The Return of the Discontinued Man

by Mark Hodder

  The two groups divided.

  As Burton, Swinburne, Trounce and Farren entered Regent Street, Burton moved close to the Scotland Yard man. “Are you coping, William?”

  Trounce grunted. “I’m still with you. These nanny-whatsits they’ve dosed us with do a better job than that Saltzmann’s of yours. By Jove, though, this world! What has the Police Force become? I joined to protect people. All I’ve seen as we’ve travelled forward through time is increasing intimidation.” He rubbed his thick fingers over his square chin. “Not that I can trust my senses anymore.” He made an all-encompassing gesture. “None of this is real.”

  “I wonder,” Burton said. “How much of the world you and I have come from was real? We operated under the assumption that we were the most civilised country in the world, but I personally witnessed the destruction we wrought in India and Africa, and we know what senseless vandalism Lord Elgin inflicted upon China.” He paused and watched a very large dome-shaped vehicle pass by. What was its real form? A creaking stagecoach? A rumbling pantechnicon?

  “Humph!” Trounce said. “And I saw too much of the Cauldron to believe in our claims of superiority. I see your point.”

  “Perhaps Charles Darwin was too optimistic. Perhaps this world is different from ours only in that it’s cloaked in a more pervasive illusion. The only thing that’s evolved is our ability to fool ourselves.”

  The four men pushed on. Two constables click-clacked past, their smooth featureless faces slowly turning toward the group before, thankfully, looking away.

  “It’s weird,” Farren said. “I truly can’t believe my eyes.”

  They came to Oxford Circus and bore right into Oxford Street. As in their own ages, the thoroughfare was lined with shops, and Burton and Swinburne were both astonished to see Shudders’ Pharmacy among them.

  “Surely not!” the poet cried out.

  “Generated by our AugMems, perhaps?” Burton theorised.

  Unable to resist it, they went in. The chimeric neatness of the exterior didn’t extend to the inside. The shop was shabby and in serious disrepair. Damp plaster sagged from its walls, and its ceiling had collapsed in one corner. Makeshift shelves supported a sparse stock of bottles and cartons.

  A stooped white-haired old man in a grubby laboratory coat greeted them. He smiled. His eyes were filmy and unfocused. He rubbed his hands together and bowed obsequiously. “Can I help you, my lords?” He gave an uncertain cough that sounded like “a-hoof!”

  “My lords?” Swinburne whispered.

  “Your name?” Burton asked.

  The man looked afraid. “I’m Martin Ocean Englebert Shudders, citizen number eight triple-four seven six three nine eight. Is there—a-hoof!—a problem? My paperwork is up to date. My payments are made. My accounts are—a-hoof!—in order. I’ve re-registered my citizenship promptly every month. I’ve never spoken out of turn.”

  “We haven’t any concerns about you,” Burton said. “We just wanted to see your shop. Has it been here for long?”

  “Fifteen years. Perfectly legal and—a-hoof!—aboveboard. The regulations have always been adhered to. My family’s loyalty has never been in question. None of us are socialists or objectors. I hate the U.R.E. and the U.S.A. I deplore their savagery. I wish those barbarians were all dead.”

  “It’s all right. As I said, we don’t doubt you. What was it before it was a pharmacy?”

  “I don’t know, my lord. It was empty when I started to—a-hoof!—rent it. But my grandfather held that it was in the family many generations ago, and was a pharmacy then, too. Many of my family have been in the trade. Legally.”

  “Thank you,” Burton said. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you.” He moved toward the door, the others following.

  “You don’t want to take anything?” Shudders asked. “Please.”

  “No. I’m sorry. Unless—do you stock Saltzmann’s Tincture?”

  “Saltzmann’s, my lord? Saltzmann’s. Saltzmann’s. No—a-hoof!—I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that. I have tranquillisers. Plenty of tranquillisers. Would you like tranquillisers? Please, have a bottle. Two bottles.”

  “No thank you.”

  They exited, looked back, and suddenly the windows were clean, and, through them, neat well-stocked shelves were vaguely visible.

  They continued along the street.

  “How very curious,” Swinburne muttered.

  “Echoes, rhythms and repetitions,” Burton said. “Time is exceedingly strange.”

  They hastened forward, all suddenly feeling the need for the safety of the minibus, worried by their separation from Bendyshe, Wells and Raghavendra.

  “Don’t look back,” Farren said, “but those pigs that passed us earlier are following.”

  “Why?” Trounce asked. “We haven’t done anything.”

  “Two more on the other side of the road,” Swinburne said. “Watching.”

  A third pair of constables dropped out of the sky and bounced on their stilts ahead of the group.

  “Damn,” Trounce muttered. “We’re in trouble.”

  “Stay calm, ignore them, and keep moving,” Burton ordered. He flinched and uttered a small cry of surprise as Bendyshe’s voice sounded in his ear.

  “Sir Richard. Don’t be alarmed. You entered a shop?”

  Burton murmured, “Yes.”

  “But didn’t take anything. That’s not done. When the elite enter the establishments of the poor, it’s customary to remove something without paying. Your failure to do so aroused suspicion. The shopkeeper immediately reported you. Constables are now closing in on your position. Two of my colleagues are on their way to extract you. Kat Bradlaugh and Maxwell Monckton Milnes. Do whatever they say, please, without question or hesitation.”

  Burton turned to address his companions, but Swinburne tapped his own ear and said, “We heard. We’re in trouble with the law because we failed to steal.”

  “I wish I had my revolver,” Trounce mumbled.

  New Centre Point was just ahead, but so were more constables.

  “They’ll take us before we can reach the minibus,” Farren observed.

  Bendyshe’s voice: “Turn right and start running. Kat will land a flier in Soho Square. Sir Richard, Algernon, get into it. The moment it departs, Maxwell will arrive in a second machine. Mick, William, that one’s for you.”

  “The square’s not far,” Farren noted. “Unless it’s been moved.”

  They rounded the corner into Soho Street and took to their heels. People scattered out of their path. A siren started to wail.

  A constable flew through the air and landed in front of them, lowering a hand to the paving as it skidded across it. The pig creature stood, viciously swatted a young woman out of the way, and pounced onto Swinburne. The poet shrieked as solid arms clamped hard around him, catching him in mid-stride. He was lifted, legs kicking.

  “Halt!” the constable commanded. “You are detained under Section Nine of the Public Order Act.”

  “I don’t think so, chum,” Trounce shouted. He slammed his heel into the back of the creature’s knee. As the constable buckled, Burton piled into it and pulled it down. He ruthlessly hammered its head into the ground. The pig man went limp. Swinburne jumped to his feet.

  “Run!” Burton bellowed. He saw constables springing in from all sides. One landed in front of him. He delivered a right hook to the side of its face. It staggered. He whirled away from it and sprinted after his companions.

  The air vibrated, and, with a loud thrumming, a small wedge-shaped flying machine swept down between the gleaming towers and thudded into the square, landing just in front of them. Immediately, a shadow fell over it and a strong wind gusted down as a far larger vessel slid overhead. It was a white disk with six rotors set into its hull and a black-and-white chequered band decorating its outer edge. A menacing cannon-like array bulged from its underside. A deafening voice thundered from the machine. “Stay where you are. Do not resist. You are in violation of Sections Nine
to Thirteen of the Public Order Act. You must submit to interrogation or forfeit your lives.”

  A door in the side of the small flier hinged upward. A middle-aged woman leaned out and yelled, “Burton! Swinburne! In! Now!” She pointed a pistol and fired three shots. Three constables, on the point of grabbing Farren, Trounce and Swinburne, were thrown backward and lay twitching in the road.

  Burton pushed Trounce toward the vehicle. “Go.”

  In his ear, Bendyshe shouted, “No! You and Swinburne first!”

  “Do as he says!” Trounce snapped. He took a pace backward and gave the king’s agent a hefty shove. Burton fell against the flier. Kat Bradlaugh grabbed him by the elbow and hauled him in. The king’s agent spat an epithet and reached out of the vehicle toward Swinburne. The poet extended his right hand. His fingertips touched Burton’s. A constable dropped down behind him. It raised a truncheon. With a loud snick, a blade slid out of the end of the weapon.

  “Algy!” Burton hollered.

  The stilted figure thrust the baton into the back of Swinburne’s neck. The poet opened his mouth in shock. The blade slipped out of it like a pointed tongue. Blood gushed. Swinburne’s green eyes rolled up. He crumpled to the ground.

  “No!” Burton screamed. “No!”

  “Kat, get him clear!”

  The door dropped shut. Burton hammered his fists against it and hollered, “Let me out! Let me out!”

  The flier lurched upward.

  “I have to help Algy!” Burton rounded on Bradlaugh. “Take me back down, damn you!”

  Through gritted teeth, she snarled, “Don’t be a fool.”

  The flier tilted to the left as she turned it. Through its side window, Burton saw constables teeming around Trounce and Farren. One lashed out at the detective inspector, its truncheon cracking ferociously across his eyes. Trounce’s head snapped back, blood spraying from it. He collapsed, kicked, and lay still.

  A second flier plummeted past and landed.

  Kat Bradlaugh uttered a cry of dismay and grappled with the steering levers. Burton felt his stomach churning as the vehicle skewed and twisted. She shouted, “The police ship is trying to access our controls. Tom, can you help?”

  “Maxwell, get Farren. Kat, I’m going to switch you to full manual.”

  “I’m ready.”

  “There are police ships approaching from the north and west. You’ll have to stay low to evade them. Get going.”

  “We can’t leave!” Burton cried out. “My friends are injured.”

  “Their nanomechs aren’t transmitting life signs, Sir Richard. I’m sorry.”

  “No!” He grabbed Bradlaugh’s shoulder. “Wait! Wait! I can’t leave them! They can’t be dead!”

  She ignored him. The flier suddenly fell, jerked to a stop some fifteen feet from the ground, and started to slide sideways.

  “Got it!” Bradlaugh exclaimed. “Which way out?”

  A constable thumped onto the front of the vehicle, causing it to rock. The creature’s fingers screeched against metal as it scrabbled for a hold.

  “Off! Off!” Bradlaugh shouted.

  The pig man squealed and scraped to the right. It fell out of sight.

  “Follow Greek Street south,” Bendyshe instructed.

  Burton glimpsed Farren at the door of the landed vessel, engulfed by constables. He was fighting like a madman, punching, kicking, somehow resisting though vastly outnumbered. Behind the Deviant, the Cannibal, Maxwell Monckton Milnes, was being dragged from the driver’s seat. His head was seized and forced all the way around. He went down.

  “You bloody animals!” Burton cried out.

  Farren broke free, dived into the parked flier, and yanked down the door.

  “Mick,” Bendyshe said. “I’ve locked you in. Are you all right?”

  Burton heard Farren panting. “No. Stabbed. Bleeding. It’s bad.”

  “Can you stay conscious?”

  “Not for—not for long.”

  “You have to fly manually. Pull the joystick back to get her off the ground, side to side to steer, push it to descend. The footplate controls forward momentum and braking. Same as in your day.”

  “Got it.”

  “Hold on tight,” Kat Bradlaugh said to Burton.

  He was pressed into his seat as the flier suddenly shot forward then was thrown against the Cannibal as it veered sharply. A thin beam of light sizzled past the side window just inches from his head. He felt its heat on his face. The glass blistered and cracked.

  Bradlaugh cried out, “They’re firing at us!”

  The second flier rose into view, weaving and bobbing as Farren struggled with the controls.

  A voice blared from the police ship. “We have you contained. Land your vehicles immediately or we’ll shoot you down. You have ten seconds to comply. No further warnings.”

  “Tom?” Bradlaugh asked.

  “Damn it. I’m helpless. You’ll have to outmanoeuvre them.”

  “I can’t.”

  Mick Farren’s voice whispered in Burton’s ear. “I guess it’s time for one last gesture of defiance. It’s been fun, Sir Richard. A real pleasure to meet you. Good luck.”

  “Farren!” Burton called. “What are you—?”

  Before he could finish, Farren’s flying machine shot upward at a tremendous velocity, slammed into the bottom of the police vessel, and disappeared in a ball of flame. Bradlaugh screamed as the shockwave hit and the steering levers were wrenched out of her hands. Burning material rained down. The noise of tortured metal filled Soho Square, like the wails of a mortally wounded leviathan.

  Bradlaugh snatched at the levers and regained control. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  She steered the flier into Greek Street and accelerated to such a breakneck velocity that Burton couldn’t draw breath. He twisted and looked to the rear just as the burning police disk went angling into a glass tower, ripped downward through its facade, broke in half, and disintegrated into the square amid a torrential downpour of fire, metal and broken glass. Then it was out of sight, and they were hurtling along, perilously close to the ground, through Charing Cross Road and into Long Acre.

  “Kat, safe house eight,” Bendyshe ordered.

  “Endell Street, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Got you. Half a minute.”

  The flier pitched onto its side and plummeted into a narrow alleyway. Burton, unable to think, held on tightly and moaned with fright as brick walls streaked past just inches away. The machine rocketed out into a lengthy back yard, flipped to the horizontal, hit the ground, screeched along in a shower of sparks, and smacked into a wall, its nose crumpling.

  “Out!” Bradlaugh barked.

  Blood dribbled into Burton’s eyes. His head had impacted against the windscreen. He couldn’t move.

  “Out!” the Cannibal repeated. She hit a switch, his door swung upward, and she pushed him into waiting hands.

  “This way, Sir Richard,” Tom Bendyshe said. “Lean on me.”

  Burton had little choice. His legs were like rubber.

  Bendyshe half-dragged him across the yard, through a door, over rotting floorboards, out of another door, and into a quiet street where the minibus waited.

  Sadhvi Raghavendra and Herbert Wells hauled him into the vehicle. Kat Bradlaugh followed and collapsed onto its floor. The door slid shut. Bendyshe clambered in next to Odessa Penniforth and said, “Not too fast. Don’t attract attention.”

  The king’s agent felt the minibus move forward. Sadhvi applied a cloth to his forehead. He heard Wells say, “Are we going to make it, Mr. Bendyshe?”

  “My colleagues are laying a false trail. Irregular BioProc signals racing westward. We, in the meantime, will be at Battersea Airfield in a few minutes.”

  Sadhvi put a hand on Burton’s shoulder. “Richard?”

  Sadhvi is alive. Wells is alive. Lawless is alive. Krishnamurthy is alive. Gooch is alive.

  He sucked in a shuddering breath.

  But M
ick Farren and—

  He couldn’t think it. Couldn’t allow any acknowledgment of the fact.

  It came anyway.

  William Trounce is dead.

  Algernon Swinburne is dead.

  Days went by. Sir Richard Francis Burton lost track of them. He and the surviving chrononauts were safe aboard the Orpheus in Bendyshe Bay, but their mission had come to a disastrous halt. The king’s agent remained in his quarters. He refused to speak to his colleagues. He didn’t eat. He didn’t drink. He didn’t smoke. He didn’t sleep.

  He sat.

  Cross-legged on the floor, eyes fixed straight ahead, for hour upon hour, he sat.

  Not a thing went through his head. His thoughts were utterly paralysed.

  Sadhvi Raghavendra did what she could for him. She brought food and took it away untouched. She sat beside him and spoke of the things she and the others had learned from the Cannibal Club, of the plutocracy that now ruled the Anglo-Saxon Empire, of the rapid physical and mental degeneration of the lower classes, of the many techniques employed by their overlords to keep them subservient and pliable, of the terrible destruction wrought during the failed revolution of the 2080s.

  “The British Museum was among the many establishments destroyed,” she said. “Access to it had long been denied to the general public. It became a symbol of everything that was being withheld. As we saw in 2022, knowledge was distributed through the Turing devices, but it was strictly controlled, and that control became so increasingly draconian that by the 2070s even the Turings were discontinued. Not surprising, then, that the museum became, at one point, the focus of protestations. In 2083, the people, in their fury, determined that if they were to be denied the knowledge it held then the government would be, too. They blew it up. Isambard Kingdom Brunel was buried beneath the rubble.” She placed her hand on his forearm and gave it a squeeze. “It’s peculiar—I’d come to regard him as a point of consistency, an old friend who never changed. But I must contrast his loss with our encountering of all these new Bendyshes and Bradlaughs, Murrays and Monckton Milneses, Brabrookes and Hunts, Bhattis and Honestys, Slaughters and Penniforths. How oddly touching it is to see our old friends peeking out from behind all the new faces. Life goes on, Richard. Life goes on.”