The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi (53 page)

“Nevertheless, I'm in your and El Yezdi's debt,” Burton said.

The door opened and Bhatti entered, followed by a stooped and elderly man. Burton instantly recognised Charles Babbage and stood to greet him.

“What's happening?” the scientist snapped in a querulous tone. “Where are the helmets? Why am I dragged from my work? Interruptions! Always interruptions! Don't you realize how close I am to completion?”

“Sir Richard and Mr. Swinburne have arrived,” Brunel said.

“About bloody time!” Babbage glared at Burton. “I've done the calculations, sir. The probabilities don't lie. You no doubt received all the required information seventeen days ago. Why did you not act upon it? Why have you delayed?”

“Charles,” Daniel Gooch said, “you know full well that random elements must be factored in.”

“Random be damned! Any man with a clear head can steer the correct path. Random is just another word for muddled thinking!”

Brunel clanged, “I fear we shall embark upon another of our inexhaustible debates if we pursue this any further. You know there's no time for that, Charles, so please recalculate and join us. Would you care for a brandy?”

Babbage disregarded the question. His brows lowered over his eyes and, ignoring the gathering as if it weren't there, he lowered himself into a seat, mumbling, “Recalculate. Recalculate. Another bloody divergence. Let's see now—” He raised the fingers of both hands to his high forehead and began to tap them upon it, as if pressing lots of small buttons in a specific but inscrutable sequence.

Swinburne leaned close to Burton, rolled his eyes, and whispered, “First Harris, now Babbage. Cuckoo!”

Bhatti helped himself to a drink and sat down just as the door opened again. Nurse Florence Nightingale entered, pushing a three-wheeled wicker bath chair. She positioned it in the middle of the room, facing them all, then stood by its side.

Burton couldn't take his eyes off the man sitting in it.

Abdu El Yezdi.

He was swarthy-skinned and sharp-cheeked, with a dark left eye and a milky right. His nose was large and hooked, and his long grey beard flowed down over a very fat stomach. Dressed in the robes of a sheik, he exuded magnetism and authority, but as Burton took in the details, it quickly became apparent that the man was also deep into his final days, if not hours; his hands were shaking, there was a blue tinge about his lips, and he was struggling to breathe.

When he spoke, his voice was thin and weak.

“Algy, it is good to see you again. Are you well?”

“Yes,” Swinburne answered. “But I wasn't sure whether I'd dreamt you or not.”

“Culver Cliff? No dream.”

The impenetrable eyes flicked to Burton and considered him for what felt to the explorer like a minute, though it was probably seconds. “And you. You have lost—have lost—” His respiration faltered. He gasped in air, waved Nightingale away when she bent toward him, and went on, “You have lost Isabel.”

Burton nodded wordlessly.

“The pain you feel. You deserve every bit of it. Bloody fool.”

“Sir,” Brunel quietly rang. “I don't think—”

“Shut up, Brunel, I'm speaking. So, Burton, who else has died while you've been flapping about like a headless bird?”

Burton glared at the Arabian and snarled, “Why, exactly, must I account to you, sir?”

“Because I know a great deal more than you do, dolt.”

El Yezdi addressed Krishnamurthy while gesturing toward the wardrobe-like wheeled box. “Maneesh, show him.”

Krishnamurthy stood and walked over to the odd item of furniture, which was about a foot taller than him, and dragged it out of the corner. He positioned it beside the bath chair, then twisted a catch and slid the front panel aside. Two white suits were hanging inside, both one-piece affairs that would cover a man completely but for the head, hands, and feet. The material was white and had the texture of fish scales. Each had a circular disk attached to the chest and a cloak descending from the shoulders. Two shiny black helmets rested on the floor of the box, along with two pairs of boots attached to two-foot-high stilts. The outlandish costumes differed only in that one was fire-scorched and its helmet dented, while the other was in pristine condition. Without a doubt, Trounce had seen one of those outfits hanging from a branch in Green Park back in 1840, and the Mad Marquess had also glimpsed one momentarily in the grounds of Darkening Towers three years earlier.

Babbage jumped up from his seat. “There they are! Why? Put them back in the workshop at once! I have to finish!”

“Settle down, Charles,” Abdu El Yezdi said. “They'll be returned to you presently.”

The old scientist muttered an incomprehensible protestation and sat down.

El Yezdi returned his attention to his guests. “You are not looking at two suits. You are looking at the same suit, which is present twice.”

“What? What? What?” Swinburne shrilled.

The Arabian chuckled, revealing large crooked and decayed teeth.

“And this outfit, which is here in duplicate, will not be created for another three hundred and forty-three years.”

“More brandy!” Swinburne screeched. “At once!”

Bhatti, smiling, passed the decanter.

El Yezdi went on, “It is from the year 2202—an almost inconceivable date, I'm sure you'll agree—and though there is nothing visibly mechanical about it, it is, in fact, a machine.”

“One that enables its wearer to travel through history,” Burton said. “And that wearer was Edward Oxford, descended from the man of the same name who shot Queen Victoria.”

“Good! The late Countess Sabina didn't speak to you in vain, then?”

“Of course not.”

“She was a good, good woman, Burton. So far, she has sacrificed herself twice for me.”

“Twice? So far? Do you intend, at any point in this conversation, to make sense?”

El Yezdi gave a bark of amusement, coughed, then recovered himself, rubbed the heel of his right hand against the middle of his chest, winced, and continued, “Oxford travelled back to watch his ancestor at work. It went wrong. His presence caused The Assassination—which should have failed—to succeed. Worse, his forebear was killed, and in an instant there could be no descendants, which meant Oxford had no ancestors and no longer existed in the future he'd come from.” The Arabian shook his head sadly. “The situation didn't get any better. While fleeing the scene, his suit was damaged by young Constable Trounce. When he leaped away through time, it misfired and sent him to 1837 and Darkening Towers, where Henry Beresford took him in.”

“Your statement differs considerably from the accounts of both Trounce and Beresford,” Burton objected.

“I know. I'll come to that. During Oxford's subsequent weeks on the estate, while he attempted to make repairs, he dropped many hints about the future world. The marquess communicated these to Mr. Brunel, who, with his extraordinary inventiveness, turned them into the machinery we see around us today, much of which should never have existed.”

“Wait!” Burton exclaimed. He turned to the brass figure. “You knew Beresford, Brunel?”

The engineer clanged, “No, I didn't.”

Swinburne gave a screech of confusion.

“Then how—?” Burton said.

“Be patient, Sir Richard,” Daniel Gooch advised.

Abdu El Yezdi was grinning, obviously enjoying himself at Burton's expense. He said, “May I continue?”

Burton answered with a slight motion of his hands.

“Beresford and Oxford concocted a plan. If Oxford could locate the woman his now-dead ancestor would have married, and if he could impregnate her, then perhaps he might become his own great-great—I don't know how many greats—grandfather. In other words, he might re-establish the line of descent and his own eventual existence in the year 2202.”

“That's utterly insane,” Swinburne objected. “Pure gobbledegook!”

“Beresford always was half-loopy,” the Arabian responded, “and Oxford's predicament sent him right over the edge, too. Nevertheless, they put the plan into action, and though the suit wasn't properly repaired, it carried Oxford far enough into the future to do what he intended. So he started leaping through time in and around 1861—a little over a year from now—and while hunting for the right girl, he was spotted again and again, becoming known as Spring Heeled Jack. Perhaps it would have stopped there—with nothing but rumours of a mysterious stilted figure—but unfortunately Henry Beresford had learned too much, and when he told Francis Galton and Charles Darwin about the time suit, they became obsessed with using it to create their own futures, which they regarded as little more than Petri dishes such as are used in experimental biology.”

Burton interrupted, “I've met Darwin. He struck me as a decent sort.”

“A man is the sum of the opportunities he accepts and the challenges he does battle with,” El Yezdi said. “Change those, and you'll have a different man.”

“Personality adapting to the environment,” Burton mused.

“Precisely. So history was sent careening off course by Oxford, and no one would have realised were it not for the investigations undertaken by Sir Richard Francis Burton and his companion, Algernon Swinburne.”

Burton looked at Swinburne. The poet looked back.

“In 1861?” Burton said. “In our future?”

“After a fashion,” the Arabian answered. He turned to Nightingale. “Florence, help me to my feet.”

“You're not strong enough, sir. This charade is quite ridiculous.”

“Stop quibbling and do as I say!”

Nightingale bent and took him by the elbow.

Krishnamurthy whispered to Burton, “He does so enjoy his dramatics.”

El Yezdi gained his feet and stood unsteadily. He glowered at Burton as if expecting a challenge. When none came, he reached up to his mouth and pulled out a set of dentures, which he threw carelessly aside. His real teeth, exposed, were much smaller and in far better condition. Unbelting his robe, he shrugged it off and allowed it to fall to the floor, revealing padding strapped around his middle. Nightingale helped him remove it, until he was standing in trousers and shirt—a deep-chested and broad-shouldered man, whose stomach was paunchy with age but not fat.

He yanked the false beard from his face—a neatly trimmed white Van Dyke adorned his chin—then took hold of his nose and twisted off the theatrical putty that had made it so hooked. The milky eye followed; a thin saucer of smoked glass that fitted over the pupil. He slipped the
keffiyeh
from his head. His hair was short and white, the oddly glittering lines of a tattoo on his scalp visible through it. Finally, he used a handkerchief to wipe his face. Makeup came off, showing him to be in his mid-sixties or thereabouts.

Swinburne yelled.

Burton jumped to his feet, stepped back, fell against his armchair, and thudded onto the floor. With his eyes fixed on the old man, he scrambled backward until his shoulders hit the wall. His mouth worked but no sound came out. He couldn't tear his eyes away from the long, deep scar on the man's left cheek.

There could be no doubt about it.

Abdu El Yezdi was Sir Richard Francis Burton.

“Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is, it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress.”

—C
HARLES
D
ARWIN

Burton's thoughts refused to coalesce. He was still numb.

After Abdu El Yezdi revealed his true identity, the meeting had ended. The old man was exhausted, Burton was paralysed by shock, and everyone else was badly in need of sleep. It was a little past four o'clock in the morning when Krishnamurthy escorted the explorer and poet to rooms prepared for them.

“I'll wake you at nine,” the faux-constable said.

Burton possessed little awareness of his own actions. He undressed and got into bed. Sleep came fast—a response to trauma and fatigue—but he awoke just four hours later and lay staring at the ceiling, attempting to think coherently.

His mind fixated on the image of his own face, aged, worn, sick, and with eyes steeped in sadness and anger.

“Is that what I am to become?” he whispered.

He remembered the sound of camel bells, a tent in an oasis, the desert, a far-off horizon, and the promise of what lay beyond it.

One day, he would be physically incapable of exploration and discovery.

A momentary flicker in infinity, then we are gone.

Time is implacable. Time is cruel.

He got up and was washed and dressed by the time Krishnamurthy knocked at the door. The Indian led him to a dining room where he breakfasted with Swinburne, Daniel Gooch, and Florence Nightingale. The latter reported that El Yezdi was still sleeping and would be left undisturbed until he woke of his own accord.