Текст книги "The Return of the Discontinued Man"

Автор книги: Mark Hodder

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

With the world having changed so dramatically, they decided to keep their expedition to London small. A large party was more liable to attract attention, and, as Gooch had suggested, the excursion could be disrupted by an occurrence of mental instability. Fewer personnel meant a lesser chance that one of them would, as Swinburne put it, “start rolling his eyes and spitting foam.”

The poet, Burton, Gooch and Farren—all well dosed with Saltzmann’s —departed Bendyshe Bay in a small boat piloted by a Penniforth. Lorena Brabrooke went with them. During the voyage across the northern stretch of the Channel, she told them about the current Cannibal Club, revealing that, though the group was still funded by Bendyshe investments—currently run by two sisters and a brother—the Foundation itself had been broken up into a large number of much smaller organisations. They were more likely to evade scrutiny than the megalithic institution the original body had become.

Membership had grown more exclusive, currently consisting only of direct descendants. Those who hadn’t been “blood members”—such as the Blanchets, von Lessings and Griffiths—were now absent.

“The younger ones in the group have all adopted the original surnames,” she said, “even those that weren’t born with them. It’s a matter of pride.”

“But why the dwindling numbers?” Burton asked.

“It got dangerously bloated back in the seventies.” She addressed Farren. “Your lot were full of zeal, but you weren’t exactly subtle.”

“We didn’t know we needed to be,” he protested.

“The system is cunning, Mr. Farren. It manipulates people’s fears and hopes, their insecurities and aspirations, and it ensures that all opposition is bogged down in a quagmire of prejudice, stupidity, propaganda and selfish motives. In your era, resistance was fun. In mine, it’s potentially a death sentence.”

“In my era?” Farren said. “The sixties weren’t so long ago. How old do you think I am?”

“In your seventies, I guess.”

“Christ! I’m twenty-five!”

“Anyway, like I was saying, the methodology the Cannibal Club employs to evade detection and keep an objective eye on developing history has had to change. It’s all digital now.”

“Something to do with fingers?” Gooch said. “The way you used your Turing device?”

“It’s technical term. It refers to an extension of the systems your Mr. Babbage devised. Thanks to him, nowadays oppression and resistance do battle in the same arena, it being the realm of information, which he, after a fashion, created.”

“Do you regard Babbage as a villain, then?” Gooch asked. “I’ve always thought of him as a hero, if a rather unpredictable one.”

“I think of him as a genius, sir. If he knew how his systems were eventually employed, I expect he’d be horrified.” An expression of pain crossed her features. “But I wish I’d never read Abdu El Yezdi’s second report.”

Burton, who’d been listening to the conversation with interest, said, “The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man. I can understand your reservation. The affair was initiated when a different iteration of Charles Babbage, in a variant history, attempted to achieve immortality in order to pursue his intention to eliminate the working classes. He wanted to replace them with machines. The idea might not have been wholly villainous, but it was certainly inhumane.”

Gooch looked thoughtful and muttered, “If we return, perhaps we should refrain from telling him about the path his work has taken. It might send him over the edge.”

“We already know something will,” Burton observed.

Swinburne, who was gazing ahead with Saltzmann’s dilated pupils at the east coast of England—grey beneath a grey dawn—said, “He’s already loopy, if you ask me. But Babbage aside, you say there’s a sort of information war being waged, Miss Brabrooke? Surely, if this horrible government of yours is to be overthrown, there’ll be a need for something more substantial. Armed revolutionaries.”

“I’m an armed revolutionary,” Brabrooke replied. “But people like me don’t shoot anymore, we just aim.”

Burton frowned. “Aim?”

“Access. Infiltrate. Manipulate.” Brabrooke offered a crooked and gappy smile. “I acquire information I’m not supposed to have, I alter it without being detected, and I withdraw leaving no evidence that anything untoward has occurred. That’s how I registered you all with the Department of Citizenship.” The boat bounced and she put a hand to her midriff. “Ugh! I hate the sea. Would that Saltzmann’s stuff of yours settle my stomach?”

The king’s agent curled his upper lip, exposing a long canine in what might have been a smile but more resembled a sneer. “Do you know what it is?”

“Oh. Yes. It’s—” she swallowed and went very pale. “Swinburne juice.”

Mick Farren groaned. “Yeah, what was all that about? A red jungle?”

Burton gestured toward the poet. “You can ask it in person.”

Swinburne smiled happily and winked. “Alternate futures! Strange events! Ripping adventures!”

“And in one of them you turned into a gigantic plant,” Farren said flatly. “Weird.”

“Indeed so,” Burton agreed. “But my companions and I are here—and on our way to 2202—at the jungle’s behest.”

“Okay,” Farren replied. “Weirder.”

Perhaps appropriately, that was the last word the chrononauts were properly aware of for the duration of the next ninety minutes. From the moment the boat docked at Gravesend, time passed in an unintelligible smudge of sensations that overburdened them to the point where the king’s agent—in a brief interval of near clarity—had no option but to dazedly pass around a bottle of the tincture that they might further dose themselves.

As the liquid radiated through him, he found himself gradually able to separate one thing from another, dragging from his jumbled senses first sound—mainly the roar of traffic—then smell, which delivered oily odours, and finally sight. This latter, a fragmentary mass, slowly congealed into the shape of the British Museum, though the blocky structure appeared to be floating amid a whirling storm of utterly indecipherable objects.

He realised that Lorena Brabrooke was peering up at him. “Sir?” She clapped her hands in front of his face. “Please. Say something. Snap out of it. I don’t think I can do this for much longer.”

He turned his head aside, coughed, closed and opened his eyes, looked back at her, and said, “Do what?”

“Lead you around like you’re a pack of zombies.”

“Zombie. Haitian. Supposedly an animated—” He stopped and blinked again. “Miss Brabrooke. We were on a train.”

“Yes, we were. From Gravesend. Then we took the London Underground.”

He shuddered. “Underground? No. I won’t go underground. I can’t bear to be enclosed.”

She displayed the gap in her teeth. “We’ve already done it. Look, you see? We’re at the museum.”

Burton heard Swinburne’s voice. “My hat! Where’s a good peasouper when you need one? My eyes are too full. Look at all these people. How did the city become so overcrowded?”

Algernon. And Daniel Gooch. Mick Farren, too.

The latter shook his head at Burton. “It’s doing my head in, man. I can’t imagine what it’s like for you.”

The king’s agent straightened and squared his shoulders. “I’m quite all right, Mr. Farren. Quite all right. Shall we proceed?”

“Yes!” Swinburne and Gooch pleaded in unison.

Lorena Brabrooke led them up the museum’s steps and into the entrance hall. It was like reliving the scene they’d earlier viewed on her Turing—an eerie repetition—and it continued as they ascended the stairs and navigated through corridors toward the Isambard Kingdom Brunel display.

And there he was.

The great engineer.

The brass man.

Suddenly, Burton felt perfectly fine.

It was a winter Tuesday, and early in the morning, so there were few other people around, and none near this particular exhibit.

Burton, Swinburne and Gooch stood and gazed at their old friend. Acting on an instinctive respect, Farren and Brabrooke withdrew a little.

Brunel, kneeling on one knee, was posed on a plinth in such a manner as to appear deep in contemplation. His hulking body was clean, polished, and glinting beneath a spotlight, which threw the eye sockets of his mask into deep shadow, serving to emphasise his stillness, as if his mind was so far withdrawn that a void had taken its place.

The big Gatling gun was raised up.

Tools extended from his wrists and fingers.

One of his arms ended in a stump.

He was just as he’d been a hundred and sixty-two years ago.

Brunel! The man around whom a cult of science and engineering had grown; the man they called “the Empire Builder,” who upon receiving hints of future technologies had used his boundless imagination and the materials of his era to reproduce ingenious approximations of them, transforming the civilised world, initiating the Great Age of Steam.

“He’s regarded as a national treasure,” Lorena Brabrooke said.

Burton glanced back at her. “The Anglo-Saxon Empire wouldn’t have existed without him, Miss Brabrooke. He was there at its inception, fighting alongside us to prevent the sabotage of the alliance between Britain and the Central German Confederation.”

She nodded, her eyes fixed on the exhibit.

The king’s agent stepped closer to the plinth. He leaned forward and peered up into Brunel’s eyes.

“Hello, my friend. It’s been quite some time.”

Nothing.

Swinburne asked, “Shall I kick him?”

Farren whispered, “Look to your right.”

The poet did so. Burton followed his gaze. On the other side of the large chamber, a constable was standing guard beside a door, its hands clasped behind its back, its small glittering black eyes upon the visitors. The pig creature was identical to the ones they’d seen in 1968, except that its stilted uniform was white.

They hastily turned their faces away from it.

Swinburne mumbled, “All right. No kicking.”

Brabrooke said, “Try again, Sir Richard.”

Conscious of the guard’s scrutiny, Burton kept his voice low. “Isambard, do you recognise me? It’s Burton. I’m here with Algernon Swinburne and Daniel Gooch. You remember Gooch, don’t you? All those projects you worked on together? The transatlantic liners? The atmospheric railways? Hydroham City? By heavens, man, he built your body!”

Gooch moved to Burton’s side. “Mr. Brunel, what happened to you? Won’t you speak? We’ve come a long way to see you. Do you know what year it is? 2022!”

“Babbage helped us,” Burton went on. “He designed a Nimtz generator. It allows the Orpheus to travel in time. What an undertaking that project was! The whole of the Department of Guided Science was given over to the job. All of your people laboured on it night and day, every man and every woman; that’s the measure of their loyalty to you, old man.”

Brunel didn’t respond, didn’t move. Not even a click emerged from him.

Swinburne pushed between them, stood on tiptoe, reached up, and snapped his fingers inches from the brass face. “Wake up, you confounded lazybones!” he demanded. “Get off your metal arse. We need your help.”

The chamber suddenly echoed with the tock tock tock of stilts as the guard crossed it.

“Now you’ve done it,” Lorena Brabrooke said. Under her breath, she continued, “Just follow its orders and, without incriminating yourselves, agree with whatever it says. Be careful.”

As the pig man drew closer, Burton whispered, “Behave, Algy.”

The constable stopped in front of them and snarled, “Don’t touch the exhibit.”

“I didn’t,” Swinburne objected. “I was just seeing how my hand reflected in its face.”

“T-bands,” the pig said. “All of you.”

Lorena Brabrooke stretched out her arm, showing the bracelet. Burton, Swinburne, Gooch and Farren followed her lead.

The guard reached out and knocked his own bracelet against theirs, one after the other.

“Jeremy Swinburne,” he stated. “Scriptwriter. Bendyshe Entertainments.”

“Um. Yes,” Swinburne agreed.

“Richard Burton. Actor. Bendyshe Entertainments.”

“Yes,” Burton said.

“Daniel Gooch. Director. Bendyshe Entertainments.”

“That’s me.”

“Michael Farren. Producer. Bendyshe Entertainments.”

Farren coughed. “Yeah.”

“Lorena Brabrooke. Production Assistant. Bendyshe Entertainments.”

“Yes, sir. We’re doing the initial research for a docudrama about Isambard Kingdom Brunel. We have to study him closely, but we won’t interfere with the display.”

The guard wrinkled its snout. “Shut up. I’m doing a background check.” Its beadlike eyes focused inward for a couple of seconds. “All right. You’re clear. Continue. Don’t touch.”

It turned and stalked back to its post. Tock tock tock.

“Phew!” Swinburne said. “What a perfectly dreadful brute.” He addressed Brabrooke. “Bendyshe Entertainments? We’re doing what with the what for the what?”

“Never mind,” she said. “It’s all a fiction.” She frowned at Burton, who was staring wide-eyed at Brunel. “Sir Richard?”

He didn’t reply.

She touched his arm. “Sir Richard?”

“It’s really over,” Burton murmured. “My world. The time I inhabited. He built it and now it’s all ended.”

They considered Brunel.

“A brief span and then we are gone,” Burton said. “Time is cruel.” He straightened and sighed. “I thought he, of all of us, would live forever.”

They remained in the museum for a further thirty minutes, standing close to Brunel, discussing his many projects and the people he’d known, hoping that Gooch was wrong and a spark of life remained, that the reminiscing would sink into the engineer and hook a memory, something to bring him out of his long, long fugue.

It didn’t work, and when the guard showed signs of renewed suspicion, they gave up.

Led by Brabrooke, the chrononauts left the exhibition hall.

Behind them, Brunel remained silent and frozen.

When Burton glanced back before passing through a doorway, it was from such an angle that, due to the spotlight reflecting into the engineer’s shadowed eye sockets, it almost appeared as if two little glowing pupils were watching them depart.

An illusion.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel was dead.

“What’s your opinion, Sadhvi?” Burton asked.

The king’s agent was sitting in the lounge of the Orpheus with Raghavendra, Swinburne, Gooch, Trounce, Krishnamurthy, Lawless, Wells, Farren, and the Cannibals—Patricia Honesty, Marianne Smith and Lorena Brabrooke.

“Daniel was worst affected,” Raghavendra said. “You, Richard, considerably less so, while Algy and Mick were dazed but remained coherent.” She patted Swinburne’s knee. “Our resident poet appears to have a strong resistance to what Mr. Wells has dubbed time shock.”

Wells said, “I compare it to the disorientation one experiences when travelling in an exotic culture, but it’s far more pernicious.”

Raghavendra said to Burton, “Your history as an explorer has given you a degree of resilience—”

“Not enough,” he interrupted. “I don’t recall a damned thing about our return from the museum.”

“Whereas Mick,” she pressed on, “is only fifty-four years ahead of his native time period, so 2022 feels a little more familiar to him.”

Farren blew cigarette smoke out through his nostrils, obviously not in full agreement.

“On this occasion, poor Daniel bore the brunt,” Raghavendra said.

Trounce looked across to Gooch and muttered, “And I know exactly how you felt.”

Gooch compressed his lips, nodded at the detective inspector, and asked Raghavendra, “What makes Algernon more resilient, do you think?”

“He has a unique brain,” she responded. “He’s extremely odd.”

“Steady on!” the poet squealed. He jerked his leg, convulsed an elbow, and crossed his eyes.

“It’s apparent to us all,” Burton observed, “that his brain is arranged in a different manner to the normal.”

“Disarranged, I should say,” Trounce muttered.

“I say! Let’s settle with unique, shall we?”

Burton continued, “My fear is that, for the rest of us, the effects are liable to get worse and the recovery time—providing we can recover—considerably extended. On this occasion, it’s taken five days for us to properly regain our faculties. We’ve been safe enough, cooped up aboard this Concorde, hidden away in Bendyshe Bay—but what will we find at our next stop? What if the bay no longer belongs to the Cannibal Club?”

“The groundwork laid by your brother and Thomas Bendyshe back in the 1860s was pure genius,” Patricia Honesty said. “It’s endured all this time, and, with each successive generation, the Bendyshes have developed it and adjusted it to suit the period. I’m pretty certain the bay will stay in our hands, and if it doesn’t, the Cannibals will have plenty of time to find another means to keep you safe.”

“Be that as it may, we need our wits about us, and we’ve come to the point where the doses of Saltzmann’s required to counter the time shock are almost as ruinous as the condition itself. The bottles delivered in the Beetle’s final shipment aren’t nearly as addictive as those that preceded them, but we still have to be cautious with the medicine.”

“Ha!” Swinburne cried out. “You’ve changed your tune.”

Sadhvi Raghavendra nodded her agreement.

“Nevertheless,” Burton said.

“We’re not even halfway through our voyage,” Trounce observed. “How are we to endure the rest?”

“Nine years away from the halfway mark,” Krishnamurthy added. “A hundred and eighty years until 2202, and I doubt our stay there will be brief.”

“Give me a bottle of the tincture,” Patricia Honesty interrupted. “I should have thought of this before. Chemistry has advanced. We’ll analyse it. Reproduce it. Or something similar.”

Her daughter gave a gesture of approval. “In the space of fifty-four years, we’ll probably create something considerably more effective and without any addictive qualities.”

“You’ll have twice as long,” Burton said. “I intend just one more stop before our target date. If Spring Heeled Jack has integrated himself with this Turing Fulcrum of yours, he has power over a considerable portion of the world. Let’s see what he makes of it by 2130. Will one of your number join us?”

“Not this time,” Patricia Honesty said. She handed him The History of the Future, volume three. “We haven’t the personnel to spare. Besides, there’s a little something we’ve been experimenting with that makes it unnecessary for us to supplement your crew. Hopefully, you’ll see what I mean a hundred and eight years from now.”

A little over a century later, the chrononauts gathered by the ship’s hatch and welcomed a single Cannibal aboard. His name was Thomas Bendyshe.

“You’re the spitting image of your ancestor!” Burton exclaimed as he shook the man’s hand.

“Hallo!” Bendyshe said. “I’m a great deal of him, but explanations must wait until later. First, let’s replace your bracelets and transfer you to the new Orpheus.”

Though he didn’t appear to do anything to prompt it, the bands around the chrononauts’ wrists instantly snapped open and slid down to their knuckles. Bendyshe collected the bracelets and put them into a cloth bag. Setting this aside, he then took a small container of pills from his pocket and distributed them among the chrononauts, two each, a blue one and a yellow one. “Swallow. They’ll release AugMems, CellComps, BioProcs and other nanomechs into your bloodstream.”

From his visions of Edward Oxford, Burton vaguely comprehended these terms. He knew that AugMems were capable of overlaying a man’s perception of reality with an artifice. Oxford had used them in his suit’s helmet, so when he arrived in 1840 to observe the attempt on Queen Victoria’s life, it would initially resemble his own time. He’d planned to slowly reduce the AugMems’ influence, revealing the reality of the past little by little. In the event, he’d acted too eagerly, removing his headpiece moments after his arrival, exposing himself to the past all at once. Burton was sure the resultant shock played its part in Oxford’s subsequent decision to interfere with his ancestor’s assassination attempt.

“Nanomechs,” he said, testing the word. Its meaning played at the peripheries of his mind; Oxford’s knowledge, not his own.

“Molecular-sized technology,” Bendyshe said, “blending biological and artificial components.”

“By Jove!” Trounce muttered in a sarcastic tone. “I’m glad you’ve cleared that up.”

“Are they safe?” Herbert Wells—now fully recovered—asked.

“Perfectly,” Bendyshe responded. “They’ll integrate without any ill effects. They’ll carry your false identities, in case the authorities check, and will also enhance your senses.”

“I’m in,” Mick Farren announced. He swallowed the pills.

“Ah yes, the 1960s,” Bendyshe said. He laughed. “I’m afraid they’re not recreational pharmaceuticals, Mr. Farren.”

“No? Enhance in what way, then?”

“They’ll show you whatever the government wants you to see.”

Farren made a noise as if choking and stuck out his tongue, trying to regurgitate the pills. He spat an epithet that caused Sadhvi Raghavendra’s eyes to widen. “Now you bloody well tell me!”

“Mr. Farren, your misgivings are entirely justified,” Bendyshe said. “Fortunately, we Cannibals have developed a means to intercede with the nanomechs’ functioning and turn them to our advantage. Provided you behave normally, nothing about you will raise suspicion. In addition, you’ll not register on any surveillance net, your movements will be cloaked, and communications between us will evade all monitoring.”

“That,” Farren replied, “I like.”

“Providing we behave normally,” Swinburne echoed doubtfully.

“Algy has a point,” Burton said. “To us, what you might regard as normal becomes ever more abnormal the farther forward into history we travel. There is also the matter of our behaviour being affected by the environment. Will the AugMems cause us to perceive this future world as a copy of our own? Do they render Saltzmann’s Tincture unnecessary?”

“No, Sir Richard, there’s a very good reason why they can’t give you an illusion of 1860s London. You’ll understand why later. However, there’s a compound in the yellow pill that’ll act much like Saltzmann’s, only without the side effects. You’ll need to take one every twenty-fours hours. I’ll leave you with a supply.”

“Then Patricia Honesty was true to her word,” Burton noted.

“She was always the most reliable of us,” Farren murmured. A strange expression crossed his face. Burton sympathised. It was difficult to process the notion that people who were alive yesterday were now long gone.

“If you all follow my lead,” Bendyshe said, “you’ll be fine.”

Sadhvi Raghavendra sighed. “I’m not wildly enthused by the prospect, gentlemen, but nothing ventured—” She swallowed the pills. Her colleagues followed suit.

Bendyshe stepped back to the hatch. He signalled to a group waiting outside the Concorde. They responded by ascending the stairs, entering the ship, and silently filing past the chrononauts.

“My team will carry your luggage to the new ship before transplanting the Nimtz generator and the babbage. Captain Lawless, Mr. Gooch, Mr. Krishnamurthy, will you assist with the engineering?”

“Of course,” Lawless said. “We’re becoming rather adept at it.”

“For the rest of you, it’s off to London we go.”

“Our third visit to the capital of the future,” Burton commented. “What shall we find there this time?”

“You’ll see indisputable evidence that Spring Heeled Jack is manipulating history. It will, I hope, give you some idea of what you’ll face when you reach 2202. As for whether it’s safe or not, we’ve done everything we can to disguise your presence. You should be able to move around freely and undisturbed. I do urge you, though, to watch your words in any circumstance where you might be overheard. Information is currency, and informers are everywhere.”

Burton gestured for Bendyshe to proceed. The Cannibal led them outside. It was an overcast night, and Bendyshe Bay was ill lit. They could see nothing beyond the field in which the Concorde had landed, though, in truth, they didn’t try, for their eyes were fixed in incredulity upon the two flying vessels beside which their own had landed.

“Rotorships!” Captain Lawless exclaimed.

Bendyshe pointed to the vessel on their left. “The Orpheus.”

“But it looks identical my old ship,” the airman observed.

“It is your old ship, sir. We have preserved it all these years. And it’s a good thing we did. Nowadays, that is the standard of technology available to the masses.”

Burton and Lawless exchanged a puzzled look. The king’s agent said, “Has there been some manner of reversal?”

“There has—a result of the failed uprising of the 2080s,” the Cannibal responded. They started across the grass toward the vessel. “The Empire was torn apart by seven years of rioting and civil disobedience. The people attempted to throw off the shackles imposed on them—literally, in the form of the bracelets—by the government. They failed. As a consequence of their actions, the division between the privileged minority and the underprivileged masses widened even farther. The latter were denied most of the advanced technologies. For them, it went retrograde. The more primitive varieties of steam machines were resurrected. The underclass has become very much like the workers of your own period, except they hardly know it.”

“Do you mean they’re drugged?” Wells asked.

“After a fashion. AugMems, which are injected at birth, enforce upon them an illusion of contentment. Their gruel tastes to them like honey, their relentless toil is imbued with false meaning, the filth in which they exist is perceived as comfort, and their empty lives are filled with distracting entertainments. They are happy because they are unable to recognise the severity of the limitations under which they labour.”

A man and three women met them at the foot of the old Orpheus’s boarding ramp. Bendyshe turned to Lawless, Gooch and Krishnamurthy. “You three will not witness the truth. Think yourselves lucky. May I introduce Jacob Hunt, Carolyn Slaughter, and Rebecca and Ben Murray? They’re overseeing the refit of the ship. If you’ll accompany them, please.”

“You won’t have any problems understanding the Orpheus, sirs,” Carolyn Slaughter said. “She’s hardly changed. Just a few additions.” She smiled at Lawless. “It’ll feel like coming home for you, I expect, Captain.”

Lawless, Gooch and Krishnamurthy bid their colleagues farewell and followed the Cannibals into the familiar ship. Bendyshe led the rest toward the other. “The Mary Seacole. We’ll fly her to the Battersea airfield.”

“It’s still there?” Detective Inspector Trounce exclaimed.

“Greatly expanded.”

“Mr. Bendyshe,” Wells said. “What did you mean by that comment, think yourselves lucky?”

“Only that the truth is rather disturbing.”

They ascended the ramp, entered the ship, and were escorted to its lounge where they settled on chairs and sofas and were served food and beverages by Bendyshe. Burton felt uncomfortable eating once again in such an informal manner, and suddenly longed for Mrs. Angell. You’ll not take your supper in the study, sir! Not again! If you want to eat, you’ll find your plate on the table in the dining room, where it bloomin’ well belongs!

“You spoke of the privileged and the underprivileged,” Wells said to Bendyshe, “but what has become of the middle class? Back in 1914, I thought they were poised to take over the Empire.”

“They were a relatively brief phenomenon,” Bendyshe answered. “They grew throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries but proved ungovernable. Before, in Sir Richard’s time, when there were simply the ‘Haves’ and ‘Have Nots,’ each individual knew his or her place in the world, and society, though not in the slightest bit fair, was at least stable. The middle classes were problematical. They always wanted more. They developed the notion that they could better themselves. They sought control. They felt they could be raised to the level of the elite, though they were rather less supportive of the idea that the lower classes might be raised to the middle. Such aspirations led them to instigate the failed revolution of the 2080s. Victory, they thought, was assured, for surely the minority wouldn’t employ brute force against a vast majority.”

Burton said, “They miscalculated?”

“Very. They didn’t know what we know, that those in power were under the sway of Spring Heeled Jack. The crackdown, when it came, was ferocious beyond belief. The constables killed millions. Literally millions.”

“Still stilted pigs?” Farren asked.

“Yes. Rather more mechanised than they were when they made their debut in the 1960s but essentially the same. They overwhelmed the rebellion, AugMems were employed to control the population, and the middle classes were forcibly thrust into the lower.”

“I don’t mean any offence,” Sadhvi said, “but to which class do you belong, Mr. Bendyshe?”

Bendyshe grinned and for an instant looked almost identical to his ancestor. “By virtue of our ability to evade government influence, the members of the Cannibal Club cannot be classified. We are fugitives. Ghosts. We inhabit the cracks in the system.”

The floor vibrated, and a rumble signified the starting of the ship’s engines.

Having been reminded of the original Thomas Bendyshe, Burton said, “You hinted at some reason for your resemblance to your—what?– great-great-great-grandfather?”

“Seven greats.”

“By my Aunt Gwendolyn’s woefully woven wig!” Swinburne cried out. “Have we really come so far?”

“You are two hundred and seventy years from home. Yes, Sir Richard, I resemble him because my father’s DNA was manipulated to accentuate the Bendyshe inheritance, and I am his—my father’s, I mean—clone.”

The floor tilted slightly as the Mary Seacole rose into the air and turned.

“You’ve lost me,” Burton said. “I understand what DNA is, having briefly inhabited the mind of the sane Edward Oxford, but—”

“That doesn’t help me,” Trounce grumbled. “I hardly understand a bloody word. You might as well speak in Greek.”

Burton looked at his friend, thought for a moment, then said, “DNA is a component of the cells in your body. It dictates how you will grow, what you will look like, what strengths and weaknesses you possess, and to some extent, how you will behave.” He turned back to Bendyshe. “Correct?”

“In a nutshell.”

“But clone?”

“Cloning involves the exact reproduction of DNA. I am not my father’s son. I am his replica, as he was of his father. All the current Cannibals are identical to their immediate forebears. You see, it was discovered during the twenty-first century that memories are inscribed into DNA and can be passed on to clones, though it requires medical intercession to make those from earlier generations available. My father had many of his ancestors’ recollections brought to the fore. They’ve been passed on to me. The Cannibal Club’s mission is one that spans centuries, so we felt it would be advantageous to have this continuity.” He stopped, peered at Burton, and went on, “For example, I vaguely recall your last meeting with my namesake. I believe we—I mean, you and he—took lunch at the Athenaeum and were interrupted by the arrival of a constable?”