Pax Britannia: Unnatural History

by Jonathan Green

  His memories of what had followed since that time had been replayed in his sleeping mind in a time-lapsed blur, a hallucinatory haze of images. The journey back from Xigaze to Bombay, traversing the continents by train until, at last, Brunel's Trans-Channel tunnel had brought him back to England, London and home.

  And now here he was lying in a bed in which he had not slept in over a year.

  But was it really home for him anymore, he found himself wondering as he stared at the cracks criss-crossing the plaster of the ceiling above him. He kept telling himself that he was pleased to be back but for all the comfort of the goose-down pillows behind his head and the sprung mattress beneath him, part of him hankered for his hard wooden pallet back at the monastery and the ridged feel of the bamboo canes against his back.

  A discreet tap at the door roused Ulysses from his reverie.

  "Enter," he replied.

  The handle turned and the door swung open as Nimrod entered the room. His manservant looked immaculate as ever, dressed in his grey butler's attire, not a hair out of place. Balanced perfectly on the splayed fingers of one hand was a silver tray. There was a starched linen cloth draped carefully over his other arm.

  "Good afternoon, sir."

  "Good afternoon Nimrod."

  "It being past noon I took the liberty of asking Mrs Prufrock to prepare you some breakfast."

  "Why, thank you, Nimrod."

  "Not at all, sir," his manservant replied, placing the tray across Ulysses' lap and laying the white linen napkin open in front of him.

  As well as a silver dish cover there was a slim cut crystal vase containing a single crimson carnation, a cafetiére of hot coffee and accompanying coffee cup, a silver toast rack, containing four triangles of both white and brown toasted bread and a copy of the day's edition of The Times.

  Nimrod lifted the platter's cover with a flourish. Ulysses' nostrils were assailed by a bloom of steam smelling richly of the griddled eggs, smoked back bacon, Cumberland sausage, black pudding, grilled tomatoes, sautéed mushrooms and hash browns.

  "I thought you must be hungry after your journey last night."

  Ulysses heartily tucked into the meal in front of him. Eschewing good manners, through a half-chewed mouthful of sausage he spluttered, "Give Mrs Prufrock my compliments on what is, I think, the most wonderful meal I have ever eaten."

  "With pleasure, sir."

  Ulysses felt a warm glow well up within him and knew that it wasn't merely from having hot home-cooked food in his belly again. This was what it meant to be home, to be surrounded by those people who mattered to you and to whom you mattered also. It was all suddenly very familiar and he found that comforting.

  "It's good to be back, Nimrod."

  "And, if I might say so sir, it is good to have you back. If you will excuse me?" And with that he left, pulling the door to carefully behind him.

  As he tucked into his breakfast, Ulysses spread out The Times on the bedspread beside him. It was time to get back up to speed with what was happening in the so-called civilised world. The copies of The Times he had been able to get hold of on the Orient Express had been woefully out of date by as much as a week in most cases.

  The headline on this edition, however - dated April 16th 1997, the paper still warm from where Nimrod had pressed the pages with an iron - was very topical indeed. It read 'Buckingham Palace Confirms Jubilee Celebrations' and concerned the celebrations planned to mark the 160th year of Queen Victoria's reign. The occasion was to be marked by the unveiling of a colossal statue of Britannia in Hyde Park, outside Paxton's glorious construction of the second Crystal Palace. All this was to occur on the twenty-third of June, in a little over two months time. The politicians, toadies, toffs and royal historians were calling it the most glorious time in the British Empire's entire history.

  Indeed it had been a most incredible century and a half, during which time man had risen from the dawn of the industrial age and the inventive uses of steam power to tame much of the world around him and even conquer the stars. Space travel, now an everyday occurrence, was once the preserve of science-fiction, conjured up by the writings of authors such as H. G. Wells and Jules Verne. With interplanetary travel mastered, and with regular launches from the space terminus at Gatwick south of the capital carrying all classes of citizen to Her Majesty's Imperial colonies on the moon and the nearer planets, there was now talk in certain secretive circles of attempts to break the only frontier remaining to mankind - time travel. What once had seemed preposterous was now the everyday, the impossible simply tomorrow's breakthrough.

  There had been unparalleled advances made in the medical sciences, difference engines and the newer field of cybernetics. The empire of Magna Britannia - once rather apologetically known simply as Great Britain - would not be what it was without the advances made in those areas. The Widow of Windsor would not be where she was without them and the nation was now policed thanks in part to the quantum developments made in clockwork-cybernetics, since Charles Babbage had accomplished the astonishing achievement of constructing the first fully automated analytical engine.

  But whilst much of the world had moved on, as mankind's achievements had exploded exponentially, so the more shameful aspects of Imperial life had continued to deteriorate. At this time London's slums were darker, dirtier and more over-crowded than even the visionary Charles Dickens could have imagined in his most despairing hour, its streets filled with the dissolute and the destitute, the gin-sodden inheritors of the darkest days of the Empire.

  Many were slaves to the machine, forced to work tirelessly in the great gothic factories built by their suffering ancestors, or had become passed over by the machine, robot-drudges taking their place in those same industrial workshops.

  The consequences of being the 'Workshop of the World' had come at a high price too. Great swathes of the British Isles were now nothing but blighted wasteland, its flora and fauna mutated or destroyed by the pollution vomited out of its many thousands of factories.

  While the great and the good enjoyed the benefits of electric light, automobiles and the thinking machines that were Babbage's legacy, dreadfully high infant-mortality, prostitution, malnutrition, cholera and syphilis still blighted the lives of the poor underclass that riddled London's streets.

  As Ulysses laid his knife and fork across a practically polished plate, there was another tap at the door. At his beckoning Nimrod entered once again.

  "Sir, when you are ready there is a cab waiting to take you to the Inferno Club."

  "Really?" Ulysses commented. "Already? It didn't take long for Wormwood to find out that I was back in town, did it?"

  "No, sir."

  "I suppose he'll be wanting a debrief. I'd best not keep him waiting," Ulysses said with a sigh, running a hand through his sleep-ruffled hair, "it only makes him irritable. Spending any period of time with him is a chore at best, and when he's irritable it only makes it ten times worse. Some warning would have been nice though; perhaps a welcome home card, or a bouquet of chrysanthemums."

  Within half an hour Ulysses Quicksilver had made his ablutions, dressed and, cane in hand, was on his way to the Inferno Club in the back of the jolting hansom cab, enduring the worldly banter of the cabbie. The cab turned into St James's Square and pulled up outside number 16A, next door to the East India club and its pillared frontage. Number 16A itself was an otherwise unassuming Regency period façade that did nothing to belie what lay beyond its closed doors.

  Somewhat disgruntled at not only having been disturbed so soon on his first day back in the capital but also finding that the cab had not already been paid for, Ulysses ascended the steps to the rosewood doors as the smoke-belching hansom chugged away. He rapped on the door with the head of his cane three times.

  The door opened a crack. Standing behind it was a squat, liveried doorman with a face like a battle-tested mastiff and who, even with the added height of his top hat, still only came up to Ulysses' shoulder. Thanks in part to his diminutiv
e size many a roustabout had misjudged Max Grendel, former carnival performer known as 'Grendel the Man-Monster, The Strongest Dwarf in the World'.

  "Good afternoon, Mr Quicksilver, sir," the doorman said, his accent distinctly that of the lower classes; there was no hiding the fact that he had been born within the sound of Bow Bells. He gave Ulysses a broad, broken smile full of missing teeth. "It's been a long time."

  "Hello, Max, old chap. How are you?"

  "Oh, mustn't grumble. You here for business or pleasure today, sir?"

  "Most definitely business. If I was after the latter I'd be asking you for a recommendation, wouldn't I Max?"

  The doorman chuckled filthily. "Right you are, sir. If you'd like to step this way then?"

  Ulysses passed the doorman half a crown and proceeded through a second set of double doors. Above these, carved into the doorframe and picked out in gold leaf, was Dante's doom-laden motto Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate, the original Italian seeming incongruously out of place in this bastion of Englishness.

  Uriah Wormwood was seated in one of two huge leather armchairs set before a crackling fire in the Quartermain Room. Despite the time of year and his proximity to the fire, the thin rake of a man still looked pinched with cold, his long hands and fingers pale, the blue network of veins visible through his porcelain skin. The hair on his head was thin and greying, swept back from the top of his balding pate and hanging down to his shoulders in greasy lank cords. In his dated frock-tailed black suit, starched white shirt and unassuming black silk cravat he looked every part the elder statesman.

  Standing behind him was a silent, unsmiling aide, who looked as capable of handling himself in a fight as Max Grendel.

  Ulysses took the seat opposite Wormwood. The older man fixed him with a needling stare. "I'd heard you were dead," he said.

  "Well as you can see, minister, reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

  A starched footman appeared and delivered a glass of whisky to Wormwood. "Sir?" he asked turning to Ulysses.

  "A brandy - cognac," he said and Wormwood waved the flunky away imperiously.

  Ulysses took a moment to take in his surroundings. It had been some time since he had been here last but in all those months nothing appeared to have really changed.

  The room was enveloped in a fug of blue smoke from the many pipes and cigars being enjoyed by the club's members. To the casual observer it would appear that this place was nothing more than a club full of aging peers, retired officers of Her Majesty's Armed Forces and directors of the board of a whole host of multinational companies. There was also a sprinkling of younger men thrown in, taking on the affectations of their elders, ready to take up the reigns of power when they were offered.

  Ulysses Quicksilver knew that such bastions of English misogyny - and the Inferno Club more truly and more covertly than any other - was where the real power lay. This was where the really important decisions were made, those that influenced the fates of nations, where the agents of all manner of organisations made their deals, were given their frequently unpalatable orders and reported back to their shadowy masters. Ulysses Quicksilver knew this better than most for he was such a man.

  "So," Wormwood said, peering at Ulysses over steepling fingers, "niceties done with... your report. What happened? Do you have the artefact?"

  "There's really no better way of putting this," Ulysses said taking his brandy from the footman. "No."

  "As I suspected," Wormwood said witheringly, that one simple phrase dripping with disdain.

  "And our Oriental... friend? What of him?"

  "His vessel went down along with mine," Ulysses recalled, images of their terrible, dramatic, and near-fatal, descent flashing behind his eyes as he did so. "He tried to board our gondola. We fought. He fell. I have not seen him, or the green-eyed monkey god of Sumatra, since."

  "You should have informed us of your return."

  "It was too risky. I still hoped to track down the Black Mamba myself. I take it that none of your other agents have reported his reappearance at any of his usual haunts?"

  "No. We can only hope that he is lying there still on the southern slopes of Mount Manaslu, frozen like some relic of the ice age. But somehow I doubt it. And besides, the matter is out of your hands."

  "What?" Ulysses said, taken aback.

  "There is another more pressing matter I wish you to deal with."

  "And what precisely is this new undertaking?"

  "There was a break-in at the Natural History Museum last night."

  "On Cromwell Road?"

  "You know of another? A night watchman was killed. A lab was ransacked. You are to... investigate."

  Ulysses took another casual swig from his glass. "Surely burglary and murder is the province of Scotland Yard."

  "And your province is to serve your Queen and country as the representatives of Her Majesty's government see fit. Besides, there may well be more to this than there at first appears. You will, of course, be paid your usual retainer."

  "Welcome home, Ulysses," the younger man muttered under his breath as he downed the rest of his drink.

  "Is there a problem?"

  "It's just that some things never change, do they, minister?"

  Ulysses' governmental contact glowered at him, his knife-edge features becoming even sharper, even more threatening.

  "I do not like you, Quicksilver, but then in my line of work I don't have to. I am, however, an... admirer of what you do and you are most accomplished, most of the time. But there are all manner of things afoot in the world. We are scant years away from a new millennium and Magna Britannia has never been in a stronger position. And neither have her enemies ever been more eager to see her fall so that they might feast richly upon the spoils.

  "The Chinese Empire is an ever-increasing threat, looking to space to solve its own overpopulation problem. We can no longer rely on Russia being the surety it once was, even if it is still a princeling state of Britain. There is talk of ancient bloodlines asserting their self-professed ancestral rights in Eastern Europe. And then there are the unruly ambitions of the Germans and their National Socialist masters.

  "There are even those within the empire who have their reasons for destabilising Her Majesty's most glorious realm, as well you know. Then there is the ongoing situation on Mars. The separatist-secessionist movement is gaining in strength and popularity daily.

  "Of themselves, none of these are major threats to our stability or the stability of Her Majesty's throne. But together? The sharks are circling, Quicksilver, and there are precious few of us able to do anything about it. Mark my words. The sharks are circling... and they are hungry."

  "Come on in, the water's lovely."

  "What?" Wormwood asked sharply.

  "Nothing minister," Ulysses replied with a sigh.

  "What are you waiting for then? Be on your way."

  "What indeed? The scene of the crime awaits and the game is surely afoot."

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Scene of the Crime

  The cab turned onto Cromwell Road and pulled up outside the grand frontage of the Natural History Museum. The building's gothic façade was an awesomely impressive sight, although it was now dwarfed by other more recent edifices and the sprawling network of the Overground that filled the sky above it. The great pillar of the South Kensington stop rose from the right-hand corner of the Museum's grounds. The architectural design and execution of the Museum - that was Sir Richard Owen's cathedral to nature and his legacy to naturalists the world over - still took Ulysses' breath away every time he saw it, even after all the wonders and all the horrors he had witnessed in his life as an agent of the throne. Stone-locked monsters of a bygone age, pterosaurs, coelacanths, cats and primates gazed down at him through the sooty grime that sullied the face of the otherwise beautiful building.

  Crossing the road Ulysses made his way up the steps that led into the Museum. There were already signs of the police presence that he woul
d find inside. An automaton constable was tapping his truncheon rhythmically into the palm of his artificially manufactured hand. Passing through the main doors Ulysses entered the central hall of the museum to find a bustle of concerned staff, Scotland Yard's finest incompetents and bewildered museum visitors milling around beneath the impassive stare of the diplodocus skeleton that dominated the vaulted nave-like space.

  Considering what had come to pass there the previous night it was amazing that the museum was even open to the public, Ulysses mused as he made his way up the central staircase, heading for the Darwin Wing. He hoped that once there it would reveal its secrets to him, such as why he had been sent to investigate a break-in and murder at the Natural History Museum in the first place.

  Ulysses could see that the police had been there before him, marching in and trampling all over the crime scene. They had marked the entire Darwin Wing as theirs with strips of yellow and black tape bearing the legend, 'Crime Scene - Do Not Cross'.

  Two constables stood either side of the entrance, their black bodies gleaming dully in the light cascading from the high windows. Ulysses approached the nearest of the Peeler-drones. The constable turned at his approach. "I am sorry, sir. This area is closed to the public," its voice crackled from somewhere behind its chestplate in an imitation of a cockney accent.

  Ulysses deftly put a hand inside a jacket pocket and pulled out a leather cardholder with a flourish, flipping the case open. "I'm not the public," he said, the wry smile curling the corners of his mouth, "Constable Palmerston," he added, reading the badge plate on the automaton's breast. There was a curious habit amongst the Metropolitan Police of naming their cybernetic officers after the famous dead. Was there something that Scotland Yard's cyberneticists knew that the rest of the world didn't?