Текст книги "The Return of the Discontinued Man"

Автор книги: Mark Hodder

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

Burton gasped. “Eugenics! We’d seen signs that it would return. Had this Wilson fellow no idea of the dangers?”

“I don’t think he cared,” von Lessing responded.

“Interfering with nature,” Jason Griffith muttered. “It stinks, man. Really stinks.”

Wells said to Burton, “I believe it was banished in your age because the early experiments were bedevilled by unexpected consequences?”

“They were,” Burton confirmed. “For every advantage the science’s founder, Francis Galton, bred into his subjects, a counterweight occurred quite spontaneously. He once created a stingless bee. He didn’t anticipate that it would also develop such speed of flight that, when it collided with his assistant, it went through him like a bullet, killing him instantly.”

“No wonder it was outlawed,” Wells muttered.

“And now it’s back,” von Lessing said, “as a part of the futile manoeuvrings of a stagnant leadership. The kids have had enough. They’ve started to protest. They want a revolution. Most don’t know anything about Spring Heeled Jack or your mission to find him, but we Cannibals have started to see signs of him in the new genetically altered—er—products. So we recruited this guy, Mick Farren, ’cos he’s a strong voice in the underground movement. He runs an antiestablishment newspaper and keeps careful track of what the government is up to. He’s also in a band, so has influence with the freaks. If it comes to it, we want to be prepared and able to offer some sort of resistance against the mad intelligence.”

“In a band? You mean like a brass band?” Swinburne asked. “How can that possibly work? And what are freaks? Eugenic creations?”

“Ha! No, man. It’s all guitars and drums and singing now. The freaks—the turned-on kids—dig it. Mick’s respected and he has insight. He’s a good cat to have on our side. People would follow him.”

“Literally a cat?” Swinburne asked. “Medically raised to a human degree of evolution?”

“No. Cat. Dude. Bloke. Chap. Fellow.”

“Oh.”

With a glance, Burton and Swinburne made a silent pact to allow certain peculiarities of the future’s language pass them by without further comment.

Burton said, “And Spring Heeled Jack?”

Von Lessing replied, “Today, in London, there’s going to be a mass demonstration against our alliance with America and against American aggression in South East Asia. The police are expected to show up in force. I want you to see them.”

“Why?” Burton asked.

Von Lessing glanced around at his colleagues. “We—we want your opinion of them.”

Detective Inspector Trounce looked puzzled. “Of the police?”

“Yeah.”

“Without preconceptions, I take it,” Burton said. “Except you’ve already indicated that you’ve detected Spring Heeled Jack’s influence. In the police?”

“Yep.”

“You have me intrigued.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t want to put any ideas in your head, so what say we finish for now and get some grub? Are you hungry?”

Burton wasn’t but felt it impolite to refuse, so the meeting broke up and the chrononauts were served an early—and thankfully small—lunch. Burton wasn’t sure what it consisted of. Some elements of it were laden with salt, others with sugar, and it all left a nasty chemical aftertaste.

Jane Packard told them, “Eddie, Karl and I will go ashore with you at Margate to meet with Mick and travel into London. You have a little while to hang loose before we arrive.”

“Hang loose,” Sadhvi Raghavendra said when they were left alone. “How unpleasantly descriptive.”

“I wonder what their poetry is like?” Swinburne mused.

“I dread to think,” Wells said. “Will we understand a word anyone says when we reach 2202?”

Burton said, “In my visions of Oxford’s native time, everything was perfectly comprehensible and there was some mention of language rehabilitation. New words are introduced as time passes, others go in and out of style, but the foundations remain. In my opinion, it’s the form of society itself that’s more likely to mystify us.”

“It’s already doing so,” Trounce muttered. “Music as a political force? Children defying the government? By Jove! What a madhouse!”

For a further half hour, they discussed what they’d learned from the current crop of Cannibals. Burton felt pride that his brother and Tom Bendyshe had secretly amassed—and so wisely invested—such funds that the organisation could afford the Concorde jump jet. It impressed him beyond measure. Too, he was gratified that his friends, the original club members, had so efficiently passed their cause down to their descendants. This new generation struck him as strange, strikingly unceremonious in attitude, scruffy in appearance, but undoubtedly committed and trustworthy.

After a while, Eddie Brabrooke poked his head into the cabin. “Time to go ashore, folks.”

They put on their coats—but were told to leave their hats, which had gone out of fashion—and followed him up onto the deck. A motorboat was bobbing on the water next to the yacht. Burton looked toward the shore and Margate’s seafront. He’d known the town as a major holiday destination, and it had hardly changed at all except that, even from this distance, it had obviously lost its gloss and become shabby and neglected.

Bidding adieu to those who were remaining behind, Burton and his companions followed Brabrooke, Karl von Lessing and Jane Packard down a rope ladder and into the boat. The woman at its tiller greeted them and introduced herself as distantly related to Richard Monckton Milnes.

She steered them to the side of the town’s promenade and, as they ascended a slippery set of stone steps, said, “See you when you get back.”

Burton stood and examined with interest the people who were strolling along the seafront. Though many of the men were suited, the overall impression was of a major drop in the standards he was used to, both in terms of attire and manner. As for the women, there was a scandalous amount of flesh on display. Dresses and skirts, which never revealed even an ankle in his era, had diminished in size so radically that even naked thighs were unashamedly exposed for all to see.

“Hardly the Utopia I was hoping for,” Wells muttered. “It smacks more of Sodom and Gomorrah.”

“Indeed,” the king’s agent agreed.

Don’t be judgemental, he told himself. Don’t think of them as English. Be the ethnologist.

“There’s Mick,” von Lessing said, waving at man who was striding toward them.

“Lord help us,” Trounce muttered.

Mick Farren was all hair. It framed his face in a great bushy nimbus. The detective inspector couldn’t take his eyes off it.

Burton, whose travels had exposed him to an endless variety of strange sights, was able to look beyond the extravagant halo. He saw a slim youth of medium height, dressed in worn blue canvas trousers—perhaps the uniform of his generation—a black shirt, a short black jacket made from leather, and boots that reminded the king’s agent of those worn by Spain’s vaqueros. Farren’s long and, by the looks of it, oft-broken nose might have dominated the face of another man, but in him it was eclipsed by the eyes, which, as he came closer, were revealed to be direct, sullen and challenging.

“Sir Richard,” he said, shaking Burton’s hand.

“Mr. Farren.”

Few people could meet and hold Burton’s gaze. Farren did. The king’s agent felt himself being assessed.

He passed the test.

In a surprisingly soft and cultured tone—Burton was half expecting a cockney accent—Farren continued, “The Orpheus was called to 1968 because I recommended it. I hope what you see today will justify my decision.” He turned to the others. “Miss Raghavendra, Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Trounce, Mr. Wells—I’m honoured to meet you all. I expect this time period will strike you as lurid and uncultured. That’s because it is.” He smiled slightly. “If you’ll follow me, I have a couple of cars parked around the corner. We’ll drive you to London.”

“What are cars?” Trounce asked as they followed Farren away from the promenade and into a street lined with shops.

“Diminutive of ‘autocarriage,’” Herbert Wells put in. “They were invented during my childhood as an alternative to the old steam spheres.” He pointed to a yellow metal box at the side of the road a little way ahead. It was mounted on four wheels and had glass windows. “By the looks of it they’ve become rather more sophisticated than the rickety contraptions of 1914.”

As they emerged onto a wider thoroughfare, five of the vehicles whipped past at a tremendous velocity, steam whistling from pipes at their rear.

“Like a landau,” Swinburne observed, “but with the driver and the engine inside.”

It being Sunday, the town was fairly quiet and the shops were closed. Burton examined the contents of their display windows and only understood half of what he saw. Everything appeared garish, plentiful, and cheaply manufactured.

“What are those rods?” Sadhvi enquired, pointing at the rooftops.

Karl von Lessing answered, “Television aerials, Miss Raghavendra. Television is like radio but with moving pictures, a little theatre in your sitting room. The aerials pick up the signals.”

“Moving pictures?” Swinburne exclaimed. “You mean, like a zoetrope?”

“A what?” von Lessing asked.

The poet cried out and aimed a kick at thin air. “How are we ever to communicate?”

The group came to two parked cars. Trounce and Raghavendra joined Eddie Brabrooke and Karl von Lessing in one, while Swinburne, Wells and Jane Packard squeezed into the back of the other, with Burton in the front beside Farren. The king’s agent watched closely as Farren manipulated steering rods and a footplate—a very similar arrangement to that of the old steam spheres and rotorchairs.

“Steam?” Burton asked, as the car rolled out into the road.

“Yep,” Farren responded. “The Yanks favour petroleum engines, but they’re unreliable as hell. Anglo-Saxon steam technology is still where it’s at. Over the past century or so, we’ve learned how to squeeze the most out of the least. It was Formby coal in your day, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“We use a process called muon-catalysation now, which is powered by an extension of the Formby treatment. We can make a marble-sized lump of coal blaze like a sun for a whole day, and a vehicle can run on twelve gallons of heavy water for almost two hundred miles at speeds of up to sixty miles an hour.”

“Heavy water?”

“Yeah, man. That’d take me a week to explain.”

The car accelerated, and Margate was quickly left behind. As the vehicle swept westward, Burton and Swinburne saw that the little seaside towns—Herne Bay and Whitstable—which had flourished in the mid-1800s, were now, like Margate, in a sad state of dilapidation, while the countryside between them had been rendered a characterless patchwork by intensive farming.

Further inland, the Kentish towns of Faversham, Sittingbourne and Gillingham were vastly expanded, but the new buildings struck the chrononauts as soulless and unprepossessing, and by the time they reached Gravesend they were shocked to find themselves already on the outskirts of the capital. London was immensely expanded.

As they swept into the densely built-up outer reaches of the city, with other vehicles flowing around them, Burton asked, “You are a musician, Mr. Farren?”

“Mick, please. I’m a singer and songwriter, among other things.”

“In a band?”

“The Deviants.”

“And music has become a political force?”

“Uh-huh.”

Farren reached down to a knob on the control panel in front of him and gave it a twist. The car’s cabin was immediately filled with a harsh blend of trumpets, guitars and other instruments that Burton couldn’t identify. The cacophony sounded vaguely Spanish and was accompanied by three or four male voices singing in harmony.

“Ouch!” Swinburne exclaimed. “What a racket!”

“The song is called ‘The Legend of Xanadu,’ Mr. Swinburne,” Farren said. “By Dave, Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich.”

“My hat! What are they? Dwarfs? What happened to the seventh?”

Farren gave a throaty chuckle.

“I presume the song refers to the Empire’s difficulties with China,” Burton said. “Though I fail to understand the Spanish motif.”

Farren shook his bushy head. “No, Sir Richard. This is what’s known as pop music—pop, short for popular. Its only function is as commercial entertainment. It has very little meaning. I doubt the kids even know where Xanadu is. Let’s try a different station.”

Keeping his eyes on the road ahead, Farren twisted another control knob. The music dissolved into crackles, whines, howls and snatches of conversation before settling into an urgent and primitive-sounding rhythm over which an American-accented voice sang about “breaking on through to the other side.”

“Rock music,” Farren revealed. “This band is called The Doors.”

“How is it different to pop?” Burton asked.

Farren thought for a moment. “I guess rock music is less about commerce and more about cutting through the surface of civilisation to find an authenticity within each of us.”

Burton considered this and said, “That was one of the aims of the original Cannibal Club when Doctor James Hunt and I first founded it. I must admit, we didn’t much pursue the objective.”

“We were too busy getting three sheets to the wind,” Swinburne added.

“Nevertheless, it’s yet another curious coincidence,” the king’s agent muttered.

Farren said, “What you intended at the club’s inception is now more important than you ever envisioned. The people are so distracted by bread and circuses they’ve lost any sense of themselves. They don’t realise they’re being enslaved by the system.”

Swinburne leaned forward. “By which you mean the system of governance established and run by the upper classes?”

“Exactly,” Farren answered. “Except, if you scrape away the layers of illusion, I’m pretty sure you’ll find a single presence at the rotten core of it.”

Burton looked at him. “Edward Oxford?”

“Yep.”

They caught their first glimpse of police constables at the junction of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road. A tower—the tallest any of the chrononauts had ever seen—dominated the area, an unsightly edifice of concrete and glass.

“Centre Point,” Mick Farren said. “Completed last year. Thirty-two storeys, all completely empty. An eyesore and total waste of money.”

It was a dramatic example of how the capital had altered. Buildings crowded against each other, pushed upward into the sky, and appeared to occupy every available space. Here and there among their ill-designed and blocky facades, segments of the nineteenth century could occasionally be spotted, like broken memories clinging to existence, but little of Burton and Swinburne’s world remained beyond the major monuments, and to the king’s agent, even the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral—which bulged up into the crystal-clear air—looked suddenly small, helpless and insignificant.

After leaving the cars in Bedford Place, the Cannibals had walked to the southern end of Tottenham Court Road where they’d joined an enormous crowd of demonstrators. Farren told them an even larger crowd was gathered in Trafalgar Square, the two groups slowly working their way toward Grosvenor Square. Burton had witnessed protests in the 1850s, but nothing to match this. People were present in their thousands, long-haired, colourfully dressed, many holding banners and placards, and all chanting, “Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh! Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh! Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh!”

Farren put his mouth to Burton’s ear and shouted above the din, “Ho Chi Minh. Former president of Vietnam. He represents what the people of South East Asia desire for their region, as opposed to what the U.S.A. or U.R.E. wants.”

Following his lead, they pushed into the crowd, taking up position behind a group of youths holding a banner bearing the words “Merseyside Anarchist Group.”

Burton felt completely out of his depth. He obviously wasn’t alone in his sense of vulnerability; Sadhvi Raghavendra was clinging to his left elbow for security, Wells was looking nervously this way and that, and Trounce was staying very close, too, and was visibly trembling. Only Swinburne appeared at ease amid the uproar. He twitched and danced and laughed and added his shrill voice to the chanting.

Raghavendra tugged at Burton’s arm, nodded toward Trounce, and yelled, “Richard! I don’t approve of the stuff, but you have to give William another dose of Saltzmann’s. This is all too much for him.”

Burton nodded, drew a bottle from his jacket pocket, and at that moment saw the police constables. He dropped the tincture, and the glass shattered at his feet.

“Bismillah!”

There were twenty policemen standing in a row on the pavement.

But they weren’t men.

Swinburne shrieked and pointed. Trounce staggered against the king’s agent. Raghavendra put a hand to her mouth. Wells swore.

“Don’t stare at them,” Eddie Brabrooke advised. “Believe me, you don’t want them to notice you.”

“You understand now why I activated the beacon?” Farren asked.

“Yes,” Burton croaked. “By God, yes!”

The constables were humanoid in form, standing upright, with bulky torsos and short, thin limbs, but they possessed the heads of pigs. Dressed in black uniforms with silver buttons, they wore round helmets and had long boots encasing the lower part of their legs. The boots were mounted on spring-loaded, two-foot-high stilts.

“The genetically altered pigs were first introduced to the force a couple of years ago,” Farren said. “They’re strong and vicious but lack height and speed. The new uniforms were introduced last month to address that problem. The moment I saw them, I thought of Spring Heeled Jack.”

“The similarity is striking,” Burton responded. “Undoubtedly, Oxford’s influence is at work. Has the genetic manipulation resulted in the usual side effects?”

“Yes,” Farren answered. “They possess an unanticipated degree of aggression.”

The police creatures were lost to view as the crowd suddenly surged forward.

Taking their cue from some of the groups around them, the Cannibals and chrononauts linked arms—Wells, Farren, Burton and Trounce leading, with Jane Packard, Karl von Lessing, Raghavendra and Swinburne following behind.

Leaning close to Trounce, Burton shouted, “William, are you all right?”

Trounce looked at him with glazed eyes. “Too many people. Too many people.”

Burton disengaged his arm and checked his pockets. Silently, he cursed himself for not bringing more Saltzmann’s from the ship. A stupid mistake. He hooked his hand back around Trounce’s elbow. “Stay with us, old chap.”

Like a tidal wave, the crowd swept along Oxford Street.

“We’re heading to the American Embassy,” Farren announced. “A show of strength.”

For the next hour, conversation was almost impossible. The chanting increased in volume and vehemence, and an ominous air of smouldering violence pressed down upon them like a brewing storm.

Burton retreated into his role of detached observer. He took in every detail of people’s attire, of their gestures and expressions, and of the words he heard spoken—or more often shouted—around him. He recognised that the England he knew was in the grip of a deep transformation, driven by a powerful zeitgeist, and rapidly becoming almost unrecognisable to him. Individuals who thought they were in control of their actions were, he perceived, actually motivated by an almost primordial passion, something chthonic and incomprehensible, though vaguely sensed. He could see it in Mick Farren’s eyes. The songwriter appeared almost mesmerised, as if participating in a war of gods without being fully cognisant of it.

And where was the insane Edward Oxford in all of this? How much of the apparent madness Burton observed was that of the Spring Heeled Jack consciousness? Had the man from 2202 infected history like a virulent disease?

Jane Packard yelled, “This is more than we anticipated, Sir Richard. Follow us. We’re going to slip into a side street and get away from here.”

It immediately proved more easily said than done. The sheer weight of numbers made the demonstration almost impossible to navigate, and over the course of the next thirty minutes they were shoved helplessly along with it all the way to North Audley Street, forced left, and driven into Grosvenor Square. Here, the furore was overwhelming and the crush of bodies immense.

Burton managed to manoeuvre to Raghavendra’s side. He shouted into her ear, “Stay close to William, Sadhvi.”

She said something he couldn’t hear and squeezed past Packard to join the Scotland Yard man.

Farren caught Burton’s eye and nodded toward the right. Following the gesture, the king’s agent saw, through the many banners and waving placards, a huddled mass of uniformed pig men, all mounted on horses. The creatures were holding sword-length batons, and their steeds were draped with light chain mail and wore horned headpieces, making them resemble unicorns.

The more Burton looked, the more constables he noticed, and every one of them had a wicked glint in its eyes.

He barged past two furiously chanting men to reach Farren. “Is there any law against protesting?”

“In theory, no. In practice—man, we’re in trouble. Everyone knows a confrontation is inevitable, but I didn’t think it’d be today.” He pointed at a large blocky building, the focus of the protesters’ anger. Burton could see pieces of fencing—obviously torn up by the crowd—being thrown toward it.

“The American Embassy,” Farren said. “If its perimeter is breached, all hell will break loose.”

No sooner had he spoken than a series of detonations sounded. Burton saw small canisters spinning through the air, trailing smoke as they arced from the cluster of uniformed pig men into the middle of the crowd.

“Tear gas!” Farren shouted.

Grey fumes billowed up, casting a swirling veil over all. People crouched and clung to each other. A voice blared into the square, “Disperse immediately! Disperse immediately! Return to your homes!”

Burton’s eyes started to burn. He squinted through the thickening cloud and pushed past Farren to Swinburne, Trounce, Raghavendra and Wells. “Stay together,” he bellowed, but his voice was lost in a cacophony of screams and shouts and the repeating demand, “Disperse immediately! Disperse immediately!”

Bottles and the poles used for placards started to rain down on the police, flung by the increasingly enraged demonstrators.

“Disperse immediately! This is your final warning! Disperse immediately!”

Goaded into ungovernable rage and considerable panic, the mob heaved and eddied like a boiling liquid, with individuals breaking off as small spaces appeared among them, only to then be engulfed again. Burton recognised, however, that some must have been escaping into side streets, for increasingly he and his companions were able to force their way southward.

Suddenly, without any perceivable prompt, the mounted constables let loose ferocious squeals and surged forward. Men and women fell beneath their horses’ hooves. The pigs swiped their batons indiscriminately, cracking heads, breaking arms, bruising ribs. Others, on foot, bounded high into the air, propelled by their spring-loaded stilts. They came flying out of the caustic gas, crashing down on people, attacking them brutally and, it appeared, with glee.

Burton staggered and coughed. He felt like he was breathing in fire. With blurred vision, he saw Jane Packard’s head spray blood as a baton crunched into the back of it. She fell and was immediately trampled by her assailant’s horse. The king’s agent lurched toward her but found his way blocked when a constable landed in front of him. The pig man snorted and laughed wickedly. Its snout wrinkled into an expression of unmitigated savagery as its beady eyes fixed on him and it raised its weapon to strike.

Mick Farren came careening into it, knocking it to the ground. He slammed a fist into its face, snatched the baton from its hand and, gripping the staff at either end, crushed it into the pig’s neck. He screamed at Burton, “Get away! Wait for us by the cars!”

Another constable hurtled down. It grabbed Farren by his bushy hair and yanked him backward. Burton swore, then pounced onto it and, acting on instinct alone, applied a Thuggee wrestling hold to its head and twisted until he felt the neck snap.

Farren raised the baton and hammered its end between the eyes of the pig beneath him. He rose from the unconscious body. “We have to get the hell out of here!”

Burton couldn’t answer. He struggled to draw breath. Vaguely, he was aware that Brabrooke was bent over Jane Packard’s broken body; that Swinburne was with Wells, who had blood streaming down his face; that Raghavendra, Trounce and von Lessing were nowhere in sight; and that the main line of mounted police had swept by and was now crashing through the crowd to his left.

Brabrooke shouted, “She’s dead! Oh God! I think Jane’s dead!”

Farren hesitated. “We have to get Burton’s lot to safety.”

“Then go. I’ll stay with her.”

“Eddie, it’s not—”

“Beat it!”

Farren stepped to Burton’s side and took hold of his arm. They were jostled as protesters seethed around them. Burton cried hoarsely, “This damned gas has me blinded! Where are Sadhvi and William?”

“I saw Karl with them,” Farren said. “He’ll get them to the cars. We have to split before the pigs head back this way.”

They elbowed through to Swinburne and Wells, grabbed them, and pushed on toward the southwestern corner of the square. The Cannibal from 1914 was in a bad way, dripping blood and fighting to remain conscious, depending on the poet for support.

“What has happened to the world?” Swinburne shrieked. “This is worse than Bethlem Hospital!”

The amplified voice blared, “Disperse immediately! All those who resist will be arrested!”

The group flinched back as another constable hit the ground just feet away. It immediately bounced onward, without sparing them a glance.

Swinburne pushed Wells at Burton and Farren. “Quick! Take him.”

Burton caught Wells. A riderless police horse came thundering out of the steam. Swinburne ran at it, seized the flapping reins, and swung himself up into the saddle. He yelled, “Follow!”

People scattered out of the horse’s way as Swinburne expertly took control of the animal and, despite it being skittish, nudged it harmlessly through the protesters, forging a path toward South Audley Street. Burton and Farren walked behind, holding Wells upright.

Finally, they broke free of the throng, staggered out of the square, and found further progress blocked by three constables.

“Under arrest!” one growled. “Stealing horse!”

“Assault!” the second announced.

“Resisting!” the third added.

“I confess!” Swinburne exclaimed. “Yes, yes, and yes!”

He yanked on the reins, and the horse reared up lashing out with its front legs. One hoof caught a pig under the chin. The creature flopped to the pavement, out cold. The other hoof thudded into a constable’s stomach. The pig folded, dropped to its knees, and instantly turned a nasty shade of green.

Burton let go of Wells, took three long strides, crouched under the remaining constable’s swinging baton, and delivered a devastating right hook. The beast spun a near-complete revolution and crumpled.

“Lucky,” Burton murmured. “I couldn’t see what I was hitting.”

Swinburne dismounted. “How’d you know when to duck?”

“Instinct. How are your eyes, Algy?”

“Stinging like blazes, but I’m all right.”

“Then guide me, please. Mick, you have Herbert?”

“Yep. Let’s head for Piccadilly. Maybe we can hop on a bus and make it back to the cars.”

It didn’t work out that way. By the time they’d staggered to the northern edge of Green Park, their eyes had cleared, but when they tried to board a bus—a two-storey-high, bright-red, steam-driven contraption—its conductor glared at Farren’s hair, looked disgustedly at the state of Wells, gaped in bemusement at Burton and Swinburne, and snapped, “Not you, sweeties!” before ringing the bell that signalled the driver to get going.

They tried two more buses with similar results.

So they walked all the way to Piccadilly Circus, along Shaftesbury Avenue and High Holborn, then up Southampton Row to Bedford Place. By the time they reached the cars, Herbert Wells was somewhat recovered. All, though, were footsore and exhausted.

Burton’s scientific detachment had become rather more pathological. He felt as if a thick pane of glass separated him from the environment, and, increasingly, when anyone addressed him, an expanding distance inserted itself between him and them. Remotely, he recognised that Swinburne was starting to experience the same, and when von Lessing and Raghavendra greeted them at the vehicles, he saw that the latter, too, was suffering this insidious entrancement. As for Trounce, he was virtually catatonic, sitting in the back of one of the cars with wide, fixed eyes and a slack mouth.

“It’s too much,” Sadhvi mumbled. “We’re losing our minds.”

Burton turned to Farren. “Mick, we can’t hold out for another day. Not without a dose of Saltzmann’s. You have to get us back to the Orpheus. We’ll stay aboard her until the refit is completed.”

Farren gave a curt nod. “I’ll drive you back to the yacht.” He addressed von Lessing. “Karl, Eddie’s with Jane. She’s badly hurt. Maybe even—maybe even dead. Will you stay and track them down?”

Von Lessing paled. “Yeah. I’ll check the hospitals. What a bloody mess.”

They bid him farewell. Raghavendra and Wells joined Trounce in the back of the car while Burton climbed into the front with Farren. They set off back toward Margate. No one spoke. Farren was lost in his own thoughts, and as for the chrononauts—

They just felt lost.

It was evening by the time they boarded the yacht. Burton and his companions had little idea of where they were or what they were doing. The Cannibals guided them to bunks, and they all fell into an instant and profound sleep.

Burton awoke at noon on the following day in an unfamiliar room and with the taste of Saltzmann’s haunting the back of his throat. He was lying on a bed—more like a shelf projecting from a concave wall—and still wearing yesterday’s clothes, which were torn and stained with blood and dust.

He sat up, looked at his hands, and noted that the knuckles were cut and bruised. Slowly, recent memories seeped back into his conscious mind.