The Return of the Discontinued Man (A Burton & Swinburne Adventure) (24 page)

Bright yellow light streamed through the windows as the airship emerged from the cloud and soared into the clear sky above it. With rotors thrumming, she sped eastward, leaving a trail of glaring white steam behind her.

Burton sat at a console and stared into space.

Initial destination: 1914. By that year, in every other variant of history, a world war was raging. In Abdu El Yezdi’s native reality, the conflict was many years old and the Prussians had overrun the world. In others, hostilities were just commencing. However, here, uniquely, the Germanic nations were placated, had joined in an economic and political alliance with the British Empire, and were sharing the spoils of Anglo-Saxon hegemony.

Nineteen fourteen might be a small step, but Burton wanted to see how the Empire would develop without the devastating events that so slowed progress in its counterparts. Besides which, it would be wise to contact the immediate descendants of the Cannibal Club, just to be sure the purpose of their mission remained clear.

While the king’s agent gave himself over to quiet meditation, the Mark III made intermittent observations pertaining to flight speed, course and altitude, Lawless gazed out at the blanket of cloud below, and Swinburne communicated the captain’s occasional commands to the engine room.

An air of expectation and trepidation hung over all.

They waited.

“We are at north fifty-one, east one degree,”
Orpheus
finally declared as the engines altered their tone. “Holding position. Flight duration twenty minutes, as anticipated. Rather good, if you ask me. I got it exactly right.”

Burton blinked, took a deep breath, stood, entwined his fingers, and cracked his knuckles. “Has the Nimtz made the initial set of calculations?”

“It doesn’t make the calculations,” the ship replied. “I do. And I have. As always, at your service.”

Swinburne placed a speaking tube back in its bracket and added, “Maneesh and Sadhvi are standing by.”

Burton crossed to him and indicated another tube, this one marked
Shipwide
. He tapped it and said to Lawless, “Do you mind, Captain?”

“Go ahead.”

Burton took up the tube and spoke into it. He could hear, beyond the bridge door, his voice echoing through the vessel.

“Sadhvi, William, Maneesh, Daniel, we’re all set. In a moment, I’ll command the
Orpheus
to move ahead through time. I have no idea how we’ll be affected, but, whatever you experience, please remain at your posts.” He hesitated, then added, “Thank you all, and—and may fortune favour us.”

Replacing the tube, he glanced at Swinburne—who grinned broadly—then looked up at the ceiling and said, “
Orpheus
, take us to nine in the evening of December the first, 1914.”

“Are you quite sure about this?”
Orpheus
responded. “I’m liable to become instantly outmoded. I don’t relish the thought.”

“Just do it, please.”

“On your own head be it. You’ll become antiquated too, you know. I’m engaging the generator. Hang on tight.”

Outside, everything suddenly turned completely white.

Utter silence closed around Burton. He saw Swinburne look at him and move his mouth as if speaking, but there was no sound at all, not from anywhere.

The poet slowly became transparent. So did the walls. Suddenly Burton was floating in limbo.

He fragmented. All the decisions he’d ever made were undone and became choices. His every success and every failure reverted to opportunities and challenges. The characteristics that had grown and now defined him disengaged and withdrew to become influences. He lost cohesion until nothing remained except a potential, existing as coordinates, waiting to take form.

He was a nebulous, unarticulated question.

The possible answers were innumerable.

A decision.

A path chosen.

Manifestation.

A recognition of whiteness, of shapes emerging from it and darkening it, of Swinburne’s face.

Burton swayed, stumbled backward, regained his balance, and looked around the bridge.

“Phew!” Swinburne exclaimed. “That felt like an instant and an eternity all rolled into one.”

“It was fifty-four years,”
Orpheus
said. “We have arrived.”

Burton said, “Call down to the others, Algy. See how they are.”

This was done, and the poet reported, “All’s well.”

Lawless said, “
Orpheus
, a systems check, please.”

The ship responded, “Done. I’m perfectly fine, thank you for asking.”

The captain crossed to a console and examined its dials. “It’s a clear night, and windless according to the readings. Cold, though. I suggest we switch off all lights and descend to five hundred feet.”

“Agreed.”

“
Orpheus
, you heard that?”

“I’m not deaf.”

“Then proceed.”

The bridge’s electrical lights clicked off, and the engines moaned.

Burton’s stomach moved as he felt the drop in altitude. He strode to the window. Swinburne and Lawless joined him. They looked out. A full moon was riding low in a starry sky. In half a century, the heavens hadn’t changed one jot.

The king’s agent muttered, “I’m a fool. I should have taken the phases of the moon into account. We’ll be visible.”

“Why did you choose December?” Lawless asked.

“Because Abdu El Yezdi caused the Russian dictator, Rasputin, to die this year. That, however, was in a different history. I’m interested to know what happened to him in this one. I’m hoping that the three great wartime mediums were so prone to resonance that their death in one history caused their deaths in all the others.”

“There’s a yacht,” Swinburne said, pointing downward. “I can just about make it out. See?”

Burton searched the silvered surface of the sea. Before he spotted the vessel, it drew his attention with a sequence of flashes.

“That’s them,” Lawless said.

“How do you know?” Burton asked.

“It’s Morse code. A system created back in the forties. The Navy is in the process of adopting it. Um, that is to say, the Navy of 1860. That ship is sending the word ‘Cannibal.’” Raising his voice, he ordered, “Steer twenty degrees to the southwest, forward half a mile, and descend to thirty feet above sea level.”

“That’s rather low,” the ship noted.

“Weather’s calm,” the captain countered.

The floor shifted as the airship followed the command.

“Go get yourself ready, gents,” Lawless said. “I’ll call down to Trounce and Gooch. They’ll meet you in the bay.”

Burton made a sound of acknowledgement and, accompanied by Swinburne, exited the bridge. They traversed a stairwell down past the main deck to
Orpheus
’s cargo bay, where they found their friends waiting.

“Hell’s bells!” the detective inspector grumbled. “That was a thoroughly unpleasant experience. I felt like I dissolved.”

“Better get used to it,” Burton advised. “Help me with the hatch.”

The four of them unlatched the bay doors in the floor and pulled the portal open. Frigid night air swept in, bearing with it the salty tang of the sea. They looked out. The glittering water appeared dangerously close. As they watched, the small vessel that had signalled them glided into view. They saw figures standing on its deck, their pale moonlit faces gazing up at them. A voice shouted, “Hail fellows well met!”

“Who’s there?” Burton called.

“The Cannibal Club circa 1914! Come on down. It’s quite safe.”

Gooch moved to a winch and rotated a handle. A small platform with handrails on three of its sides swung out from a corner of the hold until it was positioned over the hatch. He used another handle to lower it a little.

“All aboard,” he instructed.

Burton, Swinburne and Trounce stepped carefully onto the swaying square of metal. They gripped the rail.

“Say hello from me to the denizens of the future,” Gooch said, and started to wind the handle.

As the platform sank, Swinburne proclaimed, “Into the unknown, ta-rah, ta-rah!”

They emerged from the bay and dropped smoothly down to the boat. A cold breeze dug its fingers into their inadequate clothing. The platform clunked onto the wooden deck, and the cable looped around it as Gooch gave plenty of slack.

A slim white-haired and round-faced man with a pencil-thin moustache stepped forward from the gathering that awaited them. He shook them each by the hand and said, “Sir Richard, Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Trounce, I am James Arthur Honesty. Your colleague, Detective Inspector Thomas Honesty, was my father.”

“By Jove!” Trounce exclaimed. “So he made detective inspector! Good man!”

James Honesty smiled. “He did, sir, and he always spoke very highly of you—said you were the best man on the entire force.”

Trounce harrumphed and stuck out his chest a little. He suddenly deflated and said, “Spoke? You mean he’s—he’s—”

“Father passed away fourteen years ago, sir.”

Burton touched Trounce’s arm. “Remember, old chap, he’s still alive where we’ve come from.”

Honesty said, “Come belowdecks. I’ll introduce you to the current Cannibals and tell you how things stand with the world. The
Orpheus
will be fine. Such ships, though old, are still in use and a common sight. She won’t be disturbed.”

He led them to a door, down a flight of steps, a short way along a narrow corridor, and into an undecorated room furnished with a table, sideboard and chairs. They sat and waited while Honesty’s colleagues appeared and filed in. The chamber was soon crowded.

“You made it, then,” Honesty said. “The chrononauts! Perfectly marvellous!”

“Chrononauts?” Burton queried. “Is that what you call us?”

“It is. So here we all are, thrilled beyond measure to meet you. I’ll confess, not a few of us have secretly suspected the whole affair to be some sort of wild hoax, but there’s one among us who’s maintained the faith, so to speak, and whom you must thank for keeping us organised and committed. A friend of yours.”

He gestured to a very elderly individual sitting two seats to his right. The old man was gazing at Burton with an amused twinkle in his eye. Burton looked at him. Slowly, recognition dawned.

“Bismillah!” he said huskily. “Brabrooke! Edward Brabrooke!”

“Great heavens!” Swinburne cried out.

Brabrooke laughed, his parchment-thin liver-spotted skin creasing into a myriad of wrinkles. He leaned across the table and extended a gnarled hand to the king’s agent, who gripped it enthusiastically, and to the poet, who did likewise.

“I feel that I’m dreaming,” Brabrooke said. His voice rustled like dry leaves. “Here am I, seventy-five years old, and there’s you two, exactly as you were when we last got sloshed together, half a century ago. How are you, Richard? Algy? How the very devil are you?”

Burton responded, “As you say, my friend, I’m exactly as I was when we last met, which for me was just a couple of weeks ago. And the others?”

“All gone, I’m sad to say. We lost old—”

Burton interrupted. “Stop! Forgive me, but I shouldn’t have asked. I think it best if you—if all of you—refrain from speaking of those who’ve passed. For me, they’re still alive, though they currently occupy a different portion of time to this. Do you understand?”

The Cannibals nodded, and Brabrooke said, “Yes, I can see how that might be for the best.” He paused. “But I expect you’ll want to know what became of you—whether you returned from this voyage or not?”

“Can you tell me?” Burton asked cautiously.

“No. It’s the most peculiar thing. I have vivid memories of you prior to your departure, but after that there’s a thoroughly curious indecision. I feel, at one and the same time, that you returned but also that you didn’t. If you did, whatever we got up to after 1860 is lost in a frustrating amnesia.”

“Babbage warned us of such a phenomenon.”

“His theories are in our records. Knowing the ‘why’ of it doesn’t make it any the less odd.” Brabrooke reached out and took a broad-shouldered man by the elbow, pulling him to his side. “Anyway, let’s look forward, not back. This is my son, Edward John.”

“I’ve heard so much about the three of you,” the younger Brabrooke said. “It’s an honour to meet you.”

“I also have a grandson,” Edward Brabrooke said. “Eddie. When he’s older, he’ll join our ranks. Perhaps he’ll get to meet you, too.”

James Honesty put in, “Suffice to say, Sir Richard, that all your friends dedicated themselves to the continuation of our little organisation, and many are here represented.” He gestured to another, stockily built youngster. “This, for example, is Lieutenant Henry Bendyshe.”

With an oddly familiar voice, the lieutenant bellowed, “By crikey! I’m very happy to be here, sirs. My grandfather always told tall tales of you, Sir Richard, and of you, Mr. Swinburne. He considered you the finest of friends.”

“Gosh!” Swinburne muttered. “Tom found a wife. The poor girl.”

“And this,” Honesty continued, nodding toward a strikingly beautiful blonde-haired woman, “is Miss Eliza Murray, granddaughter of Admiral Henry Murray.”

“Admiral!” Burton and Swinburne exclaimed.

Brabrooke cackled. “Who’d have thought such an utter rapscallion would rise so high, hey?”

Swinburne smiled at Miss Murray and exclaimed, “My hat! But you’re the spitting image of him, except female, of course, and considerably better looking. In fact, you completely outshine him. There’s barely any resemblance at all.”

She laughed. “My mother says I have his face.”

“Well,” Swinburne said, “he was tremendously handsome, then. Apparently.”

Burton turned his attention to a dark-complexioned middle-aged woman. “And you, madam, bear a distinct likeness to Shyamji Bhatti.”

She bobbed. “His daughter. I am Patmanjari Richardson, née Bhatti.”

“Your father’s cousin, Maneesh Krishnamurthy, is up in the
Orpheus
. Perhaps you’d like to meet him?”

Honesty turned to her. “Go say hello, by all means.”

“I should like that very much.” She smiled and left the room.

Another woman, in her midfifties, was introduced as Catherine Jones, daughter of Detective Inspector Sidney Slaughter.

“We also have with us Clive Penniforth,” James Honesty said, jerking a thumb toward a muscular fellow, “whose father was a cab driver of your acquaintance.”