The Return of the Discontinued Man (A Burton & Swinburne Adventure) (29 page)

The more Burton looked, the more constables he noticed, and every one of them had a wicked glint in its eyes.

He barged past two furiously chanting men to reach Farren. “Is there any law against protesting?”

“In theory, no. In practice—man, we’re in trouble. Everyone knows a confrontation is inevitable, but I didn’t think it’d be today.” He pointed at a large blocky building, the focus of the protesters’ anger. Burton could see pieces of fencing—obviously torn up by the crowd—being thrown toward it.

“The American Embassy,” Farren said. “If its perimeter is breached, all hell will break loose.”

No sooner had he spoken than a series of detonations sounded. Burton saw small canisters spinning through the air, trailing smoke as they arced from the cluster of uniformed pig men into the middle of the crowd.

“Tear gas!” Farren shouted.

Grey fumes billowed up, casting a swirling veil over all. People crouched and clung to each other. A voice blared into the square, “Disperse immediately! Disperse immediately! Return to your homes!”

Burton’s eyes started to burn. He squinted through the thickening cloud and pushed past Farren to Swinburne, Trounce, Raghavendra and Wells. “Stay together,” he bellowed, but his voice was lost in a cacophony of screams and shouts and the repeating demand, “Disperse immediately! Disperse immediately!”

Bottles and the poles used for placards started to rain down on the police, flung by the increasingly enraged demonstrators.

“Disperse immediately! This is your final warning! Disperse immediately!”

Goaded into ungovernable rage and considerable panic, the mob heaved and eddied like a boiling liquid, with individuals breaking off as small spaces appeared among them, only to then be engulfed again. Burton recognised, however, that some must have been escaping into side streets, for increasingly he and his companions were able to force their way southward.

Suddenly, without any perceivable prompt, the mounted constables let loose ferocious squeals and surged forward. Men and women fell beneath their horses’ hooves. The pigs swiped their batons indiscriminately, cracking heads, breaking arms, bruising ribs. Others, on foot, bounded high into the air, propelled by their spring-loaded stilts. They came flying out of the caustic gas, crashing down on people, attacking them brutally and, it appeared, with glee.

Burton staggered and coughed. He felt like he was breathing in fire. With blurred vision, he saw Jane Packard’s head spray blood as a baton crunched into the back of it. She fell and was immediately trampled by her assailant’s horse. The king’s agent lurched toward her but found his way blocked when a constable landed in front of him. The pig man snorted and laughed wickedly. Its snout wrinkled into an expression of unmitigated savagery as its beady eyes fixed on him and it raised its weapon to strike.

Mick Farren came careening into it, knocking it to the ground. He slammed a fist into its face, snatched the baton from its hand and, gripping the staff at either end, crushed it into the pig’s neck. He screamed at Burton, “Get away! Wait for us by the cars!”

Another constable hurtled down. It grabbed Farren by his bushy hair and yanked him backward. Burton swore, then pounced onto it and, acting on instinct alone, applied a Thuggee wrestling hold to its head and twisted until he felt the neck snap.

Farren raised the baton and hammered its end between the eyes of the pig beneath him. He rose from the unconscious body. “We have to get the hell out of here!”

Burton couldn’t answer. He struggled to draw breath. Vaguely, he was aware that Brabrooke was bent over Jane Packard’s broken body; that Swinburne was with Wells, who had blood streaming down his face; that Raghavendra, Trounce and von Lessing were nowhere in sight; and that the main line of mounted police had swept by and was now crashing through the crowd to his left.

Brabrooke shouted, “She’s dead! Oh God! I think Jane’s dead!”

Farren hesitated. “We have to get Burton’s lot to safety.”

“Then go. I’ll stay with her.”

“Eddie, it’s not—”

“Beat it!”

Farren stepped to Burton’s side and took hold of his arm. They were jostled as protesters seethed around them. Burton cried hoarsely, “This damned gas has me blinded! Where are Sadhvi and William?”

“I saw Karl with them,” Farren said. “He’ll get them to the cars. We have to split before the pigs head back this way.”

They elbowed through to Swinburne and Wells, grabbed them, and pushed on toward the southwestern corner of the square. The Cannibal from 1914 was in a bad way, dripping blood and fighting to remain conscious, depending on the poet for support.

“What has happened to the world?” Swinburne shrieked. “This is worse than Bethlem Hospital!”

The amplified voice blared, “Disperse immediately! All those who resist will be arrested!”

The group flinched back as another constable hit the ground just feet away. It immediately bounced onward, without sparing them a glance.

Swinburne pushed Wells at Burton and Farren. “Quick! Take him.”

Burton caught Wells. A riderless police horse came thundering out of the steam. Swinburne ran at it, seized the flapping reins, and swung himself up into the saddle. He yelled, “Follow!”

People scattered out of the horse’s way as Swinburne expertly took control of the animal and, despite it being skittish, nudged it harmlessly through the protesters, forging a path toward South Audley Street. Burton and Farren walked behind, holding Wells upright.

Finally, they broke free of the throng, staggered out of the square, and found further progress blocked by three constables.

“Under arrest!” one growled. “Stealing horse!”

“Assault!” the second announced.

“Resisting!” the third added.

“I confess!” Swinburne exclaimed. “Yes, yes, and yes!”

He yanked on the reins, and the horse reared up lashing out with its front legs. One hoof caught a pig under the chin. The creature flopped to the pavement, out cold. The other hoof thudded into a constable’s stomach. The pig folded, dropped to its knees, and instantly turned a nasty shade of green.

Burton let go of Wells, took three long strides, crouched under the remaining constable’s swinging baton, and delivered a devastating right hook. The beast spun a near-complete revolution and crumpled.

“Lucky,” Burton murmured. “I couldn’t see what I was hitting.”

Swinburne dismounted. “How’d you know when to duck?”

“Instinct. How are your eyes, Algy?”

“Stinging like blazes, but I’m all right.”

“Then guide me, please. Mick, you have Herbert?”

“Yep. Let’s head for Piccadilly. Maybe we can hop on a bus and make it back to the cars.”

It didn’t work out that way. By the time they’d staggered to the northern edge of Green Park, their eyes had cleared, but when they tried to board a bus—a two-storey-high, bright-red, steam-driven contraption—its conductor glared at Farren’s hair, looked disgustedly at the state of Wells, gaped in bemusement at Burton and Swinburne, and snapped, “Not you, sweeties!” before ringing the bell that signalled the driver to get going.

They tried two more buses with similar results.

So they walked all the way to Piccadilly Circus, along Shaftesbury Avenue and High Holborn, then up Southampton Row to Bedford Place. By the time they reached the cars, Herbert Wells was somewhat recovered. All, though, were footsore and exhausted.

Burton’s scientific detachment had become rather more pathological. He felt as if a thick pane of glass separated him from the environment, and, increasingly, when anyone addressed him, an expanding distance inserted itself between him and them. Remotely, he recognised that Swinburne was starting to experience the same, and when von Lessing and Raghavendra greeted them at the vehicles, he saw that the latter, too, was suffering this insidious entrancement. As for Trounce, he was virtually catatonic, sitting in the back of one of the cars with wide, fixed eyes and a slack mouth.

“It’s too much,” Sadhvi mumbled. “We’re losing our minds.”

Burton turned to Farren. “Mick, we can’t hold out for another day. Not without a dose of Saltzmann’s. You have to get us back to the
Orpheus
. We’ll stay aboard her until the refit is completed.”

Farren gave a curt nod. “I’ll drive you back to the yacht.” He addressed von Lessing. “Karl, Eddie’s with Jane. She’s badly hurt. Maybe even—maybe even dead. Will you stay and track them down?”

Von Lessing paled. “Yeah. I’ll check the hospitals. What a bloody mess.”

They bid him farewell. Raghavendra and Wells joined Trounce in the back of the car while Burton climbed into the front with Farren. They set off back toward Margate. No one spoke. Farren was lost in his own thoughts, and as for the chrononauts—

They just felt lost.

It was evening by the time they boarded the yacht. Burton and his companions had little idea of where they were or what they were doing. The Cannibals guided them to bunks, and they all fell into an instant and profound sleep.

Burton awoke at noon on the following day in an unfamiliar room and with the taste of Saltzmann’s haunting the back of his throat. He was lying on a bed—more like a shelf projecting from a concave wall—and still wearing yesterday’s clothes, which were torn and stained with blood and dust.

He sat up, looked at his hands, and noted that the knuckles were cut and bruised. Slowly, recent memories seeped back into his conscious mind.

Standing, he looked out of a porthole and saw a broad triangular wing beyond which, past a narrow strip of coastline, the sea sparkled brightly. He was obviously on the Concorde—the new
Orpheus
—and when he turned to face the tiny cabin, he saw that his suitcases had been transferred to it from the old ship. He opened an inner door and found an en suite bathroom. Forty minutes later, he was clean, dressed in fresh clothes, and feeling a great deal better.

Burton exited into a very narrow corridor with doors running down either side of it. He’d asserted from the shape of the wing that the prow was to his left, so he followed the passage along to a door. It opened onto a long, narrow tubular lounge. A group rose to greet him: Captain Lawless, Gooch, Krishnamurthy, Raghavendra, Mick Farren, Patricia Honesty, Trevor Penniforth, and Jason Griffith.

“How do you feel?” Sadhvi asked.

“Fair to middling,” he answered, taking a seat and fishing a cheroot from his pocket. “Much more myself. The others?”

“Still in their beds. Algy is in good shape. Mr. Wells required stitches and will need to rest a while. William had a hard time of it. I’ve sedated him and dosed him with more of that accursed Saltzmann’s than my principles should allow, but without it I’m concerned he might lose his sanity.”

“And with it?”

“After plenty of sleep, I think he’ll return to us.”

“I’m sorry, man,” Farren murmured. “My fault. I could have summoned the
Orpheus
to any day, and I went and picked the day of a bloody riot.”

“We couldn’t have known, Mick,” Patricia Honesty put in.

“It doesn’t matter,” Burton said, lighting his Manila. “What’s important is that we saw evidence of Spring Heeled Jack’s presence.”

Krishnamurthy frowned. “I don’t understand. If he’s here in 1968, how and why and
where
?”

Burton gave a nod of thanks to Griffith, who’d placed a plate of sandwiches and a cup of coffee before him.

“Conspiracy theory,” Farren muttered.

“Mr. Farren?” Burton said.

“The Automatic Computing Engine.”

“And what is that?”

“There was this dude, Alan Turing, who I guess you could call Charles Babbage’s successor. He was a genius mathematician who, in 1950, is rumoured to have invented an equivalent to one of the old babbage probability calculators, except using a different and more powerful technology. Turing claimed great things for his machine, and for a few years he was the toast of the Anglo-Saxon Empire. His device would return to us the global dominance we enjoyed back in your age, and which we’d been steadily losing to our allies, the Americans. It would lead to the total mechanisation of our industries, allowing each and every one of us to live comfortably, pursuing our individual interests. No more drudgery. No more working classes being oppressed by the system.” He finished sarcastically, “Yeah, right on!”

“It didn’t happen?”

“In 1952, he was prosecuted for being a homosexual.”

Burton raised an eyebrow. “The state takes an interest in people’s sexual preferences?”

“Obsessively. He was publicly humiliated, experimented on, and two years later died from cyanide poisoning. Suicide, apparently, but there are those—the Cannibal Club among them—who think he was murdered.”

“Because?”

“Because the Automatic Computing Engine never appeared. The government claimed they examined it and found nothing but a prototype based on dodgy theoretical work. It was unsound and unworkable.”

Gooch interjected, “But you have other ideas?”

“Too right. I think the government lied and continued to develop it in secret. I think fourteen years after its inventor’s death, the Automatic Computing Engine is something quite different to what he intended. He envisioned a Utopia. The government, I suspect, has plans for exactly the opposite. If the machine really exists, I don’t know how it’s being used, but something very bad is happening behind the scenes, and if you discover that the crazy presence of Edward Oxford has somehow infiltrated the device, and that it’s manipulating government policies, then I won’t be the slightest bit surprised.”