Time's Arrow 3: White Noise (Pax Britannia (Time's Arrow))

by Jonathan Green

  “Merde!” Ulysses cursed, stumbling backwards.

  The silverback bounded forward. But it had fallen for Ulysses’ bluff, the dandy ducking under its massive outstretched arm and dashing across the platform after the fleeing anarchist.

  “GET UP THE ladder! We need to go!” Le Papillon hissed, already clambering up the swaying rope ladder himself.

  “But what about the bloody machine?” Dr Montague Moreau said.

  “Forget the bloody machine!”

  “But it was you who wanted to take it with us.”

  “I know what I said, but the plan has changed.”

  Moreau muttered something under his breath as he bundled several pieces of the dismembered machine into his arms and attempted his own ascent of the rope ladder one-handed.

  “What did you say?” Le Papillon hissed.

  “I said, the girl was right.”

  “What?”

  “No plan escapes contact with the enemy.”

  Le Papillon said nothing but re-doubled his efforts to reach the basket, and yet struggling to keep hold of the remote control still in his left hand as he did so.

  Moreau had somehow set it to ‘automatic’ – the anarchist didn’t understand the ins and outs of it, but then that was why he had involved Dr Montague Moreau in his enterprise in the first place – but he hadn’t wanted to relinquish his hold of it just yet. The cyber-ape – or Ishmael, as Moreau insisted on calling it – had proved too useful and resilient a weapon to simply discard just yet. When it had dealt with the dandy once and for all, it could re-join them.

  As the two men climbed, the rope-ladder twisting and swaying wildly, the anchored balloon drifted over them, pulling the ladder taught. Le Papillon and Moreau suddenly found themselves attempting to climb up the underside of a ladder now stretched out sharply from the vertical.

  Finding himself with nothing between him and the devastated Parc du Champ-du-Mars a thousand feet below, Le Papillon panicked and tightened his grip on the ladder. The remote control slipped from his grasp in the process.

  Below him, Moreau gave a cry of dismay as he watched the cunning box of tricks tumble through the air.

  For the time being at least, the cyber-ape was lost to them.

  ULYSSES DODGED ANOTHER swipe of the gorilla’s arm, diving across the platform and ending up next to the jumble of equipment left behind by the fleeing anarchists. Lying amongst the wreckage of the disassembled Earthquake Machine was a length of copper pipe. It was the closest thing to a weapon Ulysses could see.

  Barking in annoyance, the enraged ape swung at the dandy again. There was a resounding clang as the pipe now gripped in Ulysses’ hands connected with one of the animal’s bionic augmetics.

  Ulysses recoiled, stumbling backwards as the juddering force of his blow reverberated up his arms and through his body, eliciting renewed spasms of pain from the bullet wound in his shoulder.

  The gorilla had been seriously disabled by having to keep a hold of Cadence with one hand and it was a disadvantage Ulysses was determined to capitalise upon. He doubted he would have had a hope against the beast otherwise. And yet for as long as their struggle continued, Cadence was always going to be in jeopardy.

  Her screams and cries of alarm had been silenced and Ulysses didn’t even know if she was still conscious. He couldn’t let this continue any longer. Besides, the longer the battle went on, the closer the terrorists got to escaping unpunished.

  As the silverback moved in for the kill, Ulysses leapt into the air and swung again. This time the copper connected with the electrodes implanted into the ape’s skull. A disharmonious chord rang out, like a chorus of mismatched tuning forks.

  The ape opened its mouth wide in a silent scream of unimaginable agony, its beady eyes screwed tight shut against the pain, and let go of the girl. Cadence landed on the platform and remained where she fell, in a motionless heap.

  “Cadence!” Ulysses shouted.

  The woman answered him with a muffled groan.

  “Cadence! You have to get up!”

  The crumpled body moved.

  “Get out of the way!”

  On hands and knees now, her auburn tresses tumbling about her head and hiding her face from view, she crawled across the grilled deck to the relative safety of the lift housing.

  Having done as much as he could for the girl for the time being, Ulysses turned his attention back to the ape. The only hope either he or Cadence had of being truly out of harm’s way was if he somehow found a way to stop the brute once and for all. He doubted that a length of copper piping alone was going to do it, but for the time being it was all he had to hand.

  Ulysses swung the pipe at the ape again, but this time the savage beast was ready for him, a huge hand plucking his improvised weapon out of the air and sending it spinning over the edge of the platform.

  Rising up on its hind-legs, the cyborg gave another monstrous roar and beat its chest with its massive, pile-driver fists.

  Ulysses’ mind was racing as fast as his pulse. Unarmed, he was nonetheless not completely defenceless against the adapted animal, not as long as he kept his wits about him. Even as he was watching the beast, trying to judge what its next move might be, he was also checking out his surroundings, seeing how he might turn his environment against the gorilla.

  Trying to trick the ape into taking a wild plunge over the edge of the tower seemed like a pointless exercise. He doubted the ape would fall for it. Despite all the cranial surgery the primate had clearly had to endure, the various procedures it had undergone didn’t seem to have dulled its natural instincts, or the speed of its reactions.

  Pieces of discarded machinery lay about the platform, mainly around the entrance to the sabotaged elevator. Perhaps he could find something else from amongst the debris that he could turn into a weapon.

  And then there was Cadence Bettencourt.

  “Cadence!” he shouted, as the ape advanced, its splayed toes gripping the deck.

  He tried again. “Cadence!”

  The silverback sprang. Ulysses launched himself at its feet. The beast came down on the spot where he had been standing a moment before.

  Ulysses performed a tidily executed forward roll, miraculously ending up back on his feet, and then sprinted for the protective corner of the top of the elevator shaft.

  “Cadence!”

  “What... What can I do?” came the young woman’s groggy response.

  “Anything! Whatever you can!” Ulysses gasped as the flung himself out of the way as the ape hefted a metal component in one hand, as if it was nothing more than a pebble, and hurled it in his direction. The object disintegrated with a sharp metal clang as it smashed into the lift housing. “Otherwise this isn’t going to end well – for either of us!”

  “ARE YOU IN?” Le Papillon asked. He didn’t even bother to look round as he fired the burners.

  Taking the grunted exhalation and crash of ordinateur parts and audio equipment landing at his feet as a yes, he opened the gas valves even further, the balloon’s envelope swelling as he did so.

  The anarchist had considered not waiting for the good doctor, of course, but he had been concerned that he might still have need of the man’s technological skills, since he had been forced to leave most of the Earthquake Machine behind.

  If he was to ensure safe asylum when he reached his intended destination, he wanted to make sure that he had every asset he could to hand to ensure the continued protection of his employer.

  “Pull up the anchor and let’s away from here,” he ordered his accomplice.

  “What about the ladder?” the doctor panted.

  “Lose it.”

  ALWAYS TRY TO turn an enemy’s strength against him, was what Ulysses’ fencing tutor at Eton had impressed upon his students. Memories of the old gym hall came to mind now, along with the ghost of an aroma of floor polish and stale sweat.

  He wasn’t sure Master Murray would have included silverback gorillas among the list of enemies hi
s favoured pupil might have to face in years to come, but strategy and cunning was all Ulysses had to rely on now, and he was going to need to use every trick in his arsenal if he was to somehow stop the adapted ape once and for all, and still save the day.

  The ape was possessed of a brutal animal intelligence that was made up of cunning and instinct more than anything else. But Ulysses was possessed of a highly developed cunning streak too. The two of them, man and ape, weren’t that distantly related in evolutionary terms as Professor Galapagos’ and Professor Crichton’s research had demonstrated.

  The savage animal was becoming more and more frustrated with Ulysses with every attack he evaded. It had nowhere else to go and no other conflicting commands coming from its controllers, and so its sole purpose had become to beat the dandy into submission. But Ulysses could use that to his advantage.

  The gorilla raised its massive fists above its head and brought them down hard on the deck of the platform, the metal gauntlets sheathing its forearms buckling the metal plates as Ulysses side-stepped out of the way.

  The ape tensed, but the gauntlets had become wedged in the damaged deck plates. It growled, pulling harder, great slabs of muscle bunching as it struggled to free itself.

  In that moment, Ulysses leapt, landing on the ape’s right arm and from there, pulling himself up onto the animal’s shoulder using handfuls of matted fur to aid his ascent. The raging beast intensified its efforts still further, tugging its fists free of the floor at last, the action only serving to help Ulysses on his way as it raised its arms in instinctive fury.

  As he found himself tumbling forwards over the ape’s back, Ulysses grabbed at the thick metal collar mounted over the transmitter bolted between the animal’s shoulders. He clung on with desperate fingers as his legs slid down the silver furred back and he ended up hanging from the monster’s shoulders.

  As he kicked and jerked to keep clear of the ape’s grasping fingers, he scoured the electrodes screwed into its skull, seeing if there were any exposed cables that he could disconnect.

  A thrumming bass note – like some sort of electronic interference played at loud volume – shook the top of the tower.

  From his precarious position, turning his head this way and that, Ulysses tried to focus on the source of the sound, fearing for a moment that the Earthquake Machine had been reactivated.

  The ape recovered first. Strong fingers closed around the dandy’s ankle and pulled hard. Ulysses cried out in pain and surprise as his fingers slipped from the smooth metal of the animal’s chrome collar. And then he was flying through the air.

  In that moment one thought flashed through his mind – not where might he land, whether he would end up going over the edge, or what the ape might do to him should he survive – but what would happen to his dear, darling Emilia without him there to save her.

  He landed painfully on his back and slid across the deck, before being arrested by the balustrade that ran around its edge.

  Blinking himself back from the verge of unconscious, Ulysses saw the gorilla knuckling towards him, its face wrenched into a pained grimace. It was only then that the dandy registered that the discordant noise had changed pitch.

  When the animal was only a few feet from him it stopped altogether. The ape’s face was a knot of nervous tics and twitches.

  The note changed again.

  The ape screamed – a horrible sound borne of pain, rage and base animal fear – and its eyes blazed red.

  The animal stumbled forwards, clutching at its skull and the implanted metal probes. The bellowing roar of pain continued as the primate tugged at the thick electrodes, even as arcs of electrical discharge encircled its head in a crown of scintillating blue sparks.

  Its crashing, half-falling, half-stumbling footsteps brought it ever closer, forcing Ulysses to drag himself out of the way of the hulking brute.

  And then, at the edge of the platform, before the barrier built to keep sightseers safe, the cyber-ape stopped. Its face went slack and Ulysses found himself unable to tear his gaze from the distant look in the beast’s eyes. In that instant, for the first time since encountering the gorilla atop the roofs of Montmatre, he felt pity for the animal.

  As Ulysses stared into the gorilla’s unblinking eyes, the furious light in those obsidian orbs faded. The ape’s arms went slack and the huge, bionically-enhanced animal toppled forwards.

  Unbalanced by its heavy augmetics the silverback slipped headfirst off the platform and commenced its long, silent fall to the ground, a thousand feet below.

  Ulysses turned from observing the ape’s death-plunge and stared dumbly at the dishevelled Cadence Bettencourt, and the device in her hands. It looked like a cross between a loud-hailer and a Martian ray gun.

  “What did you do?”

  “Well it was quite simply really.” Cadence held up the box of tricks. “I used this to broadcast a resonating feedback loop tuned to the precise resonance frequency of the electrodes in the ape’s skull and then turned up the gain.”

  “In layman’s terms?”

  “I melted its brain.”

  Ulysses continued to stare at her in stunned disbelief.

  “It was the electrodes resonating inside it’s skull that killed it, disrupting the neural pathways of the brain. Of course, the vibration of the electrodes would have also effectively liquefied the soft tissue of its brain.”

  “No, you’re wrong.” Ulysses said, peering back over the edge of the tower. He could just make out the ape’s corpse spread-eagled on the broken ground below. “It wasn’t the resonating electrodes. ’Twas Beauty killed the beast.”

  For a moment neither of them said a word, the only sound the keening of the wind and the furious roar of gas-burners firing.

  “Leroux!” Ulysses suddenly shouted, looking to the radio mast above but seeing no balloon tethered there.

  “What do we do now?” Cadence said, watching the anarchist’s balloon disappearing into the haze of dust and smoke hanging over the city.

  “We go after him.”

  Cadence fixed him with a penetrating stare, pupils dilating in excitement, a smile creasing her lips.

  “Is the bike still flightworthy?”

  “Come and take a look for yourself,” Ulysses said, meeting her smile with a broad grin of his own. “Only trouble is, you know what the parking’s like in central Paris,” he added, making for the stairs.

  “No,” Cadence said, “but I’m beginning to get a pretty good idea.” And with that she set off after him.

  “READY?” CADENCE ASKED, as she lowered her goggles and revved the throttle.

  “Whenever you are,” Ulysses replied, settling himself on the padded seat of the steam-velocipede behind her. He was just glad to be able to have a bit of a sit-down for a minute or two.

  “Ready!” the robo-parrot screeched from its pannier behind both them.

  “Then... How do you English put it?” Cadence thought for a moment. “Chocks away? Tally-ho?”

  “Chocks away will do just fi –” But Ulysses didn’t get to finish his sentence, as the sudden launch snatched the breath from his lungs and the very words from his mouth.

  With a squeal of tyres, and a scream of engine noise, the velocipede hurtled forwards.

  As Cadence drove it straight at the far side of the platform, the speedometer powered up to the crucial forty-four-miles-an-hour mark, and the bike took off, a synthesised squawk of “Tally-ho!” ringing from the iron rafters of the Eiffel Tower.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Off The Rails

  “THERE THEY ARE!” Ulysses shouted needlessly over the roar of the wind.

  “I know!” Cadence shouted back over her shoulder, her eyes hidden behind the reflecting lenses of her flying goggles. “I can see it too.”

  “I can see it too!” parroted the robo-bird, its brass wings flapping in excitement.

  Paris wasn’t even a speck on the southern horizon any more. From this high altitude, Ulysses could just make out the s
parkle of sunlight on the waters of the Channel far ahead of them. While a thousand feet below, the patchwork pattern of French fields, dark green patches of woodland, and the winding course of a railway line hurried past beneath them. A hundred yards directly in front of them was Leroux’s balloon, sailing towards the coast ahead of the prevailing southerly wind.

  The sun was climbing towards its zenith and it was turning out to be a very pleasant late spring day – the weather in total contrast to the disaster that had struck Paris and that both Ulysses and Cadence had managed to live through.

  Despite his attention being focused on the escaping anarchist, Ulysses could still appreciate the beauty and the wonder of the view he was afforded. Of course he had enjoyed toy-town vistas such as this one before, having travelled via dirigible to most corners of the globe, but riding on the back of the flying bike – without several inches of reinforced glass to protect him – lent an added sensation of closeness to his surroundings.

  “I don’t suppose you thought about attaching parachutes when you were busy putting this little run-around of yours together, did you?” Ulysses asked.

  “What?” Cadence called back, over the howling of the wind in their ears.

  “It doesn’t matter!”

  The balloon – with all its additions, including canvas sails, steering rudder mechanism, and basket-mounted rocket-boosters – was only five hundred yards away now.

  When he and Cadence had set off from the primary viewing platform of the Eiffel Tower, Ulysses hadn’t given much thought to what he would do once they caught up with the villains. All that had mattered at the time was catching up with them, and some vague sense of seeing justice served.

  Or was it revenge? Revenge for what they had done to Cadence’s uncle, and the cavalier approach they had taken to the lives of others – even what they had done to the gorilla, by turning it into simply another weapon in their selfish arsenal.