Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon (Burton & Swinburne) (10 page)

“How times
have
changed,” Burton echoed. “That's the problem.”

Herbert Spencer, the clockwork philosopher, emerged from the pall to greet them.

He was a figure of polished brass, a machine, standing about five-feet-five-inches tall. His head was canister-shaped, with a bizarre-looking domed attachment on top of it that was somewhat reminiscent of a tiny church organ. The “face” beneath it was nothing more than three raised circular areas set vertically. The topmost resembled a tiny ship's porthole, through which a great many minuscule cogwheels could be glimpsed. The middle circle held a mesh grille, and the bottom one was simply a hole out of which three very fine five-inch-long wires projected.

Spencer's neck consisted of thin shafts and cables, swivel joints and hinges. His trunk was a slim cylinder with panels cut from it, revealing gears and springs, delicate crankshafts, gyroscopes, flywheels, and a pendulum. The thin but robust arms ended in three-fingered hands. The legs were sturdy and tubular; the feet oval-shaped.

He was an astonishing sight; and few who saw him now would believe that not so many weeks ago he'd been a very human, grubby, and tangle-bearded vagrant.

“Hallo, Boss! Hallo, Mr. Swinburne!” he hooted.

His strange voice came from the helmet-shaped apparatus, recently created and added to the brass man by Brunel. Spencer spoke through it clearly but with a piping effect that sounded similar to the woodwind section of a band.

Burton returned the greeting: “Hallo. How are you, Herbert?”

“I reckons I've a touch of the old arthritis in me left knee,” the philosopher said. “But can't complain.”

“A screw loose, more like!” Swinburne suggested.

“P'raps. I tells you, though—it's a strange thing to be mechanical. I fear me springs may snap or cogs grind to a halt at any bloomin' moment. Speaking o' which, I have good news—I'll be comin' to Africa, after all.”

“How so?” Burton asked as they crossed the courtyard. “Conditions will hardly be conducive to your functioning.”

“Mr. Brunel's scientists have dreamt up a new material what they makes usin' a chemical process. They calls it polymethylene. It's brown, very flexible, but waxy in texture. It's also waterproof, an' can't be penetrated by dust. They've used it to tailor a number of one-piece suits for me, what'll entirely protect me from the climate.”

“You're certain that you'll be shielded and that the material will endure? Remember, there are extremes of heat and cold, as well as mud and dust,” Burton cautioned. “During my previous expedition the clothes literally rotted off my back.”

They arrived at the tall doors of the main building. Spencer reached out and took hold of one of the handles. “The material will no doubt deteriorate over time, Boss,” he said, “but they've supplied me with fifteen of the bloomin' outfits, so I daresay they'll last. Besides—” he gestured at the fog that surrounded them, “—if I can survive this funk, I can survive anythin'!”

“Then I'm delighted,” Burton replied. “You were pivotal in our securing of the South American diamond, and your presence might be of crucial importance when—or, rather,
if
—we reach the African stone. Welcome to the team, Herbert!”

“Marvellous!” Swinburne added.

The clockwork man pulled the door far enough open for them to pass through.

“Enter, please, gents.”

The two men stepped into the Technologists' headquarters and were almost blinded by the bright lights within.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel had built Battersea Power Station in 1837. At the time, he'd been full of strange ideas inspired by his acquaintance Henry Beresford, and had designed the station to generate something he referred to as “geothermal energy.” The copper rods that stood in each corner of the edifice rose high above it like four tall chimneys, but they extended much farther in the opposite direction, plunging deep into the Earth's crust. Brunel, just thirty-one years old in '37 and still rather prone to exaggeration, had announced that these rods would produce enough energy to provide the whole of London with electricity, which could then be adapted to provide lighting and heat. Unfortunately, since its construction, the only thing Battersea Power Station had ever managed to illuminate was itself, although it was rumoured that this might soon change, for Brunel was thought to have discovered a means to significantly increase the output of the copper rods.

Shielding their eyes, Burton and Swinburne looked into the station and observed a vast workshop. A number of globes hung from the high ceiling. Lightning bolts had somehow been trapped inside them, and they bathed the floor beneath in an incandescent glare, which reflected off the surfaces of megalithic machines—contrivances whose functions were baffling in the extreme. Electricity fizzed, crackled, and buzzed across their surfaces, and shafts of it whipped and snapped across the open spaces, filling the place with the sharp tang of ozone.

Among all this, over to their right, there stood a bulky vehicle. Around twelve feet high and thirty-six in length, it was tubular in shape—the front half a cabin, the back half a powerful engine—and it was mounted on a large number of short jointed legs. Rows of legs also projected from its top and sides. At its rear, steam funnels stuck horizontally outward, while its front was dominated by a huge drill, which tapered from the outer edges of the vehicle to a point, the tip of which stood some eighteen feet in advance of the main body.

Spencer, noticing them looking at it, explained: “That's a Worm—one of the machines what they're usin' to dig the London Underground tunnels. They reckons Underground trains will make it easier for people to move around the city, now that the streets are so congested with traffic. But you won't find me gettin' into one o' them trains. I'd be afraid o' suffocatin'!”

“You can't suffocate, Herbert,” Swinburne objected.

“Aye, so you says!”

Another contrivance caught their eye. Surrounded by a group of technicians and engineers, it was a large barrel-shaped affair on tripod legs with a myriad of mechanical arms, each ending in pliers or a blowtorch or a saw or some other tool. As Burton, Swinburne, and Spencer entered, it swung toward them, lurched away from the Technologists, and stamped over.

“Greetings, gentlemen,” it said, and its voice was identical to Herbert Spencer's, except pitched at a low baritone.

“Hello, Isambard,” Burton answered, for, indeed, this hulking mechanism was the famous engineer—or, more accurately, it was the life maintaining apparatus that had encased him since 1859, earning him the nickname
the Steam Man.
The king's agent continued: “The crew of the
Orpheus
is standing ready to take delivery of the vehicles and further supplies. Is everything prepared?”

“Yes, Sir Richard. My people will tarry—harry—excuse me,
carry—
everything aboard.”

“I say, Izzy!” Swinburne piped up, with a mischievous twinkle in his green eyes. “Has your new speech-rendering device broken?”

“No,” Brunel answered. “But it is not currently interacting sufficiently—effusively—expectantly—I mean,
efficiently
—with the calculating elephants—um—
elements
—of my cerebral impasse—er,
impulse
—calculators. Unanticipated variegations—vegetations—my apologies—
variations
are occurring in the calibration of the device's sensory nodes.”

“My hat!” Swinburne exclaimed. “The problem is obviously chronic! I didn't understand a single word you just said! It was absolute gibberish!”

“Algy,” Burton muttered. “Behave yourself!”

“It's all right, Sir Pilchard—er, Sir Richard,” Brunel interjected. “Mr. Spinbroom has not yet forgiven me for the way I treated him during the String Filled Sack affair. I mean the Spring Heeled Jack despair—um—
affair.
Kleep.”

“Kleep?” Swinburne asked, trying to stifle a giggle.

“Random noise,” Brunel replied. “A recurring poodle. I mean, problem.”

The poet clutched his sides, bent over, and let loose a peal of shrill laughter.

Burton sighed and rolled his eyes.

“Mr. Brunel's speakin' apparatus is the same as me own,” Herbert Spencer put in, raising a brass finger to touch the rounded arrangement of pipes on his head. “But, as you know, me intellect is knockin' around inside the structure o' black diamonds, whereas his ain't, and the instrument responds better to impulses from inorganic matter than from organic.”

“Ah-ha!” Swinburne cried out, wiping tears from his eyes. “So you still have fleshly form inside that big tank of yours, do you, Izzy?”

“That's quite enough,” Burton interrupted, pushing his diminutive assistant aside. He steered the conversation back to the business at hand: “Are we on schedule, Isambard?”

“Yes. We have to declare—compare—
repair
the ventilation and leaping—um,
heating
—system, but the League of Chimney Sweeps has guaranteed periphery—I mean,
delivery
—of a new section of pipe by six o'clock today, and the work itself will slake—
take
—but an hour or so.”

Swinburne, who'd regained control of himself, asked, “Why can't you fabricate the pipe yourself?”

“Reg—parp—ulations,” Brunel answered.

Burton explained: “The Beetle has recently secured the sole manufacturing and trading rights to any pipes through which his people must crawl to clean or service.”

“That boy is a genius,” Swinburne commented.

“Indeed,” Burton agreed. “Very well, we'll leave you to it, Isambard. The ship's crew will help your people to load the supplies. The passengers will reconvene here tomorrow morning at nine.”

“Would you like to suspect—
inspect
—the vehicles before you depart?”

“No time. We have a murder investigation under way. I have to go.”

“Before you do, may I peek—
speak
—with you privately for a moment?”

“Certainly.”

Burton followed Brunel and stood with him a short distance away. They conversed for a few minutes, then the Steam Man clanked off and rejoined the group of Technologists.

Burton returned.

“What was all that about?” Swinburne asked.

“He was telling me a few things about the babbage device that John Speke has fitted to his head. Let's go.”

“Should I join you, Boss?” Spencer asked.

“No, Herbert. I'd like you to stay and check the inventory against the supplies loaded.”

“Rightio.”

Leaving the clockwork man, Burton and Swinburne walked out through the doors, crossed the courtyard, and joined Detective Inspectors Trounce and Honesty, Commander Krishnamurthy, Constable Bhatti, Isabella Mayson, Mrs. Angell and Fidget, and various other passengers at the foot of the rotorship's boarding ramp. Crewmembers D'Aubigny, Bingham, and Butler were also there, having been granted a few hours' shore leave.

The pea-souper swirled around them all, dusting their clothes and skin with pollutants, clogging their nostrils with soot.

“Are we all ready?” Burton asked his friends. “Then let us go and bid civilisation farewell, except for you, Mother Angell. I fully expect you to maintain its standards while we're gone.”

The group walked out through the station gates and passed alongside the outer wall beside a patch of wasteland that stretched down to nearby railway lines—a location which held bad memories for the king's agent and his assistant, for two years ago they'd been pursued across it by wolf-men and had narrowly avoided being hit by a locomotive.

They followed a path down to Kirtling Street, which took them the short distance to Battersea Park Road. Here they waved down conveyances. Monckton Milnes's guests gradually disappeared, as they each caught cabs home. Mrs. Angell and Fidget climbed into a hansom, bound for 14 Montagu Place; Isabella Mayson took another, for Orange Street; and a growler stopped for Detective Inspector Honesty, Commander Krishnamurthy, and Constable Bhatti, ready to take them each in turn to their respective homes.

A fourth vehicle—a steam-horse-drawn growler—was hailed by Burton for himself, Swinburne, and Trounce.

“Scotland Yard, driver!” the latter ordered.

“Not to Otto Steinruck's house?” Burton asked, as he climbed into the carriage and settled himself on the seat.

“It's out in Ilford,” came the reply. “Too far by cab, so I thought we'd each borrow one of the Yard's rotorchairs.”

The growler swung out onto Nine Elms Lane and chugged along next to the Thames. Its passengers took out their handkerchiefs and held them over their noses, the stench from the river so intense it made their eyes water.

Burton looked out of the window. Somewhere along this road there was a courtyard in which a young girl named Sarah Lovitt had been assaulted by Spring Heeled Jack back in 1839—just one of many attacks Edward Oxford had committed while searching for his ancestor. That was twenty-four years ago, and in that short time Oxford's influence had totally transformed the British Empire. That one man could effect such a change so quickly seemed utterly incredible to Burton but it wasn't without precedent; after all, history was replete with individuals who'd done the same—the Caesars, Genghis Khans, and Napoleons. Oxford had caused the death of Queen Victoria. After that, his influence had been subtler; he'd simply made unguarded comments about the future to Henry Beresford. The marquess had passed that information on to Isambard Kingdom Brunel, whose remarkable creative talents had been set alight by the hints and suggestions, leading to the creation of the political and cultural juggernaut that was the Technologist caste.

While Brunel's Engineers and Eugenicists succumbed to their inventive zeal, Oxford's presence in the form of Spring Heeled Jack had also inspired an opposing force: the Libertines, who sought to change social policies and create a new species of liberated man.

All of these elements had given rise to a condition of rapidly growing chaos, as scientific developments and social experimentation accelerated without check. For Charles Darwin, the man they called “God's Executioner,” who'd fallen under the sway of his cousin, the Eugenicist Francis Galton, the possibilities had been so overwhelming they'd pushed him beyond the bounds of sanity.