The Return of the Discontinued Man (A Burton & Swinburne Adventure) (33 page)

When Burton glanced back before passing through a doorway, it was from such an angle that, due to the spotlight reflecting into the engineer’s shadowed eye sockets, it almost appeared as if two little glowing pupils were watching them depart.

An illusion.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel was dead.

“What’s your opinion, Sadhvi?” Burton asked.

The king’s agent was sitting in the lounge of the
Orpheus
with Raghavendra, Swinburne, Gooch, Trounce, Krishnamurthy, Lawless, Wells, Farren, and the Cannibals—Patricia Honesty, Marianne Smith and Lorena Brabrooke.

“Daniel was worst affected,” Raghavendra said. “You, Richard, considerably less so, while Algy and Mick were dazed but remained coherent.” She patted Swinburne’s knee. “Our resident poet appears to have a strong resistance to what Mr. Wells has dubbed
time shock
.”

Wells said, “I compare it to the disorientation one experiences when travelling in an exotic culture, but it’s far more pernicious.”

Raghavendra said to Burton, “Your history as an explorer has given you a degree of resilience—”

“Not enough,” he interrupted. “I don’t recall a damned thing about our return from the museum.”

“Whereas Mick,” she pressed on, “is only fifty-four years ahead of his native time period, so 2022 feels a little more familiar to him.”

Farren blew cigarette smoke out through his nostrils, obviously not in full agreement.

“On this occasion, poor Daniel bore the brunt,” Raghavendra said.

Trounce looked across to Gooch and muttered, “And I know exactly how you felt.”

Gooch compressed his lips, nodded at the detective inspector, and asked Raghavendra, “What makes Algernon more resilient, do you think?”

“He has a unique brain,” she responded. “He’s extremely odd.”

“Steady on!” the poet squealed. He jerked his leg, convulsed an elbow, and crossed his eyes.

“It’s apparent to us all,” Burton observed, “that his brain is arranged in a different manner to the normal.”

“Disarranged, I should say,” Trounce muttered.

“I say! Let’s settle with
unique
, shall we?”

Burton continued, “My fear is that, for the rest of us, the effects are liable to get worse and the recovery time—providing we
can
recover—considerably extended. On this occasion, it’s taken five days for us to properly regain our faculties. We’ve been safe enough, cooped up aboard this Concorde, hidden away in Bendyshe Bay—but what will we find at our next stop? What if the bay no longer belongs to the Cannibal Club?”

“The groundwork laid by your brother and Thomas Bendyshe back in the 1860s was pure genius,” Patricia Honesty said. “It’s endured all this time, and, with each successive generation, the Bendyshes have developed it and adjusted it to suit the period. I’m pretty certain the bay will stay in our hands, and if it doesn’t, the Cannibals will have plenty of time to find another means to keep you safe.”

“Be that as it may, we need our wits about us, and we’ve come to the point where the doses of Saltzmann’s required to counter the time shock are almost as ruinous as the condition itself. The bottles delivered in the Beetle’s final shipment aren’t nearly as addictive as those that preceded them, but we still have to be cautious with the medicine.”

“Ha!” Swinburne cried out. “You’ve changed your tune.”

Sadhvi Raghavendra nodded her agreement.

“Nevertheless,” Burton said.

“We’re not even halfway through our voyage,” Trounce observed. “How are we to endure the rest?”

“Nine years away from the halfway mark,” Krishnamurthy added. “A hundred and eighty years until 2202, and I doubt our stay there will be brief.”

“Give me a bottle of the tincture,” Patricia Honesty interrupted. “I should have thought of this before. Chemistry has advanced. We’ll analyse it. Reproduce it. Or something similar.”

Her daughter gave a gesture of approval. “In the space of fifty-four years, we’ll probably create something considerably more effective and without any addictive qualities.”

“You’ll have twice as long,” Burton said. “I intend just one more stop before our target date. If Spring Heeled Jack has integrated himself with this Turing Fulcrum of yours, he has power over a considerable portion of the world. Let’s see what he makes of it by 2130. Will one of your number join us?”

“Not this time,” Patricia Honesty said. She handed him
The History of the Future
, volume three. “We haven’t the personnel to spare. Besides, there’s a little something we’ve been experimenting with that makes it unnecessary for us to supplement your crew. Hopefully, you’ll see what I mean a hundred and eight years from now.”

A little over a century later, the chrononauts gathered by the ship’s hatch and welcomed a single Cannibal aboard. His name was Thomas Bendyshe.

“You’re the spitting image of your ancestor!” Burton exclaimed as he shook the man’s hand.

“Hallo!” Bendyshe said. “I’m a great deal of him, but explanations must wait until later. First, let’s replace your bracelets and transfer you to the new
Orpheus
.”

Though he didn’t appear to do anything to prompt it, the bands around the chrononauts’ wrists instantly snapped open and slid down to their knuckles. Bendyshe collected the bracelets and put them into a cloth bag. Setting this aside, he then took a small container of pills from his pocket and distributed them among the chrononauts, two each, a blue one and a yellow one. “Swallow. They’ll release AugMems, CellComps, BioProcs and other nanomechs into your bloodstream.”

From his visions of Edward Oxford, Burton vaguely comprehended these terms. He knew that AugMems were capable of overlaying a man’s perception of reality with an artifice. Oxford had used them in his suit’s helmet, so when he arrived in 1840 to observe the attempt on Queen Victoria’s life, it would initially resemble his own time. He’d planned to slowly reduce the AugMems’ influence, revealing the reality of the past little by little. In the event, he’d acted too eagerly, removing his headpiece moments after his arrival, exposing himself to the past all at once. Burton was sure the resultant shock played its part in Oxford’s subsequent decision to interfere with his ancestor’s assassination attempt.

“Nanomechs,” he said, testing the word. Its meaning played at the peripheries of his mind; Oxford’s knowledge, not his own.

“Molecular-sized technology,” Bendyshe said, “blending biological and artificial components.”

“By Jove!” Trounce muttered in a sarcastic tone. “I’m glad you’ve cleared that up.”

“Are they safe?” Herbert Wells—now fully recovered—asked.

“Perfectly,” Bendyshe responded. “They’ll integrate without any ill effects. They’ll carry your false identities, in case the authorities check, and will also enhance your senses.”

“I’m in,” Mick Farren announced. He swallowed the pills.

“Ah yes, the 1960s,” Bendyshe said. He laughed. “I’m afraid they’re not recreational pharmaceuticals, Mr. Farren.”

“No? Enhance in what way, then?”

“They’ll show you whatever the government wants you to see.”

Farren made a noise as if choking and stuck out his tongue, trying to regurgitate the pills. He spat an epithet that caused Sadhvi Raghavendra’s eyes to widen. “Now you bloody well tell me!”

“Mr. Farren, your misgivings are entirely justified,” Bendyshe said. “Fortunately, we Cannibals have developed a means to intercede with the nanomechs’ functioning and turn them to our advantage. Provided you behave normally, nothing about you will raise suspicion. In addition, you’ll not register on any surveillance net, your movements will be cloaked, and communications between us will evade all monitoring.”

“That,” Farren replied, “I like.”

“Providing we behave normally,” Swinburne echoed doubtfully.

“Algy has a point,” Burton said. “To us, what you might regard as normal becomes ever more abnormal the farther forward into history we travel. There is also the matter of our behaviour being affected by the environment. Will the AugMems cause us to perceive this future world as a copy of our own? Do they render Saltzmann’s Tincture unnecessary?”

“No, Sir Richard, there’s a very good reason why they can’t give you an illusion of 1860s London. You’ll understand why later. However, there’s a compound in the yellow pill that’ll act much like Saltzmann’s, only without the side effects. You’ll need to take one every twenty-fours hours. I’ll leave you with a supply.”

“Then Patricia Honesty was true to her word,” Burton noted.

“She was always the most reliable of us,” Farren murmured. A strange expression crossed his face. Burton sympathised. It was difficult to process the notion that people who were alive yesterday were now long gone.

“If you all follow my lead,” Bendyshe said, “you’ll be fine.”

Sadhvi Raghavendra sighed. “I’m not wildly enthused by the prospect, gentlemen, but nothing ventured—” She swallowed the pills. Her colleagues followed suit.

Bendyshe stepped back to the hatch. He signalled to a group waiting outside the Concorde. They responded by ascending the stairs, entering the ship, and silently filing past the chrononauts.

“My team will carry your luggage to the new ship before transplanting the Nimtz generator and the babbage. Captain Lawless, Mr. Gooch, Mr. Krishnamurthy, will you assist with the engineering?”

“Of course,” Lawless said. “We’re becoming rather adept at it.”

“For the rest of you, it’s off to London we go.”

“Our third visit to the capital of the future,” Burton commented. “What shall we find there this time?”

“You’ll see indisputable evidence that Spring Heeled Jack is manipulating history. It will, I hope, give you some idea of what you’ll face when you reach 2202. As for whether it’s safe or not, we’ve done everything we can to disguise your presence. You should be able to move around freely and undisturbed. I do urge you, though, to watch your words in any circumstance where you might be overheard. Information is currency, and informers are everywhere.”

Burton gestured for Bendyshe to proceed. The Cannibal led them outside. It was an overcast night, and Bendyshe Bay was ill lit. They could see nothing beyond the field in which the Concorde had landed, though, in truth, they didn’t try, for their eyes were fixed in incredulity upon the two flying vessels beside which their own had landed.

“Rotorships!” Captain Lawless exclaimed.

Bendyshe pointed to the vessel on their left. “The
Orpheus
.”

“But it looks identical my old ship,” the airman observed.

“It
is
your old ship, sir. We have preserved it all these years. And it’s a good thing we did. Nowadays, that is the standard of technology available to the masses.”

Burton and Lawless exchanged a puzzled look. The king’s agent said, “Has there been some manner of reversal?”

“There has—a result of the failed uprising of the 2080s,” the Cannibal responded. They started across the grass toward the vessel. “The Empire was torn apart by seven years of rioting and civil disobedience. The people attempted to throw off the shackles imposed on them—literally, in the form of the bracelets—by the government. They failed. As a consequence of their actions, the division between the privileged minority and the underprivileged masses widened even farther. The latter were denied most of the advanced technologies. For them, it went retrograde. The more primitive varieties of steam machines were resurrected. The underclass has become very much like the workers of your own period, except they hardly know it.”