The Return of the Discontinued Man (A Burton & Swinburne Adventure) (43 page)

He drew his pistol from his waistband. “Between the eyes. Stun.”

The weapon made a spitting sound—
ptooff!

The man flopped to the ground.

“Well done, Carrots,” Trounce muttered.

“Poor blighter,” Swinburne said.

Trounce led them around the prone form.

“He’ll wake up in due course,” the poet noted. “I can’t blame him for his actions. He’s waking from a BioProc haze; realising the unadulterated truth of his existence. There’ll be anger and violence before the people identify, and move against, their true enemy.”

They filed through a maze of twisting and turning rubbish-strewn passages, traversing a district that, in Burton’s time, had been among the most prosperous in the city, but that was now much how he imagined Hades to be: confined, hot, dangerous and seedy.

Finally, the group emerged into Berkeley Square. Once a smart area filled with the well-off, it now resembled a mist-veiled crater in the middle of a shantytown.

“You’ll recall this,” Swinburne said to the king’s agent as they reached the centre of the paved space. “Though not fondly.” He kicked the toe of his left boot against a metal manhole. “Not exactly the same one, but close enough.”

Burton remembered and felt himself go pale. Last year, or rather, three hundred and forty-three years ago, he’d climbed down through a very similar metal lid into Bazalgette’s sewers, there to have a final showdown with an invader from a parallel history.

“The sewer was rebuilt and greatly expanded many years ago,” Swinburne said, “but it still follows the course of the Tyburn River. This hatch leads down to a maintenance tunnel that runs alongside it. It’s a lot drier than the sewer but also a lot narrower.”

“We—we have to go—to go even farther underground?” Burton stammered.

“I’m afraid so.”

“We’ll be all right,” Trounce said. “As long as we don’t run into any spider sweeps.”

The diameter of the tube was such that Burton, the tallest of the group, had to bend his back in order to pass along it. The physical discomfort only added to his distress. He felt like he was in his grave. The weight of the double-layered city pressed down, liable to crush the conduit at any moment.

His jaw was clamped shut. The muscles at its sides flexed spasmodically. Sweat trickled from his brow, and his legs were trembling so much he felt sure his companions must notice.

He said nothing, just followed Trounce, putting one foot in front of the other, holding his arms out and letting his fingertips slide along the inner surface, keeping his eyes half shut and mentally chanting,
Allāhu Allāhu Allāhu Haqq
, which, unfortunately, quickly turned into,
I am I am I am trapped
.

The maintenance tunnel was dark. Trounce had produced a small mechanical torch from his pocket and with this was illuminating their path, but the blackness retreated only a little way ahead and rushed in to follow closely at their heels.

Don’t let that light go out! Don’t let it happen!

Finally, Burton couldn’t hold his curiosity at bay any longer and had to ask, “Algy, what are spider sweeps?”

“Children who’ve been genetically adapted for the purpose of keeping pipes such as this clean,” Swinburne answered.

“Children,” Burton murmured. “Good.”

“Good at their job, yes,” the poet agreed, “on account of the venom they spray to dissolve whatever dirt their coat of razor-sharp spines can’t scrape off.”

Burton’s mouth went dry. “Nevertheless, they’re just children.”

“Oh yes. There’s none above the age of ten.”

“Excellent.”

“Because the younger ones eat the elders.”

“Oh.”

“They’re extremely aggressive.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And territorial.”

“I see.”

“And, I daresay, with the effect of the nanomechs wearing off, they won’t hesitate to attack us.”

“Thank you for alerting me.”

“Beneath their spines, they’re armour-plated. I should think our bullets would just bounce off them.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

“I’m thankful to be as small as I am, really. I’m just a morsel. A crumb. I wouldn’t want to encounter them if I was a big lump of juicy meat like, for example, you are.”

“That’s quite enough, thank you.”

“Don’t you want to hear about their extendible mandibles?”

“No, I think I get the picture.”

They continued on through the cramped tunnel.

Burton tried to imagine open skies, wide Arabian vistas, and distant mountains. Instead, his mind delivered a remembrance of Boulogne and Isabel. He tried to dismiss it, but each wave of claustrophobia brought it closer.

I shouldn’t be walking through a tunnel in the future. I should be strolling along a promenade with her. She should be my wife.

He felt brittle and taut, needed a distraction, something to divert his attention from the hollowness within and the constriction without.

He asked, “Algy, do you remain an atheist?”

“My hat! Of course! Why do you ask?”

“Because you died and were resurrected.”

“Must you remind me of my murder? It hurt.”

“You were dead for nearly fifty years.”

“I know. What a thoroughly beastly waste of time.”

“But do you remember anything of it?”

“Nothing at all. Except—”

The poet was quiet for a moment, and the silence of the tunnel was broken only by their footsteps and Burton’s laboured respiration.

Trounce said, “Blinkers.”

“Yes!” Swinburne cried out. His voice echoed. “Yes. Blinkers. That’s exactly it, Pouncer.”

“Don’t call me Pouncer. And keep your voice down, Carrots.”

“Blinkers?” Burton asked.

“Like racehorses wear,” Trounce said. “So they aren’t distracted by anything; so they see only the track ahead of them.”

“Intriguing,” Herbert Wells put in. “Or it would be if it made any sense. Would you explain, William?”

“Um. Blinkers is as far as I can get.”

“Algy?” Burton asked.

“Soho Square,” the poet said. “2130. I was running toward the flier, I reached out to grab your hand, there was a terrible pain, then nothing. My next memories are of my childhood, of my mother and father and old Pouncer, here and—as I matured—of a growing awareness of who I’d been before and, in fact, still was. It’s very peculiar, I can tell you, to recollect yourself as an older person in the distant past. My early teens were very difficult—”

“Teens?” Burton interrupted, then immediately remembered what Mick Farren had told him. “Ah, yes, I’m sorry. Go on.”

“I felt oddly divided,” Swinburne said.

“It was the same for me,” Trounce added.

The maintenance tunnel was curving toward their left. From the right, the muffled sound of flowing water could be heard. It sounded as if it was moving at great pressure.

Not water. Sewerage. I am trapped. I am trapped.

Swinburne continued, “But the mixed recollections were soon reconciled by the awareness of our mission. It helped to keep me on the straight and narrow.”

“Plus,” Trounce said, “we were both carefully fostered by Father—Tom Bendyshe—and knew from an early age that we’d find our purpose on the fifteenth of February, 2202—today—with the arrival of the
Orpheus
.”

“That must have been strange,” Raghavendra murmured.

“Oh, it hasn’t been so bad,” Swinburne responded. “Of course, we looked forward to seeing you all again, and I must confess, I’ve felt rather a fish out of water in this age. The nineteenth century always felt more like home, and I’ve missed it.”

“Likewise,” Trounce grunted.

“But the blinkers?” Burton asked.

“An impression that William and I never possessed before we died,” the poet answered. “A constant suspicion that what we sense is only a fraction of the full picture. That there’s a greater truth.”

“A feeling that we’ve forgotten something,” Trounce said. He raised a hand and slowed his pace. “Stay quiet now. We’re coming to a monitoring station. There may be someone in it.”

They crept ahead in silence until they were brought to a halt by a round metal door. Trounce put his ear to it and was motionless for two minutes. He stepped back, said softly, “I can’t hear anyone,” then turned the handle and pushed the portal open.

The room beyond was empty. It was also small but nevertheless came as a relief to Burton. Little more than a metal box, with a second door leading to the next section of the tunnel, it was at least well lit. In one wall—the one closest to the sewer—there were mounted a number of flat screens from which unfathomable displays glowed, charts and diagrams and rows of numbers.

Trounce started slightly, put his finger to his ear, motioned them all to stay silent, and murmured, “It’s Lorena. This must be important. We’re supposed to maintain network silence.”

He listened, his head cocked to the side, his eyebrows low over his eyes.

Slowly, the colour drained from his face.

“Bloody hell,” he mumbled. “You’re certain?”

His lips whitened as he received the reply.

“Confound it! Do what you can, all right?”

He lowered his hand. It was shaking. He used the edge of his cloak to wipe his forehead and glanced at Swinburne, who said, “What’s happened?”

“Father has been captured.”

Swinburne gasped.

“Bendyshe?” Burton asked.

Trounce nodded. “After planting the bomb in the Embassy. He ran straight into a group of constables.”

“Where have they taken him?” Swinburne asked.

Trounce reached up as if feeling for his bowler hat and looked irritated when he failed to find it. He sighed. “We don’t know. She’s lost track of him.”

Burton asked, “She can’t locate his position via his nanomechs?”

“They must have realised his nanomechs aren’t under government control, so they’ll have passed a nonlethal but very painful electric current through him to destroy them all prior to interrogation. It’s left him totally isolated.”

“Interrogation? Where would that occur? At police headquarters? Is there still a Scotland Yard?”

“No headquarters. There aren’t even police stations. The constables don’t require them.”

“Then where are crime suspects held?”

“Suspects aren’t held. They’re executed. Immediately. Without trial.”

“So—I’m sorry, William, Algy, I know he’s your father—” Burton blinked rapidly. He still couldn’t get to grips with that idea. “But if this age has such a barbaric policy, why do you think Tom Bendyshe will be interrogated rather than killed?”

Trounce and Swinburne exchanged a glance.

“I told you Lorena Brabrooke is a genius,” Trounce said. “And she is. With her every successive clone, she’s increased her skills. But the problem with keeping the Cannibal Club off the surveillance net—with making us invisible—is that it creates holes. Lorena can’t fill those holes, but she can relocate them, so what you might term ‘the absences we make’ are not in the same places as we are. That’s how we evade detection.”

The king’s agent dwelled on this for a moment, struggling slightly with concepts that remained highly abstruse to his nineteenth-century intellect. Before he’d properly formulated his next question, Raghavendra asked it. “Does Spring Heeled Jack suspect the existence of the Cannibal Club?”

“Until nine o’clock this evening, for all these years, we’ve resisted taking any action against him,” Trounce replied. “We’ve been wary of drawing attention to ourselves. Had we done so, he might have hunted us to extinction, and your mission would be jeopardised. Nevertheless, he’s known for some considerable time that
something
was evading him, and tonight—the date being what it is—we suspected his paranoia would be at its most extreme. That’s why we feared your arrival would be detected and why we finally made a move.”

“So where will they take Bendyshe?” Burton asked.

“I don’t know,” Trounce said. Frustrated, he slapped his right fist into his left palm. “Let’s get going. Not a word in this next section. The pump room at its end is almost certainly occupied by a technician.” He turned to the door that opened onto the second length of tunnel, twisted its handle, swung it wide, and holding his torch before him, led the way in.