The Return of the Discontinued Man (A Burton & Swinburne Adventure) (35 page)

“They do,” Bendyshe confirmed. “The government came close to making them illegal but then realised that people speak before they think when under the influence.”

“Must you keep calling upon your hat, Algernon?” Trounce complained. “Confound it! Why does no one wear them anymore? I feel naked without my bowler.”

Farren looked this way and that, frowned at the hissing traffic, and muttered, “Is that music?”

“I hear it too,” Herbert Wells said. “In the background.”

“Muzak,” Bendyshe said. “Ubiquitous, bland and characterless.” He said to Farren, “You thought rock and roll would conquer the world. It didn’t. Muzak did. It’s the universal temper suppressant. An insidious tranquilliser.”

“A horrendous hum,” Swinburne added. “A detrimental drone.”

Bendyshe nodded his agreement. “A puerile pacifier.”

Farren gritted his teeth and fisted his hands. “Oh man,” he growled. “What I wouldn’t give for a Deviants gig, right here, right now!”

“You’d be shot dead on the spot,” Bendyshe said.

Farren suddenly relaxed and chuckled. “Yeah, that was always the risk when I got on stage.”

Staying close together they moved away from the minibus and joined the pedestrians flocking into Oxford Street. To Burton, it felt just as if they were joining the protest again, except the people—rather than being a noisy and colourful gathering with a purpose—were nothing more than innumerable and near-silent citizens squeezing along a highway too narrow for such a dense crowd.

Sadhvi walked at his side. Wells and Swinburne were just in front; both small, both squeaky-voiced, both looking eagerly back and forth, weathering the assault on their senses. Behind the king’s agent, Trounce and Farren made quiet comments to one another; an odd combination, a police detective and a proto-revolutionary, united by a mutual disapproval of this confusing future world.

Guided by Thomas Bendyshe and jostled by the city’s denizens, they shouldered past glass-faced shop fronts and comprehended nothing of what was displayed within, saw peculiar vehicles slide by and had no understanding of what their function might be, read signs and posters the words of which signified nothing to them, and were, without respite, subjected to the steady beat and sinuous melodies of soft and relentlessly insipid “Muzak.”

Burton looked into the faces of the people and observed an incongruous mix of contented smiles and shifty eyes. Some, who were either tall or short or thin or fat, somehow left him with the impression they were just the opposite of what they appeared, as if a slender passerby was secretly obese, or a diminutive person a covert giant. This, together with the unaccustomed cleanliness of the city, gave the sense that he was among actors and moving amid a stage’s cardboard scenery. There was no depth. No connection. No meaning.

Why was the traffic moving at such a sluggish velocity? Why did the quiet hiss of the vehicles, the subdued murmur of the pedestrians, and the steady low drone of the Muzak, amount to so much silence? Where was the life?

“The shadows,” Sadhvi whispered.

“What about them?” he asked.

“They don’t match.”

She was right. The many electric street lamps, cutting through the permanent gloom at the base of the towers, endowed every individual with multiple shadows. For the most part, due to the crush of people, these couldn’t be seen separately, but occasionally there came a break in the crowd and the shadows were made visible. Burton saw them and was horrified. Most were normal but many were misshapen blots or spiked puddles or stringy smears or snarled scribbles—not at all the contours of human beings.

“By Allah’s beard!” he hissed. “What are we looking at?”

Wells glanced back at him and made a gesture, obviously having noticed the same. Burton responded with a curt nod and swallowed nervously.

They walked on. The king’s agent kept feeling things bumping against his boots, as if the pavement was as littered as those of the old East End, but when he looked down, there was nothing there.

Now and then, he became aware of apparently sourceless sounds—creaks and snaps and groans, the clip clop of horses’ hooves, the clank of a misaligned crankshaft, a hiss of pressurised steam—as though noises from his own London were somehow penetrating into this.

It’s my expectations
, he thought.
They’re imposing what I’m familiar with onto this wholly unfamiliar city
.

He was unnerved and disoriented. There was a lump in his throat. He longed to see top hats and canes, parasols and bonnets, hansom cabs and horses, chugging steam engines and wobbling velocipedes.

Where has my London gone?

That struck him as a very uncharacteristic thought.

For all his life he’d felt an outsider. He’d cursed the ways and mores of his native land. It had rejected him, considered him too unorthodox, too untamed, and too unsophisticated. Society damned him for admiring the Arab and condemned him for mixing with African savages. Ruffian Dick! Beastly Burton!

Yet, how he wanted to be back there.

For perhaps the first time in his life, he felt helpless, and he felt humility. He realised that he had, in the past, conducted himself from a position of self-appointed superiority. Yes, he’d been an unwavering proponent of Arabic culture; yes, he’d dispassionately observed tribal societies; but he’d done so as a wayward son of the Empire, knowing that, though it looked askance upon him, it was always there as a measure by which to judge.

Fool!
he thought.
Fool to think that you somehow existed outside of its confines. It made you!

And now he was, at one and the same time, home but as far from it as he’d ever been.

As they shoved their way around the corner into North Audley Street—a much different junction to the one he’d seen in ’68—he remembered his parents, how they’d dragged him from one place to the next, from Torquay to Tours, from Tours to Richmond, from Richmond to Blois, from Blois to Naples, from Naples to Pau, from Pau to Lucca, always moving, always compulsively restless, never giving him a moment to stop and form attachments, never a moment in which to simply belong.

He felt anger and sadness, resentment and self-pity.

Isabel. Isabel. Isabel. You were my hope, my foundation, my stability. Only through you could I be me. Why did you have to die?

In his mind’s eye, he saw her, waiting in a garden, with a tea cloth over her arm.

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.

“Damnation!” Burton muttered to himself. “Are my memories no longer my own?”

The chrononauts, led by Thomas Bendyshe, arrived once again in Grosvenor Square, the middle of which was, thankfully, a great deal less congested than last time. From here, the travellers gained a better view of the upper reaches of the city. London had achieved phenomenal heights. Its towers ascended to such a level their top storeys faded into the atmosphere and their internal heat generated clouds, which streamed from them in wispy trails.

The many walkways and—Burton now noticed—monorails were of such a multitude that it looked as if the city was entangled. Small flying machines buzzed hither and thither, and, at a higher altitude, massive airships floated. Many were like the
Orpheus
and
Mary Seacole
, airborne antiques, appearing entirely out of place. Others were smooth disks of silver or gold, their mode of propulsion invisible and mysterious.

“I see nothing of my own time,” Mick Farren said. “I might as well be on another planet.”

“I see the same shaped plot of land,” Detective Inspector Trounce observed, pointing around them. “This is still Grosvenor Square.” He shuddered. “I didn’t much enjoy what little I remember of my last visit.”

Farren indicated a tall pyramidal structure. “That’s where the American Embassy used to be.”

“It’s still the embassy,” Bendyshe said. He looked around, and when he was satisfied no one was close enough to eavesdrop, he continued, “It’s inhabited only by a few technicians nowadays. They oversee the equipment that broadcasts to your AugMems. The building is a part of an inner circle of establishments. From it and the others, a web of deception expands.”

“Inner circle,” Wells said. “And what is at its centre? The Turing Fulcrum?”

Bendyshe gazed at the embassy. “We think so.”

He waved the chrononauts across to an area beneath a leafy tree, which, when Burton placed his hand against its bark, proved to be of the material called plastic.

Nothing is real.

The king’s agent struggled to maintain a connection. His mind kept wandering, his attention being attracted by first one thing then another. His powers of analysis failed. Automatically, his hand went to his pocket, seeking Saltzmann’s. There was none.

“What you’ve seen so far is but a single layer of the illusion under which the population labours,” Bendyshe said. “I’ll now give you a taste of the rest. I’m adjusting your AugMems.”

He put his finger to his right earlobe and muttered, “Okay. Proceed.” Suddenly, he was enveloped by a colourful aura. Burton looked at his friends and saw that they, too, appeared to be generating beautiful halos.

“We are masquerading as the elite,” the Cannibal explained. “Thus we glow with the light of the upper classes. However, what we see is what the general populace sees. Look at the city’s citizens.”

Burton gazed across to the pavement. He saw, amongst the shuffling crowd, three people who were also surrounded by light. The rest were not. His eyes rested on a pedestrian. A calm voice whispered in his ear and caused him to jump in surprise. He heard the others utter sounds of astonishment.

John Thresher, cook, thirty-two years old. Three thousand two hundred and twenty-nine credits in debt. He plays poker. His wife has a lover. John hopes to win a fortune and lure her back, but he’s lost money eleven games in a row.

The king’s agent looked from person to person.

Teresa Chowdhury, child minder, nineteen years old. She is learning to read so she can train as a nurse. Her father tells her she has ideas above her station.

Cecilia Sanz Garcia, cleaner, forty-seven years old. She has pre-diabetes and a glandular disorder that causes extreme mood swings. She struggles with relationships.

Steven Powell, clerk, thirty-three years old. He suffers from shyness and has a tendency to stutter.

Blake Cresswell, baker, seventy-one years old. He’s never held a job for more than two years. He’s a convicted felon. His last crime, burglary, was committed twenty-seven years ago.

Mary Suzanne Clayton, metalsmith, twenty-four years old. She owns a small allotment from which vegetables are frequently stolen. She has hidden homemade wiretraps around its perimeter to catch the thieves.

“What’s this?” Sadhvi Raghavendra exclaimed.

“In your time,” Bendyshe replied, “I believe it was called
tittle tattle
.”

“Gossip?” she said.

“Yes. Everyone knows everyone else’s business. Only the upper classes are immune to the intrusion.”

“It’s a blasted liberty!” Trounce cried out. “By God! Has no one any privacy?”

“Only in their thoughts, and they have to be extremely cautious in expressing those, else they’ll certainly fall foul of informants. Anything that can possibly be interpreted as seditious is reported, and the punishments are brutal.”

“How can anyone think at all with all this horrible chattering in their ears?” Swinburne objected. “Can’t they turn it off?”

“Only the elite have that privilege. As for thinking, I suspect the system is expressly designed to discourage it.”

“Stop it, please,” Burton said. “It’s too much.”

Bendyshe touched his ear again and mumbled something. The whispering voice fell silent. The auras faded. “That,” he said, “is what the majority of the population must endure. Maximum distraction. Minimum meaning. Their existence is overflowing with inconsequential information. They drown in it. They are mesmerised by the trivial minutia of one another’s lives, and so the really big issues evade them. Questions pertaining to justice and human rights and the distribution of wealth, the preoccupations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are no longer asked.”