The Return of the Discontinued Man (A Burton & Swinburne Adventure) (17 page)

“Yes, please.”

“It’s coming through now.” Grampapa reappeared. “But listen, don’t get too caught up in all this nonsense. It was a long, long time ago. You know our DNA consultant recommended that you focus on what you do best, which is to make the future better. The past is no place for a genius like you. I’m very, very proud of everything you’ve achieved. When I think about that bloody assassin, I realise how much you’ve put the pride back into the Oxford name.”

“Thank you, Grampapa. Can I come visit soon?”

“Whenever you like.”

“I’ll call again in a few days.”

“I look forward to it.”

Their conversation ended. Burton took the letter from the desk’s printer and read it.

Brisbane 12th November 1888

My Darling

There was never any other but you, and that I treated you badly has pained me more even than the treasonable act I committed back in ’40. I desired nought but to give you and the little one a good home and that I failed and that I was a drinker and a thief instead of the good husband I intended, this I shall regret to the end of my days, which I feel is a time not far off, as I am sickly in body as well as in heart.

I do not blame you for what you do now. You are young and can make a good life for yourself and our child back in England with your parents and I would have brought more misery upon you had you stayed here, for I have been driven by the devil since he chose me as his own when I was a mere lad. I beg of you to believe that it is his evil influence that brought misery to our family and the true soul of me never wished you anything but happiness and contentment.

You remember, my wife, that I said the mark upon your breast was a sign to me of God’s forgiveness for my treachery and that in you he was rewarding me for the work I had done in hospital to restore my wits and good judgment?

I pray now that he looks mercifully upon my failure and I ask him that the mark, which so resembles a rainbow in its shape, and which lays also upon our little son’s breast, should adorn every of my descendants forevermore as a sign that the great wrong I committed shall call His vengeance upon no Oxford but myself, for I it was who pulled the triggers and no other. With my death, which as I say will soon be upon me, the affair shall end and the evil attached to my name shall be wiped away.

You have ever been the finest thing in my life. Be happy and remember only our earliest days.

Your loving husband

Edward Oxford

P.S. Remember me to your grandparents who were so kind to me when I was a lad and who, being among the first friends I ever had, I recall with immense fondness.

Burton called his mother. After a short wait, she responded. She looked younger than he did.

“Hi, Mum.”

“Ed, I was just watching your interview. Why did that that horrible man bring up ancient history? What has it to do with you?”

“I know, he took me by surprise. Did you know about the Victorian?”

“No.”

“I just spoke to Grampapa. He has a letter written by him.”

“By the Oxford who tried to kill the queen?”

“Yes. It mentions a birthmark. The same as yours.”

His mother pulled down the neck of her shirt. There was a small blemish on her skin, just above the heart. Bluish and yellow in colour, it was arc shaped and somewhat resembled a rainbow.

“My father didn’t have it,” she said, “but Grampapa does, and his father did, too. It misses occasional generations but always seems to reappear. What’s the letter about?”

“The would-be assassin had been deported to Australia. He got married there and had a son, but it all went wrong. The letter was to his wife, who was leaving him and returning to England with the child.”

“How wretched. The family DNA probably doesn’t have much of that man left in it, though, so don’t start getting fanatical about the past.”

“That’s what Grampapa said.”

“You know what you’re like. You get too obsessive about things.”

“I suppose. It’s got me thinking about the Oxfords, that’s for sure. Why do you have the name? Why didn’t you change it when you married?”

“Why follow such an outmoded tradition? Besides, none of the Oxford daughters ever adopted their husbands’ surnames.”

“But how come?”

“I don’t know.”

“And the children always took the Oxford name even if the father’s surname was different?”

“Yes. That hasn’t been a problem for many generations, but in earlier times it probably caused a few arguments.”

“Hmm. So the family name has lasted through history better than most others. Peculiar.” Burton looked at the safe in the laboratory wall. “Anyway, I’d better get back to work. Love you.”

“Returned tenfold. Bye, son.”

He dismissed the air-screen, stood, went to the safe, and retrieved the Tichborne diamond from it. Holding it up to the skylight, he marvelled at its size and the way the illumination skittered across its black facets. There was something almost hypnotic about it.

Burton returned to his desk, activated the analysis plate, and put the gemstone on it. Immediately, information began to flow across the desk’s surface. It kept coming. He’d seen it before but still found it incredible. The structure of the stone was utterly unique, unlike anything he’d ever encountered.

“Even more sensitive than a CellComp,” he whispered to himself. “More efficient than a ClusterComp. More capacity than GenMem.”

It didn’t seem possible.

A peculiar notion occurred to him, obviously inspired by the revelation concerning his ancestor. He considered it for half a minute then pulled up a calculation grid and formulated a four-dimensional mathematical representation of the idea.

He employed his grandfather’s favourite archaic expletive. “Bloody hell!”

The numbers and formulas created a shape around him that extended in every direction, both in space and time. He sank into it, was swallowed by it, and experienced an extraordinary sensation wherein the calculations mutated first into swirling colours then into a pulsating sound, which slowly stretched, twisted, and coalesced into a voice that exclaimed, “Hallo hallo hallo! Awake at last!”

Burton blinked and realised he was lying on a bed. Algernon Swinburne was sitting in a chair nearby. He was sporting an absurdly large red blossom in his buttonhole. Seeing Burton peering at it, the poet said, “It grew on my doorstep. Rather fetching, don’t you think?”

“With the floppy hat and scarf?” Burton observed. His voice sounded gravelly. “You look like you’ve stepped out of a pantomime.” He cleared his throat, noticed a glass of water on the bedside table, and reached for it. “What time is it?”

“Eight in the morning. You’ve been unconscious all night. Trounce called on me and sent me here. I’ve just arrived. Here, let me help you to sit.”

Swinburne rose, stepped over, slid an arm under Burton’s shoulders, and gave assistance as his friend struggled up. He took the glass, after Burton had swallowed its contents, and placed it back on the table.

The king’s agent peered around with his good eye—the other was still slitted—and recognised one of Battersea Power Station’s private rooms.

He leaned back, emitting a slight groan. His head was aching abominably. “What happened?”

“According to Gooch, you told the helmet to connect to Babbage’s device, then screamed and passed out. How do you feel?”

“My skull is throbbing. By God! How many visions can a man endure? I saw through Edward Oxford’s eyes, Algy.”

“Which Oxford? The sane one or loopy one?”

“The sane, in the far future, at the moment when he realised that travelling backward through history might be possible.”

Burton winced and pressed his hand against his temple. “For sure, I’ll not be allowing Babbage to place anything on my head ever again. Did he gain anything?”

“Quite the opposite. But you did. Feel your scalp.”

Burton ran his fingers through his hair. The scars on his head felt raised, gritty, and extremely tender. He winced. “What happened?”

“The helmet tattooed you. Wait, I’ll fetch Babbage. He can explain it better than I.”

“Tattooed?” Burton muttered, as his friend scampered from the room.

Minutes later, the poet returned with Babbage and Gooch.

“Are you in pain, Sir Richard?” the latter asked.

“A little. What’s this about a tattoo?”

Babbage barked, “Adaptive application!”

“In English, if you please, Charles.”

The scientist tut-tutted irascibly. “I told you before. The helmet’s components can rearrange themselves to change their function. The BioProcs extracted black diamond dust from their own inner workings and injected it into your scalp, following the line of your scars.”

Gooch added, “You may remember that Abdu El Yezdi’s scalp was similarly tattooed by the Nāga at the Mountains of the Moon. In his case, it was required to enable a procedure that sent him through time independent of the suits, though other factors, of a complex nature, were involved. He never fully explained the process to us, which means we can’t reproduce it.”

“I wouldn’t let you if you could,” Burton growled. “So what is the point of this confounded liberty?”

“We don’t know,” Babbage said. “I shall have to keep you under observation. Run some tests.”

“Most certainly not. I’ve been subjected to quite enough, thank you very much.”

“Did the synthetic intelligence apprehend anything from the Field Amplifier?” Gooch asked.

Burton nodded—and immediately regretted it as pain lanced through his cranium. He said, “Perhaps,” then recounted his visions, first of the woman, then of Oxford and the black diamond.

“The woman was his wife,” he finished, “pregnant in the initial vision, which was overlaid onto my view of the workshop, but not in the more involved and vivid second, which took me to a period before they were married, and in which I was so utterly immersed that I thought myself him. My—that is to say, Oxford’s—love for her was exceedingly strong.”

He stopped and swallowed as an ache squeezed at his heart. He wanted to see Isabel. It was a torture to know that in some other versions of this world, she still lived.

Why can I not be one of those other Burtons? One of the more fortunate ones?

He went on, “But there was no trace of lunacy in the memory, so I wonder whether it came from the functioning helmet rather than from the imprint in the Field Preserver.”

“You’re probably correct,” Babbage said. “The confounded headpiece erased all the data from my device, injected the diamond dust into you, and immediately ceased to function. We have nothing of Edward Oxford remaining except for what’s in your scalp, and that won’t last for long.”

“The tattoo will come out?”

“No, it’s too deep. What I mean to say is that the traces of Oxford inside it will soon be overwritten. Being in such proximity to your brain, the dust is within its electrical field. Your thoughts will quickly expunge the knowledge they contain. It’s a tragedy. Genius is being replaced by the prosaic.”

“Charmed, I’m sure,” Burton muttered.

Swinburne said, “It appears that every time you conduct an experiment, Charles, we lose something.”

Babbage bared his teeth.

Gooch made an observation. “For the second time, an intelligence to which we attribute no sentience has acted independently. There has to be interference. A meddler.”

“No. I don’t believe so,” Burton said. He looked at Babbage. “Prior to the damaged suit’s disappearance, you stated that if it had been the only one in our possession—if Abdu El Yezdi had never given you a pristine version—you would have transferred power from its Nimtz generator to its helmet, hoping to instigate self-repair mode.”

Babbage put his fingertips to his chin and tapped it. “I did say that, yes. It would have been the obvious course of action.”

“Well, what if all your counterparts in all the alternate histories—none of whom had a functional suit—did exactly that, all at precisely the same moment, nine o’clock on the fifteenth of February, 1860?”

The old man gazed at Burton, his mind obviously racing. His left eyebrow twitched upward. His mouth fell open. He put his hands together and rubbed them. “There—there—there would be the possibility that—that—by God!—that through means of resonance, the insane fragments of Edward Oxford’s consciousness would—would link together across the parallel realities.”

“And in consequence?”

Babbage suddenly clapped his hands and yelled, “By the Lord Harry! Active pathways!” He hugged himself and started to pace up and down at the foot of Burton’s bed, his eyes focused inward.

“Active pathways,” Swinburne said. “Oh, how you mingle incompatible words, Babbage. What are active pathways?”

Babbage answered as if addressing himself rather than the poet. “A thought is a burst of subtle electrical energy that flows through the brain, following paths between the cells. Every notion creates new routes. The damaged helmet couldn’t function because only one route was imprinted into the diamond dust—Spring Heeled Jack’s final thought. It is a static conceptual matrix, the frozen obsession of a dying madman. However—”

He stopped, frowned, placed his fingertips to his head and tapped away.

They waited.

“However. However. However. If a resonation spanned the different realities, then a potentially infinite number of—of—”

He stumbled to a halt again.

“I think I understand,” Daniel Gooch murmured. He turned to Burton. “Consider it three-dimensionally. From above, you could look down and see a single path following one particular route. From ground level, though, you might see that it is actually countless paths laid one atop the other, opening up countless new avenues on the vertical.”

“Enabling the synthetic intelligence to become conscious?” Burton asked.

“Trans-historically,” Gooch confirmed.

“You just made that word up!” Swinburne protested.

“I mean it to suggest the notion that the intelligence, which lacked the capacity for independent action in any single history, might have gained it by extending itself across every iteration of reality.”