist exploring it.

      As Murray read their subsequent telegrams, he regretted not having accompanied them. With the blessing of the Reed People, who left them to their own devices, the pair made brief incursions into the other world, diligently reporting its peculiarities. It consisted largely of a vast pink plain of faintly luminous rock, stretching out beneath a sky permanently obscured by incredibly dense fog. If there were any sun behind it, its rays were unable to shine through. As a consequence, the only light came from the strange substance on the ground, so that while one’s boots were clearly visible, the landscape was plunged into gloom, day and night merging into an eternal dusk, making it very difficult to see long distances. From time to time, a raging wind whipped the plain, producing sand storms that made everything even more difficult to see.

      The two men had immediately noticed something strange: the moment they stepped through the hole their pocket watches stopped. Once back in their own reality the mechanisms mysteriously stirred again. It was as though they had unanimously decided to stop measuring the time their owners spent in the other world. Kaufmann and Austin looked at one another – it is not difficult to imagine them shrugging their shoulders, baffled.

      They made a further discovery after spending a night, according to their calculations, in the camp they had set up right beside the opening so that they could keep an eye on the Reed People. There was no need for them to shave, because while they were in the other world their beards stopped growing. In addition, Austin had cut his arm seconds before stepping through the hole, and as soon as he was on the other side it had stopped bleeding, to the point that he had even forgotten to bandage it. He did not remember the wound until the moment they were back in the village and it bled again.

      Intrigued, Gilliam Murray wrote down this extraordinary incident in his notebook, as well as what had happened with their watches and beards. Everything pointed to some impossible stoppage of time. While he speculated in his office, Kaufmann and Austin stocked up on ammunition and food and set out towards the only thing that broke the monotony of the plain: the ghostly mountain range, scarcely visible on the horizon.

      As their watches continued to be unusable, they decided to measure the time their journey took by the number of nights they slept. This method soon proved ineffective, because at times the wind rose so suddenly and with such force they were obliged to stay awake all night holding the tent down, or their accumulated tiredness crept up on them when they stopped for food or rest. All they could say was that after an indeterminate length of time, which was neither very long nor very short, they reached the mountains. They proved to be made of the same luminous rock as the plain but had a hideous appearance, like a set of rotten, broken teeth, their jagged peaks piercing the thick clouds that blotted out the sky.

      The two men spotted a few hollows that looked like caves. Having no other plan, they decided to scale the slopes until they reached the nearest one. This did not take long. Once they had reached the pinnacle of a small mountain, they had a broader view of the plain. Far off in the distance the hole had been reduced to a bright dot on the horizon. They could see their way back, acting as a guiding light. They were not worried that the Reed People might close the hole, because they had taken the precaution of bringing what remained of the whisky with them.

      It was then that they noticed other bright СКАЧАТЬ