The Rise of the Automated Aristocrats (14 page)

Burton regarded the Beetle. The whispery quality of the man's voice suddenly felt to him a little less human, as if air was being forced not through vocal cords but through internal petals.

He asked, “And now?”

“Now I must undertake various tasks in various periods of various histories in order to make my own existence possible. In one, I'll found an organisation called the League of Chimney Sweeps and will ensure that the Swinburne of that history is one day made an honorary member of it. I'll also stow away aboard another
Orpheus
that I might warn its crew that a saboteur is aboard. I'll see to it that a gentleman named Herbert Spencer is rescued from a gang of particularly dangerous fellows known as the Rakes. I'll arrange for a rogue occultist named Eliphas Levi to be shown the error of his ways. And in the time stream that is this ship's destination, I'll travel back a few months prior to its departure and will cultivate a red jungle in an abandoned factory.” He smiled. “I must do what has already been done, and then I shall do it all again and again and again, and with each reiteration, the circle will tighten until it eventually makes itself extinct and the damage to time will be repaired, and there will be but one history and one Burton and one Swinburne and one Trounce and an infinity of unrealised probabilities.”

There followed a short silence before Trounce mumbled, “As clear as mud.”

Burton said, “It makes very little sense, yet I somehow understand it.”

One, three, five heads nodded. “Uncountable Burtons, each contributing a unique insight to the subconscious intellect that links you all, each vaguely aware of the possible sum of its parts.”

“Very well. I accept all that you have told us. You have not explained, though, why you have yanked these two fellows and me from our deathbeds.”

“Pavement,” Trounce corrected.

“I intend no ingratitude,” Burton continued, “but I would like to know why I am here.”

He felt a sudden sadness emanating from the strange figure before him. The Beetle flickered as if his presence had briefly folded to some other place, then he was back.

“
My
Swinburne and Trounce, if I might so call them, have remained in the year 2203, while I—well, let us say that the Burton who's returning to 1861 is not the Burton who departed.”

“Not by a considerable degree,” the explorer concurred somewhat dryly. “And I say that with confidence despite never having met the chap.”

“So I intend to recruit you three as replacements.”

Swinburne clapped his palms together and rubbed his hands. “Splendid!”

“Wait, Algy. Hear me out. It's a little more involved than that. You three men finished your lives with certain issues unresolved and—if you'll excuse the observation—with some measure of disappointment. I can offer you the opportunity to live again and to make different choices, but not here in the past of your own history, where you'd encounter only the same options. You'd also know what is to come, which means you could shape events to your own advantage—an irresistible prospect, which I cannot allow. However, if you travel sideways with us into
our
history, you'll arrive in an 1861 that is rather dissimilar to the one you remember. There, you'll be plunged into entirely new circumstances. You should know that the tightening of the circle, of which I've spoken, will cause events to develop with unnatural rapidity, and you'll be required to fight the instability that will undoubtedly result, including the consequences of the
Orpheus
's return from the future. You'll become entangled in matters of considerable magnitude. They will change you. The second half of your new lives will be markedly different from the second half of your old lives, and they'll not be easy. Through them, you'll become a new Burton, a new Swinburne, and a new Trounce.”

Again, a period of silence.

Burton murmured, “What if we decline?”

“I shall have no recourse but to return you to whence you came.”

“Thunder and lightning!” Trounce cried out. “You'd condemn us to our deaths?”

“Condemn? Let me tell you, William, there is a beauty in the tranquillity and transcendence of death that you would yearn for if only you could know it in life. It is not the end you perceive it to be. It is simply a liberation from the constriction of narratives.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“I have died many times.”

“Humph!”

“I accept,” Swinburne said.

Burton sighed and remembered the pervasively cold ache of rheumatism and the stiffness of his old bones. He stared at the Beetle, seeing clearly only the dark pupils with their strangely metallic outer rims. He swallowed and spoke, his voice quiet and steady. “When I was a young man, I was convinced I'd one day be immortalised as the translator of
The Scented Garden
. Then the original manuscript, which I'd purchased from the library of the Emir of Sindh, went up in flames. As an old man, I pieced the damned thing together from memory, still believing it would secure my name for posterity. Then, I have learned, it was burned again, this time by—by—bismillah!—this time by Isabel, of all people! I was, it appears, on the wrong road from the start.” He shrugged and clicked his tongue. “I accept.”

The Beetle said, “William?”

Trounce, still sitting cross-legged, slapped a palm onto the deck. “Confound it! You've drugged me! Mesmerised me! Befuddled me with gobbledegook!”

“I've spoken the truth, and you know it.”

“The deuce I do! And what of this other world of yours? This 1861? How in blue blazes are we to fit in? We'll not know up from down! Am I supposed to pretend to be this other Trounce? Masquerade as a Detective Inspector? Go home to my—to my—” His eyes suddenly welled up with tears. Angrily, he dragged his sleeve across his face and said, huskily, “to my wife?”

“A justified concern, my friend, but already the mere proximity of this ship and its crew has given rise to unaccountable memories, is that not so?”

The policeman offered a reluctant grunt of confirmation.

“When you are fully immersed in the other history, such recollections will prevail. It will feel somewhat akin to slipping your foot into a comfortable old shoe.”

“And what of our current memories?” Swinburne asked.

“They'll rapidly fade into the background. With an effort, you'll be able to raise them, should you feel inclined to do so.”

Trounce again clapped his hands over his eyes. “Oh, God help me! To blazes with the whole thing! I accept! I accept!”

The Beetle took a hold of his hood and pulled it up. From within its shadow, he said, “In my former incarnation, I—which is to say,
you
, Sir Richard—wrote a report outlining the events of this expedition. Certain matters were excluded from it, primarily those circumstances that led to my birth. It is vitally important that my existence remain a secret, for I am the embodiment of the Oxford equation and am thus the seed of humanity's future. I must be allowed to enter the collective consciousness in the correct manner. Edward Oxford's time spanning exploits caused growth to occur out of season and you have seen the consequences. Now I am eliminating the weeds and preparing the ground. No more false starts. No more mistakes. So, sealed lips, please, gentlemen. The Beetle must never be mentioned. Agreed?”

They each made a sound of acquiescence.

“As for you three, no one but you, me, Sadhvi Raghavendra, Krishnamurthy, Gooch, and Lawless will ever know that you are not exactly who you purport to be, and after a short while such a distinction will cease to matter, anyway. Sergeant Trounce, you are hereby promoted to Detective Inspector. I wish you well. Sir Richard, Algernon, I will remain aboard this vessel when you leave it and shall depart in my own manner and without ceremony. Do what needs to be done and rely on your instincts, for they will guide you correctly. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a great deal of work to do.” He made a slight gesture of dismissal with the fingers of his right hand.

Burton knew he'd get nothing more from his mystifying counterpart. He stood and offered a helping hand to Trounce, who took it and heaved himself to his feet. Swinburne hopped up, too, and they backed away from the motionless Beetle then turned, opened the door, and stepped out into the corridor.

Sadhvi Raghavendra was waiting.

Burton regarded her and felt disorientated. He knew he'd last seen her in this same place but also thought he'd last seen her standing beside the Monument Flower in 2203.

“I expect he gave you a lot to think about,” she said to them.

“He gave me nothing but a bloody headache,” Trounce complained. “'Scuse my language, ma'am.”

“As always, it's bloody excused. The headache is no surprise. The black diamonds in the Beetle's skull are not the only ones we have aboard. In fact, we are carrying a lot of them. The resonance they emit powerfully affects the psychic parts of the human mind. In the average person, proximity causes headaches, though those aboard this ship have become somewhat immune. In people with well-developed clairvoyant abilities, the gems, even from considerable distance, can cause death.”

“Humph! As far as I'm aware, my mind has no clairvoyant parts at all.”

“But nevertheless suffers due to the emanations. Either that or your session in the Slug and Lettuce is wearing off. Come through to the lounge. Let's get some coffee into you.”

As they followed her along the passage, Burton asked, “Sadhvi, what happened? What was the rapture?”

“How much did the Beetle show you?”

“My—or should I say
his
?—final moments in the brass machine. His birth, or arrival from death, or whatever it was.”

“Ah. Or should you say
yours
. Baffling, isn't it?”

“Good Lord,” Trounce groaned. “Will you people never let up?”

They entered into the comfortable chamber, which was now occupied only by Pox, who greeted them with, “Ghastly sponge heads!”

“Make yourselves comfortable. We'll be under way in few minutes. Captain Lawless is on the bridge as usual, Daniel is in the engine room, and Maneesh is attending to the Nimtz generator. A tiny crew, but most of the ship is automated.”

“Nimtz generator,” Swinburne said. “As was spoken of in our shared vision. Exactly what is it?”

“Exactly, I couldn't say, such matters not being my area of expertise, but basically it is a machine created by Edward Oxford and reproduced, albeit in a much larger and clumsier form, by Charles Babbage. It manipulates something called chronostatic energy, thus making movement through time possible.”

“I see. It sounds like uncommon nonsense.”

Burton smiled at the poet's paraphrasing of
Alice in Wonderland.

Uncommon nonsense, indeed!

The three men settled into armchairs positioned around a low table onto which Raghavendra placed an already steaming coffee pot, four cups, a jug of milk, and a bowl of sugar. She sat, leaned forward, and attended to their beverages, obviously familiar with their preferences. No milk but four heaped teaspoons of sugar for Burton, milk and two for Trounce, milk and one for Swinburne. For herself, just a splash of milk.

Old friends, some of whom had never met before, reunited.

She sipped, put her cup down, and leaned back.

“March the nineteenth, 2203. Daniel took the black diamonds from the brass man's babbage and slotted them into the holes in the old man's head. As each diamond went in, the skin closed over it. For about twenty minutes, nothing notable happened, though I sensed a presence gradually building within the prone form. At precisely half past nine, he opened his eyes and smiled.”

Raghavendra blinked rapidly and pursed her lips. She shook her head slightly.

“It's very difficult to find the words for what then occurred. A very powerful wave of what I can only describe as clairvoyant energy was transmitted from him. It was utterly overwhelming. Those of us from 1860 were knocked senseless by it. We recovered some few minutes later to find that Algy—I mean the other Swinburne—and William and Tom Bendyshe were—” She stopped and frowned. “Different.”

“In what manner?” Burton asked.

Raghavendra lifted a hand and felt her hair, caught her bottom lip between her teeth, and appeared to look inward, as if putting her thoughts into order. “They and the man we now call the Beetle had become very difficult to look at. It was as if they each had multiple heads occupying the same space, there and yet, at the very same time, elsewhere. But there was something else. It was like—um—” She stopped, considered, then went on, “There is a certain component of the human system, generally unrecognised by anatomists, that is called by clairvoyants the astral body. As far as I understand, it is a subtle electromagnetic field that follows the contours of the flesh but which also, in an exceedingly rarefied form, extends some distance outward from it.”

“The
farr
, according to Persian tradition,” Burton said. “It translates as
glory
.”

“Nincompoop breeders!” Pox shrieked.

Raghavendra ignored the bird. “Ah. Then I shall employ that word, for it is a perfect fit. What I sensed was that my friends were now each in possession of a vastly more powerful and very greatly extended astral body. In fact, their
farrs
were so expanded that they commingled not only with each other but also with the equally amplified astral bodies of every individual on the globe. In short, humanity had become one single organism of which every man and woman was but an element. Furthermore, the red jungle had become an integral component of that organism, and the grand total, the immense and unified
Being
, radiated a sheer joy that I could barely grasp, so intense was it. That, Sir Richard, was your
glory
. Nathaniel, Maneesh, Daniel, and I were virtually incapacitated by it. For sure, we all had in our bloodstreams the pollen and nanotechnology that was now a constituent of this new humanity, but in us it was functioning to resist the rapture rather than to incorporate us into it. Plainly, with our origin lying in the year 1860, we were not sufficiently progressed to withstand such a wonder. Indeed, we all felt horribly uncomfortable, as if we were suddenly a mote in evolution's eye. The Beetle, Algy, William, and Tom assisted us to the
Orpheus
. There, they bid us farewell. I regret to say that our parting was not as I should have liked it. Their presence was too much for us to withstand. I felt as if I were staring wide-eyed into the sun. We stumbled aboard, somehow managed to close the doors behind us, and instructed the ship to take us home. We then collapsed and lost consciousness. When we awoke it was to find to our astonishment that the Beetle had accompanied us aboard. He'd also taken command of the ship, slowing its passage backward through time, that he might, as he put it, ‘start stitching the wounds in history,' though how he means to achieve that end, I cannot tell you. He also proposed that we should voyage sideways into alternate histories, first to fetch Pox then to pluck you gentlemen from the end of your lives.”