Burton & Swinburne 1 - The Strange Affair Of Spring Heeled Jack (30 page)

“The loups-garous,” said Burton.

“Yes, I believe so. You think you can follow their trail?”

“In this rain, I fear not, but I have to try. I must go.”

“Good luck, Captain Burton.”

The king's agent descended to the roof, then down the side of the building to his friend waiting below.

“I hope old Ted Toppletree wasn't exaggerating about that nose of yours, Fidget!” he said. “Because if he was, we might never see Algernon Swinburne again!”

The basset hound looked up at him mutely.

Swinburne's mind was a kaleidoscope of confused memories. The werewolves had carried him at great speed through the labyrinthine alleys of the city, gripping him so tightly that he could barely breathe, carrying him sometimes upright, sometimes upside-down. Talons had dug into his arms and shoulders, thighs and calves; and there'd been a long, dark tunnel that seemed to descend into the spongy, dripping flesh of the Earth itself.

He recalled that, at one point, he'd recovered his wits enough to start screaming at the top of his voice until his cries were smothered by a muskysmelling paw.

Then, oblivion.

He opened his eyes.

He was in a huge chamber, on an upright but slightly inclined metal rack, his limbs splayed wide, straps tight around his wrists and ankles.

Artificial light flooded the cathedral-sized space; not gas light, but the white incandescence of lightning which had somehow been locked into globes hanging from the high ceiling. Beneath them, bathed in their brilliance, was machinery the like of which Swinburne had never seen nor even imagined before. There was no steam here; it was all electricity, which fizzed and crackled across the surfaces of megalithic devices, whipping from one bizarrely designed tower to another, filling the place with the smell of ozone and with sharp snaps, claps, and buzzes.

In particular, a great many bolts of energy were shooting into a chandelier-like structure suspended from the ceiling in the centre of the room. It resembled a big cast-iron wheel, with vertical stacks of disks arranged around its circumference. To these, wires and cables were affixed.

Swinburne's eyes followed their draping lines down to where they joined a crownlike construction below; a metal frame in which a number of long needles were secured, projecting a few inches outward. To these, the wires were attached. The other ends of the needles were embedded in the skull upon which the crown sat.

It was a hairless and grotesquely swollen dome, which bulged out over the ears of its owner; a head twice normal size; a phenomenal and hideous cranium! It projected forward over the wide face below, pushing bushy brows down low over eyes that glittered coldly from within their shadow. The nose was small, the mouth wide and set sternly, the jaw decorated with a big white beard which flowed down to the man's waist-for yes, the distorted creature was unmistakably a man.

Beneath the bloated head, a grey suit hung from a skeletal frame. The body was extremely withered, every visible inch of skin scored with wrinkles; rubber tubing emerged from the wrists to join devices that pumped and groaned beside the metal throne on which the man sat.

He looked, thought Swinburne, like a fetus cradled in a mechanical womb.

He also looked familiar.

“Charles Darwin!” cried the poet.

The eyes glistened, looking the poet up and down.

“You know us, boy?” Darwin's voice was deep and possessed a weirdly harmonic quality, as if two people were speaking at once.

“Of course! What's going on here? What are you up to? Who's 'us'?”

“We do not explain ourselves to children. Be quiet.”

A figure silently stepped into view from behind Swinburne. It was a tall, smartly suited man with long sideburns and a handsome but entirely expressionless face. Just above his eyebrows, his head ended; the top of the skull was missing entirely, and where the brain should have been, there was a baffling device of metal and glass in which a great many tiny lights blinked on and off in a seemingly random manner. From the back of this, a cable descended to the floor and snaked across to Darwin's throne, disappearing into its base.

The machine-brained man stepped over to a trolley and lifted from it a syringe with a fearsomely long needle.

“What are you doing?” squealed Swinburne.

“This one is inquisitive, isn't he?” muttered Darwin to himself. “Yes, he is. Tall, too, which is unfortunate. Shall we test or discard immediately? Test, I think. Child, tell us: you are an orphan? Do you remember your parents? Were they also tall?”

Machine-brain levelled the syringe, its point touching Swinburne just below the centre of his forehead.

“For pity's sake, Darwin! I'm not an orphan, my parents are none of your damned business, and I'm no child! I'm twenty-four years old! I'm Algernon Charles Swinburne, the poet!”

There came a pause, then the syringe was lowered.

Machine-brain stepped away.

“You are a chimney sweep,” declared Darwin. “Your skin and clothes are covered in soot. It is under your fingernails. Our collectors smelled it on you. They do not make mistakes.”

Swinburne wrenched at the straps holding his wrists. They held firm.

“If by `collectors' you mean those wolf-things, I'm afraid they've been fooled this time. I'm a poet, I tell you! Let me go!”

“Fooled?”

“I was posing as a sweep.”

“Why would a poet do such a thing?”

“To find out where the cursed wolves come from and why boys are being abducted!”

Darwin was silent for a moment, then said, “We are intrigued. Observe: we seem to have before us a man of a profoundly nonscientific bent. An evolutionary oddity, think you not? Of what use is a poet? Is he not merely an instance of self-indulgence; a decoration, if you will? That might be so, but pray consider the decorative qualities of certain species, say, for example, tropical birds. Do their colours and patterns not serve a purpose: to attract a mate or to confuse a predator? This creature, though his hair is of a remarkable hue, is notably puny in his development. Might we propose that his vocation has developed to compensate for his lack of physical prowess? Could it not be that, in the absence of an ability to attract a mate at a physical level, he has developed a'song' in much the same manner as a lark, which is a small dull-coloured bird with an extravagant call?”

“What the bleeding heck are you jabbering about!” shrilled Swinburne. “Let me off this damned rack! Unbuckle these straps at once!”

Darwin's huge head leaned to one side slightly and the beady eyes blinked.

“We must ask, though-why would a poet concern himself with our research?”

“What research?” demanded Swinburne. “Tell me what's going on here. Why are you abducting chimney sweeps? And what in the name of all that's holy has happened to your head, Darwin? It's damned disgusting! Why are you attached to those contraptions? Who is this automaton?”

A strange rattling emerged from the seated figure. Was it laughter?

“My, how inquisitive it is! So many questions! We have a proposal; a minor experiment; would it not be of interest to answer the young man? We have never explained ourselves to a nonrational mind. Will he show any capacity for thought that transcends moral outrage or will the fiction of God guide his response?”

“I don't believe in God!” screeched Swinburne.

“Ah! Listen! He claims disbelief. A faithless poet! We understand they classify themselves as `Bohemians.' On what basis does a mind that has neither scientific rationality nor superstitious faith operate? This is truly fascinating, do we not think? We do. We do. Proceed! Explain to him, and when we have analysed his response, he will be disposed of.”

“What?” screamed Swinburne. “Disposed of? What does that mean?”

“Observe: the survival instinct in action,” declared Darwin. "Algernon Charles Swinburne, we will explain our programme. We will then ask you to respond. Please do so clearly and in detail. To begin with, on the subject of our head. Your reaction to it is based on aesthetic values which serve no purpose. It is this size in order to incorporate the two brains which lie within. This body is that of Charles Darwin. The individual you call an automaton was once Francis Galton. The brains of those two men have been grafted together to create a four-lobed organ with comingled psychic fields which allow for the instantaneous transfer of thoughts. In effect, we have become one in order to overcome the limitations of language. We are no longer forced to resort to the symbolic in order to communicate our theories to one another; communication is direct and unsullied. There can be no misunderstanding or lack of comprehension.

“The body of Francis Galton we employ as a limb, for we are confined to this machinery which Isambard Kingdom Brunel designed to support us. Unfortunately, the human body is unable to maintain two brains without mechanical assistance.”

“Wait!” protested Swinburne.

“It interrupts,” harmonised Darwin. “We should not feel this sensation of impatience, for have we not already established that the poetical mind operates outside the logic of the scientific mind? We cannot expect it to restrain its impulses until it has heard all the information we wish to present. Yes, we agree. We must indulge the creature. What is it, Algernon Charles Swinburne?”

The little flame-headed poet, stretched out and strapped down, with machines sizzling, spitting, and shooting bolts of lightning all around him, felt as if he were trapped in a nightmare. With the squashed, gargoylelike face of Darwin peering down at him and the figure of Galton standing nearby, motionless but for the winking lights atop his head, the scene could have been a painting by Hieronymus Bosch come to life.

Fighting his rising hysteria, Swinburne shook his head and tried to order his thoughts.

“The Origin of Species made you famous-or should I say notorious-two years ago,” he said. “When the church issued death threats against you, you went into hiding, but by then your face was familiar to the general public and it certainly didn't have that horrible big bonce towering over it. In other words, the machinery encasing you wasn't required until a later date. Yet '59 is also the year Brunel died, therefore he cannot possibly have designed it.”

Again, the horrid rattle sounded.

“The poet makes a logical argument, though the solution to the apparent paradox is simple.”

“Oh, really?” said Swinburne, sarcastically. “Please enlighten me!”

“Brunel,” came the response. “Step forward.”

To the left of the throne, one of the huge pieces of machinery suddenly rose from the floor with a loud hiss of steam and clanged forward.

The most famous and successful engineer in the world, if this was truly Brunel, was no longer the short, dark-haired, cigar-chomping man of memory.

He stood on three triple-jointed metal legs. These were attached to a horizontal disk-shaped chassis affixed to the bottom of the main body, which, shaped like a barrel lying on its side, appeared to be constructed from wood and banded with strips of studded brass. There were domed protrusions at either end of it, each bearing nine multijointed arms, each arm ending in a different tool, ranging from delicate fingers to slashing blades, drills to hammers, spanners to welders.

A further dome rose from the top of Brunel's body. From this, too, arms extended-six in all-though these were more like tentacles, so long and flexible were they. Each ended in a clamplike hand.

At various places around the body, revolving cogwheels poked through slots in the wood, and on one shoulder-it was impossible to say whether it was the left or right because Brunel had no discernible front or back-a pis- tonlike device slowly rose and fell. On the other, something resembling a bellows pumped up and down, making a ghastly wheezing noise. Small exhaust pipes expelled puffs of white vapour from either end of the barrel.

Amid all the electrical machinery, this great steaming hulk seemed strangely primitive.

It thumped across the floor and squatted at Swinburne's side.

A hot cloud blew from one of its vents and rolled over the poet's face.

Bells chimed from the bulky mechanism.

“Our dear friend Isambard's voice takes some getting used to,” said Darwin. “He just confirmed that he is very much alive.”

Swinburne laughed. “I'm dreaming!” he cried. “I'm dreaming!”

“Most interesting,” said Darwin. "Observe how the poet denies the input of his senses. This is a fascinating reaction. We suggest a rupture between the corporeal sense of existence and the acquired sense of intellectual identity. Indeed. Algernon Charles Swinburne quite literally cannot believe his eyes. See how they have lost focus. We propose that this is a symptom of the medical condition termed `shock,' caused, in this instance, by the unfamiliarity of his environment. Were he of the lower order of beasts, this would ensure his destruction. Let us continue with this diverting experiment. Perhaps a brief explanation of Brunel's continued existence will bridge the rupture? Yes, but wait; we have opened a further path of investigation. We are intrigued by the possibility that a being, when placed in an environment that is alien to it, might react in this manner. If evolution is a matter of adapt or die, then is not shock entirely counterproductive to the process? Why, then, does the condition of shock exist? What is its function? We must experiment further. Agreed. However, let us first continue with our faux chimney sweep.

“Algernon Charles Swinburne, what you are looking at might be termed a life-support machine. It is steam-powered, to allow full mobility, for the Engineers have not yet created a technique whereby sufficient electrical power might be stored in a portable container. Our colleague Isambard had himself placed inside the machine in 1859. It has kept him alive since, enabling his continued rule of the Technologists.”

“Well, this is all very nice,” mumbled Swinburne, as far as possible cow ering away from the gigantic form of Brunel. “But to get back to the bloody point, why are you abducting chimney sweeps?”

Darwin's bony fingers flexed. “Ah. He regains focus. Excellent! Shall we tell him? Yes, proceed. We need fear nothing, for he will be destroyed shortly. Algernon Charles Swinburne, at some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world.”