Текст книги "The Return of the Discontinued Man"

Автор книги: Mark Hodder

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

The creature’s head snapped back, and its knees buckled. The case fell from its grip and hit the ground with an almighty crash. Tottering backward, the equerry fell into shelves and slid to the floor, taking bottles with it. They smashed and clattered noisily around it.

“Damnation,” Burton hissed.

“That,” Swinburne commented, “was an unholy racket.”

Wells, who was holding Lady Felicity Pye’s ankles, dropped them and announced, “We have company.”

Burton turned. The two Spring Heeled Jacks he’d seen a moment ago were returning, bounding along the corridor. Wells and Trounce shot them down.

“There’s more!” Trounce said. He lowered Baroness Hume to the floor and, kneeling, raised his pistol and started shooting.

“By Allah’s beard!” Burton cursed, as he saw equerries appearing in all three corridors, rounding corners and stepping from rooms. “There’s a lot of them! Back to the stairs, quickly.”

Leaving the two Uppers where they were lying, the chrononauts raced to the landing.

“Intruders! Intruders! Intruders!” the equerries shouted.

“Head, kill,” the men responded. “Head, kill. Head, kill.”

Ptooff! Ptooff! Ptooff!

One after the other, the spring heeled creatures went down.

With his companions at his back, Burton sprinted down the stairs to the next floor, where, before he saw it, an equerry pounced on him and bore him to the carpet.

“Off him! Off him!” Swinburne shrieked. He kicked the side of the creature’s head and, as its chin jerked around, pressed his pistol to where an ear should have been and pulled the trigger. Plastic, bone and pig brains splattered outward.

Burton heaved the corpse to one side and regained his feet in time to kill another of the stilt men before it managed to grab Wells.

“I have the distinct impression,” Swinburne said, “that our presence is no longer a secret.”

Their destination was one flight of stairs away, but the steps were fast crowding with equerries, all yelling, “Intruders! Intruders!”

“You may be right,” Burton said breathlessly.

Now there was no time even for the order Head! Kill! They simply pointed their weapons, fired into the mass of white figures, and forced their way forward.

“No!” Trounce yelled.

It was too late. Swinburne’s pistol gave a deep cough, and, with a deafening bang, equerries flew into pieces, those at the front being hurled forward onto the chrononauts.

Burton’s ears jangled. Pinned down by a struggling figure, he jammed the barrel of his Penniforth Mark II under its chin, averted his face, and fired. Its head exploded. He shoved the twitching carcass to one side and raised his pistol to shoot another, which was looming over him, its cranium already half shorn off, blue fire playing about the horrible wound. Before he could pull the trigger, it knocked the pistol from his hand. The weapon went spinning away over the banister and clattered out of sight.

Burton drew up his knees and kicked out, his heels thumping into his opponent’s stomach. The equerry keeled over, already dead from the damage to its skull.

Struggling to his feet, half deaf, the king’s agent fell over prone bodies, pushed himself back up, and was suddenly gripped from behind, iron-hard arms closing around him, crushing his rib cage until he couldn’t draw breath.

His right ear popped as a voice, right beside it, said, “Your presence is unauthorised.”

Something cracked behind his head. The constricting arms fell away. He turned and saw an equerry dropping to the floor, a hole through its brain. Another was ploughing through the carnage towards him. It, too, went down.

“Splendid weapons, these!” Herbert Wells called.

For the briefest of moments, there came a lull in the fighting. The stairs around Burton were buried beneath limp stilt men, shattered pictures and fallen armour. The walls were scorch-marked, the bannisters broken.

“So much for stealth,” the king’s agent muttered.

From the hallway below, more equerries came hopping.

He reached down and pulled a broadsword from a collapsed suit, hefted it, and found it to be well balanced.

Swinburne, a couple of steps above him, grinned down. “Uh ho! Now they’re in trouble.”

“Stand well back,” Burton said. “And for pity’s sake, don’t fire another explosive.”

“Sorry. It was more powerful than I—”

The poet’s words were drowned out by cries of “Intruders!” as the Spring Heeled Jacks came vaulting up the stairs. Burton swung the sword up and behind his right shoulder then, timing it perfectly, swiped it forward horizontally, decapitating three stilted figures with the single stroke. With Swinburne, Trounce and Wells following, each of them firing shot after shot, he descended the last remaining stairs to the next landing.

Burton’s expertise with the blade astounded his fellows. Weaving a web of steel about himself, he sliced, blocked and stabbed with such speed the weapon became nothing but a blur. Like a scythe through wheat, it carved a path before him. He battled his way to the mouth of the right-hand hallway and—while those equerries that avoided him fell to his companions’ bullets—moved into it. Severed limbs fell and twitched. Heads bounced to the floor. Blue flame, spurting out of lacerations and stumps, arced around him, following his blade, and to Swinburne, the Romantic poet, it looked like his friend had been enclosed within a shield of light, as if the ancient gods had bestowed upon him magical protection.

A crowd of equerries was coming from behind now, descending from above. Despite the excessive results of Swinburne’s ill-considered grenade, Trounce now resorted to another, firing it above them so it landed at their backs. The ear-splitting detonation sent dismembered torsos, pieces of banister, segments of armour, and shredded carpet raining down. Burton was far enough into the hallway to be protected from the blast, but Trounce, Swinburne and Wells all went down beneath the falling bodies.

For a moment, Burton was fighting alone.

He slashed upward from his right hip, cleaving off an equerry’s face; barged into the creature and, as it collapsed, cut horizontally back to the right, chopping off another’s head; then brought the sword swinging up and downward into the skull of a third. Momentarily, the flow of his movement was interrupted as the weapon jammed in his victim’s hard plastic cranium. A stilted figure slapped its hands to either side of Burton’s face and started to twist, attempting to break his neck. “Unauthorised!” it yelled. A hole appeared in the middle of its blank face. The hands slipped free as the figure fell.

Suddenly, there was peace.

The king’s agent wrenched his blade free and stood panting. He saw Wells, on his knees, lowering his pistol.

“Much obliged, Bertie.”

“Pardon? I’m deaf as a stone.”

Swinburne emerged from beneath a quivering cadaver. “What did you say? I can’t hear you. My ears are full of bells.”

“Exploding bullets,” Trounce grumbled as he pushed himself up. “Remind me to tell Penniforth to tone them down a little.”

“A tipple?” Swinburne responded. “I should think we’ve earned one!”

An equerry tumbled down from the shattered staircase above. It struggled to its feet. “Intruders!”

“At your service,” Trounce said. “Head. Kill.”

Climbing over the fallen, the three men joined Burton. The chrononauts were all bleeding from superficial wounds, all feeling the effects of their exertions, but also all intoxicated by the heat of battle.

Burton pointed along the corridor. Through ringing ears, the others heard him say, “To the end and turn right.”

Two equerries came leaping around the indicated corner. Swinburne and Wells shot them down.

The clamour in the chrononauts’ ears died away.

Swinburne, surveying the massacre, said, “I’m not sure we’ll find sufficient beds under which to conceal this lot.”

His friends gave barks of amusement.

They moved on, senses alert.

Twice, equerries appeared behind them and were instantly dispatched. After that, a silence fell upon the palace, bringing with it a threatening air of expectation.

The chrononauts moved forward, past closed doors and countless portraits and statuettes; Jessica Cornish repeated over and over.

Wells observed, “What a grand obsession. As a monument to a single woman, even the Taj Mahal can’t rival it.”

“The Taj Mahal speaks of a dedicated heart,” Swinburne said. “This of a magnificently sick mind.”

They reached the junction with the next hallway and turned right. Ahead, the passage dropped a level, and as they went down steps to the lower, they saw tall double doors ahead of them and heard muffled voices.

“The House of Lords,” Burton said.

“The plan?” Wells asked.

The king’s agent shrugged. “Barge in. Assess in an instant. Shoot if necessary. Rescue Tom Bendyshe. Identify the prime minister. Don’t kill him. Find out where the Turing Fulcrum is.”

“That,” Swinburne said, “is the best plan I’ve heard all day. What could possibly go wrong? We’ll be back on the jolly old Orpheus in time for breakfast.”

With his hands low, Burton raised the sword blade until it rested against his shoulder. “I’ll cut down anyone who jumps at us.” With a jerk of his chin, he indicated that Swinburne and Wells should prepare to thrust open the doors.

“It sounds like there’s a crowd in there,” Trounce said, as his fellows took hold of the gold-plated handles.

“No one with any sense would be up at this time of night,” Swinburne replied. “So they’re undoubtedly politicians. Ready?”

With his left fingers wrapped around the base of his right hand, Trounce raised his pistol, holding it poised to one side of his face. “I am.”

Burton said, “Go.”

The two smaller men threw their weight against the portal. The doors hinged inward. Burton and Trounce ran forward with Swinburne and Wells at their heels. The entrance swung shut behind them.

Their senses were assaulted.

For a moment, Burton could make nothing of the bedlam that surrounded them.

Piece by piece, it came together.

The sharp tang of ozone.

A babble of voices protesting, “Bah!” and “Boo!” and “Bad form!”

For a moment he thought himself in the midst of angry sheep.

A storm overhead. A big blue dome of crackling lightning, its jagged streaks snapping a concave course from the perimeter to the apex before streaming down into the top of a silhouetted bulk suspended in the centre; a black mass of indeterminate form.

Below the tempest, beneath Burton’s feet, a round stage-like expanse of tiled floor, unsteadily and dimly illuminated by the hissing and spitting energy. In the middle of it, an X-shaped frame to which Thomas Bendyshe was tethered, and encircling the area, row upon row of benches occupied by a braying crowd, the seats rising until they vanished into deep shadows that appeared to be immune to the strange blue illumination.

“By God!” Wells cried out. “What kind of arena is this?”

“Father!” Swinburne and Trounce yelled. They ran to Bendyshe.

A loud knocking caused Burton to spin, and he saw, on an ornate wooden chair over the door, a willowy and rather bird-like individual who was banging a gavel while shouting, “Order! Order!”

Uncertainly, the king’s agent moved to join his companions.

“Order! Order!”

The crowd quietened. A woman, three rows back, stood up. She was dressed in tight brocades, with fluffy epaulets extending from her shoulders and a conical hat upon her head.

The gavel-wielder bellowed, “Dame Pearl Marylebone, Minister for Amusements and Daily Gratifications.”

Raising her voice over the incessant sizzling from above, the woman said, “My Lord Speaker, may I, on behalf of the House, express dismay at this unwarranted intrusion and demand to know the identities of these—these—horrible ruffians!”

“Hear! Hear!” the crowd cheered.

The woman sat, a satisfied smile on her face.

Lord Speaker banged his wooden hammer again and blinked his large black eyes at the chrononauts. He pointed at Burton. “You, sir. Announce yourself.”

Burton stepped backward until he was beside Bendyshe. Without taking his eyes from the Lord Speaker, he said to the Cannibal, “Are you all right?”

After giving a nod and moistening his cracked lips with his tongue, the prisoner managed a slight smile. “Hello, Sir Richard. It’s good to see you again after all this time, though I—” He gasped and winced. “Though I regret that you find me in such a dire position. Be careful. They are all insane.”

“Sir!” the Lord Speaker insisted.

Burton raised his voice. “I am Sir Richard Francis Burton. My companions are Algernon Charles Swinburne, Detective Inspector William Trounce, and George Herbert Wells. I demand that you release this man.”

The gavel—Bang! Bang! Bang!—and, “You are in no position to make demands. You have no authority to be here. Which of the families do you represent? What corporation?”

“None and none,” Burton replied.

In a sarcastic tone, Lord Speaker said, “What are you then? Lowlies?”

The crowd laughed.

Swinburne took aim.

“Stun.”

Lord Speaker slumped.

“I’m sorry, Richard,” the poet said, “but he was being rather boorish and I thought it best we assert ourselves.”

“I say! Bad show!” a parliamentarian shouted.

“Aye!” another agreed. “Thoroughly unconventional!”

“Poor sportsmanship, I should say!” a third opined.

Above, the hemisphere of lightning turned a deeper shade of iridescent cobalt.

A man in the front row got to his feet. He was costumed as if participating in a commedia dell’arte. “My Lord Speaker appears to be resting, thus I will announce myself. I am Harold John Heck, the Duke of Deptford and Minister for Fashion, Jewellery and Accessories. Sir Richard, I demand that you explain yourself. Why have you interrupted parliamentary proceedings in such an irregular—and, frankly, thoroughly impolite—manner? You may address the House.”

Trounce and Swinburne set about untying the bonds that held their father by his wrists and ankles.

Burton put his sword point to the floor and rested both hands on the weapon’s pommel. He peered into the gloom at the edges of the circular chamber and tried to assess the size of the crowd. At least two hundred, he thought.

“We are here,” he called out, “to rescue this man and to locate a device known as the Turing Fulcrum.”

He saw little point in concealing the truth.

A woman in the front row jumped up. Burton vaguely recognised her but couldn’t think how. “Lady Dolores Paddington Station, the Minister of War, Death and Destruction. The man you refer to, and whom your companions are untethering with absolutely no leave to do so, is an enemy of the Empire. He has attacked us. We have been attempting to establish whether he represents the United Republics of Eurasia or the United States of America. Since you are obviously aligned with him—and are therefore an awfully rotten scoundrel—perhaps you’d care to answer the question. U.R.E. or U.S.A., sir?”

“We insist upon an answer,” someone yelled.

“Spill the beans!” another added.

“If we represent anyone,” Burton responded, “then it’s the majority. We represent the people. We represent what should be, but isn’t.”

“Nonsensical! You’re a bad liar, sir,” someone mocked.

“Surely you don’t refer to the inhabitants of the London Underground?” Lady Dolores exclaimed. “That would be absurd.”

Bendyshe slumped down into Trounce’s and Swinburne’s supporting arms. Struggling to raise his head, he shouted in a hoarse voice, “Neither Eurasia nor America are in any condition to attack, madam, and you bloody well know it.”

“Mind your language, sir. And you are quite wrong. Those empires despise us. They are jealous of our advanced civilisation. We have this information directly from the prime minister. Don’t you think we’re rather more likely to believe him than we are a—a—a commoner!” She spread her arms. “Parliamentarians! Plainly, we are in the presence of enemy agents. I call for the death sentence. We must do them in. Slice their necks.”

“Bravo!” someone cheered. “Hanging! Firing squad! Acid bath!”

“Could we construct an electric chair?” another shouted.

“Poison injection!”

“More of the carnivorous nanomachines! They are simply delightful!”

The crowd yelled its approval. “Huzzah! Carnivorous nanomachines! Huzzah! Huzzah!” They clapped their hands and stamped their feet.

Another women—her body and face almost entirely concealed beneath feathery garments—jumped up and cried out, “I object! I object! Let us not be impetuous!”

The hubbub subsided.

She continued, “I am Gladys Tweedy, the Marquess of Hammersmith, Minister of Language Revivification and Purification. Lady Dolores, whilst your indignation is justified, you appear to have overlooked the fact that this man claims a title. Sir Richard. If he is, indeed, a knight of the realm, then we must extend to him a modicum of courtesy. We must hear him out.”

Despite a scornful bray of “Liberal!” a number of voices were raised in agreement.

“It’s the done thing,” someone observed. “Though I must confess, I’ve never heard of the fellow.”

A man, wearing a velvet cape and tricorn hat, stood and said, “I am Lord Robert Forest Beresford of Waterford, Minister for Executions, Suppression and Random Punishments. I would hear a full and detailed statement.”

The crowd hooted its support.

“A contrary bunch of nutters, aren’t they?” Swinburne muttered.

Lord Robert said, “You and your fellows have the floor, Sir Richard. Tell us in full why you consider it desirable to release this man—” he indicated Bendyshe, “who has wreaked such terrible havoc in the Empire’s capital. Tell us what this—what did you call it? A Turning Fool? Whatever it is, tell us about it, and why you require it, and why you think we possess it, and what you intend to do with it. Speak!”

“Make it eloquent and compelling, if you please,” another parliamentarian drawled. “I’m weary and my attention is wandering.”

A ripple of laughter.

Lord Robert waved Burton forward, indicating that he should address the audience.

The king’s agent hesitated, irresolute, and turned to his colleagues. “What can I possibly say to these people? They’re like children.”

Herbert Wells said, “May I?”

“Be my guest. Keep them occupied, Bertie. I need time to think.”

“Your representative?” Lord Robert demanded, as Wells stepped forward.

“Yes,” Burton answered. “Mr. Herbert Wells.”

“Then the stage is yours, Mr. Wells.”

The Cannibal cleared his throat. In his thin reedy voice, raised above the fizzling from overhead, he said, “I ask you to consider a preliminary proposition before I answer the questions you have asked. Though you set yourselves apart, though you inhabit these high towers while the rest are teeming below, you are human, all of you. You are human. So it is, you are subject to the wants of our species. You seek to satisfy your hunger. You desire shelter and warmth and good health. You want your families to prosper. No doubt, you also seek the satisfaction of knowing that you have contributed something to the world; that your existence will not pass without notice or any effect.”

Someone shouted, “Dreary! Get on with it!”

“Order! Order!” another countered.

Burton moved to Swinburne, Trounce and Bendyshe. “What’s going on here, Tom?”

“They were about to approve the invasion of the rival empires when I was dragged in. My torture has delayed mobilisation.” He managed a weak grin. “At least I know the pain was useful for something.”

“Are you holding up?”

“It comes in waves. I’m all right for the moment, but the nanomechs will start on me again in a short while.”

Wells was saying, “Surely, out of this commonality, it is possible for you to find in yourselves an affinity for your fellow man? I urge you, discover your mercy. Embrace compassion. Ask what there is to admire in a world where the majority are suppressed and monitored and designedly distracted by falsehoods; where a few maintain their privileged position by deceiving the rest, by sucking at them like leeches, by looking down upon them as little better than animals, by jealously guarding their own interests at the expense of the majority. Where is your honour?” He threw up his arms. “Great heavens! My contemporaries had such high hopes for the future! We envisioned a world in which all men and women were equal; where every person would reap the rewards of their efforts and willingly make contributions toward the betterment of all. Can you people not see that the only true measure of success is the ratio between what we might have done and what we might have been on the one hand, and the thing we have made and the things we have made of ourselves on the other? Can you not understand that, by such a measure, you have failed utterly and miserably? I beseech you; destroy these terrible divisions you’ve created!”

As a body, the audience burst into raucous laughter.

“Please!” Wells pleaded. “Listen to me!”

Burton stepped forward. “Bertie—”

A deafening roar interrupted him. A ball of ferocious white flame blazed from the black hulk suspended above them. Bullets ripped down and thudded into Wells, shredding his clothes and flesh, crushing him to the floor and smashing the tiles around him.

The fire guttered and vanished. The roar slowed to a rapid metallic clattering then stopped.

Shiny blood oozed outward from the Cannibal’s tattered corpse.

The king’s agent, numb with the shock of it, watched as the life faded from Wells’s disbelieving eyes.

The ministers’ laughter gave way to enthusiastic applause.

Burton looked up and saw two pinpricks of red light in the bulky silhouette. Slowly, the shape descended. He heard Swinburne, Trounce and Bendyshe yelling but he couldn’t process their words.

He saw the gleam of polished brass.

He saw thick legs and an armoured torso.

He saw five arms extended, Christ-like, and a sixth, to which a Gatling gun was bolted, still directed at Wells.

He saw that the red pinpricks were eyes.

He saw, floating down to the floor, with lines of energy cascading from the apex of the domed ceiling into his head, the famous engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

The House of Lords fell utterly silent as the brass man descended.

In familiar bell-like tones, he said, “The Anglo-Saxon Empire is mine. I will not have its Constitution challenged.”

His feet clunked onto the floor. He took a pace forward and looked down at Burton. The king’s agent felt his skin prickling, reacting to the ribbons of blue energy that were pouring from the ceiling into Brunel’s exposed babbage.

“Sir Richard Francis Burton,” the engineer said.

“Isambard?”

Ignoring the enquiry, Brunel cocked his head a little to one side. “So, despite my efforts to prevent it, you have followed me through time. That is unfortunate for you, for now the manner of your demise depends upon the answer to a single question.”

Burton took a step back and hefted his sword, eyeing the huge man-shaped mechanism, observing the gaps between its brass plates, wondering whether there was a part of it so vulnerable that a sword thrust could render the entirety inoperable.

“I shall tell you how I came to be,” Brunel intoned. “Then I shall ask and you will answer. If I am satisfied with your response, you will die quickly. If I am not, you will die very, very slowly.”

Burton remained silent.

“Know this, then, Burton: I have been born seven times, and through each birth this world was formed.”

“Bravo!” a minister shouted.

“My first birth came at nine o’clock on the fifteenth of February 1860. Three hundred and forty-two years ago.” With a quiet whir of gears and hiss of miniature pistons, Brunel closed his arms about himself. He lowered his face and regarded the floor. “No thought. No sensory stimulation. No knowledge of myself. What had its inception on that day was comprised of one thing and one thing only: fear.”

Burton heard Tom Bendyshe groan and from the corner of his eye saw him buckle and fall to his knees. Trounce and Swinburne crouched and held him by the shoulders.

“Brunel! Stop this!” Trounce yelled. “For pity’s sake! He’s in agony!”

The gathered politicians bleated their objection to the interruption.

Without turning his head, Brunel extended his Gatling gun toward the three Cannibals. He didn’t fire it, but the threat was enough to quieten the former Scotland Yard man.

Holding the pose, he went on, “My second birth came at nine o’clock on the fifteenth of February, 1950. A glimmering of awareness. A vague sense of being. Perhaps a dream.”

Burton lowered his sword. “Turing’s Automatic Computing Engine. Your presence, as you moved forward through time, resonated with its silicon components. It expanded your capacity to think.” He took two paces to the left to avoid the pool of blood that was spreading from Wells’s corpse.

Brunel raised his face and looked directly at the king’s agent. “And it gave me a means to influence events as they unfolded.” Without moving his levelled gun, he unfolded his remaining arms and held their four hands and one stump before his eyes, examining them, moving his fingers, extending the tools from the top of his wrists, making drill bits and screwdrivers spin, clamps and pliers open and close. “But what was I? My body—this body—was in one place, my mind in another. I was disjointed. Incomplete. Scattered. And there were memories, nightmarish memories. I felt myself strapped down, at the mercy of a dreadful man with a swollen cranium. I saw an orangutan with the top of its head replaced by glass through which its living brain was visible. I was aboard a flying ship that was plummeting to earth. There were gunshots. And—”

An arm suddenly jerked forward, and a forefinger jabbed toward Burton’s left eye, stopping less than an inch from it. Burton stumbled back.

“And there was you. Sir Richard Francis Burton. The killer. The murderer. The assassin.”

“No. Those events occurred in a different history and involved a different me.”

For a moment, Brunel stood absolutely motionless.

“Ah, yes,” he said. He drew in his limbs, turned his palms upward, and raised his face to the crackling storm. Ribbons of energy danced across his brow and reflected on the curved planes of his cheeks. “Time. So vast and complex and delicate. Do you feel it as I do, then? Stretching away in every direction? History upon history? Variation upon variation? So many causes. So many effects. Innumerable consequences blossoming from each and every action. Possibilities and probabilities. What a beautiful, awe-inspiring, and truly terrifying equation.”

Another pause; a silence broken only by the relentless lightning, a cough from the audience, and an agonised moan from Bendyshe.

Again, Brunel regarded Burton.

“A pattern. A rhythm. A third birth, this at nine o’clock on the fifteenth of February, 1986.”

“The Turing Fulcrum.”

“Awake. Fully awake.” Brunel fisted a gauntlet-like hand. “In a world gone wrong.” He emitted a clangourous chuckle. “But wrong how? I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”

He reached out. Burton tried to dodge away, but the brass man was too fast. The king’s agent felt metal fingers close around his cheeks and jaw. The grip was surprisingly gentle, almost a caress.

“I dreamed that I was in a museum,” Brunel chimed. “And you—you!—stood before me. I thought I had escaped, but here you were, in pursuit, determined to terrorise and destroy me. Burton. The man from the past. My demon. My would-be nemesis.”

The fingers opened and withdrew. Burton glanced at his companions. Swinburne and Trounce were holding Bendyshe and gazing at Brunel. Their father was white-faced, glaze-eyed and trembling.

“My fourth birthday was at nine o’clock on the fifteenth of February, 2162. By then, my presence had been in every Turing device for a hundred and seventy-six years, yet I had no individuality. No Self.” Brunel touched his own face, running fingertips over the line of his jaw, across the immobile lips, around the deeply shadowed eye sockets. “Suddenly, it came. I was me, in this body, half submerged in the mud of a narrow subterranean stream—a tributary of the Fleet River—beneath the ruins of the British Museum. Buried alive! Buried alive! A birth into primordial horror! Inch by frightful inch I pulled myself through that narrow tunnel, feeling my battery draining, until at last I came to the Fleet, which had become a part of the sewer system, and from there climbed to the surface to claim my rightful place. It was not difficult to convince those in power that I was the Turing Fulcrum incarnate. They were weak, while I was integral to every item of technology, and had long employed it to prepare them for my advent.”

From the gathered politicians, a voice shouted, “Three cheers for the prime minister!”

Brunel whipped around his Gatling gun and pointed it at the man. “Shut your damned mouth, you cretinous heap. All of you. Not another word.”

After a moment, satisfied that he’d not be interrupted again, he lowered his gun. Though his mask was fixed and incapable of showing emotion, he appeared to withdraw into himself and was silent.

Burton waited. A breeze brushed his skin. He looked at the dome of blue fire and noticed that the tendrils of energy were streaming from a great many nodes, flashing upward from one to the next before descending from the apogee in a long, twisting funnel to Brunel’s cranium. The hissing storm, he felt sure, was increasing in power, and the air in the chamber was starting to move, as if being dragged slowly around the centre.

Brunel resumed his narrative.

“My fifth birth occurred five years ago, at nine o’clock on the fifteenth of February, 2197, when, amid the boundless chatter of information that passes through me, I discovered my queen. My saviour. Is it not said that only love can conquer fear? I know I have loved her before, though how and when eludes me. Perhaps I shall love her again, and the terror that drives me will finally be dispelled.”

“You do not feel that love now?” Burton asked.

“While you—the source of my dread—are alive? No, I have no love. Only the hope that it will come when you are gone.”

Brunel’s head jerked, as if he’d just realised something. He turned to the benches. “Beresford, where is the queen?”

Lord Robert Forest Beresford stood and nodded toward Thomas Bendyshe. “The entertainments upset her, My Lord Prime Minister. She left the chamber and went to tend her flowers in the palace greenhouse.”