The Rise of the Automated Aristocrats (44 page)

Burton ground his teeth. “I'm perfectly fine.”

“You are? Have you recovered from your injuries?”

The explorer cleared his throat and gave a hesitant nod. “Sufficiently.”

“And you still have spirit?”

Burton stared at the other man but made no reply.

Rigby removed his jacket, threw it onto a chair, and rolled up his shirtsleeves.

“Good. Then prove to me you're the man of old. The Burton I knew in India.”

“What?”

“Let's be at it. Hand to hand. Fair and square. A final reckoning. If you beat me—” He turned and addressed the clockwork man. “If I'm defeated, either because I'm unconscious or because I've said the word
submit
, you will escort Sir Richard from this cell, you'll release Swinburne and Trounce, and you'll escort the three of them out of the tower and to their liberty. Is that understood?”

The brass figure nodded.

Rigby said to Burton, “But if you prove no match for me, I'll wash my hands of you and give you over to clockwork men for torture. They'll go about their business with precision and neither qualm nor conscience. Unpleasant, to say the least. So decide. Speak or fight, which will it be?”

“There is no truth to tell, Rigby. I have nothing to say.”

The colonel sighed. “Retribution it is, then.”

Burton opened his arms, palms up. “Retribution? For what?”

Rigby adopted a boxing posture. “For everything you denied me. Raise your fists. Defend yourself.”

“I've denied you nothing. Surely you don't still hold a grudge because I performed better than you in a few language exams twenty-odd years ago?”

Rigby snapped his teeth together. “That was just the start of it. I'm the king's agent. I have access to all the records. I've read your reports. Or your counterpart's—whoever wrote the confounded things. I know what you did to me in Africa.”

“The
Mountains of the Moon
business? The Burton of that account was another man. As was the Rigby.”

“As much as I suspect you of being other than you claim, it makes little difference in the wider scheme of things. Perhaps we are who we are, no matter how many histories we straddle. I know what the other version of Swinburne became, and I know that I could have been the same were it not for you.”

Burton blinked. He lowered his hands and laughed. “Are you in earnest? You hate me because an alternate version of me burned an alternate version of you before he could transform into a sentient jungle? Do you realise how utterly preposterous that is?”

“Raise your damned fists, man.”

“To fight over such an absurdity?”

“You witnessed yourself how the jungle plays a key role in human evolution.”

“And you would have such a power? Ha! What a bloody disaster that would be for the human race.”

Rigby made a sound of impatience. “Stop. Here, take this.”

Stepping forward, he smacked the bunched knuckles of his right hand into Burton's mouth.

Rocking back, the explorer bared his teeth. “You blackguard! I'll be damned if I'll be your punch bag.”

Rigby started to circle, his eyes predatory, his expression one of utmost cruelty. He stepped in and launched a right hook, but Burton jerked out of the way and countered it with a left jab. He missed his target, feinted to the left, and got a punch home, his fist thudding into Rigby's ribs. Retaliation came at lightning speed: one, two, to his chin and left cheek. The explorer's head snapped to the side, and he rocked on his heels, his vision dimming.

Rigby was a powerful man.

A third blow brushed Burton's ear as he instinctively twisted and ducked beneath it. Heaving up from the hip, his answering punch caught the colonel again in the ribs—the same spot—causing the man to double over and step back, winded.

Burton lunged forward, aiming for a Thuggee wrestling hold, but as his arms encircled Rigby, his own momentum was used against him, and the room suddenly whirled as he was levered up and over to be sent crashing down onto the table, which broke and collapsed beneath him.

He lay stunned amid the splinters.

The clockwork man suddenly sprang forward, bent over him, and pulled at his clothing. “Get up!” it commanded. “Good Lord! Is this version of you incapable even of putting up a decent fight? Consider what that other Burton achieved. When all was lost, he still summoned resources enough to invade this base and rob its vault. Its
vault
! And you can't even give a good account of yourself when it comes to basic fisticuffs. I'm thoroughly
alarmed
to witness such weakness. It's not at all what I'd expect from my own brother.”

The voice was Edward's.

Burton stared in horror up at the near-featureless head. “Oh God, no!” he rasped. “You've actually done it.”

“My service to the empire will endure.”

“No!” Burton yelled. “You idiot! You stupid bloody idiot!”

He pushed the metal arms away and rolled onto his hands and knees, but before he could rise, brass digits clamped around his neck and held him down. Distractedly, Burton noticed that his brother's mechanical feet were caked with a blueish mud.

“Colonel Rigby has overstepped the mark,” the minister said. “He had no right to offer you your freedom. However, what's done is done, so I suggest you find the wherewithal to put up a decent fight, Richard. You're going to have to dig deep. The other Burton did so. Follow his example.”

“I'll not have your advice, you double-crossing bastard,” Burton growled.

Rigby barked, “Let him up! Let's get this over with.”

The clockwork man loosed its grip and stepped back.

Burton pushed himself up, turning to face Rigby just as the other came at him like a charging bull. Sheer luck allowed the explorer to get in the first punch, a ferocious left hook square to the chin, snapping Rigby's head back, but momentum carried the other man forward, and a moment later they went at it, practically toe to toe, swinging wildly.

Knuckles impacted against Burton again and again. His head was singing, and he was half-blinded by his own blood, the half-healed laceration in his forehead having reopened. Rigby fared no better. His right eye was closing and red gore poured from his mashed lips. However, though they may have been evenly matched in size and power, Burton's strength was quickly sapped by his existing injuries, and he started to flounder beneath his opponent's crashing attacks. He weaved and ducked as best he could but was caught over and over, wilting under the onslaught of rapid-fire short hooks and uppercuts until he fell into a clinch, holding and panting for air, desperately hoping his head would clear.

Rigby was not even remotely a gentleman. His knee came up into Burton's groin and as his opponent sagged, he gripped him by the hair, yanked his head back, and delivered a crunching headbutt to his face.

Again, Burton hit the floor. A booted foot ploughed into his side. A red mist clouded his vision. Rigby dropped on top of him, pinning his arms with his knees, and set about him, battering what resistance remained out of him, driving the explorer to the periphery of unconsciousness but holding back just enough that its promised relief was deferred.

How long the brutal punishment lasted Burton would never know. He was aware only of pain and humiliation until it finally occurred to him that the beating had stopped, and with pinprick vision, he saw that Edward was pulling Rigby back.

“That's quite sufficient, I think, Colonel,” the minister said.

“Not until I've crippled him,” Rigby protested.

“No. Leave something for our mechanical interrogators. We'll see how many sessions with them he can endure before he finally tells us what we need to know.”

“I want him ruined.”

“He will be. Come. Let's have someone tend to your bruises.”

Rigby looked down at Burton and spat on him. “I expected more. I'm disappointed. You are nothing. You're pathetic. I wash my hands of you.”

He and Edward departed.

Burton lay still and bled onto the carpet.

Through puffed and slitted lids, he stared at the ceiling.

Hours passed.

He didn't move.

A NEW FUTURE

Nothing that is morally wrong can be politically right.

—William E. Gladstone

AN UNEXPECTED ALLY EMERGES

The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation.

—Auguste Rodin

To possess an identity, a person requires a past and a present. The prisoner had too many of both. His memories conflicted with one another. He was in different places and in different circumstances at precisely the same moment, and the moment itself was uncertain.

He remembered fighting both a man from the future and the cabal of scientists who'd sought to capture that individual, intent on experimenting with multiplying histories.

He remembered discovering the presence of the black diamonds in the world and becoming aware of their pernicious influence.

He remembered that the collective consciousness of a prehuman race was contained within the gemstones but wondered whether they were real at all or, perhaps, rather a symbolic expression of a primitive and buried aspect of human sentience.

He remembered that he'd created the history he now inhabited.

He remembered that every bizarre event had culminated in him becoming something that transcended what was currently considered human; that it had called itself the Beetle; and that its presence was so paradoxical it must consume itself like the worm Ouroboros.

He remembered living into his old age, dying, and at that instant being transported into the past.

My existence is impossible.

Occasionally, he reached up with both hands to check his head, convinced it should feel somehow multiplied.

Many heads in the same space.

One. Three. Five. One.

Plainly, he was losing his mind.

If time was passing at all, the clockwork servant that delivered the meals—he could now see that it was not the same machine as his brother—provided the only measure, but he knew that it purposely appeared at irregular intervals to keep him disorientated. Sometimes it felt like he'd only just eaten when the next plate arrived. Occasionally, he was tormented by hunger between one repast and the next.