The Return of the Discontinued Man (A Burton & Swinburne Adventure) (21 page)

“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.”