Текст книги "The Return of the Discontinued Man"

Автор книги: Mark Hodder

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

“It’s not too late. What are you, thirty-nine years old?”

He snorted. “Three hundred and eighty-one by another reckoning.”

She smiled. “My point is that you might still, one day, father a child.”

“And see my own face somewhere in its features? An assurance of immortality? No, Sadhvi, that will never happen.”

“Your pain will subside.”

“If it does, it will make no difference. I was a young man in India. I was ravaged by fevers and subject to innumerable tropical infections. It has left me incapable of—of fathering a child.”

She nodded slowly. “Ah. I see. My native country is an unforgiving one.”

Sliding from the bunk, she squatted down in front of him so that her eyes were at a lower level than his, looked up at him, put her hands on his knees, and said, “You know the Hindu faith well.”

“I do. What of it?”

“You are aware, then, that we believe a cycle of creation, preservation and dissolution is at the heart of all things, at every level of existence.”

“It has been much on my mind. Have you been reading my thoughts?”

She smiled. “I wouldn’t dare to, even if I could.”

“Hmm. Cycles? What of them?”

“Just that, at a personal level, when one is in the midst of dissolution, when everything appears lost, there is still the promise of rebirth, of a new cycle to come, of fresh creation.”

“If one survives,” Burton rasped.

“The concept of survival exists only because we place fences around ourselves. It is easy to think that when the physical body dies, there is nothing beyond it. But that’s because we depend on our senses to tell us what’s real. Those senses are a part of the body. When it dies, so do they. They aren’t the truth, Richard. That lies outside of us. Whatever suffering you’re enduring, if you push it into a wider context, perhaps it will appear a little less overwhelming.”

“What context?”

“Think of what we’re doing. We’ve travelled many generations into the future. We should all be long dead and gone. Yet, here we are, on a voyage to help the entire human race fulfil its destiny.”

He gazed into her eyes, saw in them compassion and faith and unshakable friendship. He clicked his teeth together then gave a sharp exhalation and said, “You’re right. Of course, you’re right. What is Richard Burton in the greater scheme of things? I am but a pawn in a game far too complex for me to understand.”

“No,” she said. “You’re more than a pawn. Your life may not be what you hoped, but it is still yours. You have willpower. And you know better, perhaps, than any other man, how the actions of one person can alter the entire world.”

Burton put his hand to his scalp, felt the scars. “That’s for certain.”

He came to a decision, stood, and gave a hand to Raghavendra as she rose.

“Let’s go and discover what it is we must do.”

They left the cabin and walked to the bridge, where they found Wells waiting.

“How long to Battersea, Captain?” Burton asked.

“Twelve minutes,” Lawless responded. “We’re just passing Whitstable. Descending through the cloud cover now.”

“By heavens!” Wells exclaimed. He pointed out of the window. “Red snow!”

It was true. Bright scarlet flakes swirled thickly outside and speckled the window’s glass.

Bismillah! Did I somehow summon the jungle?

Burton stepped closer to the glass.

Algy?

He said, “Nine o’clock, same day, same month, separated by three hundred and forty-two years. Red snow on both occasions. Had I any doubts about this mission, this would have swept them away.”

The Orpheus lurched as the Mark III steered it sharply to the left. Burton and the others staggered. “Oops! Sorry about that!” the babbage said. “The conditions are interfering with my radar, and I didn’t anticipate there being towers in the clouds.”

“Towers?” Lawless asked. “At this altitude? This far out from the city? What do you—?” He fell silent as the rotorship emerged from the dense canopy into a forest of brightly illuminated obelisks.

“My word!” Wells cried out. “London must cover the whole of the southeast!”

They gazed out at what had once been Whitstable, a small and sleepy coastal town, now apparently a borough of the capital, having been engulfed by the ever-spreading metropolis.

“I’m reducing speed,” Orpheus said. “Some of those towers are touching three and a half thousand feet. I have to steer us between them.”

“Do it!” Lawless snapped.

“I am,” the Mark III replied testily. “Didn’t I just say so?”

“It’s incredible,” Raghavendra exclaimed. “I could never have imagined such a city. The size of it! The height!”

The engines hummed as the rotorship weaved back and forth between the vertical edifices, moving through the mammoth metropolis, travelling in a westerly direction.

“I can barely take it all in,” Lawless said. “Is it possible that people built such a marvel? It’s the eighth wonder of the world!”

They saw the mouth of the Thames, but of the river itself there was no sign.

“Gone!” Wells cried out.

“Maybe not gone,” Burton said. “Perhaps just built over. Even in the nineteenth century many of the city’s waterways had been forced beneath the streets. The Tyburn, Fleet and Effra, for example, were all incorporated into Bazalgette’s sewer system.” He shivered, recalling bad experiences in those subterranean burrows.

They marvelled at the columns, which loomed out of the falling curtain of snow, all spanned by walkways, making London resemble a great hive through which many more flying machines floated, glimmering like fireflies.

“There’s something ablaze,” Lawless noted. He pointed. “Down there.”

As the Orpheus altered course, swinging southward, Sadhvi drew their attention to three large lesser-lit areas, like linked hollows in the dazzling display.

“Hyde Park, Green Park and Saint James Park,” Burton observed. “Still there and still the same shape after all these years.” He grunted. “Which, if I’m judging it correctly, means that fire is in, or close to, Grosvenor Square.”

Recurrences. Patterns.

“Descending,” the Mark III announced. “Battersea Airfield ahead. I should warn you that I’m having problems with my altitude sensors. There’s a peculiar echo.”

“Clarify, please,” Lawless demanded.

“A double reading. I’m not certain which of them is accurate.”

“Everyone stay by the window,” Lawless ordered. “We’ll give visual assistance.”

They saw other rotorships gliding past. In design, they differed little to their own vessel. If anything, they were slightly more primitive. However, as in 2130, there were also other flying craft—disks and needles and cones—that were obviously far more advanced.

“Apparently the divide continues,” Wells said. “Progress for some, retrogression for others.”

Burton felt a lightness as the Orpheus dropped, increased weight as it slowed and stopped.

“Is the ground fifty feet below us or a thousand?” the Mark III asked.

Lawless peered down and said, “Fifty.”

The ship dropped, and they were all jogged slightly as it landed.

“Elegantly done as usual, despite the confusion,” the babbage declared. “You may congratulate me.”

“Consider your back patted,” Lawless replied.

“Cannibal Club representatives are waiting outside.”

“Thank you, Orpheus. Sir Richard, Herbert, Sadhvi, I wish you every success in your mission. Daniel, Maneesh and I will keep the ship ticking over, ready to respond in an instant should you require our assistance.”

Burton said, “Thank you, Captain.”

They clasped hands.

Burton, Wells and Raghavendra left the bridge and were met by Gooch and Krishnamurthy at the hatch.

“Ready?” Gooch asked.

Burton jerked his head in affirmation.

“A new Thomas Bendyshe,” Wells mused. “I wonder how identical he’ll be to the other?”

Gooch took hold of one hatch lever while Krishnamurthy gripped the other. They pulled, the portal opened, and the ramp slid down. A flurry of scarlet snow billowed in. They stood back.

Burton watched as two figures ascended toward him, an adult—male, to judge by the gait—and a child, both wrapped in ankle-length cloaks with wide cowls that kept their faces shielded from the downpour.

The visitors stopped in front of him. The adult snapped, “Government inspection. Do not resist. Let us aboard.”

“We’re a cargo ship,” Burton said. “Empty.”

“Nonsense. You’re a vessel from the distant past and you’re carrying enemies of the state.”

“From the past?” Burton replied. “What do you mean by that?”

“You are chrononauts from the year 1860. And you, old son, are Sir Richard Francis Burton, the famous explorer.”

“Old son?”

The figure gave a bark of laughter. He and his companion reached up and pulled back their hoods.

“I’ve always been absolutely hopeless at playacting,” said Detective Inspector William Trounce.

“What ho! What ho! What ho!” cheered Algernon Charles Swinburne.

“Cloned!” Swinburne declared with an extravagant wave of his arms. “We were jolly well cloned!”

Sadhvi stammered, “But—but are you the same?”

Trounce tapped his head. “Humph! Memories and personalities intact. We recall everything. Is my bowler aboard? I still miss it.”

Bemusedly, unable to stop staring, Burton nodded.

Trounce reached up to smooth his moustache, even though it wasn’t there anymore. “By Jove, it’s good to see you after all this time.”

“Death defied,” Wells whispered in awe.

“To the lounge!” Swinburne exclaimed, stepping forward and giving a mighty jerk of his left elbow. “A toast to old friendships renewed. Nineteenth-century brandy, hurrah! Believe me, they don’t make it like they used to. By golly, I’ve missed it terribly. And all of you, too, of course. How the very devil are you?”

Burton suddenly pounced forward, caught the poet under the arms, yanked him off his feet, and whirled him around. “Algy! Algy! Bismillah! Algy!” He dropped him and lunged at Trounce, embracing him in a bear hug. “William, you old goat!”

“Steady on!” Trounce protested.

Swinburne screeched with laughter. “Three hundred and forty-two years!” he crowed. “That’s how long it’s taken!”

“To get here?” Sadhvi asked.

“No! For Beastly Burton to go soft!”

“Idiot!” Burton protested. “By Allah’s beard! Exactly the same idiot!”

“At your service,” Swinburne said with a melodramatic curtsey. “I say! Did someone mention a toast?”

“You did. And I wholeheartedly second the motion.”

Grinning helplessly, the reunited chrononauts closed the hatch and reconvened in the ship’s lounge where, to Swinburne’s evident delight, a decanter of brandy was produced. Swallowing his measure, the poet smacked his lips, gave a sigh of pleasure, and said, “At last. There are chemicals in everything, these days. Ruins the taste.” He sat back in his chair, crossed his legs, uncrossed them, kicked out the right, twitched his shoulders, raised his glass, and added, “I appear to be empty.”

Gooch provided a refill.

“Cloned,” Burton said. “Are you, then, your own son, Algy? Grandson?”

“Neither. I’m me. The same person, the same memories, an exact copy of the body. The only difference is that I’ve lived a second childhood and have a brother I never had before.”

“Brother?”

“This old duffer,” Swinburne said, cocking a thumb at Trounce.

Burton’s right eyebrow went up.

Trounce said, “Back in 2130, the Cannibals indulged in a little body snatching. Just like the old days, hey? Resurrectionists! DNA from our corpses was put on ice. Thirty-eight years ago, mine was used to create yours truly. Thus you now find me exactly the age I was when you last saw me. My great-grandfather was the Thomas Bendyshe you met; my father his clone, also named Thomas. My mother is Marianne Monckton Milnes. Of course, they’re not strictly speaking my biological parents, but she bore me and they both raised me. In 2179, this scallywag was created—” He indicated Swinburne. “Fifteen years my junior. Same surrogate parents. The timing was carefully arranged so that he, too, would today be the age he was when you saw him last.”

Burton pulled a cigar from his pocket, fumbled and dropped it into his lap, retrieved it, looked at it, then blinked at Trounce and said, “You—you spent a childhood together?”

“Yes!” Swinburne said. “You should have seen how skinny he was. And stubborn. An absolute mule.”

“As you can see,” Trounce said. “Carrots is every bit as loony as his previous incarnation.”

Burton smiled at the nickname, which he’d heard used before in reference to his redheaded friend, though never by Trounce.

“I was somewhat past my childhood when he was born,” the ex-detective went on, “but, yes, we were raised together, and for a specific purpose.”

“It being our arrival?” Krishnamurthy ventured.

“Exactly. Algy and I are now the leaders of the Cannibal Club.”

Sadhvi said, “What of Mick Farren, William. Was he also—um– reborn?”

Trounce sighed. “I’m afraid not. There was nothing left of him. I heard what he did. Brave chap! Funny, back in 1968, he scared me silly with that wild hair of his, but I came to like him more and more. A bad loss.”

“And Thomas Bendyshe?” Burton asked.

An expression of uneasiness passed across Trounce’s and Swinburne’s faces.

The poet said, “Offshoots of the family still oversee our finances. As for the direct line, Father—”

“A distraction was necessary,” Trounce put in.

“Distraction?”

“Spring Heeled Jack is in control of the Empire, there can be no doubt about it. You arrived at nine tonight, the fifteenth of February 2202, which as we know is a significant moment for him. For reasons that will become clear to you, we were concerned that he might be watching out for your arrival. Father gave him something else to think about.”

“What?” Burton asked.

“The destruction of the American Embassy. The Cannibals have bombed it.”

The king’s agent again looked at his unlit cigar. He bit his lip and returned it to his pocket. “William, don’t tell me the club is resorting to violence.”

“Humph! The embassy has been a fully automated affair for many years. There was no one in it. Even so, it’s a crucial hub in New Buckingham Palace’s surveillance network, and its destruction will have caused considerable disruption throughout the city.”

Burton said, “I see.” He considered his old friend. Trounce looked the same, though clean-shaven and with slightly longer hair, but his manner was rather less gruff, and his diction a little different. The king’s agent found it disconcerting.

Daniel Gooch poured Swinburne a third brandy and said, “I take it the Turing Fulcrum is still in operation?”

“It is,” Trounce confirmed. “There’s been no real progress for well over a century. Everyone is watched. Everything is recorded. Creativity is suppressed. Fortunately, we Cannibals have Lorena Brabrooke.”

“We met her ancestor in 2022,” Burton said.

“The same. Cloned. A bloomin’ prodigy. Her ability to evade detection and construct false identities borders on the artistic. Your nanomechs were automatically updated the moment you appeared over Bendyshe Bay. By now, the Turing Fulcrum has already registered you as non-threats. If we exercise due caution, we can leave the ship and proceed with the mission.”

“To locate and destroy the damn thing,” Burton said.

“Quite so. There’s no question that Spring Heeled Jack has infiltrated it, exists within it, and through it has taken complete control of the Empire, yet for all Lorena’s ability to interfere with what the Fulcrum does, she’s never been able to identify exactly where it is. It, on the other hand, has on a number of occasions got dangerously close to locating her, which is why we’ve until now hesitated to mount an all-out assault against it. Tonight will be different. She’ll employ her talents to the full to confuse it while we set out to finally run Spring Heeled Jack to ground.”

“By what means are we to do that?”

The detective opened his mouth to continue, but before he could utter a further word, Swinburne leaped up, punched the air, and shouted, “We’re going to kidnap Queen Victoria! Hurrah!”

Sir Richard Francis Burton, Algernon Swinburne, Sadhvi Raghavendra and Herbert Wells were sitting in a medium-sized flier, a tubular craft with four flat disk-shaped wings. William Trounce was at the controls. They were in the air two miles west of Battersea Airfield on the other side of the now subterranean River Thames.

“Look down,” Swinburne said. He pointed out of the window. “Cheyne Walk. That’s where I lived in 1860.”

“I don’t recognise it at all,” Burton said.

The poet explained that London now existed on two distinct levels, thus Orpheus’s confusion. Walkways and platforms had melded together, been layered with soil, and planted with well-lit lawns and prettily landscaped gardens—all currently being coated with red snow. They separated slender towers of such height that the upper reaches of the city disappeared into the cloud cover and soared so far beyond it they came close to scraping the stratosphere. The overall effect was one of cleanliness and spaciousness, a luxurious environment unimaginable in Burton’s age.

Despite the thousands of towers, the upper level appeared to be sparsely populated. The king’s agent had never seen London so quiet. By comparison to what he was used to—and, especially, to what he’d witnessed during the journey to this time period—very few people were strolling around below, even taking into account the weather. Those he saw were wearing the same cloaks and voluminous hoods in which Trounce and Swinburne, and now he and his fellow chrononauts, were attired.

“You’re looking upon the city of the Uppers,” Swinburne said. “The elite. The privileged. Below it, there exists the second city, the overcrowded domain of the Lowlies.”

“The working classes, I presume,” Wells said.

“Yes, Bertie. They exist in dire poverty and are so terribly deformed by genetic manipulations that they barely qualify as human. The London Underground is a place of horror, and I’m afraid we have to go down there.”

“Why?” Burton asked. He could feel perspiration starting to bead his forehead.

Swinburne pointed to the northeast, where, at a high altitude, the edge of a platform—a third level—could be made out, its lights shining well above the upper city.

“That’s the New Buckingham Palace complex; what used to be Hyde Park, Green Park and Saint James Park. It’s inhabited by Queen Victoria and by government ministers and their staff and is exceedingly well guarded. However, water is pumped up to it from the River Tyburn, which flows beneath the lower lever. There are access conduits running parallel to the pipes that lead up from the depths to the heights.”

Burton groaned. “Please don’t say it.”

“I know, Richard. You hate enclosed spaces and you have bad memories of the Tyburn tunnel—but there’s no option. You have to go down there again.”

The flier veered northward, skirting around the western edge of the parks.

Trounce said, “In 2138, when the new palace was still being built, Lorena’s grandmother—the daughter of the Lorena Brabrooke you met in 2022—was able to access the architectural blueprints. We know from them that the conduits are connected by a lift to the upper pump room, which opens onto the palace roof where the palace greenhouses are located. They will be our point of entry.”

“I’m still confused,” Sadhvi said. “Queen Victoria?”

“Humph! I suppose it makes a crooked kind of sense that Oxford would re-create the monarch who lies at the heart of his madness,” Trounce answered.

“Is she a clone, too?”

“I very much doubt it. DNA doesn’t survive forever, and the original Victoria died three hundred and sixty-two years ago. Nor are there any descendants of the old monarchy who could convincingly claim the throne. No. I don’t know who she is or where she comes from, but, for certain, she is Spring Heeled Jack’s puppet, a figurehead enforced upon us to give a human face to his inhuman dictatorship.”

“So she has direct communication with him?” Burton asked. “She receives her instructions from the Turing Fulcrum?”

“I don’t see how she can perform her role otherwise.”

“But kidnapping?” The king’s agent shook his head. “It doesn’t sit well with me.”

“Nor me. If there was any other way—” Trounce fell silent.

He steered the flier between towers, and Swinburne marked off districts as they passed over them. “Earl’s Court. Kensington. Notting Hill.” The vessel veered to the east. “Bayswater. Edgware Road.”

Smoothly, they descended and landed in a long and narrow lamp-lit public garden. As they disembarked, Wells shivered and said, “This snow is extraordinary.”

“Blame my brother,” Trounce muttered. He raised his hood and gave a grunt of satisfaction as the others did likewise. “Even when we’re below, it’ll be best if we keep our faces covered, especially you, Richard.”

“Why me in particular?” the king’s agent asked.

Swinburne giggled. “You might scare the natives. Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

Burton glared at him, then his face softened and he muttered, “The same old Algy.”

Trounce pointed at the glowing glass frontage of a tall edifice. “Does the position of that tower ring any bells?”

“No,” Burton said. “Should it?”

“Its foundations are rooted in the spot once occupied by fourteen Montagu Place.”

“Home! By God!”

Swinburne grinned and nudged him with an elbow. “Good old Mother Angell, hey! Never fear, you’ll be back there soon enough.”

They fell silent as three “Uppers” walked by. Though the trio was enveloped in cloaks, sufficient of them was visible for Burton to see they were thin and willowy in stature.

Trounce waited until they’d passed then said to Burton, Wells and Raghavendra, “Hand over your guns. They’re rather too antique for our requirements.”

This was done, and he put them into a small compartment inside the vehicle, drawing from it five replacement pistols, which he distributed.

“The Underground is heavily patrolled by constables. They’re identical to the creatures that attacked you in 1860, Richard. You’ll remember how we fought them off with truncheons and revolvers. These pistols will make a better job of it.”

“How does it load?” Burton asked, examining his gun with interest. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“It’s a Penniforth Mark Two,” the detective inspector explained. “Invented by one of Monty’s descendants. The bullets are stored in compressed form inside the grip. There are five hundred. You’re unlikely to need more.”

“Five hundred? How is that possible?”

“Humph! A nanotech thing. Quite beyond me. All I know is that after each shot a fresh bullet is squirted into the chamber where it instantaneously expands to its full form.” Raising the weapon, he continued, “The gun has a small measure of intelligence. Watch.”

He aimed at the flier. A small red dot of light slid across the vehicle.

“That marks the target, and, as you can see, I can aim just like normal. However, I can also do this. Front end.”

The dot snapped across to the flier’s prow.

“Rear nearside window.”

In a blink, the dot moved to the vehicle’s rear window.

“Ground, ten inches in front of the middle of the flier.”

The point of illumination instantly snapped to the quoted position.

“If you need to shoot a weapon out of an opponent’s hand, just tell the pistol to do so and it will take care of the aiming.”

“Impressive!” Burton exclaimed.

“Better even than that,” Trounce said. “You can instruct the bullets to kill or to stun or to explode.”

Trounce pushed the weapon into his waistband and gestured toward an oddly shaped structure. “Our access point is over there. It leads down to the corner of Gloucester Place. Up here, we’re safe enough. Down there, we won’t be. Watch what you say and keep your faces shadowed by your hoods. Your BioProcs will work to divert attention away from you, but if you’re seen to do—or heard to say—anything suspicious, the constables will be on us before you can say Jack Robinson.” Trounce started, his eyebrows going up. “By Jove! I’ve not said ‘Jack Robinson’ for nigh on three and a half centuries! Funny how memory works when you’re a clone.”

They followed him to the structure, which proved to be the top of a spiral staircase.

“What’s to stop the people down there from coming up here?” Sadhvi Raghavendra asked.

“Superstitious dread,” Trounce answered. “The maxim ‘know your place’ has been drummed into them for nigh on a century.”

“Will we attract attention by going down?”

“We’re Uppers. We can go anywhere.” He checked that their faces were all sufficiently shadowed by the hoods, gave a nod of satisfaction, and started down the metal stairs. Burton followed, Raghavendra was next, then Wells, and lastly, Swinburne.

The stairwell—a plain metal tube—was lit by a strip of light that spiralled down anticlockwise just above the handrail to their right. The illumination served only to accentuate the narrowness of the cylinder, and, as they descended, Burton’s respiration became increasingly laboured, his claustrophobia gripping him like a vice.

Their footsteps clanged and echoed.

After five minutes, an orange radiance began to swell from below.

“Is the air getting thicker?” Burton mumbled.

“Actually, yes,” Trounce said. “The Underground is hotter, made humid by steam-powered vehicles, and is pretty much a soup of nanomechs.”

“That do what?”

“That keep the Lowlies placid.”

They suddenly emerged from the tube into an open space. As they continued down the steps, Burton and his fellow chrononauts looked around in amazement. They were in Montagu Place, not far from the corner of Gloucester Place, but aside from the configuration of the roads the area was completely unrecognisable. Where Burton’s house had once stood, there was now a row of derelict—but obviously inhabited—two-storey buildings. Toward Gloucester Place, and across it, visible along Dorset Street, much larger tenement buildings huddled. They were ill-built ramshackle affairs, mostly of wood, with upper storeys that overhung the streets. They were very similar to the old “rookeries” that had once existed in the East End, reflecting the same dire poverty and hellish conditions that had made of the Cauldron such a crime– and disease-ridden district.

In stark contrast to the overground, the streets here were densely populated. Slow-moving crowds were jammed to either side of a band of clanking, growling, hissing, chugging, popping, grinding, clattering traffic. The vehicles were more primitive than those of Burton’s age, for the most part comprised of leaking boilers, smoking furnaces, chopping crankshafts, wobbling drive bands, and belching funnels. Some were pulled by horses or donkeys or, unnervingly, by gigantic dogs. That such methods of transport existed contemporaneously with the saucer-like fliers of upper London was extraordinary.

From all these contraptions, steam billowed into the air, making the atmosphere, which reeked of sweat and filth and fossil fuels, so foggy that the far ends of Montagu Place and Dorset Street were lost in the haze.

Hanging high over the thoroughfares, suspended with no visible means of support, a multitude of large flat panels glowed with letters and disturbing images. The closest, right next to the spiral staircase, portrayed a ferocious and Brobdingnagian slant-eyed panda rampaging across a city, crushing towers beneath its clawed feet, and with hundreds of tiny people dribbling from the corners of its snarling, fanged and blood-wetted mouth. “ONLY YOU CAN SAVE THE UNITED REPUBLICS OF EURASIA FROM ITS OWN BARBARISM!” the floating placard urged.

Farther along Montagu Place, another showed horned demons holding up a “monthly report” and laughing at its contents, which read, “MURDERED: BABIES . . . 2,019; CHILDREN . . . 3,345; WOMEN . . . 12,367; NONCOMBATANTS . . . 67,832. A GOOD MONTH’S BUSINESS FOR THE U.S.A.! STOP THIS HORROR!”

Over the junction with Gloucester Place, a third panel showed a man facing a Chinese firing squad. Behind him, bodies were piled so high they disappeared from view. “SERVE THE EMPIRE. MAINTAIN OUR CIVILISATION. RESIST SOCIALISM. WE ARE SUPERIOR.”

Others panels read, “ONLY ANGLO-SAXON ENLIGHTENMENT CAN SAVE THE WORLD!” and “THE HUMAN SPECIES DEPENDS ON YOUR LABOURS!” and “MUST WE ENDURE SUCH BARBARISM ON OUR DOORSTEP?” and “SOCIALISM CAUSES SPIRITUAL DECAY!”

Higher even than this floating propaganda, curving out and up from the many massive supports of the upper world’s towers, red brick ceilings arched, enclosing everything, so that the London Underground resembled a humungous series of groin vaults, lit only by the gas lamps that lined the thoroughfares and the watery illumination that leaked from many windows. At the peak of each of the arched sections, fitted into dark holes, enormous fans were spinning, sucking out sufficient pollution to render the air breathable, but not enough to adequately clear it.

The whole domain was half sunk in shadow. It was filled with dark corners and fleeting movements; a place of furtive and crafty activities; of things caught by the corner of the eye but gone when looked at square on.

The chrononauts descended down from the ceiling, turning around and around on the spiral staircase, gazing in horror first at sagging rooftops upon which occasional scuttlings could be glimpsed, as if small burglars were fleeing from those who might bear witness, then into upper-storey windows that opened onto bare rooms in which figures lay starving or drunk or exhausted or dead.

Finally, they reached the pavement, where Burton stumbled and was caught by Trounce, who murmured, “All right?”

“Yes,” Burton said. “Bismillah, William, have you brought us to Hell?”

“I’m afraid I have.”

The passing crowd recoiled from them, giving them a wide berth, for the chrononauts were obviously Uppers and thus better, thus to be respected, thus to be feared.

“Oh my God!” Sadhvi whispered.

The people weren’t people. They were less human even than the freakish pedestrians they’d seen in 2130. Shambling past, some were tall and attenuated; others short and bulbous, or bulky like boulders, or small, wispy and wraith-like, or multi-limbed, or half animal, or amoebic as if lacking skeletal structure, or padding along on all fours, or winged, or covered from head to foot in matted hair, or just so thoroughly grotesque that the senses could hardly make sense of them. Many were naked. More were dressed in rags. Most were in Army or Navy uniforms. Their language was the same rough variety of English that Burton knew from the shadier districts of his own London, though quite a few simply grunted or whined or barked or mewled.