The Map of Chaos Read Online Free Page B

carpet. However, the days went by and Wells’s ominous warning didn’t come true. When the time limit they had set for the leap to occur ran out, they entered the phase where the likelihood of error began to grow exponentially, until one fine day Wells realized that continuing to wait in front of the window for the puppy to disappear was a question of faith or stubbornness more than anything else, and he announced that the experiment had failed.
    Over the following weeks, they retraced one by one each step they had taken in engineering the virus, while Newton, freed from captivity, frolicked at their feet, showing no sign of physical decline, nor any sign of performing the miracle that would send shock waves through society. It had all looked foolproof on paper. The damned virus had to work. So why didn’t it? They tried tinkering with the strain, but none of the modifications they made had the stability of the first. Everything pointed to that being the correct virus, the only viable one. Then where was the error? Wells searched in vain, becoming increasingly obsessed with finding what had gone wrong, while it began to dawn on the others, including Jane, that the theory on which everything was based had been incorrect. However, Wells refused to accept that conclusion and would fly into a rage if any member of the team hinted at it. He wasn’t prepared to concede defeat and determinedly kept up his research, growing increasingly irritable as the days went by, so that several members of his team were obliged to decamp. Jane watched him working feverishly in silence, ever more tormented and isolated, and wondered how long it would be before he conceded that he’d wasted the Church’s funds on a misguided theory.
    One morning, they received an invitation from Charles Dodgson to take tea with him at his house in Oxford. During the past months the two men had corresponded occasionally. The professor had benignly inquired how his ex-pupil’s research was going, but Wells had been evasive. He had decided to tell Charles nothing until he had succeeded in synthesizing the virus and had shown that it worked by injecting Newton. Then he would write to him, or call him through the communication glove, and invite him to his house, bestowing on him the privilege of being the first scientist outside his team to discover that mankind had found a way of saving itself. But since Newton had not disappeared as he was supposed to, that call had never taken place. Two exasperating months later, Wells received the invitation from Dodgson. He considered refusing it but didn’t have the heart. The last thing he wanted was to have to admit to Charles that the virus did not work. Jane told him he might benefit from his old friend’s advice. Besides, Charles still lived at Knowledge Church College, Wells’s alma mater, and perhaps the memories associated with those noble edifices would inspire him with new ideas, not to mention allow him to take a walk in the beautiful surrounding countryside, for it never hurt to get some fresh air. Wells agreed, not so much because the idea appealed to him, but in order to avoid an argument with his wife. He didn’t even raise an objection when Jane suggested taking along Newton, who when left alone at home would amuse himself by chewing up cushions, books, or other objects accidentally left within reach of his jaws. And so, one cold January afternoon, an ornithopter left the couple and Newton in front of the college gates, where Charles was awaiting them, his carefully groomed hair mussed by the downdraft of the vehicle’s propellers.
    When the ornithopter had taken off again, Wells and Charles regarded each other for a moment in silence, like two men who had agreed to take part in a duel at dawn. Then they burst out laughing and embraced affectionately, slapping each other vigorously on the back as if trying to warm each other up.
    â€œI’m sorry you lost the