Текст книги "The Return of the Discontinued Man"

Автор книги: Mark Hodder

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

Standing, he looked out of a porthole and saw a broad triangular wing beyond which, past a narrow strip of coastline, the sea sparkled brightly. He was obviously on the Concorde—the new Orpheus—and when he turned to face the tiny cabin, he saw that his suitcases had been transferred to it from the old ship. He opened an inner door and found an en suite bathroom. Forty minutes later, he was clean, dressed in fresh clothes, and feeling a great deal better.

Burton exited into a very narrow corridor with doors running down either side of it. He’d asserted from the shape of the wing that the prow was to his left, so he followed the passage along to a door. It opened onto a long, narrow tubular lounge. A group rose to greet him: Captain Lawless, Gooch, Krishnamurthy, Raghavendra, Mick Farren, Patricia Honesty, Trevor Penniforth, and Jason Griffith.

“How do you feel?” Sadhvi asked.

“Fair to middling,” he answered, taking a seat and fishing a cheroot from his pocket. “Much more myself. The others?”

“Still in their beds. Algy is in good shape. Mr. Wells required stitches and will need to rest a while. William had a hard time of it. I’ve sedated him and dosed him with more of that accursed Saltzmann’s than my principles should allow, but without it I’m concerned he might lose his sanity.”

“And with it?”

“After plenty of sleep, I think he’ll return to us.”

“I’m sorry, man,” Farren murmured. “My fault. I could have summoned the Orpheus to any day, and I went and picked the day of a bloody riot.”

“We couldn’t have known, Mick,” Patricia Honesty put in.

“It doesn’t matter,” Burton said, lighting his Manila. “What’s important is that we saw evidence of Spring Heeled Jack’s presence.”

Krishnamurthy frowned. “I don’t understand. If he’s here in 1968, how and why and where?”

Burton gave a nod of thanks to Griffith, who’d placed a plate of sandwiches and a cup of coffee before him.

“Conspiracy theory,” Farren muttered.

“Mr. Farren?” Burton said.

“The Automatic Computing Engine.”

“And what is that?”

“There was this dude, Alan Turing, who I guess you could call Charles Babbage’s successor. He was a genius mathematician who, in 1950, is rumoured to have invented an equivalent to one of the old babbage probability calculators, except using a different and more powerful technology. Turing claimed great things for his machine, and for a few years he was the toast of the Anglo-Saxon Empire. His device would return to us the global dominance we enjoyed back in your age, and which we’d been steadily losing to our allies, the Americans. It would lead to the total mechanisation of our industries, allowing each and every one of us to live comfortably, pursuing our individual interests. No more drudgery. No more working classes being oppressed by the system.” He finished sarcastically, “Yeah, right on!”

“It didn’t happen?”

“In 1952, he was prosecuted for being a homosexual.”

Burton raised an eyebrow. “The state takes an interest in people’s sexual preferences?”

“Obsessively. He was publicly humiliated, experimented on, and two years later died from cyanide poisoning. Suicide, apparently, but there are those—the Cannibal Club among them—who think he was murdered.”

“Because?”

“Because the Automatic Computing Engine never appeared. The government claimed they examined it and found nothing but a prototype based on dodgy theoretical work. It was unsound and unworkable.”

Gooch interjected, “But you have other ideas?”

“Too right. I think the government lied and continued to develop it in secret. I think fourteen years after its inventor’s death, the Automatic Computing Engine is something quite different to what he intended. He envisioned a Utopia. The government, I suspect, has plans for exactly the opposite. If the machine really exists, I don’t know how it’s being used, but something very bad is happening behind the scenes, and if you discover that the crazy presence of Edward Oxford has somehow infiltrated the device, and that it’s manipulating government policies, then I won’t be the slightest bit surprised.”

“By God,” Krishnamurthy muttered. “How can we fight something we can’t see?”

Burton responded, “By moving forward through time until it’s in plain sight.”

Sadhvi Raghavendra sighed and held up a hand, palm toward him. “I understand your impatience and the sense of urgency, but remember, Richard, that the advantage of our ability to transcend the limitations of time is that we aren’t required to hurry. I insist that we all rest for another day. We have casualties.”

Nathaniel Lawless added, “To be frank, I’m not confident I’m sufficiently au fait with this new ship’s systems, either. I’d like to study her for a while longer before our next hop.”

Penniforth smiled and rumbled, “Your Mark Three ain’t comfortable, neither, Cap’n. Without Mr. Gooch, we wouldn’t ’ave known how to connect the thing, an’ we certainly don’t know how to tell it what’s what.”

Gooch added, “The babbage will work it out for itself, but it’ll have to experiment for a bit, so yes, I agree, we should stay put for another day.”

“We’re still on the Dutch coast?” Burton asked.

Patricia Honesty answered, “Yep. This is Bendyshe Bay—private land owned by the Foundation. We’re secluded and perfectly safe.”

“Good. In that case, by all means, we’ll rest before we make our next foray into the future.”

“The year 2000?” Lawless asked.

Burton shook his head. “No. Change of plan. Our first two legs consisted of fifty-four years each. Let’s add another fifty-four. Next stop, 2022.”

Jason Griffith stood and fetched a file from a bookshelf. He handed it to Burton. “A little something to keep you occupied. The History of the Future, volume two.”

Burton groaned. “I haven’t read a single page of volume one, yet.”

“Karl is our historian,” Griffith said, “but he’s not as meticulous as your brother was, which is why the second chunk of history you jumped through has made for a slimmer file. Easier to read, man.”

Burton hummed his acknowledgement and asked, “Where is Mr. von Lessing?”

The group became silent. Farren broke it. “Still in London. He got word to us. Jane was killed by that bloody pig.”

Henry Murray’s great-granddaughter, Burton thought. Dead.

It was Henry who’d introduced Burton to Richard Monckton Milnes. Both men were—had been?—a decade older than him and had greatly influenced his decision to make the famous pilgrimage to Mecca. By God!—how different might Burton’s life be had he never met the man!

Suddenly, the warmth of Saltzmann’s throbbed in his temples, and the lounge appeared to drop away from him. He envisioned the path his life had taken as a shimmering ribbon of light. It wound through an infinite tangle of other ribbons; crossing some; running parallel to others for short and long distances; coiling around and even knotting with a few. It weaved in and out, and as his imagination—or was it his insight?—gained clarity, he sank into it until the ribbon streamed through and around him, and he saw that it was comprised of mathematical formulae.

Tumbling helplessly, he was inundated by outlandish algebraic geometries; he folded into obtuse equations; he sped along lines of esoteric calculus. He dissolved into such contorted topologies that for an instant and an eternity, he was nowhere and everywhere.

Burton reconstituted around a bunched segment of probabilities that he somehow recognised as personality traits. They manifested as an utterly unique individual. He collided with its dazzling nucleus, his own cluster of singularities ploughing into those of the other, and they exploded outward in an incandescent blaze of newly forming potentials.

The birth of further equations.

The forging of new paths.

The creation of a friendship.

Burton possessed no knowledge of the woman who’d borne Henry Murray’s child. Where he had come from, that event existed in the future. However, such were the intricacies of cause and effect, that he realised his mere presence in Murray’s life had been enough to contribute to the existence of Jane Murray, for he’d influenced his friend’s preferences and behaviour, caused him to make certain choices and to be at certain locations at certain times. He’d been the stimulus for steps taken, and subsequent ones had led his friend to that unknown woman, with whom Murray had created a child.

Converging ribbons.

Actions and consequences.

A child.

Descendants.

Jane Packard.

Dead.

Wordlessly, Burton jumped up and hurriedly left the lounge. He entered the passage that led to his cabin but had only just passed into it when he stumbled and was forced to lean against the bulkhead for support.

Sadhvi Raghavendra followed. She placed a hand on his shoulder and said quietly, “Richard, are you all right?”

He drew in a deep shuddering breath, fished a handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped a tear from his cheek.

“I never properly mourned Isabel,” he whispered. “She was to be my wife, but she was killed, and there will never be a woman to replace her. I shall have no children. When I die, everything I am will die with me. Nothing of Richard Francis Burton will continue. I’ll have no representation in the future.”

She smiled sadly. “You’ve overlooked the obvious.”

“Which is what?”

“You don’t require representation. Where the future is concerned, you are very much in it.”

“Oops!” Orpheus said. “Watch out!”

Burton, blinking the whiteness out of his eyes, fell across the sloping cockpit and slammed into a control panel. Nathaniel Lawless landed on top of him.

The floor heaved upward, sending the two men tumbling in the other direction.

Algernon Swinburne let loose a piercing shriek. Mick Farren swore.

“Wait! Wait!” Orpheus demanded. “I’m getting the hang of it now!”

The ship lurched again.

“Stop it!” Swinburne hollered, somersaulting into Lawless.

“I’m trying! Do you think it’s easy controlling a new vessel without any practice?” Orpheus protested. “You should be singing my praises!”

Finally, the Concorde levelled out. Burton, Swinburne, Lawless and Farren got to their feet.

“Report!” the captain barked.

“Give me a moment,” Orpheus replied. “It’s rather more intricate than before. Ah. No. Yes. All right, we’re fine. We’re at five thousand feet, directly above our starting point.”

“Bendyshe Bay?” Lawless demanded.

“That’s what I said, isn’t it? I should warn you, there’s a lot of air traffic around us. I recommend an immediate landing.”

“Do it.”

“The date?” Burton asked.

“As you ordered,” Orpheus answered. “Four o’clock in the morning on Tuesday the first of February in the year 2022.”

Farren looked out of the windows. “It’s as black as pitch out there.”

Burton felt suddenly lighter as the airship sank toward the ground. “I learned my lesson,” he said. “It’s a winter new moon. It was likely to be overcast, so running without lights, as we are, makes us harder to spot.”

“Not to telemobiloscopes,” Swinburne pointed out.

“Radar,” Farren said, reminding the poet of the technology’s new name. “Getting out of the sky is a very good idea.”

“Someone’s calling,” Orpheus announced. “Really! This isn’t a good time for interruptions. How many things am I supposed to do at once?”

“Let’s hear it,” Lawless said.

The Concorde’s radio system was more sophisticated than the equipment they’d gained in 1914 and didn’t require Burton or any of the others to hold the equivalent of a speaking tube. It projected a female voice directly into the bridge.

“Captain Lawless?”

“Hello,” Lawless replied.

“Incredible! You just appeared out of thin air!”

“We’re coming down. Is it safe?”

“Yes. Is Sir Richard with you?”

“I’m here,” Burton said.

“Hello. Marianne Smith. Just a small party to meet you. We’ll come aboard.”

“Very well. We’ll see you in a moment.”

He’d hardly finished speaking before their descent slowed dramatically.

“Brace yourselves,” Orpheus warned. “I’ve not landed a Concorde before. This might be disastrous.”

“Cripes!” Swinburne muttered.

The ship bumped to a halt. The whining of its engines deepened in tone as they slowed to a stop.

“I’ll gladly accept a round of applause,” the Mark III said.

“Miss Smith?” Burton queried.

“Still here.”

“We’ll open the doors in a couple of minutes.”

“Thank you.”

The radio cut off.

“I’ll stay here,” Lawless said. “I want to get the hang of the manual controls. Just in case.”

Burton nodded and gestured for the others to follow. They exited. The exterior hatch was just behind the bridge and in front of the lounge. Krishnamurthy and Gooch met them by it.

“Sadhvi’s staying with Herbert and William,” Krishnamurthy said. “They both require more time to recuperate.”

Burton took hold of the hatch’s right handle. He indicated that Krishnamurthy should take the left. In unison, they pulled and twisted, then pushed the portal open and slid it aside. A staircase automatically emerged from the base of the opening and glided down to the ground below.

Three shadowy figures were waiting. They mounted the steps, ascending to the chrononauts. The first of them to enter the ship was a short middle-aged woman with cropped grey hair and sharp features.

“Marianne,” she said, and turning, gestured an elderly woman forward. “And you know my mother, Patricia.”

“Miss Hon-Honesty!” Burton said, unable to fully disguise his shock. “We only just said good-bye.”

“It’s all right. Don’t try to hide it,” she replied. “For you, just minutes ago, I was twenty-two. For me, half a century has passed. I was Mrs. Smith for much of it, and now I’m a seventy-six-year-old widow.” She gave a cackling laugh. “Life sucks.”

“Sucks?” Swinburne interjected.

“Hello again, Mr. Swinburne. And hello, Mr. Gooch, Mr. Krishnamurthy. Yes, sucks. I’m afraid language is still degenerating.”

She turned to Farren. “Mick, you bastard.”

He gaped at her, his lips moving wordlessly.

“Look at you!” she exclaimed. “Exactly the same. My old friend, the revolutionary.” She laughed. “But not as old as me!”

They embraced, and Farren muttered, “Bloody hell! Bloody hell!”

She pushed him to arm’s length and smiled up at him. “I have excellent news for you.”

“Wh-what?” he stammered.

“Your hairstyle is back in fashion.”

Farren grinned, but Burton noticed pain in the young man’s eyes—the same pain he himself had experienced upon meeting the elderly Edward Brabrooke in 1914. There was an agonising sorrow in seeing one’s friends decay while you remained the same. Even more so, a vicious guilt.

Patricia Honesty moved aside and pulled forward the third person, a tall and gawky young woman, about eighteen years old, with fascinatingly misaligned features and a large gap between her front teeth. “This is Lorena Brabrooke.”

The introduction swept away Burton’s ruminations. Here was his old friend, again renewed, again refreshed, and again reborn.

Isabel, he thought. Ah, who might we have become together?

“Hey,” the girl said, by way of a greeting.

Burton took an instant liking to her. He smiled when she fumbled his handshake. “Young lady, I’m delighted to see the Brabrookes are still going strong.”

“Um. Thanks. I mean—wow!—it’s like, you’re a legend.”

The king’s agent chuckled. “No, I’m all too human.”

“Aren’t we all,” Patricia Honesty put in ruefully.

“I was just with your father’s friends,” Burton told Brabrooke, “back in 1968.”

“You mean my grandfather.”

“Oh. My mistake.” Burton threw out his hands. “How time flies!” He addressed Marianne Smith. “Just the three of you?”

“Yes,” she replied. “We’ll explain, but first—Lori?”

Brabrooke took something from a bag slung over her shoulder and quickly clamped it shut around Burton’s forearm. While he was still uttering, “What the devil—?” the girl administered the same treatment to Swinburne, Farren, Gooch and Krishnamurthy. The men all examined the plain black bands that now encircled their wrists.

“I can’t take it off!” Gooch grumbled.

“A blasted liberty!” Swinburne complained. “What’s the meaning of it, Miss Brabrooke?”

“T-bands,” came her mumbled response. “T for Turing.”

“Turing!” Farren cried out. “I knew it!”

“Trust us,” Patricia Honesty said. “They’re necessary. Now, Sir Richard, it’s absurdly early in the morning, we’re standing in an open doorway, and there’s a chill wind blowing on my neck. Invite us in or throw us out, one or the other.”

Burton bowed politely and waved the three visitors in. They moved through to the lounge—Gooch and Krishnamurthy followed after securing the door—and settled on the sofas. Farren got to work at the coffeepot. Burton asked Honesty, “So, ma’am, how stands the Cannibal Club?”

“Ma’am? How quaint. I like it.” The old woman gestured toward her daughter. “My child has taken the reins.”

Burton turned his eyes to Marianne, who said, “We are fewer. Twelve of us. Secrecy has become a matter of life or death. The world is vastly changed since sixty-eight.” She held up an arm to reveal that she, too, wore one of the bracelets. “These are to protect you.”

“From what?” Burton asked.

“From the government.”

“What on earth has happened?” Swinburne exclaimed.

“The Turing Fulcrum.”

Patricia Honesty, jerking her chin toward Farren, interjected, “You remember—when we last met—Mick told you about the Automatic Computing Engine? What we suspected then was true; the government was developing it in secret. During the 1980s, the technology finally saw the light of day. Turings went into mass production. Now, everybody has one.”

Krishnamurthy held up his arm and examined his bangle.

“No, Mr. Krishnamurthy,” Honesty said. “I’m not referring to T-bands.”

“Then what?” he asked.

From her bag, Lorena Brabrooke produced a thin eight-inch-long tube of what looked to Burton like brushed steel. She gave it a slight shake, and the chrononauts uttered sounds of amazement as, emitting a chime, it unfolded and, seemingly with a life of its own, snapped into a flat sheet, eight inches wide by ten long, and the thickness of a book cover. One side of it lit up, displaying colours and shapes that, when Brabrooke turned it to face them, they didn’t comprehend at all.

“This is a Turing,” she said. “It—um—I suppose it’s a bit like one of your old babbages except, rather than being a distinct device, it exists in connection with all the other Turings, forming a network. It can give you any public information you require. Look.”

Burton and the others leaned forward and watched as she moved her fingers across the screen and conjured up a mass of movement that, for a few moments, meant nothing to the king’s agent. Then he suddenly realised he was looking through a window and, amid a great deal he didn’t understand, he recognised the British Museum.

Brabrooke slid her fingertips across the screen, a little above it, and, dizzyingly, the scene rushed forward, as if the window was flying up the steps of the building. Doors whipped past. The entrance lobby—and the people in it—went blurring by. The viewpoint shot up the still-magnificent staircase.

Burton felt both absorbed and disoriented as Brabrooke moved the window through corridor after corridor, past exhibit after exhibit, until it slid into place beside a group of visitors who were standing in front of a plinth upon which there knelt a familiar figure.

“Brunel!” the chrononauts chorused.

Brabrooke touched a small circle on the screen, and a voice sounded from the device. “Isambard Kingdom Brunel, born on the ninth of April 1806, was an English mechanical and civil engineer and the founder of the Department of Guided Science. His designs, which revolutionised public transport, also allowed for the rapid expansion of the Anglo-Saxon Empire, and are generally regarded as—”

A flick of Brabrooke’s finger caused the volume to decrease until it was barely audible.

“Magic!” Swinburne whispered. “Utterly impossible!”

The girl gave a small smile. “The devices are used for work, study, communication and entertainment, and—like I said—they can access any public information. That’s the problem.”

“Ah,” Burton said. “Public.”

Farren, who’d paused in his distribution of coffee to watch the display, said, “Information is controlled?”

Marianne Smith gave confirmation. “Yes. Tightly. Extreme restrictions. Also, all activity on Turings is monitored.”

“All?” Burton asked. “But you said everybody has one. How can sense be made out of so much information?”

“By a central machine. The Turing Fulcrum. It reports to the authorities anything it interprets as illegal or suspicious activity.”

Brabrooke said, “If I used my Turing to write T-mail to a friend—”

“T-mail?” Farren interrupted.

“A message. Like a letter but without any physical existence.”

Patricia Honesty interrupted, “And you should know that there’s no longer any other way to send a written communiqué.”

“—and in it,” Brabrooke continued, “I criticised government policies, I’d soon find the authorities knocking at my door.”

“A police state?” Farren asked.

“Very much so.”

“With pigs on stilts?”

“Yes. The constables.”

Burton raised his arm. “And these bracelets?”

“They generate power from the motion of your arm and transmit it to the nearest Turing. They’re also used for communication, to transfer funds when making a purchase, and they monitor your health and location.”

“So why do I find myself with one on my wrist?”

“Because it’s illegal for any citizen of the Empire to not wear one. Anyone seen without a bracelet is immediately arrested.”

Patricia Honesty patted Brabrooke’s arm. “Lori is our technical expert, Sir Richard. She’s given each of you a false identity and a credible background. Every member of the Cannibal Club has the same. Our Turings are altered, too. They hide themselves. We—and our activities—are all invisible. That’s a far more complicated achievement than it sounds. If it wasn’t for her, you’d not be able to leave the Orpheus.”

“By which statement,” Burton said, “I presume you feel it apposite that we do.”

“Yes.” The old woman entwined her gnarled fingers and rested them on her lap. “The intelligence in each Turing is contained within microscopic squares of crystalline silicon.”

“Got him!” Daniel Gooch cried out. “Silicon crystallises in the same pattern as diamond. If it’s resonating at the same frequency as the gems in the time suits, the Oxford consciousness could easily enter it.”

She nodded. “Precisely. Silicon is at the heart of the technology Alan Turing created, so it’s quite possible that the insane intelligence which vanished from beneath your noses in 1860 has gradually been gaining influence since the 1950s.”

Mick Farren pressed a hand down onto his great bush of hair and shook his head. He glared at Patricia. “How could you have let this happen, Pat? We were meant to overthrow the straights. Now they’ve got shackles on the whole population!”

“Consumerism conquers all,” she answered. “Everything threatening was repackaged as something bright and cheerful and harmless. Whenever there’s a challenge to the system, the system transforms it into a product and uses it as a weapon to keep the people distracted. We create our own oppression. Even the war has been reduced to entertainment.”

“Whose war?” Burton asked. “America’s, still?”

“Yes. Since your last visit, it has expanded into South China. The U.S.A. and United Republics of Eurasia are at it hammer and tongs. Their economies are suffering badly.”

“And the Anglo-Saxon Empire?”

“During the seventies, the A.S.E. continued to offer cautious support to the States while managing to avoid any direct involvement with the conflict. Then Thatcher happened.” The old woman produced a handkerchief and wiped her nose. “Our politicians are entirely lacking in ethics. It’s a problem that has magnified with each subsequent generation, and it achieved its apotheosis in the last of our prime ministers, Margaret Thatcher. She came to power in 1979. Seven years later, she announced the cessation of the Empire’s trade alliance with the States. The declaration came on the same day the first Turings went on sale—the day after, we suspect, the Fulcrum was activated. In fact, we think the withdrawal from the alliance was probably its first recommendation.”

“Why?” Farren asked.

“Because it was such a contradictory turnaround. Rather than taking any notice of the people’s opposition to America’s aggression in South East Asia, the government, especially under Thatcher, had been ruthlessly curtailing the public’s right to express it. By the eighties, the authorities had the power to limit how many people could gather, where, and for how long. Protest marches were made illegal. Why then, the sudden change of policy, the sudden bowing to the will of the populace? The answer wasn’t clear until about twenty years ago, when one of our own people—a Cannibal descended from your friend, James Hunt—discovered that the British government was secretly supplying arms to both sides, to the U.S.A. and to the U.R.E.”

“Despicable!” Swinburne shrilled.

Burton slid his fingers into his hair and felt his scars. “Abdu El Yezdi worked tirelessly to create a history free of world wars. Spring Heeled Jack appears to be working equally hard to undo everything he strove for.”

“It seems so. And while we assist in our neighbours’ destruction of one another, we’ve been steadily increasing our own power, based on an industrial and agricultural foundation of genetically enhanced animals and adapted human workers. Our global dominance is rotten and immoral through and through, but, of course, we are told a different story. According to the government, we’re the bastions of civilisation, while the Americans and East Eurasians are little better than barbarians.”

“That sounds familiar,” Burton murmured. “My contemporaries depicted the Africans in the same light. It made it easier for us to justify the theft of their lands and resources.”

Honesty nodded. “The A.S.E. has consolidated its grip on almost a third of the Earth’s surface and a quarter of its total population. Its citizens are constantly warned of the threat posed by the U.S.A. and U.R.E. while also kept occupied by an endless supply of trivial entertainments and meaningless pleasures. Consumerism and war. Extremes of indulgence and fear. No one can think straight. No one has the will to muster resistance. The government can sneak in any policy it likes, and people don’t even notice.”

Burton sighed and shook his head sadly. “What did you mean by the last prime minister? What have you now? A president?”

“I meant the last of the human prime ministers,” Honesty replied. “These days, the government is formed by, and follows, the Turing Fulcrum.”

“You’ve given over governance to a machine? How could it have come to this so rapidly?”

“It may feel rapid to you, but it crept up on us like a patient and cunning predator.”

“Bloody hell,” Daniel Gooch muttered. “Spring Heeled Jack is in control.”

Krishnamurthy said, “This Turing Fulcrum—where is it?”

“Nobody knows. It’s the most closely guarded secret in the world. I sometimes think we’d have a better chance at locating the Ark of the Covenant. Nevertheless, we must do our best, which is exactly why we want you to leave the ship and come with us to London.”

“With the intention of destroying the bloody thing, I hope,” Farren growled.

“Ultimately, yes, Mick. But one thing at a time, hey? First, let’s find it.”

“What do you propose?” Burton asked.

Patricia Honesty turned to Lorena Brabrooke, who, responding to the prompt, said, “We believe the Turing Fulcrum was first activated at nine o’clock in the evening on the fifteenth of February 1986.”

Burton started slightly. That date again! Nine on the fifteenth of February!

“Based on what evidence?” he asked.

Brabrooke held up her Turing, the flat panel of which still bore the image of the Brunel exhibit in the British Museum. “Based on Isambard Kingdom Brunel. There’d been no sign of life from him since 1860, but at that precise instant, he said two words.”

The chrononauts recoiled in surprise.

“What?” Krishnamurthy whispered. “He’s alive?”

Gooch slapped his right fist into his left palm and cried out, “Good old Brunel!”

Brabrooke shrugged. “He didn’t move and he’s never spoken since. Repeated examinations have found nothing—no activity at all in his babbage.” She shrugged again. “Just two words in nearly two centuries.”

“What did he say?” Burton asked.

“I am.”

The king’s agent frowned. “I am? I am what?”

“We don’t know, but our theory is that when the Turing Fulcrum was activated it sent out a pulse of energy that resonated with the Nāga diamond fragments in Brunel’s babbage. The words might have been an echo of the machine’s first moment of self-awareness. That’s why we regard Brunel as a possible key to the Fulcrum’s location. If there’s anything of him remaining, if we could possibly wake him up, he might be able to tell us what direction and distance the pulse came from.”

“A long shot, admittedly,” Patricia Honesty murmured. “But worth a try.”

“Miss Brabrooke,” Gooch interjected. “I’m an engineer. The thing you have in your hand—the Turing—is so far beyond my understanding that I can’t even properly focus my eyes on it. What they tell me I’m seeing, my brain is trying very hard to reject. With progress having achieved such miracles, how is it you can’t revive Mr. Brunel yourselves, yet you believe that we nigh on two-hundred-year-old fossils can?”

“Fossils!” Honesty protested. “You’re younger than I am!”

“Shock,” her daughter Marianne interjected.

Gooch looked puzzled. “Pardon?”

Burton muttered, “Yes, I see it.” He addressed the engineer. “Daniel, Isambard has no notion of our mission. We’d lost him before even conceiving of it. If he has any sense of the time that’s passed, the very last thing he’ll be expecting to see is us. The surprise of it might knock the wits back into him.”

“Fair enough,” Gooch replied, after a moment’s thought. “I suppose it might work, though personally I still think it more likely that his personality was completely erased. Beyond that, however, I have another, rather more serious reservation.”

“It being?”

“That if we are so bedazzled by that,” he jabbed a finger toward Brabrooke’s Turing device, “then I fear whatever else we see might be so staggering that, before we can knock sense into Brunel, it’ll knock all the sense out of us!”