Текст книги "Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon"
Автор книги: Mark Hodder
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Mark Hodder
Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon
THE FIRST PART
THE VOYAGE TO AFRICA
“One of the gladdest moments in human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey to unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of Habit, the leaden weight of Routine, the cloak of many Cares and the Slavery of Home, man feels once more happy. The blood flows with the fast circulation of childhood…afresh dawns the morn of life….”
– SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON'S JOURNAL, 2ND DECEMBER, 1856.
CHAPTER 1
Murder at Fryston
“The future influences the present just as much as the past.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche
Sir Richard Francis Burton wriggled beneath a bush at the edge of a thicket in the top western corner of Green Park, London, and cursed himself for a fool. He should have realised that he'd lose consciousness. He should have arrived earlier to compensate. Now the whole mission was in jeopardy.
He lay flat for a moment, until the pain in his side abated, then hefted his rifle and propped himself up on his elbows, aiming the weapon at the crowd below. He glanced at the inscription on its stock. It read: Lee-Enfield Mk III. Manufactured in Tabora, Africa, 1918.
Squinting through the telescopic sight, he examined the faces of the people gathering around the path at the bottom of the slope.
Where was his target?
His eyes blurred. He shook his head slightly, trying to dispel an odd sense of dislocation, the horrible feeling that he was divided into two separate identities. He'd first experienced this illusion during fevered bouts of malaria in Africa back in '57, then again four years later, when he was made the king's agent. He thought he'd conquered it. Perhaps he had. After all, this time there really were two of him.
It was the afternoon of the 10th of June, 1840, and a much younger Richard Burton was currently travelling from Italy through Europe, on his way to enrol at Trinity College, Oxford.
Recalling that wayward, opinionated, and ill-disciplined youngster, he whispered, “Time changed me, thank goodness. The question is, can I return the favour?”
He aimed from face to face, seeking the man he'd come to shoot.
It was a mild day. The gentlemen sported light coats and top hats, and carried canes. The ladies were adorned in bonnets and dainty gloves and held parasols. They were all waiting to see Queen Victoria ride past in her carriage.
He levelled the crosshairs at one person after another. Young Edward Oxford was somewhere among the crowd, an insane eighteen-year-old with two flintlock pistols under his frock coat and murder on his mind. But Burton was not here to gun down the queen's would-be assassin.
“Damnation!” His hands were shaking. Lying stretched out like this would have been uncomfortable for any man his age-he was forty-seven years old-but it was made far worse by the two ribs the prime minister's man, Gregory Hare, had broken. They felt like a knife in his side.
He shifted cautiously, trying not to disturb the bush. It was vital that he remain concealed.
A face caught his attention. It was round, decorated with a large moustache, and possessed a palpable air of arrogance. Burton had never seen the individual before-at least not with this appearance-but he knew him: Henry de La Poer Beresford, 3rd Marquess of Waterford, called by many the “Mad Marquess.” The man was the founder of the Libertines, a politically influential movement that preached freedom from social shackles and which passionately opposed technological progress. Three years from now, Beresford was going to lead a breakaway group of radicals, the Rakes, whose anarchic philosophy would challenge social propriety. The marquess believed that the human species was restricting its own evolution; that each individual had the potential to become a trans-natural man, a being entirely free of restraint, with no conscience or self-doubt, a thing that did whatever it wanted, whenever it wanted. It was a dangerous idea-the Great War had proved that to Burton-but not one that concerned him at this particular moment.
“I'll be dealing with you twenty-one years from now,” he murmured.
A distant cheer echoed across the park. The gates of Buckingham Palace had opened and the royal carriage was steering out onto the path.
“Come on!” Burton whispered. “Where are you?”
Where was the man he'd come to kill?
Where was Spring Heeled Jack?
He peered through the 'scope. The scene he saw through its lens was incomprehensible. Shapes, movement, shadows, deep colours; they refused to coalesce into anything of substance. The world had shattered, and he was splintered and scattered among its debris.
Dead. Obviously, he was dead.
No. Stop it. This won't do. Don't submit to it. Not again.
He closed his eyes, dug his fingernails into his palms, and pulled his lips back over his teeth. By sheer force of will, he located the disparate pieces of himself and drew them together, until:
Frank Baker. My name is Frank Baker.
Good. That felt familiar.
He smelled cordite. Noise assaulted his ears. The air was hot.
Frank Baker. Yes. The name had slipped from his mouth in response to a medic's query.
“And what are you, Mr. Baker?”
A strange question.
“An observer.”
An equally strange answer. Like the name, it had come out of nowhere, but the overworked medics were perfectly satisfied with it.
Spells of nothingness had followed. Fevers. Hallucinations. Then recovery. They'd assumed he was with the civilian Observer Corps, and placed him under the charge of the short squeaky-voiced individual currently standing at his side.
What else? What else? What were those things I was looking at?
He opened his eyes. There wasn't much light.
He became aware of something crushed in his fist, opened his hand, looked down at it, and found that he was holding a red poppy. It felt important. He didn't know why. He slipped it into his pocket.
Pushing the brim of his tin helmet back, he wiped sweat from his forehead, then lifted the top of his periscope over the lip of the trench and peered through its viewfinder again. To his left, the crest of a bloated sun was melting into a horizon that quivered in the heat, and ahead, in the gathering gloom, seven towering, long-legged arachnids were picking their way through the red weed that clogged no-man's-land. Steam was billowing from their exhaust funnels, pluming stark white against the darkening purple sky.
Harvestmen, he thought. Those things are harvestmen spiders bred to a phenomenal size by the Technologists' Eugenicist faction. No, wait, not Eugenicists-they're the enemy-our lot are called Geneticists. The arachnids are grown and killed and gutted and engineers fit out their carapaces with steam-driven machinery.
He examined the contraptions more closely and noted details that struck him as different-but different from what? There were, for instance, Gatling guns slung beneath their small bodies, where Baker expected to see cargo nets. They swivelled and glinted and flashed as they sent a hail of bullets into the German trenches, and their metallic clattering almost drowned out the chug of the vehicles' engines. The harvestmen were armour-plated, too, and each driver, rather than sitting on a seat fitted inside the hollowed-out body, was mounted on a sort of saddle on top of it, which suggested that the space inside the carapace was filled with bigger, more powerful machinery than-than-
What am I comparing them with?
“Quite a sight, isn't it?” came a high-pitched voice.
Baker cleared his throat. He wasn't ready to communicate, despite a vague suspicion that he'd already done so-that he and the small man beside him had made small talk not too many minutes ago.
He opened his mouth to speak, but his companion went on: “If I were a poet, I might do it justice, but it's too much of a challenge for a mere journalist. How the devil am I to describe such an unearthly scene? Anyone who hasn't actually witnessed it would think I'm writing a scientific romance. Perhaps they'll call me the new Jules Verne.”
Think! Come on! String together the man's words. Break the back of the language. Glean meaning from it.
He sucked in a breath as a memory flowered. He was on a bed in the field hospital. There was a newspaper in his hands. He was reading a report, and it had been written by this short, plump little fellow.
Yes, that's it. Now speak, Baker. Open your mouth and speak!
“You'll manage,” he said. “I read one of your articles the other day. You have a rare talent. Who's Jules Verne?”
He saw the little man narrow his eyes and examine him through the twilight, trying to make out his features.
“A French novelist. He was killed during the fall of Paris. You haven't heard of him?”
“I may have,” Baker answered, “but I must confess, I remember so little about anything that I'm barely functional.”
“Ah, of course. It's not an uncommon symptom of shell shock, or of fever, for that matter, and you suffered both severely by all accounts. Do you know why you were in the Lake Regions?”
The Lake Regions? They are in-they are in Africa! This is Africa!
“I haven't the foggiest notion. My first recollection is of being borne along on a litter. The next thing I knew, I was here, being poked at by the medical staff.”
The journalist grunted and said, “I did some asking around. The men from the Survey Corps found you near the western shore of the Ukerewe Lake, on the outskirts of the Blood Jungle. A dangerous place to be-always swarming with Germans. You were unarmed, that odd glittering hieroglyph appeared to have been freshly tattooed into your head, and you were ranting like a madman.”
Hieroglyph?
Baker reached up, pushed his hand beneath his helmet, and ran his fingers through his short hair. There were hard ridges in his scalp.
“I don't remember any of that.”
I don't remember. I don't remember. I don't remember.
“The surveyors wanted to take you to Tabora but the route south was crawling with lurchers, so they legged it east until they hooked up with the battalions gathering here. You were in and out of consciousness throughout the hike but never lucid enough to explain yourself.”
The correspondent was suddenly interrupted by the loud “Ulla! Ulla!” of a siren. It was a harvestman spider signalling its distress. He turned his attention back to his periscope and Baker followed suit.
One of the gigantic vehicles had become entangled. Scarlet tendrils were coiling around its stilt-like legs, snaking up toward the driver perched high above the ground. The man was desperately yanking at the control levers in an attempt to shake the writhing plant from his machine. He failed. The harvestman leaned farther and farther to its left, then toppled over, dragged down by the carnivorous weed. The siren gurgled and died. The driver rolled from his saddle, tried to stand, fell, and started to thrash about. He screeched as plant pods burst beneath his weight and sprayed him with acidic sap. His uniform erupted into flames and the flesh bubbled and fizzled from his bones. It took less than a minute for the weed to reduce him to a naked skeleton.
“Poor sod,” the little man muttered. He lowered his surveillance instrument and shook dust from his right hand. “Did you see the weed arrive yesterday? I missed it. I was sleeping.”
“No.”
“Apparently a thin ribbon of cloud, like a snake, blew in from the sea and rained the seeds. The plant sprouted overnight and it's been growing ever since. It appears quite impassable. I tell you, Baker, those blasted Hun sorcerers know their stuff when it comes to weather and plants. It's how they still drum hundreds of thousands more Africans into the military than we do. The tribes are so superstitious, they'll do anything you say if they believe you can summon or prevent rain and grow them a good crop. Colonel Crowley is having a tough time opposing them-the sorcerers, I mean.”
Baker struggled to process all this. Sorcerers? Plants? Weather control?
“Crowley?” he asked.
The shorter man raised his eyebrows. “Good lord! Your brain really is shot through! Colonel Aleister Crowley. Our chief medium. The wizard of wizards!”
Baker said nothing.
The correspondent shrugged in bafflement, pressed up against the side of the trench as a line of troops pushed past, chuckled as a sergeant said, with a grin and a wink, “Keep your heads down, gents, I don't want holes in those expensive helmets,” then turned back to his 'scope. Baker watched this and struggled to overcome his sense of detachment.
I don't belong here. I don't understand any of it.
He wiped his sleeve across his mouth-the atmosphere was thick with humidity and he was sweating profusely-then put his eye to his periscope's lens.
Two more of the harvestmen were being pulled down into the wriggling flora. He said, “How many men must die before someone orders the blasted vehicles to pull back?”
“We won't retreat,” came the answer. “This is our last chance. If we can capture German resources in Africa, we might be able to launch some sort of counterattack in Europe. If not, we're done for. So we'll do whatever it takes, even if it means pursuing forlorn hopes. Look! Another one has gone down!”
The three remaining harvestmen set their sirens screaming: “Ulla! Ulla! Ulla! Ulla!”
The journalist continued, “Terrible racket. One could almost believe the damned spiders are alive and terrified.”
Baker shook his head slightly. “Strictly speaking, they're not spiders. Spiders are of the order Aranaea, whereas harvestmen are Opiliones.”
How do I know that?
The war correspondent snorted. “They're not of any order now-not since our Technologists scraped 'em out!”
All along the British trenches, men started to blow on whistles.
“Damn! Here comes our daily dose of spores. Get your mask on.”
Baker moved without thinking about it. His hands went to his belt, opened a canvas container, pulled out a thick rubber mask, and slid it over his face. He and his companion looked at each other through circular glass eyepieces.
“I hate the smell of these things,” the smaller man said, his voice muffled. “And they make me claustrophobic. Far too stifling an item to wear in this infernal climate. What say we go back to the dugout for a brew? It's getting too dark for us to see much more here anyway. Time for a cuppa! Come on!”
Baker took a last glance through his periscope. His mask's eyepieces blurred the scene, and Africa's fast-descending night obscured it even further, but he could just make out that on the far side of the weed a thick yellow cloud was advancing, appearing luminescent against the inky sky. He shivered, turned, and followed the other along the front-line trench, into a communications ditch, and back to one of the dugouts. They passed masked soldiers-mostly Askari, African recruits, many of them barely out of childhood-who sat despondently, waiting to go over the top.
The two men arrived at a doorway, pushed a heavy curtain aside, and entered. They removed their helmets and face gear.
“Make sure the curtain is hooked back into place, it'll keep the spores out. I'll get us some light,” the journalist said.
Moments later, a hurricane lamp illuminated the small underground bunker. It was sparsely furnished with two wooden beds, two tables, three chairs, and a couple of storage chests.
“Ugh!” Baker grunted. “Rats!”
“Nothing we can do about 'em. The little blighters are everywhere. They're the least of your problems. In a couple of days, that nice clean uniform of yours will be infested with lice and you'll feel like you're being eaten alive. Where's the bloody kettle? Ah, here!”
The little man got to work with a portable stove. In the light, his eyes were revealed to be a startling blue.
Baker stepped to the smaller of the two tables, which stood against the wall. There was a washbasin on it and a square mirror hanging on a nail just above. He sought his reflection but for some reason couldn't focus on it. Either his eyes wouldn't let him see himself, or he wasn't really there.
He moved to the other table, in the middle of the dugout, and sat down.
“The spores,” he said. “What are they? Where do they come from?”
“They're more properly called A-Spores. The Hun propagate giant mushrooms, a eugenically altered version of the variety commonly known as the Destroying Angel, or Amanita bisporigera, if you prefer your botany, like your entomology, in Latin. It's deadly, and so are its spores. Breathe them in and within seconds you'll experience vomiting, cramps, delirium, convulsions, and diarrhoea. You'll be dead in less than ten minutes.”
“Botanical weapons? The weed and now the mushroom spores. How horribly ingenious!”
The other man looked back at Baker with an expression of puzzlement. “It's common knowledge that the Germans use mostly plant-based armaments, surely? And occasional animal adaptations.”
“Is it? I'm sorry. As I said, my amnesia is near total. You mentioned something called lurchers?”
“Ah. Hum. Yes. Carnivorous plants. They were one of the first weapons the Germans developed. Originally they were battle vehicles, used throughout Africa. Then one day they spontaneously mutated and consumed their drivers, which somehow resulted in them gaining a rudimentary intelligence. After that they spread rapidly and are now a danger to both sides. If you see one, and there isn't a flamethrower handy, run for your life. They're particularly prevalent in the Lake Regions, where you were found.” The journalist paused, then added, “I didn't realise your memory was quite so defective. What about physically? How are you feeling?”
“Weak, but improving, and the ophthalmia has cleared up. I was halfblind when I regained consciousness in the hospital. That confounded ailment has plagued me on and off ever since India.”
“You were in India?”
Baker frowned and rubbed his chin. “I don't know. That just popped into my head. Yes, I feel I may have been.”
“India, by crikey! You should have stayed there. It might turn out to be the last bastion of civilisation on the whole bloody planet! Is that where you joined the Corps?”
“I suppose so.”
There came a distant boom, then another, and another. The ground shook. The journalist glanced at the ceiling.
“Artillery. Peashooters. Firing from the outskirts of Dar es Salaam.”
Baker muttered to himself, “Derived from bandar es-salaam, I should think. Ironic. It means harbour of peace.”Aloud, he said: “The landscape and climate feel familiar to me. Are we south of Zanzibar? Is there a village in the area called Mzizima?”
“Hah! Mzizima and Dar es Salaam are one and the same, Baker! Incredible, isn't it, that the death of the British Empire had its origins in such an insignificant little place, and now we're back here.”
“What do you mean?”
“It's generally believed that this is where the Great War began. Have you forgotten even that?”
“Yes, I fear I have. It began in Mzizima? How is that possible? As you say, it's an insignificant little place!”
“So you recall what Dar es Salaam used to be, at least?”
“I remember that it was once nothing more than a huddle of beehive huts.”
“Quite so. But that huddle was visited by a group of German surveyors a little over fifty years ago. No one knows why they came, or what occurred, but for some reason, fighting broke out between them and Al-Manat.”
“The pre-Islamic goddess of fate?”
“Is she, by gum! Not the same one, old chap. Al-Manat was the leader of a band of female guerrilla fighters. It's rumoured she was British but her true identity is shrouded in mystery. She's one of history's great enigmas. Anyway, the fighting escalated, Britain and Germany both sent more troops here, and Mzizima became the German East Africa Company's stronghold. The Schutztruppe-the Protection Force-formed there some forty years ago and rapidly expanded the settlement. It was renamed Dar es Salaam and the place has been thriving ever since. A situation our lads will reverse this weekend.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, my friend, that on Saturday, HMA Pegasusand HMA Astraeaare going to bomb the city to smithereens.”
More explosions thumped outside. They were increasing in frequency. Everything shook. Baker glanced around nervously.
“Green peas,” his companion noted.
“You can tell just from the noise?”
“Yes. Straightforward impact strikes, like big cannonballs. The yellow variety explode when they hit and send poisonous shrapnel flying everywhere. They annihilated millions of our lads in Europe, but, fortunately, the plants don't thrive in Africa.”
Baker's fingers were gripping the edge of the table. The other man noticed, and reassured him: “We'll be all right. They take an age to get the range. Plus, of course, we're noncombatants, which means we're permitted to shelter in here, unlike the enlisted men. We'll be safe unless one of the blighters lands right on top of us, and the chances of that happening are very slim indeed.”
He got the kettle going and they sat wordlessly, listening to the barrage until the water boiled, then he spooned tea leaves into a metal pot and grumbled, “Rations are low.”
Baker noticed that his companion kept glancing back at him. He felt an inexplicable urge to duck out of the light, but there was no refuge from it. He looked on helplessly as the other man's face suddenly displayed a range of emotions in sequence: curiosity, perplexity, realisation, incredulity, shock.
The smaller man remained silent until the tea had brewed, then filled two tin mugs, added milk and sugar, handed one to Baker, sat down, blew the steam from his drink, and, raising his voice above the sound of pounding shells, asked: “I say, old chap, when did you last shave?”
Baker sighed. He murmured, “I wish I had a cigar,” put a hand into his pocket, and pulled out the poppy. He stared at it and said, absently, “What?”
“Your most recent shave. When was it?”
“I don't know. Maybe three days ago? Why do you ask?”
“Because, my dear fellow, that stubble entirely ruins your disguise. Once bearded or moustachioed, your features become instantly recognisable. They are every bit as forceful as reported, every bit as ruthless and masterful! By golly, those sullen eyes! That iron jaw! The savage scar on your cheek!”
Baker snapped, “What the devil are you blathering about?”
“I'm talking of the completely impossible and utterly incredible-but also of the perfectly obvious and indisputable!” The journalist grinned. He had to shout now-the barrage was battering violently at their ears. “Come come! I'll brook no denial, sir! I'm no fool. It's out of the question that you could be anyone else, even though it makes no sense at all that you are who you are.”
Baker glowered at him.
The other shouted, “Perhaps you'd care to explain? I assure you, I'm unusually open-minded, and I can keep a secret, if you want to impose that as a condition. My editor would never believe me anyway.”
There was a detonation just outside. The room jerked. The tea slopped. Baker started, recovered himself, and said loudly, “I really don't know what you're talking about.”
“Then allow me to make it clear. Frank Baker is most assuredly not your name.”
“Isn't it?”
“Ha-ha! So you admit that you may not be who you say you are?”
“The name occurred to me when I was asked, but I'm by no means certain that it's correct.”
Baker flinched as another impact rocked the room.
“Fair enough,” the journalist shouted. “Well then, let us make proper introductions. I was presented to you as Mr. Wells. Drop it. No need for such formality. My name is Herbert. Herbert George. War Correspondent for the Tabora Times.Most people call me Bertie, so please feel free to do the same. And, believe me, I am both astonished and very happy to meet you.” He held out his hand and it was duly clasped and shaken. “Really, don't worry about the shelling, we are much safer in here than it feels. The Hun artillery is trying for the support trenches rather than the front line. They'll gain more by destroying our supplies than by knocking off a few of the Askaris.”
Baker gave a curt nod. His mouth worked silently for a moment. He kept glancing at the poppy in his hand, then he cleared his throat and said, “You know me, then? My actual name?”
“Yes, I know you,” Wells replied. “I've read the biographies. I've seen the photographs. I know all about you. You are Sir Richard Francis Burton, the famous explorer and scholar. I cannot be mistaken.” He took a sip of his tea. “It makes no sense, though.”
“Why not?”
“Because, my dear fellow, you appear to be in your mid-forties, this is 1914, and I happen to know that you died of old age in 1890!”
Baker-Burton-shook his head. “Then I can't be who you think I am,” he said, “for I'm neither old nor dead.”
At which point, with a terrible blast, the world came to an end.
The world came to an end for Thomas Bendyshe on New Year's Day, 1863. He was dressed as the Grim Reaper when he died. A committed and outspoken atheist, his final words were: “Oh God! Oh, sweet Jesus! Please, Mary mother of God, save me!”
His fellow members of the Cannibal Club later blamed this uncharacteristic outburst on the fact that strychnine poisoning is an extremely painful way to go.
They were gathered at Fryston-Richard Monckton Milnes's Yorkshire manor house-for a combined New Year and farewell fancy dress party. The farewell wasn't intended for Bendyshe-his demise was utterly unforeseen-but for Sir Richard Francis Burton and his expedition, which was leaving en route for Africa later in the week.
Fryston, which dated from the Elizabethan Age, lacked a ballroom but behind its stone-mullioned windows there were many spacious oak-panelled chambers, warmed by inglenook fireplaces, and these were filled with costumed guests. They included the Pre-Raphaelite artists, leading Technologists, authors and poets and actors, government ministers, Scotland Yard officials, and members of the Royal Geographical Society. A number of high-ranking officers from His Majesty's Airship Orpheuswere in attendance, and among the female notables were Miss Isabella Mayson, Sister Sadhvi Raghavendra, Mrs. Iris Angell, and the famous Eugenicist-now Geneticist-Nurse Florence Nightingale, making for a very well-attended soiree, such as Monckton Milnes was famous for.
In the smoking room, Bendyshe, in a black hooded cloak and a skull mask, spent the minutes leading up to his death happily pranking the Greek god Apollo. The diminutive flame-haired Olympian, actually the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, dressed in a toga, with a laurel wreath upon his head and the gold-tipped arrow of Eros pushed through his waistband, was standing near a bay window with the Persian King Shahryar, Oliver Cromwell, Harlequin, and a cavalier; otherwise Sir Richard Francis Burton, the Secretary for War Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Monckton Milnes, and the Technologist captain of the Orpheus, Nathaniel Lawless.
Swinburne had just received a full glass of brandy from a passing waiter, who, like all the staff, was dressed in a Venetian Medico Della Pestecostume, complete with its long-beaked bird mask. The poet took a gulp, placed the glass on an occasional table at his side, and turned back to Captain Lawless, saying: “But isn't it rather a large crew? I was under the impression that rotorships are flown by seven or eight, not-how many?”
“Counting myself,” the captain replied, “there are twenty-six, and that's not even a full complement.”
“My hat! How on earth do you keep yourselves occupied?”
Lawless laughed, his pale-grey eyes twinkling, his straight teeth whiter even than his snowy, tightly clipped beard. “I don't think you've quite grasped the size of the Orpheus,”he said. “She's Mr. Brunel's biggest flying machine. A veritable titan. When you see her tomorrow, I'll wager she'll take your breath away.”
The Technologist Daniel Gooch joined the group. As always, he was wearing a harness from which two extra mechanical arms extended. Swinburne had already expressed the opinion that the engineer should have outfitted himself as a giant insect. As a matter of fact, though, Gooch was dressed as a Russian Cossack. He said, “She's magnificent, Mr. Swinburne. Luxurious, too. Designed for passenger cruises. She'll carry the expedition, the supplies, and both your vehicles, with plenty of room to spare.”
Bendyshe, standing just behind the poet, with his back to him and conversing with Charles Bradlaugh-who was done up as Dick Turpin-surreptitiously took the brandy glass from the table. He slipped it beneath his mask, drained it in a single gulp, put it back, and winked at Bradlaugh through his mask's right eye socket.
“Are all the crew positions filled, Captain?” Burton asked. “I hear you had some problems.”
Lawless nodded. “The two funnel scrubbers supplied to us by the League of Chimney Sweeps proved rather too young and undisciplined for the job. They were playing silly beggars in the ventilation pipes and caused some considerable damage. I dismissed them at once.” He addressed Gooch, who was serving as chief engineer aboard the vessel: “I understand the replacements will join us at Battersea?”
“Yes, sir, and they'll bring with them a new length of pipe from the League.” One of his mechanical hands dipped into his jacket pocket and withdrew a notebook. He consulted it and said, “Their names are William Cornish and Tobias Threadneedle.”
“Nippers?”
“Cornish is a youngster, sir. Apparently Mr. Threadneedle is considerably older, though I expect he'll prove childishly small in stature, like all his kind.”
Unable to stop himself, Gooch glanced down at Swinburne, who poked out his tongue in response.
“A master sweep, no doubt,” Burton offered. “I believe the Beetle is attempting to incorporate their Brotherhood into the League.” He paused, then said, “Where have I heard the name William Cornish before?”
“From me,” Swinburne answered, in his high, piping voice. “I know him. And a fine young scamp he is, too, though rather too eager to spend his evenings setting traps in graveyards in the hope of catching a resurrectionist or two!” He reached for his glass, raised it to his lips, started, looked at it ruefully, and muttered, “Blast!” He signalled to a waiter.
