Текст книги "The Return of the Discontinued Man"

Автор книги: Mark Hodder

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

“Humph!” Trounce said. “And I saw too much of the Cauldron to believe in our claims of superiority. I see your point.”

“Perhaps Charles Darwin was too optimistic. Perhaps this world is different from ours only in that it’s cloaked in a more pervasive illusion. The only thing that’s evolved is our ability to fool ourselves.”

The four men pushed on. Two constables click-clacked past, their smooth featureless faces slowly turning toward the group before, thankfully, looking away.

“It’s weird,” Farren said. “I truly can’t believe my eyes.”

They came to Oxford Circus and bore right into Oxford Street. As in their own ages, the thoroughfare was lined with shops, and Burton and Swinburne were both astonished to see Shudders’ Pharmacy among them.

“Surely not!” the poet cried out.

“Generated by our AugMems, perhaps?” Burton theorised.

Unable to resist it, they went in. The chimeric neatness of the exterior didn’t extend to the inside. The shop was shabby and in serious disrepair. Damp plaster sagged from its walls, and its ceiling had collapsed in one corner. Makeshift shelves supported a sparse stock of bottles and cartons.

A stooped white-haired old man in a grubby laboratory coat greeted them. He smiled. His eyes were filmy and unfocused. He rubbed his hands together and bowed obsequiously. “Can I help you, my lords?” He gave an uncertain cough that sounded like “a-hoof!”

“My lords?” Swinburne whispered.

“Your name?” Burton asked.

The man looked afraid. “I’m Martin Ocean Englebert Shudders, citizen number eight triple-four seven six three nine eight. Is there—a-hoof!—a problem? My paperwork is up to date. My payments are made. My accounts are—a-hoof!—in order. I’ve re-registered my citizenship promptly every month. I’ve never spoken out of turn.”

“We haven’t any concerns about you,” Burton said. “We just wanted to see your shop. Has it been here for long?”

“Fifteen years. Perfectly legal and—a-hoof!—aboveboard. The regulations have always been adhered to. My family’s loyalty has never been in question. None of us are socialists or objectors. I hate the U.R.E. and the U.S.A. I deplore their savagery. I wish those barbarians were all dead.”

“It’s all right. As I said, we don’t doubt you. What was it before it was a pharmacy?”

“I don’t know, my lord. It was empty when I started to—a-hoof!—rent it. But my grandfather held that it was in the family many generations ago, and was a pharmacy then, too. Many of my family have been in the trade. Legally.”

“Thank you,” Burton said. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you.” He moved toward the door, the others following.

“You don’t want to take anything?” Shudders asked. “Please.”

“No. I’m sorry. Unless—do you stock Saltzmann’s Tincture?”

“Saltzmann’s, my lord? Saltzmann’s. Saltzmann’s. No—a-hoof!—I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that. I have tranquillisers. Plenty of tranquillisers. Would you like tranquillisers? Please, have a bottle. Two bottles.”

“No thank you.”

They exited, looked back, and suddenly the windows were clean, and, through them, neat well-stocked shelves were vaguely visible.

They continued along the street.

“How very curious,” Swinburne muttered.

“Echoes, rhythms and repetitions,” Burton said. “Time is exceedingly strange.”

They hastened forward, all suddenly feeling the need for the safety of the minibus, worried by their separation from Bendyshe, Wells and Raghavendra.

“Don’t look back,” Farren said, “but those pigs that passed us earlier are following.”

“Why?” Trounce asked. “We haven’t done anything.”

“Two more on the other side of the road,” Swinburne said. “Watching.”

A third pair of constables dropped out of the sky and bounced on their stilts ahead of the group.

“Damn,” Trounce muttered. “We’re in trouble.”

“Stay calm, ignore them, and keep moving,” Burton ordered. He flinched and uttered a small cry of surprise as Bendyshe’s voice sounded in his ear.

“Sir Richard. Don’t be alarmed. You entered a shop?”

Burton murmured, “Yes.”

“But didn’t take anything. That’s not done. When the elite enter the establishments of the poor, it’s customary to remove something without paying. Your failure to do so aroused suspicion. The shopkeeper immediately reported you. Constables are now closing in on your position. Two of my colleagues are on their way to extract you. Kat Bradlaugh and Maxwell Monckton Milnes. Do whatever they say, please, without question or hesitation.”

Burton turned to address his companions, but Swinburne tapped his own ear and said, “We heard. We’re in trouble with the law because we failed to steal.”

“I wish I had my revolver,” Trounce mumbled.

New Centre Point was just ahead, but so were more constables.

“They’ll take us before we can reach the minibus,” Farren observed.

Bendyshe’s voice: “Turn right and start running. Kat will land a flier in Soho Square. Sir Richard, Algernon, get into it. The moment it departs, Maxwell will arrive in a second machine. Mick, William, that one’s for you.”

“The square’s not far,” Farren noted. “Unless it’s been moved.”

They rounded the corner into Soho Street and took to their heels. People scattered out of their path. A siren started to wail.

A constable flew through the air and landed in front of them, lowering a hand to the paving as it skidded across it. The pig creature stood, viciously swatted a young woman out of the way, and pounced onto Swinburne. The poet shrieked as solid arms clamped hard around him, catching him in mid-stride. He was lifted, legs kicking.

“Halt!” the constable commanded. “You are detained under Section Nine of the Public Order Act.”

“I don’t think so, chum,” Trounce shouted. He slammed his heel into the back of the creature’s knee. As the constable buckled, Burton piled into it and pulled it down. He ruthlessly hammered its head into the ground. The pig man went limp. Swinburne jumped to his feet.

“Run!” Burton bellowed. He saw constables springing in from all sides. One landed in front of him. He delivered a right hook to the side of its face. It staggered. He whirled away from it and sprinted after his companions.

The air vibrated, and, with a loud thrumming, a small wedge-shaped flying machine swept down between the gleaming towers and thudded into the square, landing just in front of them. Immediately, a shadow fell over it and a strong wind gusted down as a far larger vessel slid overhead. It was a white disk with six rotors set into its hull and a black-and-white chequered band decorating its outer edge. A menacing cannon-like array bulged from its underside. A deafening voice thundered from the machine. “Stay where you are. Do not resist. You are in violation of Sections Nine to Thirteen of the Public Order Act. You must submit to interrogation or forfeit your lives.”

A door in the side of the small flier hinged upward. A middle-aged woman leaned out and yelled, “Burton! Swinburne! In! Now!” She pointed a pistol and fired three shots. Three constables, on the point of grabbing Farren, Trounce and Swinburne, were thrown backward and lay twitching in the road.

Burton pushed Trounce toward the vehicle. “Go.”

In his ear, Bendyshe shouted, “No! You and Swinburne first!”

“Do as he says!” Trounce snapped. He took a pace backward and gave the king’s agent a hefty shove. Burton fell against the flier. Kat Bradlaugh grabbed him by the elbow and hauled him in. The king’s agent spat an epithet and reached out of the vehicle toward Swinburne. The poet extended his right hand. His fingertips touched Burton’s. A constable dropped down behind him. It raised a truncheon. With a loud snick, a blade slid out of the end of the weapon.

“Algy!” Burton hollered.

The stilted figure thrust the baton into the back of Swinburne’s neck. The poet opened his mouth in shock. The blade slipped out of it like a pointed tongue. Blood gushed. Swinburne’s green eyes rolled up. He crumpled to the ground.

“No!” Burton screamed. “No!”

“Kat, get him clear!”

The door dropped shut. Burton hammered his fists against it and hollered, “Let me out! Let me out!”

The flier lurched upward.

“I have to help Algy!” Burton rounded on Bradlaugh. “Take me back down, damn you!”

Through gritted teeth, she snarled, “Don’t be a fool.”

The flier tilted to the left as she turned it. Through its side window, Burton saw constables teeming around Trounce and Farren. One lashed out at the detective inspector, its truncheon cracking ferociously across his eyes. Trounce’s head snapped back, blood spraying from it. He collapsed, kicked, and lay still.

A second flier plummeted past and landed.

Kat Bradlaugh uttered a cry of dismay and grappled with the steering levers. Burton felt his stomach churning as the vehicle skewed and twisted. She shouted, “The police ship is trying to access our controls. Tom, can you help?”

“Maxwell, get Farren. Kat, I’m going to switch you to full manual.”

“I’m ready.”

“There are police ships approaching from the north and west. You’ll have to stay low to evade them. Get going.”

“We can’t leave!” Burton cried out. “My friends are injured.”

“Their nanomechs aren’t transmitting life signs, Sir Richard. I’m sorry.”

“No!” He grabbed Bradlaugh’s shoulder. “Wait! Wait! I can’t leave them! They can’t be dead!”

She ignored him. The flier suddenly fell, jerked to a stop some fifteen feet from the ground, and started to slide sideways.

“Got it!” Bradlaugh exclaimed. “Which way out?”

A constable thumped onto the front of the vehicle, causing it to rock. The creature’s fingers screeched against metal as it scrabbled for a hold.

“Off! Off!” Bradlaugh shouted.

The pig man squealed and scraped to the right. It fell out of sight.

“Follow Greek Street south,” Bendyshe instructed.

Burton glimpsed Farren at the door of the landed vessel, engulfed by constables. He was fighting like a madman, punching, kicking, somehow resisting though vastly outnumbered. Behind the Deviant, the Cannibal, Maxwell Monckton Milnes, was being dragged from the driver’s seat. His head was seized and forced all the way around. He went down.

“You bloody animals!” Burton cried out.

Farren broke free, dived into the parked flier, and yanked down the door.

“Mick,” Bendyshe said. “I’ve locked you in. Are you all right?”

Burton heard Farren panting. “No. Stabbed. Bleeding. It’s bad.”

“Can you stay conscious?”

“Not for—not for long.”

“You have to fly manually. Pull the joystick back to get her off the ground, side to side to steer, push it to descend. The footplate controls forward momentum and braking. Same as in your day.”

“Got it.”

“Hold on tight,” Kat Bradlaugh said to Burton.

He was pressed into his seat as the flier suddenly shot forward then was thrown against the Cannibal as it veered sharply. A thin beam of light sizzled past the side window just inches from his head. He felt its heat on his face. The glass blistered and cracked.

Bradlaugh cried out, “They’re firing at us!”

The second flier rose into view, weaving and bobbing as Farren struggled with the controls.

A voice blared from the police ship. “We have you contained. Land your vehicles immediately or we’ll shoot you down. You have ten seconds to comply. No further warnings.”

“Tom?” Bradlaugh asked.

“Damn it. I’m helpless. You’ll have to outmanoeuvre them.”

“I can’t.”

Mick Farren’s voice whispered in Burton’s ear. “I guess it’s time for one last gesture of defiance. It’s been fun, Sir Richard. A real pleasure to meet you. Good luck.”

“Farren!” Burton called. “What are you—?”

Before he could finish, Farren’s flying machine shot upward at a tremendous velocity, slammed into the bottom of the police vessel, and disappeared in a ball of flame. Bradlaugh screamed as the shockwave hit and the steering levers were wrenched out of her hands. Burning material rained down. The noise of tortured metal filled Soho Square, like the wails of a mortally wounded leviathan.

Bradlaugh snatched at the levers and regained control. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

She steered the flier into Greek Street and accelerated to such a breakneck velocity that Burton couldn’t draw breath. He twisted and looked to the rear just as the burning police disk went angling into a glass tower, ripped downward through its facade, broke in half, and disintegrated into the square amid a torrential downpour of fire, metal and broken glass. Then it was out of sight, and they were hurtling along, perilously close to the ground, through Charing Cross Road and into Long Acre.

“Kat, safe house eight,” Bendyshe ordered.

“Endell Street, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Got you. Half a minute.”

The flier pitched onto its side and plummeted into a narrow alleyway. Burton, unable to think, held on tightly and moaned with fright as brick walls streaked past just inches away. The machine rocketed out into a lengthy back yard, flipped to the horizontal, hit the ground, screeched along in a shower of sparks, and smacked into a wall, its nose crumpling.

“Out!” Bradlaugh barked.

Blood dribbled into Burton’s eyes. His head had impacted against the windscreen. He couldn’t move.

“Out!” the Cannibal repeated. She hit a switch, his door swung upward, and she pushed him into waiting hands.

“This way, Sir Richard,” Tom Bendyshe said. “Lean on me.”

Burton had little choice. His legs were like rubber.

Bendyshe half-dragged him across the yard, through a door, over rotting floorboards, out of another door, and into a quiet street where the minibus waited.

Sadhvi Raghavendra and Herbert Wells hauled him into the vehicle. Kat Bradlaugh followed and collapsed onto its floor. The door slid shut. Bendyshe clambered in next to Odessa Penniforth and said, “Not too fast. Don’t attract attention.”

The king’s agent felt the minibus move forward. Sadhvi applied a cloth to his forehead. He heard Wells say, “Are we going to make it, Mr. Bendyshe?”

“My colleagues are laying a false trail. Irregular BioProc signals racing westward. We, in the meantime, will be at Battersea Airfield in a few minutes.”

Sadhvi put a hand on Burton’s shoulder. “Richard?”

Sadhvi is alive. Wells is alive. Lawless is alive. Krishnamurthy is alive. Gooch is alive.

He sucked in a shuddering breath.

But Mick Farren and—

He couldn’t think it. Couldn’t allow any acknowledgment of the fact.

It came anyway.

William Trounce is dead.

Algernon Swinburne is dead.

Days went by. Sir Richard Francis Burton lost track of them. He and the surviving chrononauts were safe aboard the Orpheus in Bendyshe Bay, but their mission had come to a disastrous halt. The king’s agent remained in his quarters. He refused to speak to his colleagues. He didn’t eat. He didn’t drink. He didn’t smoke. He didn’t sleep.

He sat.

Cross-legged on the floor, eyes fixed straight ahead, for hour upon hour, he sat.

Not a thing went through his head. His thoughts were utterly paralysed.

Sadhvi Raghavendra did what she could for him. She brought food and took it away untouched. She sat beside him and spoke of the things she and the others had learned from the Cannibal Club, of the plutocracy that now ruled the Anglo-Saxon Empire, of the rapid physical and mental degeneration of the lower classes, of the many techniques employed by their overlords to keep them subservient and pliable, of the terrible destruction wrought during the failed revolution of the 2080s.

“The British Museum was among the many establishments destroyed,” she said. “Access to it had long been denied to the general public. It became a symbol of everything that was being withheld. As we saw in 2022, knowledge was distributed through the Turing devices, but it was strictly controlled, and that control became so increasingly draconian that by the 2070s even the Turings were discontinued. Not surprising, then, that the museum became, at one point, the focus of protestations. In 2083, the people, in their fury, determined that if they were to be denied the knowledge it held then the government would be, too. They blew it up. Isambard Kingdom Brunel was buried beneath the rubble.” She placed her hand on his forearm and gave it a squeeze. “It’s peculiar—I’d come to regard him as a point of consistency, an old friend who never changed. But I must contrast his loss with our encountering of all these new Bendyshes and Bradlaughs, Murrays and Monckton Milneses, Brabrookes and Hunts, Bhattis and Honestys, Slaughters and Penniforths. How oddly touching it is to see our old friends peeking out from behind all the new faces. Life goes on, Richard. Life goes on.”

This latter sentiment, expressed during her most recent visit, caused something deep inside him to stir. A thought whispered as if from an immense distance:

Not Algy’s life.

Not William’s.

Not Isabel’s.

Emotion stirred. It wasn’t grief or self-pity or despair but a black and iron-hard anger that settled upon him with such subtlety that when Raghavendra next visited she didn’t notice it at all, though she saw his dark eyes had become strangely shielded, as if he were looking out through them from much farther inside himself.

He started to take a little water, a little brandy.

Gradually, he regained awareness of who he was, where he was, and what he was supposed to be doing.

He ate a meal. He smoked a Manila cheroot. He stood, stretched his stiff legs, and regarded himself in the mirror over the basin. His internal silence was broken by two words:

King’s agent.

He snorted disdainfully.

Burton washed and started to shave, pausing frequently to gaze at his reflection.

Like an aged steam engine, his mind slowly built up heat, fuelled by his rage, its gears creakingly engaging, motion returning to it.

You failed. They were under your command and they died. You failed.

It wasn’t my fault.

Everything that makes you, you lose. Whenever you value a person, it’s their death sentence. Wherever you settle, that place will change. The things you hold dear forever slip out of your grasp.

I cannot endure such loss!

Whenever you feel certain of something, the only certainty is that it will become something else.

No!

There is only one truth, and that truth is Time, and Death is Time’s agent.

No! No! No!

He dropped the cutthroat razor and leaned with his fists against the bulkhead to either side of the mirror. He glowered at himself, one side of his jaw still frothy with shaving soap, water dripping from his moustache.

John Speke. William Stroyan. John Steinhaueser. Isabel Arundell. Algernon Swinburne. William Trounce.

He leaned forward until his forehead rested against the cool glass, shut his eyes, clenched his teeth and drew back his lips. Suddenly he was shaking and his respiration became strained. He wanted to find Edward Oxford and strangle him, hammer his face until he felt the bones fracturing beneath his knuckles, rip him apart until there was nothing remaining, but in his mind’s eye, the man he envisioned himself battering with such ferocious brutality, the man he called Oxford, possessed his own features and was named Sir Richard Francis Burton.

With an inarticulate cry, the king’s agent reeled from the basin, stumbled to a chest of drawers, snatched up a decanter, and poured himself a generous measure of brandy. He swallowed it in one and stood leaning on the furniture until he stopped trembling.

He returned to the basin to finish shaving.

He felt acutely aware of the edge of the blade as it slid across the skin of his throat.

I met Swinburne and Trounce just over half a year ago. How can I be so broken by their loss?

It felt as if he’d known them forever. They were family.

“Half a year?” he mumbled. “Nearly three hundred, more like.”

Had the attachments formed across multiple histories? Were they so important to him because they had been important to Abdu El Yezdi?

After changing his clothes, Burton crossed to a Saratoga trunk, opened it, lifted out its top tray, and took a small bottle from one of the inner compartments. He pulled the cork, downed the tincture, moved to the middle of the floor, lowered himself, and sat cross-legged again.

He didn’t need Saltzmann’s anymore. His addiction had completely left him. But he wanted it.

Closing his eyes, he focused his attention on his scalp, sensing the scars that curved through the roots of his hair, feeling the diamond dust that was etched into them.

The tincture’s glow eased him into a meditative trance. He filled his mind with a repetitive chant:

Allāhu Allāhu Allāhu Haqq.

Allāhu Allāhu Allāhu Haqq.

Allāhu Allāhu Allāhu Haqq.

Allāhu Allāhu Allāhu Haqq.

He sought the Swinburne jungle, prayed that it would hear him, transcend histories, and communicate.

 

Allāhu Allāhu Allāhu Haqq.

Allāhu Allāhu Allāhu Haqq.

Algy Algy Algy talk!

Algy Algy Algy talk!

Steady and persistent, like a heartbeat, the words throbbed through him until, very slightly, he started to rock backward and forward to their rhythm.

The tempo divided time—into seconds, into minutes, into hours, into days, into weeks, into months, into years, into decades, into generations, into centuries, into millennia, into ages, into epochs, into eras, into eons, into vast cycles of repetition through which the universe itself expanded and contracted like a beating heart.

Each division possessed a birth and a death, so there were births within births and deaths within deaths, from the infinitude of the microscopic to the boundlessness of the macroscopic. He recognised life as a commencement, life as a termination, life contained within a wave pattern, a vibration, a tone; a syllable through which intelligence was made manifest at every level.

The great paradox: everything in existence was imbued with intelligence, yet everything existed only because it was discerned by that intelligence. Matter, space, time and mind inextricably intertwined, creating themselves through self-recognition.

The insight blossomed in Burton like an unfurling red rose.

The jungle, its roots extending through histories, touched him for the briefest instant and delivered a truth—a stunning clarification of his earlier visions—that caused him to cry out in wonder.

“Bismillah! We have it reversed! The universe does not create life! Life creates the universe!”

The sound of his own voice intruded upon his trance. He opened his eyes but continued to sit quietly.

Twelve years ago—subjective years—he’d become a Master Sufi. Since that time, he’d been using the phrase Allāhu Allāhu Allāhu Haqq as a mantra to aid in meditation. Now, for the first time, he considered its meaning.

God is Truth.

He didn’t believe in God—not in one that responded to prayer and intervened in human affairs. However, if intelligence was the core and cause of reality, imagining it into existence and separating it into coherent parts, then might not the religious myths of a fall from “Grace” followed by a spiritual striving to return to “Him” be an allegory of humanity’s tendency to lose itself in its own narrative structures, becoming so deeply attached to its signifiers that full awareness of the signified was lost?

Burton sighed and climbed to his feet. Crossing to the mirror, he once again considered himself. He gazed into his own eyes, saw the anger in them and, beyond it, something else, something new. What was it? A deep spiritual shock? A suspension of disbelief? An abandonment of the convictions and attitudes through which he’d defined himself?

I am unmade.

He squared his shoulders, curled his fingers into fists, and left his quarters.

He found Gooch, Wells and Bendyshe in the ship’s lounge. They jumped up as he entered.

“Sir Richard!” Gooch exclaimed. “You are recovered?”

He gave a curt nod. “What’s our status?”

“We’re secure,” Bendyshe answered. “No danger of detection.”

Burton turned back to Gooch. “The Orpheus?”

“All shipshape and Bristol fashion.”

“Then we’ll get moving. Is everyone rested?”

They made sounds of affirmation.

Wells, apparently unnerved by Burton’s abrupt attitude, said in a thin voice, “Um. We can—we can certainly depart immediately if you order it, but if you—if you require more time—”

“Time? No, Herbert. Time is the last thing I need.”

Time is my enemy. Time leads only to death.

He turned back to Gooch. “The order is given. Tom, will you be coming with us?”

“No,” Bendyshe answered. “The Cannibal Club needs to be a resourceful presence in 2202 that it may support you properly when you arrive there. We have three generations in which to strengthen the organisation. I will be cloned, and I’ll see that everything that’s necessary is done.” He stood. “Sadhvi, Daniel, Herbert, it’s been a pleasure to meet you. Sir Richard, will you walk me to the hatch?”

“Certainly.”

Hands were shaken. Burton and Bendyshe left the room.

“I’m sorry for your losses,” Bendyshe said. “I feel responsible.”

“You’re not. I am. I should never have entered the pharmacy. But enough self-recrimination. The mission will continue. We’re a single step away from our destination. I’ll not be deflected from our purpose. The reckoning with Spring Heeled Jack must come. Frankly, I look forward to it.”

They reached the hatch. Bendyshe stopped and appraised Burton for a moment. “You seem somehow harder. More ruthless. I feel a little afraid of you.”

The king’s agent said nothing. He helped the Cannibal to slide open the portal. The air that gusted in was damp and bore the scent of wet grass.

Bendyshe stepped out then turned back.

“Sir Richard, we’re fighting for humanity. Don’t lose yours.”

After a slight pause, Burton answered, “I may have no option. I sense an inevitability about it.”

Suddenly, the other couldn’t meet his eyes. Bendyshe looked down at the boarding ramp, up at the clouded afternoon sky, across to the Mary Seacole. He mumbled, “My ancestor—the Thomas Bendyshe you knew—he really loved you. He’s a part of me and I can feel it.”

Burton gave a slight nod. “He’s a part of me, too.”

They said no more.

After drawing in the ramp and securing the hatch, Burton went up to the bridge and was greeted by Captain Lawless and Maneesh Krishnamurthy.

“Let’s prepare for departure, gentlemen.”

From above, the Mark III babbage said, “At last! I feared rust might set in. I’ve been bored senseless.”

Krishnamurthy, after momentarily gazing at Burton, said, “I’m glad to see you up and about,” then set off toward the generator room, leaving Lawless and Burton alone.

“Fifteen days, give or take a few hours,” the airman said. “That’s how long our voyage has taken so far, though calculating duration when you’re travelling through time is rather like trying to measure how much water a fish drinks.”

“I’m sorry I’ve delayed us,” Burton said.

“Don’t be. You had every reason. Besides, we can linger for as long as we like. It makes no difference. We’ll still arrive at nine in the evening on the fifteenth of February, 2202.” Lawless rubbed his neatly trimmed beard. “But what’s the plan? What will we do when we get there?”

“As her principal crew, you, Daniel and Maneesh will remain aboard the Orpheus. Myself, Herbert and Sadhvi will attempt to locate and destroy the Turing Fulcrum or whatever might have superseded it. If the Cannibals report to you that we’ve failed and lost our lives, then command of the expedition will fall to you. You’ll have to decide whether to make another attempt or retreat back to our native time.”

“We’ll not flee,” Lawless said.

Orpheus interrupted. “My apologies, Captain Lawless, Sir Richard. I have been readying the systems for flight.”

“Good,” Lawless responded. He looked up. “Why apologise?”

“Because I obviously misunderstood. When you said ‘prepare for departure,’ I thought you meant we might be going somewhere, not that you intended to stand around chatting.”

The airman snorted his amusement. He touched his right earlobe and said, “Mr. Wells? Would you assist us on the bridge, please?” Upon receiving a reply, he shook his head wonderingly and said to Burton, “I feel as if these CellComp thingamajigs have made me clairvoyant. Microscopic biological machines. Lord have mercy. Science or sorcery, I ask you.”

Wells arrived and took up position at the meteorological equipment. Burton moved to the Nimtz console, from which he could monitor the output of the generator.

Krishnamurthy whispered in his ear, “Captain, Sir Richard, ready when you are.”

“Are we all set, Orpheus?” Lawless asked.

“I believe I’ve already made it perfectly clear that I am,” the Mark III replied. “You’re the one who’s dawdling.”

“Then proceed, please. You know the routine.”

The familiar rumble of engines vibrated through the floor as the rotors whirled into a blur and lifted the ship.

“Now to once again discover the shape of things to come,” Wells murmured.

A minute later, Orpheus announced that the vessel was in position and ready to jump through time. Lawless issued the command.

They entered and exited whiteness.

“I’ve received instructions,” the Mark III immediately declared. “We are to set course for Battersea Airfield.”

“Go ahead,” Lawless said. “Top speed, please. Everyone all right?”

Burton and Wells nodded. The king’s agent addressed the man from 1914. “Herbert, go get yourself prepared.”

“Pistol?”

“Yes.”

Wells left the bridge. Burton looked out at the thickly clouded night sky then crossed to the console Wells had just abandoned and examined its panel. “Snow is forecast over London,” he murmured.

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Lawless said.

“Not for me,” Orpheus confirmed.

Burton made a sound of acknowledgement. “I’d better get ready.”

He stepped through the door and descended to the main deck, walked along the corridor, through the lounge, and carried on until he came to Sadhvi Raghavendra’s quarters. He tapped on the door and entered at her called invitation. She was wearing baggy trousers and a loose shirt—men’s clothing.

“Richard!” she exclaimed. “How are you?”

“The walking wounded.”

He lowered himself into a chair beside her bunk. She sat on the mattress and placed a hand over his.

“As are we all.”

He rubbed his forehead and closed his eyes. “I don’t know how much more I can take. Last year I lost my friends Stroyan and Steinhaueser. I lost—I lost Isabel. Now Algy and William. And seeing all these descendants of my friends, of Monckton Milnes and Bendyshe and Brabrooke and the rest, only serves to remind me of my own mortality and that, when I am gone, nothing of me will remain.”