Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon

THE BAKER STREET DETECTIVE

Macallister Fogg's Own Paper! Issue 908.

Every Thursday. Consolidated Press.

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This Week:

Macallister Fogg and his lady assistant, Mrs. Boswell, investigate

THE PERIL OF THE GRAVITY PIRATES!

by T. H. Strongfellow

Plus the latest instalments of:

DOCTOR TZU AND THE SINGING COBRA by Cecil Barry

FATTY CAKEHOLE'S DORMITORY EMPIRE

by Norman Pounder

“Take us up, Mr. Wenham, no higher than seven thousand feet, if you please.” The order came from William Henson, the rotorship's first officer. He was a slender man, about fifty years old, with an extravagant moustache that curved around his cheeks to blend into bushy muttonchop whiskers. He wore tiny wire-framed spectacles that magnified his eyes while also accentuating his precise and somewhat stern manner.

He turned to Burton and Swinburne, who were standing next to Captain Lawless, having been invited up to the conning tower to witness the takeoff. “We have to keep her low, gentlemen, on account of our ventilation problems. Until we get the heating pipes fixed, flying at any greater altitude will have us all shivering in our socks.”

A vibration ran through the deck as the engines roared. There was no sensation of movement, but through the windows curving around the front and sides of the tower, Burton saw the horizon slip downward.

“Here we go,” declared Francis Wenham, the helmsman. He was at a control console at the front of the cabin, manipulating three big levers and a number of wheels; a beefily built man with pale blond, rather untidy hair, and a wispy goatee beard.

“One thousand five hundred feet,” murmured the man at the station beside him. “Swing her forty degrees to starboard, please.”

“Forty degrees to starboard, aye, Mr. Playfair.”

The horizon revolved around the ship.

Playfair turned to Henson and said, “Course set, sir.”

“Thank you. Ahead, Mr. Wenham. Get her up to forty knots.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Flight time to London, three and a half hours,” Playfair noted.

Swinburne eyed the sharp-faced, dark-eyed navigator. “I didn't see him consult his instruments,” he muttered to Lawless. “Did he just do that calculation in his head?”

“Yes,” the captain answered quietly. “He's a wizard with mathematics, that one.”

The meteorologist—short, very stout, very hairy, and wearing his bulging uniform jacket tightly buttoned—announced: “Clear going until we reach the capital, sir. Fog there.”

“Thank you, Mr. Bingham.”

The captain turned to a tall, heavily bearded man who'd just entered the cabin and said, “Ah, there you are. Sir Richard, Mr. Swinburne, this is Doctor Barnaby Quaint, our steward and surgeon. He'll give you a tour of the ship, see that you're settled into your quarters, and will make sure that you have whatever you require.”

“Is there a bar on board?” Swinburne asked.

Quaint smiled. “Yes, sir, in the lounge, though it's closed at the moment. I dare say I could rustle you up a tipple, should you require it. Would you care to follow me, gentlemen?”

They took their leave of Lawless, left the command cabin, and descended a metal staircase. A short corridor led them past the captain's quarters on one side and the first officer's on the other, and through decorative double doors into the glass-encased observation deck.

They were greeted by Detective Inspectors Trounce and Honesty, Commander Krishnamurthy, Constable Bhatti, and Mrs. Iris Angell, who was beside herself with excitement.

“Who'd have thought!” exclaimed Burton's housekeeper. “Dirty old Yorkshire—see how pretty it appears from up here, Sir Richard!”

He stepped to her side and looked out at the little villages and patchwork fields passing below.

“The northern counties have some of the most beautiful countryside in all of England,” he said. “Did you think it would be different?”

“Yes!” she exclaimed. “I expected horrible factories everywhere!”

“You'll find plenty of William Blake's ‘dark Satanic mills’ in and around the manufacturing cities, Mrs. Angell, but as you can see, the horror of the North felt by those in the South is generally quite unjustified.”

Burton watched the scenery slide by for a couple more minutes then moved over to where Detective Inspector Honesty was standing alone.

“Hello, old fellow,” he said. “I didn't see much of you at Fryston. Are you all set for Africa?”

Honesty turned to him. “I am. Wife unhappy but duty calls. Must finish this business. Stop interference from the future.” The detective gazed back out of the window and his pale-grey eyes fixed on the horizon. “Africa. Exotic flora. Might collect specimens. Cultivate in greenhouse when we return.”

“Are you an amateur horticulturalist? I didn't know.”

Honesty looked back at Burton and the explorer noticed a strange light in the smaller man's eyes—an odd sort of remoteness about his manner.

“Should've been a landscape gardener. Always wanted to be. Joined the Force on account of my father. A Peeler. One of the originals. Very dedicated. Passionate about policing. Me—I'm just good at it. But gardening—well—” He paused and a small sigh escaped him. “There are different versions of history, Captain?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe in one, I made another choice. Thomas Manfred Honesty: Landscape Gardener. Hope so.”

He returned his attention to the vista outside.

Burton patted the detective's shoulder and left him. He felt troubled by his friend's detached air. Honesty hadn't been quite himself since last September's battle with the Rakes, when he'd had his fingers broken and been throttled almost to death by an animated corpse. It was, Burton thought, enough to unnerve any man.

Trounce approached him. “How long until we reach London? I'm eager to get back onto the trail of our murderer.”

“A little over three hours.” Burton lowered his voice. “I say, Trounce, what's your opinion of Honesty? Is he a hundred percent?”

Trounce glanced toward his colleague. “I'd say he's the most determined of us all, Captain. He's a man who likes everything to be just so. The idea that an individual can hop back through time and turn it all on its head doesn't sit well with him.”

Burton gave a small nod of understanding. “The steward is taking us on a tour of the ship. Join us?”

“I will, thank you.”

Leaving Honesty, Krishnamurthy, Bhatti, and Mrs. Angell—all of whom had been around the vessel earlier that morning—Burton, Swinburne, and Trounce followed Doctor Quaint back into the corridor. As they passed by the captain's rooms, a small, slightly pudgy boy emerged.

“All shipshape, Master Wilde?” the doctor asked.

“That it is, sir. Good morning to you, Captain Burton, Mr. Swinburne, Detective Inspector Trounce. Welcome aboard!” The boy grinned, habitually raising his hand to his nose in order to conceal his rather crooked and yellowing teeth.

“Hallo, Quips!” said Burton.

Quaint addressed the explorer: “I understand Master Wilde is with us at your recommendation, sir?”

“He is indeed.”

“And I'm much obliged, so I am, Captain,” Wilde said.

“By Jove, little 'un!” Trounce exclaimed. “If someone had told you a year ago that you'd be flying to Africa as a crewmember aboard the biggest rotorship ever built, would you have believed them?”

“I can believe anything provided it is incredible, Mr. Trounce.”

“Ha! Quite so! Quite so! And I daresay it's a great deal better than going to school, hey?”

“I wouldn't know, never having suffered such an indignity. While education may be an admirable thing, it is well to remember that nothing worth knowing can be taught. Now then, I must get myself up to the captain to have these acquisition orders signed. There's much to be done, so there is, if we're to depart the country without leaving unpaid debts behind us. I'll see you later, gentlemen!”

“Good Lord!” Quaint said as Wilde disappeared up the stairs to the conning tower. “Where does he get those nimble wits from?”

“I have no idea,” Burton answered. “Perhaps his diet of butterscotch and gobstoppers has affected his brain.”

They moved on down the corridor, passing the crew's quarters, and entered the lounge, a large space stretching from one side of the ship to the other. There were tables and chairs, a small dance floor and stage, and, to Swinburne's evident satisfaction, a bar in one corner.

“How many passengers can the Orpheus accommodate, Doctor?” Burton asked.

“Two hundred, sir. The smoking room is ahead of us, and beyond that the dining room, then a small parlour, and the first-class cabins all the way to the stern, where the reading room is situated. From there we'll take the stairs down to the rear observation room, pass through the cargo hold to the galley and pantries, then the engine room, and on to the standard-class cabins in the prow end of the ship. As you can see, those rooms have access to this lounge via staircases on the port and starboard sides. Of course, the ship has a number of other rooms, but those are the main ones.”

“Phew!” Trounce gasped. “Mr. Brunel certainly likes to work on a grand scale!”

They continued their tour, marvelling at the opulence that surrounded them—for every fixture and fitting, and every item of decor, had been handcrafted from the finest materials—and eventually came to the galley, where they found Isabella Mayson unpacking foodstuffs and stocking the larders.

“By heavens, Miss Mason!” Quaint cried out. “You're making fast progress! The last time I looked in, this room was chock-a-block with unopened boxes!”

“A place for everything and everything in its place, Doctor Quaint,” the young woman responded. “We took a great many supplies on board in Yorkshire and we'll be adding more when we get to London. If I don't have the kitchen in order by then, it'll mean more work and delayed meals. We wouldn't want that, would we?”

“Certainly not!” Quaint agreed.

Miss Mayson smiled at the steward and said, “I shall be serving an early lunch at half-past twelve, Doctor.”

“Good!” Swinburne interjected. “I'm famished!”

Quaint led them out of the galley, past cabins given over to various shipboard functions, and into the first of the huge engine-room compartments. After Daniel Gooch had shown them around the massive twin turbines, they moved on to the standard-class cabins, where they encountered Sister Raghavendra, who was organising a small surgery. As Quaint explained, it was essential to have medical facilities aboard the ship, not only to cater for any passenger who might be taken ill, but also because some of the engineering duties were exceedingly hazardous. It was the job of the riggers, for example, to maintain the flight pylons, which sometimes meant crawling out onto them while the Orpheus was in mid-flight. They wore harnesses, of course, but a fall could still be damaging. Riggers had been known drop then swing into the side of their ship, suffering a crushing impact.

“Now that you have your bearings, gentlemen, I shall take my leave of you,” the doctor said as they reached a staircase at the prow of the vessel. “There is much to be done before our principal voyage begins, as I'm sure you appreciate.” He looked down at Swinburne. “I have to pass back through the lounge, sir. If you'd care to accompany me, I'll organise that breakfast tipple for you.”

“Bravo!” Swinburne cheered. “That'll be just the ticket!”

“And you, sir?” Quaint asked Burton.

“Too early for me. I'll retire to my quarters to go over the expedition inventory.”

“Then I shall see you at lunch, sir.”

The top ends of four colossal copper rods poked out of the dense fog that blanketed London. Guided by Francis Wenham, HMA Orpheus slid into position between them and gently descended into the central courtyard of Battersea Power Station.

It was two o'clock in the afternoon.

“How times have changed,” Swinburne commented as he and Sir Richard Francis Burton disembarked, wrapped tightly in their overcoats, top hats pressed onto their heads. “Who'd have thought, a couple of years ago, that we'd end up working with Isambard Kingdom Brunel?”

“How times have changed,” Burton echoed. “That's the problem.”

Herbert Spencer, the clockwork philosopher, emerged from the pall to greet them.

He was a figure of polished brass, a machine, standing about five-feet-five-inches tall. His head was canister-shaped, with a bizarre-looking domed attachment on top of it that was somewhat reminiscent of a tiny church organ. The “face” beneath it was nothing more than three raised circular areas set vertically. The topmost resembled a tiny ship's porthole, through which a great many minuscule cogwheels could be glimpsed. The middle circle held a mesh grille, and the bottom one was simply a hole out of which three very fine five-inch-long wires projected.

Spencer's neck consisted of thin shafts and cables, swivel joints and hinges. His trunk was a slim cylinder with panels cut from it, revealing gears and springs, delicate crankshafts, gyroscopes, flywheels, and a pendulum. The thin but robust arms ended in three-fingered hands. The legs were sturdy and tubular; the feet oval-shaped.

He was an astonishing sight; and few who saw him now would believe that not so many weeks ago he'd been a very human, grubby, and tangle-bearded vagrant.

“Hallo, Boss! Hallo, Mr. Swinburne!” he hooted.

His strange voice came from the helmet-shaped apparatus, recently created and added to the brass man by Brunel. Spencer spoke through it clearly but with a piping effect that sounded similar to the woodwind section of a band.

Burton returned the greeting: “Hallo. How are you, Herbert?”

“I reckons I've a touch of the old arthritis in me left knee,” the philosopher said. “But can't complain.”

“A screw loose, more like!” Swinburne suggested.

“P'raps. I tells you, though—it's a strange thing to be mechanical. I fear me springs may snap or cogs grind to a halt at any bloomin' moment. Speaking o' which, I have good news—I'll be comin' to Africa, after all.”

“How so?” Burton asked as they crossed the courtyard. “Conditions will hardly be conducive to your functioning.”

“Mr. Brunel's scientists have dreamt up a new material what they makes usin' a chemical process. They calls it polymethylene. It's brown, very flexible, but waxy in texture. It's also waterproof, an' can't be penetrated by dust. They've used it to tailor a number of one-piece suits for me, what'll entirely protect me from the climate.”

“You're certain that you'll be shielded and that the material will endure? Remember, there are extremes of heat and cold, as well as mud and dust,” Burton cautioned. “During my previous expedition the clothes literally rotted off my back.”

They arrived at the tall doors of the main building. Spencer reached out and took hold of one of the handles. “The material will no doubt deteriorate over time, Boss,” he said, “but they've supplied me with fifteen of the bloomin' outfits, so I daresay they'll last. Besides—” he gestured at the fog that surrounded them, “—if I can survive this funk, I can survive anythin'!”

“Then I'm delighted,” Burton replied. “You were pivotal in our securing of the South American diamond, and your presence might be of crucial importance when—or, rather, if—we reach the African stone. Welcome to the team, Herbert!”

“Marvellous!” Swinburne added.

The clockwork man pulled the door far enough open for them to pass through.

“Enter, please, gents.”

The two men stepped into the Technologists' headquarters and were almost blinded by the bright lights within.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel had built Battersea Power Station in 1837. At the time, he'd been full of strange ideas inspired by his acquaintance Henry Beresford, and had designed the station to generate something he referred to as “geothermal energy.” The copper rods that stood in each corner of the edifice rose high above it like four tall chimneys, but they extended much farther in the opposite direction, plunging deep into the Earth's crust. Brunel, just thirty-one years old in '37 and still rather prone to exaggeration, had announced that these rods would produce enough energy to provide the whole of London with electricity, which could then be adapted to provide lighting and heat. Unfortunately, since its construction, the only thing Battersea Power Station had ever managed to illuminate was itself, although it was rumoured that this might soon change, for Brunel was thought to have discovered a means to significantly increase the output of the copper rods.

Shielding their eyes, Burton and Swinburne looked into the station and observed a vast workshop. A number of globes hung from the high ceiling. Lightning bolts had somehow been trapped inside them, and they bathed the floor beneath in an incandescent glare, which reflected off the surfaces of megalithic machines—contrivances whose functions were baffling in the extreme. Electricity fizzed, crackled, and buzzed across their surfaces, and shafts of it whipped and snapped across the open spaces, filling the place with the sharp tang of ozone.

Among all this, over to their right, there stood a bulky vehicle. Around twelve feet high and thirty-six in length, it was tubular in shape—the front half a cabin, the back half a powerful engine—and it was mounted on a large number of short jointed legs. Rows of legs also projected from its top and sides. At its rear, steam funnels stuck horizontally outward, while its front was dominated by a huge drill, which tapered from the outer edges of the vehicle to a point, the tip of which stood some eighteen feet in advance of the main body.

Spencer, noticing them looking at it, explained: “That's a Worm—one of the machines what they're usin' to dig the London Underground tunnels. They reckons Underground trains will make it easier for people to move around the city, now that the streets are so congested with traffic. But you won't find me gettin' into one o' them trains. I'd be afraid o' suffocatin'!”

“You can't suffocate, Herbert,” Swinburne objected.

“Aye, so you says!”

Another contrivance caught their eye. Surrounded by a group of technicians and engineers, it was a large barrel-shaped affair on tripod legs with a myriad of mechanical arms, each ending in pliers or a blowtorch or a saw or some other tool. As Burton, Swinburne, and Spencer entered, it swung toward them, lurched away from the Technologists, and stamped over.

“Greetings, gentlemen,” it said, and its voice was identical to Herbert Spencer's, except pitched at a low baritone.

“Hello, Isambard,” Burton answered, for, indeed, this hulking mechanism was the famous engineer—or, more accurately, it was the life maintaining apparatus that had encased him since 1859, earning him the nickname the Steam Man. The king's agent continued: “The crew of the Orpheus is standing ready to take delivery of the vehicles and further supplies. Is everything prepared?”

“Yes, Sir Richard. My people will tarry—harry—excuse me, carry— everything aboard.”

“I say, Izzy!” Swinburne piped up, with a mischievous twinkle in his green eyes. “Has your new speech-rendering device broken?”

“No,” Brunel answered. “But it is not currently interacting sufficiently—effusively—expectantly—I mean, efficiently—with the calculating elephants—um—elements—of my cerebral impasse—er, impulse—calculators. Unanticipated variegations—vegetations—my apologies—variations are occurring in the calibration of the device's sensory nodes.”

“My hat!” Swinburne exclaimed. “The problem is obviously chronic! I didn't understand a single word you just said! It was absolute gibberish!”

“Algy,” Burton muttered. “Behave yourself!”

“It's all right, Sir Pilchard—er, Sir Richard,” Brunel interjected. “Mr. Spinbroom has not yet forgiven me for the way I treated him during the String Filled Sack affair. I mean the Spring Heeled Jack despair—um—affair. Kleep.”

“Kleep?” Swinburne asked, trying to stifle a giggle.

“Random noise,” Brunel replied. “A recurring poodle. I mean, problem.”

The poet clutched his sides, bent over, and let loose a peal of shrill laughter.

Burton sighed and rolled his eyes.

“Mr. Brunel's speakin' apparatus is the same as me own,” Herbert Spencer put in, raising a brass finger to touch the rounded arrangement of pipes on his head. “But, as you know, me intellect is knockin' around inside the structure o' black diamonds, whereas his ain't, and the instrument responds better to impulses from inorganic matter than from organic.”

“Ah-ha!” Swinburne cried out, wiping tears from his eyes. “So you still have fleshly form inside that big tank of yours, do you, Izzy?”

“That's quite enough,” Burton interrupted, pushing his diminutive assistant aside. He steered the conversation back to the business at hand: “Are we on schedule, Isambard?”

“Yes. We have to declare—compare—repair the ventilation and leaping—um, heating—system, but the League of Chimney Sweeps has guaranteed periphery—I mean, delivery—of a new section of pipe by six o'clock today, and the work itself will slake—take—but an hour or so.”

Swinburne, who'd regained control of himself, asked, “Why can't you fabricate the pipe yourself?”

“Reg—parp—ulations,” Brunel answered.

Burton explained: “The Beetle has recently secured the sole manufacturing and trading rights to any pipes through which his people must crawl to clean or service.”

“That boy is a genius,” Swinburne commented.

“Indeed,” Burton agreed. “Very well, we'll leave you to it, Isambard. The ship's crew will help your people to load the supplies. The passengers will reconvene here tomorrow morning at nine.”

“Would you like to suspect—inspect—the vehicles before you depart?”

“No time. We have a murder investigation under way. I have to go.”

“Before you do, may I peek—speak—with you privately for a moment?”

“Certainly.”

Burton followed Brunel and stood with him a short distance away. They conversed for a few minutes, then the Steam Man clanked off and rejoined the group of Technologists.

Burton returned.

“What was all that about?” Swinburne asked.

“He was telling me a few things about the babbage device that John Speke has fitted to his head. Let's go.”

“Should I join you, Boss?” Spencer asked.

“No, Herbert. I'd like you to stay and check the inventory against the supplies loaded.”

“Rightio.”

Leaving the clockwork man, Burton and Swinburne walked out through the doors, crossed the courtyard, and joined Detective Inspectors Trounce and Honesty, Commander Krishnamurthy, Constable Bhatti, Isabella Mayson, Mrs. Angell and Fidget, and various other passengers at the foot of the rotorship's boarding ramp. Crewmembers D'Aubigny, Bingham, and Butler were also there, having been granted a few hours' shore leave.

The pea-souper swirled around them all, dusting their clothes and skin with pollutants, clogging their nostrils with soot.

“Are we all ready?” Burton asked his friends. “Then let us go and bid civilisation farewell, except for you, Mother Angell. I fully expect you to maintain its standards while we're gone.”

The group walked out through the station gates and passed alongside the outer wall beside a patch of wasteland that stretched down to nearby railway lines—a location which held bad memories for the king's agent and his assistant, for two years ago they'd been pursued across it by wolf-men and had narrowly avoided being hit by a locomotive.

They followed a path down to Kirtling Street, which took them the short distance to Battersea Park Road. Here they waved down conveyances. Monckton Milnes's guests gradually disappeared, as they each caught cabs home. Mrs. Angell and Fidget climbed into a hansom, bound for 14 Montagu Place; Isabella Mayson took another, for Orange Street; and a growler stopped for Detective Inspector Honesty, Commander Krishnamurthy, and Constable Bhatti, ready to take them each in turn to their respective homes.

A fourth vehicle—a steam-horse-drawn growler—was hailed by Burton for himself, Swinburne, and Trounce.

“Scotland Yard, driver!” the latter ordered.

“Not to Otto Steinruck's house?” Burton asked, as he climbed into the carriage and settled himself on the seat.

“It's out in Ilford,” came the reply. “Too far by cab, so I thought we'd each borrow one of the Yard's rotorchairs.”

The growler swung out onto Nine Elms Lane and chugged along next to the Thames. Its passengers took out their handkerchiefs and held them over their noses, the stench from the river so intense it made their eyes water.

Burton looked out of the window. Somewhere along this road there was a courtyard in which a young girl named Sarah Lovitt had been assaulted by Spring Heeled Jack back in 1839—just one of many attacks Edward Oxford had committed while searching for his ancestor. That was twenty-four years ago, and in that short time Oxford's influence had totally transformed the British Empire. That one man could effect such a change so quickly seemed utterly incredible to Burton but it wasn't without precedent; after all, history was replete with individuals who'd done the same—the Caesars, Genghis Khans, and Napoleons. Oxford had caused the death of Queen Victoria. After that, his influence had been subtler; he'd simply made unguarded comments about the future to Henry Beresford. The marquess had passed that information on to Isambard Kingdom Brunel, whose remarkable creative talents had been set alight by the hints and suggestions, leading to the creation of the political and cultural juggernaut that was the Technologist caste.

While Brunel's Engineers and Eugenicists succumbed to their inventive zeal, Oxford's presence in the form of Spring Heeled Jack had also inspired an opposing force: the Libertines, who sought to change social policies and create a new species of liberated man.

All of these elements had given rise to a condition of rapidly growing chaos, as scientific developments and social experimentation accelerated without check. For Charles Darwin, the man they called “God's Executioner,” who'd fallen under the sway of his cousin, the Eugenicist Francis Galton, the possibilities had been so overwhelming they'd pushed him beyond the bounds of sanity.

How many others? Burton thought. How many have become something they should never have been?

The growler turned left onto Vauxhall Bridge and joined the queue of vehicles waiting to pay the toll to cross.

“The devil take it!” Trounce grumbled. “For how long are we to sit here breathing in this funk?”

“I can barely see a thing,” Swinburne said, leaning out and peering ahead. “There's no telling how far from the toll booths we are. Surely, Pouncer, you don't expect us to fly rotorchairs in this?”

“Oy!” the police officer objected. “Don't call me Pouncer! But you're right, of course. After all that fresh Yorkshire air, I forgot how damned impenetrable these London particulars can be.”

Burton made a suggestion: “It's only a couple of miles to the Yard. Why don't we leg it there and borrow penny-farthings instead?”

Trounce agreed, and moments later they were crossing the bridge on foot, cursing the stink, cursing the traffic, and cursing the fog.

“I tell you, Captain, I'll be delighted to leave this bloody cesspool of a city behind for a few months,” Trounce declared.

It was six o'clock by the time they reached Ilford, and, though the fog was thinner there, the daylight was fading and the ill-lit town was wreathed in gloom.

They steered their velocipedes along the Cranbrook Road, then turned left into Grenfell Place.

“We're looking for number sixteen,” Trounce said.

A minute later, they found it: an isolated house set back from the road and concealed by a gnarled and unnaturally twisted oak tree.

“By Jove!” Trounce exclaimed. “Why would anyone want this monstrosity in their front garden?”

They opened the gate, passed through, ducked under the branches, and walked along the path to the front door. No lights were showing in the house.

Trounce exercised the door knocker with his usual vigour but was met with nothing but silence.

“This is a murder investigation,” he said, taking two steps back, “so I have no qualms about breaking in. Stand aside, would you, while I put my shoulder to it.”

Burton held up a hand. “No need for that, old chap.” He produced a picklock from his coat pocket and went to work on the keyhole. Moments later, there was a click.

“Open sesame!” Swinburne commanded, with an effusive wave of his arms.

“Go back to the gate and stand guard, would you, Algy?” Burton asked. “We'll need to light lamps, and if our strangler returns while we're here and sees the windows blazing, he'll do a runner before we've a chance to nab him. Yell if you see anyone acting in a suspicious manner.”

The poet nodded and moved away while Burton and Trounce entered the house. The Scotland Yard man took out a box of lucifers, struck one, and put it to a wall lamp in the hallway. It illuminated three doors and a flight of stairs.

The first door opened onto a small lounge. Trounce got another lamp going and the two men saw five chairs positioned around a coffee table on which ashtrays and empty glasses stood.

“It looks like there was a meeting of some sort,” Burton observed. He checked a bureau and found it empty, then the cupboards of an armoire and found the same.

The second door led to a dining room in which they found nothing of interest, and the third door into a kitchen. Its pantry was empty.

“I fear our quarry is long gone,” Trounce muttered.

The bedrooms upstairs added weight to his suspicion, for the wardrobes were bare and there were no personal possessions to be found anywhere.

“Let's take another look at the lounge,” Burton suggested.

They returned to that room and began a thorough search of it. The king's agent picked through the ashtrays, lifting cigar butts to his nose.

“Revealing,” he murmured. “Four different Germanic brands and one English.”

“Look at this, Captain.”

Burton moved over to where his friend was squatting by the fireplace.

Trounce pointed at a reddish-brown patch at the back of the hearth. “Is that dried blood?”

Burton crouched and examined the stain. “Yes, I think so. Well spotted. But how the blazes did blood get there?” He thought for a moment, then said: “Would you call Algy in, please?”

Trounce grunted, straightened, and left the room. While he was gone, Burton pulled the ashes and half-burned coals out of the fireplace and pushed them to one side, careless of the mess he made on the hearthrug. He lifted out the grate and set that aside, too.

“There was a hansom outside,” Swinburne said as he entered the room with Trounce behind him. “It trotted past in the normal manner. I don't think it was anything untoward. What's happening here?”

“You're the chimney expert,” Burton said. “Have a look at this.”

Swinburne cast his eyes over the fireplace. “It was recently cleaned,” he noted.

“It was?”

“Yes. Look how thin the layer of soot is. Is that a bloodstain?”

“We think so.”

“Give me your lantern, Richard.”

Burton reached into his pocket and pulled out his clockwork lantern. He shook it open and wound it, then handed it over to his assistant.

Swinburne removed his topper and laid it on the coffee table, then ducked down, stepped into the fireplace, and raised the light into the chimney.

“I'm going up,” he said, and, bracing his legs against either side of the opening, he began to climb.

“Be careful, lad!” Trounce cautioned.

“Don't worry,” Burton said. “Vincent Sneed trained him well.”

“Don't mention that cad!” came Swinburne's hollow voice. “I say! There's a sort of niche up here and a little stash of food. There are more bloodstains, too. I'm going to go all the way up to the roof.”

Little showers of soot fell into the hearth, but less than Burton would have expected; evidently the poet was correct, and the chimney was fairly clean.

Five minutes passed, then scrapes and trickles of black dust and an occasional grunt indicated that Swinburne was on his way back down. His feet appeared, then the poet in his entirety, his clothes and skin blackened, his green eyes sparkling from his sooty face.

“My guess is that a chimney sweep was hired to clean the chimney then came back later to steal food from the house,” he said. “It's not uncommon. Most of the boys are half-starved and those that lodge with master sweeps are often so brutalised that they occasionally seek refuge for a night in suitable chimneys.”

“Suitable chimneys?” Trounce asked. “What constitutes a suitable chimney?”

Swinburne turned off the lantern and handed it back to Burton. “One like this, with a niche in it and a shelf wide enough for the nipper to sleep on.”

“And the blood?” Burton asked.

“They shot him.”

“What?”

“Halfway up there's a furrow in the brickwork with a bullet lodged at the end of it. That shot obviously missed. Another one didn't. There's blood smeared all the way to the top and a lot of it on the roof tiles. The lad got away by the looks of it, but I doubt he survived for long, the poor little blighter.”

The three men were silent for a moment, then Swinburne said quietly: “And now I hate that Prussian swine even more.”

They made a final search of the house in case they'd missed anything then turned off the lights, stepped out, and closed the front door behind them.

“I'll report to the Yard and will have a couple of constables sent over to keep watch on the place,” Trounce said as they proceeded down the path.

“We have no choice but to leave the investigation in the hands of your colleagues now,” Burton said, “which means even if they catch the wretch, we won't hear about it for some considerable time. There is, however, one last thing I can do.”

“What?”

The king's agent pulled open the gate and they crossed to where their velocipedes were parked.

“I can visit the Beetle. He may know something about the injured sweep.”

They started the penny-farthings' engines, mounted, and set off. As they turned back into Cranbrook Road and began to chug down the hill, Burton called, “We'll split up when we get to Mile End. I'll head off to Limehouse. Algy, you go home, get packed, and have a good night's sleep. Stay off the alcohol. Trounce, do what you have to do at the Yard then get yourself home to your wife. We'll reconvene at the Orpheus tomorrow morning.”

This arrangement was followed, and just under an hour later, Burton was striding through the stifling fog along the banks of Limehouse Cut canal. The factories that lined it had finished production for the day, and the thousands of workers who toiled within them had dispersed, returning to their lodgings in the loathsome slum that was London's East End—or “the Cauldron” as it was more commonly known.

Burton had left his velocipede in the charge of a constable back on the High Road. It wouldn't do to bring such an expensive vehicle into this district. He'd left his top hat with the policeman, too. The men in this area were most often bare-headed or wore flat caps. Best not to stand out.

The king's agent did, however, carry his sword cane—with its silver panther-head handle—held in such a manner so as to be able to quickly unsheathe the blade should it become necessary.

He arrived at a towering factory that, unlike the others, stood derelict. Nearly every one of its windows was cracked or broken, and its doors were boarded up. He circled around it until he came to a narrow dock at the side of the canal. In a niche in the building's wall, he found iron rungs set into the brickwork. He climbed them.

The edifice was seven storeys high, and by the time Burton reached the roof, he was breathing heavily. Hauling himself over the parapet, he sat and rested a moment.

There were two skylights set into the flat roof with eight chimneys rising around them. The third one from the eastern edge had rungs set into its side, and, after the king's agent had got his breath back, he began to ascend it. Halfway up, he stopped to rest again, then pressed on until he came to the top of the structure. He swung himself onto the lip of the chimney and sat with one leg to either side of it. He'd picked up a number of stones on his way here, and now he retrieved three of them from his pocket and dropped them one by one into the flue. This signal would summon the Beetle.

Burton had never actually seen the strange leader of the League of Chimney Sweeps. All he knew about him was that he was a boy, he lived in this chimney, and he had a voracious appetite for books. The Beetle had been of significant help during the strange affair of Spring Heeled Jack, when he'd arranged for Swinburne to pose as a sweep—a move that led directly to the exposure of Darwin and his cronies—and since then Burton had visited regularly, always bringing with him a supply of literature and poetry. The Beetle was especially desirous of anything written by Swinburne, whose talent he practically worshipped.

Burton wrapped his scarf around the lower half of his face and waited.

From this height there was usually a stunning view across London but today the king's agent could barely see his own hand in front of his face. The fog was dense and cold, and the “blacks” were falling—coal dust that coalesced with ice at a higher altitude and drifted down like dark snow.

He frowned. The Beetle should have responded by now.

“Hi!” he called into the flue. “Are you there, lad? It's Burton!”

There was no answer. He dropped three more stones into the darkness and sat patiently. The minutes ticked by and there was still no sound of movement, no whispery voice from the shadows.

Burton called again, waited a little longer, then gave up.

Where was the Beetle?

Half an hour later, after retrieving his vehicle and headwear, Burton continued homeward. For a few minutes he thought a hansom was following him, but when he reached the main thoroughfares, he became so ensnarled in traffic that he lost sight of it.

Central London had ground to a complete halt, the streets jammed solid with a bizarre mishmash of technologies. There were horses pulling carts and carriages; prodigious drays harnessed to huge pantechnicons; steam-horse-drawn hansoms and growlers; velocipedes; and adapted arachnids and insects, such as harvestmen and Folks' Wagon Beetles, silverfish racers and omnipedes. Burton even saw a farmer trying to drive a herd of goats through the streets to Covent Garden Market.

It seemed to the king's agent that the past, present, and future had all been compressed into the capital's streets, as if the structure of time itself was deteriorating.

None of the vehicles or pedestrians was making any progress, being more engaged in battling one another than in moving forward. The horses were whinnying and shying away from the insects, the insects were getting tangled up in each other's legs and mounting the pavements in an attempt to pass one another, and among them all, cloaked in fog and steam, crowds of people were shouting and cursing and shaking their fists in fury.

Slowly, with many a diversion down dark and narrow side streets and alleyways, Burton made his way out of Cheapside, past the Bank of England, and along Holborn Road. Here, at the junction with Red Lion Street, he collided with another velocipede—whose driver had lost control after his vehicle's boiler burst and knocked the gyroscope out of kilter—and was almost forced into an enormously deep and wide hole in the road. Clutching at the barrier around the pit so as not to topple from his penny-farthing, Burton cursed vehemently, then reached down and turned off his engine. The other man, who'd fallen onto the cobbles, picked himself up and kicked his machine. “Stupid bloody thing!” he cried out, then looked up at the king's agent. “Bless me, sir, you almost came a cropper! Pray forgive me!”

“It wasn't your fault,” Burton said, dismounting. “Are you hurt?”

“I've ripped my trouser knee and knocked my elbow but nothing more life-threatening than that. What's this whacking great crater all about?”

“They're building a station here for the new London Underground railway system. The Technologists say it'll make moving around the city a lot easier.”

“Well, it couldn't be any more difficult,” the man answered. “Strike a light! What was that?”

Something had whined past his ear and knocked off Burton's top hat.

“Get down!” the king's agent snapped, pushing the other man to the ground.

“Hey up! What's your game?”

“Someone's shooting!”

“I beg your pardon? Did you say shooting?”

The explorer scanned the milling crowd, then reached for his hat and snatched it up from the road. There was a hole in its front, near the top edge. At the back, an exit hole was set a bit lower.

“The shot was fired from slightly above ground level,” he murmured.

“Shot? Shot?” the man at his side stammered. “Why are we being shot at? I've never done anything! I'm just a bank clerk!”

“Not we—me.”

“But why? Who are you?”

“Nobody. Pick up your boneshaker and get out of here.”

“But—I—um—should I call for a policeman?”

“Just go!”

The man scuttled sideways on his hands and knees, pushed his penny-farthing upright, and wheeled it away while crouching behind it, as if it might shelter him from further bullets. As he disappeared into the noisy throng, Burton also moved, sliding along the edge of the barrier with his eyes flicking left and right, trying to pierce the fog.

“Confound it!” he hissed. He had no idea where the shootist might be. In one of the nearby carriages, perhaps? On a velocipede? Not in a building, that much was certain, for the windows along this side of the street were nothing but faint rectangular smudges of light—no one could possibly have identified him through the intervening murk.

He decided to follow Falstaff's dictum that “discretion is the better part of valour,” and, bending low, he retrieved his cane, abandoned his conveyance, and shouldered his way into the crowd. He ducked between the legs of a harvestman, squeezed past a brewery wagon, and hurried away as fast as the many obstructions would allow. It was a shame to leave the penny-farthing behind but he couldn't risk climbing up onto its saddle again—that would make him far too visible.

It was past eleven o'clock by the time he finally arrived at 14 Montagu Place. As he stepped in, Mrs. Angell greeted him.

“Hallo!” he said, slipping his cane into an elephant's-foot holder by the door. “Good show! You got home! What a state the streets are in!”

“It's pandemonium, Sir Richard,” she agreed. “How are the delivery boys to do their job? We'll starve!”

“I'm halfway there already,” he said, shrugging out of his coat and hanging it on the stand. “I haven't eaten since I don't know when!”

“Then you'll be pleased to hear that a bacon and egg pie has been waiting for you these three hours past. That should fill the hole in your stomach. I don't know what to do about the hole that appears to have found its way into your hat, though.”

Burton took off his topper and eyed it ruefully. “Oh well, I don't suppose I'll need it where I'm going. Perhaps you'd consign it to the dustbin for me?”

“Most certainly not!” the old woman objected. “A fine headpiece like that should be repaired, not abandoned. What happened to it?”

“Someone took a pot-shot at me.”

Mrs. Angell raised her hands to her face. “Oh my goodness! With a gun? Are you hurt?”

Burton placed the hat on the stand, then squatted to untie his bootlaces.

“Not at all. The would-be assassin's aim was off.”

He eased his boots off and stood in his stockinged feet.

“I missed a night's sleep and I'm weary to the bone,” he said. “I'll change into something more comfortable and join you in the kitchen for supper, if you don't mind.”

Mrs. Angell looked surprised. “Eat? In the kitchen? With me?”

Burton took his housekeeper by the shoulders and smiled fondly down at her. “My dear, dear woman,” he said. “I shan't see you again for such a long time. How will I ever do without you? You've fed me and cleaned up after me; you've kept me on the straight and narrow when I would have strayed; you've put up with intruders and all manner of inconveniences; you didn't even complain when the Tichborne Claimant practically demolished the house. You are one of the world's wonders, and I'd be honoured to dine with you tonight.”

With glistening eyes, Mrs. Angell said, “Then be my guest, Sir Richard. There is, however, a condition.”

“A condition? What?”

“I shall boil plenty of water while we eat and, when we are finished, you'll carry it upstairs and take a bath. You reek of the Thames, sir.”

Burton relaxed in a tin bathtub in front of the fireplace in his study. He'd shaved, clipped his drooping moustache, and scrubbed the soot and toxins from his skin.

He took a final puff at the stub of a pungent cheroot, cast it into the hearth, reached down to the floor and lifted a glass of brandy to his lips, drained it, then set it back down.

“Someone,” he said to the room, “doesn't want me to go to Africa, that much is plain.”

“Fuddle-witted ninny,” murmured Pox, his messenger parakeet. The colourful bird was sleeping on a perch near a bookcase. Like all of her kind, she delivered insults even while unconscious.

Burton leaned back, rested his head on the lip of the tub, and turned it so that he might gaze into the flickering flames of the fire.

His eyelids felt heavy.

He closed them.

His breathing slowed and deepened.

His thoughts meandered.

In his mind's eye, faces formed and faded: Lieutenant William Stroyan, Sir Roderick Murchison, Ebenezer Smike, Thomas Honesty, Edwin Brundleweed. They shifted and blended. They congealed into a single countenance, gaunt and lined, with a blade-like nose, tight lips, and insane, pain-filled eyes.

Spring Heeled Jack.

Gradually, the features grew smoother. The eyes became calmer. A younger man emerged from the terrible face.

“Oxford,” Burton muttered in his sleep. “His name is Edward Oxford.”

His name is Edward Oxford.

He is twenty-five years old and he's a genius—a physician, an engineer, a historian, and a philosopher.

He sits at a desk constructed from glass but, rather than being clear, it is somehow filled with writing and diagrams and pictures that move and wink and come and go. The surface of the desk is flat and thin, yet the information dancing within it—and Burton instinctively knows that it is information—appears to be three-dimensional. It's disconcerting, as if something impossibly big has been stored in something very small—like a djan in a lamp—but this doesn't appear to bother Oxford. In fact, the young man has some sort of control over the material, for occasionally he touches a finger to the glass or he murmurs something and the writing and outlines and images respond by folding or flipping or metamorphosing.

A large black diamond has been placed on the desk.

Burton recognises it as the South American Eye of Nāga, which he'd discovered last year beneath the Tichborne family's estate. The dream disagrees with him. The stone was not found in 1862, it says. It was found in 2068.

Original history!

Oxford is fascinated by it. The structure of the stone is unique. He whispers, “Even more sensitive than a CellComp. More efficient than a ClusterComp. More capacity than GenMem.”

What is he talking about? Burton wonders.

The dream twists away and repositions itself inside a day a few weeks later.

The diamond is filled with the remnant intelligences of a prehistoric race. They have inveigled their way into Oxford's mind.

He starts to think about time.

He becomes obsessed.

He becomes paranoid.

It happens that he shares his name with a distant ancestor who, in a fit of insanity, had attempted to assassinate Queen Victoria. A voice, from somewhere behind his conscious mind, insists: “That man besmirched your family's reputation. Change it. Correct it.”

Why does this obscure fact suddenly matter? Why should he care about a forgotten incident that occurred near three hundred and fifty years ago?

It matters.

He cares.

He can think about little else.

The reptilian intelligence plants another seed.

Slowly, in Oxford's mind, a theory concerning the nature of time blossoms like a pervasively scented exotic flower. Its roots dig deeper. Its lianas entangle him. It consumes him.

He works tirelessly.

The dream convulses and fifteen years have passed.

Oxford has cut shards from the diamond and connected them to a chain of DNA-StringComps and BioProcs. They form the heart of what he calls a Nimtz Generator. It is a flat circular device. It will enable him to move through time.

To power it, he's invented the fish-scale battery, and has fashioned thousands of these tiny solar-energy collectors into a one-piece tight-fitting suit. He's also embedded an AugCom into a round black helmet. It will act as an interface between his brain and the generator. It will also protect him from the deep psychological shock that he somehow knows will afflict anyone who steps too far out of their native time period.

The boots of the costume are fitted with two-foot-high spring-loaded stilts. They appear wildly eccentric but they offer a simple solution to a complex problem, for when the bubble of energy generated by the Nimtz forms around the suit, it must touch nothing but air.

Oxford will literally jump through time.

It is the evening of 15th February, 2202. Nine o'clock. A Monday. His fortieth birthday.

Oxford dresses in attire suitable for the 1840s. He pulls his time suit on over the top of it and clips on his stilts. He attaches the Nimtz Generator to his chest and puts the helmet on his head. He picks up a top hat and strides out of his workshop and into the long garden beyond.

His wife comes out of the house, wiping her hands on a towel.

“You're going now?” she asks. “Supper is almost ready!”

“I am,” he replies, “but don't worry—even if I'm gone for years, I'll be back in five minutes!”

“You won't return an old man, I hope!” she grumbles, and runs a hand over her distended belly. “This one will need an energetic young father.”

He laughs. “Don't be silly. It won't take long.”

Bending, he kisses her on the nose.

He instructs the suit to take him to five-thirty on the afternoon of 10th June, 1840. Location: the upper corner of Green Park, London.

He looks at the sky.

“Am I really going to do this?” he asks himself.

“Do it!” a voice whispers in his head, and before he can consciously make a decision, he takes three long strides, jumps, hits the ground with knees bent, and leaps high into the air. A bubble forms around him and he vanishes with a small detonation, like a little clap of thunder.

Pop!

Sir Richard Francis Burton jerked awake and tepid water slopped over the edge of his bath.

He shivered, sat up, and looked around his study, trying to identify the source of the noise. His attention was drawn to a thin wisp of steam rising from a tubular contraption on one of his three desks. He reached for a towel then stood, stepped out of the bath, and wrapped the thick cloth around himself. He crossed to the desk. The glass and brass apparatus was his direct connection to the prime minister and the king. Burton retrieved a canister from it, snapped it open, and pulled out a sheet of paper. He read the words: Be prepared to receive the prime minister at 2 a. m.

“Curse the man! That's all I need!”

Pox twitched a wing and chirped, “Stink fermenter!”

Burton looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was half-past one.

Rapidly drying himself, he went into his dressing room and put on loose white cotton trousers and a shirt, then wrapped his jubbah—the long and loose outer garment he'd worn while on his pilgrimage to Mecca, which he now used as a night robe—over the top of them. He slid his feet into pointed Arabian slippers and wound a turban around his damp hair.

By two o'clock, the bathtub had been removed, another Manila cheroot had been smoked, and Burton had sat and pondered his strange dream. There was much about it that he didn't understand—the curious glass desk, the sparsely furnished room in which it stood, some of the words that Edward Oxford had uttered—yet it seemed vividly real.

Did I just glimpse a distant future? The one that was meant to be before Oxford interfered?

Hearing the coughing of steam engines and rumble of wheels in the street outside, he stepped to the window and looked out in time to see Lord Palmerston's armoured six-wheeled mobile castle draw up.

He went downstairs and opened the front door.

Palmerston was standing on the step, with his odd-job men Gregory Hare and Damien Burke on either side of him.

“Do you consider that suitable attire, Captain Burton?” the prime minister asked.

“For two o'clock in the morning? Yes, sir,” Burton replied, moving aside to let the men enter. “Do you consider it a suitable hour for visiting?”

“One cannot run an Empire and maintain respectable hours, sir.”

“Up to the study, if you please.”

Burton closed the door and followed them upstairs, noting that the prime minister's men were dressed, as ever, in outlandishly old-fashioned outfits.

“Last time I saw this room,” Palmerston said as he entered the bookcase lined chamber, “it was all but destroyed.”

“You're referring to the occasion when we were attacked and you hid in my storeroom?” Burton responded.

“Now, now, Captain. Let us not get off on the wrong foot.”

Palmerston placed his hat on one of the desks and took off his calfskin gloves. His fingernails were painted black. He didn't remove his tightly buttoned velvet frock coat but smoothed it down then sat in Burton's favourite saddlebag armchair and crossed his legs. He pulled a silver snuffbox from his pocket and said, “We must talk. I would have been here earlier but the streets were impassable.”

Burke and Hare each sat at a desk. Burton took the armchair opposite Palmerston, who asked, “Your expedition is equipped and ready for departure?”

“It is.”

“Good. Good. All running smoothly, then?”

“Yes. Unless you count two attempts on my life, one of which resulted in the death of my good friend Thomas Bendyshe.”

Palmerston jerked forward. “What did you say?”

“A man named Peter Pimlico tried to poison me. He was hired by a Prussian named Otto Steinruck, who then killed him by strangulation to keep him quiet. And, earlier this evening, somebody sent a bullet my way.”

Damien Burke, tall, hunchbacked, extremely bald, and sporting the variety of side whiskers known as “Piccadilly Weepers,” cleared his throat and said, “This Germanic individual, Captain Burton—did you find out anything about him?”

“Only that he's portly, wears a large moustache, has pointed claw-like fingernails, and chews Kautabak tobacco.”

Burke glanced at Gregory Hare, who was short and muscular, with white hair and a broad, pugnacious face. “Ah-ha,” he said. “Do you agree, Mr. Hare?”

“I do, Mr. Burke,” Hare answered. “Ah-ha.”

“You know something of this individual?” Burton asked.

“Yes,” Burke said. “I consider it highly likely that Otto Steinrück is not Otto Steinrück. It is almost certainly an alias. The man fits the description of a notorious Prussian spy named Count Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin. You'll remember that last year he helped Richard Spruce and his Eugenicist colleagues to flee the country. A very dangerous man, Captain.”

Burton nodded. “And one bent on preventing me from going to Africa, it would appear. I'm certain he's still working with Spruce, too.”

“Why so?”

“The dead man had a foul-looking plant sprouting from the roof of his mouth.”

“Hmm. That's interesting.” Burke took a notebook from his pocket and scribbled something in it with a pencil.

Palmerston opened his snuffbox, took a pinch of brown powder, sprinkled it onto the back of his right hand, and raised it to his nose. He snorted it and his eyes momentarily widened.

It occurred to Burton that the prime minister's face had been stretched so taut by his Eugenicist treatments that those eyes appeared almost oriental.

“A complex situation,” Palmerston muttered. “There are great moves being made, Captain, moves that will reshape the world, and you are in the thick of it.”

“How so?”

“Tomorrow afternoon, I shall make an announcement to parliament. You'll be out of the country by then, so I came to give you the news personally. Excuse me—”

Palmerston turned his head to one side and let loose a prodigious sneeze. When he looked back, there were hundreds of deep wrinkles around his eyes and nose. Over the next few minutes, they slowly flattened out and disappeared.

“What news?” Burton asked.

“Lincoln has surrendered. America is ours.”

Burton's jaw dropped. He fell back into his seat, speechless.

“Some time ago,” Palmerston continued, “I told you that if this should occur I would demand of the Confederates the abolition of slavery as repayment for our role in their victory. I fully intend to do that. But not just yet.”

Finally, Burton found his voice and asked, “Why not?”

“Because of Blut und Eisen.”

“Blood and iron?”

“Three months ago, while you were clearing up the Tichborne business and our turncoat Eugenicists were defecting to Prussia, Chancellor Bismarck made a speech in which he declared his intentions to increase military spending and unify the Germanic territories. He said—and believe me, I can quote this from memory, for it is seared into my mind: ‘The position of Prussia in Germany will not be determined by its liberalism but by its power. Prussia must concentrate its strength and hold it for the favourable moment, which has already come and gone several times. Since the treaties of Vienna, our frontiers have been ill-designed for a healthy body politic. Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided—that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849—but by blood and iron.’”

Burton said, “I read accounts of the speech in the newspapers. Is he warmongering?”

Palmerston clenched his fists. “Indisputably. It is the first blatant move toward the world war Countess Sabina has predicted. There is no doubt that Bismarck is seeking to establish a Germanic empire to rival our own. Empires require resources, Captain Burton, and there is one vast untapped resource remaining in the world. I refer to Africa.”

“So you suspect Bismarck will try to establish a foothold there?”

“I think he intends to carve it up and suck it dry.”

“But what has this to do with America's slaves?”

“If a united Germany can count Africa among its territories, and if war breaks out, it will find itself with an almost limitless source of expendable manpower.”

“Expendable?”

“I believe the term is ‘cannon fodder.’”

The king's agent felt ice in his veins. “You surely aren't suggesting—” he began.

Palmerston interrupted him. “If we are faced with such a situation, we will require our own disposable units.”

“You mean America's slave population?”

“Yes. A little over four million individuals, though I'm including women in that number.”

Burton's jaw flexed spasmodically. “Hellfire, man! You're talking about human beings! Families! You're not only suggesting support for state sanctioned slavery—you're talking about bloody genocide!”

“I mean to ensure the survival of the British Empire, whatever it takes.”

“No!” Burton shouted. “No! No! No!” He slapped his hand down on the leather arm of his chair. “I won't stand for it! It's despicable!”

“You'll do whatever you're damned well ordered to do, Captain Burton,” Palmerston said softly. “And what you are ordered to do is help me to ensure that no such circumstance ever arises.”

“Wha—what?”

“Your primary mission hasn't changed—you are to retrieve the Eye of Nāga so that we might employ it to infiltrate and coerce the minds of our opponents. However, there is now a secondary purpose to your expedition. You are to employ your military and geographical experience to determine which are the most strategically advantageous African territories and how we might best secure them. I intend to claim that continent before Bismarck makes his move, and I'm relying on you to advise me how to do it.”

Burton's heart hammered in his chest. His mind raced.

He looked into Lord Palmerston's impenetrable eyes.

“And if I do, sir, and if we make Africa a part of the British Empire, then what of the inhabitants? What of the Africans?”

The prime minister—returning Burton's gaze steadily and without blinking—replied: “They will be accorded the rights granted to all British subjects.”

There was a moment of silence, broken only by Gregory Hare clearing his throat slightly, then Burton said, “You refer to the same rights enjoyed by those undernourished Britishers who toil in our factories and inhabit our slums? The same given to those who beg on our street corners and doorsteps? The same extended to servant girls abused and impregnated by their employers then thrown onto the streets where their only means of survival is prostitution? Is this the marvellous civilisation that you, the great imperialist, have to offer Africa?”

Palmerston shot to his feet and yelled, “Shut the hell up, Burton! Am I to endure your insolence every time we meet? I'll not tolerate it! You have your orders!” He stamped to the door, snapping his fingers at Burke and Hare. They rose and followed. He ushered them out first, then, with his hand on the doorknob, turned to face the explorer.

“Do your bloody job, Captain!” he snarled.

The prime minister stepped out of the room and slammed the door shut behind him.

“Illiterate baboon,” Pox squawked.

“In the maelstrom of making history,” Bertie Wells said, “very little of it is accurately recorded. When the time finally comes for an account of the events that have passed, human nature takes over.”

He and Burton were in an ambulance sharing that rarity of rarities, a scrounged cigar. The oxen-drawn vehicle was part of a convoy, a seemingly never-ending line of soldiers and vehicles moving up from the south toward the port of Tanga, some hundred miles north of Dar es Salaam.

It was early morning but already ferociously hot. The troops were dripping sweat. They were exhausted, ill, and miserable. Occasional bursts of chanting broke out—the usual sad native dirges—but these quickly tailed off, overwhelmed by the rhythmic tromp tromp tromp of boots. At one point a company of Britishers broke into song, their mock cheerfulness shot through with resentful hatred. The tune was “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” but the lyrics were rather more colourful than those of the original hymn:

When this lousy war is over, no more soldiering for me,

When I get my civvy clothes on, oh how happy I shall be.

No more church parades on Sunday, no more begging for a pass.

You can tell the sergeant major to stick his passes up his arse.

The sergeant major in question harangued the men for a three-mile stretch after that.

Burton was sitting on the ambulance's tailgate, leaning against the side of the vehicle's open back. He couldn't stop scratching.

“Human nature?” he said. “What do you mean?”

Wells, perched on a bench just behind him, responded, “I'm of the opinion that we possess an inbuilt craving for narrative structure. We want everything to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. That way, we can make better sense of it.” He looked down at Burton. “How many days did that uniform last before it got infested?”

“Four. The lice are eating me alive.”

“Chin up, old man. It could be worse. Fever, trench foot, dysentery, having your bloody legs blown off—all the perils of wartime Africa.”

“Bismillah! What are you people doing? You've created hell from an Eden!”

“Is my generation responsible, Richard, or is yours? I've heard people say over and over that we are all products of the past. They'd lay the blame for this war squarely at their fathers' feet. In other words, welcome to the world you created.”

“Absolutely not! None of my contemporaries intended the creation of this Jahannam!”

“As you say. Besides, I disagree with the philosophy of what you might term sequentialism. The problem, as I see it, is that we don't truly understand the nature of the past. We mythologise it. We create fictions about actions performed to justify what we undertake in the present. We adjust the cause to better suit the effect. The truth is that the present is, and will always be, utter chaos. There is no story and no plan. We are victims of Zeitgeist. I apologise for using a German word, but it's singularly appropriate. Are you familiar with it?”

“Yes. It translates as ‘ghost tide,’ or, perhaps, ‘spirit of the age,’ and refers to the ambience or sociopolitical climate of any given period.”

“Exactly so, and in my view it's a phenomenon entirely independent of history. History doesn't create the zeitgeist, we create the history to try to explain the zeitgeist. We impose a sequential narrative to endow events with something that resembles meaning.”

The ambulance jerked as its wheels bounced through a pothole. Burton's head banged against the vehicle's wooden side.

“Ouch!”

“How's your arm?” Wells asked.

“Aching. How's your leg?”

“Broken. How's your head?”

“Shut up.”

“Have a cigar.”

The war correspondent passed what remained of the “Hoffman” to the explorer, who glanced at its much-reduced length and muttered, “Your lungs are healthy, at least.” He raised it to his lips and drew in the sweet smoke, savouring it while observing the column of men and vehicles that snaked back over the rolling landscape.

The supply wagons and ambulances were mostly towed by steam-horses or oxen. There were a few mangy-looking nonmechanical horses in evidence, too, including mega-drays pulling huge artillery pieces. Harvestmen stalked along beside the troops, and Scorpion Tanks thumped through the dust with their tails curled over their cabins, the guns at their ends slowly swinging back and forth.

“Hey! Private!” Burton called to a nearby Britisher. “Where are we?”

“In it up to our bloody eyeballs, chum!”

“Ha! And geographically?”

“I ain't got a bleedin' clue. Ask Kitchener!”

“We're almost there, sir,” an African voice answered. “Tanga is a mile or so ahead.”

“Much obliged!” Burton said. He turned Wells. “Did you hear that? We must be near your village. Shall we hop out here?”

“Hopping is my only option, unfortunately.”

Burton slid from the tailgate into the ambulance, then moved to its front and banged his fist against the back of the driver's cabin. “Stop a moment, would you?”

He returned to Wells and, as the vehicle halted, helped him down to the ground and handed him his crutches. The two men put on their helmets, moved to the side of the column, and walked slowly along beside it.

“So what's your point, Bertie?”

“My point?”

“About history.”

“Oh. Just that we give too much credence to the idea that we can learn from the past. It's the present that teaches the lesson. The problem is that we're so caught up in doing it that we can never see the wood for the trees. I say! Are you all right?”

Burton had suddenly doubled over and was clutching the sides of his head.

“No!” he gasped. “Yes. I think—” He straightened and took a deep, shuddering breath. “Yes. Yes. I'm fine. I'm sorry. I just had a powerful recollection of—of—of a man constructed from brass.”

“A statue?”

“No. A machine. But it was—it was—Herbert.”

“What? Me?”

“No, sorry, not you, Bertie. I mean, its—his—name is—was—is Herbert, too.”

“A mechanical man named Herbert? Are you sure your malaria hasn't flared up again?”

Burton clicked his tongue. “My brain is so scrambled that the line between reality and fiction appears almost nonexistent. I'm not sure what that particular memory signifies, if anything. Perhaps it'll make more sense later. Where's the village?”

Wells pointed to a vaguely defined path that disappeared into a dense jungle of thorny acacias. The trees were growing up a shallow slope, and Burton could just glimpse rooftops through the topmost leaves. “Along there,” Wells said. “Kaltenberg is right on the edge of Tanga—practically an outlying district. It was built by the Germans in the European style, on slightly higher ground. The occupants fled into the town a few days ago. We'll get a good view of the action from up there.”

“I gather the role of war correspondents is to climb hills and gaze down upon destruction?”

“Yes, that's about it.”

They left the convoy and followed the dirt track. The boles of the trees crowded around them, blocking the convoy from sight. The sky flickered and flashed through the foliage just above their heads. Mosquitoes whined past their ears.

“Who's Kitchener?” Burton asked.

“One of the military bigwigs. Or was. No one knows whether he's dead or alive. Damn this leg! And damn this heat. In fact, damn Africa and all that goes with it! I'm sorry, we'll have to slow down a little.” Wells stopped, and, balancing himself on his crutches, struck a match and lit a cigarette. He took a pull at it then held it out to Burton.

“Thanks, Bertie, but I'll pass. My fondness for cheap cigars doesn't plummet to such depths. Besides, it would ruin the taste of my toffee.”

“You have toffee?”

“I scrounged it from the ambulance driver. Four pieces. I'd offer you two but I fear they'd be wasted after that tobacco stick.”

“You swine!”

Burton grinned.

“And don't do that with your ugly mug,” Wells advised. “It makes you look monstrously Mephistophelian.”

“You remind me of someone.”

“Who?”

“I don't recall.”

They set off again, the war correspondent swinging himself along on his crutches.

Burton said, “Remind me again why we're attacking Tanga.”

“Firstly,” Wells replied, “because we're trying to regain all the ports; secondly, because we want to raid German supplies; and thirdly, and most importantly, because it's believed the commander of the Schutztruppe, Generalmajor Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck, is holed up there, and we would dearly love to deprive him of his existence. The man is a veritable demon. He has a military mind to rival that of Napoleon Bonaparte!”

By the time they reached the first of the Kaltenberg cottages, both men were sweating profusely. “Do you remember snow?” Wells muttered as they moved out from beneath the acacias and into the village. “What I wouldn't give for a toboggan ride down a hill with a tumble at the bottom.” He stopped and said quietly, “Richard.”

Burton followed his companion's gaze and saw, in a passageway between two cottages, the body of an Askari in British uniform. They approached and examined the corpse. A laceration curved diagonally across the African's face, the skin to either side of it swollen and puckered.

“That's a lurcher sting,” Wells observed. “He's recently dead, I'd say.”

“This was a bad idea, Bertie. We should have stayed with the column.”

Wells shook his head. “It's the job of a war correspondent to watch and report, Richard. When we reach the other end of the village, you'll find that it offers an unparalleled view across Tanga. We'll see far more from here than we would if we were in the thick of it. Not to mention the fact that we'll stand a better chance of staying alive.”

The silence was suddenly broken by a rasping susurration, similar to the sound of a locust, but shockingly loud and menacing.

“Hum. I might be wrong,” Wells added, his eyes widening. “Where did that noise come from?”

“I don't know.”

They stepped out of the passage and immediately saw a lurcher flopping out of one of the cottages they'd just passed. It was a hideous thing—a tangle of thorny tentacles and thrashing tendrils. From its middle, a red, fleshy, and pulsating bloom curled outward. Extending from within this, two very long spine-covered stalks rose into the air. They were rubbing together—a horribly frantic motion—producing the high-pitched ratcheting sound. The wriggling plant rolled forward on a knot of squirming white roots—and it moved fast.

“We've got to get out of here!” Burton cried out. “Drop your crutches, Bertie! I'm going to carry you!”

“But—”

Wells got no further. Burton kicked the crutches away, bent, and hoisted the shorter man up onto his shoulder. He started to run, heavy-footed.

“Bloody hell!” he gasped. “This is a lot easier with Algy!”

“Who?”

“Um. Algy. Bismillah! That's who you put me in mind of! How in blazes could I have forgotten him?”

“I don't know and right now I don't care. Run!”

Burton pumped his legs, felt his thigh muscles burning, and heard the lurcher rapidly drawing closer behind him.

“It's on us!” Wells yelled.

The famous explorer glimpsed a house door standing ajar. He veered toward it and bowled through, dropping Wells and banging the portal shut behind him. The lurcher slammed into it with terrific force, causing the frame to splinter around the lock. Burton quickly slid the bolts at the top and bottom into place. Thorns ripped at the wood outside.

“This door won't keep it out for long. Are you all right?”

“I landed on my leg,” Wells groaned.

Burton helped the war correspondent to his feet. “Let's get upstairs. God, my head! I was just knocked sideways by memories!”

He gave support to his friend and they made their way up and through to the front bedroom. The other upper chamber was given over to storage.

The din of hammering tentacles continued below. Burton was breathing heavily. He lowered Wells onto a bed, then staggered back and leaned against a wall, pressing the palms of his hands into his eyes.

“Algernon,” he whispered, and when he looked up, there were tears on his cheeks.

“What is it?” the shorter man asked.

Burton didn't answer. He was looking beyond his companion, at a dressing table mirror, and the face that stared back from it was that of a total stranger. It was all he could see. He fell into its black, despair-filled eyes and was overwhelmed by such a powerful sense of loss that his mind began to fracture.

“Richard!” Wells snapped. “Hey!”

The room sucked back into focus.

“Where am I?” Burton gasped. He felt hollow and disassociated.

Wordlessly, Wells pointed at the window.

After drawing a shuddering breath, Burton crossed to it, but he quickly stepped back when he saw thorny vines crawling over the glass.

“Manipulated and accelerated evolution,” the war correspondent observed. “Another of the Eugenicists' ill-conceived monstrosities. That thing was once a man in a vehicle. Look at the damned thing now! So who's this Algy person?”

“Algernon Swinburne.”

“The poet? Yes, of course, you knew him, didn't you?”

“He is—was—my assistant.”

“Really? In what?”

“I have no idea. But I recall fleeing from a fire with him slung over my shoulder.”

“Fire is what we need now. It's the only way we'll destroy the lurcher. Step a little farther back from the window, Richard. The stalks are strong enough to break through the glass.”

Burton hastily retreated. He looked around the room at the furniture, the pictures, and the ornaments. Everything was crawling with ants and cockroaches. Even this fact stirred buried recollections. The name “Rigby” rose into his awareness then sank away again.

Wells said, “My leg is hurting like hell.”

“Stay here while I have a poke about in the other room,” Burton responded. He went out onto the landing and into the chamber beyond. Wells sat and massaged his right thigh.

A loud crack sounded from below as the front door split under the lurcher's continued assault.

Burton came back in.

“Any luck?” Wells asked.

“A whole bottle of it.” Burton held up a wide-necked container. “Turpentine.”

Wells pulled something from his jacket pocket. “And a box of four whole matches. Yours for the price of two pieces of toffee.”

“Deal.”

Burton crossed to the window and, after putting the bottle on the floor, used both hands to slide the sash up. It squealed loudly and jammed, with less than a foot of it open.

“Look out!” Wells shouted.

The explorer staggered back as two flailing stalks came smashing through the glass and wood, showering splinters over both men. The spiny appendages coiled and slashed around the room, gouging the furniture and ripping long gashes across the walls.

Wells, acting without thinking, threw himself back onto the bed, clutched the thin mattress, and rolled, wrapping it around himself. He lunged upright and dived at the window, letting out an agonised scream as pain knifed through his wounded leg. He landed across the stalks, pinning them to the floor. They bucked under him and curled back, slapping against the bedding, shredding it.

“Quick, man! I can't hold it!”

Burton sprang at the bottle, which was rolling over the floorboards, scooped it up, and untwisted the cap. Unable to get past Wells to stand directly in front of the window, he stuck his arm through it from the side and poured the turpentine, praying to Allah that it would land on the target.

“The lucifers, Bertie!”

“I dropped the bloody things!”

A ragged length of the mattress's cotton cover was ripped away exposing the horsehair stuffing beneath. The material flew into the air as one of the stalks whipped up and back down, thumping across the correspondent's body.

Burton, having spotted the matchbox lying on the floor, scrambled across the room. He crawled and rolled on broken glass.

“Have you got them?” Wells yelled.

“Yes!”

Snatching up the length of torn material, Burton reeled back to the front wall, thudded against it, and slid into a crouch beside the window.

Wells was suddenly sent spinning into the air as the long stalks jerked violently and slid from the room.

The battering noises ceased.

Burton, with a puzzled expression, stood and cautiously peered out of the window. The stalks were nowhere in sight. Carefully, he leaned out and looked down.

The lurcher was below, quivering and jerking as if in the grip of a seizure.

“What's happened to it?” he murmured.

He pulled a match from the box, struck it, put the flame to the torn cotton, and dropped the burning cloth onto the plant, which immediately exploded into flames.

As he watched, the fire turned from blue to yellow and started to belch thick black smoke.

He turned and started to speak but realised that Wells was unconscious.

“Bertie, are you all right?”

The war correspondent shifted and groaned.

Pulling away the tattered mattress, Burton helped his companion to sit upright. Wells's uniform was ripped and bloodstained.

“You're bleeding, Bertie.”

“Nothing serious,” his friend croaked. “So are you. Is it dead?”

“Yes. It was odd, though. The thing appeared to lose control of itself just before I set fire to it. Let's get out of here.”

They limped from the bedroom and down the stairs, pulled open the wrecked front door, and tumbled out onto the street.

The lurcher had already been reduced to a twitching bonfire.

“Wait here,” Burton said. “I'll get your crutches.”

He retrieved them from outside the alley farther down the road and returned.

“You did exactly what he would have done,” he said, handing over the sticks.

“Who?”

“Algernon Swinburne. He's the most fearless man I've ever known.”

“That's where the comparison fails, then. I was scared out of my wits.”

“You're a good chap, Bertie.”