The Return of the Discontinued Man (A Burton & Swinburne Adventure) (13 page)

Burton looked at the RGS building. “We’re here for Richard Spruce.”

“You remember that?”

“No, I presume it. He’s the only botanist we know. I don’t recall a thing since—” He stopped and considered. “Since just after breakfast. The experiment—I keep returning to it. I’ve witnessed so many alternate versions of the bloody event that I’m giddy with it.”

The king’s agent massaged the back of his neck. He could still feel the Saltzmann’s throbbing in his veins, though the sensation was fast fading.

“It was unusually rapid again,” he murmured, referring to the fast onset of the tincture’s effects and their unusual intensity.

Swinburne, mistaking his meaning, said, “Not really, if it lasted from breakfast to lunch. All morning in the grip of a mirage!”

The tincture.

The visions.

Of course!

Burton heaved a sigh. “Come on.”

They strode the short distance to the Royal Geographical Society and went inside. Burton nodded to the portly man at the reception desk, who immediately came out from behind it, hurried over, and said in a hushed voice, “You’ll not cause any bother?”

“Bother, Mr. Harris?” Burton asked.

“Sir Roderick is furious with you. Your monster caused a great deal of damage last night.”

“It’s not my monster,” Burton protested. “I’m not responsible for what happened here.”

“It was screaming your name and Sir Roderick holds you accountable. The Society doesn’t welcome such disruption. You may be disbarred.”

Burton snarled, “If that’s his attitude, Sir Roderick can shove the Society right up his—”

“Harris,” Swinburne interrupted. “We just want a word with Richard Spruce. We’ll be but a moment.”

Harris looked relieved. “He’s not here.”

“Where, then?” the poet asked.

“I don’t know.”

“We’ll find someone who does,” Burton said. He shouldered past Harris, who cried out, “But! But! But! I say! No dogs allowed!” and ascended the wide staircase with Fidget and Swinburne at his heels. To their left, portraits of the Empire’s most celebrated explorers were hanging crookedly. Dr. Livingstone had a hole in his forehead and Mungo Park was upside down.

They passed along a wood-panelled hallway to the clubroom. The normally impressive chamber was in disarray. The mirror behind the bar was broken. The carpet was strewn with fragments of glasses and bottles. Tables and chairs were splintered and overturned.

There were only eight men present, three of them staff, who were assiduously cleaning the mess.

“No Spruce,” Burton murmured, “but I see old Findlay by the window. Perhaps he can point us in the right direction.”

Arthur Findlay, a lean-faced individual, was sitting in an armchair, reading a newspaper through
pince-nez
spectacles, apparently oblivious to the signs of chaos that surrounded him. He looked up as they approached, sprang to his feet, and clasped Burton’s hand in greeting.

“I say! Beastly Burton! How the deuce are you, old fellow? Been brawling again, I see. Here, last night, was it? I’ve heard rumours of a wild animal on the rampage.”

“Hallo, Arthur. I’ll confess to a slight spat, but it wasn’t here. Have you met Algernon Swinburne?”

“Hallo, lad. You’re the poet, aren’t you? Super! Simply super!”

“What ho! What ho! What ho!” Swinburne returned. He pointed down to the basset hound. “Have you met the mutt? His name is Beelzebub, Savage Fiend of Hell.”

“Fidget,” Burton corrected.

“Lovely breed,” Findlay observed. “Bassett hound, what! Very placid. Wouldn’t say boo to a goose.”

“Ha!” Swinburne exclaimed.

The geographer grinned at him. “I say, your hair is as fiery as our new flora, lad. Baffling, the flowers, hey? Perfectly extraordinary. What the devil? What the very devil?”

Burton said, “On which subject, we’re looking for Richard Spruce. Any idea where he might be?”

“The botanist fellow? In the Cauldron, I believe.”

“The East End? Why?”

“Ashes, Burton! Ashes! A fine growth medium and the area offers no restriction, what!”

It made sense. The terrible slums and tenements of the crime-riddled East End—the Cauldron—had, last November, been destroyed by the city’s worst fire since 1666. Despite a particularly wet winter, the area had smouldered for weeks afterward. It was cool now, but rebuilding hadn’t yet commenced.

“Join me for drinkies?” Findlay suggested.

“Certainly,” Swinburne said.

“No,” Burton countered. “We’re on a mission, Arthur. We’ll go straight to Spruce.”

Minutes later, they were back out in Whitehall Place. Swinburne whistled piercingly for a cab—causing Fidget to bark and Burton to wince—then took off his hat and waved it at a hansom while jumping up and down. “Hey there! Hey! Cab! Over here! I say! Cabbie!”

The vehicle swerved and pulled to a stop beside them.

“No need ter get a bee in yer bonnet,” the driver said. “I saw yer.”

“The Cauldron!” Swinburne cried out. “And don’t spare the blessed horses!”

“I ain’t got no ’orses. It’s a steam engine, see?” The driver jerked his chin at the machine chugging in front of him.

“Well, don’t spare that then!” Swinburne shrilled.

He climbed aboard.

Burton gave the driver an apologetic look, lifted Fidget into the carriage, followed, and sat. As the conveyance jolted into motion, he said, “Why the histrionics, Algy?”

Swinburne clapped his hands in Burton’s face. “To keep you in the here and now. By golly, to think we spent the past hour together and you didn’t even know it. Don’t you even recall my limerick?”

“Limerick?”

“An engineer by the name of John Kent, had a tool most remarkably bent, his wife bore the brunt, when it—”

“Stop! I assure you, I’m entirely in the present.”

“This one?”

“Yes, this one.”

Despite Burton’s protest, Swinburne regaled him with bawdy poems and jokes all the way to Aldgate, where the hansom stopped, the hatch in the roof lifted, and the driver shouted down, “Can’t go any farther, gents.”

His passengers disembarked. Swinburne fished a shilling from his pocket and passed it up, his manner distracted, his eyes not straying from the heaped foliage that surrounded them.

“Two and six,” the driver said.

“Here.” Burton passed up the remainder of the fare. “Thank you, driver.”

The man took the coins and gazed around. “I were here three days ago, an’ all this weren’t. Where’d the blessed things come from? What are they? Roses? Poppies? Gladioli?”

“I haven’t the foggiest idea,” Burton replied.

The carriage departed. Swinburne, throwing out his arms, twirled on the spot and laughed, “A red garden! London has become a red garden! Ouch! I say! Keep that blasted dog away from my feet, will you?”

“Sorry,” Burton said.

They picked their way along the street, stepping through tangled growth, rounded a corner, and passed the fire-damaged skeleton of a tenement building.

They stopped. They stared.

The ruined Cauldron lay ahead.

Burton had expected to see a great plain of ash from which the stumps of burned buildings jutted. Instead, he saw a thick jungle of the brightest reds.

“My hat!” Swinburne whispered. “How has it grown so fast? We’ll never find Spruce among that lot!”

Burton cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Spruce! I say! Spruce! Are you there?”

After a moment, a faint voice sounded. “Hallo! Who’s that?”

“I’m Burton! Where are you, old chap?”

“Over here!”

“Where?”

“Here!”

“Keep calling, we’ll join you!”

They moved forward with Fidget squeezing through the undergrowth beside them. After a few steps, the plants closed overhead and progress became difficult.

“We?” came a faint cry. “We who?”

“I’m with the poet Algernon Swinburne!” Burton pushed into a tangle of leaves and twisting branches, exotic blooms and weird gourd-like fruits. Swinburne reached out and touched one of the latter. “Fruiting after just a few hours? I feel like I’m dreaming.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” the king’s agent agreed. “Not even in Africa.”

“Poet?” Spruce cried out. He sounded closer.

“Seeking inspiration!” Swinburne called. “I’m writing a verse entitled ‘O Pruning Shears, Wherefore Art Thou When I Need Thee?’”

The chuckled response was plainly audible, and the next moment they broke through into a clearing and saw Spruce standing in its centre. “Hallo, Sir Richard, Mr. Swinburne.”

Spruce was a long-limbed fellow with curly but receding hair and a beard peppered with grey. His manner, as he shook their hands, was friendly but reserved, his eyes evading theirs in a fashion that struck Burton as diffident rather than shifty.

“What do you make of it, old chap?” the king’s agent asked. “Have you seen anything like this before?”

“Not at all. It’s utterly fantastic. The rate of growth is simply staggering, yet the species—whatever it is—appears more suited to the humidity and heat of central Africa than to a cold British winter.”

“Is that where the seeds have come from?”

“I would say so.”

Spruce squatted and gestured for Burton and Swinburne to follow him down. The latter manoeuvred carefully to ensure that his buttocks were facing away from Fidget.

Spruce said, “Look at this.” He used his right hand to scrape away snow until a layer of ash was revealed, then dug a little more, exposing a tangle of thin white roots.

“It has a fibrous and propagative root system with a plenitude of rhizomes, so that while one plant may sprout from the seed, a great many more will then sprout from the expanding roots. But here’s the peculiar thing—” Spruce dug at the ash until he’d made a shallow trench between the trunks of two tall, thick bushes. “Do you see what I mean?”

Burton examined the exposed roots. “As you said, both plants have grown from a single artery.”

“Ah,” Spruce responded. “That’s the thing. These particular ones haven’t. I can see from their stage of development that they were both seedlings.”

Burton used his forefinger to trace the path of one particular root. “But this joins them.”

“Exactly. Every seed-born plant has extended roots to its fellows, and those roots have merged with one another. It’s almost as if all of this—” He stood and held his arms out to encompass all the verdure, “is a single organism.”

Swinburne asked, “And its growth? Have you an explanation? A theory?”

“None. Were I not witnessing it with my own eyes, I should say it’s impossible. All this—in two days!”

Burton turned and gazed at the leaves, flowers and fruits.

Spruce asked, “Did you encounter anything like it during your expedition to the Central Lakes?”

“Nothing close,” Burton answered. “Nothing even with this hue.”

“Then, if you’ll pardon the question, why are you here, Sir Richard? I wasn’t aware that you counted botany among your interests.”

“I’m a hobbyist, nothing more, but this phenomenon is so thoroughly outré that it’s piqued my curiosity.”

“I can certainly understand that.”

“If you find out anything more, would you let me know? I live at fourteen Montagu Place.”

“For sure.”

“Thank you. We’ll not interrupt your research any further.”

After bidding the botanist farewell, Burton, Swinburne and Fidget headed back the way they’d come.

“We didn’t learn much,” Swinburne ruminated. “What now?”

“We’ll drop in on my pharmacist, Mr. Shudders.”

“Why?”

“He supplies me with Saltzmann’s Tincture.”

Swinburne screeched, “What? What? What? The drug Sadhvi Raghavendra has repeatedly warned you against is sold by a man named
Shudders
—and still you gulp it down? I think you might be the most ridiculous fellow I’ve ever met!”

“That, Algernon, is because, unlike me, you’ve never had the advantage of encountering yourself.”

“But—for crying out loud!—you’re buying more of the foul poison? Your addiction is beyond the bounds! Must I gather the Cannibals and have them help me lock you away until the dependency has passed?”

“I simply want to know where he gets the tincture from.”

“Why?”

“Because I think it’s the cause of my visits to variant histories.”