by Mark Hodder
Trounce started to search for his gun. “It’s all gone to the devil. The police used to be a public service, there to offer protection, but there’s a new order sweeping through the Yard, and Rigby’s Special Patrol Group exemplifies its credo, which is to enforce and intimidate.”
Burton peered at the head but could see little in the darkness. “And tonight? Why did they come after us?”
“I’ve been keeping my ears peeled, working with Detective Inspector Slaughter and Constable Honesty to get a measure of Rigby.”
Burton uttered a small sound of approval. Slaughter and Honesty had both been members of the Ministry of Chronological Affairs. They were good, trustworthy men.
“I’d learned that Rigby was having you both followed. Earlier tonight, Slaughter came to me and said he’d just overheard the man issue an arrest order for Algy.” He addressed the poet. “You were going to be detained for questioning.”
Swinburne said, “Why? What have I done?”
“You’ve penned subversive poetry.”
“Pah! Everyone’s a critic.”
“Believe me, Rigby’s criticism would have stung like no other. ‘Detained for questioning’ is a metaphor. It means ‘placed in a cell without charge, held for an indeterminate period, and frequently beaten.’ You were lucky Slaughter was in the right place at the right time. He saw three clockwork men return to the Yard and report they’d lost track of you in this district. When he passed that information to me, I immediately suspected you’d be in the lodge. So I raced over and got here in the nick of time. Ah, here it is!” He bent, retrieved his revolver, blew dust from it, and put it in his pocket. “Let’s get out of here. We’re all three fugitives now. We should find somewhere to lay low.”
“I know just the place,” Burton said.
Swinburne indicated that they should follow him. “Then this way, chaps. I arranged to rendezvous with Monty after our chinwag. He should be waiting nearby.”
Leaving the alley, and moving as silently as possible, they passed through one passage after another with only Trounce’s lantern lighting the way. Rats frequently scurried out of their path. Burton coughed as the corrosive fog caught in his nostrils. He could feel grit accumulating in his hair and on his skin, and the humid damp was beginning to penetrate his clothing.
Footsteps sounded from ahead. Trounce quickly extinguished the light. They pressed themselves into a doorway. Three mechanised constables ran past, their blue face lamps glowing, their batons extended, their metal feet stamping.
When the noise of them had faded, Trounce rewound his lantern. “Phew! A close call. Come on.”
“We’re almost there,” Swinburne noted.
Five minutes later, they emerged into what felt to Burton like a more open space, though initially he wasn’t quite sure why he made that presumption. Trounce’s light penetrated the fog sufficiently to reveal the suggestion of railings with a skeletal tree branch twisting just above them—one of the city’s many little squares, with a tiny, enclosed public garden in its middle.
Swinburne put two fingers to his mouth and whistled twice.
A reply sounded from off to their left.
They walked in that direction and soon found the landau. Montague Penniforth, standing beside it, greeted them.
“Hallo, gents! Mr. Trounce, it’s good to see you again. I was beginnin’ to think—Blimey! What the bloomin’ ’eck has ’appened to you?”
Swinburne winked at him. “The girls got a little overenthusiastic. It was perfectly splendid!”
Burton pushed the poet into the vehicle. “Can you drive us to Norwood, Monty?”
“South of the river? Aye, course I can. Long way though, ’specially in this ’souper.”
“Keep your ears peeled. Let me know if you think we’re being followed.”
“Will do, guv’nor. All aboard!”
Burton and Trounce climbed in and, as they settled, the steam horse coughed itself awake. The landau set off.
It astonished the explorer that Penniforth could drive in such conditions but, as before, the cabbie was able to navigate without difficulty—albeit slowly—through the murk.
“Why suddenly order me apprehended?” Burton asked Trounce. “Followed, I can understand, but I haven’t done anything untoward, even by the current overly stringent standards.”
“A new directive from the Home Office,” Trounce said. “Undesirables are to be rounded up.”
“What qualifies as an undesirable?”
“Humph! There’s the rub. It’s more or less anyone who, in Rigby’s judgement, poses a significant threat to the stability of the empire. His remit is so broad and ill-defined that he could quite literally include any person in it. From what I’ve so far witnessed, he’s currently preying on those people who possess the wits and resources to offer viable opposition to Disraeli’s Young England. Algy has been identified as a mouthpiece for the protesters, and you—by virtue of your friendship with him, not to mention Rigby’s hatred of you—were an obvious addition to the list.”
Burton pondered this, then suddenly gave a cry of alarm and, leaning forward, hastily used his cane to open the hatch in the cabin roof.
“Monty!”
“Aye, guv’nor?”
“Keep your eyes peeled for any street urchins. I need to send a message via the Whispering Web.”
“Rightio, but the nippers will all be asleep at this hour.”
Falling back into his seat with a curse, Burton said, “The Cannibal Club. I need to warn them. Should we go back to Leicester Square?”
“No,” Trounce responded. “We need to get as far away from the area as possible. You were carousing tonight? At Bartolini’s?”
“Yes.” The explorer fished his pocket watch from his waistcoat and flipped open its lid. “Hmm. It’s later than I thought. He’ll have kicked them out by now.”
For the next few minutes, they sat in silence.
Trounce took out a handkerchief and attended to his bloodied face.
Swinburne twitched and jerked and pulled at his scorched clothing.
When the landau steered into Piccadilly, the little poet uttered an exclamation and pointed out of the window. “Hallo! What’s going on there?”
Burton leaned across him and looked out at Green Park. Though obscured by rolling vapours and drifting ash, countless lamps brightly illuminated the open space, and the explorer could just make out hundreds of workmen who appeared to be erecting row upon row of wooden huts.
“Are we hosting some manner of exposition?” he enquired of Trounce.
“Not that I’m aware of,” the detective inspector responded. “And if we were, I would certainly know about it, for it would need to be policed.”
“Then what is the purpose of those cabins?”
The Scotland Yard man shrugged.
Their vehicle trundled on southward and crossed the river. On the Lambeth Road, they encountered a ragamuffin—a young lad in overlarge boots and with a battered topper placed at a cocky angle on his head. He revealed to Burton that he was on his way to a newspaper depot to pick up a bundle of early editions. “I can sell an ’undred of ’em in less ’n a bloomin’ hour,” he boasted.
“Would you like to earn enough so you don’t have to?” the explorer asked.
“Cor! Not ’alf!”
Burton gave a simple message to be delivered to Richard Monckton Milnes’s town house. You and the Cannibals are in danger of arrest. Leave the city at the earliest opportunity.
The boy ran off, with a pocket jingling with coins, to send the warning on its way. No doubt Monckton Milnes would be roused from his bed at a horribly early hour and given something to think about other than his hangover.
The carriage continued on.
Burton examined the head of the Special Patrol Group machine. Not black but midnight blue. Heavy for its size. A badge inset into the helmet-shaped cranium bore the stylised image of an eagle and the motto: LEX EST ABSOLUTA.
“The La
w is Absolute.”
Swinburne said, “Pardon?”
“The new police dictum, by the looks of it.”
“Rigby’s justification for bully-boy tactics,” Trounce snarled. “Everything that made me proud to serve has been corrupted. To hell with it! To hell with Chief Commissioner Mayne, to hell with Colonel Rigby, to hell with Scotland Yard, and, especially, to hell with Disraeli! I’ll not play his game, and I know plenty of other Yard men who feel the same way. I’m in a mind to organise them. We should found a proper resistance.”
“Hurrah!” Swinburne cheered. “Good old Pouncer! To war! To war!”
“Let’s not be reckless,” Burton said. “I’d like a better idea of what the premier is up to before I turn revolutionary.”
Trounce stuck out his chest. “Whatever it is, it’s wrong. I’m British! That has always stood for something and must continue to do so. I’ll not stand by and see it tainted by that damn—” He gritted his teeth.
“Jew?” Burton suggested. “Listen here, William, I’ll not have any of that. I’ve travelled the world and mixed with Hindus and Hebrews and Muslims and Christians and so-called heathens of every sort. If there’s but one lesson I’ve learned, it is that a man is good or evil on his own account. He might employ his religion to justify his actions but, if that religion weren’t there, he’d find something else to excuse his behaviour. Wickedness is wickedness, and it will twist any belief to its own end. Evil has been done in the name of every god ever imagined, and, atheist though I may be, I’ll not decry an entire faith just because some who claim it are contemptible.”
“Anyway,” Swinburne added, “Dizzy converted to Anglicism when he was a child.”
Trounce muttered, “For crying out loud, I was going to say dandy.”
“Great Scott!” Swinburne cried out in shock. “You’d stoop so low as to condemn a man for his lacy cuffs and velvet collars?”
“Oh, shut up, both of you. You know full well what I meant. This country has led the world in the establishment of social decency and respect. The British created the very concept of freedom.”
“And reason!” Swinburne agreed.
“Tolerance!” Trounce said.
“Justice!”
“Progress!”
“Opportunity!”
“Perseverance!”
Burton waved his hands. “All right! All right! Enough evangelising. One thing at a time. There’s something vitally important we must do before anything else.”
“What?” Swinburne and Trounce chorused.
“Sleep, damn it.”
Their vehicle passed through Brixton, breasted Tulse Hill, and entered Norwood Road. Penniforth, who’d played a prominent role in the case Burton had written up as The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi, knew the area well, and now lifted the hatch and called down. “The burial ground?”
“Yes please, Monty,” Burton responded. “Are we followed?”
“The soup is a bit thinner here, guv’nor, an’ I can see some ways behind us. No one on our tail, I’m pretty sure of it.”
Five minutes later, the landau drew to a halt at the gates of West Norwood Cemetery, and the passengers disembarked.
“I’m goin’ to leave it at the Coach an’ Horses ’round the corner,” Penniforth told them. “Dare say you’ll be in the land o’ Nod by the time I join you, so I’ll see you in the mornin’.”
He touched the brim of his hat and drove off.
Burton, Swinburne, and Trounce entered the cemetery and started along a path through the trees. The fog, though thick, was, as Penniforth had stated, more penetrable in this part of the city, and they soon glimpsed, through the branches, the steeple of the Episcopal Church.
They found the door to the building shut but unlocked, and upon entering through it, moved to the right, passed along the outer aisle, and paced into the right-hand transept. Stepping to an arched doorway, they descended the stone steps beyond it and arrived at a wooden door, which Burton pushed open. It creaked loudly, the sound echoing.
“Your lantern, William?”
The detective inspector made a sound of acknowledgment and produced his light. Moments later, it illuminated a catacomb; a tall, long, and narrow vaulted passage of elegant brickwork with three arched doorways on either side, which, as they passed along it, they saw opened onto narrower but longer corridors. Coffins lay in wall niches, and decorative wrought-iron gates opened onto small bays and loculi in which individuals and families had been interred.
At the far end of the passage, they came to a blank wall. Burton used his right foot to nudge a brick at the base of it. There was a soft clunk. He put his shoulder to the wall and pushed. A square section of it swung inward, revealing a long, dusty corridor. It was barely wider than his shoulders and sloped downward.
Burton led his companions in, and, as the portal swung shut behind them, reflected that his fear of enclosed spaces appeared to have left him. No surprise after a year spent entrapped in a metal body.
The memory of that experience felt very remote.
Too, the fact that he was entering a hiding place previously used by the creature who’d killed Isabel had little effect on him. He ought to feel uneasy but didn’t. The recollection of her death contained no depth of emotion, no regret or sorrow.
From behind him, Trounce’s lamp cast weird shadows.
They proceeded forward until, once again, they were confronted by a featureless wall. Burton pressed another brick to open a concealed door then led them out into a vault of coffin-filled alcoves and gated bays. It was illuminated by oil lamps and cluttered with machinery. These catacombs, he knew, were beneath the Dissenters’ Church. They were wider, taller, and more extensive than the neighbouring tunnels and consisted of many more passages, which branched off from the central corridor. This, though also crowded with machinery and workbenches, appeared rather more organised than the others. It was quiet. They saw only one person—a woman—attending to chemical apparatus.
“Good evening,” Burton said, as they drew closer to her. “Or do I mean morning?”
“Sir Richard!” she exclaimed, looking up. “We weren’t expecting you. Everyone is asleep.”
“As I would very much like to be. We’ll speak with Mr. Gooch at a more convenient hour. Is there anywhere we can lay our heads?”
She nodded and pointed toward the mouth of a passage. “We’ve cleared out the bays along there. You’ll find some unoccupied. The bedding is a bit makeshift, I’m afraid, but it suffices. If you’d like to wash first, go right to the end. You’ll find basins, jugs of water, soap and towels. There’s also a contraption of pipes and—well—it’s an—um—it’s our facilities, if you see what I mean.”
“I do. It all sounds marvellous. Will you tell Daniel we’re here when he rises, but not to disturb us? We’ve had an exhausting night. And ask him to have a look at this.” He held up the metal head and placed it on a worktop.
“Oh! I’ve not seen one like that before. Yes, I’ll tell him. Pleasant dreams.”
“Unlikely.”
Less than thirty minutes later, the three men were, as Penniforth had predicted, in the land of Nod.
In the morning, Burton, Swinburne, and Trounce breakfasted from the considerable supplies the ex-DOGS personnel had accrued in their hideout. They then joined Daniel Gooch at a workbench.
“This is remarkable,” the engineer told Burton, lifting the metal head of the downed Special Patrol Group constable. He turned it so the explorer could see the exposed inner workings. “You’ll note that the babbage is of a completely different design. A little larger. As far as I can see, it’s been inspired by the Turing additions to the Mark Three in the Orpheus.”
Burton peered at the mechanism. “But why the increase in size? The Turing machinery we encountered in the future was tiny—some of it microscopic.”
“It was,” Gooch agreed. “But though we can ascertain the function of Turing components, we still haven’t the capacity to reproduce them on such a sma
ll scale. This, I am certain, is Babbage’s best effort to mimic that future machinery by employing contemporary techniques and materials. No one but he could have done it. For all that it’s clumsier and less powerful than a Turing of 2202, it’s nevertheless a significant advancement over our previous probability calculators. The man is a bloody genius. This is magnificent!”
Trounce, standing with Swinburne on the other side of the workbench, and sporting a very black eye, grumbled, “Humph! You might be less enthusiastic if it directed a machine that thumped you with a baton.”
“I dare say,” Gooch conceded.
Burton pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I can only conclude that Charles is producing these machines for the government. He departed the power station with forethought and in a carefully arranged manner, taking all his work with him. It’s unlikely then that he’s being forced to do anything against his will. My suspicion is that he was recruited by the prime minister last October, though what might have been promised to him, and what motivated Disraeli at that time, I cannot fathom.”
Swinburne hopped into the air and swiped a fist. “Dizzy is an absolute cad! A total bounder! Our audience with him was an utter farce!”
Burton nodded his agreement. “I believe so. He was considerably more knowledgeable than he appeared to be. For a start, he’d no doubt already read The History of the Future, which Babbage’s contraptions had snatched from Maneesh and Sadhvi the day before we met with him.”
“He’s gone mad,” Trounce opined. “It’s the only explanation.”
They fell silent for a few moments.
Gooch raised the brass head. “I wonder where these things are being manufactured. The equipment used to assemble clockwork men at Battersea Power Station was removed—along with everything else—by government men when the Department of Guided Science was disbanded. Wherever it was taken, I daresay that’s where we’ll find old Babbage.”
“Even if we locate it, what—” Trounce began. Gooch cut him off with a loud exclamation.
“Wait! I could—yes! By heavens, I think you may have given me the means!” He turned the head. Its exposed artificial brain somewhat resembled an unpeeled artichoke. With the forefinger of his left supplementary hand, he pointed to a small, leaf-shaped, metal panel that lay flush with its surface. “It’ll take me some considerable time to study the whole thing—or, rather, what I can of it without setting off the booby trap—but I can tell you right now what this is. It’s the equivalent of the component I removed from Grumbles, the part containing the grain of black diamond dust. Only this, instead of diamond, holds a flake of crystalline silicate.”