The Return of the Discontinued Man (A Burton & Swinburne Adventure)

by Mark Hodder

  “All aboard,” he instructed.

  Burton, Swinburne and Trounce stepped carefully onto the swaying square of metal. They gripped the rail.

  “Say hello from me to the denizens of the future,” Gooch said, and started to wind the handle.

  As the platform sank, Swinburne proclaimed, “Into the unknown, ta-rah, ta-rah!”

  They emerged from the bay and dropped smoothly down to the boat. A cold breeze dug its fingers into their inadequate clothing. The platform clunked onto the wooden deck, and the cable looped around it as Gooch gave plenty of slack.

  A slim white-haired and round-faced man with a pencil-thin moustache stepped forward from the gathering that awaited them. He shook them each by the hand and said, “Sir Richard, Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Trounce, I am James Arthur Honesty. Your colleague, Detective Inspector Thomas Honesty, was my father.”

  “By Jove!” Trounce exclaimed. “So he made detective inspector! Good man!”

  James Honesty smiled. “He did, sir, and he always spoke very highly of you—said you were the best man on the entire force.”

  Trounce harrumphed and stuck out his chest a little. He suddenly deflated and said, “Spoke? You mean he’s—he’s—”

  “Father passed away fourteen years ago, sir.”

  Burton touched Trounce’s arm. “Remember, old chap, he’s still alive where we’ve come from.”

  Honesty said, “Come belowdecks. I’ll introduce you to the current Cannibals and tell you how things stand with the world. The Orpheus will be fine. Such ships, though old, are still in use and a common sight. She won’t be disturbed.”

  He led them to a door, down a flight of steps, a short way along a narrow corridor, and into an undecorated room furnished with a table, sideboard and chairs. They sat and waited while Honesty’s colleagues appeared and filed in. The chamber was soon crowded.

  “You made it, then,” Honesty said. “The chrononauts! Perfectly marvellous!”

  “Chrononauts?” Burton queried. “Is that what you call us?”

  “It is. So here we all are, thrilled beyond measure to meet you. I’ll confess, not a few of us have secretly suspected the whole affair to be some sort of wild hoax, but there’s one among us who’s maintained the faith, so to speak, and whom you must thank for keeping us organised and committed. A friend of yours.”

  He gestured to a very elderly individual sitting two seats to his right. The old man was gazing at Burton with an amused twinkle in his eye. Burton looked at him. Slowly, recognition dawned.

  “Bismillah!” he said huskily. “Brabrooke! Edward Brabrooke!”

  “Great heavens!” Swinburne cried out.

  Brabrooke laughed, his parchment-thin liver-spotted skin creasing into a myriad of wrinkles. He leaned across the table and extended a gnarled hand to the king’s agent, who gripped it enthusiastically, and to the poet, who did likewise.

  “I feel that I’m dreaming,” Brabrooke said. His voice rustled like dry leaves. “Here am I, seventy-five years old, and there’s you two, exactly as you were when we last got sloshed together, half a century ago. How are you, Richard? Algy? How the very devil are you?”

  Burton responded, “As you say, my friend, I’m exactly as I was when we last met, which for me was just a couple of weeks ago. And the others?”

  “All gone, I’m sad to say. We lost old—”

  Burton interrupted. “Stop! Forgive me, but I shouldn’t have asked. I think it best if you—if all of you—refrain from speaking of those who’ve passed. For me, they’re still alive, though they currently occupy a different portion of time to this. Do you understand?”

  The Cannibals nodded, and Brabrooke said, “Yes, I can see how that might be for the best.” He paused. “But I expect you’ll want to know what became of you—whether you returned from this voyage or not?”

  “Can you tell me?” Burton asked cautiously.

  “No. It’s the most peculiar thing. I have vivid memories of you prior to your departure, but after that there’s a thoroughly curious indecision. I feel, at one and the same time, that you returned but also that you didn’t. If you did, whatever we got up to after 1860 is lost in a frustrating amnesia.”

  “Babbage warned us of such a phenomenon.”

  “His theories are in our records. Knowing the ‘why’ of it doesn’t make it any the less odd.” Brabrooke reached out and took a broad-shouldered man by the elbow, pulling him to his side. “Anyway, let’s look forward, not back. This is my son, Edward John.”

  “I’ve heard so much about the three of you,” the younger Brabrooke said. “It’s an honour to meet you.”

  “I also have a grandson,” Edward Brabrooke said. “Eddie. When he’s older, he’ll join our ranks. Perhaps he’ll get to meet you, too.”

  James Honesty put in, “Suffice to say, Sir Richard, that all your friends dedicated themselves to the continuation of our little organisation, and many are here represented.” He gestured to another, stockily built youngster. “This, for example, is Lieutenant Henry Bendyshe.”

  With an oddly familiar voice, the lieutenant bellowed, “By crikey! I’m very happy to be here, sirs. My grandfather always told tall tales of you, Sir Richard, and of you, Mr. Swinburne. He considered you the finest of friends.”

  “Gosh!” Swinburne muttered. “Tom found a wife. The poor girl.”

  “And this,” Honesty continued, nodding toward a strikingly beautiful blonde-haired woman, “is Miss Eliza Murray, granddaughter of Admiral Henry Murray.”

  “Admiral!” Burton and Swinburne exclaimed.

  Brabrooke cackled. “Who’d have thought such an utter rapscallion would rise so high, hey?”

  Swinburne smiled at Miss Murray and exclaimed, “My hat! But you’re the spitting image of him, except female, of course, and considerably better looking. In fact, you completely outshine him. There’s barely any resemblance at all.”

  She laughed. “My mother says I have his face.”

  “Well,” Swinburne said, “he was tremendously handsome, then. Apparently.”

  Burton turned his attention to a dark-complexioned middle-aged woman. “And you, madam, bear a distinct likeness to Shyamji Bhatti.”

  She bobbed. “His daughter. I am Patmanjari Richardson, née Bhatti.”

  “Your father’s cousin, Maneesh Krishnamurthy, is up in the Orpheus. Perhaps you’d like to meet him?”

  Honesty turned to her. “Go say hello, by all means.”

  “I should like that very much.” She smiled and left the room.

  Another woman, in her midfifties, was introduced as Catherine Jones, daughter of Detective Inspector Sidney Slaughter.

  “We also have with us Clive Penniforth,” James Honesty said, jerking a thumb toward a muscular fellow, “whose father was a cab driver of your acquaintance.”

  “Gents,” Penniforth said. His voice was so deep it sounded like an avalanche. He touched his fingers to his temple. “Pops is still with us, but he don’t get around much no more. Has a spot o’ bother with his hips. He sends his best.”

  “Good old Monty!” Swinburne exclaimed.

  “And finally, from the old crowd, we have Robert Crewe-Milnes, the first Marquess of Crewe.”

  The marquess, a handsome man with a wide moustache and a military bearing, said, “My father was Richard Monckton Milnes.”

  Unexpectedly, Burton felt overcome by emotion. The muscles to either side of his jaw worked spasmodically. He blinked at Crewe-Milnes, who gave a sad smile of understanding and said nothing more.

  Swinburne sniffed, pulled out a handkerchief, and blew his nose.

  After a moment’s silence, Honesty said, “So that is nine of us, all descended from the original Cannibals, with the exception of Mr. Brabrooke, who is an original. However, as you can see, we are twelve in total. We have three new recruits, who we felt could contribute much to our cause, they being inclined toward considerations of the future, as well as possessing admirable insight into the present. The first is Mademoise
lle Amélie Blanchet.”

  A rather coarse-featured, overweight and ostentatiously dressed woman of about fifty years murmured, “Welcome aboard, gentlemen. Bonjour. Bonjour.”

  “She wields considerable influence in high society. Few people better comprehend how an undercurrent of idle gossip influences cultural and political movements, and no one hears more of it than she.”

  The woman gave a somewhat sardonic smile.

  Honesty went on, “Then we have Erik von Lessing, who has many connections in the German government.”

  Burton acknowledged the white-haired and smartly dressed man, who returned his nod with a sharp bow.

  “And last but by no means least, our resident visionary.” Honesty indicated a tubby little chap who was no taller than Swinburne. “Mr. Herbert Wells.”

  “I feel honoured to meet you, Sir Richard,” Wells said. His voice was high-pitched and childlike. “And you, too, Mr. Swinburne.”

  Burton frowned. “Herbert Wells? Herbert George Wells?”

  “Yes,” Wells responded. “You’re no doubt remembering the fellow Abdu El Yezdi wrote of in his account entitled ‘Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon.’ We are pretty certain that he was me, albeit a different me in a different version of history.” He shuddered and added, “And thank goodness for that. My poor counterpart suffered the dreadful world war we ourselves have avoided.”

  “Perhaps, then, I should say it’s nice to meet you again, Mr. Wells,” Burton said, with a wry curl of his lips.

  Wells chuckled.

  “Shall we get to business?” Honesty asked. “Practicalities first?”

  Burton nodded. “Let’s. The Orpheus?”

  “Penniforth and von Lessing are our resident experts in engineering. Gents?”

  “Aye,” Penniforth rumbled. “Airships ain’t changed all that much since your time. The Orpheus can just about pass muster if no one looks too close, like. But we’re goin’ to fit her with a telemobiloscope afore you set off again.”

  “A telly-mo-billy-whatsit?” Swinburne enquired.

  “Invented by a German,” von Lessing put in. “Christian Hülsmeyer. It can detect other ships in your location through means of reflected radio waves.”

  The poet threw out his hands in a helpless shrug. “Radio?”

  “Wireless telegraph signals.”

  “Good Lord!” Burton exclaimed. “Useful!”

  “We even transmit entertainment shows through ’em,” Penniforth added. “Music and suchlike. We ’ave a radio unit ready to add to the Orpheus. It will make it easier for the future Cannibals to contact you.”

  “Excellent. And what else?”

  “There ain’t much else.”

  “Really? Am I to take it that progress has slowed?”

  Edward Brabrooke interjected, “Yes, it most certainly has. These youngsters refer to our time as the Steam Revolution, Richard, and rightfully recognise Isambard Kingdom Brunel and old Charles Babbage as the geniuses at its heart. You’ll doubtlessly recall that Isambard ceased to function in 1860?”

  “For us, it was just a couple of months ago,” Burton noted. “He never recovered?”

  “No.”

  “What became of him?”

  “He was declared dead. There was a magnificent ceremony at St. Paul’s Cathedral to mark his passing, and a stone was laid bearing his name, though there was no corpse to bury beneath it. His mechanical form is exhibited in the British Museum. As for Charles Babbage, he went into hiding for half a decade and—I’m sorry, but this is necessary information—lost his mind. They say he died a raving lunatic, though no one is sure exactly when.”

  “Why the uncertainty?”

  Brabrooke shrugged and made a gesture that incorporated the room. “Perhaps his close association with this endeavour has cast the same veil over him that confounds our post-1860 memories of you.”

  “Odd.”

  “It is. The sixties are regarded as a mysterious period. Significant events were left unrecorded, were hushed up, and have been inexplicably forgotten. Whatever occurred, it marked the end of the Steam Revolution, and those few who knew him generally agree that Babbage was somehow at the heart of it. All I can tell you for certain is that, on the twenty-eighth of September, 1861, he destroyed all his prototypes, all the devices he had in his possession, and incinerated his every plan, blueprint, and diary. He left no trace of his work at all, other than the Mark Two probability calculators that occupied the heads of existing clockwork men, and as you know, those calculators were notoriously booby-trapped, so any unauthorised infiltration caused them to self-destruct. Very few of them still exist. Put simply, we lost Babbage and his knowledge. It was the death-knell of the Department of Guided Science. By the 1880s, it had been incorporated into the Department of Industry and all the great names associated with it were gone.”

  Swinburne said, “What about the blueprint for our time mechanism—the Nimtz generator? Didn’t he give it over to the Cannibal Club?”

  “Destroyed,” Brabrooke said. “We don’t know how it works. We’ll never be able to reproduce it, or modernise it, or even mend it if it breaks down.”

  Burton murmured, “Then I must depend on Daniel Gooch.” He frowned. “Twenty-eighth of September, ’sixty-one, you say? Why does that date ring a bell?”

  Herbert Wells answered, “You read it in ‘The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack,’ Sir Richard. That date, in El Yezdi’s native history, was when your counterpart first encountered Edward Oxford.”

  Burton murmured, “Ah yes, of course.” He raised a hand to his head and ran his fingertips through his hair, feeling his scars and the grittiness of the diamond dust etched into them. It was becoming a habitual gesture. “Charles placed great faith in El Yezdi’s obsession with timing and coincidences. Perhaps that explains the when of his actions, but it doesn’t explain the why.”

  Wells said, “His motive remains a mystery, but his actions certainly slowed our progress, as did our lack of participation in the wars.”

  Burton frowned at him. “Wars, Mr. Wells? Did Abdu El Yezdi fail to avert the disaster he predicted?”

  The little man shook his head. “No, no. If, in all the other histories, a worldwide conflict has broken out, then we have, thanks to his efforts, been spared it. In our world, the conflict has for the most part confined itself to Russia and China.”

  “In what manner?”

  “It started with Russian expansionism. In 1877, that country declared war on, and obliterated, the old Ottoman Empire, advancing westward to occupy a number of Eastern European territories. In 1900, it turned its attention to the south and ventured into the northern provinces of China, sparking a fierce war with the Qing Dynasty. Initially, this didn’t go so well for the Russians, and five years later its people rose in revolution and overthrew the ruling aristocracy. They united under a new leader. A man Abdu El Yezdi encountered.”

  “Grigori Rasputin.”

  “Yes. Under his mesmeric leadership, Russia renewed its assault on China, which by now was weakening rapidly due to the trade embargoes inflicted upon it by our own empire, they being a legacy of the bad relations caused in your time by the actions of Lord Elgin. The situation reached crisis point three years ago, when the Qing Dynasty collapsed. China is currently re-forming itself as a socialist republic. As for Russia, it received a terrible blow earlier this year when Rasputin suffered a brain haemorrhage and died.”

  “Ah. I was curious to know whether that would happen.”

  Swinburne said, “And the British Empire, Mr. Wells?”

  “Now known as the Anglo-Saxon Empire. It’s steered clear of conflict and continues to consolidate its strength. It has now incorporated all of Western Europe, most of Africa, India, the Caribbean, and Australia. We also have a strong economic alliance with the United States.”

  “The united states of where?” William Trounce asked.

  “America,” Wells said. “The year after your departure, a civil war erupted between
the North and South of that country. It lasted from 1861 until 1865. The North won. The U.S.A., as it is commonly called, is currently expanding its manufacturing infrastructure and rapidly growing in power. I fear we are being left behind. As I mentioned, without the incentive of battle, where the sciences and engineering are concerned, the pace of change has become ever more sedate in the A.S.E.”

  A.S.E., Burton thought. Anglo-Saxon Empire. U.S.A. United States of America. Just as Edward Oxford’s grandfather mentioned, the world is being abbreviated.

  Henry Bendyshe took a thick binder from the sideboard and handed it to Brabrooke, who then passed it to Burton, saying, “Your brother left this for you. It covers all the principal developments in every field of endeavour.”

  Burton gave a snort of amusement. “Typical of the minister. He thinks that, because we’re travelling three hundred and forty-two years into the future, I’ll have plenty of time for reading.”

  Brabrooke laughed. “You’ll be getting another such file at your next stop. We intend to chronicle world events for you. When you return to 1860, you’ll have a guide to the future.”

  “Which may well become an extravagant work of fiction the moment we act upon the information in it,” Burton mused. “Nevertheless, useful. Thank you.” He put the book down and patted it thoughtfully. “So, to the most pertinent question. What of Spring Heeled Jack? We know 2202 is his ultimate destination, but is the Oxford intelligence influencing history as he moves forward through it?”

  “We have no evidence to suggest so,” Brabrooke replied.

  Burton considered the back of his hands for a few moments. He looked up at Brabrooke, said softly, “Thank you, old friend,” then met the eyes of each of the others in turn. “My gratitude to each and every one of you. Your predecessors were my friends. I have no doubt they would be proud of you. Much as I’d like to remain here and get to know each of you, the fact is, my companions and I are on a mission, and I feel it necessary to press on. It’s an incongruous sensation to know that all the time in the world is at our disposal yet to also feel that time is pressing.”