The Rise of the Automated Aristocrats (20 page)

“Your ship's been taken,” Burton told him.

“What?” Lawless and Edward Burton cried out in unison.

The king's agent—Burton realised with a slight shock that he was already subsumed into that role—told them what had happened. Lawless's face turned white and his eyes flashed angrily. Edward twisted his mouth into an ugly snarl, then jabbed a finger at Trounce. “You! Stop standing about. Get to Scotland Yard. There are clockwork men all over London. I want to know whether any others have misbehaved.”

Trounce swallowed, blinked, sought Burton's eye, cleared his throat, nodded, put his bowler hat on his head, and moved toward the door.

“William,” Burton called after him. “We need to know whether the
Orpheus
has landed anywhere in the city, too. Get some constables onto it. Make enquiries.”

Trounce looked doubtful for an instant then nodded decisively. “Where do you—ah, yes, Montagu Place. Very well. I'll—I'll see what I can do and will report to you there.” He left the room.

Edward Burton addressed Swinburne. “The Venetia has a number of brass men among its staff. Go down and see what they're up to.”

“Rightio.”

“Richard, fetch me a bottle of ale.”

Burton's eyes fixed upon the other man's. “I beg your pardon?”

“I need a drink, damn it! Hell's bells, what am I to do without Grumbles?”

“I can tell you right now that you'll not replace him with me.”

“Shut up. I blame you for these untoward events.”

“Why so?”

“You come back and the very next day, all this. Am I supposed to consider it a coincidence?”

“I made a similar observation to Mr. Faraday.” Burton stepped over to the drinks cabinet. “It
is
rather suggestive, that much can't be denied.” He passed a bottle and glass to his brother. “Here's your beer. Maybe it will keep your mouth occupied with something other than petulant and ill-thought-out accusations.”

The minister scowled at him, took the bottle, and turned to address Lawless. “What made your ship worth taking?”

“It's the best in the fleet.”

“Oh, humbug! Don't be so absurd. There are plenty of rotorships in the empire, but yours is the only one that's just returned from the future. So, Captain, what is aboard it? What did you bring back with you aside from a talkative parrot? Obviously, whatever it is, that's what they're after.”

Lawless looked questioningly at Burton. The explorer said, “The Mark Three babbage calculator that automates the ship's functions and manipulates the Oxford equation to allow it to jump through time—”

He stopped, suddenly taken aback by his own words.

I talk as if I know these things. I don't! This madness has nothing to do with me. I'm a retired geographer. A writer. An old man who can't even get dressed without help.

Edward poured his beer, set the bottle aside, and took a gulp from the glass. He held it up and examined the way the light glimmered through the dark liquid. Slowly, as if engrossed, he said, “What about it?”

Burton's lips moved soundlessly as he struggled with the words that wanted to come out.

He gave up and let them.

“We had engineers—descendants of the Cannibal Club—tinker with it. They replaced some of its parts. The new components have expanded the synthetic intelligence by means of calculating techniques evolved from the work of a man named Turing. They supersede those developed by Babbage by some considerable degree.”

The minister took another swig then set the glass on the table at his side. His eyes met his sibling's and held them. “What else?”

“There are a great many more of the black diamonds. Multiple iterations of the same stones.”

“More? By God, don't we have enough of the infernal things? No wonder I've had a headache all day. What of the various devices you wrote of in your report? What of the identity bracelets and the intelligent pistols?”

“I judged it best to leave them where they belong, which is assuredly not in the year 1861.”

Without averting his gaze, Edward addressed Lawless. “Is that correct, Captain?”

“Um. Yes. That is to say, we didn't bring anything apart from the diamonds and reworked Mark Three, and I might add that whoever has taken the ship is in for a disappointment, since its brain stopped working the moment we arrived. More likely they were after the gemstones, anyway.”

Edward's face darkened, highlighting his scars and the brutality of his appearance.

“Do you both take me for a bloody fool? You think this was some manner of heist? Ridiculous! No, no, no. There's more to this. You're keeping something from me. The final chapter of your report is nothing but damned obfuscation. Something else happened, and I demand to know what. Furthermore, the notion that you returned virtually empty handed is beyond credibility. You are attempting to deceive me. I won't have it! What else was aboard your ship, Captain? Or perhaps I should be asking who?”

Lawless paled and mumbled, “No one. Nothing.”

“Liar! Traitor! I should have you clapped in irons and thrown into a dungeon!”

“I forgot something,” Burton muttered.

“What?”

The document. The History of the Future. It's still in Krishnamurthy's satchel.

“I forgot how objectionable you can be.”

His brother bared his teeth in a nasty snarl.

“And to contribute to your ill temper a little more,” Burton said, “the diamonds containing the remnants of Spring Heeled Jack were taken from the station, too.”

“Dolt! Incompetent fool! I should—I should—”

“What I can't quite understand,” Burton went on, “is why they were left there in the first place. Babbage took all the others last November. Why didn't he take the ones in Brunel's head, too? Perhaps because he thought Brunel still occupied them? If so, it suggests he learned otherwise the moment we returned from the future. How?”

Swinburne returned and, in his high-pitched voice, declared, “I just encountered the manager on the stairs. He's in a right old flap. Apparently, Sprocket, the doorman, has done a bunk.”

“And the others?” Burton asked.

“There are seven other clockwork servants in the building. They're all behaving normally.”

“About face,” the explorer ordered. “We're leaving.” He pushed the poet back toward the door and gestured for Lawless to follow.

“Come back here at once!” the minister shouted. “I'll have the truth out of you, confound it!”

He was ignored.

“Find the bloody ship! Keep me informed. And have the manager send up someone to assist me.”

As they descended the stairs, Lawless hurried ahead and said over his shoulder, “I'm going home to get my rotorchair. I'll fly over every inch of this city until I find the
Orpheus
. I'll catch up with you later.”

He reached the bottom of the staircase, raced across the lobby, and exited the hotel.

Burton strode to the reception desk with Swinburne at his heels.

“Sir?” the clerk asked. He cast a disapproving glance at the poet's filthy attire.

“I hear your doorman has absconded, Mr. Bromley. Did you see him go?”

“Yes sir. Sprocket. I don't know what came over him. He's never misbehaved before. He followed your two colleagues, the injured man and the young lady, when they departed and hasn't returned.”

“Ah, did he now? Thank you.” As he strode away, Burton thought of something and turned back. “Incidentally, the minister asks not to be disturbed until further notice.”

“Very well, Sir Richard. Duly noted.”

“You're very mean to your sibling,” Swinburne observed as they placed their hats upon their heads and stepped out onto the Strand.

“Apparently so. I can't help myself. But it won't hurt Edward to get off his considerable behind. He needs the exercise.”

“And what of us?” the poet asked. “What shall we do now?”

Burton moved to the edge of the pavement, raised his swordstick, and gave a loud whistle to summon a ride from the seething mass of eccentric vehicles.

“We have to get to the Penfold Sanatorium,” he said. “Maneesh still has the historical records, and I fear Sprocket might be intent on getting them.”

A steam-horse-drawn growler drew to a halt at the kerb. Its engine emitted a gargling sigh and a cloud of white vapour.

The king's agent directed the driver to the hospital and added, “Make haste, please. It's an emergency.”

“I'll do me best,” the man replied, “but the traffic ain't going to part for us like the bloomin' Red Seas, if yer don't mind me a-sayin' so.”

“There's a generous tip in it for you if you get us there in good measure,” Burton stated as he climbed aboard.

“Back streets, then. Better hang on. It'll be a bumpy ride.”

As Swinburne settled beside Burton and the carriage jolted into motion, the poet asked, “How could the doorman know Krishnamurthy has the documents?”

“Grumbles was aware of the fact,” Burton answered. “He was in the room when we spoke about them. I thought he was trying to prevent us from getting to the station when he set upon us in the yard. It might be that he was actually after the satchel. However, he didn't have the opportunity to speak with Sprocket, so your question stands, and I don't know the answer to it.”

They grabbed at the leather hand straps hanging over the windows, steadying themselves as, without warning, the vehicle careened to the right. The light dimmed as walls closed in on either side of it. The driver had evidently steered into an alleyway. Burton caught a glimpse of a vagabond pressed against brickwork, his eyes wide with surprise as the wheels missed his toes by mere inches.

Rounding a corner, thundering through a small, litter-strewn square and into another tight passage—this bordered by slouching tenement buildings—the growler bumped over uneven ground and scattered detritus, rocking from side to side and giving its passengers a thorough shaking.

“This is Soho, isn't it?” Swinburne said, hanging on for all he was worth. “Strange how such a squalid rookery can exist right beside the glamour of the Strand.”

“The British Empire has always been one of contrasts,” Burton replied. He added “Oof!” as the vehicle bounced over a pothole. “And in London, they are condensed and brought into sharp focus.”

From a maze of alleyways, the growler emerged into Oxford Circus where it was immediately hemmed in by a cacophonous profusion of wheeled and multilegged machines. Drivers yelled expletives at each other. Horses reared and whinnied in distress. Spokes tangled with metal knees. Steam and smoke billowed in every direction.

“Get your bleedin' heap out o' my way!” their man bellowed. “Coming through! Coming through! And the same to you, matey! Oy! Mind out! Are you blind or what? Yeah? Well why don't you shove it where the sun don't shine!”

With a lot of bumping, scraping, and very bad language, they nudged their way across the bustling junction before, like a cork popping out of a bottle, suddenly accelerating into a narrow side street.

Once again, the opulent facade of the city gave way to the inner rot, as they clattered into the grimy backwaters of Marylebone, moving through roads inhabited mainly, it appeared, by beggars, drunkards, ne'er-do-wells, and women of ill repute.

“If Sadhvi and Maneesh stuck to the main roads, which they surely did, we might reach the sanatorium before them,” Swinburne observed.

“So might Sprocket,” Burton countered.

The growler scraped through a very narrow passage, navigated a tight corner, and emerged into a long, straight, and slightly wider alley bordered on either side by the featureless redbrick walls of tall warehouses.

Burton leaned out of the window and looked ahead. The far end of the alley opened onto what appeared to be a main thoroughfare—Weymouth Street, he guessed—and he could see the front of a butcher's shop.

Momentarily made light-headed by déjà vu, he collapsed back into his seat and grappled with disparate memories, but before he could get a firm grasp on any of them, the vehicle reached the junction and turned with such speed that its left side rose up and Swinburne was knocked into him.

“My hat!” the poet squealed. “The teeth will be shaken from my head at this rate!”

Burton regarded the patch of oil that had been transferred from his companion's clothes to his own sleeve. “Our cabbie must be in debt. He's certainly keen on earning that tip.”

Moments later, they swung out onto Marylebone Road and were rattling toward the crossing with Edgware when the driver gave a cry of alarm and jerked the carriage to a halt with such abruptness that both passengers were propelled forward, banging their heads against the opposite wall of the cabin.

Shouts and screams reached them from outside.

“What now?” Swinburne muttered.

Throwing open the door, Burton jumped to the ground and saw, ahead at the junction, that an ornithopter had just landed in the middle of the thoroughfare. It had evidently done so precipitously, for a wagon lay crushed to matchwood beneath it, and vehicles, in seeking to avoid a collision with the wide, still-flapping metal wings, were veering to either side, bumping up onto the pavements and, in one case, as Burton watched, smashing through the front window of a bakery.

Swinburne stepped down to his side and cried out, “Look! Surely that's Sprocket!” He pointed at a landau that was skidding to a halt in front of the flying machine. A clockwork man was clinging to its back, hitching a ride like a street urchin.

“Sadhvi and Maneesh!” Burton exclaimed and started forward.

He saw the brass doorman drop to the road and stride to the side of the carriage. At the same moment, the ornithopter's hatch swung open and six mechanical figures emerged and ran the short distance to join Sprocket, who gripped the landau's door, ripped it off, and flung it aside. A cry of fright came from within.