The Rise of the Automated Aristocrats (17 page)

Their landau steered into Trafalgar Square and entered the Strand. Burton looked with interest at Parliament's clock tower, the home of the famous Big Ben bell. Partially concealed by a web of scaffolding, it was almost twice as tall as he remembered, and its architecture was considerably altered. Upon making an enquiry about it to Gooch, he was told, “The old one was destroyed by a bomb.” Immediately, the explorer recalled the event as if he'd been there.

He sighed and glanced at Swinburne and Trounce. The poet appeared to be enjoying himself immensely, craning his neck as he leaned out of the window, peering this way and that, taking it all in, careless of the steam and coal smoke that curled around him. Trounce, by contrast, was sitting pale faced and nervous, holding his bowler by its brim and sliding it around and around through his fingers.

The three of them had, over breakfast at the station, shared the fact that they'd each awoken with their heads full of new information. Burton, for example, now knew that he lived not in Trieste but at 14 Montagu Place, a house he recalled having rented a room in at some point in his other life—though, peculiarly, as much as he tried, he couldn't pinpoint exactly when. Similarly, Swinburne was currently resident at 16 Cheyne Walk, which he shared with the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, it being a house he'd moved into in 1862 in his former existence but which, here, he'd apparently occupied considerably earlier.

Burton found himself clinging to mundane information such as this, for it gave to him a sense that he'd been reborn into a proper corporeal world rather than into an unfathomable and unanticipated heaven or hell. Unfortunately, there were other recollections, which—as much as he tried to suppress them—insistently arose to suggest that hell might be a much more viable possibility.

Isabel had been killed by a
nosferatu
. A vampire.

An older Burton from yet another history had inadvertently created this one.

There had been confrontations with crazed scientists, with clairvoyant dictators, with the rampaging forces of the Prussian Empire, with werewolves and monsters.

It was all confused, entangled, and illogical, as if cause was refusing to always precede effect, as if an event in one history could have consequences in another.

Time streams, Raghavendra called them, a term coined by Bertie Wells.

He wondered who Bertie Wells was, then pictured in his mind's eye a small man dying two nasty deaths.

He shuddered.

Allāhu Allāhu Allāhu Haqq.

He couldn't reenter the meditation, couldn't avoid the man he was tumbling into.

Sir Richard Francis Burton: king's agent.

The landau rocked to a halt, and the driver banged on the roof and called down, “Venetia Hotel, gents.”

They exited the cabin, jumping down to the pavement. Trounce inadvertently bumped into an individual who was strapped into a machine that carried him along on four mechanical legs.

“Watch where you're stepping, man!” the pedestrian protested.

The Scotland Yard man managed an uncertain “humph!” and watched incredulously as the quadruped scuttled away.

“Three and six,” the driver told them.

“I'll think you'll find it's a shilling,” Swinburne countered.

The corners of Burton's mouth twitched up. Different world, same old friend. There was comfort in that, at least.

Gooch paid the driver the proper fare, despite the poet's further objections, and they waited while the second carriage stopped and its passengers disembarked.

“How do you like our London?” Raghavendra asked Burton as she approached.

“It's an insane asylum.”

Trounce muttered, “Seconded.”

Captain Lawless, at her side, smiled and gave a grunt of agreement. “That's why I used to prefer to stay in the
Orpheus
.”

“Used to?” Burton asked.

“That bloody mechanical brain has taken the pleasure out of it.”

The group—Burton, Swinburne, Trounce, Gooch, Raghavendra, Krishnamurthy, and Lawless—mounted the steps of the Royal Venetia Hotel and were greeted at its door by a clockwork man upon whose chest plate the initials R. V. H. were engraved. “Shall I have the bellboy fetch your luggage from the vehicles, sirs?”

“We have none,” Burton responded. “We're merely visiting a guest.”

The machine opened the portal to them. “Right you are, sir. Mr. Bromley, the reception clerk, is at his desk to your left as you enter. Good day to you.”

As they walked into the lobby, the clerk looked up, recognised Burton and acknowledged him with raised brows and a polite nod, and called out, “He's expecting you, Sir Richard. Nice to see you again.”

Gooch murmured an explanation. “I sent Pox last night to announce our arrival.”

“I hope the insults were pithy.”

Burton straight away wondered why he'd expressed such a sentiment.

They climbed the ornate staircase to the fifth floor and passed along a corridor to suite 5. Automatically, Burton took the lead, and when he arrived at the door, he eyed it for a moment before, with a mystifying reluctance, raising his panther-headed cane and rapping on it. Half a minute later, the door swung open to reveal another clockwork man.

“Hello, Grumbles,” Burton said.

Grumbles. My brother's servant. Wait! My brother? My brother is—the minister?

“Good morning, gentlemen, ma'am. Will you come in, please? The minister is in his reading room. May I take your hats, coats and canes?”

“Nice new voice, Grumbles,” Gooch said.

“Thank you, sir. It suits very well.”

After handing over their outdoor garb, the group—the word
chrononauts
persistently occurred to Burton—was led by the gently whirring and ticking mechanism through a parlour and into a large library. The chamber was all books. They lined every wall from floor to ceiling, teetered in tall stacks on the deep red carpet, and were strewn haphazardly over the various tables, chairs, and sideboards. In the midst of them, by the window, a giant of a man, wrapped in a threadbare red dressing gown, occupied an enormous wing-backed armchair of scuffed and cracked leather. His hair was brown and untidy, and from it, a deep scar ran jaggedly down the broad forehead to bisect the left eyebrow. His eyes, which fixed on Burton as he entered, were intensely black. The nose, obviously once broken, had been reset crookedly, and the mouth—the upper lip cleft by another scar—was permanently twisted into a superior sneer. It was a face every bit as brutal in appearance as Burton's own, but the heavy jaw was buried beneath bulging jowls, and the neck was lost in rolls of fat which undulated down into a vast belly sagging over thick legs. The fellow was so obese that, despite the two walking sticks propped against one of the tables, it was impossible to imagine him in motion.

“So you're back, at last,” the minister said. He narrowed his eyes at Burton. “You look different.”

You can bloody well talk!

While it was true that Burton was astonished at his sibling's corpulence, the thought hadn't been just a sarcastic reaction. The Edward Burton of his own history, after being severely beaten by Singhalese villagers in 1856, had become so pathologically withdrawn that, by 1858, he wasn't speaking at all and, the following year, was committed to Surrey County Lunatic Asylum. He'd still been there in 1890.

“We were—we were away for over a year,” the explorer stammered.

“I'm well aware of that. Why did I have to wait? However long you spent there, you could have been back a minute after your departure. For crying out loud, if you have the ability to transcend time, why not bloody well use it? All of you, find somewhere to sit. Grumbles, serve tea, coffee, or whatever.”

Gooch, clearing books from a chair, said, “We felt it wise to remain true to subjective time.”

“You didn't consider that it would be in the interests of the empire for the prime minister to know the outcome of your expedition sooner rather than later?”

Gooch sat and, out of habit, looked at Burton for support.

Burton spoke without thinking. “As its leader, I judged otherwise. And please bear in mind, brother, that those of us who travelled aboard the
Orpheus
have witnessed three and a half centuries of the empire's future. It might be argued that we can comprehend what is best for it better than anyone else, and that includes you.”

That'll hit where it hurts!

With a slight shock, he realised that he'd slipped into his counterpart's role as if it were second nature. He knew, as if he'd always known, that Edward, in addition to being the minister of chronological affairs, was also Disraeli's most trusted advisor. Indeed, the information at his fat fingertips was so deep and so broad ranging in nature that, on occasion, it might be justifiably suspected that Edward was the empire's primary mover and shaker in the great games currently being played between Britain, Prussia, Russia, and China. To suggest to Edward that anyone knew more than he concerning such matters was to strike a blow where it counted.

The minister responded with a taut silence, steepled his fingers in front of his chin, and locked eyes with Burton, who, while matching the implacable stare, realised that somewhere along the way the competitive relationship of their youth had got very, very out of hand.

He felt that he was in over his head. He wanted to shout,
Stop! I'm not who you think I am!

Edward said, “Do you have a written report?”

“I do.” Burton turned to Krishnamurthy. “Please, Maneesh?”

Krishnamurthy, who had a leather satchel hanging from his shoulder, took a thick file from it and handed it to Burton who, in turn, passed it to the minister. The explorer recognised his own characteristically small handwriting upon its cover. He—the
other
he—had written it during his sojourn in the twenty-third century.

Edward gave a snort of disdain. “I see you still hold the government in contempt.”

“Pardon?”

“The title you've inflicted upon the document.
The Return of the Discontinued Man
. Must you insist on such childishness?”

Amusement spiked through the explorer. Suddenly, he rather liked his
doppelgänger
. Glancing across at Swinburne, he saw a gleeful twinkle in the poet's eye. Trounce, too, appeared more at ease. Already the three resurrected men were settling into their new circumstances, which, just as the Beetle had predicted, felt as familiar as favoured old footwear.

“Strange affairs and curious cases require melodramatic titles,” Burton said. “They offer a forewarning of the contents.”

“Then the future was—?”

Swinburne offered the confirmation. “Strange and curious, Minister.”

“Indeed. See to yourselves while I read it. Grumbles will attend you.”

Without further word, the minister opened the file and ignored them completely.

After a few minutes, Burton gestured for Swinburne, Trounce, and Gooch to join him in the parlour.

There, he drew his friends closer with a waggle of his fingers and whispered, “Remember, there's nothing in the report to suggest we're anything other than the men he knows.”

Swinburne grinned. “Should we continue the charade?”

“It's becoming less of one by the minute, don't you think?”

Trounce rubbed the side of his jaw. “The odd thing is, I feel like me, and I feel at home. Yesterday, I'd never have suggested that we could get away with it, but today I'd say we can.”

“Agreed,” Swinburne said. “I find myself wondering whether I dreamt my old age.”

Burton made a sound of agreement. “If it becomes apposite to reveal the truth, we shall, but I suspect that Edward might regard us with suspicion if he knew the full story.”

“He most certainly would,” Gooch put in. “He doesn't like the inexplicable. That's why Disraeli gave him the role. It's the job of the minister of chronological affairs to identify the abstruse and get rid of it.”

“I wouldn't like him to regard me as such,” Burton said.

“You can count on me and the rest of the crew to keep our lips sealed,” Gooch said.

Grumbles entered. “Can I get you anything, gentlemen?”

They each made a sound or gesture to indicate the negative. The clockwork servant bobbed his head in response, moved to a corner, and stood motionless.

“What of the accounts of future history given to us by the Cannibal Club?” Gooch asked.

For an instant, Burton didn't know what the engineer was referring to, then, in a flash, he remembered. The Cannibal Club, currently—in 1861—little more than a band of his hard-drinking bachelor friends, would soon found a secret dynasty, making allies available to the chrononauts as they travelled into the future. The
Orpheus
had visited the years 1914, 1968, and 2022 en route to 2202. In each, the descendants of the original Cannibals had handed over a record of events, so that by the time the travellers had reached their destination, they possessed a full chronicle of centuries to come.

But how to use such information?

The “time stream” they'd navigated would continue to exist whatever their current actions. However, any deviation from its events would cause a new stream to branch off from it, and this world would follow that path rather than the original. Had that already happened? Contorted logic suggested so, for the exact moment of the
Orpheus
's departure in 1860 contained within it only two possibilities—either the ship would return or it wouldn't—and all the history the expedition had chronicled from that moment forward must have therefore been suspended between those two prospects, neither of which could be realised until the homeward voyage had—or hadn't—been completed. That meant, simply by coming back, the expedition had changed the future from one fashioned by two possibilities into one created from a single fact.