The Return of the Discontinued Man (A Burton & Swinburne Adventure) (42 page)

Sadhvi Raghavendra stopped and knocked something unspeakable from the heel of her left boot. “Are there no street-crabs in the twenty-third century, William?”

“The nanomechs are supposed to consume waste material and use it for fuel,” Trounce responded. “Unfortunately, down here it accrues faster than even they can manage.”

“I suspect,” Swinburne added, “that Spring Heeled Jack purposely allows a measure of waste matter to accumulate. Having the inhabitants of the Underground wallow in their own detritus gives them a constant reminder of their status.”

They rounded the corner and entered Baker Street.

IT IS UP TO YOU TO RESCUE HUMANITY! TOIL FOR THE ANGLO-SAXON EMPIRE! WE MUST MARCH FORTH AND LIBERATE THE WORLD FROM THE SAVAGERY OF SOCIALISM!

“Was the world similar to this in the original 2202, Richard?” Herbert Wells asked. “In the single history that existed before time bifurcated?”

“As shown to me by the sane fragment of Oxford?” Burton responded. “No, it wasn’t like this at all. Certainly, London had greatly expanded and was filled with tall towers, but I received no impression of such an atrocious divide, no sense of this inequality.”

“Hmm. Curious. Insanity aside, if the Spring Heeled Jack intelligence has its origins in a considerably more pleasant future than this, why has he created such a dreadful alternative? Whence this twisted vision?”

“Perhaps it has its roots in my time,” Burton answered. “It was in the nineteenth century that he lost his mind. He appears to have taken what he saw there and developed it along such abhorrent lines that this,” he gestured around them, “is the result.”

“Did our world really have such evil potential in it?” Raghavendra asked. “I thought us enlightened.”

“You believed what you were told,” Burton said, “but consider the Cauldron. Was it not an aspect of London that could easily be the progenitor of this?” He glanced at a thin ten-foot-tall, six-armed, four-legged figure that came tottering by like a tumbling stack of broom handles. It was wearing Army reds and an officer’s hat, which it doffed flamboyantly to him, murmuring, “My lord.”

Burton pulled his hood more tightly over his head. From its depths, he examined the crowd as it parted in front of his group, trudging past to his left and right. He saw dull, suffering eyes and gaunt faces. A great many of the Lowlies bobbed their heads or touched their foreheads in respect. All appeared disconcerted by the presence of these “Uppers.”

Stilted figures prowled among them. The crowd shied away from the constables as they approached and cast hard looks at their backs after they’d passed. The Underground, Burton felt, was a pressure cooker, ready to explode.

“William!” he said.

Trounce halted. “What is it?”

Burton pointed across to the middle of Baker Street where a tall plinth divided the thoroughfare. It bore a large statue of a young woman. A plaque, attached to the base, declared,
Her Majesty Queen Victoria, of the United Kingdoms of Europe, Africa and Australia, Defender of the Faith, Empress of India
.

“Yes,” Trounce said. “That’s her. She took the throne five years ago, our first monarch since the death of King George the Fifth in 1905.”

“I know who she is,” Burton said. “I’ve seen her before. She appeared before me when I donned the time suit’s helmet.”

“I say!” Swinburne exclaimed. “Really?”

“She is—was—Edward Oxford’s wife.” Burton rubbed the sides of his head, his brow furrowing. “I should know her name. I’m positive it isn’t Victoria, but it escapes me.”

“Whatever it is,” Trounce said, “Spring Heeled Jack obviously sought her out.”

“And has literally put her on a pedestal,” Swinburne quipped. “Would she have known what—who—he was?”

“No,” Burton said. “Remember, Oxford wiped himself out of history. From her perspective, he has never existed.”

“It must have come as quite a shock to her when she ascended to the throne, then.”

“Shhh!” Trounce hissed. With his eyes, he indicated a group of constables who’d just rounded the corner from Blandford Street.

Following the former detective inspector’s lead, the chrononauts stood casually and listened while he explained to them that “the Lowlies are the workhorses of the Empire. They take pride in their practicality, in their uncompromising ability to get a job done, and benefit from the spiritual cleansing that comes with hard toil.” He continued in this vein until the stilt men had passed, then chuckled and said, “Trounce of the Yard, deceiving the police. Who’d have thought?”

“And indulging in pure fantasy, too,” Swinburne added. “Spiritual cleansing, my foot!”

“Let’s push on,” Trounce said.

“Workhorses,” Raghavendra echoed, as they resumed walking, “but why so many in military uniform?”

“The Empire is mobilising,” Swinburne answered. “We are soon to move against what used to be the United States of America and the United Republics of Eurasia.”

“War?”

“My hat! Hardly that, Sadhvi! The U.S.A. and U.R.E. are in no condition to resist. They battled each other for so long, with us supplying the munitions, that their various countries are utterly ruined. Their populations are decimated, and the old borders have gone.”

“Are they still fighting each other?”

“If you believe the propaganda.”

“Which you shouldn’t,” Trounce put in. “The Cannibal Club has infiltrated our government’s records, which offer a story far different to that given the public.”

Burton looked up at a billboard. SOCIALISM IS THE DEATH OF CIVILISATION.

Trounce followed his eyes. “There’s no socialism. There’s no longer any conflict. There hasn’t been for a long time. Those vast regions of the Earth are now occupied by countless small communities, which somehow manage to survive in unutterably harsh conditions. They function under a self-regulating anarchism somewhat similar to that which existed in Africa before the Europeans and Arabs destroyed it.”

“Why the lies?” Raghavendra asked. “Why is the Anglo-Saxon Empire telling its people that the rest of the world is filled with—with—”

“Savage socialists,” Swinburne offered. “Permanently at each other’s throats.”

She nodded.

“Simply to mesmerise everyone into believing that this—” Trounce made an all-encompassing gesture, “is the superior civilisation and that it’s threatened from without.”

Swinburne added, “And also to justify our forthcoming invasions of America and Eurasia and our subjugation of their inhabitants.”

“If we don’t destroy the Turing Fulcrum,” Trounce said, “Spring Heeled Jack will conquer the world.”

“Bloody hell!” Burton responded.

“That,” Swinburne said, “is exactly what it will be.”

The lower end of Baker Street was lined by much higher buildings than they’d seen so far in this subterranean world, some of them almost touching the brick ceiling, and was teeming with even more of the hideously deformed Lowlies. When a pack of naked goat men bundled past, drunk, rowdy, stinking, and unashamedly aroused, Sadhvi Raghavendra said, “Can’t you enable our AugMems, William, so we can share their illusion of a better world?”

Trounce looked surprised. “Like in 2130, you mean? Did I not say? This is what they see. The real world. The illusion of cleanliness was slowly phased out during the later twenty-one hundreds. It had done its job. The policy of ‘know your place’ has, through various methods, been so consistently and insidiously driven into the population over the course of three centuries that it’s now instinctive and can be maintained with just basic propaganda and mildly tranquillising BioProcs.”

“It’s—it’s repugnant!” Wells spluttered.

“But there’s hope, Bertie,” Swinburne said. “Look.”

He pointed ahead at a large placard that had emerged from the mist ahead.

Burton stumbled to a halt and gazed in shock at it.

Floating over the street, it declared, “THE ENEMY IS AMONG US! THIS IS THE FACE OF THE SOCIALIST FIEND!” Beneath the glowing words, there was a portrait of a brutal and scarred face.

It was Burton’s own.

The chrononauts uttered sounds of incredulity.

“It’s what I’ve hinted at,” Trounce said. “Spring Heeled Jack obviously remembers you, Richard. Fears you.”

“I don’t understand,” Burton said. He looked down at Swinburne. “How does this offer hope?”

The poet gave a happy smile and a compulsive jerk of his shoulder. “By nature, the human race is very, very naughty.”

“What?” The king’s agent turned to Trounce, seeking a more cogent explanation.

Trounce said, “What Algy means is that if you tell a child not to do something without properly explaining why it mustn’t be done, you can be sure that, the moment your back is turned, the child will test the prohibition.”

“Spring Heeled Jack has overplayed his hand,” Trounce continued. “It requires only a spark to light the fuse.” He pointed up at the placard. “That face is the spark.”

“I think I understand,” Wells said softly, “When the government is perceived as the people’s enemy, the enemy of the government is perceived as the people’s friend.”

Swinburne reached out and squeezed Burton’s arm. “And when BioProcs stop tranquillising because, for example, the local transmitting station has been blown up by a dastardly member of the Cannibal Club, then—”

Burton cleared his throat. “I see.”

Trounce said, “No doubt your Mr. Grub is now busily making your presence known. It adds greater urgency to our mission. We have to destroy the Fulcrum before the people drive themselves into sufficient a frenzy to take action, else there’s little doubt that wholesale slaughter will ensue, first when the government attempts to quell our own insurgents, and then when it sends them to enslave the remains of our neighbouring empires.”

“By God, Trounce. Have you loaded so much onto my shoulders? I’m just an explorer, an anthropologist, a writer.”

“You’ve become a figurehead, too.”

I just want to go home.

Burton looked at his friends, his eyes clouded with distress, aware that he’d just thought the words that had driven his enemy over the brink and into madness.

He felt his heart throbbing, moved his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and exhaled with an audible shudder.

Burton had often regarded emotions as a phenomenon of the body rather than of the mind. It was the body that instilled fear when destruction threatened and joy when survival was assured. To now achieve what was expected of him, he knew he’d have to transcend those corporeal impulses. He must become all intellect. He must be as hard and as cold as metal.

He glanced once again at the placard before saying to Trounce in a flat tone, “Let’s get going.”

They waited while a group of spiderish women herded a flock of geese past, then moved on to the junction with Oxford Street, the whole length of which appeared to be a teeming marketplace. Over the rooftops opposite, dark smoke stained the atmosphere. There was much shouting, a few screams, and many people running, scampering, hopping or scuttling back and forth.

Gesturing at the mouth of a road on the other side of the thoroughfare, Trounce said, “Here we are again. North Audley Street. If we continue straight on, we’ll be back in old Grosvenor Square, with New Grosvenor Square overhead.”

“Bad memories,” Swinburne said. “Though they belong to my predecessor.”

“I suppose the commotion is what Grub was referring to?” Wells asked.

“Yes. Aboveground, the American Embassy is a burning wreck. Beneath it, some of the Underground’s ceiling has obviously fallen in. I hope there weren’t too many casualties. We’ll skirt around it. A little way eastward through the market then south into alleyways that’ll take us to Berkeley Square.”

“I’ve had unfortunate experiences in alleyways,” Burton grumbled. “Being held at gunpoint by you being one of them.”

Trounce laughed. “I recall I was masquerading as a fictional detective named Macallister Fogg at the time. A ridiculous farce. Did I ever apologise?”

“You didn’t need to. I thumped you on the chin.”

They walked through the market, passing stalls selling fruit and vegetables, meat and fish, clothes both newly made and second hand, pots and pans, brushes and cloths, tools and furniture; passing vendors of milk and tea and coffee, mulled wine and frothy ales, tinctures and pick-me-ups; passing tarot card readers and crystal ball gazers, palmists and phrenologists, astrologers who couldn’t see the sky and numerologists who probably couldn’t add up; passing four-armed jugglers and one-legged balancing acts, swan-necked singers and multi-limbed dancers, accordionists and violinists, deep-chested trombonists and bone-fisted drummers; passing emaciated beggars and obscenely curvaceous prostitutes, tousle-haired ragamuffins and shuffling oldsters, sad-faced young women and flint-eyed young men; passing vendors of corn on the cob and baked potatoes, winkles, mussels and jellied eels, roasted nuts and toffee apples.

It was as if Burton’s London had been revived in an outrageously distorted form and buried beneath the surface of the Earth.

They walked on until they were almost opposite the spot where Shudders’ Pharmacy had once been. There was no sign of it now, a slumping tenement having occupied the site.

“Here,” Trounce said, and led them into a narrow alley between two immense arching pylons.

Rats scampered out of their path.

Trounce used the heel of his boot to shove a pile of rotting wooden crates out of the way.

They moved on in silence.

Rounding a corner, they were brought up short when a headless man jumped out of a shadowed niche and brandished a knife at them. He was naked from the waist up and had a coarse-featured face in his chest. “I durn’t bloody care. I durn’t. I’d rather cop it wiv summick in me pockits than nuffink. Give me what yer got. Anyfink. Give me. Give me, or I’ll slice the bleedin’ lot a yer.”

Swinburne stepped forward. “My dear fellow,” he said. “You have been liberated. We are your saviours, not your enemy. Do not misdirect your newfound discontent.”

“Shut yer mouth yer bleedin’ midget an’ hand summick over.”

The poet sighed. “Then with regret, I have no choice but to give you this.”