Текст книги "The Return of the Discontinued Man"

Автор книги: Mark Hodder

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

Quaintly costumed people were walking in the park.

No, not costumed. They always dress this way.

Burton started to walk down the slope toward the base of Constitution Hill, struggling to overcome his growing sense of dislocation.

“Steady, Edward,” he muttered to himself. “Hang on, hang on. Don’t let it overwhelm you. This is neither a dream nor an illusion, so stay focused, get the job done, then get back to your suit.”

Job? What job? I am here to observe, that is all.

Again, it was as if a second voice existed inside him. It whispered, Stop him! Stop your ancestor!

Burton reached the wide path. The queen’s carriage would pass this way soon.

My God! I’m going to see Queen Victoria!

He looked around. Every single person in sight was wearing a hat or bonnet. Most of the men were bearded or moustachioed. The women held parasols.

He examined faces. Which belonged to his forebear? He’d never seen a photograph of the original Edward Oxford, but he hoped to detect some sort of family resemblance. He stepped over the low fence lining the path, crossed to the other side, and loitered near a tree.

People started to gather along the route. He heard a remarkable range of accents, and they all sounded ridiculously exaggerated. Some, which he identified as working class, were incomprehensible, while the upper classes spoke with a precision and clarity that seemed wholly artificial.

Details kept catching his eye, holding his attention with hypnotic force: the prevalence of litter and dog faeces; the stains and worn patches on people’s clothing; rotten teeth and rickets-twisted legs; accentuated mannerisms and lace-edged handkerchiefs; pockmarks and consumptive coughs.

“Focus!” he whispered.

A cheer went up. He looked to his right. The queen’s carriage had just emerged from the palace gates, its horses guided by a postilion. Two outriders trotted along ahead of the vehicle, two more behind.

Where was his ancestor? Where was the gunman?

Ahead of him, a man wearing a top hat, blue frock coat, and white britches straightened, reached under his coat, and moved closer to the path.

Slowly, the royal carriage approached.

“Is it him?” Burton muttered, gazing at the back of the man’s head.

Moments later, the forward outriders came alongside.

The blue-coated individual stepped over the fence and, as the queen and her husband passed, took three strides to keep up with their vehicle, then whipped out a flintlock pistol, aimed, and fired. He threw down the smoking weapon and drew a second.

Burton yelled, “No, Edward!” and ran forward.

What the hell am I doing?

The gunman glanced at him.

Burton vaulted over the fence and grabbed his ancestor’s raised arm. If he could just disarm him and drag him away, tell him to flee and forget this stupid prank.

They struggled, locked together.

“Give it up!” Burton pleaded.

“Let go of me!” the would-be assassin yelled. “My name must be remembered. I must live through history!”

I must live through history. I must live through history.

The words throbbed into the future, echoed through time.

The second flintlock detonated, the recoil jolting both men.

The back of Queen Victoria’s skull exploded.

Burton gripped the gunman, shook him, and heaved him off his feet.

His ancestor fell backward, and his head impacted against the low cast-iron fence. There was a crunch, and a spike suddenly emerged from the man’s eye. He twitched and went limp.

“You’re not dead!” Burton exclaimed, staggering back. “You’re not dead! Stand up! Run for it! Don’t let them catch you!”

The assassin lay on his back, his head impaled, blood pooling beneath him.

Burton stumbled away.

There were screams and cries, people pushing past him.

He saw Victoria. She was tiny, young, like a child’s doll, and her shredded brain was oozing onto the ground.

No. No. No.

This isn’t happening.

This can’t happen.

This didn’t happen.

Burton backed away, feeling terrified, fell, got up again, shoved his way out of the milling crowd, and ran.

“Get back to the suit,” he mumbled as his legs pumped. “Try something else.”

He raced up the slope and ran into the trees.

His heart was pounding.

He pushed through to where he’d left the time suit.

I’ll go farther back. I’ll change this.

He suddenly registered that someone was behind him. Before he could turn, an arm encircled his neck and squeezed with agonising force, crushing his throat. He saw his suit, the boots and headpiece, just feet away. He reached for them, but it was hopeless. He knew he was going to die.

A man hissed in his ear, “You don’t deserve this, but I have to do it again. I’m sorry.”

Do it again?

He felt his head being twisted.

My neck! My neck! Get off me!

His vertebrae crunched.

White light flared.

He felt suspended, as if time had halted.

He heard Charles Babbage’s voice.

“It is nine o’clock on the fifteenth of February, 1860.”

“It is nine o’clock on the fifteenth of February, 1860.”

“It is nine o’clock on the fifteenth of February, 1860.”

“It is nine o’clock on the fifteenth of February, 1860.”

“It is nine o’clock on the fifteenth of February, 1860.”

The voice overlaid itself again and again, as if thousands of Babbages were speaking at once.

Flee! Burton thought. Get away from here! Back home! Back home in time for supper! Back home! Back home in time!

It was one o’clock in the afternoon on Monday the twentieth of February, and fourteen individuals were gathered in the library of suite five at the Royal Venetia Hotel. They were not particularly comfortable, for the room was bursting at the seams with books and the group had difficulty finding places to sit or stand among them. The volumes, which ranged from boys’ adventure novels to esoteric tracts, from political memoirs to philosophical treatises, lined every wall from floor to ceiling, were stacked high on the deep red carpet, and were piled haphazardly in every corner.

Sir Richard Francis Burton’s brother, Edward, presided over the meeting. Morbidly obese, with a face disfigured by scars, he was wrapped, as was his habit, in a threadbare red dressing gown and occupied an enormous wing-backed armchair of scuffed and cracked leather. There was a half-empty tankard of ale on the table beside him. His clockwork butler, Grumbles—with his canister-shaped head of brass cocked slightly to one side—was standing nearby, ready to refill the glass.

“So the jungle is dying?” Edward asked.

“Withdrawing might be the better term,” Burton replied. “In a few days, nothing of it will remain except mulch. It has fulfilled its purpose. London will soon be clear of its unseasonal blooms.”

“Sentient herbage. Utterly preposterous.”

“That’s not the least of it. The jungle and Algernon are one and the same.”

Edward Burton glowered at the king’s agent, then at Detective Inspectors William Trounce and Sidney Slaughter, Police Constable Thomas Honesty, Sadhvi Raghavendra, Daniel Gooch, Charles Babbage, Richard Monckton Milnes, Captain Nathaniel Lawless, Maneesh Krishnamurthy, Shyamji Bhatti and Montague Penniforth. Together, these individuals comprised the secretive Ministry of Chronological Affairs, of which he was the head.

“All of you give credence to this fantasy, I suppose?” he asked.

“I trust Sir Richard’s judgement,” Gooch said.

“Likewise,” Trounce muttered. “Which means I may have to start doubting my own.”

The others nodded, apart from Babbage, who appeared to be counting his fingers.

The minister addressed Swinburne. “And what do you make of it, young man?”

The poet kicked spasmodically, accidentally knocking over a stack of books, and shrilled, “It’s delicious! The jungle is me and I am it and we are one and the same. Or some such.”

“That isn’t much help.”

“May I partake of a bottle of your ale, Minister? I feel sure it will clarify my thoughts.”

Edward Burton impatiently waved his permission.

Burton said, “We know that in Abdu El Yezdi’s native history, when he trekked to the Mountains of the Moon, a version of Algy went with him. El Yezdi never explained what happened to his companion, but he does record that a Prussian agent, Count Zeppelin, followed them, and that the man possessed venomous talons—a product of eugenics. As fantastic as it sounds, the toxin caused an individual named Rigby to transform into vegetation. It appears that the same fate befell the poet.”

From the sideboard to which he’d moved, and with a bottle in one hand and a glass in the other, Swinburne said, “The other jolly old Swinburne is now a plant-based consciousness. It possesses a unique perception of time and is aware of every variant of history. It was able to send its roots through into our world to warn us what has happened. Simply splendid! I feel thoroughly proud of it, him, and myself!”

Edward gave a puff of incredulity. He lifted his ale, gulped it down, and jabbed a fat forefinger toward his brother. “It inflicted the visions upon you?”

“They weren’t visions exactly,” Burton corrected. “The jungle worked with the Beetle and the children under his command to produce Saltzmann’s Tincture from its fruits. Through a vague mesmeric influence, and over the course of half a decade, it introduced the decoction to me and slowly increased its potency. The most recent doses caused my awareness to slide from one iteration of history to another, drawing my attention to the advent of what we might term the Spring Heeled Jack consciousness, which was created when all the Charles Babbages across all the histories performed the same experiment at the same moment.”

“It knew ahead of the event that it would occur?”

“As I say, the jungle has a unique perception.”

“And what of your experiences as Edward Oxford?”

Burton paused to light a cheroot. “The one sane fragment of Spring Heeled Jack caused black diamond dust to be injected into my scalp. It was an act of suicide, for my own thoughts would soon overwrite it. However, before that occurred, I received from it memories of the time suit’s construction and the final moments of its inventor. It was a message, or rather, it was the gift of an essential item of information.”

“What information?”

“Before I answer that, I think you should hear what the jungle showed Algy.”

The minister turned his eyes back to the poet.

“Well?”

Swinburne, who had a glass to his lips, swallowed hastily, coughed, spluttered, and dragged a sleeve across his mouth. “What? Pardon? Hello?”

“Your leafy counterpart,” the king’s agent said to him. “Give an account of your experience while under its influence.”

“Ah, yes. I say! This is a fine beer, Your Maj—um—your ministery-ness. What! Er. Well. It happens to be the case, apparently, that our history is where the destiny of the human race will be played out. This, thanks to the efforts of Abdu El Yezdi—he having averted the next century’s world wars, the ones that’ll so afflict the other histories. Ours is the stage upon which Mr. Darwin’s theories will be enacted.” Swinburne moved back to his seat, sat, and crossed then uncrossed his legs. “In our distant future, the year 2202 should be one of transcendence and transformation. Perhaps Oxford’s breakthrough, his overcoming of the limitations of time, is meant to be a part of it. Unfortunately, it has all gone completely arse over elbow.”

“Because of Spring Heeled Jack, I presume,” the minister said.

“Yes. The insane Oxford consciousness has fled back to that year and has there somehow blocked the evolutionary process.”

“And the jungle knows this—?”

“Because it is—that is to say, I’m—it’s there.” Swinburne hiccupped.

Detective Inspector Slaughter, who had a tankard of milk in his hand, cleared his throat, smoothed his huge moustache, and said, “Forgive me for interrupting, and forgive me again if I seem a little cold-hearted, but need we be overly concerned about events that are occurring three and a half hundred years hence? We shall be long dead by 2202, after all.”

Constable Honesty snapped, “Child on the way. One day, perhaps, grandchildren. So forth.”

Slaughter held up a hand. “I concede your point, Constable. I myself have a daughter.”

“With all due respect,” Burton said, “the issue goes deeper even than protecting your descendants. Every evening since Charles performed his experiment, we have been invaded by stilted mechanisms.”

“Eleven of the monstrosities last night,” Trounce interjected.

“That the Oxford consciousness is sending them back to the year it was created implies what we might term a soul searching, a quest for identity.”

“Why are the creatures so obsessed with you?” Monckton Milnes asked.

“Because Oxford has twice been killed by a Richard Burton, and those deaths, paradoxically, were integral to the creation of this Spring Heeled Jack intelligence.”

Trounce snorted. “By Jove! Does it think you’re its father?”

“I wouldn’t go that far, old fellow, but it may well regard me as essential to its growing self-awareness, and I’m certain it fears me and has an irrational need to kill me.”

“Patricide,” Slaughter put in. He shook his head wonderingly. “Though—no offence intended—it isn’t going about it in a very efficient manner, is it? Why are the stilt men so—”

“Nutty,” Swinburne interjected. “Absolutely bonkers.”

“I was going to say disoriented.”

Burton drew on his cheroot and blew out a plume of blue smoke. “If the Spring Heeled Jack mind is still coalescing into a functioning entity, perhaps they reflect its incompleteness.”

Edward Burton signed for Grumbles to refill his glass. “It has to be stopped.”

“Yes,” the king’s agent replied.

“What, brother, do you suggest we do?”

Turning to Babbage, Burton said, “Charles?”

Daniel Gooch reached out and prodded the preoccupied scientist, who looked up, blinked, and said, “I’m not to blame. The probability of all my selves performing the experiment at the same moment is so low as to be virtually inconceivable. The only explanation is that time itself possesses an agenda.”

“No one regards you as the source of the problem,” Burton said. “But you might have the solution.”

“How so?”

“In one of the alternate histories, you proposed to apply the principles of the time suit to a specially constructed vehicle in order to send a group of us through history.”

“Did I, indeed?” Babbage exclaimed.

“Microscopic components reproduced in macroscopic form. Could you do it?”

“Hmm!” Babbage raised his fingers to his head—tap tap tap!—and muttered, “I’ve just finished designing the Mark Three probability calculator. It has nowhere near the power of the suit’s helmet, but I daresay it could be adapted to the task. We also have plenty of the black diamond shards. However, without the mathematical formula that enables the procedure—”

Burton reached up and, aping the scientist’s habitual gesture, tapped his own head. “I have the equation. That was the message given to me by the diamond dust, by the undamaged helmet. The jungle helped me to understand it.”

Babbage gave a shout of excitement and leaped to his feet. “You can recall it?”

“If I put myself into a mesmeric trance, I should be able to retrieve the memory. I warn you, though, that writing out the formula will probably take some days. It is exceedingly complex.”

“By the Lord Harry!” Babbage exclaimed. He wrung his hands eagerly then stopped and frowned. “Hmm. But it won’t solve the principal difficulty, which is that to duplicate the suit’s function I’d have to create a machine the size of a room. It would need to be inside a very large vehicle, and a flying one at that.”

Burton addressed Nathaniel Lawless. “Captain?”

Lawless’s face turned as white as his finely trimmed beard, and he stammered, “Surely—surely you don’t mean to—to—to pilot the Orpheus into the future?”

“Yes!” Babbage shouted. “Yes! I could adapt your rotorship!”

“Pah!” Edward Burton barked. “Dick, this is an absurd notion! You mean to take the fight to Spring Heeled Jack? To the year 2202? What will you do when you get there? You’ll be hopelessly lost. A fish out of water. A centuries-old antique!”

“Richard,” Monckton Milnes added softly, “the shock of finding himself outside of his own era turned Oxford into a raving lunatic. What’s to prevent the same from happening to you?”

“The jungle had two hundred bottles of Saltzmann’s delivered to my pharmacist,” Burton said. “A small dose each day will be sufficient to counter the deleterious effects.”

Sadhvi Raghavendra protested, “On what do you base that supposition?”

“I’ve been using the tonic for five years. I’m well acquainted with its effects.”

She gave a dismissive wave of a hand. “It turned you into an addict.”

“A froth-mouthed gibbering imbecile,” Swinburne added.

“Hardly that, Algy. And the addiction is already easing now that its purpose is achieved.”

Raghavendra arched an eyebrow at him and said nothing more.

“I repeat,” Edward Burton murmured. “What will you do?”

Burton smoked. He narrowed his eyes. He drawled, “Whatever is necessary. We’ll work it out when we get there. The advantage is ours.”

“And how, may I ask, do you draw that conclusion?”

“Because we can plan ahead.” Burton nodded toward Thomas Honesty. “Tom has a baby on the way.” He indicated Montague Penniforth and Detective Inspector Slaughter. “Monty already has a little boy, and Sidney a daughter. My Cannibal Club is populated by eligible bachelors. I propose that we transform it into a secret and elite organisation whose members will pass down to their descendants the details of our mission. We’ll move forward through time in a series of jumps, stopping to meet with them along the way. They’ll advise us with regard to social and technological developments. They’ll keep their eyes open for Oxford’s presence and will tell us if it manifests ahead of 2202, and will also assist us in avoiding detection.” He spoke to Honesty, Slaughter and Penniforth. “How about it, gentlemen? Will you join the group? Will you become Cannibals?”

Honesty jerked his head in assent.

Slaughter wiped a line of milk from his moustache. “A family mission, is it? In for a penny, in for a pound, that’s what I say.”

Penniforth gave a thumbs-up.

Edward Burton said, “Brother, please tell me you’re joking. By heavens, the whole endeavour is doomed from the start.”

“If you have a better idea, let’s hear it.”

The minister picked at his fingernails for a moment before, in a quiet tone, saying, “How can it possibly work? Won’t you simply create yet another alternate history?”

Burton turned to Babbage. “Charles?”

“You intend to make a change to the future, not to the past,” the old man said. “Our reality is—from the present moment onward—thus suspended between two possibilities: you will come back from the future or you won’t. For you, as you travel forward through time to 2202, the history you pass through will not be in any way defined by the answer, for you won’t yet have provided it.”

“What? What? What?” Swinburne screeched.

Ignoring him, Burton asked, “But if we ask someone from the future what became of us?”

“They simply won’t know,” Babbage replied. “Every consequence of your return—or consequence of your none return—will remain in an indefinite state until you actually do one or the other.”

“And if we do return, will we be able to act on the knowledge gained from the future?”

“Yes.”

“So we’d be creating yet another branch of history.”

“From the perspective of the future you’ve returned from, yes, but subjectively, no.”

“Aargh!” Swinburne shrieked. “How can time be subjective?”

“My dear boy!” Babbage exclaimed. “How can it not be?”

“I’m hearing words,” Trounce grumbled, “but if you threw them into a bag, gave it a good shake, and poured them out, the results would make just as much sense to me.”

The minister held up a hand to halt the discussion. “All right. All right. Let us suppose I finance the project. Who would you take with you, Dick?”

“A small company,” the king’s agent answered. “Volunteers only.”

“Me,” Swinburne said.

“And me,” Sadhvi Raghavendra put in. “You’ll need my medical expertise, especially if you’re dosing yourselves with that horrible tincture.”

“It’s utterly preposterous,” Detective Inspector Trounce declared. “Whatever it is. Nevertheless, you can count on me. Perhaps I’ll eventually understand what I’m becoming involved with.”

“The Orpheus is my ship,” Lawless stated. “I’ll not give her over to anyone else, so I’m in, too. But crew?”

“How much can be automated?” Burton asked Babbage.

“A lot. The Mark Three will fly her. I’ll give the Orpheus a brain.”

Lawless whistled. “That’ll be interesting.” He pursed his lips then said to Burton, “I suppose I can train you and your fellows for whatever duties remain.”

“I’ll come,” Maneesh Krishnamurthy announced. He gripped his cousin, Bhatti, by the arm before he could also volunteer. “No, Shyamji. You’ve been romancing that charming young dressmaker. I have high hopes for you. Put a ring on her finger. Start a family. Throw your lot in with the Cannibal Club.”

“But—”

“No argument.”

Shyamji Bhatti frowned before offering a shrugged concession.

Gooch said, “You’ll require an engineer to keep the airship in good order. Mr. Brunel is out of action and shows no sign of recovery. Take me.”

Burton said, “Thank you, Daniel.” He glanced at each of the volunteers in turn. “Seven of us, then. Let me remind all of you that even if we inadvertently cause further bifurcations in history, we can travel back along them. This world will still be here. We can return to it.” He faced his brother. “Minister?”

Edward held his sibling’s eyes for a second. “Very well. If only to save us from a plethora of stilted lunatics, I’ll sanction this tomfoolery. I’ll also see to it that the Cannibal Club receives whatever funding it requires, with one proviso; I shall lead it. The group’s mission will need to be meticulously planned, its existence ingeniously concealed, its continuity assured for many generations. There is no man alive more suited to such a job than I.”

“Agreed,” Burton said with a slight smile.

Over the course of the next hour, the minister secured one of the hotel’s private sitting rooms, and the core members of the Cannibal Club were summoned.

By seven o’clock, they were all present with the exception of Henry Murray, who’d left the city to visit friends in Somerset. Sir Richard Francis Burton, Edward Burton, Richard Monckton Milnes, Thomas Bendyshe, Doctor James Hunt, Sir Edward Brabrooke and Charles Bradlaugh settled in the chamber, accepted drinks, and each lit a cigar or pipe.

“‘Attend immediately by order of the king,’” Brabrooke quoted. “I’ve never before received such a peremptory invitation.”

“Nor have you ever been requested to do what I am about to ask of you,” the king’s agent said. “We find ourselves in extraordinary circumstances, gentlemen. So strange, in fact, that you’ll be required to swear an oath of absolute secrecy and loyalty to the crown before we continue.”

The club members glanced at one another, eyebrows raised, but none objected, and, after the vows were made, full disclosure followed, causing the brows to rise even higher.

Once the briefing was over and the commission served, they sat in stunned silence, which was eventually broken by Bendyshe, who suddenly bellowed with laughter and cried out, “By all that’s holy, you’ve assigned to us a mission to mate!”

Doctor James Hunt grinned. “I shall devote myself to it assiduously.”

Sir Edward Brabrooke raised his glass. “Ladies of London beware.”

“Tally ho!” Charles Bradlaugh cheered.

Monckton Milnes looked at Burton and winked.

Burton left his brother with the group to plan the future of the club. He returned to suite five. His colleagues there had divided into smaller groups, each discussing some specific aspect of the planned venture.

“I wish Brunel were with us,” Gooch quietly said to him. “I don’t doubt I can build Babbage’s version of a Nimtz generator, but I’m certain Isambard would make a better job of it.”

“You can’t revive him?”

“I fear not. When the damaged time suit vanished, the burst of energy it transmitted appears to have erased his mind from the diamonds in his babbage calculator.”

“But—” Burton’s brow creased, “if that’s the case, why did it not also erase the undamaged helmet?”

“I asked Babbage the very same question. He posits that it’s because the helmet contained a healthy version of the same mind. What hit Brunel as something alien and overwhelming struck the helmet as a moment of disordered thought that it was able to quash with its own rationality. For poor Brunel, it was too unfamiliar. He had no way to resist. We’ve lost our friend and the world’s most brilliant engineer. He’s dead.”

“I mourn with you, Daniel. He was a great man and a good friend. But I also have every faith that, even without him, you can fulfil what we require of you.”

Gooch flexed his mechanical arms and folded his real ones across his chest. “I’ll direct all the Department of Guided Science’s resources to the design and construction of the Nimtz generator and to the refit of the Orpheus. Despite the complexity of the project, with so many people working on it, it won’t take more than a few weeks. But what of the future, Sir Richard? Surely they’ll have flying machines. Won’t our nineteenth-century rotorship stick out like a sore thumb? How will we avoid detection?”

“We’ll depend on the Cannibals,” Burton answered. “Or, rather, on their descendants. Their remit will include the securing of up-to-date airships into which we can transfer the Orpheus’s machinery. We must replace her as we travel.”

“Expensive.”

“My brother intends to make careful investments to assure us adequate funds.”

A thrill of unexpected excitement suddenly coursed through Burton’s veins. He left Gooch, went to a window, and looked out at the Strand. The street lamps glowed unsteadily, glimmering through falling snow. Pedestrians crowded the pavements. Traffic pumped steam and smoke into the air.

A new expedition! A new journey into the unknown!

After so many extraordinary events, Burton felt almost immune to further surprises and, indeed, over the course of the following three weeks, though he was six times pounced on by Spring Heeled Jacks, he dealt with them in an almost perfunctory manner, by now aware that they succumbed easily to a bullet or a blow to the head. He sustained no further injuries. However, at the end of that period, the theory he’d formed to explain the creatures and the events associated with them was somewhat shaken by an occurrence that didn’t fit into the picture.

It happened on a wet Thursday morning just a few yards from his house.

He’d breakfasted, gone to the mews at the rear of number 14, fired up the furnace in his steam sphere, and set off for Battersea Power Station.

Steering out of the alley that opened onto Montagu Place, he directed the vehicle toward the junction with Gloucester Place, drove past his front door, and pushed his toes down on the accelerator plate.

A bubble appeared in the air less than twenty feet ahead. It popped, and a woman fell into the road. She screamed. Bits of polished wood and a severed arm hit the ground around her.

Burton slammed his heels down, braking hard. It was too late. The sphere thudded into the woman, she was dragged under its drive band, and Burton was jolted as it bumped over her.

He threw himself out and ran to the back of the vehicle.

Nearby, on his corner, Mr. Grub yelled, “Bloody hell!”

The woman lay broken and bleeding. Her appearance was thoroughly bizarre; she possessed a preternaturally tall and attenuated body, a very narrow face, huge black eyes with no whites around the pupils, and a lipless mouth. She was colourfully attired, as if for a carnival.

She blinked at Burton and in a faint voice said, “Oh! It’s you again! Where are we?”

A bubble formed around her. The king’s agent stepped back.

The woman vanished with a loud bang, taking a bowl-shaped lump of macadam with her.

Grub ran over. “Blimey! Where’d she go?”

Burton said, “Back to wherever she came from, I suppose.”

“And left a bloomin’ great pothole behind her.”

“I’ll report it,” Burton said. He sighed. “We live in strange times, Mr. Grub.”

“Aye,” Grub muttered, “I blame Disraeli. He’s a bit of a dandy, ain’t he? I reckons this world would make a lot more sense if an ordinary ol’ geezer like me was in charge.”

“You should run for parliament.”

Grub shook his head sadly. “Nah. It’s not me place to do so.”

Six weeks later, Burton took lunch with Thomas Bendyshe in the Athenaeum. Despite being a palatial and tall-ceilinged chamber, the club’s eatery had always been known by the rather more humble appellation of ‘the Coffee Room.’

Bendyshe, as usual, was at full volume. Oblivious to the morsel of lamb chop lodged between his front teeth, he bellowed, “So you’ll be off tomorrow then, old boy?”

“Keep your voice down,” Burton urged. “For pity’s sake, Tom, why must you always hoot like a confounded foghorn? And yes, the Orpheus is ready at last.”

“My word!” his companion trumpeted. “What a rapid job they’ve made of it, hey? Bloomin’ miracle workers!”

It was true, the Department of Guided Science, and especially Charles Babbage and Daniel Gooch, had worked at a phenomenal rate to prepare the vessel for its forthcoming voyage. Battersea Power Station had never been so crowded or so active. Its engineers, physicists, logicians, theoretical mathematicians, designers, inventors, chemists and metallurgists had worked night and day without pause. Even the venerable Michael Faraday had been called out of retirement to contribute his expertise to the project.

Bendyshe used his fork to stab the last potato on his plate, transferred it to his mouth and before he’d swallowed it, said, “I’ve not seen you since that extraordinary meeting at the Venetia. Lord, what a couple of months. How many times have you been assaulted by the jumping Jacks?”

“Eleven,” Burton replied. “And look at this.”

He took a quick gulp of wine then reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded letter, which he handed across the table.

Bendyshe put down his cutlery, took it, opened it, read it, and hollered, “From old George Herne on Zanzibar!”

“Shhh!” Burton hissed. “It is. He reports that the stilt men have been causing mayhem even there, and word has reached him from Kazeh that they’ve been seen in that far-flung town, too. The Africans consider them invading demons.”