The Return of the Discontinued Man (A Burton & Swinburne Adventure) (9 page)

“From what yer might call a filler-soffickle standpoint,” Herbert Spencer declared, “I ain’t averse to the idea what that time can divide into separate ’istories. An’ I must admit, I quite likes the possibility that there’s more ’n one o’ me, an’ that some o’ the others might ’ave ’ad better hopportunities than what I’ve ’ad. It’s a rum do—hey?—to fink there might be an ’Erbert Spencer somewhere what’s a bloomin’ toff with an heducation n’ all!”

Spencer was sitting behind Lieutenant Richard Francis Burton on a saddle-like seat mounted on the back of a massive woodlouse—of the genus
armadillidium giganticus
. Burton was steering the crustacean along Nine Elms Lane toward Battersea Castle. There were many more of the creatures on the road, some with as many as five passengers upon their plated backs.

“In your case, Herbert,” the explorer responded, “I suspect the profundity of your intelligence is probably the same in every version of the world. If, in a parallel existence, you are better educated, then perhaps it allows you to express yourself in a rather more erudite manner, with the consequence of greater attention and respect from the intelligentsia, but you’ve never struck me as a man who particularly desires to be feted.”

“Nah,” Spencer agreed. “All that attention? It ain’t fer the likes o’ me. The appeal of bein’ a toff is a full stomach, that’s all.”

Burton was suddenly hit by a vertiginous sense of falling. He tugged at the armadillidium’s reins, as if trying to avoid something that wasn’t there, and gave a cry of alarm. From behind him a voice said, “Cor blimey! Steady on! You nearly ’ad us off the bloomin’ road!”

Twisting around, he saw a bearded vagabond sitting behind him.

“Watch out!” the man said, pointing ahead.

Burton returned his attention to the woodlouse and steered it back onto the left side of the thoroughfare.

He gasped. Though low snow-bearing clouds obscured the night sky, the cold air was so incredibly crisp and clear that every street lamp blazed like a star, and, to his right, the River Thames glittered as if filled with phosphorescence. He looked down again at the thing beneath him.

“Um.”

“Somethin’ wrong, Boss?”

“No,” Burton lied.

He struggled to recall the man’s name. Wells? No. Speke? Spencer. Yes. Herbert Spencer. How did he know that?

The accounts left by Abdu El Yezdi. Herbert Spencer was a vagrant philosopher. He was killed while holding shards of one of the Nāga diamonds. Due to his proximity to them, the dying emanation of his brain was imprinted into the gems. They were later transferred into a clockwork man’s babbage device, giving Spencer’s still-conscious mind a means through which to express itself and, after a fashion, live again.

This memory suddenly felt profoundly significant to Burton, though he couldn’t fathom why.

A huge dragonfly hummed by overhead, with a man saddled upon its thorax and glowing paper lanterns trailing on ribbons behind it.

Burton watched it pass and was startled when a lock of hair fell over his eyes. He reached up and found himself possessed of a shoulder-length mane. For some strange reason, he imagined he’d always worn it short. He pushed his fingertips into its roots and along his scalp. No scars.

What is wrong with me?

He must have been daydreaming. He’d imagined something about a mechanical horse. His thoughts were jumbled and erratic. Fantasies were intruding into them. Berserkers. Spring Heeled Jack. Lord Palmerston.

He muttered, “I must be going barmy.”

The four copper towers of Battersea Castle were just ahead. He felt it to be his destination, so guided the woodlouse off the road and into the edifice’s decorative gardens. Frost had whitened the grass, hedgerows, and skeletal trees. The flowerbeds to either side of the path were barren.

“Pull yourself together,” he whispered as he drew his steed to a halt outside the castle’s gates.

“Beg pardon?” Spencer asked.

“Sorry. Nothing.”

As they climbed to the ground, Burton reeled to one side and would have fallen had Spencer not caught him by the wrist.

“Flamin’ heck, Boss! What’s got into yer?”

“Too many late nights.” Burton steadied himself. He put a hand to his ribs, to his left arm, to his chin. Ghostly pain inhabited them but didn’t hurt him.

Spencer said to the armadillidium, “Wait.”

It rolled itself into a ball. The king’s agent marvelled at the way the creature made of itself such a perfect sphere, completely protected by its armour, with the saddle balanced on top. It was astonishing. The achievements of the geneticists never ceased to amaze him. Sir Francis Galton certainly deserved all the honours he’d received.

Geneticists? Galton? Galton the lunatic? The father of that illegal science?

“Why are we riskin’ this visit?” Spencer asked. “The Master Guild of Engineers is defeated, an’ if Gladstone finds out we’re consortin’ wiv the enemy, ’e’ll likely ’ave us ’ung, drawn an’ quartered.”

“Gladstone is an ass,” Burton replied involuntarily. He looked up at the building, noting that, in contrast to its well-tended gardens, it appeared shabby and neglected. Many of its windowpanes were cracked. It didn’t feel right. Not at all.

He knocked on the door. A motor-driven mechanical guard opened it and ushered them through. Like so many of the devices created by the Master Guild, it was a rickety thing that wobbled on its wheels and coughed black smoke from a clanking oil-powered engine. It led the king’s agent and his companion to the tall inner gates and opened them. Burton and Spencer entered.

Wending their way past the machinery, they arrived at the central work area, where they found Algernon Swinburne waiting with Charlie Babbage.

“Hey ho, fellow rabble-rousers!” the diminutive poet cried out. “Welcome to the dark heart of the insurgency. My hat, it’s like the jolly old Gunpowder Plot. What! What! What!”

Babbage said, “We’ve been waiting. Why are you late?”

“I don’t know,” Burton replied truthfully.

“We was at the Penfold Private Sanatorium,” Spencer put in. “Sister Raghavendra says they can’t save Monty Penniforth’s arm an’ will ’ave to remove it an’ grow ’im a new ’un.”

Babbage waved a hand dismissively. “Immaterial. Immaterial.”

“Not to Monty,” Swinburne observed. “That’s his drinking arm.” He quivered and spasmed in his usual over-excitable manner.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel trundled into view. One of his wheels squeaked annoyingly. His brain was plainly visible, floating in a dome-shaped glass container, and his many thin metal tentacles were in constant motion, writhing and curling restlessly.

“Hello, Lieutenant Burton,” he said. His voice sounded like bubbling liquid. “Mr. Spencer.”

Burton nodded a greeting then looked at the ruined attire spread out on one of the workbenches.

“Edward Oxford’s time suit,” he observed.

A recurrent dream. Or nightmare.

“Yes,” Brunel replied. “Charlie will explain. He feels he might have a solution to our problem.”

Babbage hissed impatiently. “Feels? Feels? Don’t impose the imprecision of emotions upon me, Brunel. My theories, premises, hypotheses—call them what you will—originate in logical thought. There is no room for doubt in science. Either something is, or it isn’t, or it’s unknown. If I say I have a solution, it’s because I do. My feelings don’t enter into it.”

“The terminology I employ has no influence upon the facts,” Brunel countered.

Babbage rasped, “Just the attitude that has weakened the Master Guild of Engineers to the point of extinction. Accuracy! Accuracy! I’ll have exactitude, if you please!”

“Must I stand here listening to you two squabbling?” Burton asked. “What is your proposition, Charlie?”

“That we give up the fight.”

Before Burton could respond, Swinburne screeched, “That’s it? That’s your idea? Gladstone’s dictatorship continues unabated, he’s taken Isabella Mayson as his unwilling mistress, Prince Albert is incarcerated in the Tower of London and due to be executed next week, the Libertines are employing their mediumistic powers to incite a war with Prussia, most of our allies are dead, and your great plan is to give up? By my Aunt Carlotta’s cruelly constraining corsets! Why would you propose such a thing? It’s perfectly monstrous!”

“I suggest it,” Babbage said, “so that we might start the rebellion from scratch.”

Burton looked from Babbage to Swinburne to Brunel and back at Babbage. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

The scientist placed his right hand on the time suit’s headpiece. “This,” he said, “contains what amounts to a synthetic intelligence, though one virtually incapacitated by the ravings of a madman. Nevertheless, by putting carefully considered questions to it, I have managed to ascertain that the suit transcends the natural flow of time by employing an extraordinarily sophisticated mathematical equation. What fragments of it I’ve had access to leave me convinced that, were I to extract it in full, I’d be able to construct a machine to emulate the function of the garment.”

Herbert Spencer said, “Yer mean t’ say, you could build another of the bloomin’ things?”

“If that is what I meant to say, I’d have said it,” Babbage responded. “No. The techniques available in the year 2202 are beyond even my understanding. Without them, we cannot create microscopic systems. I might, however, be capable of constructing a macroscopic equivalent. It would perhaps, be the size of a room or, more significantly, of a large vehicle.” He looked meaningfully at Burton. “One that might carry the core of our rebel group three years back through history.”

Swinburne squawked, swiped a fist through the air, and hollered, “By crikey! We’ll be able to go back and nip that blighter Gladstone in the bud!”

Burton shook his head and muttered, “There’s a problem.”

He knew the plan wouldn’t work. In travelling back to alter the past, the rebels would simply create a new strand of history. This one, in which he now found himself, would remain unchanged.

Babbage misinterpreted the comment as a question. “There is. The helmet is almost drained of power. If you give me permission, I can transfer energy to it from the Nimtz generator. The process might possibly allow the intelligence to regain some measure of sanity, enabling it to repair itself and provide me with further information.”

“Permission?”

“The suit is yours.”

Burton sighed. He indicated his consent.

Babbage consulted his pocket watch and declared it to be nine o’clock on the fifteenth of February.

The king’s agent suddenly knew exactly who, where, and when he was.

The wrong Burton.

In the wrong place.

On the wrong day.

Another repeat performance. Why?

Babbage ran his finger around the side of the Nimtz generator. The disk crackled and threw out a fountain of sparks. The old man recoiled with a cry of alarm.

Burton reached to either side, took Swinburne and Spencer by their arms, and started to pull them away from the bench.

Babbage stepped backward. “I hadn’t anticipated—”

A bubble formed around the helmet, suit and boots. With a thunderous bang, it popped, and the time suit, most of the workbench, and a large chunk of Isambard Kingdom Brunel vanished. The engineer slumped and became motionless.

Spencer cried out, “Blimey! Where’s it gone?”

“No! No! No!” Babbage wailed. “This is a disaster! We can’t have lost it! It’s impossible!” He stamped his feet and clapped his hands to his face. “How? How?”

Burton closed his eyes and massaged the sides of his head. “I’ve had enough of mysteries, and the light in this place always gives me a headache. I’m leaving.”

Swinburne and Spencer joined him. They walked back across the workshop and out through its doors. Snow was falling from a pitch-black sky. It was white. The courtyard, swathed in it, glared brilliantly under the spotlights.

The men left the power station and approached the armadillidium. Burton ordered, “Open.” It unrolled its considerable bulk. He climbed aboard, and his companions followed him up.

“The chaps are waiting for us at the Hog in the Pound,” Swinburne said. “Let’s see what plan Trounce and Slaughter have come up with. A means to rescue Miss Mayson from Gladstone’s lustful groping, I hope.”

Taking hold of the reins, Burton guided the woodlouse back through the gardens and out onto Nine Elms Lane.

He looked down at his hands. The scar on the left was no longer there. Brightness swept in from the corners of his eyes. He saw his fingers curled around the reins of his armadillidium; around the reins of a clockwork horse; around the handlebars of a velocipede.

In an instant, the snow stopped falling and it was daylight.

He lost control of his vehicle, hit the back of a hansom cab, careened into the kerb, and crashed to the ground. The penny-farthing’s crankshaft snapped and went spinning high into the branches of the trees lining the riverside.

He lay sprawled on the ground.

The cab driver yelled, “You blithering idiot!” but didn’t stop his vehicle.

A raggedly dressed match seller—a woman who lacked teeth but possessed an overabundance of facial hair—shuffled over and squinted down at the king’s agent. “Is ye hurt, ducky?”

For a moment, he couldn’t reply, then he managed to croak, “No. I’m all right.”

“You look all battered. Better get yerself up off the pavemint afore the snow soaks into ’em smart togs o’ yourn. Stain ’em scarlit, so it will. Would ye like t’ buy a box o’ lucifers?”

Burton pushed himself up. He thanked the woman for her concern and exchanged a few coins for a matchbook.

After dragging his broken velocipede out of the road, picking up his hat, and brushing himself down, he stood for a minute, utterly perplexed. He touched his head and found that his hair was short. There were scars on his scalp, a painful lump at the back of his skull, and a scabby cut on his chin. His left elbow hurt. In fact,
all
of him hurt.

Gradually, it dawned on him that he was on Cheyne Walk. He could see Battersea Power Station on the other side of the river. Fumbling for his chronometer, he flipped its lid. It was three o’clock in the afternoon.