The Rise of the Automated Aristocrats (11 page)

Again, unbidden, knowledge blossomed. During the voyage to this future, the “authentic” Algernon Swinburne—and William Trounce, too—had been killed. The men walking beside Burton were copies. Clones. And brothers! Carried by the same woman!

Burton, who possessed no familiarity with the concept of cloning, suddenly did, and the wonder of it was that it failed to astonish him, this because his mind was already overloaded. He received but could not process. Such information might perhaps make sense eventually—as it obviously did to his host—but for now all he could manage to do was watch and listen, allowing the bizarre experiences and memories to overlay his own in the manner—just as Sadhvi Raghavendra had said—of a palimpsest.

He recalled that he was, in reality, sitting with his companions before a cloaked man aboard the
Orpheus
and began to will himself to return to that place. Then he stopped, afraid that he'd peel away illusion upon illusion until he was back in his bedroom in Trieste, in the throes of a heart attack.

“Hear the word! Hear the word! The rapture is coming! Any time now! Be prepared! The rapture is nigh!”

Just ahead, the source of the loud pronouncements came into view: a distorted figure squatting on the corner of a junction between two trails, with a wagon loaded with fruit, nuts, and vegetables in front of it. Short and bulbous—dressed in baggy garments and with a flat cap upon its broad head—the creature was little more than a blob with seemingly boneless arms protruding from it and a head that grew straight from the torso without mediation from anything resembling a neck. The froggish face, jutting forward, was split by a mouth so wide that its corners touched the tiny vestigial ears.

The man—if the street vendor could be so classified—suddenly expanded his throat and cheeks, puffing them out tremendously, like a balloon, so that he even more resembled a bullfrog, and opened the phenomenal mouth to blast, “Hear the word! Hear the word! Land for all! Homes for all! Food for all! Sky for all! The rapture is just minutes away!”

“Ouch!” Swinburne muttered, putting his fingers into his ears. “What ho, Mr. Grub! What ho! Put a sock in it, will you, old fellow!”

“Hallo, Mr. Swinburne,” the living trumpet responded. “Hallo, Mr. Trounce. Hallo, guv'nor.” His head split into so broad a smile that Burton marvelled the top half of it didn't fall off.

“You've not joined the exodus, then?” Trounce asked.

“Me, sir? No, sir! This is me patch. There's been a Grub a-standin' 'ere since time immum—immim—imm—umm—”

“Immemorial,” Swinburne offered.

“Aye, that's the word. Since time immaterial. I'll not abandon it fer nuthink, even if it means I'll be the last bloke livin' in London.”

“I doubt it'll come to that,” Trounce said. “There's plenty content to stay.”

“True enough, sir, true enough. It'll be a different sort a London, though, won't it?”

“It already is.”

“Aye, but I ain't referrin' to the jungle. What I mean to say is, it'll not be a city no more. Soon, there'll be no such thing anywheres.”

Burton chimed, “You can confirm it? Cities are decentralising?”

Grub bent an arm upward and scratched the side of his jaw. “If'n I take yer meanin' correctly, guv'nor, yes, that's the word. People is leavin' all the old cities an' spreadin' outward into smaller communities.” He gestured around at the vegetation. “Homes for all. Food for all. Anywhere. Least there will be once the jungle covers the globe.”

“And governance?”

“Takes care o' itself, don't it?”

“Smaller settlements,” Swinburne mused. “Microcommunities. Easily maintained by their population. With no competition for resources, there's little motive for crime or warfare. The jungle is bringing peace to the world.”

“And 'appiness,” Grub said. “I ain't never imagined it could be like this, sir.” He turned his face upward. The red foliage reflected in the outer edges of his little protuberant eyes and stars were mirrored in the pupils. “One more piece left to place in the jigsaw, if'n I might put it like that, an' it's a-comin' this very evenin'.” To Burton, he said, “All o' this is 'cos of you, guv'nor. Folks hold you as their champion.”

Burton shook his head, his neck ratcheting. “No, I mustn't be idolised. The people were, for too long, dominated by those who held themselves as better than the rest, and they, in turn, were presided over by the mind of a single man—and he a lunatic. You are free now. The world is yours. As for me—” He held out his six arms. “I have no place here. I'm not even human.”

“You're the most 'uman of us all,” Grub protested. “You sacrificed your life for us. Sort of. If'n yer know what I mean.”

“Whether that's true or not, I don't belong here. I have to take my leave of you. I've come to say good-bye, Mr. Grub. Tonight, I shall witness the rapture, whatever it may be, and afterward, my friends and I will board the
Orpheus
and return to our own time.”

Grub scratched his head. “I've asked you before an' I'll ask you again, 'cos I can't get me noggin' around such wonders—you're really from the past?”

“We are, and it's high time we went back to it.”

“I'll spread the word, then. The people will want to see you off.”

“I'd prefer it otherwise. I can't bear partings and I have a distaste for ceremony. Will you delay any pronouncement until the morning?”

“If that's what you ask, that's what I'll do, of course.”

“Thank you. And thank you, too, for the part you played in the revolution. It was you who mobilised the people and you who prevented them from running wild after we defeated those who ruled over you.”

Grub bobbed his flat head and gave a loose salute. “The workers ain't inclined to riot, sir. They are too busy gettin' on with gettin' on. Always 'ave been.” He turned to Swinburne and Trounce. “But you two gents—surely you'll stay?”

“We shall,” Swinburne answered. “Though we possess the memories of the men from whom we were cloned—that is to say, the Swinburne and Trounce from 1860—we are native to this time and will, we're certain, be subject to the rapture.”

“You feel it in you? The expectation? It's powerful, hey? I feel an imm—immin—”

“Yes, we do, and ‘imminence' is the word you're looking for. In fact, we should get back to our friends, before it's too late. We'll seek you out again tomorrow, old chap.”

“Right you are, sir.” The vendor again addressed Burton. “Good-bye. Thank you. From every single one of us.”

After handshakes were exchanged, Burton, Swinburne, and Trounce turned and retraced their steps, following Gloucester Place down to a barely recognisable Portman Square—it being little more than a clearing in the jungle, though one of unnaturally angular dimensions. In its centre, the
Orpheus
was floating a little above the rust-coloured and mushroom-dotted lichen that covered the ground.

They boarded it and joined Captain Lawless on the bridge.

Swinburne said to him, “The others will be at the Monument Flower by now. Let's go straight there.”

Lawless looked up at the ceiling. “You heard the man,
Orpheus
.”

“I'm busy,” the Mark III said. “Why don't you walk? It's hardly any distance.”

“Busy doing what?”

“Contemplating.”

Lawless looked at Burton with an expression of exasperation. “I'm sure the bloody thing is getting worse every day. Babbage created it as a calculating machine. This era's scientists have made of it a thinking machine. And a thoroughly irritating one, at that.”

“What are you contemplating,
Orpheus
?” Swinburne asked.

“My own existence.”

“Oof!” Lawless exclaimed. “That is easily explained. You were built. Built to operate this ship. At my command. And I command you to fly it to Green Park. Do you understand?”

“Perfectly. Though none of that explains
your
existence.”

“How about leaving me to worry about that?”

“Hurry,” Trounce put in. “The rapture is almost here. I feel fit to burst.”

Swinburne put a hand to his brother's elbow. “Don't worry, Pouncer. Nothing will happen without us.”

“How can you possibly know that?”

“I just do.”

The
Orpheus
eased smoothly into the air. Burton looked out through the window and watched the jungle sinking past. It thinned, dropped out of sight, and he was suddenly looking at a half-moon, visible through a forest of black columns that rose from a twinkling blanket, the speckled lights of which appeared as a counterpoint to the stars above. The glowing jungle swathed the land for as far as the eye could see, from horizon to horizon.

The rotorship steered a course southeastward then circled a colossal obelisk—a knotted trunk half a mile in circumference and so inconceivably tall that its upper reaches were lost from view.

New Buckingham Palace.

Orpheus
sank down just to the north of it, coming to rest on the eastern slope of Green Park.

The small expanse of land, uncluttered by jungle, consisted of a lawn dotted only by a few isolated bushes, the berries of which offered a paltry illumination, and thickets of trees around its fringe, which also offered some measure of light. As Burton, Swinburne, Trounce, and Lawless disembarked and started down the shallow slope, the explorer was able to make out Queen Victoria's monument silhouetted ahead of them. It had been erected, he recalled, in 1842 on the spot where, two years before, a bullet had killed the monarch. Designed by a little-known artist named Henry Corbould, and, according to its creator, based on a vivid dream, it took the form of a huge flower of no identifiable species, though it somewhat resembled a cross between a rose and a tulip.

Controversial when erected, the memorial had weathered the storm of criticism and, by the time of Burton's death in 1890, was an accepted and celebrated element of London's landscape. The monument was twenty feet in height but appeared considerably larger to the explorer as he now approached it. Were he able to frown in puzzlement, he would have done so, for a trick of the light made it look as if the monument was slowly swaying, its spiny petals gently curling and uncurling.

He gasped—a sound that resembled the susurration of a brushed cymbal.

The movement was no illusion.

A new set of facts bubbled to the front of his mind. In this version of history, Spring Heeled Jack had caused the memorial to be demolished, perhaps in an attempt to forget the crime that had contributed to his madness. Thirteen months ago, Swinburne, moved by a whim, had buried the ashes of Burton—the Burton whose consciousness now occupied this brass body—on the same spot. From those ashes, the plant had grown and flowered, its bloom remarkably similar in form to the old monument.

The four men joined a group of people standing at its base. One of them stepped forward to greet them.

“The blossom is getting more active by the second. I was starting to worry you might not arrive back in time. You said your farewells to Mr. Grub?”

“We did, Tom,” Burton said. The Burton of Trieste was amazed to see, in the other's features, echoes of his old friend Thomas Bendyshe. The Burton of brass knew him to be a cloned descendent of that man.

Looking past him, the explorer spotted the rest of the crew of the
Orpheus
: Daniel Gooch, Sadhvi Raghavendra, and Maneesh Krishnamurthy.

Trounce looked up at the massive flower. “We haven't missed anything, then?”

Bendyshe replied. “A lot of leaf curling and some odd pops and whistles. We all feel certain it'll be the source of the rapture.”

Burton said, “You base that assumption on what?”

“The excitement we're experiencing. The expectation. It's definitely emanating from this thing.”

Krishnamurthy moved closer to them and added, “Those of us from the
Orpheus
feel it, but it's affecting those native to this time with much greater intensity.”

Burton extended his arms slightly. “I sense nothing, but I trust your and the others' instincts. So a vegetable is going to change humanity?”

“It wouldn't be the first time.”

“Maneesh?”

“The humble potato. It could be argued that its arrival in Europe sparked the agricultural revolution, which in turn lead to the industrial revolution and the rise of empires.”

“Hmm. I little while ago, Algy proposed that the Irish potato blight altered the course of history.”

Krishnamurthy grinned. “Well, there you are. As hard as it may be to swallow—I refer to the fact, not to the spud—it's from such innocuous items that the human world takes its form. We can't discount the possible influence of—” He stopped and gaped as heavy bunches of berries hanging from the plant suddenly erupted with light.

“Hello!” Bendyshe exclaimed. “Your arrival appears to have added to its agitation, Sir Richard!”

Swinburne whispered, “It's been waiting for us. Now the show can begin.”

Above their heads, a rattle sounded, and with a creaking of its woody stalk, the flower turned and bent, giving the impression that it was looking down at them. Bladder-like organs at the back of its outermost petals expanded like balloons, then contracted, and as they did so, air was blown through the central bud, the petals of which moved like lips. A dreamy whistle emerged and was shaped into words.

“One, who is not, we see; but one, whom we see not, is;

Surely this is not that; but that is assuredly this.”

“What, and wherefore, and whence? for under is over and under;

If thunder could be without lightning, lightning could be without thunder.”

“Bloody hell!” Daniel Gooch cried out, throwing up his supplementary arms. “Will wonders never cease? Now we have to deal with a talking flower!”