The Return of the Discontinued Man (A Burton & Swinburne Adventure) (45 page)

This love isn’t mine. It’s Oxford’s.

A name popped into his mind.

“Jessica,” he said.

Her eyes widened. “You—you know me, sir? My real name?”

“Jessica,” he repeated. “Jessica Cornish.”

“But—but—I haven’t been called that for—for—” She moved forward, put her hands out toward him and hesitated, her expression alternating between fear and wonder. “How?”

Trounce said gruffly, “Queen Victoria.”

“Yes.” Tears spilled onto her cheeks. “They—
he
—calls me Victoria. But I’m—I’m Jessica Cornish. How do you know me? Who are you people? Why are you here?”

Trounce slipped behind her and pushed the door shut. He levelled his pistol and muttered, “This is a spot of luck. But be careful, Richard.”

“Lower your weapon,” Burton said. He looked down at the queen. “For how long have you been the monarch, Miss Cornish—Your Majesty?”

“Jessica, please. Just Jessica. It feels—it’s so good to hear that name again. I was chosen five years ago.”

“And prior to that?”

“I lived in Aldershot. I was nobody. A nanny.” She clenched her hands beneath her chin. “Who are you? Can you help me?”

“Help you?”

“I never wanted to be the queen. I don’t know why I am.”

“Miss Cornish,” Swinburne said. “The proclamations. The ones you issue. Might I ask where they come from?”

“Him.”

“Him?”

“The prime minister.”

Swinburne looked at Trounce. “A prime minister? I didn’t know we had one.”

“It’s news to me,” Trounce said. “What of the Turing Fulcrum, Miss Cornish?”

“The—what?”

“The device that guides the government. Perhaps it advises the prime minister?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Trounce’s eyes moved from Jessica Cornish to Swinburne to Burton.

The queen stepped closer to Sadhvi Raghavendra, instinctively seeking the support of her own gender. Raghavendra smiled at her, laid a hand gently on her upper arm, and said to Trounce, “She’s innocent, William. A victim. It’s plain to see.”

The queen nodded. There was an almost childish pleading in her eyes, helplessness.

Burton asked, “This prime minster, when was he elected?”

“He never was.”

“I mean, when did he assume his position?”

The queen leaned closer to Raghavendra. “Um. Forty years ago, I think.”

“2162?”

“Yes.”

“The year the original Edward Oxford was born,” Burton mused.

“He’ll be angry,” the queen said. “You shouldn’t be here. When they finish with that poor man, he’ll come looking.”

“Who are they?” Burton asked. “And what man?”

“The ministers. The traitor.”

“I don’t understand you.”

She put her hands over her face and emitted a quavering moan. “Oh. Oh. They are terrible. Terrible! Their entertainments. So cruel. Torture!”

Trounce reached out and gripped her wrist, not gently. “They have a captive?” he rasped. “What are they doing to him? Tell me!”

“Steady,” Burton murmured.

Recoiling from Trounce, the queen said, “He blew up the American Embassy.”

“Father!” Swinburne croaked.

“They injected him with nanomechs. The machines are eating him from the inside.”

“And they call it entertainment?” Trounce snarled. “By God! Where?”

“In the House of Lords. Five floors down.”

Trounce’s eyes blazed. Jessica Cornish moaned. “I have to go. I shouldn’t be talking to you. I’ll be punished. Let me go. Let me go.”

“It’s all right,” Raghavendra said soothingly. “We’re here to help you, Jessica. Will you trust us? Perhaps we can give you your freedom.”

“He won’t let you. He’ll kill you all. He’ll punish me for speaking with you. You don’t understand. The prime minister is dangerous. Very dangerous.”

“Miss Cornish,” Swinburne said. “What happens here tonight will be the culmination of events that date all the way back to 1837. No danger will dissuade us from doing what must be done.”

Burton turned to speak to Trounce but stopped when he saw his friend’s eyes. The former detective appeared to be almost paralysed by anger, as if he could think only of charging down the stairs with his pistol blazing, yet knew this would be a fatal error. He stood battling with himself, trembling with fury, his mouth opening and closing.

Since being reunited with him, Burton had allowed Trounce to take the lead, conceding to his greater knowledge of this future world. Burton, though, was the commander of the mission, and he saw that he must now reassert himself in that position.

“Sadhvi,” he said, “Miss Cornish will feel undoubtedly more comfortable with you. Take her across to the pump room and wait for us there. We’ll either join you or send for you when our business is done. If neither of those happens and you judge that you’ve waited long enough, make your way back, with our guest, to the
Orpheus
. In the meantime, describe to her who we are and why we are here.”

The queen moaned and shook her head. “They’ll send equerries to search for me.”

“We’ll take care of that. Sadhvi, go.”

Swinburne added, “Cross the roof as rapidly as possible. Remember, the queen has no adapted nanomechs in her system. Miss Cornish, you’ll experience considerable discomfort outside. It’s extremely cold and the air is thin. Have courage. You’ll only have to traverse a short distance.”

With a brusque nod of acknowledgment, Raghavendra pulled the queen away through the foliage and toward the door to the palace roof.

Swinburne put his finger to his ear and muttered instructions to Lorena Brabrooke. Sadhvi Raghavendra, at least, would be protected out there.

“It’ll be a while before we can speak with Lorena again,” he told them when he’d finished. “She’s now setting out to disrupt all the palace’s internal communications. Our BioProcs won’t escape the effects.”

Burton raised his pistol. “We four shall stay together. The Turing Fulcrum may have been using the faux queen as its public mouthpiece, but apparently a prime minister is providing a rather more assertive one, too. We need to get at him. First, though, let’s rescue Tom Bendyshe.”

Trounce growled, “And if anyone stands in our way, by God, I’ll kill them.”

Burton, Swinburne, Trounce and Wells quietly descended from the rooftop greenhouse to Buckingham Palace’s uppermost storey. The staircase, being more of a service route than a feature of the palace’s opulent interior, did not go down any farther. In order to reach the next floors, they needed to find the grand central stairwell. There were lifts, of course, but these were more often used by the palace’s inhabitants and thus presented the chrononauts with a greater danger of discovery and entrapment.

Trounce and Swinburne both recalled from the architectural plans that the main staircase ran through the middle of the building and was located somewhere to their left. It was more for show than function, so they hoped to use it without being detected.

They moved out of the shadows at the end of the stairs and along a corridor, past the entrance to an elevator, and on to a junction with a much larger and more elegantly decorated passageway. There was a purple carpet running along its floor, its walls bore countless portraits—all of Jessica Cornish—and crystal chandeliers hung from its ceiling every twenty feet along its length. Doors gave way to rooms on either side. Narrow, baroquely carved sideboards stood between them, holding vases of red flowers, small statuettes and framed pictures, all of the queen.

Burton put his head around the corner and looked to the right. Far away, the hallway ended at double doors. He looked to the left. A white stilted figure was striding toward him.

“Stay where you are!” it shouted. “You are not recognised. Your presence is unauthorised.”

“Damn!” Burton cursed. “We’re discovered.”

Swinburne stepped past him and raised his Penniforth Mark II.

“Head. Kill.”

The pistol spat—
ptooff!
—and the stilted figure fell to the floor. They ran to it, and Burton saw a round hole exactly between where its eyes would be had it a human face. He stepped to a door and, holding his own weapon ready, opened it, revealing an unoccupied bedchamber.

“Drag it in here, we’ll hide it under the bed.”

While this was being done, he asked, “So constables patrol the palace, William?”

“This isn’t a constable,” Trounce responded. “It’s an equerry, one of her majesty’s personal attendants. Basically, it’s exactly the same thing but with a different title. As you can see, it’s identical to the creatures that started appearing in London back in 1860. Fortunately, they don’t carry truncheons, which makes it a little easier for us.”

“Who, besides the queen, lives here?”

“All the ministers of the government and their lackeys. The higher echelons of the Uppers. Also, I presume, our mysterious prime minister, whomever he might be.”

They closed the bedroom door and continued on along the hallway. It ended at another junction. Burton whipped around the corner, facing to the right, gun raised. Trounce did the same, facing left.

“Head! Kill!” they chorused.

Ptooff! Ptooff!

Wells helped Burton to retrieve his victim while Swinburne assisted Trounce. They hoisted the equerries back to the junction and barged into what proved to be another sleeping chamber. A man, on the bed, sat up. He was bald-headed, attired in bright-pink pyjamas, and so morbidly obese that he resembled a gigantic wobbling blancmange. In a bizarrely singsong voice, he warbled, “Hey there! What’s this all about, then?”

Swinburne pointed his pistol. “Stun.”

Outspreading ripples marked the point of impact. The man looked down at his stomach. “Ouch! That hurt! How dare you!”

His eyes rolled up into his head, and he plopped backward onto his pillows.

The chrononauts discovered that the mattress, straining beneath its occupant’s weight, was too close to the floor to provide a hiding space, so instead shoved the two equerries into a wardrobe.

“For how long will Mr. Humpty Dumpty remain unconscious?” Wells enquired.

“Long enough,” Swinburne replied. “I expect he’ll be famished when he wakes up.”

They returned to the junction. Halfway along the left-hand branch, they saw the head of the main stairwell and ran toward it, their feet padding on the soft, luxurious carpet.

They jerked to a stop at the top of the steps, weapons directed downward, but no one was ascending.

Faintly, from far below, an incoherent shout echoed, whether one of anger or merriment, pleasure or pain, they couldn’t discern.

Treading carefully, they went down, passing polished suits of armour standing on display to either side of every tenth step, gauntlets clasped around the grips of broadswords, the blades’ tips resting between pointed sollerets.

A Grecian-style statue dominated the landing of the next floor. It portrayed Jessica Cornish, naked but for flowing material around her hips and a laurel wreath on her head.

As they rounded to the next flight, two female voices floated up to them.

“Why, my dear Baroness, I feel thoroughly wearied to the bone.”

“Of course you do, my lady. It is exceedingly late. I, too, must take to my bed. This whole business has quite exhausted me. I’m certain I’ll lie awake fretting over it.”

“Nonsense! You’re being far too theatrical. It will blow over. It’s merely a hiccup of some sort.”

“Hiccup? How can a hiccup so thoroughly detach the government from its people? Do you not perceive the seriousness of our position? The palace is utterly cut off, dear thing. Utterly! Worse still, we’ve lost all control over the commoners. The implications are frightful.”

“You suggest they might break the law, Baroness?”

“No. I suggest they might indulge in unfettered breeding.”

“Heaven forbid! Now I shall have nightmares.”

Burton said, “Good evening, ladies.”

The two Uppers stopped in their tracks and looked at him. He saw them register, with mutual gasps of consternation, the pistol he was brandishing at them. Their eyes flickered as they took in Swinburne, Trounce and Wells, all standing at his back.

“If you attempt to call for help, I’ll shoot you,” he said.