The Return of the Discontinued Man (A Burton & Swinburne Adventure) (4 page)

“Enough! Enough!” Burton protested. “Will you both please give it a rest? I shan’t touch the stuff, I give you my word.”

Monckton Milnes responded with a brusque nod. He stepped aside as the other Cannibals crowded forward to voice their consternation and amazement. Burton endured their attentions. He was aware that Monckton Milnes and Swinburne were both watching and assessing him, and it irritated him that they considered themselves better judges of his condition than he. At the same time, he was touched, and cursed himself for a fool that he harboured such an idiotic spark of resentment.

Too much self-sufficiency. Why be so contained? Few men have such loyal friends. Swinburne, Monckton Milnes, Bendyshe, Bradlaugh—all of them. They are not attached to you. They are integral.

He felt the void that marked Isabel’s absence.

Bendyshe was hollering, “Bartolini will never forgive you, old thing! You went straight through his bloomin’ window! The restaurant is wrecked! Why aren’t you dead?”

Burton thought,
I might as well be
.

Swinburne grabbed at a hand strap as the landau in which he and Burton were riding bounced over the kerb while rounding a corner. He coughed and muttered, “Drat the thing!” He was referring to the carriage’s side window, which was jammed half open, allowing smoke from the vehicle’s steam engine to coil in to assault their eyes and noses.

“Spring Heeled Jack!” he exclaimed. “How is it possible? I thought Edward Oxford was dead.”

Burton, grimacing with the pain caused by the jolt, had finally located a Manila cheroot in his waistcoat pocket, and now shakily held a lucifer to it. He set about adding to the abrasive atmosphere. Blood was congealing on his chin and neck, and his tattered left sleeve was wet with it.

He gathered his thoughts for a moment then said, “Let’s consider what we already know. Oxford was from the future. In the year 2202—”

“Inconceivably distant!”

“—he created a wearable machine, comprised of a one-piece skintight suit with a flat disk on its chest, a black helmet that encased his head fully but for the face, a cloak, and boots to which powerfully sprung stilts were attached. These latter were necessary to propel him into the air, so that nothing touched him, there to be thrown backward or forward through history by the microscopic components of his device.”

“I can see why you’ve delayed your translating of
A Thousand Nights and a Night
,” Swinburne said. “You must find its tales positively pedestrian.” He produced a flask from inside his coat and unscrewed its top.

Burton grunted his agreement. “Oxford leaped back to the year 1840 to observe his ancestor’s failed attempt to assassinate Queen Victoria. He intervened, inadvertently caused the assassination to succeed, and accidentally killed his forebear. His suit, badly damaged, then threw him farther back through time to 1837.”

Swinburne took a swig, smacked his lips, and passed the flask to Burton. “He changed history and wiped himself out of the future. What an idiot.”

“Indeed,” Burton agreed. He took a drink and returned the vessel to the poet, wincing as brandy burned the cuts where the insides of his cheeks had been mashed against his teeth. He sucked at his cigar. His ribs creaked. They were badly bruised. Through billowing smoke, he went on, “Oxford had caused time to bifurcate. There was now the original history and, running parallel to it, a new one in which he was trapped. His prolonged exposure to the past caused him to rapidly lose his mind. He embarked upon a desperate hunt for the woman his ancestor would have married.”

“Meaning to impregnate her in order to reestablish the chain of descent that would eventually lead to his own birth,” Swinburne said. He giggled and hiccupped. “Only a lunatic could
conceive
of such a scheme! Please forgive the rotten pun.”

Burton waited for the landau to pass a loudly clanking pantechnicon. When he could again be heard, he said, “He was repeatedly spotted by the public, who regarded him as something of a bogeyman and named him Spring Heeled Jack. Meanwhile, the man who gave him shelter relayed to Isambard Kingdom Brunel some of Oxford’s hints about the machineries of 2202. Employing the materials and knowledge of our age, the great engineer acted upon this information, and, over the course of two decades, the British Empire quickly filled with his diverse and ever more eccentric inventions.”

Swinburne gestured at the interior of the landau. “Behold! A horseless carriage! The great age of steam!”

The vehicle’s motor produced a horrible grinding noise followed by a thunderous belch. They heard their driver swearing at it.

“Yes, but our history is not the one we’re discussing. For us, now, it is 1860. Where Oxford was trapped, the next significant event takes place a year hence, when a version of me—who, to avoid confusion, we shall refer to by the name he’ll later adopt, Abdu El Yezdi—will learn the truth about Oxford. He’ll also discover that a cabal of scientists intends to seize the time suit, repair it, and use it to create multiple histories in which to experiment with evolution and eugenic manipulation. To prevent this, and hoping to forestall any further interference with the flow of time, he’ll break Oxford’s neck and will take possession of the suit.”

“What a brute!” Swinburne muttered.

“He is—or was—or will be—me.”

“As I said.”

“Oaf.”

“I hope they have some brandy at the power station. My supply is dwindling fast. Are we nearly there?”

Burton peered out of the window. “We’re on Piccadilly. Just passing Green Park.”

“How very germane. That’s where Victoria was gunned down.”

“It’s snowing again.”

“Red?”

“White.” Burton considered his cigar and calculated how many more puffs he could drag out of it. It was, he concluded, good for another four or five. He moved his wounded arm and winced, tried and failed to position it in a manner that hurt less. The pain of his wounds was intensifying. It caused him to lose track of his thoughts. He furrowed his brow, gritted his teeth, and tried to battle through the discomfort.

“1862,” Swinburne prompted.

“Ah yes, a year after Oxford’s death. El Yezdi will discover that parts of the suit contain tiny shards taken from one of the three mythical “Eyes of Nāga,” rare black diamonds, each a fragment of a fallen aerolite. Remarkably, they’re able to store and maintain subtle electrical fields, such as those generated by the human brain. My
doppelgänger
, setting out to find all three stones, will learn that in every existing variation of history, a devastating world war is coming. During that conflict, the diamonds will be used to psychically enhance three great dictators: Britain’s Aleister Crowley, Prussia’s Friedrich Nietzsche, and Russia’s Grigori Rasputin. One of those men, Rasputin, will send his mind back through time from the year 1914 in order to alter the course of the war.”

“My head hurts,” Swinburne complained.

“My everything hurts,” Burton responded. His hand drifted to a pocket. He felt the outline of the Saltzmann’s bottle.

Don’t. You gave your word.

Swinburne said, “Your counterpart will defeat the Russian and cause him to die in 1914, two years earlier than he would otherwise have done.”

“Resulting in yet another split in history. El Yezdi will become aware that such bifurcations can’t be controlled and are occurring in profusion.”

A flurry of snow blew in through the jammed window. Swinburne lifted his top hat from his knees, upended it, and tapped it with his knuckles. Snowflakes rained onto his boots. “Really,” he muttered. “We might just as well sit on the roof.”

“So,” Burton said, “having gained through his battle with Rasputin two of the Eyes of Nāga, El Yezdi will organise an expedition to recover the third, which is located in the Mountains of the Moon close to the source of the Nile. He’ll be challenged by a rival group financed by Prussia, and the two safaris will fight their way across Africa, unaware that they’re both being manipulated by the Nāga, a prehistoric race of intelligent reptiles whose consciousness has been trapped in the stones for millennia.”

“As if all the rest wasn’t sufficiently fantastic,” Swinburne said, “now we have lizard men. Shall we get drunk and forget all this nonsense, Richard? We could live out our remaining days in a pleasant haze, oblivious to all absurdities bar our own.”

Burton dropped his cigar stub and crushed it beneath his heel. “Pass that flask.”

“Hurrah! He toasts the motion!”

The king’s agent imbibed and returned the near-empty container. “I might be tempted, but I fear the absurd has a tendency to seek us out wherever we might be, as the events of this evening have demonstrated.”

The landau lurched to a halt, there came a knock on the roof, a hatch lifted, and the driver looked down at them. “’Scuse us, gents. Won’t be two shakes of a lamb’s tail. Got to shovel more coal into the furnace. Just a tick. Half a minute. Quick as a flash, like. I shan’t keep you. It won’t take long.”

The hatch slammed shut.

“He certainly took his time telling us how fast he’s going to be,” Swinburne observed. “Where were we? Ah, yes, Abdu El Yezdi is going to realise that the Nāga arranged his experiences from the start. That’s when his trials will really begin.”

“Quite so. The reptiles will tattoo black diamond dust into his scalp, it being required for a technique they’ll then employ to send him forward through time to 1914, where for five years he’ll endure the terrible global conflict and witness its devastating effect on Africa. Traumatised, with his memory in pieces, he’ll evade the British psychic Aleister Crowley and make his way back to the Mountains of the Moon, there to return to 1863. The Nāga will inform him that the experience was a parting gift, intended to give him a better understanding of the nature of time. They’ll then be liberated from the diamond, which El Yezdi will take back with him to England.”

“As gifts go, that one was lousy.”

“I can’t disagree. It certainly influences his subsequent determination to restore history to its original single stream. Emulating the Nāga’s method, and taking the diamonds and damaged time suit with him, he’ll travel back to Green Park in 1840.”

“Hooray! We can return to the past tense. It feels so much more
normal
.”

“I quite agree.”

The carriage rocked as the driver climbed back up to his seat. The engine gave a roar, settled into a more subdued chugging, and the vehicle jerked back into motion. Burton hissed and clutched at his arm.

“All right?” Swinburne murmured.

“Yes. So my counterpart waited for history to repeat itself, which it did: Edward Oxford arrived in 1840, having jumped from 2202. My other self immediately killed him and took possession of his undamaged suit. Thus Oxford couldn’t be thrown to 1837, history wouldn’t be altered, and everything would be back as it should be.”

“Except it wasn’t. Somehow, he failed to prevent Victoria’s assassination.” Swinburne shook the now empty flask and heaved a forlorn sigh.

“Correct. El Yezdi had created yet another strand of history,
this
one that you and I inhabit, and he was trapped in it, knowing that a younger version of himself, the nineteen-year-old
me
, was already here.”

“Two Burtons,” Swinburne mused. “How perfectly dreadful.”

The one at his side gave a wry smile. “I’m glad I was oblivious to the fact until last year.”

The poet held up the empty brandy flask. “I wish I was a little more oblivious. All this is giving me a terrible thirst. I also feel obliged to remind you that our current conversation was begun with the intention of perhaps shedding light on what or who it was that wrecked Bartolini’s and beat you black and blue. We appear to be no closer to any insight.”

“I want to outline events in their proper order that we may think clearly.”

“Where hopping through time is concerned, I’m not sure there’s any such thing as a proper order. And do you really think clarity of thought is possible after going through a window headfirst? You’re ambitious, I’ll give you that. Well, carry on. You have my undivided attention.”

“Now that the brandy is gone.”