The Rise of the Automated Aristocrats (38 page)

On two occasions I have been asked, “Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?” I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

—Charles Babbage

Water, thrown over his head, brought Burton back to consciousness. He was hanging, suspended by the wrists, his toes barely touching the ground. The strain on his arms was excruciating.

He opened his eyes and saw the water, stained pink with his blood, trickling down onto the floorboards and splashing around his bare feet.

His boots had been removed. So had the remnants of his shirt.

He looked up.

He was in a shed—not hut 0 but another of identical dimensions, though lacking bunks. To his left, Sir Roderick Murchison, Captain Henry Murray, and Sir Edward Brabrooke were standing in line, all handcuffed. To his right, Thomas Bendyshe, Doctor James Hunt, Richard Monckton Milnes, and Sir Charles Bradlaugh were also shackled.

In front of him, Commander Thaddeus Kidd, backed by four green-painted clockwork men, was holding a pistol to Henry Spencer Ashbee's head.

He said, “Welcome back, Sir Richard,” and pulled the trigger.

Blood spattered over Bendyshe and Hunt.

Ashbee flopped to the floor.

The prisoners uttered sobbing cries.

“A consequence,” Kidd said, “of your misjudged actions.”

He put the gun onto a table and picked up a leather whip.

“Colonel Rigby wants answers, and I can assure you that I am quite as determined as he to get them out of you. No doubt you think that by keeping your lips sealed you are saving the poet and your other fugitive friends. That is a misconception. They will be apprehended sooner or later. It is inevitable. The empire's new security measures will net every traitor, every person complicit in the Chinese menace.”

Burton snarled, “There is no Chinese menace, you bloody fool.”

The whip snapped out and scored the skin of his stomach. He hissed with the pain of it.

“If you have some notion,” Kidd went on, “that your knowledge of their whereabouts makes you indispensable, you are quite wrong. Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether you speak or not. As I say, they will be captured anyway. And as commander of this camp, I have the authority to decide whether it would be more beneficial for the empire to keep you and question you or to dispose of you in a manner that may demonstrate to the other detainees the futility of defiance.” He smiled nastily. “The latter course, I believe, holds greater value.” Kidd passed the whip to one of the mechanical guards. “His back. Forty lashes.”

“No! Wait!” Monckton Milnes shouted.

Kidd took two paces and punched him in the mouth. “Not another word! Not from any of you!”

The brass man walked past Burton and positioned itself behind him.

“Kidd,” the explorer whispered. “You're a jumped-up little popinjay, so inflated by the pathetic fraction of power apportioned to you, so eager to emulate Rigby, that you've willingly become blind to the truth. Why don't you open your eyes and—”

With a loud slap, his back erupted with pain. His various wounds—the aching head and arms, the blistered hand, the scrapes and bruises—were utterly subsumed by it. The torment tore through his nerves, saturated his flesh, clawed into his bones. His ability to think, already blunted by the blow to his head, was halted.

For the briefest moment, he sensed that his suffering was fading, but with this revelation came a second slap, and the agony was renewed.

The inexorable punishment continued.

Burton's sense of himself retreated like the sea sucking back over pebbles. For a measureless period, he was far away, gathering, building, intensifying, then he came crashing back to break again—agonisingly—on pitiless reality.

On and on it went, and each time he returned to himself, it was with less force, until the waves of pain had flattened out, and he was incapable of feeling anything more.

He hung, physically and mentally suspended.

Warm blood dribbled down the back of his legs.

He dimly recognised that the world was shifting around him as he was cut down and carried out of the hut.

Again, water splashed over his head.

Somewhere far off, whistles blew and orders were barked.

Grass scraped between his toes.

A voice: “Line up! Line up! Move yourselves! Move! Hurry now! In line!”

Falling.

The ground thumping into his ravaged back.

More water.

He opened his mouth and swallowed some of it.

A figure, bending over him, slapped his face.

“Up with you! Come on, Sir Richard!”

Commander Kidd.

“Wha—?” Burton croaked.

“Pull yourself together, man,” Kidd insisted. “The most important moment of your life has come. The
last
moment. Pay attention.”

The explorer weakly extended his hands, fumbling for a hold around Kidd's throat. The commander laughed and brushed them aside. He straightened and swung his booted foot into Burton's ribcage.

“Up!”

Rolling onto his front, Burton heaved himself to his elbows and from there to his knees. His skin was slick with blood. He was dizzy and disoriented. His eyes wouldn't focus. He swayed and began to fall.

“Help him,” Kidd said.

Metal hands slid under his arms. He was yanked to his feet. His vision adjusted. He saw the camp's prisoners all lined up, rows of them fading into the fog. He saw a scaffold and a noose.

“Let's make a good show of it,” Kidd whispered to him.

The commander turned to the assembled detainees and bellowed, “Gentlemen, as you are all aware, the British Empire is faced with dire peril from the Far East. In order to meet this threat, great sacrifices must be made. You men have been selected for a special task. You have all seen HMA
Eurypyle
arriving and departing each day. When your turn comes, you will board that vessel and it will take you to France, and from there you will be transported by rail and steamship to India to aid in the construction of its defences against neighbouring China. Let every man do his duty, that, when the time comes for him to return home, he can do so with his head held high, knowing that he has helped preserve the greatest civilisation to have ever existed.” Kidd indulged in a dramatic pause then raised his right hand, index finger pointed at the sky. “But! But! But! Not all are as diligent as you. There are some present here today who scorn the many benefits the empire has brought to our world. They seek to undermine it. They would have you capitulate to Chinese rule.”

Incredibly, despite that they'd been detained without warning or charges, half-starved and brutally mistreated, some of the gathered men booed and jeered.

“This man,” Kidd declared, lowering his pointing finger so that it was directed at Burton, “is foremost among the traitors. He has defied our prime minister. He has associated with fugitives and quislings. He has fomented dissent. He has attempted to escape from this camp. Today, he will pay the price.” He addressed the guards. “Onto the scaffold with him.”

Burton was dragged to the wooden structure and hauled up its steps to the platform. Kidd followed, took hold of the noose, and pulled it down over the condemned man's head, tightening it a little around his neck.

He spoke softly into Burton's ear. “Old Dizzy will give me a medal for this. Rigby, on the other hand, will tear me off a strip. He'd much prefer to kill you himself. However, this camp and its inhabitants are my responsibility, and I'll be damned if I allow that lunatic to take all the honours.”

Burton wanted to say, “You'll be damned whatever you do,” but the words emerged only as a dry rattle.

Kidd stepped to the front of the platform. “Men!” he cried out. “Let it be known that the execution you are here to witness has been authorised by—”

He stopped and looked up.

A large shadow was dropping out of the sky directly overhead.

There came a loud thrumming of engines.

The fog boiled and flattened and fled to the borders of the park.

Prisoners, heedless of discipline, scattered in all directions.

The
Orpheus
, bristling with guns, set down.

Burton's knees were like rubber. They gave beneath him. The noose tightened. He started to choke.

The door in the side of the ship opened, and the ramp slid out and down. A man appeared at the top of it. He raised a rifle and a report echoed.

Commander Kidd took two steps backward then turned to face Burton. He had a sickly smile upon his face. Blood spurted from a hole in his chest. “That—” He paused and winced. “That is not what we arranged.”

He fell to his knees and toppled forward, his head hitting the boards with a resounding clunk.

Vaguely, Burton, his face blackening, wondered what the commander's final words referred to.

The man with the rifle ran down the ramp and across the grass toward the scaffold.

Behind him, thick gun barrels, projecting from the sides of the vessel, swung toward their targets. Through narrowing vision, Burton identified the weapons as a variation of the new Gatling guns.

His pulse thundered in his ears. His heart hammered. His mind became increasingly detached. He watched as green guards and SPG units suddenly reacted, pouncing forward to intercept the running man.

The Gatling guns coughed and roared. Metal heads were torn to shreds. Some exploded. Others simply disintegrated into clouds of shrapnel.

Burton blacked out but came to just moments later as the noose was dragged up over his head. He slumped against his rescuer.

“Look sharp,” the man said. “We're not out of the woods yet.”

“Hallo, Pryce,” Burton mouthed soundlessly.

Wordsworth Pryce was Captain Lawless's second officer. He'd been part of the
Orpheus
's crew during the explorer's African expedition.

“Hellos and how-do-you-dos later,” Pryce said. “Are you able to stand unassisted?”

Burton tried.

“I'll take that as a no.”

The airman threw aside his rifle, which he couldn't operate one-handed, drew a revolver from a holster on his hip, and wrapped his left arm around the explorer.

An SPG unit met them at the foot of the scaffold's steps. It raised its twin truncheons.

“Halt! Your presence is unauthorised. Your actions are illegal. Surrender to me immediately or you will be forcibly subdued in the name of the King.”

“Subdue this!” Pryce barked. He drilled three bullets into its head.

“Unacceptable!” the machine responded. “You are under arrest. You will—kaaaark—fyaaar—”

Its head burst into flames.

Pryce hauled Burton away from it and toward the
Orpheus
.

To the left and right, only a few clockwork men were close enough to pose a threat, and the ship's guns quickly mowed them down.

“Wait!” Burton croaked. “The others. The Cannibals.”

“No time,” Pryce said, dragging him into the ship.

“Can't—can't leave them.”

“We have no choice.”

The airman propped Burton against a bulkhead, and turned as Maneesh Krishnamurthy's cousin, Shyamji Bhatti, joined them. “Help me close her up.”

The two men slid the hatch shut. When the bolts were locked into place, Pryce turned and shouted through the door to the bridge, “All done, Captain!”

Immediately, Burton felt heavier as the ship shot upward.

“Man the stern gun,” Pryce said to Bhatti. “Police vessels will be on us at any moment.”

“Aye, sir.”

As the young Indian ran to the stairs leading to the lower deck, the second officer gave support to Burton and hurried him toward the lounge.

“Transported to—to India. The Cannibals. Slavery.”

“If that happens,” Pryce countered, “we'll mount a rescue mission and get them back. First things first.”

They arrived at the lounge. Other men—crewmen who, for the most part, Burton knew—came forward and helped to move him to a couch.

“Doctor Quaint isn't with us,” Pryce said. “This is McGarrigle, our new medical orderly.”

The young man indicated nodded a greeting. “I'll dress your wounds as best I can, but you'll require proper attention later.”

Burton was hanging on to consciousness by a thread.

“Quaint—dead,” he managed. “Murdered in—in front of me.”

Pryce paled.

“Stand aside!” a voice commanded.

The men around the couch stepped back. Burton saw what had been, until now, blocked from his view. It was a massive armchair, and his even more massive brother was occupying it.

“What a bloody shambles,” the minister said. “You've managed to stumble from one crisis to another, and you've achieved precisely nothing. Now I'm left with no option but to take a hand in matters. Pathetic, Richard! Pathetic!”

“I had no—”

“Shut up. I don't want to hear anything from you except for the location of Swinburne, Trounce, and Gooch and his people. We must gather them up.”

“Norwood,” Burton said. “Cemetery. The catacombs.”

His brother addressed Pryce. “Tell the captain to shake off whatever pursuit there is before landing the ship in Norwood Cemetery.”

Pryce nodded. “We'll head east, outrun them, then circle back to approach Norwood from the south.”

“I don't need to know the details. Just get it done. Bhatti, fetch me a bottle of ale. McGarrigle, apply your ointments and bandages. I want this man on his feet. Fill him with morphine and brandy if you have to. The rest of you, go about your business.”

Burton felt a drumming vibration beneath him. His stomach turned. The floor slanted.

“Guns,” McGarrigle murmured, leaning over his back and examining the terrible welts upon it. “And evasive manoeuvres. Nothing to worry about. The
Orpheus
can outrun even police rotorships.”