The curious case of the Clockwork Man

Sir Richard Francis Burton was dead.

He was lying on his back in the lobby of the Royal Geographical Society, sprawled at the bottom of the grand staircase with a diminutive red-haired poet slumped across his chest.

Algernon Charles Swinburne, tears streaming down his cheeks, his senses befuddled with alcohol, quickly composed an elegy. It was, after all, best to strike while the iron was hot.

He raised his head, his hair fiery in the flickering gas light, and, in his high-pitched voice, proclaimed: Wouldst thou not know whom England, whom the world,

Mourns? For the world whose wildest ways he trod,

And smiled their dangers down that coiled and curled

Against him, knows him now less man than god.

He hiccupped.

Beneath his hand, in Burton's jacket, he felt a flask-shaped lump. Surreptitiously, he began to wiggle his fingers into the pocket.

“Our demigod of daring, keenest-eyed,” he continued, with a sniff. “To read and deepest-”

“Atrocious!” a voice thundered from the top of the stairs.

Swinburne looked up.

Sir Roderick Murchison stood imperiously on the landing.

“Keep your hands to yourself, Algy,” came a whisper.

Swinburne looked down.

Burton's eyes were open.

“Atrocious behaviour!” Murchison boomed again.

The president of the Royal Geographical Society descended with dignity and poise. His back was ramrod straight. His bald head was shining. He passed portraits of the great explorers: James Cook, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Franklin, Sir Francis Drake-this latter painting was hanging askew, having been struck by Burton's passing foot-William Hovell, Mungo Park, and others.

“I'll not brook such conduct, Burton! This is a respectable scientific establishment, not a confounded East End tavern!”

Swinburne fell back as his friend, the former soldier, explorer, and spy-the linguist, scholar, author, swordsman, geographer, and king's agent-staggered to his feet and stood swaying, glowering at Murchison, his one-time sponsor.

“Alive, then?” the poet muttered, gazing bemusedly at his friend.

At five foot eleven, Burton appeared taller, due to the breadth of his shoulders, depth of his chest, and slim athletic build. As inebriated as he was, he radiated power. His eyes were black and mesmeric, his cheekbones prominent, his mouth set aggressively. He had short black hair, which he wore swept backward, and a fierce mustache and beard, forked and devilish. A deep scar disfigured his left cheek, tugging slightly at his bottom eyelid, and there was a smaller one on the right, each marking the path of a Somali spear that had been thrust through his face during a disastrous expedition to Berbera.

“You're a damnable drunkard!” Murchison barked as he reached the bottom step. His narrow features suddenly softened. “Are you hurt?”

Burton snarled his response: “It'll take more than a tumble down the bloody stairs to break me!”

Swinburne scrambled up from the floor. He was tiny, just five foot two, and slope-shouldered. His head, perched on such a diminutive body, and with its mop of carroty hair, seemed perfectly enormous. He had pale-green eyes and was clean shaven. He appeared much younger than his twenty-four years.

“Confound it,” he squeaked. “Now I'll have to use the elegy for somebody else. Who died recently? Anyone noteworthy? Did you like it, Richard? The bit about ‘For the world whose wildest ways he trod’ was especially appropriate, I thought.”

“Be quiet, Swinburne!” Murchison snapped. “Burton, I'm not trying to break you, if that's what you're implying. Henry Stanley was better financed to settle the Nile question than you. I had little choice but to add the Society's backing to that which he received from his newspaper.”

“And now he's disappeared!” Burton growled. “How many flying machines have to vanish over Africa's Lake Regions before you realise that the only way in is on foot?”

“I'm well aware of the problem, sir, and I'll have you know that I warned Stanley. It was his newspaper that insisted he take rotorchairs!”

“Pah! I know the area better than any man in the entire British Empire, but you saw fit to send a damn fool journalist. Who next, Murchison? Perhaps a dance troupe from the music halls?”

Sir Roderick stiffened. He crossed his arms over his chest and replied, icily: “Samuel Baker wants to mount a rescue mission, as does John Petherick, but whomever I send, it shan't be you, of that you can be certain. Your days as a geographer are over. It appears, however, that your days as a drinker are not!”

Burton clenched his teeth, tugged at his jacket, took a deep breath, paused, sighed it out, and all of a sudden the fight left him. He said, in a subdued tone: “Sam and John are good men. Accomplished. They know how to handle the natives. My apologies, Sir Roderick, I find it difficult to let go. I still think of the Nile question as mine to answer, though, in truth, I have a new and entirely different role to play now.”

“Ah, yes. I heard a rumour that Palmerston has employed you. Is it true?”

Burton nodded. “It is.”

“As what?”

“In truth, it's hard to say. I'm titled the ‘king's agent.’ It's something of an investigative role.”

“Then I would think you're well suited to it.”

“Perhaps. But I still take an interest in-well-sir, if you hear anything-”

“I'll get word to you,” Murchison interrupted curtly. “Now go. Get some coffee. Sober up. Have some self-respect, man!”

The president turned and stamped back up the stairs, straightening Drake's portrait as he passed it.

A valet fetched Burton and Swinburne their coats, hats, and canes, and the two men walked unsteadily across the lobby and out through the double doors.

The evening was dark and damp, glistening with reflections after the day's showers. A chill wind tugged at their clothes.

“Coffee at the Venetia Hotel?” Burton suggested, buttoning his black overcoat.

“Or another brandy and a bit of slap and tickle?” Swinburne countered. “Verbena Lodge isn't far from here.”

“Verbena Lodge?”

“It's a house of ill repute where the birchings are-”

“Coffee!” Burton said.

They walked along Whitehall Place and turned right into Northumberland Avenue, heading toward Trafalgar Square. Swinburne began to sing a song of his own composition: If you were queen of pleasure,

And I were king of pain,

We'd hunt down love together,

Pluck out his flying-feather,

And teach his feet a measure,

And find his mouth a rein;

If you were queen of pleasure,

And I were king of pain.

His tremulous piping attracted disapproving glances from passersby. Despite the bad weather and the late hour, there were plenty of people about, mainly gentlemen strolling to and fro between the city's restaurants and clubs.

“Oh, bugger it,” the poet cursed. “I think I just sang the last verse first. Now I'll have to start again.”

“Please don't trouble yourself on my account,” Burton murmured.

A velocipede-or “penny-farthing,” as some wag had christened the vehicles-chugged past, pumping steam from its tall funnel into the already dense atmosphere of London.

“Hal-lo!” the rider exclaimed as he passed them, his voice rendered jittery as the vehicle's huge rubber-banded front wheel communicated every bump of the cobbled street to his spine. “W-what's g-going on in the s-square?”

Burton peered ahead, struggling to focus his eyes. There was, indeed, some sort of commotion. A crowd had gathered, and he could see the cockscomb helmets of police constables moving among the top hats.

He took Swinburne by the arm. “Come along,” he urged. “Let's see what the hullabaloo is all about.”

“For pity's sake slow down, will you!” complained his companion, who had to match Burton's every stride with two of his own. “You'll render me horrendously sober at this pace!”

“Incidentally, Algy, in the event of my demise, perhaps you'd show a little more restraint with the god and demigod references,” Burton grumbled.

“Ha! What a contrary fellow you are! On the one hand you seem obsessed by religions; on the other, repelled by them!”

“Humph! These days, I'm more interested in the underlying motivation-in the reasons why a man is willing to be guided by a god whose existence is, at best, impossible to prove and, at worst, an obvious fabrication. It seems to me that in these times of rapid scientific and industrial advancement, the procurement of knowledge has become too intimidating a prospect for the average man, so he's shunning it entirely in favour of faith. Faith requires nothing but blind adherence, whereas knowledge demands the continual apprehension of an ever-expanding body of information. With faith, one can at least claim knowledge without having to do the hard work of acquiring it!”

“I say!” Swinburne cried. “Well said, old chap! Well said! You hardly slurred a single word! You're eminently reprehensible!”

“You mean comprehensible.”

“I know what I mean. But Richard, surely Darwin's natural evolution has rendered God undeniably defunct?”

“Indubitably. Which begs the question: to what falsehood will the uneducated masses willingly devote themselves next?”

They paced along, swinging their canes, their hats set at a jaunty angle. Despite the revitalising nip in the air, Burton was developing a headache. He decided to take a brandy with his coffee; perhaps it would numb the faint throbbing.

When they reached Trafalgar Square, the famous explorer plunged into the crowd and shouldered his way through it with Swinburne trailing in his wake. A constable stepped into their path, his hand raised.

“Stay back, please, gents.”

Burton pulled out his wallet and withdrew from it a printed card. He showed it to the policeman who instantly saluted and stepped back.

“Beggin’ your pardon, sir.”

“Over here, Captain!” a deep, slightly husky voice called. Burton saw his friend Detective Inspector William Trounce of Scotland Yard standing at the base of Nelson's Column. Two people were with him: a young dark-skinned constable and, curiously, someone who was standing absolutely still, concealed from head to toe by a blanket.

Trounce met them with a hearty handshake. He was a bulky but amiable-looking individual, short but broad, with thick limbs and a barrel chest, bright twinkling blue eyes, and a large upward-curling brown mustache. His heavy square chin accurately hinted at a streak of stubbornness. He was wearing a dark worsted suit and a bowler hat.

“Hallo, chaps!” he said cheerfully. “Been drinking, have you?”

“Is it that obvious?” Burton mumbled.

“You didn't exactly cross the square as the crow flies.”

“We're on our way to the Venetia for coffee.”

“Very wise. Strong, black, with plenty of sugar. This is Constable Bhatti.”

The policeman standing at Trounce's side saluted smartly. He was slender, youthful, and rather handsome.

“I've heard a lot about you, sir,” he effused, with a slight Indian accent. “My cousin, Commander Krishnamurthy, was with you during the Old Ford affair.”

He was referring to the recent battle that Burton, Swinburne, and a great many Scotland Yard men had fought against the Technologists and Rakes. Those two normally opposed groups-the one dedicated to scientific advancement, the other to anarchistic revolution-had banded together to try to capture a man from the future who'd become known as Spring Heeled Jack. Burton had defeated them and killed their quarry.

“Krishnamurthy's a thoroughly good egg,” Swinburne noted. “But commander? Has he been promoted?”

“Yes, sir. It's a new rank in the force.”

Trounce added: “They've made him head of the newly formed Flying Squad, and deservedly so. I don't know anyone who can handle a rotorchair the way Krishnamurthy does.”

Burton nodded his approval and looked curiously at the silent, motionless blanket.

“So what's happening here, Trounce?”

The detective inspector turned to his subordinate. “Would you explain, please, Constable?”

“Certainly, sir.” The young policeman looked at Burton and Swinburne and his dark eyes shone with excitement. “It's marvellous! An absolute wonder! Practically a work of art! I've never seen anything so intricate or-”

“Just the facts, please, lad,” Trounce interjected.

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. This is my beat, you see, Captain Burton, and I pass through the square every fifty minutes or so. Tonight has been a quiet one. I've been making the rounds as usual, with nothing much to report aside from the customary prostitutes and drunkards-er-that is to say-”

He stopped, cleared his throat, cleared it again, and cast a pleading glance at his superior.

William Trounce laughed. “Don't worry, son, Captain Burton and Mr. Swinburne have been celebrating, that's all. Isn't that right, gents?”

“Quite so,” Burton confirmed, self-consciously.

“And I wouldn't mind celebrating some more!” Swinburne announced.

Burton rolled his eyes.

Trounce addressed Bhatti: “So it was business as usual?”

The constable nodded. “Yes. I came on duty this evening at seven o'clock and passed this way three times without incident. On the fourth occasion, I noticed a crowd gathering here, where we're standing. I came over to investigate and found this-” He gestured at the concealed figure.

Trounce reached out and pulled the blanket away.

Burton and Swinburne gasped.

“Beautiful, isn't it!” Bhatti exclaimed.

A mechanical man stood before them. It was constructed from polished brass, slender, and about five feet five inches tall. The head was canister-shaped, flat at the top and bottom, and featureless but for three raised circular areas set vertically in the front. The top one was like a tiny ship's porthole, through which a great many motionless gears could be glimpsed, as small, complex, and finely crafted as the workings of a pocket watch. 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. They were straight and vibrated slightly in the breeze.

The neck consisted of thin shafts and cables, swivel joints and hinges. A slim cylinder formed the mechanical man's trunk. Panels were cut out of it, revealing cogwheels and springs, delicate little crankshafts, gyroscopes, flywheels, and a pendulum. The thin but sturdy arms ended in three-fingered hands. The legs were sturdy and tubular; the feet oval-shaped and slightly domed.

“It's a beauty, isn't it?” Constable Bhatti breathed. “Look here, in the small of the back. You see this hole? That's where the key goes.”

“The key?” Burton asked.

“Yes! To wind it up! It's clockwork!”

“Bhatti, here,” Detective Inspector Trounce put in, “is the Yard's amateur Technologist. Of all the policemen in London, he's certainly the right chap to have found this contraption.”

“A happy coincidence for the constable,” Swinburne observed glibly.

“It's my hobby,” the young policeman enthused. “I attend a social club where we tinker with devices-trying to make them go faster or adapting them in various ways. Great heavens, the fellows would be beside themselves if I turned up with this specimen!”

Burton, who'd started to examine the brass figure with a magnifying glass, absently asked the policeman what he'd done after discovering it.

“The crowd was swelling-you know how Londoners flock around anything or anyone unusual-so I whistled for help. After a few constables had arrived, I gave the mechanism a thorough examination. I must admit, I got a little absorbed, so I probably didn't alert the Yard as quickly as I should have.” He looked at Trounce. “Sorry about that, sir.”

“And what is our metal friend's story, do you think?” asked Burton.

“Like I said, Captain, it's clockwork. My guess is that it's wound down. Why it was out walking the streets, I couldn't venture to guess.”

“Surely if it was walking the streets, it would have attracted attention before it got here? Did anyone see it coming?”

“We've been making enquiries,” Trounce said. “So far we've found fourteen who spotted it crossing the square but no one who saw it before then.”

“So it's possible-maybe even probable-that it was delivered to the edge of the square in a vehicle,” Burton suggested.

“Why, yes, Captain. I should say that's highly likely,” the detective inspector agreed.

“It could have made its way through the streets, though,” Bhatti said. “I'm not suggesting it did-I simply mean that the device is capable of that sort of navigation. You see this through here?” He tapped a finger on the top porthole at the front of the machine's head. “That's a babbage in there. Can you believe it? I never thought I'd live to see one! Imagine the cost of this thing!”

“A cabbage, Constable?” Trounce asked.

“Babbage,” Bhatti repeated. “A device of extraordinary complexity. They calculate probability and act on the results. They're the closest things to a human brain ever created, but the secret of their construction is known only to one man-their inventor, Sir Charles Babbage.”

“He's a recluse, isn't he?” Swinburne asked.

“Yes, sir, and an eccentric misanthrope. He has an aversion to what he terms ‘the common hordes’ and, in particular, to the noise they make, so he prefers to keep himself to himself. He hand-builds each of these calculators and booby-traps them to prevent anyone from discovering how they operate. Any attempt to dismantle one will result in an explosion.”

“There should be a law against that sort of thing!” Trounce grumbled.

“My point is that when wound up, this brass man almost certainly has the ability to make basic decisions. And this here-” Bhatti indicated the middle opening on the thing's head “-is, in my opinion, a mechanical ear. I think you could give this contraption voice commands. And these-” he flicked the projecting wires “-are some sort of sensing device, I'd wager, along the lines of a moth's antennae.”

Trounce pulled off his bowler hat and scratched his head.

“So let's get this straight: someone drops this clockwork man at the edge of the square. The device walks as far as Nelson's Column, then its spring winds down and it comes to a halt. A crowd gathers. According to the people we've spoken to, the machine got here just five minutes or so before you arrived on the scene, Constable. And you've been here-?”

“About an hour now, sir.”

“About an hour. My question, then, is why hasn't the owner come forward to claim his property?”

“Exactly!” Bhatti agreed. “A babbage alone is worth hundreds of pounds. Why has it been left here?”

“An experiment gone wrong?” Swinburne offered. “Perhaps the owner was testing its homing instinct. He dropped it here, went back to his house or workshop or laboratory or whatever, and is waiting there for it to make its way back. Only he didn't wind the blessed thing up properly!”

Burton snorted. “Ridiculous! If you owned-or had invented-something as expensive as this, you wouldn't abandon it, hoping it'll find you, when there's even the remotest chance that it might not!”

Spots of rain began to fall.

Trounce glanced at the black, starless sky with impatience.

“Constable Hoare!” he shouted, and a bushy-browed, heavily mustached policeman emerged from the crowd and strode over.

“Sir?”

“Go to Saint Martin's Station and hitch a horse to a wagon. Bring it back here. On the double, mind!”

“Yes, sir!”

The constable departed and Trounce turned back to Burton.

“I'm going to have it carted over to the Yard. You'll have complete access to it, of course.”

The king's agent pulled his collar tightly around his neck. The temperature was dropping and he was shivering.

“Thank you, Detective Inspector,” he said, “but we were just passing. I don't think there's anything here we need to take a hand in. It's curious, though, I'll admit. Will you let me know if someone claims the thing?”

“Certainly.”

“See you later, then. Come on, Algy, let's leg it to the Venetia. I need that coffee!”

The powerfully built explorer and undersized poet left the policemen, pushed through the throng, and headed across to the end of the Strand. As they entered the famous thoroughfare, the drizzle became a downpour. It hammered a tattoo against their top hats and dribbled from the brims.

Burton's headache was worsening and he was starting to feel tired and out of sorts.

A velocipede went past, hissing loudly as the rain hit its furnace.

Somewhere in the distance a siren wailed-a litter-crab warning that it was about to disinfect a road with blasts of scalding steam. It was a waste of time in this weather, but the crabs were automated and clanked around London every night, whatever the conditions.

“It's a good job brass doesn't rust,” Swinburne observed, “or this weather would be the death of the clockwork man!”

Burton stopped.

“What is it?” his assistant asked.

“You're right!”

“Of course I am. It's an alloy of copper and zinc.”

“No, no! About it being a coincidence!”

Swinburne hopped up and down. “What? What? Richard, can we please get out of this blasted rain?”

“Too much of a coincidence!”

Burton turned and took off back in the direction of Trafalgar Square.

“We're already too late!” he yelled over his shoulder.

Swinburne scampered along behind him, losing ground rapidly.

“What do you mean? Too late for what?”

He received no answer.

They raced into Trafalgar Square and rejoined Trounce and Bhatti. The latter had managed to open the uppermost portal in the machine's head and was peering in at the babbage.

“Oh, you're back! Look at this, Captain!” he said, as Burton reached his side. “There are eight tiny switches along the inside edge of this opening. Maybe they adjust the machine's behaviour in some manner? Each one has an up or down position, so how many combinations would-?”

“Never mind that!” the king's agent snapped. “Tell me the route of your beat, Constable!”

“My beat?” Bhatti looked puzzled.

“What's happening?” Trounce asked.

Burton ignored the detective inspector. His eyes blazed intently.

“Your beat, man! Spit it out!”

The constable pushed his helmet back from his eyes. Rainwater trickled down the back of his uniform. “All right,” he said. “From here I proceed along Cockspur Street and around into Whitcomb Street. I walk up as far as the junction with Orange Street then turn right and keep on until I reach Mildew Street. I turn right again, at the works where they're shoring up the underground river, enter Saint Martin's, and foot-slog it back down to the square.”

“And that takes fifty minutes?” Burton demanded.

“When you figure in all the alleyways that I poke my nose into, the shop doors that need checking, and so forth, yes.”

“And places of note on the route? Places you check with the greatest diligence?”

“What's this about, Captain Burton?”

“Just answer the confounded question, man!”

“Do as he says, lad,” Trounce ordered.

“Very well. There's the main branch of the Bright Empire Bank on the corner of Cockspur; the Satyagraha Bank is on Whitcomb; Treadwell's Post Office is on Orange Street, with SPARTA just opposite-”

“Sparta?”

“The Swan, Parakeet, and Runner Training Academy.”

“Ah. Continue, please.”

“The League of Enochians Gentlemen's Club is at the corner of Mildew, with the works on the other side; then going down Saint Martin's, there's Scrannington Bank, Brundleweed the diamond dealer's, the Pride-Manushi velocipede shop, Boyd's Antiques, and Goddard the art dealer. That's it. There are plenty of other places, of course, but those are the ones I make a special point of checking.”

“Trounce, take Bhatti and follow the route from the Cockspur end,” Burton directed. “Algy and I will take the opposite direction, along Saint Martin's.”

Trounce frowned, held out his hands in a shrug, and asked: “But why? What are we looking for?”

“Can't you see?” Burton cried. “This bloody thing-” he struck the brass figure with his cane and it clanged loudly “-is nothing but a decoy! Whoever dropped it off in the square knew it would fascinate Bhatti, knew he'd pore over it obsessively before summoning help from the Yard, and knew that a fair amount of time would pass before he returned to his beat!”

“Hell's bells!” Trounce shouted. “You mean there's a crime in progress? Come on, Constable!”

He shoved bystanders aside, ordered a nearby police sergeant to guard the metal man, and raced away with Bhatti toward the end of Cockspur Street.

Sir Richard Francis Burton and Algernon Swinburne made their way to the edge of the square and pressed on through the rain to Saint Martin's.

Adrenalin had sobered them but Burton's headache was intensifying and a familiar ague-a remnant of Africa-was beginning to grip his limbs. It was an oncoming attack of malaria, and if he didn't get back to his apartment soon to quell it with a dose of quinine, he'd be immobilised for days to come.

They passed the police station and nodded to Constable Hoare, who was at the side of the road hitching a miserable-looking police horse to a wagon.

All along the street, gas lamps had fizzled out, their covers inadequate against the downpour. Only a few remained alight, and the deep shadows and streaming rain reduced visibility to just a few yards.

A little farther on, the two men came to Goddard's and peered through the night grille at the window behind.

“Good gracious!” Swinburne blurted excitedly. “There's a Rossetti in there and I modelled for it! I must tell Dante. He'll be over the moon!”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was a founding member of the True Libertines-the most idealistic faction of the Libertine caste and a counterbalance to the notorious Rakes. He was also one of the “Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,” a community of artists whose stated aim was to produce works that communicated at a “spiritual” level with the common man; a direct challenge to the current trend in propaganda. Few people admired them. Rossetti and his cohorts were mocked and ridiculed by the press, which claimed the artists were appealing to a void, since common men-the working classes-lacked anything resembling a well-developed sense of their own spirituality.

Swinburne often socialised with the group and had posed for their paintings on a number of occasions. He was surprised that Goddard dared display the small, medieval-themed canvas, which depicted the poet as a flame-haired knight with lance in hand, mounted on a sturdy horse. Admittedly, the picture was half hidden behind a more commercial portrait of the late Francis Galton, who was shown wielding a syringe and smiling broadly beneath the words: Self-improvement! It doesn't hurt a bit!

The premises was quiet and dark, its door secure, the windows intact.

“Let's move on,” Burton said. “No one's going to steal a Rossetti.”

An old-fashioned horse-drawn brougham-they were still common-came clattering alongside, splashed water onto their trouser legs, and disappeared into the gloom. Oddly, the sound of its horse's hooves thundered on, seeming quite out of proportion to the size of the animal.

“A mega-dray,” Swinburne commented, and Burton realised that his assistant was right; the heavy clopping wasn't from the brougham's animal at all, it was from one of the huge dray horses developed by the Eugenicists, the biological branch of the Technologist caste. Obviously there was one nearby, though even as Burton thought this, the sound faded into the distance.

Boyd's Antiques, which was on the other side of the road, was, like Goddard's, locked up and undisturbed.

“Nothing happening here,” Swinburne said as they walked on. “Great heavens, Richard, we're in desperate straits-we're both soaked, and not with alcohol!”

“Good!” Burton replied. “I thought I'd weaned you off the bottle.”

“You had, but then you tempted me back! You've not been sober for more than two days since the Spring Heeled Jack hoo-ha!”

“For which I apologise. I think my frustrations over the Nile situation have been getting the better of me.”

“Give it up, Richard. Africa's no longer your concern.”

“I know, I know. It's just that… I regret the mistakes I made during my expedition. I wish I could go back and make amends.”

A man hurried past them, spitting expletives as the strengthening wind turned his umbrella inside out.

Swinburne gave his friend a sideways glance. “Do you mean physically return to Africa or go back in time? What on earth's got into you? You've been like a bear with a sore head lately.”

Burton pursed his lips, thrust his cane into the crook of his elbow, and pushed his hands into his pockets.

“Montague Penniforth.”

“Who?”

“He was a cab driver-a salt-of-the-earth type. He knew his position in society, and despite it being tough and the rewards slight, he just got on with it, uncomplainingly.”

“So?”

“So I dragged him out of his world and into mine. He got killed, and it was my fault.” Burton looked at his companion, his eyes hard and his expression grim. “William Stroyan, 1854, Berbera. I underestimated the natives. I didn't think they'd attack our camp. They did. He was killed. John Hanning Speke. Last year, he shot himself in the head rather than confront me in a debate. Now half his brain is a machine and his thoughts aren't his own. Edward Oxford-”

“The man who leaped here from the future.”

“Yes. And who accidentally changed the past. He was trying to put it right, and I killed him.”

“He was Spring Heeled Jack. He was insane.”

“My motives were selfish. He revealed to me where my life was going. I broke his neck to prevent any chance that he might succeed in his mission. I didn't want to be the man that his history recorded.”

They trudged on through the sodden rubbish and animal waste. Unusually, this end of Saint Martin's Lane hadn't yet been visited by a litter-crab.

“If he'd lived, Richard,” Swinburne said, “the Technologists and Rakes would have used him to manipulate time for their own ends. We would have lost control of our destinies.”

“Does not Destiny, by its very nature, deny us control?” Burton countered.

Swinburne smiled. “Does it? Then if that's the case, responsibility for Mr. Penniforth's death-and the other misfortunes you mentioned-must rest with Destiny, not with you.”

“Which would make me its tool. Bismillah! That's just what I need!”

Burton stopped and indicated a shopfront. “Here's Pride-Manushi, the velocipede place.”

They examined the doors and windows of the establishment. No lights showed. Everything was secure. They squinted through the gaps in the metal shutter. There was no movement, nothing amiss.

“Brundleweed's next,” Burton murmured.

“Gad! I don't blame you for wishing you were back on the Dark Continent!” Swinburne declared, pulling at his overcoat collar. “At least it's warm there. A thousand curses on this rain!”

They crossed the road again. As they mounted the pavement, a beggar stepped out of a shadowy doorway. He was ill kempt and wore disreputable clothes. A profusion of greying hair framed his face, and it was quite apparent that he was well acquainted with neither a comb nor a bar of soap.

“I lost me job, gents,” he wheezed, raising his flat cap in greeting and revealing a bald scalp. “An’ it serves me bloomin’ well right, too. I ask you, why the heck did I choose to be a bleedin’ philosopher when me mind's nearly always muddled? Can you spare thruppence?”

Swinburne fished a coin out of his pocket and flipped it to the vagrant. “Here you are, old chap. You were a philosopher?”

“Much obliged. Aye, I was, lad. An’ here's a bit of advice in return for your coin: life is all about the survival of the fittest, an’ the wise man must remember that, while he's a descendant of the past, he's also a parent of the bloomin’ future. Anyways-” he bit the thruppence and slipped it into his pocket “-Spencer's the name, an’ I'm right pleased to have made your acquaintance. Evenin’, gents!”

He raised his cap again and retreated to his doorstep, where the rain couldn't reach him.

Burton and Swinburne continued their patrol.

“What an extraordinary fellow!” Swinburne reflected. “Here's Brundleweed's. It looks quiet.”

It did, indeed, look quiet. The grille was down, the window display was intact, and the lights were off.

“I wonder how Trounce and Bhatti are getting on,” Burton said. He tried the door. It didn't budge. “It looks all right. Let's foot it to Scrannington Bank.”

The cold wind battered them and the deluge lanced into their faces. They pulled the brims of their hats down low and the collars of their coats up high, but it was a lost cause.

Burton was shivering uncontrollably. Tomorrow, he knew, he was going to be in a bad way.

The bank loomed ahead. It was a big, dirty, foreboding edifice. The water had cut grey rivulets into its sooty coat.

Swinburne hopped up its steps to check the doors. They were closed and barred. He came back down. All the windows were shuttered.

“This isn't very inspiring at all. I think we're on a wild goose chase,” he complained. “What time is it?”

“Nigh on midnight, I should say.”

“Look around you, Richard. Everyone has disappeared. We haven't even seen an automated animal. Man, woman, and beast are tucked up in their warm, dry beds! So are criminals!”

“You're probably right,” Burton replied grumpily, “but we should press on until we reunite with Trounce.”

“Fine! Fine! If you say so,” Swinburne replied, throwing up his arms in exasperation. “But please remember that-should another occasion like this arise in the future-being wet to the bone and frozen to the marrow is definitely not the sort of pain I enjoy. The sting of a hard cane, yes! The sting of a hard rain, no! What's that?” He pointed across the road to a fenced area beside an intersection. Beyond the low barricade, there was pitch darkness.

“It's Mildew Street,” Burton answered. “Let's take a look. Those are the works where they're shoring up the underground river.”

They crossed Saint Martin's again and leaned over the waist-high wooden barrier. They couldn't see a thing.

Burton pulled a clockwork hand-lantern from his pocket, shook it open, and gave it a twist. The sides of the device spilled light into the rain. He held it up over the fence, illuminating a muddy pit. The saturated ground angled down to the mouth of a well, from which the top of a ladder projected. Streams of water gurgled over the slope and disappeared into the wide shaft.

“Look!” he exclaimed, pointing to a patch of mud at the top of the slope, just beneath a collapsed segment of fencing on the Mildew Street side.

“You mean the footprints?” Swinburne shrugged. “So what?”

“Don't be a blessed fool!” Burton growled. “How long are muddy footprints going to last in this weather?”

“My hat! I see what you mean!”

“They're recent. Some of them haven't even filled with water yet.”

The two men moved around the barrier to the broken section. Burton squatted and examined the footprints closely.

“Remind you of anything?” he asked.

“It looks like someone's been pressing flat irons into the mud,” the poet observed. “My goodness, those are deep prints. Whoever made them must have been very heavy. Ovals, not shoe-shaped. I say! The clockwork man!”

“Not the one in Trafalgar Square,” Burton corrected. “It had clean feet and these prints were made while it's been standing beside the column. There were other clockwork men here-three of them-and less than fifteen minutes ago, I should think. Look who was with them!”

Burton moved his lantern. The circle of light swept across the mud and settled on a line of big, widely spaced, very deep oblong prints. Who- or whatever had made them obviously possessed three legs.

Swinburne recognised them at once. “Brunel!” he cried. “Isambard Kingdom Brunel! The Steam Man!”

“Yes. See how deep his prints are by the well? He obviously waited there while the brass men went down. I wonder what they were up to?”

Burton stepped over the fence's fallen planks and turned to his assistant. “I'm going to have a look. You run back to that Spencer fellow. Give him another thruppence and ask him if he saw anything unusual around here, then come back and wait for Trounce and Constable Bhatti. Go! We mustn't waste any more time!”

Swinburne raced off.

Burton crouched, lowering his centre of gravity to improve his balance on the slippery surface. He began to inch downward, bracing himself with his cane, holding the lantern high. The rain hissed around him. He wondered whether he was doing the right thing. Brunel and his clockwork companions were getting away-but from what? What had they been up to?

He'd covered half the short distance to the well when his feet shot out from under him. He slapped down onto his back and went slithering uncontrollably toward the mouth of the shaft, slewing sideways until his hip thudded against the top of the ladder which, thankfully, was bolted to the side of the well. He felt his shoulders swerving over the sodden clay and was propelled headfirst into the opening. Without thinking, he let go of his cane and threw out a hand. It closed over a rung and he gripped hard as his body turned in the air, swung down, and slammed against the ladder. The force of the impact knocked the wind out of him and loosened his hold. He fell before catching another rung. Pain lanced through his shoulder. His cane clacked onto a solid surface somewhere below.

He scrambled for a foothold, secured himself, and hung on, shaking. An involuntary groan issued from his lips.

He felt weak and ill. Despite the cold weather, beads of sweat were gathering on his forehead.

The lantern went out.

Shifting to better secure himself, he gave the device a twist. It spluttered back into life and he lowered it past his knee, revealing a brick walkway not far below. A river flowed beside it, the brown surface heaving and frothing as it sped past.

Burton descended with water pouring around him from the pit above. He stepped off the ladder and flexed his arm, winced, then picked up his cane and flashed the light around, finding himself in a small section of newly built brick-lined tunnel. Farther down in both directions, it gave way to a soft-walled, insecure-looking passage which, for as far as he could see-which wasn't very far-had been shored up with timber.

The walkway ran alongside the river and disappeared into the darkness. On it, three sets of muddy oval-shaped footprints trailed back and forth.

He followed them.

The course of the river was by no means straight but the explorer felt certain that it remained more or less beneath Saint Martin's on its way to the Thames.

Moments later, he came to a hole cut into the wall on his left. Big lumps of stone were scattered around it and a pile of rubble blocked the path beyond. A glance at the ground assured him that the three mechanical men had passed this way, so he entered and stepped through a short stretch of roughly cut tunnel.

It broke through into the unlit and damp basement of a building, empty but for broken pieces of packing crates, a rusty iron bedstead, and an old chest of drawers. Smeared mud cut a channel across the dusty floor to an open door and up the stairs beyond.

Treading softly, the king's agent ascended. There was another door at the top of the stairs, which he opened carefully. His lantern illuminated what appeared to be a workshop. There was a large safe in the corner. Its door had been wrenched off and lay, warped out of shape, on the floor nearby. The safe was empty.

He passed through to a hallway and entered the next room, which he found was at the front of the building. He recognised it at once. He'd seen it through a security grille. It was Brundleweed's-the diamond dealer's shop.

He returned to the safe and examined it.

“Emptied out!” he said, softly. “But why would Brunel-the most lauded engineer in the Empire-steal diamonds? It doesn't make sense!”

The public believed that Isambard Kingdom Brunel had died from a stroke in 1859. They regarded him as one of the greatest Englishmen ever to have lived. Little did they know that he'd actually retreated into a mobile life-maintaining mechanism, and, from it, still directed the Technologists’ various projects.

“What the devil is he playing at?” Burton muttered.

There was nothing further he could do here-and the longer he remained, the farther away the Steam Man and his three clockwork assistants would get.

He turned and ran back the way he'd come. It took but a few moments to reach the ladder and climb it.

Someone called to him as he poked his head out into the rain: “Burton! Burton! Hurry up, man!”

“Trounce? Is that you? Give me a hand, will you?”

“Wait there!”

He squinted through the downpour, saw figures milling about, sliding down the slope toward him, and was surprised when Spencer the philosopher emerged from the rain.

“Hallo, Boss! Reach up an’ we'll ’ave you out in a jiffy!”

“Hello, Mr. Spencer! Here, grab the end of my cane!”

He extended his stick toward the vagrant, who clutched it tightly.

Burton clambered up and gripped Spencer's wrist. He saw that the beggar was held by Trounce, who in turn was held by Bhatti.

Swinburne, who wasn't holding anybody, was jumping up and down on the other side of the fence, screeching: “Don't let go of him! Don't let go!”

The chain of men pulled Burton up out of the pit, over the fallen fence, and onto the pavement.

“By Jove!” Trounce observed. “You're a sight!”

Burton looked down at himself. He was caked with mud from top to toe. He felt as bad as he looked, but, ignoring the ache burrowing through his bones, he twisted off the lantern, thrust it into his pocket, and reported his discovery: “It's a diamond robbery. They tunnelled into Brundleweed's from the side of the underground river.”

“Strewth!” Constable Bhatti gasped. “Old Brundleweed took a big delivery a couple of days ago. The crooks must have made off with a fortune!”

“And they're heading west!” Trounce declared.

“How do you know that?” Burton asked.

“Mr. Spencer saw them!” Swinburne revealed.

Burton turned to the vagrant. “Explain!”

“There were one of ’em whoppin’ great pantechnicons parked here, Boss. One of the ones what's drawn by the jumbo dray horses. I didn't see nothin’ goin’ on, but it galloped off at a rare old pace just a few moments afore you arrived.”

“We heard it!” Burton confirmed.

“And it passed us on Orange Street!” Trounce said. “Heaven knows where it is now. We'll never catch up with it!”

“Are you joking?” Burton cried. “How can we miss a horse that size? It's a veritable mountain!”

“True, but a fast-moving one that might have headed off in any direction by now!”

The king's agent turned suddenly and started to race away along Mildew Street.

“Follow me!”

“What? Hey! Captain Burton!” the detective inspector shouted after the retreating figure. “Damn it! Come on, Bhatti!”

The two policemen took off after the king's agent. Swinburne followed, and behind him came Spencer, who'd decided to stick with the group in the hope that another thruppence might be forthcoming.

They dashed into Orange Street, and Trounce hadn't gone far before he spotted Burton ahead, hammering on a door and bellowing, “Open up in the name of the king!”

The detective inspector recognised the building. He'd checked it just a few minutes before: SPARTA, the automated animal training centre.

In a flash, he realised what Burton was up to.

“This is the police!” he hollered officiously. “Open the door!”

He heard a bolt being drawn back.

Swinburne and Spencer arrived, panting.

The portal opened slightly and an eye was put to the crack.

“I was asleep!” a female voice protested.

“Madam, I'm Detective Inspector William Trounce of Scotland Yard. These are my associates and we need your help!”

The door opened wider, revealing a young woman clad in dressing gown, nightcap, and slippers. Her face was strong, oval-shaped, brown-eyed.

“What do you mean?”

“Have you any trained swans on the premises?” Burton asked brusquely.

“Yes. No. That is to say, not fully but six are close enough. Trained, I mean.”

“Then I'm afraid we must commandeer four of them.”

“Five,” Spencer corrected.

The woman looked astonished, her eyes flicking from Burton to Trounce and back again.

“Please, ma'am,” Trounce said in a softer tone. “This is an emergency. You will be compensated.”

She stepped back. “You'd better come in. My name is Mayson, Isabella Mayson.”

They entered.

Miss Mayson lit an oil lamp and held it up.

“Merciful heavens! What happened to you!” she gasped upon noticing Burton's mud-encrusted clothing.

“Would you mind if I explained later, Miss Mayson? There really isn't any time to spare.”

“Very well. This way, please.” She lifted an umbrella from a stand and led them along the passage. “I'm afraid you'll have to pass the parakeets to get to the swans.”

Bhatti grinned and said, “We policemen are used to a little abuse. I take it they've not found a solution to the problem yet?”

“Through this room, gentlemen. The cages are beyond. No, Constable-um-?”

“Bhatti, Miss.”

“No, Constable Bhatti, they haven't. Wait a moment.”

She stopped at a door, fiddled with a key ring, located the appropriate key, and fitted it into the lock.

“Brace yourselves,” she advised, with a wry smile.

She opened the door and they all stepped through.

Insults exploded from the stacked cages encircling the room: “Piss-guzzlers! Cheese-brains! Stench-makers! Cross-eyed baboons! Drooling fumblers! Flush-faced sots! Blubberous flab-guts! Witless remnants! Boneheaded contortionists! Sheep-tickling louts! Maggotous duffers! Ugly buffoons! Slime-lickers!”

It was a deafening roar, and it didn't let up for a moment as they traversed the long chamber toward the door at its far end.

“I'm sorry!” Miss Mayson shouted at the top of her voice. “Take it on the chin!”

Swinburne giggled.

Messenger parakeets had been one of the first practical applications of the Eugenicists’ science to be adopted by the British public. A person only had to visit a post office to give one of their birds a message, name, and address, and the parakeet would fly off to deliver the communication. No one but the Eugenicists knew how the colourful little creatures found the addresses, but they always did.

There was one problem.

The parakeets cursed and insulted everyone they encountered. Invariably, messages were liberally peppered with expletives not put there by the sender. Nevertheless, the system proved popular, especially as some of the birds displayed a rather amusing talent for creating totally meaningless words that, nevertheless, sounded insulting. These “new insults” were all the rage at Society events. Swinburne himself had recently been called a “blibbering chub-fluffer” by a parakeet delivering an invitation to a poetry reading at Lord Haverleigh's. He'd laughed about it for days. You are cordially invited-you blibbering chub-fluffer-to an evening of stinking poetry and abysmal piss wine -

The foul-mouthed birds demonstrated an issue that had troubled eugenics from the very start. Whatever modification the scientists bred into a species, it always brought with it an unexpected side effect. The giant dray horses, for example, had no control over their bladders or bowels and were overproductive in both departments. This had proven a serious problem in London's already filthy streets until the Engineering branch of the Technologists invented the automated mechanical cleaners, popularly known as “litter-crabs,” to tackle the issue.

“Hag-kissers! Slack-jaws! Dirt-gobblers! Mumblebums! Dolts! Filthy blackguards! Bulging scumbags! Gusset-sniffers! Gibbering loonies! Puppy-munchers!”

Trailing behind Miss Mayson, the men reached the other side of the room. The young woman unlocked a door, threw it open, and ushered them through. The portal slammed shut behind them and she leaned against it, opening the umbrella. “That's quite enough of that, I think! My apologies, gentlemen.”

They stood in a very spacious rain-swept yard beside a row of cages, each containing an upright wheel. In each wheel there was a dog-all greyhounds-sprinting at top speed. There must have been at least twenty of them, and the rumble of the spinning wheels drowned out even the noise of the rain.

The greyhounds were known as runners, and they formed the other half of the British Postal Service. Where the parakeets communicated spoken messages, the dogs delivered letters, racing from door to door with the missives held gently between their teeth. In fact, they were unable to stop running, and even when they arrived at a delivery destination they jogged on the spot until the letter they carried was taken. They were also voracious eaters, and any person using the service was obliged to feed them.

“They've just gone to sleep,” Miss Mayson said, gesturing toward the animals.

“They run in their sleep?” Swinburne asked wonderingly.

“Yes, which is why I had the wheels put inside their cages. It's better than having them racing around the yard. The swans are over there.”

She indicated the far end of the enclosure, where nine breathtakingly huge birds stood in high-roofed pens. Their heads were poised, about fifteen feet up, at the top of elegantly curved necks. Their beady eyes watched the group as it approached them.

“Don't worry. They're almost tame.”

“Almost?” Trounce asked, doubtfully. “Somehow, I don't find that very comforting.”

“If they were any wilder, they'd bite your head off before you could blink. They're aggressive by nature.”

Trounce smoothed his mustache with his fingers.

“But four are tame enough to fly, yes?” Burton asked.

“Five,” Spencer added.

“Yes, sir, though you might struggle a bit. They're a touch headstrong.”

“Let's get them buckled up. We have to work fast.”

Miss Mayson crossed to a shed from which she produced harnesses and big folded box kites. Then she picked up a long, thin wooden cane, returned to the pens, and used it to drive out five of the enormous white birds.

“Down!” she commanded, while slapping one of the swans on its side with the rod. It obligingly squatted, and, while Spencer held the umbrella over her, she showed the men how to attach the long reins to the base of the bird's neck, passing them over its back. Swinburne, who'd flown swans before, assisted her by buckling the ends of lengthy leather straps to its legs and clipping the other ends to one of the box kites which Burton and Trounce had unfolded.

While they worked, the king's agent instructed his companions: “Look out for litter-crabs.”

“Why litter-crabs?” Trounce asked in a puzzled tone.

“I noticed that the end of Saint Martin's hadn't been cleaned,” Burton responded. “Now I know why. The litter-crabs were tempted away from it by the mega-dray. You know how the contraptions tend to follow behind the horses, cleaning up the manure. I dare say they're still on its trail!”

“Good thinking, Captain!” the policeman exclaimed.

Miss Mayson helped Constable Bhatti into a kite. He sat on the canvas seat, slipped his boots through the stirrups, and took the reins. The woman showed him how to control the bird.

A few minutes later, all five men were in position.

Miss Mayson stepped back. “Half a mo!” she cried. “Wait there-I have an idea!”

She ran back along the yard and into the training centre.

“What's she up to?” Burton grumbled truculently, but even as he spoke she reappeared and hurried over to them.

She held a small blue and yellow parakeet in her hand.

“All messenger parakeets are identified by a postcode,” she said. “This is POX JR5. She's one of the new breed. As long as she knows you, she'll be able to find you. She doesn't even need your address. You can use her to communicate between the kites. She'll keep up with the swans-she's the swiftest of all my birds. Tell her your names!” She held the parakeet out to each of the men in turn.

“Captain Richard Burton.”

“Odorous thug!” the bird whistled.

“Detective Inspector William Trounce.”

“Ponderous buffoon!” it cheeped.

“Algernon Charles Swinburne.”

“Illiterate bum-pincher!” it cackled.

“Constable Shyamji Bhatti.”

“Nurdle-thwacker!” it squawked.

“Herbert Spencer.”

“Angel-faced beauty,” it crooned.

“My goodness!” Miss Mayson exclaimed. “Was that a compliment?”

Burton blew out a breath. “Please,” he said, “there's no time for this!”

She gave a small nod and placed the parakeet on Burton's shoulder. It hunkered down and he felt its little claws sinking into the soggy cloth of his overcoat.

“Good luck!” the young woman said, stepping back. “Constable, call in tomorrow and tell me all about it!”

Bhatti smiled and nodded. “Get yourself inside and dry off,” he advised. “Your slippers are wet through!”

Sir Richard Francis Burton snapped his reins the way she'd shown him. His swan stretched out its wings, ran five steps forward, and, with a mighty flapping, soared into the air. The leather straps of the harness uncoiled, snaked up after it, jerked taut, and his kite shot upward.

Thrown violently back into his canvas seat, the king's agent found himself rising at phenomenal speed into the sodden atmosphere. The rain pelted against his face. His swan spiralled higher and, when he glanced back, he saw that his colleagues were following behind.

The chase was on!

T he water-laden air jabbed cold needles into Burton's face, but despite being hatless-for, like the others, he'd placed his headgear into a spacious pocket at the back of the kite-he actually felt unpleasantly warm; a sign that his malarial fever was developing rapidly. He tried to stay focused but a peculiar sense of disassociation was creeping over him.

“Bloody git-face,” POX JR5 mumbled.

The five giant swans began to circle over the western end of Orange Street. Visibility was poor in the rain so the men flew them close to the rooftops, except for Swinburne, who, despite being the most experienced flier, was having problems controlling his unruly bird. He was currently somewhere overhead, inside the low blanket of cloud.

Tracking the mega-dray proved easier than Burton had anticipated.

It was Bhatti who spotted the trail. He steered his swan in beside Burton's, but the kites, at the end of their long tethers, were flying extremely erratically due to the wind and beating rain, making it impossible to shout across to one another.

Burton spoke to the parakeet: “Pox! Message for Constable Shyamji Bhatti. Message begins. What is it? Message ends. Go.”

The brightly coloured bird launched itself from his shoulder. A few moments later, when the constable's kite tumbled upward past his own, Burton saw that the messenger was already squawking into the young policeman's ear.

The explorer shifted his hips, trying to stabilise his vehicle. It was foul weather for flying!

The parakeet returned. “Message from dribbling sponge-head Constable Shyamji Bhatti!” it whistled. “Message begins. Look off to the right, snot-picker-the bloody litter-crabs are all along Haymarket. Message ends.”

Burton told Pox to take the message to Trounce, Swinburne, and Spencer. He then sent his swan wheeling to the right and along Haymarket. He passed over four of the large eight-legged, steam-driven street cleaners and spotted a fifth at the end of Piccadilly. Yanking at the reins, he veered to the left and followed the thoroughfare. He soared past a sixth crab, a seventh, an eighth, and Green Park hove into view. The ninth litter-crab was clearing up a mountain of steaming manure outside the exclusive Parthenon Hotel; after that, all the way to Hyde Park Corner, he didn't see a single one.

Pox returned to his shoulder.

He circled counterclockwise around the edge of Green Park, peering into the gloom.

There!

The massive pantechnicon was in the park, close to the Queen Victoria Memorial, with the mega-dray towering in front of it.

Looking back, he saw his colleagues following. Swinburne's bird suddenly plummeted from the clouds, honked loudly, and swooped downward to land in the park. Behind it, the box kite was dragged through treetops, splintering and ripping until nothing of it was left. Burton saw the tiny poet bounce from branch to branch and tumble from the trees to the ground.

With a heartfelt curse, he slowed his swan, pulled it around in a tight turn, and flew low over his friend.

“Are you hurt?” he bellowed as he flapped past.

He wheeled again; flew back.

“Yes!” came a small voice from below. “It was thrilling!”

Burton marvelled at his swan's manoeuvrability as he pivoted it through the air to fly over Swinburne once more.

“Round up some policemen!” he shouted. “Capture that pantechnicon!”

He increased altitude, wiping the rain from his eyes, and rejoined the others, who were circling above the massive vehicle. The bulky figure of Isambard Kingdom Brunel could be seen at the back of it. He was unloading four machines, aided by his three clockwork men.

As always, Burton felt awed by the sight of the Steam Man.

The most famous and successful engineer in the world stood on three multijointed mechanical legs. These were attached to a horizontal disk-shaped chassis affixed to the bottom of Brunel's body. The body was like a barrel lying on its side, with domed protrusions at either end. Each of these bore nine triple-jointed arms, and each arm ended in a different tool, ranging from delicate fingers to slashing blades, drills, hammers, spanners, and welders.

A further dome rose from the top of Brunel's body. From this, too, arms extended-six in all-though these were more like tentacles, long and flexible. Each ended in a clamplike hand.

At various places around the barrel-body, revolving cogwheels poked through slots, and on one shoulder a piston slowly rose and fell. On the other, something resembling a bellows pumped up and down and Burton knew from previous experience that it made a hideous wheezing noise.

This massive mechanism kept Brunel alive-but what of the man inside? How did he breathe or see or hear or eat? How much of his humanity did he retain?

The king's agent-along with Swinburne, Trounce, and two or three others-was aware that some of the engineer's recent activities were not only ethically dubious but had, perhaps, gone beyond the boundaries of the law. However, as Sir Richard Mayne, chief commissioner of police at Scotland Yard, said: “It would be unwise to arrest a national hero-a man who has done, and secretly continues to do, great good for the Empire-unless we have absolute and irrefutable proof of his crimes.”

So far, that proof had not been forthcoming.

Burton gave a whistle of amazement. He'd just realised what Brunel and his assistants were doing. They were unpacking and unfolding ornithopters.

“Message for Detective Inspector Trounce,” he said. “Message begins. They have ornithopters. I don't know how fast these swans are but they're about to be tested. Message ends. Go.”

Pox plunged out of the kite.

Along with gas-filled airships and electrical engines, ornithopters were generally considered to be one of the Technologists’ “dead-end” inventions-good in theory but not in practice. The winged machines possessed great speed and could cover enormous distances without refuelling, but they were also impossible for a person to control; human reactions simply weren't fast enough to compensate for their innate instability. It had been suggested that a babbage could fly them but, of course, babbages were rare and prohibitively expensive. Except, Burton thought, there were three of them down there right now, with Brunel, each housed in a clockwork body, each mounting an ornithopter's saddle.

The engineer's own flying machine was massive-the biggest of the type the explorer had ever seen-which it needed to be in order to carry Brunel's great weight.

The four swans swooped overhead as the ornithopters started to roll forward.

The parakeet returned to Burton's shoulder.

“Message from skunk-scented Detective Inspector Trounce!” it screeched. “Message begins. Use your gun. Shoot the blasted ornithopters, you sludge-brained nincompoop, but don't fire at bilious Brunel. Message ends.”

Burton passed the right rein to his left hand and pulled a Smith and Wesson revolver from his coat pocket. It was difficult to steer the swan one-handed and the kite was swinging about wildly. What with that and the rain and the wind, making an accurate shot seemed impossible. His hand, too, was trembling with his oncoming fever. Hopelessly, he pointed the gun in the general direction of the ornithopters and pulled the trigger. Immediately, one of the machines disappeared in a ball of steam and a loud detonation echoed across the park. A brass head went spinning into the air, narrowly missing Herbert Spencer's swan.

“Lucky shot!” Burton mumbled. “Must have hit the pressure boiler!”

The three remaining ornithopters accelerated over the grass, belching vapour from their funnels, their wings flapping. A ratcheting noise reached Burton's ears as the machines angled into the air and picked up speed.

Gunshots sounded from Trounce and Bhatti's kites, and one of the flying contraptions suddenly slid sideways, turned over, and thumped back down to earth, crushing the clockwork driver beneath it. Burton caught a glimpse of a mangled and twitching figure as he flew past.

He fired another shot, pocketed his revolver, grabbed at the reins with both hands, and gave them a hefty flick, urging his swan to greater speed.

The ornithopters, with wings beating so fast they became nothing but a blur, leaned to the right and turned, heading northward. They increased altitude and disappeared into the clouds. The swans followed.

Burton was wretchedly wet. His teeth chattered and he shook uncontrollably.

He wiped his face in the crook of his elbow and when he looked up he found that he'd unexpectedly emerged into clear, dry, still air.

The layer of cloud had fallen away beneath him and a full moon glared down, turning the top of the billowing weather front a bright silvery grey. There was no rain and hardly a breeze at this altitude, and his box kite immediately settled into smooth flight, losing the sickening weaving and bobbing motion that had marked the pursuit so far.

Brunel's machine flapped ahead. Where was his companion?

Burton looked to his right and saw Bhatti and Spencer. He looked to his left and saw Trounce-and shouted a warning! Too late!

The surviving clockwork man's ornithopter plunged from above straight into Trounce's swan. A metal wing tore through the bird's neck, slicing its head clean off.

The ornithopter arced away as the bird's decapitated corpse plummeted down into the cloud, dragging the kite behind it. In the instant before Trounce vanished into the thick mist, Burton saw him yank his emergency strap, separating the kite from the bird.

He breathed a sigh of relief. His friend would float safely to earth, though the landing might leave him shaken and bruised.

He steered closer to his two remaining companions. Here, above the bad weather, his voice carried: “Where did it go?”

“I don't know!” Bhatti yelled, peering up and around.

“Down into the cloud!” Spencer shouted. “It went right under your bloomin’ kite, Boss! It- aaah! ”

The ornithopter shot up from below, passing straight through the harness that attached the vagrant philosopher to his bird. Spencer tumbled away in his kite while the swan, with no one to guide it, turned and flew back the way it had come.

Burton snatched at his revolver, fumbled, and dropped it out of the kite. He cursed and glanced across at the constable, hoping his moment of weakness hadn't been witnessed. It hadn't. Bhatti was looking this way and that, scanning the sky for their attacker.

“Coming down at you!” the policeman screamed, pointing upward.

The king's agent yanked fiercely at his reins, sending his bird, with a honk of protest, swerving sharply to the left. Bhatti's revolver barked twice as the ornithopter plunged past, narrowly missing a collision with Burton's kite. The enemy vehicle twisted in the air and rose up beside the constable's swan. The driver, mounted on the ornithopter's saddle, turned to look at the giant bird. The frightened swan responded with its species’ characteristic belligerence. It whipped its neck sideways, gripped the brass head in its beak, and ripped it from the mechanical shoulders.

Bhatti cheered, but his delight was short-lived. With nothing to steer it, the ornithopter slid into his bird. Metal and fleshy wings clashed and a stream of blood showered back over the constable. The swan shrieked and started to fall, the ornithopter spinning down beside it, trailing a spiral of steam.

“Good luck, Captain!” Bhatti shouted, yanking at his release strap. He disappeared behind and below Burton's kite.

Ahead, the Steam Man had gained some distance and was bearing slightly to the east.

A violent tremor ran through Burton's body. He gritted his teeth.

“All right, Brunel,” he ground out harshly. “Now it's just you and me.”

He cracked the reins.

The chase continued over the clouds and across rain-swept London. Burton struggled to keep his mind from drifting. He wondered where his onetime travelling companion John Hanning Speke was, and thought about the time they'd spent together in Africa. It turned into a hallucination; the canvas seat of the box kite became a canvas stretcher, swaying beneath him as natives bore him along. He saw Speke bending over him, sprinkling water from a flask onto his burning, fevered brow.

“Not long now, Dick,” Speke said. “We'll reach Ujiji before sundown. We can lay up there awhile and get ourselves shipshape before we explore the lake more thoroughly. It's easy going for the rest of the afternoon, old thing. Flat savannah. No more swamps. There's lots of wildlife. I shot three gazelles and five vultures this morning!”

Shooting. Always shooting! God, how Speke loved to kill!

The water continued to sprinkle onto his face.

Enough!

Speke didn't stop. The droplets fell with greater force, drenching him. He snapped awake. Bismillah! Where ' s Brunel?

Looking this way and that, furious with himself, he found that he'd dropped back into the clouds. He tugged angrily at the reins, guiding his bird back upward.

Emerging into the clear air, he spotted the ornithopter ahead and to the left. It was descending. He followed and the vapour swallowed him again. Moments later he was being tossed around by the wind and rain. Looking down at the streets below, he recognised nothing until he saw the familiar landmarks of Muswell Hill and Alexandra Park. He watched as Brunel steered his ornithopter in a wide arc and settled in Priory Park, a lesser patch of greenery to the southeast.

After flying a slow circuit around it, the king's agent swooped in low above the bordering trees and, as they fell away behind him, tugged his release strap. The world somersaulted wildly as he tumbled away from the swan, then the ground swelled up and a terrific impact knocked his senses from him.

Burton opened his eyes.

Why was he lying in the rain? Why was he tangled in material? Why-? Memory returned.

He stirred, rolled over, pushed canvas and broken spars away, got to his knees, and vomited. His whole body was shaking.

He groped around until he found the kite's pocket, pulled his silver-topped, panther-headed cane free, and, leaning heavily upon it, hauled himself to his feet.

POX JR5 fluttered onto his shoulder.

Burton fished a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his mouth. As he pulled it away, he saw rain-diluted blood on the square of cotton. He felt his face and discovered a deep gash on the bridge of his nose. Holding the cloth to it, he stumbled across the boggy grass into a nearby thicket.

He leaned against the bole of a tree. His head ached abominably.

“Pox. Message for Detective Inspector Trounce,” he croaked. “Message begins. Brunel landed in Priory Park, Crouch End. He is inside the priory. Get here fast. Bring men. Message ends. Go.”

The parakeet blew a raspberry and departed.

Burton, concealed in the shadows beneath the huddle of trees, looked out over the lawn at the forbidding old building. The big ornithopter stood in front of its large double doors. The rain drummed loudly on the contraption's metal fuselage, and tendrils of steam coiled from the funnel.

Drawing on the remarkable reservoir of strength that had seen him through so many adventures, the king's agent took off across the lawn and skidded into cover behind the machine. He moved along its side, ducked under a folded wing, and leaned out to look past it at the front of the priory.

The front doors had opened and light shone from within. The Steam Man clanked into view. Bells chimed: Brunel's odd and almost incomprehensible mechanical voice. Burton, with his extraordinary ear for languages, was able to discern the words: “Come in out of the rain, Captain.”

“So much for concealment,” he grunted.

Straightening, he trudged across to the entrance. With a puff of exhaust fumes, Brunel stood aside.

“Do not be concerned for your safety,” the engineer rang as Burton stepped in. “Come and warm yourself by the fire. There is someone I want you to meet.”

The interior of the building had been completely refurbished to accommodate Brunel's size. Originally, it had been a three-floored property. Now only the upper level survived. The bottom two had been knocked into one enormous space, punctuated by tall iron braces that replaced the supporting walls. A narrow staircase, lacking a banister, ran up the wall to Burton's left.

Off to his right, behind wooden screens of Indian design, he could see items of ornate furniture standing on patterned rugs, and a big inglenook fireplace in which flames flickered invitingly. It was to this area that one of the Steam Man's multijointed arms gestured.

“Where are the diamonds, Brunel?” Burton demanded.

There came a whir of gears and another arm lifted. The clamp at its end held a number of flat jewel cases.

“Here. An explanation awaits you by the fire. I insist that you go and dry yourself, Sir Richard. If you refuse, you'll catch your death.”

The threat was unmistakable.

Burton turned and walked unsteadily to the furnished area, passing benches strewn with small items of machinery, tools, drills, brass fittings, gears, and springs. He stepped around the screens and looked down at an elderly man seated in a leather armchair. Bald, shrunken, hollow-eyed, and with pale liver-spotted skin, he was unmistakably Sir Charles Babbage.

“By the Lord Harry!” the old inventor exclaimed in a cracked and raspy voice. “Are you ill? You look all in! And you're sopping wet, man! For heaven's sake, sit down! Pull the chair closer to the fire. Brunel! Brunel! Come here!”

Burton placed his cane to the side of the hearth and collapsed into an armchair.

The Steam Man thudded over and lifted a couple of the screens away. He loomed above the two men.

“Where are your manners?” said Babbage. “Get Sir Richard a brandy!”

Brunel moved to a cabinet and, with astonishing delicacy considering his great bulk, withdrew from it two glasses and a crystal decanter. He poured generous measures, returned, and held them out-one to each man. Burton and Babbage accepted them, and Brunel took a few paces back. With a hiss of escaping steam, he lowered into a squat and became entirely motionless but for the rhythmic wheezing of his bellows.

“Creak creak! Creak creak!” Babbage observed. “Abysmal racket! On and on it goes. And all evening, the rain on the windows! Pitter-patter! Pitter-patter! How is a man supposed to think? I say, drink up, Burton! What on earth's the matter with you?”

Burton gulped at his brandy. The edge of the glass rattled against his teeth. He pulled the stained handkerchief from his pocket and used it to wipe the blood from his face, dabbing at the cut on his nose.

He sighed, threw the reddened square of cotton into the fire, and muttered: “Malaria.”

“My dear fellow, I'm so sorry! Is there anything I can do?” Babbage asked.

“You could explain, sir.”

“I can explain, Sir Richard, and when I do, I'm afraid you'll find that your pursuit of Brunel and your wanton destruction of three of my probability calculators was a grave misjudgement.”

“My actions were prompted by the fact that Brunel, the great engineer, seems to have stooped to common burglary.”

“I can assure you there was nothing common about it; that I was willing to sacrifice one of my calculators as a decoy is indication enough of that, don't you think? Let me ask you a question: does the theft of diamonds qualify as a crime when millions of people-in fact, the entire Empire-will benefit from it? Before you answer, may I remind you that a similar question is frequently employed by the British government to justify the pillaging of entire countries?”

Burton held up a hand. “Stop. I myself have argued that the spread of so-called civilisation is little more than invasion and suppression, looting and enslavement, but for the life of me I can't see how it relates to the squalid burglarising of a diamond dealer's shop!”

Babbage chuckled. “There you go again. Two men crowbarring a door and coshing a policeman, that I will accept as squalid, but a mechanised genius leading three clockwork probability instruments? Tut-tut, Sir Richard! Tut-tut!”

“Answer the-” Burton stopped and groaned as a tremor overwhelmed him. The glass dropped from his hand and shattered on the edge of the hearth. Babbage flinched at the noise, then recovered himself and made to get up. Burton stopped him with a wave of a hand.

“Don't! I'm all right! So tell me, how does the good of the Empire relate to tonight's burglary?”

The Steam Man clanked into action, moving back to the drinks cabinet.

“I must share with you a vision of the future,” Babbage said. “I want to tell you what is possible-the kind of world we can start building immediately, providing I survive.”

“The diamonds have something to do with your survival? I don't understand.”

“You will.”

Burton took the replacement drink offered by Brunel.

The Steam Man resumed his former position. A small hatch flipped open in the front of his body and a pliers-like appendage reached in and pulled out a long, thick cigar. The hatch closed and the roll of tobacco was fitted into a small hole located a few inches beneath the bellows. Another arm rose and the blowtorch at its end ignited and lit the cigar. The bellows rose and fell. The cigar pumped blue smoke into the air.

Old habits die hard.

Burton sipped at his drink. It was gin. Good choice.

Babbage leaned forward. “Burton, what if there was no longer a requirement for the working classes?”

The king's agent looked down at his shoes, which were steaming before the fire.

“Keep talking,” he said. He felt weirdly disjointed, as if the world he inhabited were something he might awaken from.

“Imagine this: from one end of the Empire to the other, mechanical brains control the day-to-day necessities of human life. They cook our food. They clean our homes. They sweep our chimneys. They work in our factories. They deliver our goods. They monitor and maintain our infrastructure. They serve us absolutely, unquestioningly, uncomplainingly-and require absolutely nothing in return!”

“You mean the babbage devices?” Burton queried, his voice thick and slurring.

“Pah! The probability devices are mere prototypes. They are nothing compared to what I can achieve-if I live!”

“If you live,” Burton echoed. “And how do you propose to do that, old man?”

“Come with me.”

Babbage pushed himself out of the chair, took a walking stick from beside it, and shuffled out beyond the screens.

Weakly, Burton retrieved his cane and followed.

With a whir, a clank, and a plume of steam, Brunel fell into pace behind them.

They crossed to the centre of the workshop, where a plinth stood, draped with a thin cloth.

“Please,” Babbage said to Brunel.

The Steam Man extended an arm and pulled the material away.

Burton looked bemusedly at an intricate contraption of brass; a fantastic array of cogwheels, springs, and lenses, all contained within a brain-shaped case. It was delicate, confusing, and strangely beautiful.

“A babbage?” he asked.

“Much more than that. It is my future,” the scientist responded. “And thus, also the future of the British Empire.”

Burton leaned on his cane and wished Detective Inspector Trounce and his men would hurry up.

“How so?”

The elderly scientist gently brushed his hand over the device.

“This is my latest creation,” he said. “A probability calculator designed to employ information held in an electrical field.”

“What information?”

“Everything in here,” Babbage replied, tapping the side of his cranium with a bony forefinger.

The king's agent shook his head. “No. The brain's electrical activity is so subtle as to be immeasurable,” he said. “Furthermore, the brain is mortal, not mechanical-when it dies, so does the field.”

“As far as measurement goes, you are wrong. With regard to death, you are right. However, there's something you haven't taken into consideration. Would you show us, please, Brunel?”

Isambard Kingdom Brunel lowered himself and placed the jewel cases on the floor. There were six of them, all removed from Brundleweed's safe. The Steam Man's arms flexed. Clamps held the cases steady while fine saw blades slid through their locks. Gripping devices took hold and pulled the containers open. Five of them were pushed aside. Pincers moved forward into the sixth. One by one, five large black stones were separated from the rest.

“The Cambodian Choir Stones!” Babbage announced.

“What about them?” asked Burton, impatiently. His eyelids felt heavy and his legs weak.

“My greatest technical challenge, Sir Richard, has not been the gathering, processing, and dissemination of information, but the storage of it. It is relatively easy to make a machine that thinks, but to make a machine that remembers -that is quite another thing. Pass the gemstones to our guest, Brunel.”

The famous engineer obeyed, dropping the black diamonds one by one into Burton's extended palm. The king's agent looked at them closely, struggling to keep his eyes focused.

“You are holding in your hand the solution to the problem,” Babbage said. “These diamonds were retrieved from a temple in Cambodia by a Frenchman, Lieutenant Marie Joseph Francois Garnier. There were seven in total. They've been known in that country as the Choir Stones since their discovery in 1837 on account of the fact that they occasionally emit a faint musical hum.

“Francois Garnier gave two of the diamonds to his colleague, Jean Pelletier, and kept the remaining five for himself. Pelletier happened to be a committed Technologist. He knew we were on the lookout for such stones. We'd heard that something of the sort existed and suspected they might possess unique qualities. When he brought his two to my attention, I experimented with them and was intrigued by the possibilities offered by their rather unusual crystalline structure. I made a prototype device into which to fit them. Unfortunately, before I finished my work, Pelletier suffered a heart attack, and when his body was found there was no sign of the stones. No doubt a member of his household staff made off with them. You can't trust these lowly types. My prototype was useless to me without them, so I gave it to Darwin, who had it fitted to a man I believe you are acquainted with-John Speke.”

Burton gave a gasp of surprise.

“Without the two diamonds fitted into it, the device didn't function as I had intended but it enabled Darwin to gain some measure of control over the poor fellow,” Babbage continued. “Though why he should want it, I don't know. Nor do I care.”

“But surely he gave some indication why Speke was important to him?” Burton asked.

“Maybe. I forget. It's beside the point. What matters is that the Pelletier diamonds were just two of seven, and the remaining five recently appeared in London. Obviously, by hook or by crook, I had to have them-the Francois Garnier Collection.”

“So you chose by crook. ”

“I selected the most efficient and immediate method,” Babbage answered. “These black diamonds, you see, Sir Richard, can contain and maintain an electrical field, no matter how slight it may be. Do you understand the significance?”

“Not really.”

“Then I shall put it into simple terms. At death, there is a surge of electrical activity in the human brain-a transmission, if you will. The Choir Stones are so sensitive that, if they are close enough, they will receive and store that transmission. Memories, sir-they hold memories. I intend to die in their presence. My intellect will be imprinted upon them. Brunel will then set them into the machinery of this probability calculator, which, like its predecessor, is designed to process the information recorded in their structure. In other words, the essence of Charles Babbage will live on-or, rather, think on-in this device.”

Burton laughed mirthlessly. “You mean to achieve immortality?”

“I mean for my intellect to survive.”

“And your soul?”

Babbage clucked with irritation. “Pshaw! I no more believe in that superstitious claptrap than you do! I refer to my thought processes! The quintessence of myself!”

“Nonsense! A human being adds up to far more than the electrical field generated by, or contained within, the spongy matter of his brain. What about the heart, sir? What about emotion? What about how he feels about his memories-his triumphs and regrets?”

Now it was the elderly scientist's turn to laugh. “Firstly, there is absolutely no empirical evidence that emotion is housed in the heart,” he said scornfully. “And secondly, even if it was, it is eminently disposable! What good has emotion ever done except to wound and anger and weaken and give rise to humanity's most primitive and animalistic urges? Surely you're not going to lecture me about the majesty of love?”

“No, I'm not. I do say, though, that there are certain decisions a man is called upon to make which transcend the dictates of reason.”

“Balderdash! Those are simply occasions where a lesser intellect struggles; where intelligence gives up and submits to emotional impulses. I design machines that decide the best course of action based upon logic. ”

Burton fought to keep his mind focused, his head from nodding. His fever was raging now. The room was spinning and Babbage's voice seemed to echo from a long way off. He was aware of Brunel's bulky presence a few paces behind him.

“No, Sir Charles, it won't do,” he rasped. “You have overlooked the fact that a mind separated from the heart entirely eliminates ethics and morality. Look at what you and Brunel have done tonight. You have stolen! You've performed what to you is merely an act of logical necessity-but did you for one minute consider the consequences for Mr. Brundleweed? In a few hours from now he'll awaken to find his business in ruins. His reputation will suffer. His income will be devastated. He and his family will be penalised for your actions.”

“Irrelevant!” Babbage jerked. “The man is nothing but a common merchant.”

“And what of his son or his daughter? Do you know their destiny?”

Babbage licked his lips. “What are you talking about? I don't even know whether he has a son or daughter. I know nothing about the man!”

“Exactly! You know nothing about him, yet you judge him dispensable. What if one of his children was destined to discover a cure for influenza, or the secret of perpetual motion, or a system by which poverty could be eliminated? What might you have deprived us of?”

The old man looked disconcerted. “None of that is certain,” he protested. “And since they are a lower class of people, it is highly unlikely.”

“Your disdain for the working classes is well known, Sir Charles. Perhaps that is why you seek to replace them with thinking machines. But your contempt does not eliminate the possibility that someone in the Brundleweed family might one day play a crucial role in our social evolution.”

The king's agent fought the impulse to vomit. An unbearable hammering assaulted the inner walls of his skull.

“It's a very simple equation,” Babbage grumbled. “A matter of probability. We can state that maybe Brundleweed's children will become an important influence to future generations, but we can also state that I, Charles Babbage, am already an important influence and will continue to be so.”

“Conceit!”

“Fact! I can certainly make the world a more efficient place!”

“But maybe,” Burton whispered, “efficiency isn't all it's held up to be. Maybe it's the inefficiencies and mistakes that give us the best impetus to change and grow and improve!”

“No! Miscalculations slow us down! I don't make them. I deal only with the proven and the certain, yet who can dispute that I am evolved? Hand me the diamonds!”

Burton passed the five black gemstones to the old man.

“You can kill me now,” Babbage said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Kill me, Sir Richard. Brunel will do the rest.”

With a shaking hand, Burton pulled the blade from his swordstick.

“Are you sure? You really want me to kill you?”

“Of course I do. Get on with it, man! I have work to do!”

“You are absolutely certain that your memories will be transferred to the diamonds?”

“Yes!”

“Then you illustrate my argument admirably. Nothing in life is certain, Sir Charles. The diamonds are fakes.” He stepped forward and plunged his rapier into the scientist's heart. “Do you now get my point?”

Babbage whispered: “Fakes?”

He died. His corpse slid from Burton's sword and crumpled to the floor.

The king's agent turned and faced the Steam Man.

The hulking machine stood motionless but for the bellows on its shoulder, which scraped up and down incessantly. Little more than an inch of the cigar remained.

Bells chimed: “The Francois Garnier Collection is not genuine?”

“The stones are onyx crystals.”

“Impossible.”

“Look for yourself.”

Burton stepped back. Brunel lumbered past him and retrieved a stone from Babbage's hand, holding it up with a pincer while another arm held a magnifying tool in front of it.

Burton had no idea what the engineer used for eyes.

“You are correct,” Brunel rang. “Then Babbage is dead and his device is useless.”

The king's agent felt his knees giving way. He sheathed his sword.

“I can't fight you, Brunel. I'm not sure I can even stand up for much longer. The best I can do is offer some advice.”

“Advice?”

“Stop associating with insane scientists. The authorities are already concerned about you after your involvement with Darwin and his cronies. This latest caper will do your reputation no good at all. Redeem yourself, Isambard. Redeem yourself.”

Even as the words left his lips, the room began to reel and Burton staggered to one side and collapsed onto the floor.

The massive engineer loomed over him. “Sir Richard, there are those in my faction who would have me kill you.”

“I don't doubt it,” Burton whispered, as darkness pushed in at the periphery of his vision. “And I bet John Speke is foremost among them.”

“You are wrong. Lieutenant Speke is no longer affiliated with the Technologists. He and a small group of Eugenicists absconded to Prussia some weeks ago.”

Burton's eyes began to close. “Do your worst,” he said sleepily. “I'm at your mercy.”

“I would rather make a request of you.”

“A request? What-what is it?”

“My fiancee, nurse Florence Nightingale, is missing. She has not been seen or heard of for slightly over a month. Find her for me.”

“You want me to-”

“Find her. Will you try?”

Burton managed to nod. The room tumbled.

Distant bells: “I shall take Sir Charles and locate a quiet graveyard for him. He so abhorred noise. We will meet again, Sir Richard.”

Oblivion.

Shouts.

Gunshots.

War cries.

Orange light flickered across the canvas roof.

John Speke stumbled in. His eyes were wild.

“They knocked my tent down around my ears!” he gasped. “I almost took a beating! Is there shooting to be done?”

“I rather suppose there is,” Burton replied. “Be sharp, and arm to defend the camp!”

A voice came from behind: “There's a lot of the blighters and our confounded guards have taken to their heels!” It was Lieutenant Herne, returning from a scouting mission. “I took a couple of potshots at the mob but then got tangled in the tent ropes. A big Somali took a swipe at me with a bloody great club. I put a bullet into the bastard. Stroyan's either out cold or done for. I couldn't get near him.”

Have they killed William Stroyan? God! I'm sorry, William. It's my fault! I'm so sorry!

A barrage of blows pounded against the canvas. Ululating war cries sounded. Javelins were thrust through the opening. Daggers ripped at the material.

“Bismillah!” Burton cursed. “We're going to have to fight our way to the supplies and get ourselves more guns. Herne, there are spears tied to the tent pole at the back. Get ’em!”

“Yes, sir!” Herne responded. He turned, then cried: “They're breaking through the canvas!”

Burton spat expletives. “If this blasted thing comes down on us we'll be caught up good and proper. Get out! Come on! Now!”

He hurled himself through the tent flaps and into a crowd of twenty or so Somali natives, setting about them with his sabre, slicing right and left, yelling fiercely.

Clubs and spear shafts thudded against his flesh, bruising and cutting him, drawing blood. He glanced to the rear, toward the tent, and saw a thrown stone crack against Speke's knee. The lieutenant stumbled backward.

“Don't step back!” Burton shouted. “They'll think that we're retiring!”

Speke looked at him with an expression of utter dismay.

A club struck Burton on the shoulder. He twisted and swiped his blade at its owner. The crush of men jostled him back and forth. Someone shoved him from behind and he turned angrily, raising his sword, only recognising El Balyuz, the expedition's guide, at the very last moment.

His arm froze in midswing.

White-hot pain tore through his head.

He stumbled and fell onto the sandy earth.

A weight pulled him sideways.

He reached up.

A javelin had pierced his face, in one side of his mouth and out the other, dislodging teeth and cracking his palate.

He fought to stay conscious.

The pain!

Damn it, Speke-help me! Help me!

A damp cloth on his brow.

Dry sheets beneath him.

He opened his eyes.

Algernon Swinburne smiled down at him.

“You were having a nightmare, Richard. The nightmare.”

Burton moved his tongue about in his mouth. It was dry, not bloody.

“Water,” he croaked.

Swinburne reached to the bedside table. “Here you are.”

Burton pushed himself into a sitting position, took the proffered glass, and drank greedily.

His friend plumped the pillows behind him and he leaned back, feeling comfortable, warm, and unbelievably weak. He was in his own bedroom at 14 Montagu Place.

“It was a bad attack,” Swinburne advised. “I refer to the malaria, not to the Berbera incident,” he added, with a grin.

“Always the same bloody dream!” Burton grumbled.

“It's not surprising, really,” the poet noted. “Any man who had a spear shoved through his ugly mug would probably have nightmares about it.”

“How long?”

“The spear?”

“Was I unconscious for, you blessed clown.”

“You were in a high fever for five days then slept almost solidly for three more. Doctor Steinhaueser has been popping in every few hours to keep you dosed up with quinine. We forced chicken broth into you twice daily, though I doubt you remember any of that.”

“I don't. The last thing I recollect is talking with Brunel in the priory. Eight days! What happened? Last time I saw you, you'd just taken a tumble through some trees.”

“Yes, that confounded swan was an unmanageable blighter! I rounded up a little squadron of constables and we drove the pantechnicon to Scotland Yard. Of course, it was an utter waste of time; there were neither fingerprints nor any other admissible evidence to connect it either with the Brundleweed robbery or with Brunel and his clockwork men.

“Anyway, while I was having my cuts and bruises attended to by the Yard physician, William Trounce, Herbert Spencer, and Constable Bhatti all came limping in for the same treatment. We knew you'd get word to us, so after we'd been bandaged, soothed, patted on our heads, and sent on our merry way, we regrouped in Trounce's office, sat steaming by the fire, and waited. When the parakeet arrived and delivered your message, we gathered a force together and raced to Crouch End on velocipedes. You were unconscious inside the priory with the diamonds at your side. There was no sign of Isambard Kingdom Brunel.”

“Did you find one of Babbage's devices? On a plinth?”

“Yes. Trounce took it in as evidence. The diamonds were returned to Brundleweed. He's not happy, though. It turns out that Brunel made off with a select few and left fakes in their place.”

“The black ones? Francois Garnier's Choir Stones?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“I'll tell you later, Algy. But you're wrong. It wasn't Brunel who took the originals. I need to sleep now. I'll write up a full report when my strength is back. Oh, by the way, what became of Herbert Spencer?”

“He got a little reward from Scotland Yard for helping us out. Miss Mayson has given him an occasional job, too. He cleans out the parakeet cages at the automated animal academy.”

“He must have a thick skin!”

“He doesn't need one. Apparently the birds have taken a shine to him and barrage him with compliments!” Swinburne stood. “I'm staying in the spare bedroom. Just ring if you need anything.”

“Thank you,” Burton replied sleepily as his friend departed.

He lay back with his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling.

Two weeks passed.

Burton worked on an expanded edition of his book The Lake Regions of Central Africa.

He slowly regained his strength. His long-suffering housekeeper, Mrs. Iris Angell, cooked him magnificent meals and despaired when he sent them back barely touched. His appetite had always been slight, but now-as she told him every single morning and every single evening-he needed sustenance.

She underestimated his iron constitution.

Little by little, the gaunt hollows beneath his scarred cheekbones filled out; the dark shadows around his eyes faded; his hands steadied.

Algernon Swinburne, now living back in his own apartment on Grafton Street, Fitzroy Square, was a frequent visitor and observed with satisfaction the normal swarthiness returning to his friend's jaundiced countenance.

Burton eventually got around to writing a report detailing his confrontation with Sir Charles Babbage. He held nothing back.

Rolling the document, he placed it in a canister, which he slotted into an odd-looking copper and glass contraption on his desk. He dialed the number 222 and pressed a button. There came a gasp, a plume of steam, a rattle, and the canister shot away down a tube, en route to the prime minister's office.

He was just settling in his armchair and reaching for a cigar when there came a knock and Mrs. Angell entered.

“There's a Countess Sabina to see you, sir.”

“Is there, by James!? Send her up, please!”

“Should I chaperone?”

“There's no need, Mrs. Angell. The countess and I are acquainted.”

Moments later, a woman stepped into the study. She was tall and may once have possessed an angular beauty, but now looked careworn; her face was lined, her chestnut hair shot through with grey, her fingernails bitten and unpainted. Her eyes, though, were extraordinary-large, slightly slanted, and of the darkest brown.

She was London's foremost cheiromantist and prognosticator, and had given Burton much to think about during the Spring Heeled Jack case.

“Countess!” he exclaimed. “This is an unexpected pleasure! Please sit down. Can I get you anything?”

“Just water, please, Captain Burton,” she answered, in a musical, slightly accented voice.

He crossed to the bureau and poured her a glass while she sat and patted down her black crinoline skirt and straightened her bonnet.

“I'm sorry to intrude,” she said as he handed her the drink and sat opposite. “My goodness, you look ill!”

“Recovering, Countess, and I assure you, your visit is very welcome and no intrusion at all. Can I be of some service?”

“Yes-no-yes-I don't know-maybe the other way around. I-I have been having visions, Captain.”

“And they concern me in some way?”

She nodded and took a sip of water. “When you came to me last year,” she continued, “I saw that you had embarked upon a course never meant for you, yet one that would lead to greater contentment.”

“I remember. You said that for me the wrong path is the right path.”

“Yes. But in recent days, I have been increasingly aware of the alternative, Captain, by which I mean the original path. Not just yours, but that which we were all destined to tread until the stilt-man drove us from it.”

“Edward Oxford. He was a meddler with time.”

“With time,” she echoed, softly. Her eyes seemed to be focused on the far distance. “I'm sorry,” she whispered. “I had intended to talk to you first but it is overwhelming me. I cannot stop it. I have to-I have to-”

Burton lunged forward and caught the glass as it dropped from her loose fingers. Her eyes rolled up into her head and she began to rock slightly in her chair. She started to speak in a voice that sounded weirdly different from her own, as if she was far away and talking to him through a length of pipe.

“I will speak. I will speak. It is all wrong. No one is as they should be. Nothing is as intended. The storm will break early and you shall witness the end of a great cycle and the horrifying birth pains of another; the past and the future locked together in a terrible conflict.”

A coldness gripped Burton.

“Beware, Captain, for a finger of the storm reaches back to touch you. There are layers upon layers, one deception concealing another-and that one but a veil over yet another. Do not believe what you see. The little ones are not as they appear. The puppeteer is herself a puppet and the sorcerer is not yet born. The dead shall believe themselves living.”

Her head fell back and a horribly tormented groan escaped her.

“No,” she whispered. “No. No. No. I can hear the song but it should not be sung! It should not be sung! The stilt-man broke the silence of the ages and the sorcerer hears; and the puppeteer hears; and the dead hear; and, oh, God help me-” her voice suddenly rose to a shriek “-I hear, too! I hear, too!”

She clapped her hands to her ears, arched her back, thrashed in her seat, and slumped into a dead faint.

“My God!” Burton gasped. He took her by the shoulders and straightened her; pushed his handkerchief into the glass of water and folded it over her brow; went to a drawer and retrieved a bottle of smelling salts. Moments later she was blinking and coughing.

He poured her a small brandy. “Here, take this.”

She gulped it, spluttered, breathed heavily, and slowly calmed.

“My apologies. Did I fall into a trance?”

“You did.”

“I suspected something of the sort might happen, though I hoped I might have more control over it. For two weeks I've felt the urge to see you, to transmit a message to you, but I did not know what it was, so I didn't come.”

Burton repeated what she had told him.

“Do you know what it means?” he asked.

“I never know. When I'm spellbound, I'm unaware of what I say, and it seldom makes sense to me afterward.”

Burton gazed at her thoughtfully. “Is there something else, Countess? Even though the message has been delivered, you seem uneasy.”

The prognosticator suddenly stood and paced back and forth, wringing her gloved hands.

“It's-it's-it's that I can't trust that the message is valid, Captain.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because-I know it sounds strange-but this, what I do, my ability to glimpse not only the future, but futures -plural-should not be possible!”

“I'm not sure I understand what you mean. You have a reputation for accuracy and I've seen it demonstrated. Plainly, it is not only possible but also actual.”

“Yes, and that's the problem! Prognostication, cheiromancy, spiritualism-these things are spoken of in the other history, but they do not work there, and those who claim such powers are regarded as nothing but charlatans and swindlers.”

Burton got to his feet, took his visitor by the upper arms, and turned her to face him.

“Countess, you and I are privy to a fact that very, very few people know: namely, that the natural course of time has been interfered with. The history we are living is different from what would otherwise have been. People are being exposed to opportunities and challenges they perhaps should not experience, and it is changing them entirely. Future mechanisms, hinted at in conversations between Edward Oxford's companion, Henry Beresford, and Isambard Kingdom Brunel, are being developed according to current knowledge, giving us a glut of contraptions that, in all probability, should never have existed at all. Yet, amid all this chaos and confusion, there is one thing we can be certain of: changing time cannot possibly alter natural laws. I don't know whether spiritualist powers belong to the science of physics or to the science of biology; I know only that they are real. You are the living evidence.”

Countess Sabina's eyes met his, and in them he saw utter conviction as she said: “And yet, in the world that should have been, they are not real. They are not real. Somehow, Captain Burton, I feel this is the key!”

“The key to what?”

“To-to the survival of the British Empire!”

Later that same day, Burton was standing by one of his study windows smoking a Manila cheroot, filling the room with its pungent scent and staring sightlessly at the street below, when a messenger parakeet landed on the sill. Raising the window, he received: “Message from that dung-squeezer, Detective Inspector Trounce. Message begins. Word has reached me that you're back on your feet, you dirty shunt-knobbler. I'll call round at eight this evening. Message ends.”

Burton chuckled. Dirty shunt-knobbler. He must tell Algy that one.

He did, later, when Swinburne visited, and the poet roared with laughter, which was cut short when Fidget, Burton's basset hound, bit his ankle.

“Yow! Damn and blast the confounded dog! Why does he always do that?” he screeched.

“It's just his way of showing affection.”

“Can't you train him to be a little less expressive?”

They sat and chatted, relaxing in each other's company, enjoying their easy though unlikely friendship. Perhaps no stranger pair could be found in the whole of London than the brutal-faced, hard-bitten explorer and the delicate, rather effeminate-looking poet. Yet there was an intellectual-and perhaps spiritual-bond between them, which had begun with a shared love for the work of the Portuguese poet Camoens; had been sustained by a mutual need to know where their own limits lay-if, indeed, they had any; and was now strengthened by the challenges and dangers they faced together in the service of the king.

On the dot of eight, there came a hammering at the front door, followed by footsteps on the stairs and a tapping at the study door.

“Come!” Burton called.

The portal swung open and Mrs. Angell crossed the threshold. She stood nervously wrapping her hands in her pinafore.

“Detective Inspector T-Trounce and a young con-constable to see you, sir,” she stammered. “And-and-goodness gracious me!”

“Mrs. Angell? Are you quite all right?”

Trounce stepped into the room behind her. Constable Bhatti followed.

“Hallo, Captain! Hallo, Swinburne!” the Scotland Yard man cried cheerfully. “Mrs. Angell, my dear woman, don't worry yourself! I promise you, it's absolutely harmless!”

“B-but-bless my soul!” the old dame stuttered. She threw up her hands and bustled out of the room.

“What's harmless?” Burton asked.

“You look like your old self again!” Trounce exclaimed, ignoring the question. “But never mind! Worse things happen at sea!”

Swinburne gave a screech of laughter.

“Come in, gentlemen; help yourself to a drink and cigar,” Burton invited, indicating the decanter and the cigar box.

They did so, pulled over a couple of armchairs, and settled around the fireplace with the king's agent and the poet. Fidget sprawled on the hearthrug at their feet.

“We have a gift for you, Captain,” Trounce declared with a mischievous twinkle.

“Really? Why?”

“Oh, for services rendered and whatnot! Besides, I noticed that your shoes are never polished, your cuffs are frayed, and your collars need starching!”

“Ever the detective. What on earth has my personal grooming got to do with anything?”

“I'm suggesting, Captain Burton, that you're in dire need of a gentleman's gentleman-a valet!”

“I have a housekeeper and a maid. Any more staff and I'll be managing a ‘household!’”

“Only those that need managing,” Trounce said. He winked at Bhatti.

The young constable smiled and called: “Enter!”

A figure of gleaming brass walked in, closed the door, and stood, whirring softly.

Fidget yelped and dived behind a chair.

“My hat!” Swinburne exclaimed. “Is that the clockwork man of Trafalgar Square?”

“The very same!” Trounce answered. “Constable Bhatti has been studying him for the past three weeks.”

“We found a key that fitted him in the priory,” the constable added. “Then it was just a matter of experimentation. As I suspected, the little switches at the front of the babbage dictate his behaviour. He can be rendered more aggressive, subservient, independent; you can set him to respond to any voice, specific voices, or just your own. What do think, Captain Burton?”

Burton looked at each of his guests, then turned his gaze to the brass man.

“Frankly, gentlemen,” he said, “I'm at a complete loss. You mean me to keep this mechanism as a valet?”

“Yes,” Trounce said. “It will do whatever you tell it!”

Bhatti nodded and added: “It has enough independence to perform tasks without needing to be told all the time. For example, if you order it to ensure that your shoes are polished by six o'clock each morning, then it will never need telling again.”

“I wish I could say the same about my missus!” Trounce muttered.

“Wait, Captain!” Bhatti said, jumping up. He strode to the brass man and stood in front of it. “Everybody remain silent, please. Captain Burton, would you say a few words when I nod at you?”

“Words? What words?”

“Any! It doesn't matter!”

The constable took a small screwdriver from his pocket, turned to the clockwork figure, unscrewed the small porthole in its “forehead,” and used the tool to click down one of the small switches inside.

“The next voice you hear,” he told the device, “will be the only voice you obey unless it instructs you otherwise.”

He turned and nodded to Burton.

Rather self-consciously, the famous explorer cleared his throat: “I-er-I am Richard Burton and, apparently, you are now my valet.”

The brass man turned its head slightly until it appeared to be looking straight at Burton.

It saluted.

“That's its way of acknowledging your command,” said Bhatti. He reached into the porthole and flipped the switch back, then closed the little glass door and started to screw it into place.

“One moment, Constable!” Burton interrupted. “If you are all agreeable, I'd like the device set to accept commands from everyone present, and Mrs. Angell, too.”

“You're sure?” Trounce asked.

Burton nodded and pulled a cord that hung beside the fireplace. It rang a bell in the basement, summoning the housekeeper.

When she arrived, he told her about the new valet, and Bhatti went through the process again with her, with Trounce, and with Swinburne.

Mrs. Angell left the study, a bewildered expression on her face, while Bhatti joined the others around the fireplace and lit a pipe. He watched, smiling, as Burton moved over to the mechanism, looked it up and down, tapped its chest, and examined the little cogs that revolved in its head.

“Useful!” the king's agent muttered. “Very useful! Might I train it as a fencing partner?”

“Certainly!” Bhatti answered. “Though you'll probably find it too fast an opponent!”

Burton raised his eyebrows.

“Incidentally,” the constable added, “it'll need winding once a day, and, if I may suggest, you should name it. A name will make it easier to issue orders.”

“Ah, yes, I see what you mean.”

Burton stood in front of his new valet and addressed it: “Do you recognise my voice?”

The brass man saluted.

“Your name is-Admiral Lord Nelson!”

Another salute.

Burton's guests laughed.

“Bravo!” Swinburne cheered.

The king's agent turned to the policemen. “Thank you, Detective Inspector Trounce, Constable Bhatti-it's a magnificent gift! And now I propose that we bring the case of the clockwork man of Trafalgar Square to a close by giving my valet his first order.”

Trounce nodded encouragement.

“Admiral Nelson!” Sir Richard Francis Burton commanded. “Serve the drinks!”

The drinks were duly served.

Later that night, the king's agent found himself unable to sleep. A question was bothering him. He offered it to the darkness: “Whatever became of the genuine Choir Stones?”

I t was the first Monday of April, 1862. Five weeks after the death of Sir Charles Babbage.

A hiss, a clatter, and a sound like a large bung being pulled from a jar announced the arrival of a canister in the device on Sir Richard Francis Burton's desk.

Fidget raised his head from the hearthrug, barked, whimpered, then went back to sleep.

The maid, fifteen-year-old Elsie Carpenter, put down her broom, left the study, ran up the stairs, past the bedrooms, up the next staircase, and knocked on the library door.

Exotic music was coming from the room beyond.

“Come!” a voice called.

She entered and curtseyed.

Burton, wrapped in his jubbah -the loose robe he'd worn during his famed pilgrimage to Mecca-sat cross-legged on the floor amid a pile of books. He had a turban wound around his head and was smoking a hookah. The ends of his slippers curled to points.

He'd shaved off his forked beard some days ago and now sported long, exotic mustachios, which drooped to either side of his mouth. The new style made him appear younger and, in Elsie's opinion, rather more dashing.

There was another man in the library, squatting in a corner, who was a good deal less prepossessing than her master. Elderly, brown, and skinny, he wore a voluminous white and yellow striped robe and a tall fez. He was playing a nay -the long Arabian flute-the tones of which were hauntingly liquid and melodic.

Burton nodded at the man, who responded by laying down his instrument.

“Thank you, al-Masloub. Your talent shines ever more brightly as the years pass. Take what you need from the sideboard, and blessings be upon you.”

The old man stood, bowed, and murmured: “ Barak Allahu feekem. ”

He moved to a heavy piece of furniture to the right of the door and opened the small, intricately carved wooden box that stood upon it. From this he extracted a few coins, before silently slipping past Elsie and out of the room.

“What is it, Miss Elsie?” Burton asked.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said, curtseying for a second time. “Sorry to dis-disperupt your music, but a message just arrived in the thingamajig.”

“Thank you. And you mean disrupt.”

“That's right, sir. Disperupt.”

The maid bobbed again, backed out of the room, ran down the stairs, retrieved her broom, and was out of the study before Burton got there. She descended to the basement and entered the kitchen.

“All swept clean as a whistle, ma'am,” she told Mrs. Angell.

“Did you dust the bookshelves?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“And the mantelpiece?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“And that big old African spear?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“And did you polish the swords?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“And beat the cushions?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“And what about the doorknobs?”

“You can see your face in 'em, ma'am.”

“Good girl. Take a piece of fruitcake from the tin and have a rest. You've earned it.”

“Thank you, ma'am.”

Elsie took her slice of cake, put it on a plate, and settled on a stool.

“By the way, ma'am, the musical shriek has left and the master's got a message in the thingamajig.”

“Sheik,” the housekeeper corrected. She sighed. “Oh dear. I'm convinced that contraption only ever delivers trouble!”

She turned to the clockwork man, who was standing at the table, peeling potatoes. “Attend Sir Richard, please, Lord Nelson.”

The valet laid down his knife and saluted, wiped his fingers on a cloth, and marched out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the study. He entered and moved to the bureau between the windows, standing motionless beside it, awaiting orders.

Burton was by the fireplace.

“Listen to this,” he said, absently. “It's from Palmerston.”

He read from the note in his hand:

Investigate the claimant to the Tichborne title.

The king's agent sighed. “I was hoping to avoid all that blessed nonsense!”

He looked up, saw his valet, and said: “Oh, it's you. Lay out my day suit, would you? I think I'll drop in on old Pouncer Trounce, see what he knows about the affair.”

Half an hour later, Burton stepped out of 14 Montagu Place and strolled in the direction of Whitehall. He'd not gone more than three paces when a voice hailed him: “What ho, Cap'n! Fit as a fiddle, I see!”

It was Mr. Grub, the street vendor, who supplied chestnuts from a Dutch oven in the winter, and whelks, winkles, and jellied eels from a barrow in the summer.

“Yes, Mr. Grub, I'm much improved, thank you. How's business?”

“Rotten!”

“Why so?”

“Dunno, Cap'n. I think it's me pitch.”

“But you always pitch your barrow here. If it's so bad, why not move?”

Grub pushed his cloth cap back from his brow. “Move? Phew! Dunno about that! I've been here for years, an’ me father afore me! Fancy a bag o’ whelks? They're fresh out o’ the Thames this morning!”

“No thank you, Mr. Grub. I'm on my way to Scotland Yard.”

Burton wondered how anything from the Thames could possibly be classified as “fresh.”

“Well, you ain't the only one what don't want nuffink.” Mr. Grub sighed. “Cheerio, Cap'n!”

“Good day, Mr. Grub!”

Burton tipped his hat at the vendor and continued on his way.

It was a fine spring day. The sky was blue and the air still. All across the city, thin pillars of smoke rose vertically, eventually dissipating at a high altitude. Rotorchairs left trails of steam between them, a white cross-hatching that made an irregular grid of the sky. Swans, too, swooped among the columns like insects flying through a forest.

The king's agent swung along at a steady pace, with the hustle and bustle of the streets churning around him. Hawkers hollered, prostitutes wheedled and mocked, ragamuffins yelled, traders laughed and argued and haggled, street performers sang and juggled and danced, pedestrians brandished their canes and parasols and doffed their hats and bobbed their bonnets, horses clip-clopped, velocipedes hissed and chugged, steam-horses growled and rumbled, carriages rattled, wheels crunched over cobbles, dogs barked. It was an absolute cacophony. It was London.

He spotted a familiar face.

“Hi! Quips!” he called, waving his cane.

Oscar Wilde, nine years old, orphaned by the never-ending Irish famine and earning his daily crust by selling newspapers, was loitering outside a sweet shop.

“Top o’ the morning to you, Captain!” He smiled, revealing crooked teeth. “Help me to choose, would you? Bullseyes or barley sugars? I'm after thinking barley sugars.”

“Then I agree, lad.”

Oscar pulled off his battered top hat and scratched his head.

“Ah, well now, whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong. So I suppose it'd better be bullseyes!” He sighed. “Or maybe both. It seems to me that the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Don't you think so, Captain Burton?”

The explorer chuckled. Young Oscar had a remarkable way with words-thus his nickname.

“Are you flush, young ‘un?”

“Aye, I am that. My pockets are heavy with coins, so they are. I sold out in less than an hour. It seems everyone in London is after having a newspaper this morning. Have you seen the news yourself, sir?”

“Not yet. I've had my nose in books.”

“Then you must be the exception that proves the rule, for I have it in mind that the difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read!”

“I suppose the Tichborne business is still making the headlines?”

A nearby organ grinder started to squeeze out something approximating a tune on his tatty machine. Oscar winced and raised his voice: “I'll say! It has all the classes gossiping-from high lords to low layabouts! Everyone has an opinion!”

“What's the latest?” Burton shouted above the unmelodious groans, squeaks, wails, and whistles.

“The Claimant arrived in Paris and his mother has recognised him!”

“By James! Is that so?”

The Tichborne affair was a huge sensation-and one that touched a sensitive area of Burton's life, for the family was connected by marriage to the Arundells, to whom Isabel, his ex-fiancee, belonged.

The Tichbornes were one of the oldest families in the southern counties, but the estate's fortunes had dwindled considerably over the past two or three generations-due, it was rumoured, to an ancient curse. In recent years, the continuation of the line had depended upon two heirs. The eldest, Roger, was a fairly typical example of an ill-educated aristocrat, while his younger brother, Alfred, was even more vacuous, and a gambler, too. Roger had offered the greatest hope for the family until, disastrously, he was lost at sea in 1854, while sailing back from South America to claim the baronetcy after the death of his father. So it was Alfred who became the latest in the long line of Tichborne baronets, and he almost ran the estate-near Winchester in Hampshire-into the ground. Money trickled through his fingers like water. His mother, Lady Henriette-Felicite, was French. She'd not enjoyed a happy marriage and had retreated to Paris long before her husband died. From a distance, she kept a close eye on the diminishing Tichborne coffers, and when the situation became so dire that she feared Sir Alfred would make a pauper of her, she sent a family friend, Colonel Franklin Lushington, to live at Tichborne House and take control of the estate's finances. Lushington had managed to curb her son's worst excesses, but what he couldn't do was turn the young baronet into a good prospect for marriage.

Sir Alfred would almost certainly be the last Tichborne.

Then something totally unexpected happened.

A year ago, while the Dowager Lady Henriette-Felicite was visiting Tichborne House, a down-on-his-luck Russian sailor came begging for alms. The old lady, by this time frail and feeble-minded, asked him if he'd ever heard of La Bella, the ship that took her eldest to the bottom of the ocean. The sailor had not only heard of it but also knew that a small group of survivors had been rescued from a longboat bearing its name. They'd been landed in Australia.

Lady Henriette-Felicite immediately placed advertisements in the Empire and a number of Australian newspapers.

A month ago, she'd received a response in the form of a badly written and misspelled letter.

It was from Roger.

He was alive.

He told her he'd been living under the name “Tomas Castro,” and was working as a butcher in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, about halfway between Sydney and Melbourne.

He asked his mother to send him money so he could come home, and, as evidence that he-the author of the letter-truly was her son, he referred to a brown birthmark upon his side. The dowager remembered the blemish and sent the money.

Now, it seemed, the man the newspapers had dubbed “the Claimant” had met the old woman and she'd confirmed his identity.

The long-lost Roger Tichborne had returned!

As Oscar explained to Burton, the upper classes were delighted that an ancient family was restored, while the lower classes were celebrating the fact that an aristocrat had been living as a common labourer.

Dowager Lady Henriette-Felicite was bursting with joy. The rest of the Tichborne family-the cousins and assorted relatives, most of whom bore the surnames Doughty or Arundell-were not.

They didn't believe a word of it.

“He'll be over to assert ownership of the estate soon!” Oscar shouted, as the barrel organ screamed and belched.

Burton nodded thoughtfully, pulled a sixpence from his pocket, and pushed it into the urchin's palm.

“I'll see you later, Quips,” he said. “Here's a coin for a pie. You can't live on sweets alone!”

“I can get plump trying! Thank you, Captain!”

Oscar disappeared into the shop, and Burton walked on, relieved to hear the organ music fading into the background.

On the corner of Baker Street, he waved down a hansom, which, pulled by a puffing steam-horse-like a smaller version of the famous Stevenson's Rocket-took him along Wigmore Street and halfway down Regent Street before jolting to a halt when its crankshaft snapped and punched a hole in the boiler. Dismissing the driver's apologies, he hailed another and continued on through Haymarket to Whitehall and Scotland Yard.

Mounting the steps of the forbidding old edifice, he was encountered going up by Detective Inspector Trounce, who happened to be on his way down.

“Well met!” the policeman declared.

“I was just coming to pick your brains,” said Burton, shaking his friend's hand.

“I'm off to put the wind up Freddy Blue, the pawnbroker. Care to tag along?”

“Rightio. Why? What's he done?”

They descended the steps and set off toward Trafalgar Square.

“A little bird told me he's started to fence stolen property again.”

“A parakeet?”

Trounce shook his head. “No, Cock Sparrow, the child pickpocket. What was it you wanted to jiggle my grey matter about?”

They skirted around the edge of the square and entered Northumberland Avenue, which was clogged with traffic as delivery wagons trundled up from riverside, heading into the centre of the capital.

“I was wondering what you might know about the Tichborne Claimant.”

“Only what I've read in the papers.”

“That's all? You mean Scotland Yard isn't looking into it?”

“Why should we? No charges have been brought against anyone. What's your interest, Captain?”

“To be frank, I haven't any. It's little more than newspaper sensationalism, as far as I can see. Pam, unfortunately, has other ideas.”

“Palmerston? Why would it concern the prime minister?”

“Who knows? The man's brain is as unfathomable as one of those babbage devices.”

Trounce made a sound of agreement. “Incidentally,” he said, “you should have seen the men he sent to collect the babbage we found at the priory on the night of the Brundleweed raid. They were like a couple of blessed morticians!”

“Ah. That'll be Damien Burke and Gregory Hare. They're his odd-job men.”

“ Odd is right. I've never seen odder. And speaking of oddities, how's young Swinburne?”

“He's working on a new batch of poems. And pursuing his hobby, of course.”

Trounce snorted. Both men knew that Swinburne's “hobby” involved frequent visits to brothels where he enjoyed being flogged by willing madams.

“He has strange tastes, that one,” the detective muttered. “Why anyone would enjoy being birched, I can't imagine. I suffered the rod once or twice at school, and didn't like it one little bit!”

“The more I learn about him,” Burton replied, “the more I believe Swinburne has a genuine physiological condition that causes him to feel pain as pleasure. He's a fascinating study!”

“And a thorough pervert. Though a damned courageous one, I'll give him that. Absolutely fearless! Here's Mr. Blue's shop. I'll do this alone, if you don't mind. Will you wait here?”

“Certainly. Don't pummel him too hard.”

“A verbal dressing-down, that's all, Captain!” Trounce smiled. He cracked his knuckles and vanished into the pawnbroker's.

Sir Richard Francis Burton leaned on his cane and watched the traffic pass by. The traders’ vehicles were mostly horse-drawn. There weren't many who could afford a steam-horse. The men on the carts were tough and wiry individuals. Their shirtsleeves were rolled up to their elbows and Burton could see the knotted muscles of their forearms, the thickness of their bones, and the leathery quality of their skin. There wasn't an ounce of fat on any of them, nor was there even a hint of pretension-nary a whiff of self-consciousness. They were stripped down to the basics of existence. They toiled, they ate, they slept, they toiled again, and they never imagined anything different. He admired them, and, in a strange way, he envied them.

A couple of minutes later, he heard a footstep behind him and turned.

Detective Inspector Trounce had emerged from the shop.

“He started blubbing like a baby before I'd said more than two words,” the policeman announced. “I expect he'll stay on the straight and narrow for a while. It's his second warning. He'll not get another. I'll have the bracelets on him. What say you we drop in at Brundleweed's? It's just around the corner.”

“Good idea.”

They set off.

“Has there been no clue to the Choir Stones’ whereabouts?” Burton asked.

“Not a whisper, unless Brundleweed's heard something through the grapevine since I last spoke to him. He maintains that he locked the genuine articles in the safe that evening. Yet we know that Isambard Kingdom Brunel removed fakes. So either Brundleweed is lying-which I find hard to believe; his reputation is absolutely spotless-or an extremely accomplished cracksman got there first and left no trace.”

They passed back into Trafalgar Square, weaving through the crowds, and on into Charing Cross Road, heading toward Saint Martin's.

“Do you have a suspect?”

Trounce removed his bowler, slapped it, and placed it back on his head.

“The obvious man would be-” he began, then interrupted himself: “By Jove! Look at that!”

A bizarre vehicle had snaked into view from around the next corner and was thundering toward them at high speed. It was a millipede-an actual insect-grown to stupendous proportions by the Eugenicists. When it had reached the required size, they'd killed it and handed the carcass over to their Engineering colleagues, who'd sliced off the top half of its long, segmented, tubular body. They'd removed the innards until only the tough outer carapace remained, and into this they'd fitted steam-driven machinery via which the many legs could be operated. Platforms had been bolted across the top of each segment and upon them seats were affixed, over which canopies arched, echoing the shape of the missing top half of the body. A driver sat at the front of the vehicle in a chair carved from the shell of the head. He skillfully manipulated a set of long levers to control the astonishing machine.

It was a new type of omnibus, and it was packed solid with passengers, with three people to every seat and a fair number standing and hanging on for dear life as it hurtled along. They cheered and hooted with delight as hansoms and growlers, carts and velocipedes, horses and pedestrians hurriedly moved to the side of the road, out of the oncoming vehicle's path. Dense clouds of steam boiled from pipes along its sides and, as it came alongside Burton and Trounce and careened into the narrow gap that opened up through the centre of the traffic, hot vapour rolled over the two men, obscuring the scene. Impassioned curses and profanities came from within the cloud; there was a crash, a scream, and the shuddery whinny of a panicked horse.

“Damned freakish monstrosity!” Trounce yelled. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the moisture from his face.

“That's one of the most extraordinary things I've ever seen!” Burton exclaimed. “I'd read that the Technologists were experimenting with insect shells but I had no idea they'd progressed so far!”

“You regard that as progress?” Trounce objected. He waved his hat at the milieu that was slowly emerging from the thinning haze. “Look! It's utter bloody chaos! We can't have horses and steam-horses and penny-farthings and now steam-bloody-insects as well, all on the streets at the same time! People are going to get hurt!”

“Humph!” Burton agreed. “We certainly seem to be entangled in a profusion of mismatched machineries.”

“A profusion? Call it whatever you will, Captain Burton, but the fact of the matter is that if the dashed scientists don't slow down and plan ahead with something at least resembling foresight and responsibility, London is going to grind to a complete standstill, mark my words!”

“I don't disagree. Come on. Let's move along. What was it you were saying? About the suspect?”

“Suspect? Oh, Brundleweed. Yes. Well, the obvious safecracker to look at would be Marcus Dexter-there's no strongbox he can't open and he's as cunning as a fox-but he's operating in Cape Town at the moment, that's for certain. Cyril ‘the Fly’ Brady is locked up in Pentonville, and Tobias Fletcher is consumptive and out of action. There's no one else I know of who could have opened Brundleweed's safe without dynamite.”

A one-legged beggar swung himself on crutches directly into Trounce's path. He pleaded in a throaty voice for a ha'penny: “Jest fr'a cuppa tea, me ol’ china.”

The detective glowered at him, told him to move along, but pressed a penny into his palm as he went.

“I'm almost inclined to run with the diamond merchant's theory,” he muttered.

“Brundleweed has a theory?”

“Of sorts. He believes a ghost took the diamonds.”

Burton stopped and stared at his companion in amazement.

“A ghost?”

“Yes. He's fooled himself into believing that he saw a phantom woman that night.”

“You don't believe him, surely?”

“No, of course not. He probably dozed off and dreamt it. Except-”

“What?”

“The friend of Francois Garnier; the one he gave two of the black diamonds to-”

“Jean Pelletier.”

“Yes. I contacted the Surete in Paris. They confirmed that he died from a heart attack.”

“So?”

“So he was found in his lodgings, the room was locked from the inside, and the windows were closed. Yet, for some reason, his face was frozen into an expression of sheer terror. The detective I spoke to actually used the words 'like he'd seen a ghost.’”

“Intriguing.”

“Hmm. Anyway, let's hear what Brundleweed has to say. C'mon, shake a leg.”

They arrived at the shop a few moments later and entered.

Edwin Brundleweed looked up from his counter, which was secured behind metal bars. He was a stooped, middle-aged gentleman, with a long brown pointed beard drooping from his narrow chin. His head was prematurely bald, his lips thin, and thick-lensed spectacles were perched on the bridge of his hooked nose.

“Why, Detective Inspector! How very nice to see you! Is there news?”

“I'm afraid not, Mr. Brundleweed. This is Captain Sir Richard Burton. He's the gentleman who discovered the robbery here.”

“Then I'm very much in your debt, sir,” the dealer said to Burton. “If it weren't for you, the rest of the diamonds would have been lost too and I'd have been put out of business. Pray, come in, gentlemen.”

Brundleweed moved to a door set in the bars at the side of the counter, unlocked it, and stepped back to allow his visitors through. He relocked it behind them.

“I have a fresh pot of tea just brewed and a new tin of custard creams. Would you care to join me?”

Burton and Trounce answered in the affirmative. A few minutes later, they were seated with their host around a table.

“Mr. Brundleweed,” Burton said, “I'm puzzled. Why would the mystery person who replaced the Choir Stones with fakes take only those gems and not the others you had in your safe?”

The king's agent knew from Babbage that the missing gems possessed special qualities but he wondered who else might be aware of the fact.

“Good question!” came the reply. “I believe the culprit must be a specialist, a collector, a man who has interest in diamonds only for their history rather than for their financial worth. Do you know their background?”

“Only that they were discovered after they started ‘singing’ in 1837, were recently taken from a temple in Cambodia by Lieutenant Francois Garnier, and there were originally seven of them, but he gave two away. Those two subsequently went missing after the death of their owner.”

“That's correct. However, there's much more to the tale, and it's this that makes the remaining gems so eminently collectable. Black diamonds aren't the same as the white variety; they're not found in diamond fields, such as we have in South Africa and Canada. Current thinking posits that they fall from the sky as aerolites.”

“Yes, I've come across that theory.”

“According to an obscure occult manuscript-dating from the sixteenth century, if I remember rightly-which is quoted in Schuyler's De Mythen van Verloren Halfedelstenen, a large aerolite that fell in prehistoric times broke into three pieces. One piece landed in the West, another in Africa, and the third in the Far East. They are known as the Eyes of Naga.”

“Three eyes?”

“Yes. Three eyes. Peculiar, isn't it? I'm afraid I have no understanding of the Dutch language and wasn't able to read the Schuyler volume myself-my information came from a summary in Legendary Gemstones by Jerrold Wilson-but I believe the author goes on to recount two myths: a South American one which tells how the Amazon sprang into being when a large black diamond fell from the sky; and a Cambodian one about a lost continent in which a great river flowed from the spot where a black stone fell. He speculates that a similar story probably exists in the African interior concerning the source of the Nile.”

“It does!” Burton exclaimed. “While I was in the central Lake Regions, in a town named Kazeh, I was told that the fabled Mountains of the Moon supposedly mark the outer rim of a crater where an aerolite fell, giving rise to that river.”

“It can't be a coincidence, can it?” Brundleweed said. “I suppose the mythical shooting star really did fall. Anyway, the Choir Stones are supposedly the fragments of the Far Eastern Eye. If that's true, then the original diamond must have been considerably larger than the Koh-i-noor.”

“Hmm,” Burton grunted. “The Naga. I've encountered references to them. They equate to the Devanagari of Hindu mythology; seven-headed reptilian beings who established an underground civilisation long before Darwin's apes learned how to walk upright.”

“Ah, well, there you are,” Brundleweed commented, noncommittally.

“I shall have to look into that,” Burton murmured thoughtfully. “What of the African and South American diamonds?”

“Not a trace,” the dealer answered. “Although there are vague suggestions that, seventy years or so ago, an English aristocrat discovered an enormous black diamond in Chile. However, I very much doubt the veracity of the claim, for no such diamond has ever been seen, let alone cut and placed on the market.”

“The aristocrat's name?”

“I have no idea, Captain. As I said, it's the vaguest of rumours.”

“Hmm. And what of Francois Garnier? Why did he decide to sell his collection?”

Brundleweed snorted scornfully: “Believe it or not, he claimed that they emanate a deleterious influence. Tosh and piffle, of course!”

“Did you have any prospective buyers?”

“No, but my advertisement in the trade newspaper was only published a couple of days before the robbery. I received just a single enquiry, from a chap who came into the shop to confirm that I was putting the stones on the market, but he was one of those dandified Rake-ish sorts, and though he expressed an interest, he didn't leave a name or address, and I haven't heard from him since.”

“I followed that up,” Detective Inspector Trounce put in, “but it's been impossible to trace the fellow.”

Burton sipped his tea and gazed at the biscuit tin, his mind working.

He looked up. “Is there any explanation for the sound the diamonds are reputed to make?”

“Not that I know of. The sound is real, though. I heard it myself-the faintest of drones. I believe there's a Schuyler in the British Library, if you want to consult it. Maybe the author makes mention of the phenomenon.”

“Thank you, Mr. Brundleweed. One final question. You reported a ghost?”

The diamond dealer looked embarrassed. He coughed and scratched his chin through his beard.

“Um, to be frank, Captain Burton, I think I must have nodded off and dreamed it.”

“Tell me, anyway.”

“Very well, but please bear in mind that I was strangely out of sorts that afternoon. I don't know why. I developed a migraine and felt oddly nervous and jumpy. For some reason, I imagined that my lot in life was very unsatisfactory and I grew rather morose. I inherited this little business from my father and have never before or since considered that I might do anything else in life but run it. However, that afternoon I was suddenly filled with resentment toward it, feeling that it had prevented me from doing something more important.”

“What, precisely?”

“That's the thing of it! I have no idea! The suggestion that I might abandon the family business is absurd in the extreme! Anyway, I was in a thoroughly bad temper and, at four o'clock-I remember the time because the clock suddenly stopped ticking and I couldn't get it started again-I decided to pack it in for the day. The Francois Garnier Collection was already locked in my safe but, before leaving, I went to double check it. As I passed through into the workshop, the figure of a woman caught my eye. It made me jump out of my skin, I can tell you. She was standing in the corner, white and transparent. Then I blinked and she was gone. Believe me, after that I had a thorough case of the jitters and left the shop in a hurry, though not before locking up carefully. On the way home, the fresh air seemed to do me good and the migraine left me. I began to feel more like my old self. By the time I stepped through my front door, I was perfectly fine. I went to bed early and slept heavily. I didn't awake until the police knocked the next morning.”

Burton looked at Trounce. “Some sort of gas?” he suggested. “Causing hallucinations?”

“That was my thought,” the detective replied. “But we checked every inch of the floors, walls, and ceilings and found no residue and no indication of how gas might have been introduced. Certainly it didn't come up from the cellar. The tunnel from the underground river wasn't dug until hours later.”

There was a long pause, then Burton said: “I apologise for imposing upon you, Mr. Brundleweed. Thank you for the tea and biscuits. I hope the diamonds are recovered.”

“I suppose they'll surface eventually, Captain.”

“And when they do,” Trounce offered, “I'll hear about it!”

The men stood, exchanged handshakes, and Burton and Trounce took their leave.

“What next?” the detective asked as they stepped out onto the street.

“Well, Trounce old chap, this has piqued my curiosity, so I think I'm going to bury my head in books for the rest of the day to see what more I can dig up about the Naga, then on Wednesday I shall take my rotorchair out for a spin.”

“Where to?”

“Tichborne House. Much as I'd rather pursue this diamond affair, orders are orders, so I ought to have a chat with the soon-to-be-deposed baronet.”

Burton spent an uncomfortable afternoon at the British Library consulting Matthijs Schuyler's De Mythen van Verloren Halfedelstenen, along with a number of other books and manuscripts.

He became increasingly ill.

Malaria is like an earthquake; after the initial devastating attack, a series of lesser aftershocks follow, and one of them crept over the king's agent as he studied.

It began with difficulty focusing his right eye. Then he began to perspire. By five o'clock he was trembling and feeling nauseous.

He decided to go home to sleep it off.

Sitting in a hansom, being bumped and jerked toward Montagu Place, he considered what he'd read.

According to the occult text consulted by Schuyler, a continent named Kumari Kandam once existed in the Indian Ocean. It was home to the Naga kingdom, whose capital city spanned a great river, the Pahruli, which sprang from the spot where a black diamond had fallen from the sky.

The Naga were reptilian, and were constantly warring with the land's human inhabitants, enslaving them, sacrificing them, and, it was hinted, eating them.

However, the humans were growing in numbers, while the Naga were diminishing, so there came a time when the reptilian people had little choice but to seek a peaceful coexistence.

The humans sent an emissary, a Brahmin named Kaundinya, and as a symbol of the peace accord, he was married to the Naga monarch's daughter.

However, Kaundinya was not just an ambassador, he was also a spy. He discovered that while the Naga were a multitude, they were also one, for their minds were joined together through means of the black diamond.

After a year living with the reptilian race, during which time he convincingly acted the loving husband, Kaundinya was granted the right to add his own presence to the great fusion of minds.

He was taken before the gemstone, and watched without protest as a human slave was sacrificed to it. Then, with great ritual, pomp, and ceremony, he was sent into a trance and his mind was projected into the stone.

What a mind he possessed!

Trained since early childhood, Brahmin Kaundinya had achieved the absolute pinnacle of intellectual order and emotional discipline. For a year, the Naga had been covertly projecting their thoughts into his, and for a year, despite feeling them crawling around inside his skull, he'd appeared to be nothing but a simple goodwill ambassador when, in truth, he was a living weapon-and their nemesis.

As his awareness sank into the crystalline structure of the stone, Kaundinya was able to position some aspect of himself in its every angle, every line, and every facet. He filled it until no part of it was free from his consciousness. Then he turned inward, delved into the depths of his own brain, and purposely burst a major blood vessel.

The massive haemorrhage killed him instantly, as he'd known it would, and, because he'd infiltrated the entire stone, his death caused it to shatter, tearing apart the minds of every single Naga on the continent of Kumari Kandam.

It was genocide.

Many generations later, the land itself was destroyed when the Earth gave one of its occasional cataclysmic shrugs.

Now, in 1862, little evidence remained of the prehistoric lizard race. They were depicted in carvings in a few Cambodian temples, such as Angkor Wat, but whether these representations were accurate could never be established.

What fascinated Sir Richard Francis Burton, though, was that this myth of a lost reptilian civilisation existed not only in Cambodia but also in South America, where the lizard men-known as Cherufe -were also overthrown by the expanding human race. Their kingdom had been invaded, there had been mass slaughter, and just a few of them had escaped. This small group, carrying their sacred black diamond, had been pursued almost the entire length of the continent, far south to Chile, where they had vanished and were never heard of again.

In Africa, too, there were the Chitahuri of the Zulus, called the Shayturay by the tribes in the central Lake Regions.

It was, of course, surplus information that didn't, as far as he could see, have much bearing on the unsolved theft of the Francois Garnier Collection, but Burton possessed a self-confessed “mania for discovery” which drove him to peel away layer after layer of whatever subject he studied. It at least enabled him to establish a wider and, to him, more interesting context.

There was one more thing.

The Cambodian fragments had been discovered in 1837, when a priest became aware of a low humming while meditating in his quarters. He'd lived in that room for forty-seven years and had never heard the low musical tone before. He traced it to the base of a wall, and a loose brick. The five diamonds were behind it.