Текст книги "The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi"

Автор книги: Mark Hodder

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

Monckton Milnes’s eyebrows rose. “By Gad! That’s damned peculiar. What does it mean?”

“It means that Edward was already aware that I am somehow, unknowingly, involved in the events I’m investigating.”

Burton’s friend nodded as if this was a statement of the obvious. “He must have received information to that effect from Abdu El Yezdi, before the latter’s sudden silence. Can you continue to doubt the existence of spirit advisors, Richard?”

Burton pressed his hands together and tapped them against his chin. “Let us just say that I now regard the subject as an avenue worth exploring. Which brings me to my second question. When Countess Sabina first approached you, back in 1840, why did you give her any credence?”

“You and I have on a couple of occasions discussed the pornographic poem The Betuliad.”

Burton nodded. “A celebration of flagellation, author unknown. What of it?”

“The countess knew that it also exists under an alternate title—The Rodiad. She was also aware of the author’s identity.”

“Indeed! Who wrote it?”

“I did.”

Burton laughed. “You deceptive hound!”

“I was just having a little fun at your and everyone else’s expense. No one—absolutely no one—knew it was my work. Yet she did, and I couldn’t ignore or discount her.”

“Then I rescind my earlier refusal,” Burton said. “I would like to meet with her. Might she be willing to see me?”

“I should think so. She’s a virtual recluse these days but she still comes to me when I request it, and I daresay she’ll call on you if I ask her to.”

“Thank you. As to whether I’ve made any progress or not, I can’t judge it, but there have certainly been developments, the main being that, with Oliphant’s help, Burke and Hare have broken Francis Galton out of Bedlam.”

“Good God! They have Galton, of all people? That man’s mastery of Eugenics poses a terrible danger. Are you certain it was Burke and Hare?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“What the hell are they playing at, I wonder?”

“I intend to find out.”

Monckton Milnes, his face creasing with worry, massaged his forehead.

Burton said, “I’m concerned you might also be at risk. I imagine they have a bone to pick with you.”

“Probably not. I strongly doubt that Palmerston’s thugs are aware of the role I played in their master’s fall from grace. I was very much behind the scenes.”

“Good,” Burton responded. “Nevertheless, I’m glad you’re off to Fryston. If Burke and Hare are currently in London, then perhaps it’s best that you’re not.”

Monckton Milnes jumped to his feet. “You’re right, and I’m running late. Sorry to be unsociable but I really must dash. Bags to pack and whatnot. I understand you’ll be at Wallington Hall next month. I’ll see you there.”

Burton rose. “Ah! You’re attending, too, then?”

“I wouldn’t miss it. Rossetti showed me some of young Swinburne’s poetry—it’s quite extraordinary. I’ve never read anything like it. A prodigious talent! He’s going to be an absolute sensation and I’m eager to meet him. I wrote to Lady Trevelyan. She doesn’t entirely approve of me—I’m rather too raffish, apparently. Nevertheless, I managed to wangle an invite. A few days there, then perhaps we can travel together to New Wardour Castle, yes?”

“Certainly.”

They strode across the room. The explorer opened the door and followed his friend through.

“Incidentally,” Burton said as they descended the stairs, “what of your French acquaintance?”

“No word yet—the post isn’t that fast—but I’ll contact you the moment he replies.”

“Very well. Of course, I’ll do likewise if I discover anything about Nurse Nightingale.”

Monckton Milnes took his topper from the hallway stand.

Just as Burton was reaching to open the street door, a tremendous thumping rattled it on its hinges.

“Great heavens!” Monckton Milnes exclaimed. “Are we under attack?”

“It appears so.” Burton turned the handle and opened the door. Detective Inspector Trounce, who was just commencing his next assault, overbalanced and stumbled in.

Burton caught him. He introduced his guests to one another, and pointed at the detective’s hat. “What on earth is that?”

“Humph! Bowler!”

“Bowler?”

Monckton Milnes interjected, “It’s the latest thing. All the rage with the up-and-coming. Detective Inspector Trounce is obviously quite the man about town.”

Trounce removed the headgear and punched it. “Up-and-coming? More like down-and-out. I may well be a detective inspector but I’m still the village idiot as far as my colleagues are concerned.”

“Fashion always evokes merriment before it catches on,” Monckton Milnes observed. “My pegtop trousers had the same effect. Now every blighter is wearing them, which, I regret to say, renders them far too fashionable to be fashionable, if you get my drift.”

“Eh?” Trounce said.

“Never mind,” Burton interrupted. “What can I do for you, Trounce?”

“I just came by to say thank you, sir.”

“No need for the ‘sir.’ Plain old Burton will do, or captain, if you prefer. Thank me for what?”

“For whatever you said to the home secretary. The chief commissioner has given me the—um—” He glanced at Monckton Milnes and shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other.

“It’s all right. My friend works closely with the government and knows all about it.”

“Oh, I see. Well then. Slaughter and I are to work the abductions case together.”

“Good show!”

“I bid you good hunting, gentlemen,” Monckton Milnes said. “Richard, if I find anything of relevance in my library, I shall post it to you at once.” He shook his friend’s hand, and the detective inspector’s, stepped down to the pavement, and strolled away.

“Your arrival is propitious, Trounce,” Burton said. “Can you accompany me to Kent?”

“In relation to the case?”

“Yes. Have you heard of Charles Darwin?”

“No.”

“He’s related to Francis Galton.”

Trounce gave a start. “By Jove! A police alert was just issued for an escaped lunatic called Galton. The same man?”

“The same,” Burton confirmed. “He was aided in his escape by Burke and Hare. It’s possible that Darwin was involved.”

“Then we must confront him at once.”

“Indeed. But first, come upstairs. I’ve decided to take you fully into my confidence. You need to know the remaining details of the case.”

Forty minutes later, as they left the house, Burton asked, “Are we to take to the air again?”

“If you don’t object, and if you can manage it without destroying another of the Yard’s rotorchairs.”

Burton winked at Bram Stoker as they passed the little newsboy. “Object to another adventure with Mr. Macallister Fogg?” he said. “Of course not!”

They flew fifteen miles or so southeast, landed in Downe Village, asked directions, then flew another quarter of a mile south and put down in the large and well-tended gardens of Down House. The rumble of their machines’ engines had hardly ceased before they were surrounded by a horde of excited children, all eagerly asking about the rotorchairs and begging for a ride.

A middle-aged woman emerged from the house and shooed away the youngsters.

“Mrs. Darwin?” Burton asked.

“Yes,” she replied, prising a small boy from her skirts. “Run along, Leo. Into the house with you.”

“My sincere apologies for descending upon you unannounced,” Burton continued as the boy scampered off. “If we’ve come at an inconvenient time—”

“There’s no other such in this house, I’m afraid. You gentlemen are?”

“Sir Richard Francis Burton and Detective Inspector William Trounce. Is your husband at home, ma’am?”

“He is, but I’d rather he wasn’t disturbed. He’s in bad health and is dealing with some rather pressing matters. What is this about?”

“Francis Galton. He’s escaped from Bethlem Asylum.”

Mrs. Darwin put a hand to the small crucifix that was hanging from her necklace. Her eyes widened. “Oh, Lord! Is Charles in danger?”

“I couldn’t say. I know he regularly corresponded with Mr. Galton.”

“Yes, he did. They are half-cousins and family is extremely important to Charles.”

“And I understand they also share scientific interests?”

“I wouldn’t—that is to say—Francis has ideas that—his thinking is not—is not—” She stopped and frowned.

Burton waited for her to clarify her thoughts.

“Francis has some very strange notions,” she finally continued, “which my husband humours but does not approve of. I think—I think, under the circumstances—” She stopped again, then said, more assertively, “I shall fetch Charles. This news is the last thing he needs, but it would be wrong of me to keep it from him. Will you wait here? I’ll send him out. A little fresh air will do him good, at least.”

She left them and ran across the lawn and into the house.

“What do you make of that?” Trounce asked.

“She appears very tense,” Burton replied. “More so, perhaps, than can be attributed to the mothering of so many children. Lord knows, that must place her under enough pressure, but I suspect there’s some other issue at play. Did you notice how she repeatedly touched her crucifix?”

“As a matter of fact, I did. What of it?”

“My fiancée also wears the cross. I’ve noted her touching it to draw on her faith for comfort. Mrs. Darwin’s action was quite different. There was a sort of desperation about it, as if the solace she was seeking was no longer there.”

Trounce gave a non-committal grunt and nodded toward the house. Burton looked and saw a casually dressed man emerging from it, walking stick in hand. He was about fifty years old, an inch or so under six feet tall—but a little stooped—stockily built, and bald-headed. His brows, which jutted craggily, buried his eyes in deep shadow, and his jaw, bordered by curly sideburns, might have been carved from rock, so solid was it. However, as he drew closer and the sunlight illuminated his eyes, Burton noted an intense torment in them, and realised that the man’s back was bent not from physical causes but from an emotional burden.

“I am Charles Darwin,” the scientist said. “Sir Richard, I regret that we’ve never run into one another. I have followed your exploits with much interest. My profoundest congratulations. Your solving of the Nile question is as impressive a feat as I have ever heard of.”

“Thank you, sir,” Burton responded. “It is indeed unfortunate that our paths haven’t crossed until now—though not an uncommon circumstance within the RGS. An organisation of travellers inevitably finds its headquarters more than half-empty for most of the time. This is my colleague, Detective Inspector Trounce.”

“Good day to you, sir. Colleague?”

Burton smiled. “A geographer and a policeman—a strange combination, but it so happens that I’ve been commissioned to investigate a certain matter, and it has thrown Detective Inspector Trounce and I together.”

Darwin used his stick to indicate a path that led from his garden into the fields beyond. When he spoke again, he stuttered a little. “Sh-shall we walk? You can tell me all about it. Th-this matter concerns Francis, does it not? My wife said he’s escaped.”

“That’s correct,” Burton responded as they set off down the path. “And he was assisted by Burke and Hare.”

“The—the—the traitors? B-but what has he to do with them?”

Trounce said, “That’s what we were hoping you could tell us, Mr. Darwin.”

They skirted a hedgerow, thick with the billowy flowers of white snakeroot, and entered a meadow that had been neatly cropped by sheep. Rabbits raced away from them and vanished into their burrows.

Darwin waved his stick from side to side in an extravagant gesture of negation. “No, no, no!” he cried out. “Francis has never once mentioned the rogues. I cannot believe he has any connection with them. W-w-when they fled the country back in ’forty-one, he was still at Trinity College and so deeply involved in his research that he barely saw a soul. By mid ’forty-five, his Irish experiment had failed, he’d suffered a severe breakdown, and had been incarcerated. As far as anyone knows, Burke and Hare were somewhere on the continent during those years.”

“Who funded his research?” Burton asked.

“His club.”

“It being?”

“The—the—the League of Enochians.”

“I’ve not heard of it.”

“I have,” Trounce put in. “It occupies a building on the corner of Mildew Street where it joins Saint Martin’s Lane.”

“So this club has an interest in Eugenics?”

Darwin stopped and thumped his stick into the ground. “Damn Eugenics!” Burton and Trounce looked at him in surprise, taken aback at the show of anger from a man who had thus far appeared mild in temperament.

“Francis is family,” Darwin continued, “but the manner in which that bloody club encouraged him to appropriate and pervert my research is—is—is absolutely foul. I cannot forgive that he allowed himself to be so swayed.”

Burton put out a hand and touched the scientist’s arm. “Mr. Darwin, perhaps this would make rather more sense to me if I understood the nature of your work.”

They resumed their walk. Darwin snorted. “Sir Richard, I’ve been attempting to articulate my theory since 1837—”

Without thinking, the explorer blurted, “The beginning of the Great Amnesia!”

Darwin peered at him curiously. “W-w-what of it?”

“I—” Burton stopped, considered, and went on, “I wonder how it affected you, that is all.”

“The same way it affected everyone else. In 1840, I had to extensively review three years’ worth of research and notes, and it all seemed oddly unfamiliar to me. However, it made sense, and as a matter of fact, in going through it, my enthusiasm was renewed, my ideas clarified, and I was set upon a course that led me to my current position.”

“Which is?”

They reached the corner of the field and followed the path as it curved sharply to the right.

“W-w-which is that, having fully developed my hypothesis, I have, since ’fifty-seven, been writing a detailed account of it. However, a year ago, to my dismay, I received a paper from a fellow scientist—Alfred Wallace—that dealt with the very same matter. I thought I had been f-f-forestalled, but my publisher insisted that if I produced an abstract of my dissertation, it could be published before Wallace pipped me to the post. I have thus been struggling for thirteen months to condense my w-w-work. And now you ask me to explain it in a few sentences!”

Burton glanced up at the blue, cloud-spotted sky. He thought he could hear the distant clatter of approaching engines.

“I’m trying to understand why Burke and Hare took Mr. Galton from the asylum,” he said, “and can only surmise that it has something to do with Eugenics. If he developed that science by subverting your own research, then I must have some grasp of your theory in order to comprehend his version of it.”

Darwin stopped, poked the tip of his cane into a blackberry bush, and used it to lift a clump of overripened berries. He bent and scrutinised them closely.

“Very well,” he muttered. “Let us put it this way. Our world has limited resources, thus every individual of every species is engaged in intense competition for them. Do you follow?”

“I do, sir.”

“Within any given species, individuals vary in their t-t-traits. One might have better eyesight than another, or sharper teeth, or a brighter-coloured skin, or a better ability to endure cold, and so on and so forth. Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Depending on local conditions, some of these traits will aid survival, while others will not. The individuals that possess the advantageous ones will generally eat better, live longer, and thus breed more successfully, passing their attributes on to their offspring. Over t-t-time, therefore, the species as a whole will retain beneficial characteristics while breeding out the weaknesses.”

Darwin suddenly turned away from the bush, straightened, and faced Burton and Trounce. He raised a finger. “But, but, but! Environmental conditions are far from stable. There are ongoing geological and climactic upheavals and alterations. So it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor is it the most intelligent. It is the one that is most adaptable to change—the one that will most quickly develop and adopt new strengths and abilities even to the point where, eventually, and if necessary, it will transmute into a new species entirely. Gentlemen, I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of natural selection.”

He lowered his hand and regarded them, blinking, and panting slightly after what had become an increasingly impassioned speech.

Burton heard the engines he’d noticed before draw much closer. They idled, and he looked toward Down House, convinced they’d halted at the Darwin residence.

Trounce quietly cleared his throat and said, “Um. Where does God fit into your theory, Mr. Darwin?”

The scientist winced. He set off again along the path. They walked with him.

“My poor Emma,” he said. “My w-w-wife has laboured assiduously to assist me in preparing my thesis for publication, but in contemplating it, she has found, as did I, that her faith is eroded. She c-c-clings to it, Detective Inspector, whereas I—well, I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created, for example, parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars. There is no other conclusion to draw than that the universe we observe has precisely the properties we would expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”

Burton, who’d so often drawn this same conclusion but been unable to accurately express it or identify incontrovertible evidence to support it, looked at Darwin with admiration. “Sir, if, as you said, my solving of the Nile question was as impressive a feat as you have ever heard of, then I suggest you hold your own theory to a mirror, for the elegant explanation you have just given, though you might consider it curtailed in the extreme, is enough to convince me that you are on the brink of transforming the world of man. That a human brain can produce so profound an insight is—” He stopped, lost for words.

Darwin supplied them. “Bloody dangerous.”

“Dangerous?”

“You wanted to know what my half-cousin has done with my theory, Sir Richard. I will tell you. He has proposed a human intercession in the processes of natural selection. Rather than allow the successes and failures of survival to dictate the shape of species, he wants to decide for himself which strengths to breed and which weaknesses to eliminate.”

“But how is that different from the actions of, say, a pigeon breeder or a cattle farmer?” Burton asked.

“It is different because he intends that it be applied to the human species. Furthermore, rather than allowing physical characteristics to develop over long periods of time and in response to the environment, he advocates surgical intervention to hasten the process of evolution.”

“The warden at the hospital suggested that Mr. Galton believed that men can be made gods.”

“If, by gods, you mean beings with physical and mental powers that far exceed what is currently natural to us, then yes, that is what Francis seeks.”

Darwin, Burton, and Trounce all jerked their heads around toward the house.

“Was that a scream?” Trounce said.

“Emma!” Darwin gasped.

They left the path and started running across the grass. Burton rapidly drew ahead while Trounce helped the scientist along. The explorer heard children shouting and crying. Angling to the right, he rejoined the path where it entered the garden, raced past the white snakeroot flowers, and burst out of the bushes onto the lawn of Down House.

There were two steam spheres at the side of the residence, both empty but with their engines still ticking over and vapour curling from their funnels. Two of the Darwin children were lying dead or unconscious on the ground. The others were screaming in panic and running back and forth. A short, ape-like man had his arms around Mrs. Darwin, pinning her arms to her sides. She was facing away from him, and as Burton came into her line of sight, she saw him and yelled, “Get them away! Save my children! Save my children!”

Standing a little to the left of her, a second man, taller and thinner than the other, raised his right arm and pointed a green and very odd-looking pistol at the little boy named Leo. Burton, still running toward them, heard a sharp gasp—phut! The youngster hit the grass, rolled, and became still.

“Again,” the short man snarled at Emma Darwin. “Where is your husband?”

“We have company, Mr. Hare,” the taller man declared upon seeing Burton.

“Ah, so we do, Mr. Burke!”

Hare threw Mrs. Darwin aside and he and his companion turned to face the explorer. They were dressed identically in long black surtouts, black waistcoats, and knee-length breeches that gave way to pale yellow tights. Their white shirts had high cheek-scraping collars. Yellow cravats encased their necks. Their shoes were buckled and blocky-heeled.

Burton skidded to a halt in front of the taller man, Damien Burke, who said, “Good day to you, Mr. Darwin. I’m afraid I’ve frightened your children.”

He was slightly hunchbacked and extremely bald but with a short fringe of hair around his ears that curled into enormous “Piccadilly weeper” sideburns. His face hung in a naturally maudlin expression.

Burton said, “Sorry, wrong man,” and launched the heel of his hand up into Burke’s chin. The cracking blow sent Palmerston’s man sprawling backward and the weapon fell from his fingers. Burton had just enough time to register that, though pistol-shaped, it more resembled some sort of spineless cactus, before Hare crashed into him. The thug was immensely broad, with massive shoulders and long, thick arms. His head was crowned with an upstanding mop of pure white hair that angled around his square jawline to a tuft beneath the heavy chin. His pale grey eyes were deeply embedded in gristly sockets; he had a splayed, many-times-broken nose and an extraordinarily wide mouth filled with large flat teeth. The latter were displayed in full as Hare caught Burton around the neck, crushed his windpipe in the crook of his arm, grinned broadly, and bent him double.

Burton struggled for breath as small dots began to swim in front of his eyes. He reached down with both hands, wrapped them around Hare’s right knee, and dug his thumbs in beside the two big tendons there, brutally forcing them apart. Hare screeched and fell, dragging Burton down with him. The explorer stabbed an elbow into muscle-padded ribs, broke free as Hare’s grip loosened, and scrambled away from him.

He saw Darwin rushing to the fallen children and the other youngsters running to their mother.

Trounce hollered, “Burton!”

“Get the other one!” the explorer croaked, and was in the middle of gesturing toward Burke, who was getting to his feet, when Hare’s fist connected with the side of his head. Blocking the follow-up—more by luck than skill, for his senses were still reeling and he was off balance—Burton thudded his knee into Hare’s side and pushed himself away. He staggered to his feet and stood swaying. Hare faced him, still grinning, and assumed a fighting stance unfamiliar to the explorer but which he vaguely recognised as Oriental.

Off to the left, Trounce collided with Burke and they went down in a tangle of thrashing limbs.

Hare’s right fist swept forward. Burton moved to dodge the blow but it never arrived. Instead, his opponent used the mock punch as a counterbalance, swivelled, and kicked, his heel whipping up into Burton’s nose. The explorer was sent spinning backward, blood spraying around him. Without any awareness of what he was doing, he stopped himself from falling, parried a chopping hand, and—shooting out his arm—grabbed his opponent’s hair. He yanked inward and delivered a savage headbutt to Hare’s mouth, crushing the man’s lips into his teeth. His adversary slumped. Burton twisted his grip and sank his teeth into the other’s cheek, clamping hard until he felt hot blood welling. Hare shrieked and pushed him away with such force that Burton’s feet left the ground. The explorer thudded down, teetered, regained his equilibrium, and spat a lump of wet flesh onto the grass.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Trounce fall. The detective didn’t get up.

Burke called, “Do you require assistance, Mr. Hare?”

Hare, standing with his eyes fixed on Burton, his massive arms hanging and blood bubbling from the hole in the left side of his face, made a dismissive gesture then charged at Burton like a stampeding bull. He leaped, revolved through the air, and kicked. Burton ducked, snatched at the man’s ankle, and using Hare’s own momentum spun and slammed him down. Palmerston’s thug tried to dodge away but Burton sprang forward and swung his boot into the man’s head, once, then again, and a third time.

Hare flopped back and lay still.

Using his sleeve to wipe the blood from his mouth, Burton looked up and, though his vision was blurred, saw Mrs. Darwin collapsed with children crying over her prone form; saw Trounce motionless on the sward; and saw Burke dragging an unconscious Darwin to one of the steam spheres. He started toward the two vehicles but hadn’t taken more than two steps before meaty fingers closed around his left wrist and jerked him around. He found himself face to face with the ruined features of Gregory Hare and mumbled, “Why won’t you bloody well stay down?”

Hare gave a malignant hiss, raised his hand, and chopped it into Burton’s forearm. A horrible crunch sounded. Burton fell to his knees as white-hot pain flared through him.

“Mr. Hare!” Burke shouted. “It is time to leave.”

“I have to finish this one, Mr. Burke.”

“No time to waste on irrelevancies. Come along.”

Hare, with blood streaming down his neck and soaking into his clothes, glared down at Burton and said, “You’d better pray we never meet again.”

He stumbled off toward the vehicles.

Burton saw Burke sit the senseless Darwin against one of the spheres, open a hatch at the rear of the vehicle, then lift the scientist and bundle him into what was obviously a storage compartment.

Hare reached the other sphere and clambered into it. With a puff of steam, it rolled, turned, and sped away from the house and onto the Luxted Road.

Damien Burke slammed the hatch shut, drew the strange cactus-like pistol from his jacket, and pointed it at Burton.

“Don’t move!” he said.

Burton snarled and forced himself to his feet, cradling his broken left arm in his right.

There came that soft sound again—phut!—and a seven-inch spine embedded itself into the lower-left side of Burton’s waistcoat.

He gingerly moved his arm aside and looked down at the quill. The front half of it was glistening with a clear substance. He took hold of the dry end and plucked it out.

The second sphere went rumbling after the first.

Tottering across the lawn, Burton bent over Trounce and felt his heart. The Scotland Yard man was still alive. One of the spines was sticking out of his shoulder. Burton pulled it out, shook the detective, but received only a groan in response.

He moved over to little Leo. The boy was also deeply unconscious but alive, with one of the needles in him.

Burton approached the other children, all gathered around their mother. He selected the eldest, a girl of about sixteen years, squatted down next to her, and put his hand on her shoulder.

“What’s your name?”

“Etty,” she replied, tearfully.

“Look,” he said, and taking by its tip the spine that was in Emma Darwin’s neck, withdrew it.

“See where it’s wet?” he said. “That is what has sent your mother to sleep. Go to the other children and take out the needles, but be careful only to hold them by the dry parts. Do you understand?”

She nodded, her lower lip trembling. “Yes, sir.”

“Good girl. They’ll all wake up. My friend will, too.” He nodded toward Trounce. “And when he does, he’ll get help for you all.”

“What of my father, sir?” she said.

“I’m going after him now.”

Burton straightened and, despite himself, gave a yelp as he felt the broken bones of his forearm grind together. He walked unsteadily to the bottom of the garden, climbed into his rotorchair, and turned the small wheel that set the engine in motion. A minute later, the machine soared upward. He steered it, one-handed, over the house, and followed the road to the northwest: the direction in which the spheres had rolled.

It was a clear day and he could see for miles. Ahead, the road curved northward, and farther on, to the northeast. He saw the two vehicles rounding that second bend and entering the village of Downe. Burton surveyed the field-patched countryside beyond the settlement. He saw that the road exited Downe and ran on through gently undulating meadows. It was bordered on either side by woods and high hedgerows and, a couple of miles ahead, bent sharply to the left.

He pushed his toes into the rotorchair’s footplate, sending the machine surging forward, and shoved the middle flight lever, which caused the contraption to drop like a stone. He cried out through gritted teeth as pain almost blinded him then yanked the lever back. The rotorchair swooped over the ground, levelling out a mere ten feet above it, and shot across the fields at terrifying speed.

As the crow flies, Captain Burton. As the crow flies.

The air forced tears from the explorer’s eyes. He passed the spheres, far off to his right, drew ahead of them, and came to the sharp bend. Shielded by trees, he jerked his rotorchair to a halt, set it down in the middle of the road just beyond the curve, and momentarily passed out.

The sound of approaching engines brought him back to his senses. He coughed, spat blood, and dived out of the flying machine just as the lead sphere rounded the bend at high speed and, with no time to stop, slammed into it. Both vehicles detonated with a deafening boom and disappeared into a ball of fire. The sound tore into the far distance and left silence behind it.

Raggedly, Burton, hit by the blast, pirouetted with infinite slowness through the air.

I can’t do this by myself.

He watched with detached fascination as the flame-filled world revolved majestically around him.

What of your self-sufficiency? What of your intractable independence?

Fragments of spinning metal glinted in the sunlight.