The curious case of the Clockwork Man bas-2

by Mark Hodder

  His unexpected probe was so forceful that the answer flared in her mind before she could stop it. Burton saw confirmation that the Tichborne creature and Orton the butcher were one and the same. The man had been chosen for her scheme because he possessed a peculiarly well-developed ability to project coercive mental energy, though he was oblivious to this talent. He'd been using it unknowingly in Wagga Wagga to attract customers to his shop, and they had come, despite fearing and loathing him due to his disgusting appetite for raw meat. Implanting the Choir Stones beneath his scalp had greatly enhanced the ability.

  The woman's invasive presence assaulted Burton with greater intensity.

  “Very clever, Gaspadin Burton! But I shall get far more from you than you can get from me! Already I am deep inside your memories. I see poor Lieutenant Stroyan there. You killed him. How careless of you!”

  Still she misjudged him, and while she dug her claws into his painful memories, she also exposed much more of herself than she realised. He felt a sense of triumph blazing through the woman. She gloried in the fact that Britain's labourers were falling under the spell of her great deception, eagerly swallowing the story of a lost aristocrat who'd returned home to find himself snubbed by the society that produced him simply because he'd worked as a commoner. It was the perfect means to rouse their sleeping passions.

  How valuable the Tichbornes had been! Her faux prodigal not only gave her the means to disseminate her evil influence among the working classes, but had also secured for her the South American diamond.

  Burton, gathering information, struggled to resist her taunts. He remembered his friend's courage, and told her: Stroyan died as he would have wished-a brave man performing his duty.

  “Nonsense! You killed him! The guilt eats away at you!”

  Again, he tried to surprise her into revealing more: Tell me, madam, where did you find out about the Eyes of Naga?

  He felt her reel at the question.

  “Dorogoi!” she exclaimed. “You know too much!”

  This time, however, an answer did not inadvertently enter her thoughts. Instead, Burton detected the presence of an impassable barrier, as if part of the woman was-was-

  He couldn't define what he sensed.

  “How I learned of the Eyes is of no consequence. All that matters is that I employ them to open the minds of the poor and the downtrodden. You see how I clear the blinkers from their eyes? ”

  You speak as if you are performing some manner of social service, but that is not your intention, is it? Tell me the truth. What do you hope to achieve?

  “Revolution.”

  You want to overthrow the British Empire?

  “I want to demolish it.”

  Why?

  “Because I am a seer, malchik moi. I have cast my mind into the future and I know the destiny of my beloved country. I have watched Mother Russia brought to her knees. I have watched her wither and die! ”

  What the hell has this to do with Britain?

  “Everything! See what I have seen!”

  White-hot pain seared into Burton's head. He screamed his anguish as the woman's clairvoyant vision flooded into his brain-too much information, too fast, blasting down the channel that joined their minds, overwhelming his senses, telling him far more even than she'd intended, and driving him into a near stupor.

  Paralysed in thought as well as body, he watched helplessly as her prophecy slowly unfolded in his mind's eye.

  Blood.

  Light.

  A first taste of air.

  A child is born in Russia, the son of peasants.

  Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin.

  He is blessed-or perhaps cursed-with clairvoyant powers.

  His childhood is unhappy. Everyone knows there is something different-strange-about him. He is shunned. Only his siblings give him the attention he craves. He adores them. Then his sister drowns in a river, and his brother, saved from the same fate, is taken by pneumonia.

  Rasputin knows that one day he will also die in water. The knowledge terrifies him-unhinges him. He becomes erratic and violent. His parents banish him to a monastery deep in the Ural Mountains, unaware that the establishment has been overrun by the banned Khlysty sect; flagellants, whose orgiastic rituals end in physical exhaustion, and, for Rasputin, in ecstatic mediumistic hallucinations.

  Two years later, now a lanky, straggle-haired youth, he emerges from the mountains, intoxicated with a sense of his own importance and in no doubt that he will gain control of his country and make of it a great power. He has seen it. It has been prophesied. It is the future.

  Before his twentieth birthday, he marries and comes to hate his wife, has children and is repelled by them, and indulges in affairs-many affairs-before walking out of his home, never to return. He travels back and forth across Russia, and, after three years, makes his way to Saint Petersburg.

  Soon the whole city knows him. They call him the “Mad Monk.” He is the holy man who heals the sick, who sees the future, and who gets drunk and seduces married women and their daughters.

  The tsaritsa comes to him, drawn by his reputation as a miracle worker. Her son is dying. Rasputin eases the boy's suffering. He gains the royal family's trust. By now he is an alcoholic and a sexual deviant, but he has the tsar's ear.

  A new century dawns.

  For years, Britain and Prussia-now United Germany-have been engaging in skirmishes in Central Africa. The tensions deepen, and Britain's Technologists begin an arms race with Germany's Eugenicists. The British government is nervous. It has come to regard eugenics as an insidious evil, a menace to civilisation, an antithesis to freedom and the rights of man.

  The prime minister seeks to publicly downplay the growing threat from the foreign power. After all, the British Empire is massive. It counts North America, India, the Caribbean, Australia, and huge chunks of Africa among its many territories. What can a comparatively small nation like Germany do against such a global power?

  Then Britain's reclusive monarch, King Albert, dies, aged ninety. Lord Palmerston's masterful manipulation of the constitution had given Albert the throne after the assassination of Queen Victoria, but has now left it with no obvious successor.

  The republican movement gains popular support. The country is thrown into crisis. The government is distracted.

  Germany invades France.

  Germany invades Belgium.

  Germany invades Denmark.

  Germany invades Austria-Hungary.

  Germany invades Serbia.

  They all fall.

  The Greater German Empire is born.

  Britain declares war.

  Emperor Herbert von Bismarck sends his chancellor, Friedrich Nietzsche, to Russia to win the backing of the tsar.

  Secretly, Nietzsche also meets with Grigori Rasputin. It's the first time they've encountered each other in the flesh, but for many months they've been in mediumistic contact, for Nietzsche, like Rasputin, is profoundly clairvoyant. He is also a profligate, drug-addict, and sadomasochist.

  They have a plan.

  Rasputin will manipulate the tsar into allying Russia with Germany. When the British are defeated and their Empire is carved up, assassinations will be arranged. The Bismarck and Romanov dynasties will be destroyed. Together, Nietzsche and Rasputin will become the supreme rulers of the entire Western world. They convince themselves that they will be strict but benign.

  It begins.

  Tsar Nicholas has no resistance to Rasputin's mesmeric influence. Russia declares war against Britain.

  For three appalling years, the conflict rages, spreading across the whole world, with the British Technologists’ steam machines on one side and the German Eugenicists’ adapted flora and fauna on the other.

  An entire generation of men is slaughtered.

  Europe is battered until it is little more than one gigantic, muddy, blood-soaked field.

  Britain falters, but fights on, and when the British American States join the conflict, Germany is bruised
and, for the first time, retreats.

  Russian troops arrive in the nick of time. There is another great push forward. For two more years, the battles seethe back and forth over Europe's devastated territories, until finally, the biggest empire the world has ever seen topples and falls.

  The war ends. The spoils are divided. The treachery follows.

  Tsar Nicholas and his entire family are rounded up and shot in the head. Bismarck is garrotted. His family and supporters are executed.

  Friedrich Nietzsche rises to power, receives life-prolongation treatments, and begins a near-century-long reign of terror that will earn him the sobriquet The Devil's Dictator.

  Britain, from its deathbed, makes one final gesture of defiance. Two days before Rasputin is to be named president of Russia, three members of the palace staff surround him. They are British spies. They produce pistols and, at point-blank range, pull the triggers. All three guns jam. Rasputin has long feared assassination, and projects around himself a permanent mediumistic energy field that alters the structure of springs, robbing them of their power. No trigger mechanism will function anywhere near him.

  He laughs in the faces of the would-be killers, and, with a careless gesture, causes their brains to boil in their skulls.

  The following day, he is poisoned with cyanide. Realising that he's the subject of a second assassination attempt, he slows down his metabolism and begins to consciously secrete the poison out through his pores. Four men corner him and hack at him with an axe. They bludgeon him into submission, bind him hand and foot, and wrap him in a carpet. Rasputin is carried to the ice-bound Neva River and thrown in.

  Despite his terrible wounds, it is-as he's known it would be all his life-the water that kills him.

  He dies believing the British have had their revenge.

  He is wrong.

  The assassins are German.

  The year is 1916, and Nietzsche, now the most powerful man in the world, considers himself well rid of the Mad Monk. Russia, without a visionary in control, will never pose a threat. It is left isolated, friendless, ungoverned, and poverty-stricken.

  With millions of its sons killed in the war, the sprawling country's agricultural infrastructure collapses. Famine decimates the population. A harsh winter does the rest.

  Russia's death is lonely, lingering, and catastrophic.

  “There!”

  The woman's voice hissed through Burton's skull.

  He gulped in air and a tremor shook his body as consciousness returned.

  “There!” she repeated. “That is why I do what I do! I have seen Mother Russia die, and I will not allow it! No! I shall change history! I shall ensure that Britain is in no condition to oppose Germany! I shall see to it that the World War is over in months rather than years! I shall cause your workers to bring this country to its knees! And when the terrible war comes-for there is no stopping it-Germany will wipe your weakened, filthy Empire from the Earth without need of Russia's aid. And while it is doing so, Rasputin will be making the homeland strong, and when the war is done and Germany is weakened, he will strike! There will be a new Empire-not Britain's, not Germany's, but Russia's! ”

  You're insane.

  “No. I am a prophet. I am the saviour of my country. I am the protector of Rasputin, the death of Britain, and the destroyer of Germany. I am Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, and Destiny is mine to manipulate!”

  She pushed deeper into his mind. Burton opened his mouth to scream but could make no sound. It felt as if his cranium was filling with maggots.

  “Dorogoi!” she exclaimed. “You killed Babbage! How gratifying! But what is this? Even more guilt? My, my, Gaspadin Burton, what a brilliant mind you have, but so filled with fears and insecurities-and so many regrets! I see now that killing you is not enough, for there is something you fear more, and that shall be your punishment: I will cause your own weaknesses to deprive you of your reason!”

  Her mesmeric power intensified. It overwhelmed his crumbling resistance. His capacity for independent thought was summarily crushed and immobilised.

  A fracture opened. Burton's subtle and corporeal bodies lost cohesion. His mind began to splinter. His viewpoint suddenly changed and he found himself hovering outside his own body. He watched the intelligence fade from his own eyes.

  The odd disassociation gave him his one slender chance.

  A lgernon Swinburne was in no fit state to conduct an interrogation. He'd been drinking with Charles Doyle, first in the Frog and Squirrel, then in Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, and, in Herbert Spencer's opinion, he'd taken another step closer to becoming a chronic alcoholic. The philosopher hoped the pitiful state of Doyle would teach the young poet a lesson.

  The Rake had not put up much resistance when they and Burton had shanghaied him. As a matter of fact, when informed that the seance had been postponed-which was a lie, of course-and invited for drinks at Montagu Place, he'd expressed relief, hooked his arms in theirs, and cried: “Lead on, Macduff!”

  They had led on, after first indulging in a comedic charade of jacket and hat swapping which baffled the already befuddled Doyle and had Swinburne in fits of giggles.

  Burton headed off toward Gallows Tree Lane, while Swinburne and Spencer ushered Doyle north along Gray's Inn Road, then west along the Euston and Marylebone Roads. Rioters were still on the rampage but they paid scant attention to the trio, who weaved through and around the wreckage and fights and fires, appearing to be nothing but an urchin, a vagabond, and a hopeless drunk.

  They were twice stopped and questioned by the police. Fortunately, Swinburne was familiar with both the constables and, after he surreptitiously lifted his wig to reveal the carroty red hair beneath and whispered words of explanation, they allowed him and his companions to pass.

  The next hurdle was rather more intimidating. Mrs. Iris Angell responded to their hammering on the front door by opening it and placing herself on the threshold, with hands on hips and a scowl on her face.

  “If you think you're setting foot in this house while three sheets to the wind you must be even more intoxicated than you smell. How many times must I put up with it, Master Swinburne?”

  Unable to reveal his mission while Doyle was beside him, Swinburne charmed, flattered, wheedled, demanded, apologised, and almost begged, all to no avail.

  In the distance, Big Ben chimed ten. In his mind's eye, the poet pictured Richard Burton joining the seance, and he jumped up and down in frustration.

  Then he remembered that the agent and his housekeeper had shared with him a password to use when on king's business.

  “My hat, Mother Angell, it completely slipped my mind! Abdullah.”

  “Now then, you'll not be using that word carelessly, I hope. Sir Richard will not stand for that, you know!”

  “I promise you, dear lady, that I employ it fully cognisant of the consequences should your suspicions, which I insist are entirely unfounded, prove to be true. Abdullah, Mrs. A. Abdullah, Abdullah, and, once more, Abdullah! By George, I'll even throw in an extra one for a spot of blessed luck! Abdull-”

  “Oh, stop your yammering and come in. But I'm warning you, gentlemen: any monkey business and I'll have Admiral Lord Nelson ejecting you from the premises with a metal boot to your posteriors!”

  She allowed them to pass through.

  “Master Swinburne, a message arrived by runner for Sir Richard. I left it on his mantelpiece.”

  They climbed the stairs and entered the study.

  “Buttock face! Strumpet breeders!”

  POX JR5 fluttered across the room and landed on Herbert Spencer's shoulder.

  “Gorgeous lover boy!” the parakeet cackled.

  Doyle collapsed into an armchair.

  Swinburne read the message mentioned by the housekeeper: Miss Nightingale communicated with me the moment you left Bedlam. Situation understood. Thank you, Sir Richard. I am in your debt. If you require assistance, my not inconsiderable resources are at your disposal. I can be contacted at Battersea Power
Station.

  Isambard Kingdom Brunel

  The poet raised his brows and muttered: “An old enemy may have just become a new friend.”

  He took a decanter of brandy from Burton's bureau and joined Doyle. They set about emptying it.

  Spencer abstained from drinking. He felt obliged to remain sober enough to record any useful information Swinburne might extract from Doyle. By contrast, Burton's assistant felt it incumbent upon himself to make their guest-who was too far gone to realise that he was actually their prisoner-feel that he was among friends; that he could talk freely. He therefore matched the Rake drink for drink.

  The subsequent conversation, if it could qualify as such, was, to Spencer's ears, verging on gibberish.

  Doyle, who didn't seem to care that he was drinking with a child-for that's what Swinburne, in his disguise, appeared to be-was regaling the “boy” with “facts” about fairies. His voice was thick and slurred and his eyes rolled around in a disconcerting manner.

  “Sh-see, they-they fiss-fick-fixate on a person, like they've fig-fixated on me, then they play merry miz-mischief. It's peek-a-boo when ye least essexpect it; diz-distraction when ye least- urp! -need it; wizz-whisperings when ye least want ’em. Aye, aye, aye, they're not the joyful little sprites I dep-depict for the pish-picture books, ye know. Och no. I have to paint ’em that w-w-way, y'zee-shee-see, just so I can sell ma work.” He groaned, swigged from his glass, and muttered: “Damn and- urp! -blast ’em!”

  “But where do they come from, Mr. Doyle? What do they want? Why are they tormenting you? What do they look like? Do they speak? Have they intelligence?”

  “Och! One q-question at a time, laddie! They are eff-etheric beings, and they latched onto ma ash-ash-ass-astral body while I was shhh-sharing the eman-eman-emanations.”

  Swinburne started to say something but Spencer jumped in with: “Sharin’ the emanations? What's that mean?”

  Doyle belched, drained his glass, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and held the tumbler out for a refill. His hand trembled.