The Rise of the Automated Aristocrats (52 page)

McGarrigle assisted Swinburne.

“The method of control?” Burton asked.

Lawless clicked two bars into place. They projected forward from just above Burton's waist.

“Rest your arms on these and wrap your hands around the grips at their ends.”

Following the directive, Burton found that his fingers slid naturally over trigger-like levers, four on each side. Lawless rapidly explained their function then stood back while, without leaving the ground, Burton and Swinburne practiced flapping. While they were thus engaged, Trounce and McGarrigle kept clockwork men at bay with well-placed pistol shots.

The rest of Lawless's crew started to land nearby, among them Shyamji Bhatti.

“No!” the airman yelled at them. “Back up! Shoot at the metal men from above!”

They obeyed his command.

Lawless watched them for a moment then turned his grey eyes to Burton. “That's all the training you need. The contrivances practically fly by themselves. Get going before the cur escapes.”

The explorer nodded. He reloaded his pistol and, while doing so, addressed Trounce. “I can't help but feel I'm abandoning you.”

“Oh, balderdash! The battle is almost won. As far as I can see, the automated aristocrats are dropping dead of their own accord, and we outnumber the Special Patrol Group.”

Burton scanned the crowd and noticed, for the first time, that many of the brass men, rather than fighting, were clutching their heads, some falling to their knees, others twitching on the ground.

He accepted extra ammunition from the detective inspector, pocketed it, and murmured, “Rigby, then.”

He put his arms on the bars and squeezed the appropriate triggers. Trounce hastily retreated from the thrashing wings. Burton felt the ground drop away from his feet and heard Swinburne squealing with excitement. The two men flapped upward then spread their wings and allowed the searing heat to push them with breathtaking rapidity to a greater altitude. Red-hot embers rose all around them. Burton gazed down at Southwark. The fire, as Trounce had feared, was spreading, and the whole district was in obvious peril. Until the Special Patrol Group machines were defeated, the London Fire Engine Establishment wouldn't be able to tackle the heart of the inferno.

Rising above the smoke, Burton spotted a second blaze, this on the opposite side of the river. He angled his wings, soared out over the water, and realised what it was. Edward had somehow managed to collide with the
Eurypyle
in such a manner as to ensure the two wrecked ships plummeted out of the sky directly onto the Tower of London. Such a calculation, Burton pondered, would have been beyond even Edward's ability under normal circumstances. However, with a babbage at his mind's disposal, speed, weight, and trajectory had been determined accurately.

The ancient castle, built to endure the most powerful of medieval siege weapons, had not fully withstood the impact of the two massive flying machines. Its defensive walls in the southeastern corner had been knocked inward, and their rubble was strewn across the grounds, marking a broad trail to the keep against which a flaming hulk of indistinguishable form—a snarled mass of metal, wood, and other materials—had slammed with such force that, though the bulk of the White Tower remained unscathed, its corner turret had collapsed, falling onto and through the wooden roof.

My brother is down there. Dead.

He pushed that fact aside to be dealt with later.

The two men crossed the water.

The night air was mild but felt cool as it flowed across the scorched skin of Burton's face. He listened to the hissing of the miniature furnace strapped to his back, the vigorous chugging of the tiny but powerful steam engine, and contemplated the Formby coal he'd been told about, a single lump of which could burn for twenty times as long as untreated coal, giving off an incredibly intense heat.

He flapped closer to Swinburne, surprised at the ease with which he performed the manoeuvre, and called across to him, “Something occurs to me.”

“That we should never have left the Slug and Lettuce?” Swinburne suggested.

“Aye, you're not far wrong there, my friend. But no. I was considering these wings and the other machinery we've seen in this world. You know, I'm half-convinced that none of it would work in our own.”

Swinburne yelped. “And you choose to divulge this while we're strapped into the contraptions and hanging two hundred feet in the air?”

Burton ignored the protest. “We've learned that the material world is the stuff of our own imaginations. If that's the case, then so too, surely, are the rules which dictate how that world functions—the laws of physics, for example. And since there are multiple renditions of the world, might not each one include slight variations in the rules?”

“It's an utterly marvellous and thoroughly intriguing proposition,” Swinburne countered, “presented under the most ridiculous of circumstances and at the most inopportune of moments. Next time you have a theory, I'll certainly be keen to hear it, but spoken, perhaps, across a table in the lounge of a gentlemen's club rather than yelled through space high over the River bloody Thames, you dolt!”

Burton gave a bark of laughter and immediately felt astounded that such a sound had emerged from his mouth at such a time.

Out of nowhere, he was suddenly filled with a sense of completeness. The other Burtons—including the Beetle—were a part of him, but they felt like echoes. Their memories were starting to fade. Trieste was still there, Isabel was still there, but their significance had dwindled. Attachments, attitudes, and issues that once mattered no longer did.
The Secret Garden
had gone up in flames, and he didn't care.

This was his life now.

There remained just one loose end to tie.

He descended toward the White Tower, started to circle it, and saw that the burning wreckage blocked its entrance. There was a scattering of people in the grounds. They looked confused and indecisive. A few were attempting the clear a path to the door, but the fire was holding them back.

Rigby, Burton hoped, was trapped inside.

Something on the building's roof flashed brightly, and a projectile screamed past his head. A detonation sounded. Another flash and suddenly his left wing collapsed.

“They're shooting at us!” Swinburne screeched.

Burton, spinning wildly, hurtled down onto the keep's roof, hit it so hard the wind was knocked out of him, and rolled uncontrollably in a tangle of cloth and snapping wing spars. He thudded into the battlements and lay still. With blurred vision, he saw a white-haired figure standing at a mounted cannon.

Swinburne flapped past. “It's the confounded butterfly collector!”

The gun fired.

The poet shrieked, soared upward, banked sharply, and fell toward the shootist feet first.

“You'll not pin my wings!”

His heels thumped into the man's chest, sending him sprawling. The poet swooped up a little before dropping and landing. His wings folded behind him. He drew his revolver, stepped to the lepidopterist, examined him, and announced, “Knocked cold. Are you all right, Richard?”

Burton groaned and pushed away pieces of torn wing. “I think I have abrasions on my lacerated bruises.” He climbed unsteadily to his feet, stood swaying, then unbuckled his harness and shrugged out of it. His shirt hung off him in tatters.

Swinburne divested himself of his wings and joined the explorer. They looked across the river. Southwark was a raging furnace. A cloud of black smoke was boiling up from it and blowing eastward.

“My hat!” Swinburne said. “If the fire brigade can't get that under control, we'll have the Great Fire of London all over again.”

Burton pointed to where large vehicles could be seen gathering to the west of the blaze. “There was no fire service in 1666. Ours is well-trained, well-equipped, and already getting to work. Two years ago, they quelled the conflagration that destroyed the East End. I have faith they'll triumph again on this occasion.”

He looked up. Overhead, the sky was clear. The police rotorships that had previously harassed Lawless's vessel were gone. Those policemen who'd obeyed Chief Commissioner Mayne had either swapped sides or made themselves scarce. Burton wondered whether the dearth of constables on the city's streets had been noticed. He thought this night would likely be counted a good one for petty criminals—but a bad one for major villains.

He drew his revolver.

“The colonel is mine. Don't forget it.”

Swinburne shrugged. “As you say. I'll take Disraeli if he's still alive. He insulted my poetry.”

They moved closer to the hole in the roof. The turret's rubble had crashed through, plunged past the third-storey gallery that encircled the chapel of St. John, and was now piled on the chapel's second-storey floor. It had also displaced one end of a thick rafter, causing it to swing down onto the gallery, where it had jammed fast, bridging the hole from the roof down to the narrow stone walkway.

The poet waved his pistol at it. “If we watch our footing, keep our balance, and the joist holds, that's our way in.”

“And if a single one of those three
ifs
turns into a
but
, we fall to our deaths.”

“Yes. Thrilling, isn't it?”

“Horribly.”

Burton gingerly approached the splintered edge of the gap, testing every step, afraid the roof would give way beneath him. He squatted at the precipice, braced himself with his hands, and lowered a leg to the sloping beam. After thumping his heel into it a few times, he announced, “It feels stable enough.”

“Hoorah!”

Swinburne jumped past, landed with one foot in front of the other on the rafter, stood wobbling for a moment, and started downward with his arms extended for balance.

Burton clenched his teeth and swallowed hard.

Pausing, the poet turned and whispered, “Careful! I hear voices.”

The explorer slapped a hand to his forehead. “Just move, confound you!”

“It's steep,” Swinburne observed. “Tricky.”

He wheeled around, swayed, stood on one foot and stuck out the other, waved his arms, regained his equilibrium, continued on down, and hopped onto the gallery. Waving at Burton, he grinned and gestured for him to follow.

Burton muttered the choicest of the many epithets he'd learned in India, Arabia, and Africa before easing down onto the thick wooden strut. He began to inch forward. Far beneath, he could hear voices but dared not look down. Someone shouted, “Every single document that bears my name, do you understand? All of them! Burned! Immediately!”

The rafter emitted a loud creak.

Burton froze.

Swinburne suddenly pressed himself against the wall beside the arched doorway and put his finger to his lips.

A short, rotund, and heavily bearded individual stepped into view, saw Burton, jerked to a halt, and exclaimed, “What the devil are you doing up there? You'll fall to your death, man!”

“I sincerely hope not,” Burton replied. “Will you tell me what's happening? It'll take my mind off the drop while I work my way down.”

“Happening?” the man said. “We're defeated, that's what's happening.”

Burton resumed his slow descent. He focused on the man's words and tried to ignore the space into which he could topple at any moment.

“The prime minister is burbling nonsense,” the other said. “He's lost his mind. That Rigby fellow has taken charge. He expects us to fight. Fight! I'm George Ward Hunt, Chancellor of the Exchequer, for pity's sake, not a blessed soldier! Take my advice and steer clear of him. He'll shoot you dead on the spot if he suspects any betrayal. Find anything with your signature on it and burn it. Erase every indication of your involvement, if you can, then try to make your escape with the rest of us when we get the door clear.”

Burton neared the end of the rafter. Swinburne, behind the newcomer, watched him while remaining silent.

The explorer said, “To be truthful, there's not much left of me to burn.”

“Really? What department are you from? Are you one of the clerks? I don't recognise you.”

Burton reached the gallery and jumped onto it. He breathed a sigh of relief and bent, resting his hands above his knees, breathing heavily.

“And for that matter,” the man continued, with a hint of suspicion creeping into his voice, “why were you on the roof? You look all banged up. A terrible mess. All that blood! Caught up in the crash, were you?”

Straightening, Burton said, “Where did you say Rigby was?”

“I didn't. He's downstairs, ranting and raving in the ministerial office. I say, look here, will you explain yourself, please? I'm sorry, but the rebels could try to invade the castle at any moment, and if you turned out to be one of them, well, I'd be red in the face, to say the least.”

“It would be rather embarrassing,” Burton conceded. “But a sharp thwack on the head with a pistol should provide you with an excuse in the event of any incriminations.”

“Eh? What's that you said?”

Swinburne stepped forward and obliged.

Burton caught the man and carefully lowered him to the floor. “It appears that Disraeli's subordinates are rather too preoccupied with saving their own skins to bother us.”

“To a politician,” Swinburne observed, “not a single thing matters more than his own survival. They discard principles like a sinking balloonist discharges ballast.”

Moving away from the prone figure, they passed through the doorway, and entered a long corridor that ran along the inside of the tower's east wall to the northeastern corner, where it ended at the top of a stairwell. To his chagrin, Burton saw that the steps went up as well as down, ascending to the roof. There'd been no need to risk the rafter.

Archways on their left opened into a large chamber with the same dimensions as the government office below and the Tool Room on the ground floor. It was crammed with wardrobes, chests of drawers, and unmade beds. The smell of burning paper pervaded the air.