The Rise of the Automated Aristocrats (27 page)

Bradlaugh stepped closer to avail himself of the decanter. “Your brother still hasn't contacted you?”

“No.”

Without declaring his intentions, and accompanied by Shyamji Bhatti, Edward had, the day following Burton's meeting with Disraeli, abandoned his suite at the Venetia, taking with him just a small amount of luggage. Burton didn't know where he'd gone and hadn't had the opportunity to ask him whether he'd been privy to the meeting last October between Disraeli and Babbage.

Two days after Edward's disappearance, Captain Lawless had been informed that his ship was to be used in an exhibition of mechanical wings. Taking umbrage that the pride of the fleet was to be employed for the purpose of public entertainment, he and his crew had departed Battersea Power Station in it and had not been seen since. The
Orpheus
, once again, was missing.

I am losing my allies.

“I say!” Bendyshe exclaimed. “What about that parrot of yours? Doesn't it possess an uncanny ability to locate the people it knows?”

“It does, and I've sent it more than a few times to Edward, Bhatti, Lawless, Krishnamurthy, and Raghavendra, and on every occasion it has flown back and stated, ‘message undelivered.' It can only mean that our people are either beyond its flight range or locked indoors somewhere.”

“And Gooch?” Bradlaugh asked. “Still no progress?”

“Very little. He's working under severe constraints in a field that isn't his area of expertise. His colleague Michael Faraday would have been of considerable assistance, but he left the country for America the moment Disraeli incorporated the Department of Guided Science into the Department for Industry.”

“Gad!” Brabrooke said. “The DOGS disbanded! Dizzy has gone insane, I tell you. Completely insane.”

“How many of his people does Gooch have with him?” Monckton Milnes enquired of Burton.

“Seventeen. He and they cleared out of Battersea Power Station the day before it was closed down. They took equipment with them and have been hiding out at a secret location ever since. Under such circumstances, developing a Field Amplifier is proving difficult, to say the least, but until it's completed, I'm stumped.”

“And that bounder Rigby hasn't made any headway, I suppose?”

“I've seen no evidence that he's even investigating.”

Monckton Milnes shook his head sadly. “How could it have come to this? I thought your expedition was supposed to open the way to a bright new future, and instead we have Disraeli declaring his every new policy ‘emergency legislation' so its parliamentary passage can be expedited in days—sometimes hours—without any proper consultation, consideration, or discussion. Why the hell is Gladstone allowing it? And what is the emergency? China, we are told! The whole empire is being flooded with Celestial spies! Do any of you actually believe that?”

“Not I,” Bradlaugh said.

“Nor I,” Brabrooke agreed. “The Treaty of Tianjin was signed immediately after the bombing of the Old Summer Palace. Why would the Qing Dynasty immediately renege on it? The prime minister's claim that the Chinese are planning to attack the British mainland is risible balderdash. Our government is fear mongering. These are tactics of distraction.”

Bendyshe jabbed a forefinger toward Burton. “I don't know what you told Dizzy about the future but, plainly, it has sent him over the edge.”

Drawing on the hookah, Burton murmured, “I made it perfectly clear in my report that Spring Heeled Jack's ascendancy was made possible by successive generations of increasingly ineffectual aristocratic leaders. The equation is simple enough to comprehend: where power and privilege is inherited, then the qualities that earned the honours in the first place must surely diminish. The prime minister appears to have ignored that observation entirely and is bent on establishing today exactly the sort of inviolable divide between the rich and poor that I witnessed in the twenty-third century.”

He gulped at his brandy angrily. His mood was dark and had been since the meeting at Number 10. He felt as if the sudden and harsh new governmental policies were somehow his fault.

He needed to see Swinburne and Trounce. Only their company soothed the restlessness that was boiling inside him. Unfortunately, Algy had so thrown himself into his poetic but vitriolic criticisms of the empire, and was enjoying such a level of notoriety, that he'd become extremely difficult to pin down. Trounce, meanwhile, had been at odds with his superior at Scotland Yard, having strenuously objected to the arming of constables with pistols, to the right to incarcerate suspects without charges, and to the many other new powers recently granted to the Police Force. Having been twice reprimanded, he was now working extended shifts in an attempt to restore the chief commissioner's confidence in him and avoid any further disciplinary action.

The Cannibals were left as Burton's only recourse, but though he valued each of them as friends, there lurked within him the feeling that these drunken meetings were nothing but a means of avoidance, an arena in which to talk about the world when he should be confronting it head on.

Why this bloody paralysis?

Why, for twelve weeks, had he felt so forestalled in the matter of Raghavendra and Krishnamurthy's abduction? Why could he not identify a means to locate them—or Babbage—beyond that which Gooch had proposed?

Has turning forty made of me an old man?

It was a recurring and aggravating thought.

Too old for this. Too old.

“I think,” Tom Bendyshe said, “that I shall take a leaf out of Algy's book and join the opposition to this dreadful regime. My little publishing concern has so far confined itself to ethnological work and material of, shall we say, a rather more saucy nature. I'm inclined to now turn over my presses to our little redheaded friend. As inflammatory as his poetry is, I'll wager it's not half of what he wants to say.”

“Hankey and Ashbee are treading cautiously,” Bradlaugh noted, referring to the two mutual friends who'd thus far published the poet's works. “I'd advise you to do the same. The authorities may have turned a blind eye to your volumes of erotica, but I doubt they'll stand for outright subversion. I already fear for Algy. Don't make me fear for you, too.”

Bendyshe flapped his hand dismissively. “Pshaw! Don't worry yourself, old fellow. My presses are in Paris. I can't be arraigned for what's published there, and I'll ensure the material is brought to this country by suitably circuitous means.”

He filled and raised his glass and bellowed, “By gad! I propose a toast to Algernon! May his barbs prick Dizzy where it hurts the most!”

The quaffing continued and intensified. Burton listened to conversations as they meandered drunkenly from one subject to another, dwindled, and arose again to follow a new and equally digressive path. He contributed to fewer and fewer of them, becoming ever more withdrawn, his thoughts folding in on themselves.

He tried to envision his future, wondered where he'd go or what he'd write, but his mind persistently skipped past all the possibilities and instead presented him with visions of his dotage. He imagined himself incapacitated, imprisoned in a declining body, the fancy quickly developing with such pitiless clarity that his hands started to shake, a cold ache gnawed at his joints, and gravity tugged at him as if eager to draw him into the grave.

Time is moving too fast, spiralling in on itself. Events are out of control. I am plummeting toward my death.

“I can't!” he cried out, lurching to his feet and dropping his half-filled glass. “I can't!”

“Richard?” Monckton Milnes asked, reaching for him.

Burton batted his friend's hand away. “Not again!”

Again? Again? What am I saying?

He stumbled to the door and snatched his outdoor vestments from a coat rack.

“Can't what?” Monckton Milnes called after him.

Burton turned unsteadily. The Cannibals were gaping at him, their faces expressing surprise and concern.

“I have—I have to go,” he mumbled, placing his hat upon his head.

Practically falling through the door, he descended the stairs, hearing the muffled voice of Bendyshe behind him. “What the devil has got into him? I swear, the old boy's not been the same since his confounded expedition!”

Burton barged past a waiter, hurried through the restaurant, and plunged out into Leicester Square.

London was fogbound and insufferably warm. The sulphurous pall had enveloped the city two weeks ago, steadily thickening into a peasouper, a “London particular.” Visibility was so reduced that Burton felt he'd stepped into a limbo inhabited only by vague and silent ghosts.

One of the phantoms detached itself from the wall beside the restaurant door and, before the explorer had taken two paces, swooped upon him. Burton was suddenly wrapped in shadow. A vast hand clapped tightly across his mouth, and a thick limb embraced him from behind, pinning his arms to his sides.

A voice hissed in his ear. “Lord 'elp us, you've kept me a-waitin' for long enough. Shush now! Don't make a bloomin' sound, guv'nor. They're watchin' out for you.”

“Mmmph,” Burton replied.

“It's me. Follow. Quiet as you can.”

Montague Penniforth.

Penniforth was a cab driver, a giant of a man, Burton's friend, and a member of the Ministry of Chronological Affairs.

The hand and arm fell away. Fingers clutched his sleeve. Tripping drunkenly over his own feet, Burton allowed himself to be drawn along close to the sides of the buildings and into a side street. There, he was bundled into a landau. Penniforth whispered, “Someone wants to see you. I'll take you right there. Here, drink this.”

A flask was thrust into Burton's hands.

The carriage door closed, and the vehicle rocked as Penniforth heaved his considerable bulk up onto its box seat. There came a mechanical cough, growl, and splutter as the steam-horse started. The wheels began to grind over cobbles.

Bemusedly, Burton lifted the flask, opened its lid and sniffed at the contents. Coffee. He sipped it. Hot. Black. Strong. Well-sugared.

A foghorn sounded from the Thames. The fog muffled all other noises bar those made by the landau.

He drank the coffee and, when he'd finished, concluded that enough time had passed. He lifted his cane and used its end to push open the little trapdoor in the cabin's roof.

“What's the story, Monty?”

“Wait,” came the abrupt reply.

Burton waited.

The carriage turned this way and that. Twice, its cabin bumped and scraped against brick walls. The vehicle was obviously navigating the narrow back streets.

After perhaps five minutes, Penniforth called down, “You've got hounds on your scent, an' I daresay we've not shaken 'em off, so when I tells you to jump, you 'op out while I keep goin' an' lead 'em on a merry chase. You'll find yerself at the end of an alley. Walk down it—no hangin' about—an' enter the establishment what you'll find 'alfway along.”

“I'm followed? By whom and for what reason? And what establishment?”

“No time to explain, guv'nor. Jump! Now! Off you go!”

Burton opened the door and dropped from the moving carriage. His feet hit the ground, and he staggered and nearly fell. By the time he'd righted himself, Penniforth's cab had already vanished into the murk.

A denser shadow to his right marked the mouth of an alley. Burton quickly moved into it and, when he heard the chugging of approaching engines, pressed himself against a wall. Three velocipedes passed, rattling along the road he'd just left, obviously chasing the landau. Their riders were unidentifiable, their forms mere smudges in the cloud, but he had the fleeting impression that they were somehow oddly proportioned, and a chill prickled through him.

He didn't move until the vehicles' noise had faded to nothing and even then waited for two minutes before turning and feeling his way forward, peering cautiously ahead. His boots encountered litter and filthy puddles. Flecks of ash accumulated on his shoulders and hat. The corrosive fumes assaulted the back of his throat. He battled the impulse to cough.

An orange glow pierced the vaporous curtain a few steps away and to his left. He moved toward it and saw a gas lamp above a dark blue door. A small brass plaque was mounted on the portal. It bore the words
Verbena Lodge
.

“Ah,” Burton murmured. “Algy.”

His friend's physiological quirk didn't only inspire inappropriate outbursts of humour but also caused the poet to experience pain as pleasure. This had given rise to certain unusual tastes. Verbena Lodge was where Swinburne indulged them.

Burton thrice applied the handle of his cane to the wood. Half a minute passed before his knocks were acknowledged. The door, with a slight squeak, swung inward. A seven-foot-tall bald-headed and muscular African, dressed in long white robes, looked down at the visitor.

“I don't recognise you,” he rumbled, his voice sounding as if it was rising from the depths of the earth.

“Burton. I think my friend Swinburne is here. He sent for me.”

“Swinburne. There's no Swinburne.”

“I see. Perhaps he goes by another name. He's a very short and excitable fellow with a taste for the lash and a propensity for versifying.”

The doorman grinned, his teeth startlingly white. “Oh. You mean Mr. Wheldrake.”

Ernest Wheldrake. A pseudonym Algy used when writing humorously negative reviews of his own poetry.

“I believe so.”

“Come in, please.”

Burton entered. The servant closed the door after him, stalked across the small lobby, and poked his head around an arched opening into the room beyond. “Madam, a gentleman is here to see Mr. Wheldrake. Should I—?”

A husky female voice responded, “He's expected, Malazo. Show him up to the Crimson Suite. Remind the girls that it's off-limits until further notice.”