The Return of the Discontinued Man

“Bismillah!” Burton muttered. “What are you? Man or machine?”

He had to wait until midnight for Krishnamurthy and Bhatti, and when they arrived, Burton was surprised to hear a third person piling up the stairs with them. They hurtled into the room without ceremony, and the addition proved to be Detective Inspector Trounce.

“Mayhem!” the Scotland Yard man thundered. “Bloody mayhem! Spring Heeled Jacks left, right and centre! By Jove, what the blazes has happened here?”

Burton removed the raw steak he’d been holding to his swollen eye and held up the severed head. “This did.”

“You got one!”

“More the case that it got me.”

The two Indians moved over to the stilted body and squatted down beside it. They each gave a cry of surprise at the exposed fleshy interior of its neck.

“How many, Trounce?” Burton asked.

“Hard to say. Six that I’m sure of, counting this one. Leicester Square again. The Royal Geographical Society again. Old Ford village. Marvel’s Wood. Battersea Fields.” He pointed a thick forefinger at Burton. “You. Without a doubt, they’re hunting you. Why?”

“I don’t think they themselves could answer that,” Burton said. “As with the first encounter, this one found me but didn’t know what to do about it.”

Bhatti looked up. “The minister has received further reports about yesterday’s manifestations, Sir Richard. Apparently, our friend here—” he patted the decapitated corpse, “or his brethren—also visited Lucca and Naples in Italy, and Boulogne in France.”

“All places I’ve lived,” Burton said. Inwardly, he flinched. It wasn’t true that he’d lived in Boulogne, but he didn’t want to explain that it was significant for being the place where he’d first met Isabel.

“It’s obvious that a net is being cast with you as its prey,” Bhatti went on, “but what is the point, when you’ve been twice caught with no consequence aside from a severe beating?”

“Consequence enough,” Burton protested. Gingerly, he felt his eye. It had closed almost to a slit.

“And in the meantime people are being frightened witless,” Trounce said. “I’ll not have it! It has to stop!” He snatched his bowler hat from his head, dropped it, and kicked it at the fireplace. It narrowly missed the blaze, bounced from the hearth, and rolled beneath a desk.

Burton said, “We’re doing what we can. Maneesh, what’s the news from Babbage?”

“Probably that he’ll be over the moon when we deliver this body to him. But, also, he needs you at the station straightaway. He thinks he may be able to locate our absconding time suit, but your assistance is required.”

“Mine? What can I do? I’m no scientist.”

“For sure, but you’re the same man as Abdu El Yezdi, which apparently is of considerable significance.” Krishnamurthy and Bhatti lifted the headless cadaver. “Let’s put this into the carriage and get going.”

“Lord help us, cover it with a sheet, at least,” Trounce snapped. “We don’t want to look like confounded body snatchers.”

This was done, and a few minutes later the group squeezed into a steam horse–drawn vehicle, which then went trundling southward, Battersea bound. Trounce had elected to join them and watched as the king’s agent dabbed an alcohol-soaked handkerchief against his latest facial injuries.

“I’m sure it looks worse than it is, Trounce.”

“It looks hideous. Even your bruises have bruises. One more punch-up, and you’ll be unrecognisable.”

“That might prove advantageous.”

There was insufficient light in the cabin to allow for further scrutiny of the Spring Heeled Jack, but Bhatti, who was holding the head upside-down on his lap, remarked, “The texture of its skin is exactly like the cloth of the time suit. More solid, but the same scaly feel.”

It was the last thing said for the duration of the journey. A pensive silence fell upon them.

They travelled down Gloucester Street, past Hyde Park and Green Park, along Buckingham Palace Road, over Chelsea Bridge, and arrived at Battersea Power Station.

A guard opened the doors in response to their knock and ushered them through. “Mr. Babbage is in the workshop, sirs,” he said, peering with interest at the limp, sheet-concealed figure.

They entered, crossed the quadrangle, and went into the workshop. A technician gestured for them to follow him. They did so, trailing between the machines to the central work area.

Yet again, Burton looked upon Charles Babbage, who, with Daniel Gooch, was attending to a throne-like chair beside which the Field Preserver was suspended. The undamaged time suit was on a bench beside it. The men were tinkering with a great mass of wires that stretched between the hanging box and a framework that surrounded the suit’s helmet.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel was standing nearby, completely motionless. Trounce stood in front of him, peered at the metal face, and muttered, “Dead as a doornail.”

Gooch looked up at them as they placed the Spring Heeled Jack on a worktop and removed the sheet. “Sir Richard! You’ve captured one of the mechanisms!”

“I have,” Burton said. “Though I suffered a drubbing in the process.”

“So I see. My goodness, you’ve certainly been in the wars lately.” Gooch approached and started to examine the prone figure. “My stars! This looks like flesh.”

“It is. How’s Brunel?”

“In a total fugue. I checked his probability calculator and it seems fine. We’re leaving him for a while to see whether he comes out of it naturally.”

Burton looked at Babbage, who was so deeply engrossed in his work he had neither glanced up from it nor acknowledged the new arrivals. “I understand my presence is required, Daniel? Why?”

“Charles can explain it best.” Gooch called to the scientist, waited a moment, then, when the old man failed to respond, shouted more loudly, “Charles!”

The elderly scientist finally tore his eyes from the box and looping wires. He clapped his hands together, cried out, “Ah! Burton! Excellent! Just the man!” but then saw the stilted figure and, for the next fifteen minutes, utterly ignored everyone while he pored over it.

Finally, he addressed Gooch. “Have this stored in ice. Send for Mr. Lister. His medical knowledge is required. This mechanism has biological components. Our investigation of it might be more autopsy than dismantlement. Incredible! Incredible!”

Gooch called over a group of technicians and issued orders. Three of them carted the corpse away. A fourth hurried off to summon Lister.

“We shall proceed with our experiment while we await his arrival,” Babbage asserted. He jabbed a finger first at Burton then at the throne. “You. Sit.”

The king’s agent stayed put and folded his arms across his chest. “I’ll not subject myself to anything before you explain it to my satisfaction.”

Babbage gave a cackling laugh. “Ha! The primitive man views scientific processes as the darkest of sorceries, is that it? Don’t you worry, sir. No harm shall come to you. All you have to do is wear the helmet for a few moments and issue an instruction that it will accept from only you.”

Gooch added, “As you know, Sir Richard, Abdu El Yezdi allowed Mr. Babbage to ask questions of the functioning helmet but strictly forbade him to issue it with commands. We still follow that dictate.”

“An absurd precaution,” Babbage spat. “My research is needlessly crippled.”

“My counterpart saw the suit give rise to unhealthy enthusiasms in certain scientists,” Burton commented. “He no doubt intended that you be spared the same.”

“I’m not subject to childish passions.”

“I’m glad to hear it. To return to the matter in hand, what instruction?”

Babbage pressed his fingertips together. “Ah. The instruction. Yes. At the moment the outfit vanished, it broadcast its electromagnetic field with such strength that it was inscribed into my Field Preserver. The reverse of what I intended.”

“The experiment was supposed to record the contents of the healthy headpiece, not the damaged,” Maneesh Krishnamurthy clarified.

“That is what I just indicated, young man. Do you intend to add unnecessary observations to everything I say?”

“No, sir. My apologies.”

Trounce leaned close to Burton and whispered, “By Jove! A tetchy old goat, isn’t he?”

Gooch said, “We’re pretty sure the same burst of energy is what incapacitated Isambard.”

Babbage rapped his knuckles against the Field Preserver. “Thus what is imprinted is, in essence, a thought from the insane mind of Edward Oxford. Burton, I want you to order the functional helmet to access the recording then employ your own intellect to analyse it. You will experience it as an intention, a memory or perhaps an emotion, which you’ll feel as if it’s your own. I believe that, within that frozen thought, you may detect evidence of whoever issued the command that initiated the suit’s disappearance. You might also discover where it has gone.”

He lifted the pristine helmet and the framework that surrounded it. Burton regarded it for a moment. “Very well. Let’s get it over and done with.”

He moved to the throne-like chair and sat. Gooch stepped forward and gave assistance to Babbage, both pushing the headpiece down over Burton’s cranium. The king’s agent felt soft padding pressing against his hair and encasing his skull so completely that only his face was visible to the others.

Babbage leaned over his Field Amplifier, examining its dials.

Gooch asked Burton, “Do you hear it, sir?”

“Hear what?”

“The voice of the synthetic intelligence.”

“I don’t hear anything.”

“You have to wake it. Wait. We need to make a few adjustments first.”

The Field Preserver began to hum.

“Now, Sir Richard,” Gooch said. “Think the words engage interface.”

“What do they mean?”

Babbage growled, “Must you question every statement? Just do as Mr. Gooch says.”

Burton did, and in his mind a male voice answered, “Ready,” causing him to jump in surprise.

“Y-yes,” he stammered. “Now I hear it.”

Babbage rubbed his hands together. “Bravo! Tell it to search for external connections.”

Burton thought, Search for external connections.

“One found,” the voice declared immediately.

“It says it’s found one.”

“That’s the Field Amplifier. Good. Order it to connect and display.”

Burton issued the instruction.

“Warning, the source is corrupted,” came the response.

The king’s agent relayed the words to Babbage, who replied, “Tell it to disregard and proceed.”

Disregard and proceed, Burton thought. He looked at William Trounce, who was observing the proceedings with his arms folded and a disapproving expression on his face. Suddenly, the Scotland Yard man faded, overlaid by a scene that materialised in front of Burton’s eyes. The king’s agent saw a woman standing in a garden, pregnant, holding a tea towel. She was pretty, with long black hair, large brown eyes, and a short, thick, but curvaceous and attractive body. She looked directly at him and smiled.

He loved her.

He wanted to return to her in time for supper.

He heard himself say, in a voice that wasn’t his own, “Don’t worry. Even if I’m gone for years, I’ll be back in five minutes.”

The woman disappeared into a blazing white inferno.

Pain seared into his mind.

He screamed.

The interviewer asked, “Mr. Oxford, how does it feel to single-handedly change history?”

“I haven’t changed history,” Burton replied. “History is the past.”

“Let me rephrase the question. How does it feel to have altered the course of human history? I refer to your inventing of the fish-scale battery, which so efficiently emulates photosynthesis, and which has given us the clean and free power that lies at the heart of all our current technologies.”

“I don’t really know how it makes me feel,” Burton responded. “I’m an ordinary man, like any other. My concerns are with my family and with contributing whatever I can to society.”

The interviewer chuckled. “Hardly ordinary, sir. Physicist, engineer, historian, philosopher—you are just thirty-five years old, and already your name is up there with geniuses like Galileo, Newton, Fleming, Darwin, Einstein, Temple, Clavius the Fourth, the Zhèng Sisterhood—”

“Stop, please!” Burton protested. “We’re lucky enough to live in a world where those who want to explore to the limits of their abilities are encouraged and given the resources to do so. I work in my particular fields and others work in theirs. We have astounding musicians, engineers, artists, designers, architects, storytellers, athletes, chefs, and so forth. However, those people who are content to operate at a more sedate level are as extraordinary in their own right as anyone you might call a genius. The miracle of existence is that everyone is utterly unique. Each and every one of us should be equally celebrated.”

“But don’t you find it astonishing that it’s your creation, in particular, that’s arguably caused the biggest change to culture since the Industrial Revolution?”

“Why ‘in particular’?”

“Because of where you come from.”

“Aldershot?”

The interviewer smiled. “Not geographically. Genetically.”

Burton frowned. “Genetically? To what are you referring?”

“You’re a historian. You yourself have identified the Victorian Age as the beginning of the modern world. Have you not researched your own ancestry? If one of your forebears had succeeded in his perfidy, there’d have been no Victorian Age at all.”

“Perfidy? That’s a marvellously old-fashioned word. My partner would approve of it. She works at a language revivification centre.”

The interviewer laughed. “It’s funny how the language changes, isn’t it? Like clothes, what was once outdated is now fashionable again. But to return to the question, I’m referring to your family tree. You are descended from another Edward Oxford, who lived from 1822 to 1900. When he was eighteen years old, he attempted to assassinate Queen Victoria. Fortunately, both the shots he fired missed her. Don’t you find it fascinating that we have one Oxford who might have prevented the commencement of the modern age and another Oxford who has, through his genius, ended it by enabling the authentic freedoms of trans-modernity?”

“My studies of the period have been focused on industrial development, so no, I wasn’t aware of this other Oxford,” Burton answered. He felt a little uncomfortable. “And, to be honest, I don’t find it particularly fascinating. It’s a function of the human mind to link events into a narrative and to separate history into chapters, but those are conceptual impositions that don’t necessarily reflect the true nature of time. There is no actual correlation between what I have done these past few years and what my ancestor did—or attempted to do—” He made an instantaneous mental calculation and continued, “three hundred and fifty-seven years ago.”

“Then you don’t think the Oxfords are genetically predisposed to change—or to attempt to change—history?”

“Like I said, history is the past. It can’t be changed.”

“Let us face in the other direction then, and look into the future. What next for Edward Oxford?”

“I expect my next projects to grow out of my current studies of the Tichborne diamond.”

“Which is?”

“A large black gemstone discovered over a hundred years ago in a labyrinth beneath the old Tichborne estate in Hampshire. It has extraordinary electromagnetic properties, for which I hope to find a practical application.”

“Such as?”

“It might be capable of storing brainwaves in such a fashion that they continue to function.”

“Continue to—do you mean—to think?”

“Yes. A person’s conscious mind could be stored within the structure of the stone.”

“That’s astonishing!”

“It is, but there are a lot of other possibilities, too. The research is at a very early stage, so I can’t really tell you much more.”

“Well, unfortunately we’re out of time anyway. May I wish you continued success in your various endeavours, and I’d like to offer my gratitude, on behalf of the audience, for all that you’ve achieved. Thank you very much indeed for sharing your thoughts with us this morning.”

“It was my pleasure. Thank you.”

The interview ended, and Burton swiped the air-screen away. He turned to his partner, who was sitting at the breakfast table.

She raised her eyebrows and said, “That was peculiar.”

“It was. Queen Victoria!”

“Didn’t you know?”

“I had no idea, but I’ll certainly look into it.”

“Why bother?”

“I’m interested.”

“Funny how all the Oxford men seem a little eccentric. It appears the characteristic goes back a long way.”

“Are you suggesting we’re inclined to madness?”

“Of course not, but imagine what it must have been like in those days. For the majority of people there was no freedom and no opportunities. If your ancestor had the same potential intelligence and passion as you do but was denied an education and outlet for them, might the frustration not have tipped him over the edge?”

“I suppose. Who knows what a person might be capable of in such circumstances?”

Burton stood and picked up his mug of coffee. “I’d better get to it. What are you doing today?”

“I have an art class in an hour. This afternoon, I’m teaching at the language centre.”

He stepped over and planted a kiss on her forehead. “See you tonight?”

“If you don’t work too late.”

He smiled and left the kitchen.

In his laboratory, he sat at his desk, accessed the Aether, and called up information pertaining to the Victorian-era Oxford.

The facts were sparse.

Born on the ninth of April 1822 in Birmingham, his ancestor had moved to London with his mother and sister around 1832, and by ’37 was living with them in lodgings at West Place, West Square, Lambeth. He was employed as a barman in various public houses, the last two of them being the Hat and Feathers in ’39 and the Hog in the Pound in ’40.

On the tenth of June 1840, while the queen, who’d been on the throne for just three years, was taking her daily carriage ride through Green Park with her new husband, Prince Albert, Oxford stepped alongside the vehicle, drew two flintlocks, and shot at the monarch. His bullets flew wide. After being seized by onlookers, he was arrested, charged with treason, but ultimately found not guilty due to insanity. He was sent to Bethlem Royal Hospital—the infamous Bedlam—where he remained, a model patient, until being transferred to Broadmoor Hospital in 1864. Three years later, he was released on the provision that he’d immediately immigrate to Australia, which he did. He was married there to a girl much younger than him, fathered a son, and lived a respectable existence for a short while before turning to drink and thievery. The family broke up. After that, his life deteriorated, and he died a pauper.

“Sad,” Burton muttered.

He called his great-grandfather, who, despite being 112 years old, was still possessed of all his faculties, though, like every male Oxford, he was a little idiosyncratic. The old man’s lean, sharp-nosed face appeared almost immediately as the air-screen unfurled.

“Hello, Eddie. I thought you might call.”

“Hi, Grampapa. How are you? You look well.”

“Nonsense. I look like an Egyptian mummy. I’m nearing my termination date. I have eleven years left. Eleven! Can you imagine that?”

“You know full well that DNA scans don’t always accurately predict the moment of death.”

“And you know full well that they usually do. It’ll be heart failure.”

“Easily avoided. When will you get repaired?”

“Never, lad. I’m content to slip away. No one should live beyond his or her time, and I’ve been around for long enough. In the old days, they were lucky to make it to eighty. You understand, I hope?”

“I do, and I respect your right to make the choice. Actually, it’s the old days I’m calling about. What do you know about our ancestors?”

“Ha! That interviewer got you curious, did he? You did well, by the way—came across as clever but reasonable. Not many of the male Oxfords could’ve managed that. We tend to be an unbalanced crowd. What’s the correct term nowadays?”

“Off-narrative.”

“Ha ha! Bloody ridiculous! My grandfather would’ve used off their rocker if he were feeling generous. More likely crackpot or crazy or nuts. Language has no bite anymore. You kids emit nothing but a watery drone. Mind you, when I was a kid I never understood a bloody word the adults were saying. They all spoke in acronyms. English language restoration was the best policy the government ever introduced. That girl of yours is doing a good job. Heh! Perfidy. I liked that. Bravo the interviewer! What were we talking about?”

“Ancestors. The assassin. Did you know?”

“About our family embarrassment? Actually, I’d forgotten all about him until he was mentioned. But yes, I knew. I wonder if I still have the letter?”

“Letter?”

“It’s the oldest relic we’ve got. Wait, let me look.”

The lined face disappeared from the screen. A minute later, the image of a handwritten letter appeared on it.

“Sent to his wife,” Grampapa said. “I’m afraid there’s no record of her, but I vaguely recall my grandfather saying something about her being the daughter of a family Edward Oxford was acquainted with before he committed his crime. Do you want a hard copy?”

“Yes, please.”

“It’s coming through now.” Grampapa reappeared. “But listen, don’t get too caught up in all this nonsense. It was a long, long time ago. You know our DNA consultant recommended that you focus on what you do best, which is to make the future better. The past is no place for a genius like you. I’m very, very proud of everything you’ve achieved. When I think about that bloody assassin, I realise how much you’ve put the pride back into the Oxford name.”

“Thank you, Grampapa. Can I come visit soon?”

“Whenever you like.”

“I’ll call again in a few days.”

“I look forward to it.”

Their conversation ended. Burton took the letter from the desk’s printer and read it.

Brisbane 12th November 1888

My Darling

There was never any other but you, and that I treated you badly has pained me more even than the treasonable act I committed back in ’40. I desired nought but to give you and the little one a good home and that I failed and that I was a drinker and a thief instead of the good husband I intended, this I shall regret to the end of my days, which I feel is a time not far off, as I am sickly in body as well as in heart.

I do not blame you for what you do now. You are young and can make a good life for yourself and our child back in England with your parents and I would have brought more misery upon you had you stayed here, for I have been driven by the devil since he chose me as his own when I was a mere lad. I beg of you to believe that it is his evil influence that brought misery to our family and the true soul of me never wished you anything but happiness and contentment.

You remember, my wife, that I said the mark upon your breast was a sign to me of God’s forgiveness for my treachery and that in you he was rewarding me for the work I had done in hospital to restore my wits and good judgment?

I pray now that he looks mercifully upon my failure and I ask him that the mark, which so resembles a rainbow in its shape, and which lays also upon our little son’s breast, should adorn every of my descendants forevermore as a sign that the great wrong I committed shall call His vengeance upon no Oxford but myself, for I it was who pulled the triggers and no other. With my death, which as I say will soon be upon me, the affair shall end and the evil attached to my name shall be wiped away.

You have ever been the finest thing in my life. Be happy and remember only our earliest days.

Your loving husband

Edward Oxford

P.S. Remember me to your grandparents who were so kind to me when I was a lad and who, being among the first friends I ever had, I recall with immense fondness.

Burton called his mother. After a short wait, she responded. She looked younger than he did.

“Hi, Mum.”

“Ed, I was just watching your interview. Why did that that horrible man bring up ancient history? What has it to do with you?”

“I know, he took me by surprise. Did you know about the Victorian?”

“No.”

“I just spoke to Grampapa. He has a letter written by him.”

“By the Oxford who tried to kill the queen?”

“Yes. It mentions a birthmark. The same as yours.”

His mother pulled down the neck of her shirt. There was a small blemish on her skin, just above the heart. Bluish and yellow in colour, it was arc shaped and somewhat resembled a rainbow.

“My father didn’t have it,” she said, “but Grampapa does, and his father did, too. It misses occasional generations but always seems to reappear. What’s the letter about?”

“The would-be assassin had been deported to Australia. He got married there and had a son, but it all went wrong. The letter was to his wife, who was leaving him and returning to England with the child.”

“How wretched. The family DNA probably doesn’t have much of that man left in it, though, so don’t start getting fanatical about the past.”

“That’s what Grampapa said.”

“You know what you’re like. You get too obsessive about things.”

“I suppose. It’s got me thinking about the Oxfords, that’s for sure. Why do you have the name? Why didn’t you change it when you married?”

“Why follow such an outmoded tradition? Besides, none of the Oxford daughters ever adopted their husbands’ surnames.”

“But how come?”

“I don’t know.”

“And the children always took the Oxford name even if the father’s surname was different?”

“Yes. That hasn’t been a problem for many generations, but in earlier times it probably caused a few arguments.”

“Hmm. So the family name has lasted through history better than most others. Peculiar.” Burton looked at the safe in the laboratory wall. “Anyway, I’d better get back to work. Love you.”

“Returned tenfold. Bye, son.”

He dismissed the air-screen, stood, went to the safe, and retrieved the Tichborne diamond from it. Holding it up to the skylight, he marvelled at its size and the way the illumination skittered across its black facets. There was something almost hypnotic about it.

Burton returned to his desk, activated the analysis plate, and put the gemstone on it. Immediately, information began to flow across the desk’s surface. It kept coming. He’d seen it before but still found it incredible. The structure of the stone was utterly unique, unlike anything he’d ever encountered.

“Even more sensitive than a CellComp,” he whispered to himself. “More efficient than a ClusterComp. More capacity than GenMem.”

It didn’t seem possible.

A peculiar notion occurred to him, obviously inspired by the revelation concerning his ancestor. He considered it for half a minute then pulled up a calculation grid and formulated a four-dimensional mathematical representation of the idea.

He employed his grandfather’s favourite archaic expletive. “Bloody hell!”

The numbers and formulas created a shape around him that extended in every direction, both in space and time. He sank into it, was swallowed by it, and experienced an extraordinary sensation wherein the calculations mutated first into swirling colours then into a pulsating sound, which slowly stretched, twisted, and coalesced into a voice that exclaimed, “Hallo hallo hallo! Awake at last!”

Burton blinked and realised he was lying on a bed. Algernon Swinburne was sitting in a chair nearby. He was sporting an absurdly large red blossom in his buttonhole. Seeing Burton peering at it, the poet said, “It grew on my doorstep. Rather fetching, don’t you think?”

“With the floppy hat and scarf?” Burton observed. His voice sounded gravelly. “You look like you’ve stepped out of a pantomime.” He cleared his throat, noticed a glass of water on the bedside table, and reached for it. “What time is it?”

“Eight in the morning. You’ve been unconscious all night. Trounce called on me and sent me here. I’ve just arrived. Here, let me help you to sit.”

Swinburne rose, stepped over, slid an arm under Burton’s shoulders, and gave assistance as his friend struggled up. He took the glass, after Burton had swallowed its contents, and placed it back on the table.

The king’s agent peered around with his good eye—the other was still slitted—and recognised one of Battersea Power Station’s private rooms.

He leaned back, emitting a slight groan. His head was aching abominably. “What happened?”

“According to Gooch, you told the helmet to connect to Babbage’s device, then screamed and passed out. How do you feel?”

“My skull is throbbing. By God! How many visions can a man endure? I saw through Edward Oxford’s eyes, Algy.”

“Which Oxford? The sane one or loopy one?”

“The sane, in the far future, at the moment when he realised that travelling backward through history might be possible.”

Burton winced and pressed his hand against his temple. “For sure, I’ll not be allowing Babbage to place anything on my head ever again. Did he gain anything?”

“Quite the opposite. But you did. Feel your scalp.”

Burton ran his fingers through his hair. The scars on his head felt raised, gritty, and extremely tender. He winced. “What happened?”

“The helmet tattooed you. Wait, I’ll fetch Babbage. He can explain it better than I.”

“Tattooed?” Burton muttered, as his friend scampered from the room.

Minutes later, the poet returned with Babbage and Gooch.

“Are you in pain, Sir Richard?” the latter asked.

“A little. What’s this about a tattoo?”

Babbage barked, “Adaptive application!”

“In English, if you please, Charles.”

The scientist tut-tutted irascibly. “I told you before. The helmet’s components can rearrange themselves to change their function. The BioProcs extracted black diamond dust from their own inner workings and injected it into your scalp, following the line of your scars.”

Gooch added, “You may remember that Abdu El Yezdi’s scalp was similarly tattooed by the Nāga at the Mountains of the Moon. In his case, it was required to enable a procedure that sent him through time independent of the suits, though other factors, of a complex nature, were involved. He never fully explained the process to us, which means we can’t reproduce it.”

“I wouldn’t let you if you could,” Burton growled. “So what is the point of this confounded liberty?”

“We don’t know,” Babbage said. “I shall have to keep you under observation. Run some tests.”

“Most certainly not. I’ve been subjected to quite enough, thank you very much.”

“Did the synthetic intelligence apprehend anything from the Field Amplifier?” Gooch asked.

Burton nodded—and immediately regretted it as pain lanced through his cranium. He said, “Perhaps,” then recounted his visions, first of the woman, then of Oxford and the black diamond.

“The woman was his wife,” he finished, “pregnant in the initial vision, which was overlaid onto my view of the workshop, but not in the more involved and vivid second, which took me to a period before they were married, and in which I was so utterly immersed that I thought myself him. My—that is to say, Oxford’s—love for her was exceedingly strong.”

He stopped and swallowed as an ache squeezed at his heart. He wanted to see Isabel. It was a torture to know that in some other versions of this world, she still lived.

Why can I not be one of those other Burtons? One of the more fortunate ones?

He went on, “But there was no trace of lunacy in the memory, so I wonder whether it came from the functioning helmet rather than from the imprint in the Field Preserver.”

“You’re probably correct,” Babbage said. “The confounded headpiece erased all the data from my device, injected the diamond dust into you, and immediately ceased to function. We have nothing of Edward Oxford remaining except for what’s in your scalp, and that won’t last for long.”

“The tattoo will come out?”

“No, it’s too deep. What I mean to say is that the traces of Oxford inside it will soon be overwritten. Being in such proximity to your brain, the dust is within its electrical field. Your thoughts will quickly expunge the knowledge they contain. It’s a tragedy. Genius is being replaced by the prosaic.”

“Charmed, I’m sure,” Burton muttered.

Swinburne said, “It appears that every time you conduct an experiment, Charles, we lose something.”

Babbage bared his teeth.

Gooch made an observation. “For the second time, an intelligence to which we attribute no sentience has acted independently. There has to be interference. A meddler.”

“No. I don’t believe so,” Burton said. He looked at Babbage. “Prior to the damaged suit’s disappearance, you stated that if it had been the only one in our possession—if Abdu El Yezdi had never given you a pristine version—you would have transferred power from its Nimtz generator to its helmet, hoping to instigate self-repair mode.”

Babbage put his fingertips to his chin and tapped it. “I did say that, yes. It would have been the obvious course of action.”

“Well, what if all your counterparts in all the alternate histories—none of whom had a functional suit—did exactly that, all at precisely the same moment, nine o’clock on the fifteenth of February, 1860?”

The old man gazed at Burton, his mind obviously racing. His left eyebrow twitched upward. His mouth fell open. He put his hands together and rubbed them. “There—there—there would be the possibility that—that—by God!—that through means of resonance, the insane fragments of Edward Oxford’s consciousness would—would link together across the parallel realities.”

“And in consequence?”

Babbage suddenly clapped his hands and yelled, “By the Lord Harry! Active pathways!” He hugged himself and started to pace up and down at the foot of Burton’s bed, his eyes focused inward.

“Active pathways,” Swinburne said. “Oh, how you mingle incompatible words, Babbage. What are active pathways?”

Babbage answered as if addressing himself rather than the poet. “A thought is a burst of subtle electrical energy that flows through the brain, following paths between the cells. Every notion creates new routes. The damaged helmet couldn’t function because only one route was imprinted into the diamond dust—Spring Heeled Jack’s final thought. It is a static conceptual matrix, the frozen obsession of a dying madman. However—”

He stopped, frowned, placed his fingertips to his head and tapped away.

They waited.

“However. However. However. If a resonation spanned the different realities, then a potentially infinite number of—of—”

He stumbled to a halt again.

“I think I understand,” Daniel Gooch murmured. He turned to Burton. “Consider it three-dimensionally. From above, you could look down and see a single path following one particular route. From ground level, though, you might see that it is actually countless paths laid one atop the other, opening up countless new avenues on the vertical.”

“Enabling the synthetic intelligence to become conscious?” Burton asked.

“Trans-historically,” Gooch confirmed.

“You just made that word up!” Swinburne protested.

“I mean it to suggest the notion that the intelligence, which lacked the capacity for independent action in any single history, might have gained it by extending itself across every iteration of reality.”

Babbage whispered, “Sentient. But still insane!”

“So no one caused the damaged suit to vanish,” Gooch mused. “It did it all by itself. But where did it go?”

Burton said, “Back to where—or rather, to when—it originally came from. The year 2202.”

“You gleaned all this from the functioning helmet?” Swinburne asked. “Is it alive, too?”

Gooch answered, “Was, in a manner of speaking. Not now. Inevitably, it must have also been influenced by the resonance. Whatever intelligence has been formed by the multiple iterations of the suit, the sole undamaged helmet was probably the only sane element of it.” He narrowed his eyes at the king’s agent. “Now it appears to be a part of you. Intriguing!”

Babbage stopped pacing and peered at Burton. “Whence this theory? I demand to know!”

The king’s agent climbed out of the bed and crossed to where his clothes were folded upon a chair. He started to dress. “I have witnessed your counterparts in other histories, Charles. In all of them, he did exactly what you’ve stated you would do. I watched him connect the damaged suit’s helmet to the Nimtz generator and in every case the suit vanished.”

“You witnessed?” Gooch interjected. “Did you visit a medium?”

“No, Daniel. My mind was projected into my other selves.”

“By what means?”

“Through the influence of a medical tonic called Saltzmann’s Tincture.”

“Ridiculous!” Babbage barked. “A magical potion? Pure fantasy! And if it were true, it would imply that someone brewed the concoction specifically so you’d be warned of the advent of this new intelligence. Who? How is it possible?”

Burton buttoned his shirt. “The identity of our ally remains a mystery. It’s one I intend to solve.”

Accompanied by Swinburne, the king’s agent took a cab home. The sky was clear and the day’s cold had a sharp bite. In the hansom’s cabin, they shivered and their breath clouded from their nostrils.

While his friend waited in the vehicle, Burton entered number 14 and, two minutes later, emerged with Fidget.

“Is the beast really necessary?” Swinburne huffed, folding his legs up onto the seat as Burton climbed in. “Haven’t I suffered enough?”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Burton said, “but you haven’t been beaten black and blue, rendered unconscious, and tattooed against your will.”

“Nevertheless, I value my ankles. They’re a vital part of me. They keep my feet attached to my legs.”

Burton bumped his cane against the roof of the cabin. The hansom jolted into motion.

“I say, Richard, are we caught up in a feud between two Edward Oxfords, one demented and the other with his marbles intact?”

“I posit but a single Oxford consciousness. One that betrayed itself when its single fragment of sanity indicated to me where the rest had fled.”

“That’s how you interpret what you saw?”

“With regard to the initial vision of Oxford’s pregnant wife, certainly. The longing for her was overwhelming.”

“So he’s jumped back to 2202 to find her,” Swinburne mused.

“The tragedy of it being that he won’t arrive in the 2202 from which he came, for it no longer exists. He wiped it out of existence when he changed the past. That, I believe, is what the second part of the vision was attempting to show me.”

“Surely he must know? Isn’t it the very fact that sent him over the edge?”

“It is, but perhaps 2202 is the only point of reference remaining to him.”

“No,” Swinburne said. “There’s another.”

“What?”

“The man who killed him. Sir Richard Francis Burton. Which might explain why he’s sending his henchmen back in time to beat seven bells out of you.”

“I should consult with Doctor Monroe at Bethlem Hospital,” Burton murmured. “He might offer useful insight into the workings of an unsound mind.”

The king’s agent looked out of the cab’s window. Flowers crammed the city’s every nook and cranny, clung to every untrodden surface. He murmured, “Are we to be overgrown? I wonder how this foliage fits into the picture?”

They travelled to Oxford Street and disembarked outside Shudders’ Pharmacy.

“I just sent a boy with a message for you,” the old man exclaimed as they entered his shop. “A box of two hundred bottles was dropped off an hour ago. An extraordinary amount. They normally only bring twenty at a time.”

“Dropped off by whom, Mr. Shudders?”

“The usual young lads.”

“By wagon?”

“Yes. Why such a large delivery, though? I’m most puzzled.”

“Will you take us through to the back yard, please?”

The pharmacist gestured for them to follow and led them out into the little cobbled area.

“Did the wagon come in?” Burton asked.

“It did.”

“Then it’ll have some of that anise adhered to its wheels.” Burton turned to Swinburne, “Let’s see if Fidget can earn back the money I paid for him.”

“And once he’s done his job,” the poet responded, “perhaps you’ll return him to Mr. Toppletree?”

“I think not.”

Burton pulled the basset hound across to the gates, squatted, and watched the dog as it snuffled around, tail wagging, obviously excited by the strong odour.

“Follow, Fidget! Follow!”

The hound strained at its lead and loosed a gruff bark.

“Come on!” Burton called. “He’s caught the scent! Thank you, Mr. Shudders.”

“My pleasure,” Shudders mouthed, looking thoroughly perplexed.

Burton and Swinburne raced after Fidget as he plunged out of the gate and into Poland Street.

“He’s taking us to the last piece of the puzzle!” Burton cried out. “I feel sure of it!”

It was quite the foot-slog. Fidget dragged them out into Oxford Street’s traffic, and amid the cursing of indignant drivers they wove their way through panting vehicles and whinnying horses, in and out of billowing clouds of hot steam and gritty smoke, along to Holborn and up onto the Hackney Road. They arced around the northern border of the fire-ravaged and now overgrown Cauldron, then south down Saint Leonard Street all the way to Limehouse Cut Canal.

“Back into the East End!” Swinburne cried out.

The waterway marked a straight border at the edge of the vanished slums, the ruins of which were now completely buried beneath an amassed tangle of red. Facing the jungle, the flame-blackened sides of factories loomed over the channel.

All but one of the buildings were active, with fumes belching out of their towering chimneys and wagons arriving and departing from their loading bays. The exception was a seven-storeys-high derelict with nary a windowpane that wasn’t either cracked or broken.

“My hat, Richard!” Swinburne said. “Isn’t that the place Abdu El Yezdi wrote of in his first account? The home of the mysterious boy known as the Beetle?”

“It is. In the history El Yezdi came from, the lad was head of the League of Chimney Sweeps, which doesn’t exist in our variant of reality.”

“Yet we have Locks Limited,” the poet murmured. “Without the K, I’ll warrant. L.O.C.S.—League of Chimney Sweeps.”

Fidget guided them around to the front of the abandoned factory, and there they found a wagon parked by a double door. The basset hound stopped by one of its wheels, pressed his nose against its rim, gave a bark, then cocked his leg and wetted it.

“Phew! There’s nothing like a fast hike across the city to keep the cold at bay. We must have walked five miles, at least,” Swinburne said. “What a nose the little devil possesses, to have followed the trail all that way.”

He paced over to a dirty window and squinted through the fractured glass. “Have a look at this!”

Burton joined him and saw that thick scarlet leaves completely blocked the view. The jungle was inside the building.

The king’s agent moved to the doors, tried them, and found them to be secured. He rapped on the portal with the head of his cane.

No response.

Swinburne hammered his knuckles against the window. “Hallo! Hallo! Anyone at home?” A narrow wedge of glass toppled from the pane and clinked onto the ground by his feet.

They waited. Nothing.

Burton bent and examined the door’s keyhole. “It’s a basic deadlock. I’ll have it open in a jiffy.”

He retrieved a set of picks from his pocket and got to work. It took him less than a minute. There came two clicks, a clunk, and a loud creak as he pulled the doors open.

His breath hissed out through his teeth in a little cloud.

Swinburne gave a squawk of surprise.

The doors opened onto a tunnel through dense vermilion vegetation. Very little light filtered in through the factory’s dirty windows, but among the crowded leaves and tangled branches, strange fruits hung, glowing like little lanterns.

“A fairy grotto!” Swinburne exclaimed.

“A fiery grotto,” Burton corrected. He took a cautious step forward. “This tunnel hasn’t been cut or even cultivated. The plant appears to have grown into an arched pathway quite naturally. How thoroughly odd.” He moved a little farther into the building. “Shall we see where it goes?”

He closed the door behind them and tied the end of his dog’s lead to its latch. “Wait here, Fidget.”

Very slowly, listening for any sound, they proceeded through the closely packed verdure.

The jungle’s leaves showed enormous variety, some being smooth-edged, others crinkly. Its flowers ranged from tightly bunched petals to splayed blooms, some as small as daisies, others wider than Burton’s arm span. Branches went from bulky limbs to spindly twigs. All were contorted and twisted, curling this way and that, corkscrewing, bending and dividing in every direction, ending in buds and fruits and big gourd-like growths.

The scent was delicious, heady, and intoxicating. Burton started to feel—albeit faintly—the same euphoria that Saltzmann’s gave him, and, as they moved forward into the factory, he noted that Swinburne appeared to be fast slipping into a state of reverie.

They rounded one tight bend after another.

“A labyrinth?” Swinburne whispered. His voice was slurred.

“A single path,” Burton noted, “folding back and forth but gradually guiding us to the centre.”

“What Minotaur awaits us, I wonder?”

They kept going.

Burton noted that the floor was carpeted with a springy layer of fibrous roots, all matted together, and that the plant was somehow generating heat, for the atmosphere felt warm and humid.

“I feel very peculiar,” Swinburne mumbled.

“The aroma,” the king’s agent responded.

“It’s affecting you the same way, Richard? You feel a sense of—of—?”

Burton glanced at his colleague. “Endless possibilities?”

“Yes, that’s it. I find myself so relaxed that poetry is positively flooding from me. By golly! Such inspiration!”

Throwing his head back, he sleepily declaimed:

I hid my heart in a nest of roses,

Out of the sun’s way, hidden apart;

In a softer bed than the soft white snow’s is,

Under the roses I hid my heart.

He stopped and gave a dopey grin, then his eyes widened and he emitted a gasp as a voice whispered:

Why would it sleep not? Why should it start,

When never a leaf of the rose-tree stirred?

What made sleep flutter his wings and part?

Only the song of a secret bird.

“My hat! Who said that?”

Burton pointed up into the branches to their right. “There’s someone there. A child, I think.”

The voice, susurrating like leaves in a breeze, said, “Please. Don’t look at me. Walk on. The path is nearly ended. You are expected and welcome.”

“I can’t make him out in the—in the—” Swinburne said. He suddenly yawned, before finishing, “in the gloom.”

“Hey, lad!” Burton called. “Come out of there. We mean no harm.”

“How did you finish my verse?” Swinburne added, speaking very slowly. “I only just thought of it.”

“It is the song of the rose,” came the reply. “Follow the path.”

The king’s agent looked at his companion, shrugged, and continued on. They walked, aware that the small figure was scrambling from branch to branch and keeping pace with them. Burton tried to catch sight of the boy, but the leaves were so densely packed, and the red light so deep and shadow-filled, that he could discern little of him.

Rounding a bend, they stepped out into a clearing; a domed space completely enclosed by foliage from which hundreds of glowing fruits dangled in clusters, like fat grapes. In its middle, a bush humped up from the floor, and at its top a single flower blossomed, a red rose of phenomenal proportions, almost three feet in circumference, with fat bees and colourful butterflies and bright motes drifting lazily in the air around it.

The perfume was thick and cloying. Burton staggered and sank to his knees.

Leaves rustled as their escort moved around the edge of the glade.

“Are you the Beetle?” Burton murmured.

“Yes,” came the whispered reply.

“You manufacture Saltzmann’s Tincture?”

“It comes from the gourds.”

“Then this vegetation has been here for some considerable time?” Like Swinburne, Burton had to stop to yawn. “Long before the seeds fell?”

“It began to grow up through the planks of the floor a little more than five years ago. This Wednesday past, it produced the seeds and sent them out of the factory’s chimneys to summon you here.”

“To summon me?”

“To summon your companion. The poet is the key.”

“Hallo? Excuse me? What? What?” Swinburne drawled.

From the amid the crowded leaves, and with much creaking and squeaking, two slim branches extended, heavy gourds drooping from each.

“Moving?” Swinburne slurred. “Is the jungle moving?”

The gourds dropped and cracked at Burton’s and Swinburne’s feet. Thick honey-coloured liquid oozed from them.

“Drink, Mr. Swinburne,” the Beetle whispered. “You too, Sir Richard.”

Swinburne sat cross-legged on the carpet of roots, between Burton and the rose, with the gourd in front of him. Burton, with his unswollen eye blurring, tried to focus on his friend. For a brief moment, he saw him clearly. Swinburne’s green eyes were wide. His pupils were distended. He appeared to be in a trance. Pink butterflies were fluttering around him and settling on his shoulders. Burton thought he might be hallucinating. He looked up and felt sure that, in the small gaps between the vegetation above, he could glimpse a night sky milky with stars.

Impossible.

Swinburne closed his eyes, a slight smile on his face, raised the gourd, and drank from it.

Burton fought to make sense of what he was seeing. The poet resembled a dreaming Buddha, the red of his hair merging with the red of the rose behind him, until the poet and the blossom appeared to merge into one.

Though he didn’t will them to do so, Burton’s hands grasped the gourd and raised it to his mouth. He swallowed sweet viscous liquid.

A voice, like Swinburne’s but reverberating as if spoken into an echoing cavern, sounded in his mind:

Time, thy name is sorrow, says the stricken

Heart of life, laid waste with wasting flame

Ere the change of things and thoughts requicken,

Time, thy name.

“Algy, get out of my damned head!” Burton moaned.

From the vegetation, the Beetle urged, “Don’t resist it. The weight of ages is upon you.”

What the hell does that mean?

The voice continued:

Girt about with shadow, blind and lame,

Ghosts of things that smite and thoughts that sicken

Hunt and hound thee down to death and shame.

The unaccountable sense that he was not in an East London factory but deep in Central Africa swept through him. The Mountains of the Moon!

Eyes of hours whose paces halt or quicken

Read in blood-red lines of loss and blame,

Writ where cloud and darkness round it thicken,

Time, thy name.

Was the rose reciting the verse? A talking flower?

Nay, but rest is born of me for healing,

—So might haply time, with voice represt,

Speak: is grief the last gift of my dealing?

Nay, but rest.

Petals unfurling. Ages unfolding. Time, curling around itself, opening its secrets.

Petal layered upon petal. History layered upon history.

What am I seeing?

The Beetle’s voice: “The world’s narrative.”

All the world is wearied, east and west,

Tired with toil to watch the slow sun wheeling,

Twelve loud hours of life’s laborious quest.

Burton tried to distinguish between his vision and his imagination. He couldn’t. Jumbled sensations bubbled and swirled through him. A rose, a poet, a rhythm, an utterance that chanted through eternity, sprouting from within itself—the seed as the verbalisation, the shoot as the emerging verse, the blossom as signification, the pollination as cognisance, the fruit of understanding, again the seed.

Time is a form of expression? A language? A lyric? The words sung to a tune? A dance?

Pulsating colours. Stratified harmonies. Invasive fragrances.

Eyes forespent with vigil, faint and reeling,

Find at last my comfort, and are blest,

Not with rapturous light of life’s revealing—

Nay, but rest.

Slowly, the words metamorphosed. They became flavours. The flavours became colours. The colours became sensations. The sensations became numbers.

An equation.

It pulsed away from him, and the farther it withdrew, the more of itself it revealed, until he could see the entirety; a megalithic, looping, paradoxical mathematical structure of such esoteric intricacy that, for a moment, he viewed it with an utter lack of comprehension.

Then it slotted into place, and he understood it as Edward Oxford had understood it.

He opened his eyes, looked at the bedroom ceiling, and thought about the attempted assassination. Turning his head, he gazed at the woman who lay sleeping beside him—the woman who’d been his wife for the past two years.

She was pregnant.

I must understand my roots, he thought. Else the branches may bear bad fruit.

Later, in his laboratory, he shaved thin slivers from the side of the black diamond, hooked them up to a BioProc, marvelled at the output, and gradually realised what the data meant. His equation may have been labyrinthine in its complexity, but filtered through a BioProc, it also became practical.

He could do it.

He could travel back.

He could watch.

Sir Richard Francis Burton momentarily opened his eye. He saw red jungle but didn’t comprehend it.

Burton? Who is Burton? My name is Edward Oxford.

His eyelid slid shut, and it was six months later. During that period, he’d constructed a suit of fish-scale batteries; had connected the shards of diamond to a chain of CellComps and BioProcs, forming the heart of the main control unit—a device he named a Nimtz generator—and had embedded an AugCom and BioProcs enhanced with powdered black diamond into a helmet. It acted as an interface between his brain and the generator and would also protect him from the deep psychological shock he suspected might affect a person who stepped too far out of their native segment of history.

If the prototype worked as planned, its various elements could later be created at a cellular level and coded directly into his body. Such an augmentation could never be made public. There was only one black diamond—

There are three.

—and he could see no way to replicate its unique qualities. As it was, in order to integrate it with his biological functions, he’d have to powder some of the gem and tattoo it into his skin—a primitive solution and, obviously, one that couldn’t be applied to the entire population.

Besides, what would happen if everyone in the world could travel through time?

So, no bio-integration for the moment. And no tattooing. Just the clunky old-school technology—a thing he would wear—and if the experiment worked, he’d consider the next step afterwards.

By now, the project had kept him out of the public eye for a considerable period, and journalists were clamouring for another interview. Not wanting to arouse their suspicions, he eventually conceded. After explaining that he was working on a new theory of botanic integration, he was asked the usual questions. Did the recording of information directly into individuals’ DNA—which had commenced a century ago—mark a new step in evolution? With the old computer technologies now completely supplanted by cellular manipulation, could the human body itself be regarded as a machine? Had the replacement of the NewWeb with the Aether resulted in a new understanding of botanic sentience, and what were the implications? Might that sentience be incorporated into human consciousness?

He answered distractedly, his mind all the while considering the gravitational constants to which his calculations had to be tethered, else his jump through time would also become a disastrous jump into the far reaches of space.

Then it came again. “How does it feel to single-handedly change history?”

He offered exactly the same reply as before. “I haven’t changed history. History is the past.” Then he chuckled, and there was an edge to the sound, and the following day it was reported that Edward Oxford was obviously working too hard and needed a holiday.

Two weeks after everything else was complete, he hit upon a ridiculously simple solution to the last remaining difficulty. When the bubble of energy generated by the Nimtz formed around the suit, it was essential that it touched nothing but air, else it would carve a chunk out of whatever it was in contact with, and the shock of that could seriously injure him. Initially, Burton thought he’d have to jump off a bridge to achieve this, but then in a moment of mad inspiration, he designed boots fitted with two-foot-high spring-loaded stilts. Whimsical they may have been, but they solved the problem. Leap high into the air. Jump through time. Don’t take anything with you.

On the first day of February in the year 2202, he told his wife what he intended to do.

She rested a hand on her distended belly and said, “I’d rather you waited until our child is born.”

“Because you fear for me?”

“Yes, of course.”

“There’s no danger. If the coordinates I set are inside or contiguous with a solid object at the destination point, the device will automatically readjust them.”

“But what if you do something that interferes with events as they happened?”

“I have no intention of doing anything except watch my ancestor attempt to kill Queen Victoria then move a day or so ahead of the event to chat with him. I’ll listen to whatever he has to say but shan’t attempt to dissuade him. Besides, if I was to do anything to alter history, then time must possess some sort of mechanism to correct the interference, else we’d know about it, wouldn’t we?”

“How?”

“There would be an anomaly of some sort.”

She voiced her doubt with a hum, and added, “And what if your ancestor attacks you? He’s obviously capable of violence.”

“I’ll be careful. If he gets agitated, I’ll make a rapid departure.”

His wife chewed her lip and looked uncertain.

Burton experienced a pang of guilt. He’d told an unanticipated lie.

I’m not going to just watch him. I’m not going to just talk to him. I’m going to stop him. Yes! Stop him!

The intention was unexpected; it had come out of nowhere.

He shrugged it off and put a hand on his partner’s knee. “It’s all right. Really, it is. Nothing can possibly go wrong.”

“When?” she whispered.

“In two weeks. On my birthday.”

And so it was.

On the fifteenth of February, 2202, Burton completed his preparations. He dressed in mock Victorian clothing—with a copy of the letter from his ancestor in one of the pockets—pulled his time suit on over the outfit, affixed the Nimtz generator to his chest, strapped the boots over thinner leather ones, and lowered the round black helmet onto his head.

Intricate magnetic fields flooded through his skull. Information began to pass back and forth between his brain and the helmet’s BioProcs. The structure of his brainwaves soaked into the diamond dust.

Bouncing on the stilts, and with a top hat in his hand, he left his laboratory and tottered out into his long garden. Three centuries ago, Aldershot had been a small town twenty-five miles or so from central London. Now it was a suburb of the sprawling metropolis, the glittering spires of which could be seen in the near distance. He stood and contemplated them for a moment. They were intrusive. The advertising that flickered and flashed upon their sides struck him as ugly and psychologically aggressive. But there was change in the air. The era of consumerism had long passed, and such remnants were fast disappearing. The human species, it was generally agreed, was on the brink of becoming something rather more elegant than it had ever been before—something that, perhaps, would integrate with its environment in a subtler manner. No one knew what or how. They just knew it was going to happen.

His wife came out of the kitchen and walked over to him, wiping her hands on a tea towel.

“You’re going now?” she asked. “Supper is almost ready.”

“Yes,” he replied. “But don’t worry. Even if I’m gone for years, I’ll be back in five minutes.”

“You won’t return an old man, I hope,” she grumbled, and placed a hand on her stomach. “This one will need an energetic young father.”

He laughed. “Don’t be silly. This won’t take long.”

Bending, he kissed her on her freckled nose.

He straightened and instructed the suit to take him to five-thirty on the afternoon of the tenth of June, 1840, location: the upper corner of Green Park, London.

He looked at the sky.

Am I really going to do this?

An inner voice that hardly felt a part of him urged, Do it!

In answer, Burton took three long strides, hit the ground with knees bent, and launched himself high into the air. A bubble formed around him. It popped. He fell, thudded onto grass, and bounced. Glancing around, he saw a rolling park surrounded by tall towers. In the near distance, there was the ancient form of the Monarchy Museum, once known as Buckingham Palace, where the relics of England’s defunct royal families were displayed.

A thicket lay just ahead. Burton ran into it, ducking among the trees.

He reached up to his helmet and switched it off.

A foul stench assaulted his nostrils: a mix of raw sewage, rotting fish, and burning fossil fuels.

He started to cough. The air was thick and gritty. It irritated his eyes and scraped his windpipe. He fell to his knees and clutched at his throat, gasping for oxygen. Then he remembered he’d prepared for this and, after opening the suit’s front, fumbled in his jacket pocket, pulling out a small instrument, which he applied to the side of his neck. He pressed the switch, it hissed, he felt a slight stinging sensation, and instantly could breathe again.

Burton put the instrument away and rested for a moment. His inability to catch his breath had been a perceptive disorder rather than a physical one. The helmet’s AugMems had protected him from the idea that the atmosphere was unbreathable—now a sedative was doing the job.

He unclipped his boots, kicked them off, and quickly slipped out of the time suit. He stood and straightened his clothes, placed the top hat on his head, and made his way to the edge of the thicket. As he emerged from the trees, a transformed world assailed his senses, and he was immediately shaken by a profound uneasiness.

Only the grass was familiar.

Through air made hazy by burning fossil fuels, he saw a massive expanse of empty sky. The towers of his own time were absent—they’d been nothing but an illusion projected onto his senses by the headpiece. London appeared to be clinging to the ground and slumbering under a blanket of relative silence, though, from the nearby road, he could hear horses’ hooves, the rumble of wheels, and the shouts of hawkers.

Ahead, Buckingham Palace, now partially hidden by a high wall, looked brand-new.

Quaintly costumed people were walking in the park.

No, not costumed. They always dress this way.

Burton started to walk down the slope toward the base of Constitution Hill, struggling to overcome his growing sense of dislocation.

“Steady, Edward,” he muttered to himself. “Hang on, hang on. Don’t let it overwhelm you. This is neither a dream nor an illusion, so stay focused, get the job done, then get back to your suit.”

Job? What job? I am here to observe, that is all.

Again, it was as if a second voice existed inside him. It whispered, Stop him! Stop your ancestor!

Burton reached the wide path. The queen’s carriage would pass this way soon.

My God! I’m going to see Queen Victoria!

He looked around. Every single person in sight was wearing a hat or bonnet. Most of the men were bearded or moustachioed. The women held parasols.

He examined faces. Which belonged to his forebear? He’d never seen a photograph of the original Edward Oxford, but he hoped to detect some sort of family resemblance. He stepped over the low fence lining the path, crossed to the other side, and loitered near a tree.

People started to gather along the route. He heard a remarkable range of accents, and they all sounded ridiculously exaggerated. Some, which he identified as working class, were incomprehensible, while the upper classes spoke with a precision and clarity that seemed wholly artificial.

Details kept catching his eye, holding his attention with hypnotic force: the prevalence of litter and dog faeces; the stains and worn patches on people’s clothing; rotten teeth and rickets-twisted legs; accentuated mannerisms and lace-edged handkerchiefs; pockmarks and consumptive coughs.

“Focus!” he whispered.

A cheer went up. He looked to his right. The queen’s carriage had just emerged from the palace gates, its horses guided by a postilion. Two outriders trotted along ahead of the vehicle, two more behind.

Where was his ancestor? Where was the gunman?

Ahead of him, a man wearing a top hat, blue frock coat, and white britches straightened, reached under his coat, and moved closer to the path.

Slowly, the royal carriage approached.

“Is it him?” Burton muttered, gazing at the back of the man’s head.

Moments later, the forward outriders came alongside.

The blue-coated individual stepped over the fence and, as the queen and her husband passed, took three strides to keep up with their vehicle, then whipped out a flintlock pistol, aimed, and fired. He threw down the smoking weapon and drew a second.

Burton yelled, “No, Edward!” and ran forward.

What the hell am I doing?

The gunman glanced at him.

Burton vaulted over the fence and grabbed his ancestor’s raised arm. If he could just disarm him and drag him away, tell him to flee and forget this stupid prank.

They struggled, locked together.

“Give it up!” Burton pleaded.

“Let go of me!” the would-be assassin yelled. “My name must be remembered. I must live through history!”

I must live through history. I must live through history.

The words throbbed into the future, echoed through time.

The second flintlock detonated, the recoil jolting both men.

The back of Queen Victoria’s skull exploded.

Burton gripped the gunman, shook him, and heaved him off his feet.

His ancestor fell backward, and his head impacted against the low cast-iron fence. There was a crunch, and a spike suddenly emerged from the man’s eye. He twitched and went limp.

“You’re not dead!” Burton exclaimed, staggering back. “You’re not dead! Stand up! Run for it! Don’t let them catch you!”

The assassin lay on his back, his head impaled, blood pooling beneath him.

Burton stumbled away.

There were screams and cries, people pushing past him.

He saw Victoria. She was tiny, young, like a child’s doll, and her shredded brain was oozing onto the ground.

No. No. No.

This isn’t happening.

This can’t happen.

This didn’t happen.

Burton backed away, feeling terrified, fell, got up again, shoved his way out of the milling crowd, and ran.

“Get back to the suit,” he mumbled as his legs pumped. “Try something else.”

He raced up the slope and ran into the trees.

His heart was pounding.

He pushed through to where he’d left the time suit.

I’ll go farther back. I’ll change this.

He suddenly registered that someone was behind him. Before he could turn, an arm encircled his neck and squeezed with agonising force, crushing his throat. He saw his suit, the boots and headpiece, just feet away. He reached for them, but it was hopeless. He knew he was going to die.

A man hissed in his ear, “You don’t deserve this, but I have to do it again. I’m sorry.”

Do it again?

He felt his head being twisted.

My neck! My neck! Get off me!

His vertebrae crunched.

White light flared.

He felt suspended, as if time had halted.

He heard Charles Babbage’s voice.

“It is nine o’clock on the fifteenth of February, 1860.”

“It is nine o’clock on the fifteenth of February, 1860.”

“It is nine o’clock on the fifteenth of February, 1860.”

“It is nine o’clock on the fifteenth of February, 1860.”

“It is nine o’clock on the fifteenth of February, 1860.”

The voice overlaid itself again and again, as if thousands of Babbages were speaking at once.

Flee! Burton thought. Get away from here! Back home! Back home in time for supper! Back home! Back home in time!

It was one o’clock in the afternoon on Monday the twentieth of February, and fourteen individuals were gathered in the library of suite five at the Royal Venetia Hotel. They were not particularly comfortable, for the room was bursting at the seams with books and the group had difficulty finding places to sit or stand among them. The volumes, which ranged from boys’ adventure novels to esoteric tracts, from political memoirs to philosophical treatises, lined every wall from floor to ceiling, were stacked high on the deep red carpet, and were piled haphazardly in every corner.

Sir Richard Francis Burton’s brother, Edward, presided over the meeting. Morbidly obese, with a face disfigured by scars, he was wrapped, as was his habit, in a threadbare red dressing gown and occupied an enormous wing-backed armchair of scuffed and cracked leather. There was a half-empty tankard of ale on the table beside him. His clockwork butler, Grumbles—with his canister-shaped head of brass cocked slightly to one side—was standing nearby, ready to refill the glass.

“So the jungle is dying?” Edward asked.

“Withdrawing might be the better term,” Burton replied. “In a few days, nothing of it will remain except mulch. It has fulfilled its purpose. London will soon be clear of its unseasonal blooms.”

“Sentient herbage. Utterly preposterous.”

“That’s not the least of it. The jungle and Algernon are one and the same.”

Edward Burton glowered at the king’s agent, then at Detective Inspectors William Trounce and Sidney Slaughter, Police Constable Thomas Honesty, Sadhvi Raghavendra, Daniel Gooch, Charles Babbage, Richard Monckton Milnes, Captain Nathaniel Lawless, Maneesh Krishnamurthy, Shyamji Bhatti and Montague Penniforth. Together, these individuals comprised the secretive Ministry of Chronological Affairs, of which he was the head.

“All of you give credence to this fantasy, I suppose?” he asked.

“I trust Sir Richard’s judgement,” Gooch said.

“Likewise,” Trounce muttered. “Which means I may have to start doubting my own.”

The others nodded, apart from Babbage, who appeared to be counting his fingers.

The minister addressed Swinburne. “And what do you make of it, young man?”

The poet kicked spasmodically, accidentally knocking over a stack of books, and shrilled, “It’s delicious! The jungle is me and I am it and we are one and the same. Or some such.”

“That isn’t much help.”

“May I partake of a bottle of your ale, Minister? I feel sure it will clarify my thoughts.”

Edward Burton impatiently waved his permission.

Burton said, “We know that in Abdu El Yezdi’s native history, when he trekked to the Mountains of the Moon, a version of Algy went with him. El Yezdi never explained what happened to his companion, but he does record that a Prussian agent, Count Zeppelin, followed them, and that the man possessed venomous talons—a product of eugenics. As fantastic as it sounds, the toxin caused an individual named Rigby to transform into vegetation. It appears that the same fate befell the poet.”

From the sideboard to which he’d moved, and with a bottle in one hand and a glass in the other, Swinburne said, “The other jolly old Swinburne is now a plant-based consciousness. It possesses a unique perception of time and is aware of every variant of history. It was able to send its roots through into our world to warn us what has happened. Simply splendid! I feel thoroughly proud of it, him, and myself!”

Edward gave a puff of incredulity. He lifted his ale, gulped it down, and jabbed a fat forefinger toward his brother. “It inflicted the visions upon you?”

“They weren’t visions exactly,” Burton corrected. “The jungle worked with the Beetle and the children under his command to produce Saltzmann’s Tincture from its fruits. Through a vague mesmeric influence, and over the course of half a decade, it introduced the decoction to me and slowly increased its potency. The most recent doses caused my awareness to slide from one iteration of history to another, drawing my attention to the advent of what we might term the Spring Heeled Jack consciousness, which was created when all the Charles Babbages across all the histories performed the same experiment at the same moment.”

“It knew ahead of the event that it would occur?”

“As I say, the jungle has a unique perception.”

“And what of your experiences as Edward Oxford?”

Burton paused to light a cheroot. “The one sane fragment of Spring Heeled Jack caused black diamond dust to be injected into my scalp. It was an act of suicide, for my own thoughts would soon overwrite it. However, before that occurred, I received from it memories of the time suit’s construction and the final moments of its inventor. It was a message, or rather, it was the gift of an essential item of information.”

“What information?”

“Before I answer that, I think you should hear what the jungle showed Algy.”

The minister turned his eyes back to the poet.

“Well?”

Swinburne, who had a glass to his lips, swallowed hastily, coughed, spluttered, and dragged a sleeve across his mouth. “What? Pardon? Hello?”

“Your leafy counterpart,” the king’s agent said to him. “Give an account of your experience while under its influence.”

“Ah, yes. I say! This is a fine beer, Your Maj—um—your ministery-ness. What! Er. Well. It happens to be the case, apparently, that our history is where the destiny of the human race will be played out. This, thanks to the efforts of Abdu El Yezdi—he having averted the next century’s world wars, the ones that’ll so afflict the other histories. Ours is the stage upon which Mr. Darwin’s theories will be enacted.” Swinburne moved back to his seat, sat, and crossed then uncrossed his legs. “In our distant future, the year 2202 should be one of transcendence and transformation. Perhaps Oxford’s breakthrough, his overcoming of the limitations of time, is meant to be a part of it. Unfortunately, it has all gone completely arse over elbow.”

“Because of Spring Heeled Jack, I presume,” the minister said.

“Yes. The insane Oxford consciousness has fled back to that year and has there somehow blocked the evolutionary process.”

“And the jungle knows this—?”

“Because it is—that is to say, I’m—it’s there.” Swinburne hiccupped.

Detective Inspector Slaughter, who had a tankard of milk in his hand, cleared his throat, smoothed his huge moustache, and said, “Forgive me for interrupting, and forgive me again if I seem a little cold-hearted, but need we be overly concerned about events that are occurring three and a half hundred years hence? We shall be long dead by 2202, after all.”

Constable Honesty snapped, “Child on the way. One day, perhaps, grandchildren. So forth.”

Slaughter held up a hand. “I concede your point, Constable. I myself have a daughter.”

“With all due respect,” Burton said, “the issue goes deeper even than protecting your descendants. Every evening since Charles performed his experiment, we have been invaded by stilted mechanisms.”

“Eleven of the monstrosities last night,” Trounce interjected.

“That the Oxford consciousness is sending them back to the year it was created implies what we might term a soul searching, a quest for identity.”

“Why are the creatures so obsessed with you?” Monckton Milnes asked.

“Because Oxford has twice been killed by a Richard Burton, and those deaths, paradoxically, were integral to the creation of this Spring Heeled Jack intelligence.”

Trounce snorted. “By Jove! Does it think you’re its father?”

“I wouldn’t go that far, old fellow, but it may well regard me as essential to its growing self-awareness, and I’m certain it fears me and has an irrational need to kill me.”

“Patricide,” Slaughter put in. He shook his head wonderingly. “Though—no offence intended—it isn’t going about it in a very efficient manner, is it? Why are the stilt men so—”

“Nutty,” Swinburne interjected. “Absolutely bonkers.”

“I was going to say disoriented.”

Burton drew on his cheroot and blew out a plume of blue smoke. “If the Spring Heeled Jack mind is still coalescing into a functioning entity, perhaps they reflect its incompleteness.”

Edward Burton signed for Grumbles to refill his glass. “It has to be stopped.”

“Yes,” the king’s agent replied.

“What, brother, do you suggest we do?”

Turning to Babbage, Burton said, “Charles?”

Daniel Gooch reached out and prodded the preoccupied scientist, who looked up, blinked, and said, “I’m not to blame. The probability of all my selves performing the experiment at the same moment is so low as to be virtually inconceivable. The only explanation is that time itself possesses an agenda.”

“No one regards you as the source of the problem,” Burton said. “But you might have the solution.”

“How so?”

“In one of the alternate histories, you proposed to apply the principles of the time suit to a specially constructed vehicle in order to send a group of us through history.”

“Did I, indeed?” Babbage exclaimed.

“Microscopic components reproduced in macroscopic form. Could you do it?”

“Hmm!” Babbage raised his fingers to his head—tap tap tap!—and muttered, “I’ve just finished designing the Mark Three probability calculator. It has nowhere near the power of the suit’s helmet, but I daresay it could be adapted to the task. We also have plenty of the black diamond shards. However, without the mathematical formula that enables the procedure—”

Burton reached up and, aping the scientist’s habitual gesture, tapped his own head. “I have the equation. That was the message given to me by the diamond dust, by the undamaged helmet. The jungle helped me to understand it.”

Babbage gave a shout of excitement and leaped to his feet. “You can recall it?”

“If I put myself into a mesmeric trance, I should be able to retrieve the memory. I warn you, though, that writing out the formula will probably take some days. It is exceedingly complex.”

“By the Lord Harry!” Babbage exclaimed. He wrung his hands eagerly then stopped and frowned. “Hmm. But it won’t solve the principal difficulty, which is that to duplicate the suit’s function I’d have to create a machine the size of a room. It would need to be inside a very large vehicle, and a flying one at that.”

Burton addressed Nathaniel Lawless. “Captain?”

Lawless’s face turned as white as his finely trimmed beard, and he stammered, “Surely—surely you don’t mean to—to—to pilot the Orpheus into the future?”

“Yes!” Babbage shouted. “Yes! I could adapt your rotorship!”

“Pah!” Edward Burton barked. “Dick, this is an absurd notion! You mean to take the fight to Spring Heeled Jack? To the year 2202? What will you do when you get there? You’ll be hopelessly lost. A fish out of water. A centuries-old antique!”

“Richard,” Monckton Milnes added softly, “the shock of finding himself outside of his own era turned Oxford into a raving lunatic. What’s to prevent the same from happening to you?”

“The jungle had two hundred bottles of Saltzmann’s delivered to my pharmacist,” Burton said. “A small dose each day will be sufficient to counter the deleterious effects.”

Sadhvi Raghavendra protested, “On what do you base that supposition?”

“I’ve been using the tonic for five years. I’m well acquainted with its effects.”

She gave a dismissive wave of a hand. “It turned you into an addict.”

“A froth-mouthed gibbering imbecile,” Swinburne added.

“Hardly that, Algy. And the addiction is already easing now that its purpose is achieved.”

Raghavendra arched an eyebrow at him and said nothing more.

“I repeat,” Edward Burton murmured. “What will you do?”

Burton smoked. He narrowed his eyes. He drawled, “Whatever is necessary. We’ll work it out when we get there. The advantage is ours.”

“And how, may I ask, do you draw that conclusion?”

“Because we can plan ahead.” Burton nodded toward Thomas Honesty. “Tom has a baby on the way.” He indicated Montague Penniforth and Detective Inspector Slaughter. “Monty already has a little boy, and Sidney a daughter. My Cannibal Club is populated by eligible bachelors. I propose that we transform it into a secret and elite organisation whose members will pass down to their descendants the details of our mission. We’ll move forward through time in a series of jumps, stopping to meet with them along the way. They’ll advise us with regard to social and technological developments. They’ll keep their eyes open for Oxford’s presence and will tell us if it manifests ahead of 2202, and will also assist us in avoiding detection.” He spoke to Honesty, Slaughter and Penniforth. “How about it, gentlemen? Will you join the group? Will you become Cannibals?”

Honesty jerked his head in assent.

Slaughter wiped a line of milk from his moustache. “A family mission, is it? In for a penny, in for a pound, that’s what I say.”

Penniforth gave a thumbs-up.

Edward Burton said, “Brother, please tell me you’re joking. By heavens, the whole endeavour is doomed from the start.”

“If you have a better idea, let’s hear it.”

The minister picked at his fingernails for a moment before, in a quiet tone, saying, “How can it possibly work? Won’t you simply create yet another alternate history?”

Burton turned to Babbage. “Charles?”

“You intend to make a change to the future, not to the past,” the old man said. “Our reality is—from the present moment onward—thus suspended between two possibilities: you will come back from the future or you won’t. For you, as you travel forward through time to 2202, the history you pass through will not be in any way defined by the answer, for you won’t yet have provided it.”

“What? What? What?” Swinburne screeched.

Ignoring him, Burton asked, “But if we ask someone from the future what became of us?”

“They simply won’t know,” Babbage replied. “Every consequence of your return—or consequence of your none return—will remain in an indefinite state until you actually do one or the other.”

“And if we do return, will we be able to act on the knowledge gained from the future?”

“Yes.”

“So we’d be creating yet another branch of history.”

“From the perspective of the future you’ve returned from, yes, but subjectively, no.”

“Aargh!” Swinburne shrieked. “How can time be subjective?”

“My dear boy!” Babbage exclaimed. “How can it not be?”

“I’m hearing words,” Trounce grumbled, “but if you threw them into a bag, gave it a good shake, and poured them out, the results would make just as much sense to me.”

The minister held up a hand to halt the discussion. “All right. All right. Let us suppose I finance the project. Who would you take with you, Dick?”

“A small company,” the king’s agent answered. “Volunteers only.”

“Me,” Swinburne said.

“And me,” Sadhvi Raghavendra put in. “You’ll need my medical expertise, especially if you’re dosing yourselves with that horrible tincture.”

“It’s utterly preposterous,” Detective Inspector Trounce declared. “Whatever it is. Nevertheless, you can count on me. Perhaps I’ll eventually understand what I’m becoming involved with.”

“The Orpheus is my ship,” Lawless stated. “I’ll not give her over to anyone else, so I’m in, too. But crew?”

“How much can be automated?” Burton asked Babbage.

“A lot. The Mark Three will fly her. I’ll give the Orpheus a brain.”

Lawless whistled. “That’ll be interesting.” He pursed his lips then said to Burton, “I suppose I can train you and your fellows for whatever duties remain.”

“I’ll come,” Maneesh Krishnamurthy announced. He gripped his cousin, Bhatti, by the arm before he could also volunteer. “No, Shyamji. You’ve been romancing that charming young dressmaker. I have high hopes for you. Put a ring on her finger. Start a family. Throw your lot in with the Cannibal Club.”

“But—”

“No argument.”

Shyamji Bhatti frowned before offering a shrugged concession.

Gooch said, “You’ll require an engineer to keep the airship in good order. Mr. Brunel is out of action and shows no sign of recovery. Take me.”

Burton said, “Thank you, Daniel.” He glanced at each of the volunteers in turn. “Seven of us, then. Let me remind all of you that even if we inadvertently cause further bifurcations in history, we can travel back along them. This world will still be here. We can return to it.” He faced his brother. “Minister?”

Edward held his sibling’s eyes for a second. “Very well. If only to save us from a plethora of stilted lunatics, I’ll sanction this tomfoolery. I’ll also see to it that the Cannibal Club receives whatever funding it requires, with one proviso; I shall lead it. The group’s mission will need to be meticulously planned, its existence ingeniously concealed, its continuity assured for many generations. There is no man alive more suited to such a job than I.”

“Agreed,” Burton said with a slight smile.

Over the course of the next hour, the minister secured one of the hotel’s private sitting rooms, and the core members of the Cannibal Club were summoned.

By seven o’clock, they were all present with the exception of Henry Murray, who’d left the city to visit friends in Somerset. Sir Richard Francis Burton, Edward Burton, Richard Monckton Milnes, Thomas Bendyshe, Doctor James Hunt, Sir Edward Brabrooke and Charles Bradlaugh settled in the chamber, accepted drinks, and each lit a cigar or pipe.

“‘Attend immediately by order of the king,’” Brabrooke quoted. “I’ve never before received such a peremptory invitation.”

“Nor have you ever been requested to do what I am about to ask of you,” the king’s agent said. “We find ourselves in extraordinary circumstances, gentlemen. So strange, in fact, that you’ll be required to swear an oath of absolute secrecy and loyalty to the crown before we continue.”

The club members glanced at one another, eyebrows raised, but none objected, and, after the vows were made, full disclosure followed, causing the brows to rise even higher.

Once the briefing was over and the commission served, they sat in stunned silence, which was eventually broken by Bendyshe, who suddenly bellowed with laughter and cried out, “By all that’s holy, you’ve assigned to us a mission to mate!”

Doctor James Hunt grinned. “I shall devote myself to it assiduously.”

Sir Edward Brabrooke raised his glass. “Ladies of London beware.”

“Tally ho!” Charles Bradlaugh cheered.

Monckton Milnes looked at Burton and winked.

Burton left his brother with the group to plan the future of the club. He returned to suite five. His colleagues there had divided into smaller groups, each discussing some specific aspect of the planned venture.

“I wish Brunel were with us,” Gooch quietly said to him. “I don’t doubt I can build Babbage’s version of a Nimtz generator, but I’m certain Isambard would make a better job of it.”

“You can’t revive him?”

“I fear not. When the damaged time suit vanished, the burst of energy it transmitted appears to have erased his mind from the diamonds in his babbage calculator.”

“But—” Burton’s brow creased, “if that’s the case, why did it not also erase the undamaged helmet?”

“I asked Babbage the very same question. He posits that it’s because the helmet contained a healthy version of the same mind. What hit Brunel as something alien and overwhelming struck the helmet as a moment of disordered thought that it was able to quash with its own rationality. For poor Brunel, it was too unfamiliar. He had no way to resist. We’ve lost our friend and the world’s most brilliant engineer. He’s dead.”

“I mourn with you, Daniel. He was a great man and a good friend. But I also have every faith that, even without him, you can fulfil what we require of you.”

Gooch flexed his mechanical arms and folded his real ones across his chest. “I’ll direct all the Department of Guided Science’s resources to the design and construction of the Nimtz generator and to the refit of the Orpheus. Despite the complexity of the project, with so many people working on it, it won’t take more than a few weeks. But what of the future, Sir Richard? Surely they’ll have flying machines. Won’t our nineteenth-century rotorship stick out like a sore thumb? How will we avoid detection?”

“We’ll depend on the Cannibals,” Burton answered. “Or, rather, on their descendants. Their remit will include the securing of up-to-date airships into which we can transfer the Orpheus’s machinery. We must replace her as we travel.”

“Expensive.”

“My brother intends to make careful investments to assure us adequate funds.”

A thrill of unexpected excitement suddenly coursed through Burton’s veins. He left Gooch, went to a window, and looked out at the Strand. The street lamps glowed unsteadily, glimmering through falling snow. Pedestrians crowded the pavements. Traffic pumped steam and smoke into the air.

A new expedition! A new journey into the unknown!

After so many extraordinary events, Burton felt almost immune to further surprises and, indeed, over the course of the following three weeks, though he was six times pounced on by Spring Heeled Jacks, he dealt with them in an almost perfunctory manner, by now aware that they succumbed easily to a bullet or a blow to the head. He sustained no further injuries. However, at the end of that period, the theory he’d formed to explain the creatures and the events associated with them was somewhat shaken by an occurrence that didn’t fit into the picture.

It happened on a wet Thursday morning just a few yards from his house.

He’d breakfasted, gone to the mews at the rear of number 14, fired up the furnace in his steam sphere, and set off for Battersea Power Station.

Steering out of the alley that opened onto Montagu Place, he directed the vehicle toward the junction with Gloucester Place, drove past his front door, and pushed his toes down on the accelerator plate.

A bubble appeared in the air less than twenty feet ahead. It popped, and a woman fell into the road. She screamed. Bits of polished wood and a severed arm hit the ground around her.

Burton slammed his heels down, braking hard. It was too late. The sphere thudded into the woman, she was dragged under its drive band, and Burton was jolted as it bumped over her.

He threw himself out and ran to the back of the vehicle.

Nearby, on his corner, Mr. Grub yelled, “Bloody hell!”

The woman lay broken and bleeding. Her appearance was thoroughly bizarre; she possessed a preternaturally tall and attenuated body, a very narrow face, huge black eyes with no whites around the pupils, and a lipless mouth. She was colourfully attired, as if for a carnival.

She blinked at Burton and in a faint voice said, “Oh! It’s you again! Where are we?”

A bubble formed around her. The king’s agent stepped back.

The woman vanished with a loud bang, taking a bowl-shaped lump of macadam with her.

Grub ran over. “Blimey! Where’d she go?”

Burton said, “Back to wherever she came from, I suppose.”

“And left a bloomin’ great pothole behind her.”

“I’ll report it,” Burton said. He sighed. “We live in strange times, Mr. Grub.”

“Aye,” Grub muttered, “I blame Disraeli. He’s a bit of a dandy, ain’t he? I reckons this world would make a lot more sense if an ordinary ol’ geezer like me was in charge.”

“You should run for parliament.”

Grub shook his head sadly. “Nah. It’s not me place to do so.”

Six weeks later, Burton took lunch with Thomas Bendyshe in the Athenaeum. Despite being a palatial and tall-ceilinged chamber, the club’s eatery had always been known by the rather more humble appellation of ‘the Coffee Room.’

Bendyshe, as usual, was at full volume. Oblivious to the morsel of lamb chop lodged between his front teeth, he bellowed, “So you’ll be off tomorrow then, old boy?”

“Keep your voice down,” Burton urged. “For pity’s sake, Tom, why must you always hoot like a confounded foghorn? And yes, the Orpheus is ready at last.”

“My word!” his companion trumpeted. “What a rapid job they’ve made of it, hey? Bloomin’ miracle workers!”

It was true, the Department of Guided Science, and especially Charles Babbage and Daniel Gooch, had worked at a phenomenal rate to prepare the vessel for its forthcoming voyage. Battersea Power Station had never been so crowded or so active. Its engineers, physicists, logicians, theoretical mathematicians, designers, inventors, chemists and metallurgists had worked night and day without pause. Even the venerable Michael Faraday had been called out of retirement to contribute his expertise to the project.

Bendyshe used his fork to stab the last potato on his plate, transferred it to his mouth and before he’d swallowed it, said, “I’ve not seen you since that extraordinary meeting at the Venetia. Lord, what a couple of months. How many times have you been assaulted by the jumping Jacks?”

“Eleven,” Burton replied. “And look at this.”

He took a quick gulp of wine then reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded letter, which he handed across the table.

Bendyshe put down his cutlery, took it, opened it, read it, and hollered, “From old George Herne on Zanzibar!”

“Shhh!” Burton hissed. “It is. He reports that the stilt men have been causing mayhem even there, and word has reached him from Kazeh that they’ve been seen in that far-flung town, too. The Africans consider them invading demons.”

“They might be right,” Bendyshe observed. He took a couple of minutes to scan through the missive. “So everywhere you’ve been, there the freakish creatures are. A veritable infestation. Poor old Bartolini has been forced to close his restaurant. You aren’t his favourite customer, not by a long shot. I reckon he’d kick you in the seat of the pants if he dared.”

Burton offered a regretful grimace. “I’ve been banished from the Royal Geographical Society, as well. Four times, the Spring Heeled Jacks have crashed into its lobby demanding to see me. I have a permanent police guard outside my home. Ten battles have been fought in Montagu Place. Though perhaps ‘battle’ is too strong a word.”

“Eh? Why so?”

“They don’t put up much of a fight. Grub, the vendor who plies his trade on the corner, saved me last week by clouting one of them over the head with his coal shovel.”

“Ha! Good man!” Bendyshe frowned, applied a fingernail to his teeth, dug out the strand of meat, looked at it, put it back into his mouth, and said, “I read those crazy tales left by Abdu El Yezdi. So you really think these stilt-walkers are some aspect of Edward Oxford?”

“Yes, though they don’t appear to realise it.”

“Peculiar, hey?”

“It is.”

A waiter stopped at their table and refilled their glasses. Burton turned down the offer of another bottle. When the man had gone, he said, “Are you comfortable with your new role, Tom? The Cannibal Club will soon become a very different prospect. There’ll be no more horseplay.”

“Apart from the hunt for a suitable spouse, hey?”

“Well, yes, I suppose.”

“I’m ready, willing and able. Incidentally, your brother intends to combine my anthropological knowledge with his own financial nous in order to play the markets.”

Burton rubbed the scar on his chin with his forefinger. “Anthropological stockbroking?”

“If I can accurately forecast the ebb and flow of human affairs, and the minister, based on those predictions, invests wisely, then we should be able to establish assets enough to fund the Cannibal Club for many generations to come.”

“On what will you base your prognostications?”

“I shall consult with the Department of Guided Science to learn what varieties of machinery they think will develop in future years and how it might be employed by industry and society. I’ll work with old Monkey Milnes to examine up-and-coming politicians, their philosophies and inclinations, and where they might take our world. I’ll learn from the patterns of history, and will scrutinise current trends and project them forward. And I’ll confer with the Empire’s most talented mediums.”

“A major project, Tom.”

“I relish it. I hope that my—” He stopped and gaped as, somewhere behind Burton, a loud pop sounded, followed immediately by a crash and cries of alarm.

The king’s agent jumped out of his seat and whirled, yanking a Beaumont-Adams revolver from his waistband.

A Spring Heeled Jack had materialised in the dining room and landed on a table. It was flailing about amid broken glasses and crockery, yelling, “Where is Burton? My neck! Don’t break my neck! Prime Minister? Where are you?”

Burton raised his gun.

“Everybody stand clear!”

Patrons scattered. He aimed at the figure and, as it clambered to its feet, pulled the trigger, once, twice, three times, hitting it in the chest. The stilt man collapsed to its knees, a bubble peeled outward from its skin, and it vanished.

Tom Bendyshe, temporarily neglecting his atheism, cried out, “Mary mother of God! Won’t they ever stop?”

Thirty minutes later, Burton’s membership was rescinded and he was banished from the Athenaeum.

“Soon, I shan’t be allowed anywhere,” he complained, as he bid his friend farewell.

“Tomorrow, you won’t be anywhere,” Bendyshe observed. “At least, nowhere in this age.”

The following day, the minister of chronological affairs said, “Whatever else you do during your visit to the future, will you please prevent the Spring Heeled Jacks from making further visits to us? I’m thoroughly irritated by the infernal pests.”

Miraculously, Edward Burton had left the Royal Venetia Hotel and was sitting in a growler at the foot of the Orpheus’s boarding ramp. Battersea Power Station towered in the background.

It was raining.

Sir Richard Francis Burton, standing beside the carriage and holding an umbrella against which the water drummed, replied, “Must I remind you, Edward, that while you’ve been hiding away in your hotel suite, it is I who’ve borne the brunt of the intrusions?”

“A reminder isn’t necessary,” his brother said. “I’m exhausted by the constant worry.”

“About the disruption?”

“About you, you dolt.”

Burton was silent for nearly a minute. Then he said, “It appears that eugenics, or a similar science, will make a resurgence in the future.”

“You base that assertion on what?”

“Joseph Lister has finally identified the flesh inside the Spring Heeled Jack mechanisms.”

“And?”

“It appears to be a variation of pork.”

“Pork? You’re telling me they’re pigs?”

“A pig machine hybrid.”

“God in heaven! What nightmarish world does Oxford inhabit?”

“I’ll soon find out.” Burton hesitated, then added, “If I don’t come back—”

“Do,” Edward snapped.

The king’s agent looked around at the rain-swept airfield and up at the station’s four copper towers. “Just how much will it all change, I wonder?”

The minister grunted. “Babbage and Brunel have been the driving force behind the immense progress we’ve witnessed in our lifetime, but Babbage is old and increasingly eccentric, and as for Brunel, he’s little more than a statue now.” Raising his fat fingers to his face, Edward Burton stroked his stubbled jowls. “Your initial jump will be a mere fifty-four years; a tiny step by comparison with your ultimate destination. Surely the world will be recognisable?”

“If we went backward the same number of years, we’d be in 1806. Imagine what an inhabitant of that time would make of this.”

His brother nodded. “You’re right. Well, needless to say, I’ll do all I can to ensure that members of the Cannibal Club meet you at your scheduled stops. I regret that I’m unlikely to be among them. Mortality—I find it such a terrible disappointment.”

“Don’t treat this as a good-bye, Edward. You know I can’t bear such sentiment.”

The minister looked away, cleared his throat, lifted his cane, and banged it on the growler’s ceiling. “The Venetia, Mr. Penniforth.”

Montagu Penniforth looked down from the driver’s box and touched two fingers to the peak of his cap. “Good luck to yer, Sir Richard. Me little ’un’s name is Clive. Three years of age now. He’ll be there to meet yer, I ’ope. A mite older, though.”

“Thank you, Monty.”

A tremor shook the carriage. It coughed a plume of steam, rattled, and moved off. Burton watched it go, took a final look around, then spun on his heel and strode up into the Orpheus.

Daniel Gooch and Charles Babbage met him as he entered. He furled his umbrella and handed it to the elderly scientist.

“We’re ready,” Gooch said. The engineer had abandoned his auxiliary arms and appeared a little ill at ease with just his own natural pair.

Babbage cast his eyes over the dripping umbrella in his hand as if uncertain what it was, then glowered disapprovingly at Burton. “Can I trust you with my devices, sir? They are my masterpieces.”

“I shan’t go near them,” Burton replied. “They are in Daniel’s charge.”

“Excellent.” Babbage tapped the engineer’s shoulder with the brolly’s handle. “I want them returned to me undamaged, young man.”

Gooch nodded. “Of course. I’ll look after them. I give you my word.”

Babbage made a sound that suggested he didn’t believe the guarantee. He turned his attention back to Burton. “Remember, the equipment will move the ship through time but not instantaneously. She can’t match Edward Oxford’s suit for efficiency. For him, the transference from one date to another was like the blink of an eye. For you, there will be intervals between. They may be disorientating. You might even lose consciousness. Don’t worry. The Mark Three calculator will function independently and will see you to your destination.”

“Thank you.”

The old man said to Gooch, “I’m relying on you to analyse the machinery of the future and bring me detailed reports.”

“I’ll do so.”

Babbage gave a nod of satisfaction, peered again at Burton’s brolly, then opened it, held it over his head, muttered, “Ah ha!” and descended the ramp to the ground.

Gooch said to the king’s agent, “Will you help me to close her up?”

They pulled in the ramp, slid the double doors shut, and twisted the bolts into place.

“I have to go to the engine room, Sir Richard. Mr. Trounce is assisting me. Mr. Krishnamurthy and Miss Raghavendra are in what used to be the smoking lounge, overlooking the Nimtz generator. I’ve trained them both in its operation, which isn’t nearly as complicated as Mr. Babbage would have you believe. You’ll join Mr. Swinburne and Captain Lawless on the bridge?”

“I will. For heaven’s sake, Daniel, drop all the ‘misters’ and ‘misses’ and just call me Richard. We’ve known each other long enough to dispense with formalities. First name basis, if you please. Has everyone taken their dose of Saltzmann’s?”

“Yes.”

“Good show.”

Burton and Gooch set off in opposite directions.

As he traversed the passageway and ascended the stairs to the command deck, Burton marvelled at the brilliance and craftsmanship of the scientists and engineers. As predicted, Babbage had been unable to reproduce the microscopic workings of Oxford’s suit, but that he’d created their functional equivalents, albeit on a much larger scale, in such little time, was astonishing. Of course, he’d been studying the suits for many years, so was well versed in the operations of its many components, but he’d lacked the mathematical principle at the heart of them. When Burton supplied it, Babbage for the first time saw with absolute clarity how Oxford’s invention defied the strictures of time, and he was able with breathtaking rapidity to design a device that employed contemporaneous machinery to do the same. Where Oxford’s genius had fitted it all into a helmet and small flat disk, Babbage required a double-sized Mark III probability calculator and a twenty-four-foot-long, twelve-foot-wide, and ten-foot-high contraption of cogs, levers, pistons, looms, barrels, sliding links, moveable arms, teeth, pegs, holes, warp beams, cranks, ratchets, gears, wheels, pipes, valves, cross heads, cylinders, regulators, inlets, outlets, flywheels, boilers, pumps, condensers, ducts, transmitter disks, field amplifiers, chronostatic coils and a loudly rumbling furnace.

All the remaining fragments of the Nāga diamonds had been fitted into it, each in a lead housing to prevent their slightly deleterious emanations from affecting the travellers. The resonation between the gems was known to give rise to mediumistic faculties. Far from being useful, these abilities tended to cause confusion, indecisiveness and headaches.

Work had not stopped at the manufacture and assembly of the generator’s many parts. The weight of the machine was such that the Orpheus herself required an extensive overhaul, and it was here that the haste showed, for where her original trimmings were luxurious, the new additions were stark and basic. No influence of the Department of Arts and Culture here. Just bare, unpainted metal. Thus it was that when Burton entered the bridge he found himself in a room that, at eye level, possessed sumptuous fixtures and fittings but that, when one looked up, gave way to a new domed ceiling in the middle of which an unadorned—and, frankly, quite ugly—framework held the spherical Mark III; the ship’s “brain.”

“My poor Orpheus,” Captain Lawless said, following Burton’s gaze. “They’ve made of her a monster.”

Swinburne, at his side, exclaimed, “Oh no, Captain! She’s beautiful. Not in form anymore, perhaps, but without a doubt in purpose.”

From above, a voice said, “At least someone appreciates me.”

Burton groaned and looked at Lawless. “I take it you’ve become familiar with Babbage’s so-called personality enhancements?”

“That’s what I was referring to, Sir Richard. A monster.”

“You should be grateful,” Orpheus protested. “What other captain has ever had such a close working relationship with his ship?”

“What other captain would endure it?” Lawless countered. He said to Burton, “Ready?”

“The ramp is in and the hatch is locked.”

“Good-oh. If you would, Mr. Swinburne?”

The poet nodded and crossed to a speaking tube. He blew into it and shrilled, “Trounce! I say, Pouncer, are you there?”

Putting the tube to his ear, he received an answer, then responded, “Fire up the engines, dear fellow! And three cheers for our jolly old escapade!”

Lawless arched an eyebrow at Burton and murmured, “Not the standard of discipline I’m used to.”

“Whatever you do,” Burton advised in a whisper, “don’t get Algy going on discipline. You’ll hear things you’d wish you could forget.”

A deep grumble vibrated through the floor.

“I must admit, I’ve been thoroughly impressed by Trounce though,” Lawless continued. “He rolled up his sleeves and took to the training like a fish takes to water.”

“He’s a practical sort,” Burton confirmed. “Whereas Swinburne’s head has always been where we are just about to go; that is to say, up in the clouds.”

“Engines at optimum,” Orpheus announced. “Are you going to stand around chin-wagging or shall we get on with it?”

“Take us to latitude north fifty-one, east one degree, altitude eight thousand feet,” Lawless commanded. He explained to Burton, “As planned—opposite the mouth of the Thames and a little north of Margate. Far enough out to sea to avoid detection, I hope.”

“Ascending,” Orpheus said.

Swinburne whooped.

The floor lurched slightly as the ship left the ground, its engines thundering.

“I feel somewhat redundant,” Lawless commented.

“Some judgements require more than cold calculations,” Burton murmured. He stepped to the rain-spattered window and took a last look at the sprawling city before the ship was swallowed by the weather front.

“En route,” Orpheus noted. “We’ll reach the coordinates in twenty minutes. The Nimtz generator requires a pressure of one thousand and five hundred psi in order to achieve the necessary power by the time we get there. It is currently at one thousand and ten psi. I suggest you adjust valves twenty-two to twenty-eight to setting six so we might accelerate through time without any delay.”

“On the other hand,” Lawless said, “sometimes cold calculations are just the ticket. Mr. Swinburne, relay the Orpheus’s advice to Mr. Krishnamurthy, please.”

“Aye aye, Captain Lawless, sir. Straightaway.” Swinburne gave a snappy salute and clicked his heels.

“Just ‘aye aye’ will do.”

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

Burton sat at a console and stared into space.

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

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

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

An air of expectation and trepidation hung over all.

They waited.

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

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

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

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

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

“Go ahead.”

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

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

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

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

“Just do it, please.”

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

Outside, everything suddenly turned completely white.

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

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

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

He was a nebulous, unarticulated question.

The possible answers were innumerable.

A decision.

A path chosen.

Manifestation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Agreed.”

“Orpheus, you heard that?”

“I’m not deaf.”

“Then proceed.”

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

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

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

“Why did you choose December?” Lawless asked.

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

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

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

“That’s them,” Lawless said.

“How do you know?” Burton asked.

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

“That’s rather low,” the ship noted.

“Weather’s calm,” the captain countered.

The floor shifted as the airship followed the command.

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

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

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

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

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

“Who’s there?” Burton called.

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

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

“All aboard,” he instructed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Father passed away fourteen years ago, sir.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Great heavens!” Swinburne cried out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Can you tell me?” Burton asked cautiously.

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

“Babbage warned us of such a phenomenon.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Admiral!” Burton and Swinburne exclaimed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Gents,” Penniforth said. His voice was so deep it sounded like an avalanche. He touched his fingers to his temple. “Pops is still with us, but he don’t get around much no more. Has a spot o’ bother with his hips. He sends his best.”

“Good old Monty!” Swinburne exclaimed.

“And finally, from the old crowd, we have Robert Crewe-Milnes, the first Marquess of Crewe.”

The marquess, a handsome man with a wide moustache and a military bearing, said, “My father was Richard Monckton Milnes.”

Unexpectedly, Burton felt overcome by emotion. The muscles to either side of his jaw worked spasmodically. He blinked at Crewe-Milnes, who gave a sad smile of understanding and said nothing more.

Swinburne sniffed, pulled out a handkerchief, and blew his nose.

After a moment’s silence, Honesty said, “So that is nine of us, all descended from the original Cannibals, with the exception of Mr. Brabrooke, who is an original. However, as you can see, we are twelve in total. We have three new recruits, who we felt could contribute much to our cause, they being inclined toward considerations of the future, as well as possessing admirable insight into the present. The first is Mademoiselle Amélie Blanchet.”

A rather coarse-featured, overweight and ostentatiously dressed woman of about fifty years murmured, “Welcome aboard, gentlemen. Bonjour. Bonjour.”

“She wields considerable influence in high society. Few people better comprehend how an undercurrent of idle gossip influences cultural and political movements, and no one hears more of it than she.”

The woman gave a somewhat sardonic smile.

Honesty went on, “Then we have Erik von Lessing, who has many connections in the German government.”

Burton acknowledged the white-haired and smartly dressed man, who returned his nod with a sharp bow.

“And last but by no means least, our resident visionary.” Honesty indicated a tubby little chap who was no taller than Swinburne. “Mr. Herbert Wells.”

“I feel honoured to meet you, Sir Richard,” Wells said. His voice was high-pitched and childlike. “And you, too, Mr. Swinburne.”

Burton frowned. “Herbert Wells? Herbert George Wells?”

“Yes,” Wells responded. “You’re no doubt remembering the fellow Abdu El Yezdi wrote of in his account entitled ‘Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon.’ We are pretty certain that he was me, albeit a different me in a different version of history.” He shuddered and added, “And thank goodness for that. My poor counterpart suffered the dreadful world war we ourselves have avoided.”

“Perhaps, then, I should say it’s nice to meet you again, Mr. Wells,” Burton said, with a wry curl of his lips.

Wells chuckled.

“Shall we get to business?” Honesty asked. “Practicalities first?”

Burton nodded. “Let’s. The Orpheus?”

“Penniforth and von Lessing are our resident experts in engineering. Gents?”

“Aye,” Penniforth rumbled. “Airships ain’t changed all that much since your time. The Orpheus can just about pass muster if no one looks too close, like. But we’re goin’ to fit her with a telemobiloscope afore you set off again.”

“A telly-mo-billy-whatsit?” Swinburne enquired.

“Invented by a German,” von Lessing put in. “Christian Hülsmeyer. It can detect other ships in your location through means of reflected radio waves.”

The poet threw out his hands in a helpless shrug. “Radio?”

“Wireless telegraph signals.”

“Good Lord!” Burton exclaimed. “Useful!”

“We even transmit entertainment shows through ’em,” Penniforth added. “Music and suchlike. We ’ave a radio unit ready to add to the Orpheus. It will make it easier for the future Cannibals to contact you.”

“Excellent. And what else?”

“There ain’t much else.”

“Really? Am I to take it that progress has slowed?”

Edward Brabrooke interjected, “Yes, it most certainly has. These youngsters refer to our time as the Steam Revolution, Richard, and rightfully recognise Isambard Kingdom Brunel and old Charles Babbage as the geniuses at its heart. You’ll doubtlessly recall that Isambard ceased to function in 1860?”

“For us, it was just a couple of months ago,” Burton noted. “He never recovered?”

“No.”

“What became of him?”

“He was declared dead. There was a magnificent ceremony at St. Paul’s Cathedral to mark his passing, and a stone was laid bearing his name, though there was no corpse to bury beneath it. His mechanical form is exhibited in the British Museum. As for Charles Babbage, he went into hiding for half a decade and—I’m sorry, but this is necessary information—lost his mind. They say he died a raving lunatic, though no one is sure exactly when.”

“Why the uncertainty?”

Brabrooke shrugged and made a gesture that incorporated the room. “Perhaps his close association with this endeavour has cast the same veil over him that confounds our post-1860 memories of you.”

“Odd.”

“It is. The sixties are regarded as a mysterious period. Significant events were left unrecorded, were hushed up, and have been inexplicably forgotten. Whatever occurred, it marked the end of the Steam Revolution, and those few who knew him generally agree that Babbage was somehow at the heart of it. All I can tell you for certain is that, on the twenty-eighth of September, 1861, he destroyed all his prototypes, all the devices he had in his possession, and incinerated his every plan, blueprint, and diary. He left no trace of his work at all, other than the Mark Two probability calculators that occupied the heads of existing clockwork men, and as you know, those calculators were notoriously booby-trapped, so any unauthorised infiltration caused them to self-destruct. Very few of them still exist. Put simply, we lost Babbage and his knowledge. It was the death-knell of the Department of Guided Science. By the 1880s, it had been incorporated into the Department of Industry and all the great names associated with it were gone.”

Swinburne said, “What about the blueprint for our time mechanism—the Nimtz generator? Didn’t he give it over to the Cannibal Club?”

“Destroyed,” Brabrooke said. “We don’t know how it works. We’ll never be able to reproduce it, or modernise it, or even mend it if it breaks down.”

Burton murmured, “Then I must depend on Daniel Gooch.” He frowned. “Twenty-eighth of September, ’sixty-one, you say? Why does that date ring a bell?”

Herbert Wells answered, “You read it in ‘The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack,’ Sir Richard. That date, in El Yezdi’s native history, was when your counterpart first encountered Edward Oxford.”

Burton murmured, “Ah yes, of course.” He raised a hand to his head and ran his fingertips through his hair, feeling his scars and the grittiness of the diamond dust etched into them. It was becoming a habitual gesture. “Charles placed great faith in El Yezdi’s obsession with timing and coincidences. Perhaps that explains the when of his actions, but it doesn’t explain the why.”

Wells said, “His motive remains a mystery, but his actions certainly slowed our progress, as did our lack of participation in the wars.”

Burton frowned at him. “Wars, Mr. Wells? Did Abdu El Yezdi fail to avert the disaster he predicted?”

The little man shook his head. “No, no. If, in all the other histories, a worldwide conflict has broken out, then we have, thanks to his efforts, been spared it. In our world, the conflict has for the most part confined itself to Russia and China.”

“In what manner?”

“It started with Russian expansionism. In 1877, that country declared war on, and obliterated, the old Ottoman Empire, advancing westward to occupy a number of Eastern European territories. In 1900, it turned its attention to the south and ventured into the northern provinces of China, sparking a fierce war with the Qing Dynasty. Initially, this didn’t go so well for the Russians, and five years later its people rose in revolution and overthrew the ruling aristocracy. They united under a new leader. A man Abdu El Yezdi encountered.”

“Grigori Rasputin.”

“Yes. Under his mesmeric leadership, Russia renewed its assault on China, which by now was weakening rapidly due to the trade embargoes inflicted upon it by our own empire, they being a legacy of the bad relations caused in your time by the actions of Lord Elgin. The situation reached crisis point three years ago, when the Qing Dynasty collapsed. China is currently re-forming itself as a socialist republic. As for Russia, it received a terrible blow earlier this year when Rasputin suffered a brain haemorrhage and died.”

“Ah. I was curious to know whether that would happen.”

Swinburne said, “And the British Empire, Mr. Wells?”

“Now known as the Anglo-Saxon Empire. It’s steered clear of conflict and continues to consolidate its strength. It has now incorporated all of Western Europe, most of Africa, India, the Caribbean, and Australia. We also have a strong economic alliance with the United States.”

“The united states of where?” William Trounce asked.

“America,” Wells said. “The year after your departure, a civil war erupted between the North and South of that country. It lasted from 1861 until 1865. The North won. The U.S.A., as it is commonly called, is currently expanding its manufacturing infrastructure and rapidly growing in power. I fear we are being left behind. As I mentioned, without the incentive of battle, where the sciences and engineering are concerned, the pace of change has become ever more sedate in the A.S.E.”

A.S.E., Burton thought. Anglo-Saxon Empire. U.S.A. United States of America. Just as Edward Oxford’s grandfather mentioned, the world is being abbreviated.

Henry Bendyshe took a thick binder from the sideboard and handed it to Brabrooke, who then passed it to Burton, saying, “Your brother left this for you. It covers all the principal developments in every field of endeavour.”

Burton gave a snort of amusement. “Typical of the minister. He thinks that, because we’re travelling three hundred and forty-two years into the future, I’ll have plenty of time for reading.”

Brabrooke laughed. “You’ll be getting another such file at your next stop. We intend to chronicle world events for you. When you return to 1860, you’ll have a guide to the future.”

“Which may well become an extravagant work of fiction the moment we act upon the information in it,” Burton mused. “Nevertheless, useful. Thank you.” He put the book down and patted it thoughtfully. “So, to the most pertinent question. What of Spring Heeled Jack? We know 2202 is his ultimate destination, but is the Oxford intelligence influencing history as he moves forward through it?”

“We have no evidence to suggest so,” Brabrooke replied.

Burton considered the back of his hands for a few moments. He looked up at Brabrooke, said softly, “Thank you, old friend,” then met the eyes of each of the others in turn. “My gratitude to each and every one of you. Your predecessors were my friends. I have no doubt they would be proud of you. Much as I’d like to remain here and get to know each of you, the fact is, my companions and I are on a mission, and I feel it necessary to press on. It’s an incongruous sensation to know that all the time in the world is at our disposal yet to also feel that time is pressing.”

James Honesty said, “We quite understand, sir. There are two points of business remaining before we get to work modernising the Orpheus. The first is that, during the months before Mr. Michael Faraday passed away, when it was obvious that we could no longer rely on Mr. Babbage, he created a device for us. It is a beacon that can signal to your ship while it is speeding through time. We know your next scheduled stop is the year 2000. However, if the beacon functions as he promised, then the Cannibal Club can summon you to an earlier date should we deem it necessary. If we detect any sign of Edward Oxford, and if you now give us permission, we shall do so.”

“Permission is enthusiastically granted,” Burton said. “That’s an excellent development.”

Honesty continued, “The second matter is this, Sir Richard: we feel it wise that a member of our group join you. We all have half a century’s worth of knowledge that you and your associates lack. What you encounter and may not understand at your next stop might be somewhat more familiar to a person from the year 1914.”

Burton pondered this. “I can’t disagree, Mr. Honesty. Whom have you elected?”

Herbert Wells stood up. “Me, sir.”

“Then welcome aboard the time machine, Mr. Wells.”

They emerged from whiteness.

Herbert Wells put his hands to his head. “Ouch! What a ghastly sensation.”

The Orpheus said, “We have been waylaid. This is not the year 2000.”

“What happened?” Nathaniel Lawless demanded.

“The Cannibals have used their Faraday beacon. It is ten o’clock on Sunday morning, the seventeenth of March, 1968.”

“Another jump of fifty-four years,” Burton murmured. “Coincidence?”

“My hat! We’re over a century into the future!” Swinburne exclaimed.

“Marvellous!” Wells cried out. “Though it’s just half the time for me, of course. Nevertheless, marvellous!”

“There is an incoming radio transmission,” Orpheus said.

Lawless and Burton crossed to the box-like contraption the 1914 Cannibals had added to the bridge.

“It was this, wasn’t it?” Burton asked, lifting a fist-sized semicircular object from the side of the device.

“Yes,” Lawless said. “Blue to receive, green to send.”

The king’s agent pressed a blue button. Immediately, a female voice filled the bridge. “Orpheus? Hello, Orpheus? Respond, please.”

“Now the green, and answer,” Lawless instructed.

Burton did as directed. The voice was cut off. He spoke into the object in his hand. “This is Burton, aboard the Orpheus. Can you hear me?”

Blue button.

“Sir Richard! Hi. Right on. You made it. Welcome to 1968. Listen, this is important. Fly your ship twenty miles to the east. You’re too exposed there and badly outdated. You’ll be noticed. We have a replacement vessel waiting for you.”

“Understood. We’re on our way. To whom am I speaking?”

“My name is Jane Packard, daughter of Eliza Teed, née Murray. I’m Admiral Henry Murray’s great-granddaughter. I have with me an Honesty, a Penniforth, a Slaughter, a Bhatti and a Brabrooke. The Cannibals are still going strong, sir.”

“Splendid! We look forward to meeting you, Miss Packard. I assume you have news for us?”

“We do. I’d prefer to tell you face to face, if that’s cool with you.”

“Cool? Er, all right? Yes, it’s fine. We’ll rendezvous with you in—” He looked at Lawless, who said, “Fifteen minutes.” Burton relayed this before breaking contact.

“A replacement?” the Orpheus said. “What do they mean, a replacement? I’m in fine fettle. I don’t want to be replaced.”

“Don’t worry,” Lawless replied. “You’ll be transferred to the new ship.”

“I should hope so.”

“I say,” Swinburne announced. “That Miss Packard sounded rather—um—casual, didn’t she?”

“An alteration in tonal communication,” Burton observed. “We must expect such modifications over the years. Language is flexible. It adapts.”

Wells said, “It might be an indication of her social standing. Such matters were in upheaval during my time. There was a rapidly expanding middle class.”

“It being?” Burton asked.

“The bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie.”

“I think I understand the reference. There were signs of such a phenomenon in the eighteen sixties. No doubt, had this middle class been better established in the mid-nineteenth century, I would have been labelled as such. I never quite made the grade as far as the gentry were concerned.”

Lawless consulted the meteorological console and murmured, “Exceptionally mild for the time of year, by the looks of it.” He joined Burton, Swinburne and Wells at the window and peered ahead at the horizon. After a while, they discerned two objects brightly reflecting the spring sunshine, one in the air and the other on the water.

A couple of minutes later, Orpheus said, “They’re calling us again.”

Burton went to the radio, clicked the switch, and listened as Jane Packard said, “We have you in sight, Orpheus.”

“Acknowledged, Miss Packard. We can see you, too. What do you want us to do?”

“Have yourself, Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Trounce, Miss Raghavendra and Mr. Wells lowered onto the yacht. We’ll take you to London. You’ll be staying with us for a couple of days. Captain Lawless, Mr. Gooch and Mr. Krishnamurthy should follow our airship in the Orpheus. They’ll be escorted to a secluded cove on the coast of Holland, where your babbage devices will be transferred from the old ship into the new and your people will be instructed in the piloting of the updated vessel.”

“We’re in your hands, Miss Packard.”

A few moments later, the other flying ship drew alongside. It was a streamlined affair, with a white tubular body, sharply pointed at the front but flaring into a vertical sail-shape at the rear. Two spinning rotors, each enclosed in a flat circular housing, were inset into wide triangular wings, which made the entirety of the vessel a horizontal V-shape. Steam was blasting out from beneath it, rolling out across the water’s surface and half obscuring the yacht.

“My goodness!” Wells exclaimed. “Will you look at that!”

“She’s a Concorde class jump jet,” Jane Packard transmitted. “Created by British and French engineers and just coming into service.”

Nathaniel Lawless glanced at Swinburne and whispered, “Jump jet?”

“Machines will soon seem like magic to cavemen like us,” the poet muttered. “I fear they’re already far beyond our comprehension.”

Half an hour later, all but Lawless, Gooch and Krishnamurthy had been lowered onto the deck of the large and extraordinarily luxurious yacht. They stood beside Jane Packard and watched—their hair whipped about by the sea breeze—as the two airships receded into the east.

Wells whispered, “Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative. And my goodness, how we humans adapt!”

“The Concorde is a real beauty, Mr. Wells,” Packard conceded. “And futuristic in design. We hope she won’t appear too out of place at your next destination.”

She was the only person, aside from them, on the deck. Perhaps in her late forties but young-looking, she was slim and athletic, with very long blonde hair and a freckled face free of cosmetics, though adorned with spectacles. She was clothed in such a shocking outfit that Burton hardly knew where to look. Her upper body was scarcely covered by a sleeveless, buttonless and collarless thin white shirt upon which the face of an African was depicted along with the mysterious word Hendrix. Over this, she had what was either a sleeveless coat or an absurdly long waistcoat of fringed suede leather. Her legs were encased in—of all things—trousers, tailored from some manner of light canvas, faded blue in colour, and breathtakingly tight around the knees, thighs and loins but wide and flappy at the ankles. She had a string of beads around her neck, another around her left wrist, and wore moccasins, or something very similar, on her feet.

As mild as the weather was, she was underdressed for it and plainly cold.

“Come below,” she said as the yacht’s engine growled and the vessel started westward. “The club has a lot more members since 1914. A few of my comrades are aboard, but you’ll meet others in London, including Mick, who we’ve selected to join your expedition.”

“Is he related to one of the originals?” Swinburne asked.

“Nope.”

She guided them down and into a lounge room that was furnished in garishly bright colours with its fittings and decor moulded from a waxy material similar to the skin of the Spring Heeled Jacks. In response to Burton’s query, she informed him that it was “plastic.”

A small group rose from sofas to greet them. All were garbed, like Packard, in such an informal manner they might as well have just got out of their beds.

“Wow!” one of them said. “Sir Richard Francis Burton—in the flesh! And Algernon Swinburne! This is way out there!” He stepped forward and extended his hand. “Mark Packard.”

“My younger brother,” Jane added.

Burton took the hand and shook it. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Packard. Long hair has come back into fashion for gentlemen, I see. I noticed it was worn rather short in 1914.”

“Still is among the straights,” Packard replied.

“Straights?”

Jane Packard interjected, “We’ll explain all that in a minute. Let’s get everyone acquainted first.”

She introduced the rest, who’d all been gaping as if Burton and his friends were ghosts. The Cannibals were Patricia Honesty, Trevor Penniforth, Eddie Brabrooke, Jimmy Richardson—who bore an uncanny resemblance to Shyamji Bhatti—and Miranda Kingsland of the Slaughter family, plus Karl von Lessing, grandson of Erik, and a new recruit named Jason Griffith.

Everyone settled on seats and sofas. Penniforth and Kingsland served coffee. Mark Packard and Jason Griffith lit what initially appeared to be roughly rolled white cigarillos but which, once their fumes reached his nostrils, Burton instantly recognised as hashish. Brabrooke offered him a tobacco cigarette.

“Manufactured in France?” Burton asked the young man.

“Made and smoked everywhere now,” Brabrooke responded.

Burton couldn’t help but give a grunt of shock as Miranda Kingsland and Patricia Honesty both started to smoke. Women did so in his own time, of course, but rarely in company with gentlemen.

Kingsland, noticing his expression, grinned. “My gender is making great progress in liberating ourselves from the restrictions yours has imposed on us throughout history.”

“Glad to hear it,” Burton said. He drew on the cigarette, coughed, made a face, muttered, “Bismillah!” and took a gulp of coffee, which tasted even worse.

Sadhvi Raghavendra—dressed in a loose Indian smock and looking surprisingly contemporaneous with the Cannibals—addressed Jane Packard, “If I may ask, you said the Cannibal Club has expanded. How many more are there?”

“Phew!” Packard answered. “Thing is, you see, we’ve kind of become a social movement.”

Burton frowned. “Our mission is supposed to be secret.”

“Oh yeah, man!” Jason Griffith interjected. “Still is. We’re in on it, and Mick and the Deviants know the game, but the rest are like, kicking against the straights without knowing the full story, if you dig what I’m saying.”

Trounce shifted in his seat and looked at his companions in utter bafflement.

“Deviants?” Swinburne asked. “Straights? Dig?”

“We should start at the beginning,” Miranda Kingsland put in.

“And in English,” Trounce muttered.

“Yeah, but when was that?” Griffith asked her.

“1950s,” Karl von Lessing said decisively.

“Sir,” the king’s agent said to him, “perhaps we have too many speaking at once. With due deference to your friends, may I suggest you take centre stage and recount to us what has occurred during the course of the past fifty-four years, who Mick is, what these ‘deviants’ and ‘straights’ are, and why you and your colleagues felt the Orpheus should be summoned to 1968?”

Von Lessing looked at the others. They each gave words of consent:

“Sweet.”

“Sure thing.”

“Fine with me.”

“I can dig it.”

“Okay, so here’s the scene,” von Lessing said. “First, secrecy. Your brother was a genius. He created an investments company that, for years, has been like, thriving, man. The Bendyshe family runs it—” He broke off as Burton laughed.

“Sir Richard?”

“Good old Bendyshe! I’d never have predicted his line to be so responsible!”

“The original, the Thomas you knew, gave really—what’s the word?”

“Prescient,” Mark Packard put in.

“Yeah—prescient advice to the old minister of chronological affairs. This yacht and our Concorde are privately owned by the Bendyshe Foundation, which has offices in Bombay and is currently headed by Joseph and James Bendyshe. So, you see, the Cannibal Club is well financed and, as I said, thriving, but still completely hidden.”

“We’ll keep it that way,” Jason Griffith added. “You can be sure.”

Burton gave a grunt of approval.

“So,” von Lessing continued, “on to the history lesson. I guess things started to get a bit flaky back in the 1930s. Real bad famines had been weakening Russia since Rasputin’s death, and China was winning the war. Then, from 1935 to ’40, led by Poland, the Eastern European countries—Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, and the Baltic states—ousted their occupying governments and declared independence. Russia was on the brink of total collapse until, in 1940, assistance came from an unexpected quarter.”

Burton raised an eyebrow enquiringly.

“China,” von Lessing said. “It declared a complete ceasefire, handed back captured territory, and flooded the country with aid. It then rebuilt its former enemy’s industrial infrastructure and established exclusive trade relations. In 1949, they merged and became the United Republics of Eurasia.”

“That’s rather a startling turnaround,” Swinburne observed.

“Too right. For sure, it caught us—and the Yanks—on the hop. So now the world had three superpowers: the A.S.E., the U.S.A., and the U.R.E.”

“My hat! What a badly curtailed vocabulary you have.”

“Yeah. Maybe the abbreviations reflect our politicians’ tiny minds. Anyway, the Anglo-Saxon Empire and the United Republics are separated by a belt comprised of Slavic Eastern Europe, the Middle East, British India—which is the A.S.E.’s only direct border with the U.R.E.—and the South East Asian countries of Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.”

“Thailand?” Burton asked.

“You knew it as Siam. The belt countries are stable and at peace except for South East Asia, which is currently the scene of a bloody conflict between the U.R.E. and U.S.A.”

“America? Why America?”

“Ideology. East Eurasia has adopted socialist principles. America is concerned that if these are imposed on South East Asia, which China lays claim to, they’ll easily spread through India and into the Anglo-Saxon Empire, which actually isn’t as crazy as it sounds, since many of the kids—particularly in France—are already socialists.”

“Or, at least, say they are,” Patricia Honesty murmured.

“Bravo!” Herbert Wells said quietly. “I’m convinced that socialism has the potential to lead us to a more humane system than capitalism allows. Through it, we can destroy false ideas of property and self, eliminate unjust laws and poisonous and hateful suggestions and prejudices, create a system of social right-dealing and a tradition of right-feeling and action. I believe it to be the schoolroom of true and noble Anarchism, wherein by training and restraint we shall make free men.”

“And women, Mr. Wells,” Honesty put in.

“Of course! Of course! Forgive me my antiquated methods of reference.”

“Forgiven. You’re obviously ahead of your time.”

Wells laughed. “I most certainly am!” He slapped his thigh. “Corporeally!”

“But why is America doing the fighting and not us—not the A.S.E.?” Swinburne asked.

Von Lessing answered, “Firstly, because America’s prosperity has come about largely through its alliance with us; an alliance it suspects might crumble if we lose our enthusiasm for the frenzied capitalism it so fervently preaches. Secondly, because there’s a strong independence movement in India, and if we made that country the front line in a war, for sure it would leave the A.S.E., taking our strongest manufacturing regions with it and depriving America of its principal source of trade. And thirdly, because with the U.S.A. doing the fighting, the conflict has a better chance of being contained. If we participated, the hostilities would undoubtedly spread. China detests us, and has done since your time.”

“Thanks to Lord Elgin,” Burton said. “But surely your politicians have tried to make amends for his ill-judged actions? His vandalism occurred over a century ago.”

“Squares don’t apologise. They just make excuses.”

“Squares?”

“The straights.”

Swinburne squealed and flapped his arms. “What in blue blazes are you talking about? Straight squares? Have you ever heard of bent ones?”

“Yeah, man. There are plenty.”

“What? What? What?”

Sadhvi Raghavendra said, “Perhaps you could endeavour to employ rather more traditional language, Mr. von Lessing?”

“Yes, please,” William Trounce grumbled.

“I must confess,” Wells added, “I’m a bit lost.”

Von Lessing held up a hand. “Sure. Sure. I’m trying. Um. So, like, remember how, back in your day, the politicians either came through Oxford or Cambridge universities or were, at least, aristocrats, yeah?”

“Yes,” Burton and Wells chorused.

“That never changed, and those people have increasingly bungled it on the political scene. They’re stuck in their ways, man. Completely out of touch. Following outdated traditions. They don’t know how to work with East Eurasia, whose people they regard as savages.”

“Ah,” Wells said. “You mean the Anglo-Saxon genius for parliamentary government continues to assert itself; there is a great deal of talk and no decisive action?”

“Right on! Exactly that! And it’s like, the middle classes respected these people, ’cos that’s the traditional way of things, so there’s been no challenge to ’em.”

Patricia Honesty added, “The people we refer to as straights or squares, Mr. Swinburne, are the ones who blindly stick with the status quo even if it’s plainly festering and useless; the ones who’re incapable of changing course; who haven’t the guts or imagination to do so. They have no ability to adapt and evolve.”

“And the deviants?” Burton asked.

“Rock ‘n’ roll, man!” von Lessing enthused.

“Good Lord!” Wells exclaimed. “What is rocking role?”

“Rock and roll,” Mark Packard clarified, “is where it’s at, and we reckon it’s going to change the world.”

Burton’s brow creased. He looked at von Lessing, who explained, “It’s fast rhythmic music. It came out of the States—America—having evolved from the blues, jazz and swing.”

The chrononauts all stared at him blankly.

Von Lessing continued, “Styles of music that can all be traced back to America’s slave population, which brought from Africa a storytelling tradition accompanied by an intense beat and a sort of call-and-response chant.”

“At last,” Burton murmured. “Something I’m familiar with. The musical storytelling you refer to is—according to legend—said to have originated in the Lake Regions of Central Africa.” He looked first at Swinburne and then at Wells. “The Mountains of the Moon. Significant.”

“Those peaks appear to have an inordinate involvement with human affairs,” the poet noted.

“What?” von Lessing asked.

“We’re piecing together a jigsaw,” Burton told him. “Please continue. What bearing does this music have on the political situation?”

“So, uh, yeah, rock and roll really took off in the fifties and it kinda galvanised the kids, gave them a sort of independent identity, I guess. Made them rebellious.”

“Created the teenager,” Patricia Honesty put in.

“What is a teenager?”

She smiled. “In your day, Mr. Burton—um, I mean, Sir Richard—there was no transition from childhood to adulthood. You were a kid until you got a job, and then you were an adult, whatever your age. Nowadays, between thirteen and twenty, there’s a sort of rite of passage. Teenagers have their own culture, their own music, their own fashion.”

“They think for themselves,” von Lessing said. “And now this freethinking is extending into some of the older generation, too. We’re sick of the establishment, the straights, and we’re making plenty of noise about it.”

Herbert Wells asked, “And that’s the deviation you spoke of?”

Von Lessing laughed. “Yeah, man. You see, this is what happened; the government saw the people were getting restless and losing respect for their so-called ‘betters.’ By sixty-four, Harold Wilson was elected as prime minister. This dude reckoned the only way to keep the populace happy was by making the weakening Empire strong again, to prove our superiority. To do that, he revived a banished technology; one that only the British had knowledge of. He made eugenics legal, and it quickly developed into what’s now called genetics.”

Burton gasped. “Eugenics! We’d seen signs that it would return. Had this Wilson fellow no idea of the dangers?”

“I don’t think he cared,” von Lessing responded.

“Interfering with nature,” Jason Griffith muttered. “It stinks, man. Really stinks.”

Wells said to Burton, “I believe it was banished in your age because the early experiments were bedevilled by unexpected consequences?”

“They were,” Burton confirmed. “For every advantage the science’s founder, Francis Galton, bred into his subjects, a counterweight occurred quite spontaneously. He once created a stingless bee. He didn’t anticipate that it would also develop such speed of flight that, when it collided with his assistant, it went through him like a bullet, killing him instantly.”

“No wonder it was outlawed,” Wells muttered.

“And now it’s back,” von Lessing said, “as a part of the futile manoeuvrings of a stagnant leadership. The kids have had enough. They’ve started to protest. They want a revolution. Most don’t know anything about Spring Heeled Jack or your mission to find him, but we Cannibals have started to see signs of him in the new genetically altered—er—products. So we recruited this guy, Mick Farren, ’cos he’s a strong voice in the underground movement. He runs an antiestablishment newspaper and keeps careful track of what the government is up to. He’s also in a band, so has influence with the freaks. If it comes to it, we want to be prepared and able to offer some sort of resistance against the mad intelligence.”

“In a band? You mean like a brass band?” Swinburne asked. “How can that possibly work? And what are freaks? Eugenic creations?”

“Ha! No, man. It’s all guitars and drums and singing now. The freaks—the turned-on kids—dig it. Mick’s respected and he has insight. He’s a good cat to have on our side. People would follow him.”

“Literally a cat?” Swinburne asked. “Medically raised to a human degree of evolution?”

“No. Cat. Dude. Bloke. Chap. Fellow.”

“Oh.”

With a glance, Burton and Swinburne made a silent pact to allow certain peculiarities of the future’s language pass them by without further comment.

Burton said, “And Spring Heeled Jack?”

Von Lessing replied, “Today, in London, there’s going to be a mass demonstration against our alliance with America and against American aggression in South East Asia. The police are expected to show up in force. I want you to see them.”

“Why?” Burton asked.

Von Lessing glanced around at his colleagues. “We—we want your opinion of them.”

Detective Inspector Trounce looked puzzled. “Of the police?”

“Yeah.”

“Without preconceptions, I take it,” Burton said. “Except you’ve already indicated that you’ve detected Spring Heeled Jack’s influence. In the police?”

“Yep.”

“You have me intrigued.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t want to put any ideas in your head, so what say we finish for now and get some grub? Are you hungry?”

Burton wasn’t but felt it impolite to refuse, so the meeting broke up and the chrononauts were served an early—and thankfully small—lunch. Burton wasn’t sure what it consisted of. Some elements of it were laden with salt, others with sugar, and it all left a nasty chemical aftertaste.

Jane Packard told them, “Eddie, Karl and I will go ashore with you at Margate to meet with Mick and travel into London. You have a little while to hang loose before we arrive.”

“Hang loose,” Sadhvi Raghavendra said when they were left alone. “How unpleasantly descriptive.”

“I wonder what their poetry is like?” Swinburne mused.

“I dread to think,” Wells said. “Will we understand a word anyone says when we reach 2202?”

Burton said, “In my visions of Oxford’s native time, everything was perfectly comprehensible and there was some mention of language rehabilitation. New words are introduced as time passes, others go in and out of style, but the foundations remain. In my opinion, it’s the form of society itself that’s more likely to mystify us.”

“It’s already doing so,” Trounce muttered. “Music as a political force? Children defying the government? By Jove! What a madhouse!”

For a further half hour, they discussed what they’d learned from the current crop of Cannibals. Burton felt pride that his brother and Tom Bendyshe had secretly amassed—and so wisely invested—such funds that the organisation could afford the Concorde jump jet. It impressed him beyond measure. Too, he was gratified that his friends, the original club members, had so efficiently passed their cause down to their descendants. This new generation struck him as strange, strikingly unceremonious in attitude, scruffy in appearance, but undoubtedly committed and trustworthy.

After a while, Eddie Brabrooke poked his head into the cabin. “Time to go ashore, folks.”

They put on their coats—but were told to leave their hats, which had gone out of fashion—and followed him up onto the deck. A motorboat was bobbing on the water next to the yacht. Burton looked toward the shore and Margate’s seafront. He’d known the town as a major holiday destination, and it had hardly changed at all except that, even from this distance, it had obviously lost its gloss and become shabby and neglected.

Bidding adieu to those who were remaining behind, Burton and his companions followed Brabrooke, Karl von Lessing and Jane Packard down a rope ladder and into the boat. The woman at its tiller greeted them and introduced herself as distantly related to Richard Monckton Milnes.

She steered them to the side of the town’s promenade and, as they ascended a slippery set of stone steps, said, “See you when you get back.”

Burton stood and examined with interest the people who were strolling along the seafront. Though many of the men were suited, the overall impression was of a major drop in the standards he was used to, both in terms of attire and manner. As for the women, there was a scandalous amount of flesh on display. Dresses and skirts, which never revealed even an ankle in his era, had diminished in size so radically that even naked thighs were unashamedly exposed for all to see.

“Hardly the Utopia I was hoping for,” Wells muttered. “It smacks more of Sodom and Gomorrah.”

“Indeed,” the king’s agent agreed.

Don’t be judgemental, he told himself. Don’t think of them as English. Be the ethnologist.

“There’s Mick,” von Lessing said, waving at man who was striding toward them.

“Lord help us,” Trounce muttered.

Mick Farren was all hair. It framed his face in a great bushy nimbus. The detective inspector couldn’t take his eyes off it.

Burton, whose travels had exposed him to an endless variety of strange sights, was able to look beyond the extravagant halo. He saw a slim youth of medium height, dressed in worn blue canvas trousers—perhaps the uniform of his generation—a black shirt, a short black jacket made from leather, and boots that reminded the king’s agent of those worn by Spain’s vaqueros. Farren’s long and, by the looks of it, oft-broken nose might have dominated the face of another man, but in him it was eclipsed by the eyes, which, as he came closer, were revealed to be direct, sullen and challenging.

“Sir Richard,” he said, shaking Burton’s hand.

“Mr. Farren.”

Few people could meet and hold Burton’s gaze. Farren did. The king’s agent felt himself being assessed.

He passed the test.

In a surprisingly soft and cultured tone—Burton was half expecting a cockney accent—Farren continued, “The Orpheus was called to 1968 because I recommended it. I hope what you see today will justify my decision.” He turned to the others. “Miss Raghavendra, Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Trounce, Mr. Wells—I’m honoured to meet you all. I expect this time period will strike you as lurid and uncultured. That’s because it is.” He smiled slightly. “If you’ll follow me, I have a couple of cars parked around the corner. We’ll drive you to London.”

“What are cars?” Trounce asked as they followed Farren away from the promenade and into a street lined with shops.

“Diminutive of ‘autocarriage,’” Herbert Wells put in. “They were invented during my childhood as an alternative to the old steam spheres.” He pointed to a yellow metal box at the side of the road a little way ahead. It was mounted on four wheels and had glass windows. “By the looks of it they’ve become rather more sophisticated than the rickety contraptions of 1914.”

As they emerged onto a wider thoroughfare, five of the vehicles whipped past at a tremendous velocity, steam whistling from pipes at their rear.

“Like a landau,” Swinburne observed, “but with the driver and the engine inside.”

It being Sunday, the town was fairly quiet and the shops were closed. Burton examined the contents of their display windows and only understood half of what he saw. Everything appeared garish, plentiful, and cheaply manufactured.

“What are those rods?” Sadhvi enquired, pointing at the rooftops.

Karl von Lessing answered, “Television aerials, Miss Raghavendra. Television is like radio but with moving pictures, a little theatre in your sitting room. The aerials pick up the signals.”

“Moving pictures?” Swinburne exclaimed. “You mean, like a zoetrope?”

“A what?” von Lessing asked.

The poet cried out and aimed a kick at thin air. “How are we ever to communicate?”

The group came to two parked cars. Trounce and Raghavendra joined Eddie Brabrooke and Karl von Lessing in one, while Swinburne, Wells and Jane Packard squeezed into the back of the other, with Burton in the front beside Farren. The king’s agent watched closely as Farren manipulated steering rods and a footplate—a very similar arrangement to that of the old steam spheres and rotorchairs.

“Steam?” Burton asked, as the car rolled out into the road.

“Yep,” Farren responded. “The Yanks favour petroleum engines, but they’re unreliable as hell. Anglo-Saxon steam technology is still where it’s at. Over the past century or so, we’ve learned how to squeeze the most out of the least. It was Formby coal in your day, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“We use a process called muon-catalysation now, which is powered by an extension of the Formby treatment. We can make a marble-sized lump of coal blaze like a sun for a whole day, and a vehicle can run on twelve gallons of heavy water for almost two hundred miles at speeds of up to sixty miles an hour.”

“Heavy water?”

“Yeah, man. That’d take me a week to explain.”

The car accelerated, and Margate was quickly left behind. As the vehicle swept westward, Burton and Swinburne saw that the little seaside towns—Herne Bay and Whitstable—which had flourished in the mid-1800s, were now, like Margate, in a sad state of dilapidation, while the countryside between them had been rendered a characterless patchwork by intensive farming.

Further inland, the Kentish towns of Faversham, Sittingbourne and Gillingham were vastly expanded, but the new buildings struck the chrononauts as soulless and unprepossessing, and by the time they reached Gravesend they were shocked to find themselves already on the outskirts of the capital. London was immensely expanded.

As they swept into the densely built-up outer reaches of the city, with other vehicles flowing around them, Burton asked, “You are a musician, Mr. Farren?”

“Mick, please. I’m a singer and songwriter, among other things.”

“In a band?”

“The Deviants.”

“And music has become a political force?”

“Uh-huh.”

Farren reached down to a knob on the control panel in front of him and gave it a twist. The car’s cabin was immediately filled with a harsh blend of trumpets, guitars and other instruments that Burton couldn’t identify. The cacophony sounded vaguely Spanish and was accompanied by three or four male voices singing in harmony.

“Ouch!” Swinburne exclaimed. “What a racket!”

“The song is called ‘The Legend of Xanadu,’ Mr. Swinburne,” Farren said. “By Dave, Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich.”

“My hat! What are they? Dwarfs? What happened to the seventh?”

Farren gave a throaty chuckle.

“I presume the song refers to the Empire’s difficulties with China,” Burton said. “Though I fail to understand the Spanish motif.”

Farren shook his bushy head. “No, Sir Richard. This is what’s known as pop music—pop, short for popular. Its only function is as commercial entertainment. It has very little meaning. I doubt the kids even know where Xanadu is. Let’s try a different station.”

Keeping his eyes on the road ahead, Farren twisted another control knob. The music dissolved into crackles, whines, howls and snatches of conversation before settling into an urgent and primitive-sounding rhythm over which an American-accented voice sang about “breaking on through to the other side.”

“Rock music,” Farren revealed. “This band is called The Doors.”

“How is it different to pop?” Burton asked.

Farren thought for a moment. “I guess rock music is less about commerce and more about cutting through the surface of civilisation to find an authenticity within each of us.”

Burton considered this and said, “That was one of the aims of the original Cannibal Club when Doctor James Hunt and I first founded it. I must admit, we didn’t much pursue the objective.”

“We were too busy getting three sheets to the wind,” Swinburne added.

“Nevertheless, it’s yet another curious coincidence,” the king’s agent muttered.

Farren said, “What you intended at the club’s inception is now more important than you ever envisioned. The people are so distracted by bread and circuses they’ve lost any sense of themselves. They don’t realise they’re being enslaved by the system.”

Swinburne leaned forward. “By which you mean the system of governance established and run by the upper classes?”

“Exactly,” Farren answered. “Except, if you scrape away the layers of illusion, I’m pretty sure you’ll find a single presence at the rotten core of it.”

Burton looked at him. “Edward Oxford?”

“Yep.”

They caught their first glimpse of police constables at the junction of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road. A tower—the tallest any of the chrononauts had ever seen—dominated the area, an unsightly edifice of concrete and glass.

“Centre Point,” Mick Farren said. “Completed last year. Thirty-two storeys, all completely empty. An eyesore and total waste of money.”

It was a dramatic example of how the capital had altered. Buildings crowded against each other, pushed upward into the sky, and appeared to occupy every available space. Here and there among their ill-designed and blocky facades, segments of the nineteenth century could occasionally be spotted, like broken memories clinging to existence, but little of Burton and Swinburne’s world remained beyond the major monuments, and to the king’s agent, even the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral—which bulged up into the crystal-clear air—looked suddenly small, helpless and insignificant.

After leaving the cars in Bedford Place, the Cannibals had walked to the southern end of Tottenham Court Road where they’d joined an enormous crowd of demonstrators. Farren told them an even larger crowd was gathered in Trafalgar Square, the two groups slowly working their way toward Grosvenor Square. Burton had witnessed protests in the 1850s, but nothing to match this. People were present in their thousands, long-haired, colourfully dressed, many holding banners and placards, and all chanting, “Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh! Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh! Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh!”

Farren put his mouth to Burton’s ear and shouted above the din, “Ho Chi Minh. Former president of Vietnam. He represents what the people of South East Asia desire for their region, as opposed to what the U.S.A. or U.R.E. wants.”

Following his lead, they pushed into the crowd, taking up position behind a group of youths holding a banner bearing the words “Merseyside Anarchist Group.”

Burton felt completely out of his depth. He obviously wasn’t alone in his sense of vulnerability; Sadhvi Raghavendra was clinging to his left elbow for security, Wells was looking nervously this way and that, and Trounce was staying very close, too, and was visibly trembling. Only Swinburne appeared at ease amid the uproar. He twitched and danced and laughed and added his shrill voice to the chanting.

Raghavendra tugged at Burton’s arm, nodded toward Trounce, and yelled, “Richard! I don’t approve of the stuff, but you have to give William another dose of Saltzmann’s. This is all too much for him.”

Burton nodded, drew a bottle from his jacket pocket, and at that moment saw the police constables. He dropped the tincture, and the glass shattered at his feet.

“Bismillah!”

There were twenty policemen standing in a row on the pavement.

But they weren’t men.

Swinburne shrieked and pointed. Trounce staggered against the king’s agent. Raghavendra put a hand to her mouth. Wells swore.

“Don’t stare at them,” Eddie Brabrooke advised. “Believe me, you don’t want them to notice you.”

“You understand now why I activated the beacon?” Farren asked.

“Yes,” Burton croaked. “By God, yes!”

The constables were humanoid in form, standing upright, with bulky torsos and short, thin limbs, but they possessed the heads of pigs. Dressed in black uniforms with silver buttons, they wore round helmets and had long boots encasing the lower part of their legs. The boots were mounted on spring-loaded, two-foot-high stilts.

“The genetically altered pigs were first introduced to the force a couple of years ago,” Farren said. “They’re strong and vicious but lack height and speed. The new uniforms were introduced last month to address that problem. The moment I saw them, I thought of Spring Heeled Jack.”

“The similarity is striking,” Burton responded. “Undoubtedly, Oxford’s influence is at work. Has the genetic manipulation resulted in the usual side effects?”

“Yes,” Farren answered. “They possess an unanticipated degree of aggression.”

The police creatures were lost to view as the crowd suddenly surged forward.

Taking their cue from some of the groups around them, the Cannibals and chrononauts linked arms—Wells, Farren, Burton and Trounce leading, with Jane Packard, Karl von Lessing, Raghavendra and Swinburne following behind.

Leaning close to Trounce, Burton shouted, “William, are you all right?”

Trounce looked at him with glazed eyes. “Too many people. Too many people.”

Burton disengaged his arm and checked his pockets. Silently, he cursed himself for not bringing more Saltzmann’s from the ship. A stupid mistake. He hooked his hand back around Trounce’s elbow. “Stay with us, old chap.”

Like a tidal wave, the crowd swept along Oxford Street.

“We’re heading to the American Embassy,” Farren announced. “A show of strength.”

For the next hour, conversation was almost impossible. The chanting increased in volume and vehemence, and an ominous air of smouldering violence pressed down upon them like a brewing storm.

Burton retreated into his role of detached observer. He took in every detail of people’s attire, of their gestures and expressions, and of the words he heard spoken—or more often shouted—around him. He recognised that the England he knew was in the grip of a deep transformation, driven by a powerful zeitgeist, and rapidly becoming almost unrecognisable to him. Individuals who thought they were in control of their actions were, he perceived, actually motivated by an almost primordial passion, something chthonic and incomprehensible, though vaguely sensed. He could see it in Mick Farren’s eyes. The songwriter appeared almost mesmerised, as if participating in a war of gods without being fully cognisant of it.

And where was the insane Edward Oxford in all of this? How much of the apparent madness Burton observed was that of the Spring Heeled Jack consciousness? Had the man from 2202 infected history like a virulent disease?

Jane Packard yelled, “This is more than we anticipated, Sir Richard. Follow us. We’re going to slip into a side street and get away from here.”

It immediately proved more easily said than done. The sheer weight of numbers made the demonstration almost impossible to navigate, and over the course of the next thirty minutes they were shoved helplessly along with it all the way to North Audley Street, forced left, and driven into Grosvenor Square. Here, the furore was overwhelming and the crush of bodies immense.

Burton managed to manoeuvre to Raghavendra’s side. He shouted into her ear, “Stay close to William, Sadhvi.”

She said something he couldn’t hear and squeezed past Packard to join the Scotland Yard man.

Farren caught Burton’s eye and nodded toward the right. Following the gesture, the king’s agent saw, through the many banners and waving placards, a huddled mass of uniformed pig men, all mounted on horses. The creatures were holding sword-length batons, and their steeds were draped with light chain mail and wore horned headpieces, making them resemble unicorns.

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

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

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

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

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

“Tear gas!” Farren shouted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Then go. I’ll stay with her.”

“Eddie, it’s not—”

“Beat it!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Assault!” the second announced.

“Resisting!” the third added.

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

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

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

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

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

“Instinct. How are your eyes, Algy?”

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

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

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

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

They tried two more buses with similar results.

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