The Return of the Discontinued Man

by Mark Hodder

  “Did our world really have such evil potential in it?” Raghavendra asked. “I thought us enlightened.”

  “You believed what you were told,” Burton said, “but consider the Cauldron. Was it not an aspect of London that could easily be the progenitor of this?” He glanced at a thin ten-foot-tall, six-armed, four-legged figure that came tottering by like a tumbling stack of broom handles. It was wearing Army reds and an officer’s hat, which it doffed flamboyantly to him, murmuring, “My lord.”

  Burton pulled his hood more tightly over his head. From its depths, he examined the crowd as it parted in front of his group, trudging past to his left and right. He saw dull, suffering eyes and gaunt faces. A great many of the Lowlies bobbed their heads or touched their foreheads in respect. All appeared disconcerted by the presence of these “Uppers.”

  Stilted figures prowled among them. The crowd shied away from the constables as they approached and cast hard looks at their backs after they’d passed. The Underground, Burton felt, was a pressure cooker, ready to explode.

  “William!” he said.

  Trounce halted. “What is it?”

  Burton pointed across to the middle of Baker Street where a tall plinth divided the thoroughfare. It bore a large statue of a young woman. A plaque, attached to the base, declared, Her Majesty Queen Victoria, of the United Kingdoms of Europe, Africa and Australia, Defender of the Faith, Empress of India.

  “Yes,” Trounce said. “That’s her. She took the throne five years ago, our first monarch since the death of King George the Fifth in 1905.”

  “I know who she is,” Burton said. “I’ve seen her before. She appeared before me when I donned the time suit’s helmet.”

  “I say!” Swinburne exclaimed. “Really?”

  “She is—was—Edward Oxford’s wife.” Burton rubbed the sides of his head, his brow furrowing. “I should know her name. I’m positive it isn’t Victoria, but it escapes me.”

  “Whatever it is,” Trounce said, “Spring Heeled Jack obviously sought her out.”

  “And has literally put her on a pedestal,” Swinburne quipped. “Would she have known what—who—he was?”

  “No,” Burton said. “Remember, Oxford wiped himself out of history. From her perspective, he has never existed.”

  “It must have come as quite a shock to her when she ascended to the throne, then.”

  “Shhh!” Trounce hissed. With his eyes, he indicated a group of constables who’d just rounded the corner from Blandford Street.

  Following the former detective inspector’s lead, the chrononauts stood casually and listened while he explained to them that “the Lowlies are the workhorses of the Empire. They take pride in their practicality, in their uncompromising ability to get a job done, and benefit from the spiritual cleansing that comes with hard toil.” He continued in this vein until the stilt men had passed, then chuckled and said, “Trounce of the Yard, deceiving the police. Who’d have thought?”

  “And indulging in pure fantasy, too,” Swinburne added. “Spiritual cleansing, my foot!”

  “Let’s push on,” Trounce said.

  “Workhorses,” Raghavendra echoed, as they resumed walking, “but why so many in military uniform?”

  “The Empire is mobilising,” Swinburne answered. “We are soon to move against what used to be the United States of America and the United Republics of Eurasia.”

  “War?”

  “My hat! Hardly that, Sadhvi! The U.S.A. and U.R.E. are in no condition to resist. They battled each other for so long, with us supplying the munitions, that their various countries are utterly ruined. Their populations are decimated, and the old borders have gone.”

  “Are they still fighting each other?”

  “If you believe the propaganda.”

  “Which you shouldn’t,” Trounce put in. “The Cannibal Club has infiltrated our government’s records, which offer a story far different to that given the public.”

  Burton looked up at a billboard. SOCIALISM IS THE DEATH OF CIVILISATION.

  Trounce followed his eyes. “There’s no socialism. There’s no longer any conflict. There hasn’t been for a long time. Those vast regions of the Earth are now occupied by countless small communities, which somehow manage to survive in unutterably harsh conditions. They function under a self-regulating anarchism somewhat similar to that which existed in Africa before the Europeans and Arabs destroyed it.”

  “Why the lies?” Raghavendra asked. “Why is the Anglo-Saxon Empire telling its people that the rest of the world is filled with—with—”

  “Savage socialists,” Swinburne offered. “Permanently at each other’s throats.”

  She nodded.

  “Simply to mesmerise everyone into believing that this—” Trounce made an all-encompassing gesture, “is the superior civilisation and that it’s threatened from without.”

  Swinburne added, “And also to justify our forthcoming invasions of America and Eurasia and our subjugation of their inhabitants.”

  “If we don’t destroy the Turing Fulcrum,” Trounce said, “Spring Heeled Jack will conquer the world.”

  “Bloody hell!” Burton responded.

  “That,” Swinburne said, “is exactly what it will be.”

  The lower end of Baker Street was lined by much higher buildings than they’d seen so far in this subterranean world, some of them almost touching the brick ceiling, and was teeming with even more of the hideously deformed Lowlies. When a pack of naked goat men bundled past, drunk, rowdy, stinking, and unashamedly aroused, Sadhvi Raghavendra said, “Can’t you enable our AugMems, William, so we can share their illusion of a better world?”

  Trounce looked surprised. “Like in 2130, you mean? Did I not say? This is what they see. The real world. The illusion of cleanliness was slowly phased out during the later twenty-one hundreds. It had done its job. The policy of ‘know your place’ has, through various methods, been so consistently and insidiously driven into the population over the course of three centuries that it’s now instinctive and can be maintained with just basic propaganda and mildly tranquillising BioProcs.”

  “It’s—it’s repugnant!” Wells spluttered.

  “But there’s hope, Bertie,” Swinburne said. “Look.”

  He pointed ahead at a large placard that had emerged from the mist ahead.

  Burton stumbled to a halt and gazed in shock at it.

  Floating over the street, it declared, “THE ENEMY IS AMONG US! THIS IS THE FACE OF THE SOCIALIST FIEND!” Beneath the glowing words, there was a portrait of a brutal and scarred face.

  It was Burton’s own.

  The chrononauts uttered sounds of incredulity.

  “It’s what I’ve hinted at,” Trounce said. “Spring Heeled Jack obviously remembers you, Richard. Fears you.”

  “I don’t understand,” Burton said. He looked down at Swinburne. “How does this offer hope?”

  The poet gave a happy smile and a compulsive jerk of his shoulder. “By nature, the human race is very, very naughty.”

  “What?” The king’s agent turned to Trounce, seeking a more cogent explanation.

  Trounce said, “What Algy means is that if you tell a child not to do something without properly explaining why it mustn’t be done, you can be sure that, the moment your back is turned, the child will test the prohibition.”

  “Spring Heeled Jack has overplayed his hand,” Trounce continued. “It requires only a spark to light the fuse.” He pointed up at the placard. “That face is the spark.”

  “I think I understand,” Wells said softly, “When the government is perceived as the people’s enemy, the enemy of the government is perceived as the people’s friend.”

  Swinburne reached out and squeezed Burton’s arm. “And when BioProcs stop tranquillising because, for example, the local transmitting station has been blown up by a dastardly member of the Cannibal Club, then—”

  Burton cleared his throat. “I see.”

  Trounce said, “No doubt your Mr
. Grub is now busily making your presence known. It adds greater urgency to our mission. We have to destroy the Fulcrum before the people drive themselves into sufficient a frenzy to take action, else there’s little doubt that wholesale slaughter will ensue, first when the government attempts to quell our own insurgents, and then when it sends them to enslave the remains of our neighbouring empires.”

  “By God, Trounce. Have you loaded so much onto my shoulders? I’m just an explorer, an anthropologist, a writer.”

  “You’ve become a figurehead, too.”

  I just want to go home.

  Burton looked at his friends, his eyes clouded with distress, aware that he’d just thought the words that had driven his enemy over the brink and into madness.

  He felt his heart throbbing, moved his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and exhaled with an audible shudder.

  Burton had often regarded emotions as a phenomenon of the body rather than of the mind. It was the body that instilled fear when destruction threatened and joy when survival was assured. To now achieve what was expected of him, he knew he’d have to transcend those corporeal impulses. He must become all intellect. He must be as hard and as cold as metal.

  He glanced once again at the placard before saying to Trounce in a flat tone, “Let’s get going.”

  They waited while a group of spiderish women herded a flock of geese past, then moved on to the junction with Oxford Street, the whole length of which appeared to be a teeming marketplace. Over the rooftops opposite, dark smoke stained the atmosphere. There was much shouting, a few screams, and many people running, scampering, hopping or scuttling back and forth.

  Gesturing at the mouth of a road on the other side of the thoroughfare, Trounce said, “Here we are again. North Audley Street. If we continue straight on, we’ll be back in old Grosvenor Square, with New Grosvenor Square overhead.”

  “Bad memories,” Swinburne said. “Though they belong to my predecessor.”

  “I suppose the commotion is what Grub was referring to?” Wells asked.

  “Yes. Aboveground, the American Embassy is a burning wreck. Beneath it, some of the Underground’s ceiling has obviously fallen in. I hope there weren’t too many casualties. We’ll skirt around it. A little way eastward through the market then south into alleyways that’ll take us to Berkeley Square.”

  “I’ve had unfortunate experiences in alleyways,” Burton grumbled. “Being held at gunpoint by you being one of them.”

  Trounce laughed. “I recall I was masquerading as a fictional detective named Macallister Fogg at the time. A ridiculous farce. Did I ever apologise?”

  “You didn’t need to. I thumped you on the chin.”

  They walked through the market, passing stalls selling fruit and vegetables, meat and fish, clothes both newly made and second hand, pots and pans, brushes and cloths, tools and furniture; passing vendors of milk and tea and coffee, mulled wine and frothy ales, tinctures and pick-me-ups; passing tarot card readers and crystal ball gazers, palmists and phrenologists, astrologers who couldn’t see the sky and numerologists who probably couldn’t add up; passing four-armed jugglers and one-legged balancing acts, swan-necked singers and multi-limbed dancers, accordionists and violinists, deep-chested trombonists and bone-fisted drummers; passing emaciated beggars and obscenely curvaceous prostitutes, tousle-haired ragamuffins and shuffling oldsters, sad-faced young women and flint-eyed young men; passing vendors of corn on the cob and baked potatoes, winkles, mussels and jellied eels, roasted nuts and toffee apples.

  It was as if Burton’s London had been revived in an outrageously distorted form and buried beneath the surface of the Earth.

  They walked on until they were almost opposite the spot where Shudders’ Pharmacy had once been. There was no sign of it now, a slumping tenement having occupied the site.

  “Here,” Trounce said, and led them into a narrow alley between two immense arching pylons.

  Rats scampered out of their path.

  Trounce used the heel of his boot to shove a pile of rotting wooden crates out of the way.

  They moved on in silence.

  Rounding a corner, they were brought up short when a headless man jumped out of a shadowed niche and brandished a knife at them. He was naked from the waist up and had a coarse-featured face in his chest. “I durn’t bloody care. I durn’t. I’d rather cop it wiv summick in me pockits than nuffink. Give me what yer got. Anyfink. Give me. Give me, or I’ll slice the bleedin’ lot a yer.”

  Swinburne stepped forward. “My dear fellow,” he said. “You have been liberated. We are your saviours, not your enemy. Do not misdirect your newfound discontent.”

  “Shut yer mouth yer bleedin’ midget an’ hand summick over.”

  The poet sighed. “Then with regret, I have no choice but to give you this.”

  He drew his pistol from his waistband. “Between the eyes. Stun.”

  The weapon made a spitting sound—ptooff!

  The man flopped to the ground.

  “Well done, Carrots,” Trounce muttered.

  “Poor blighter,” Swinburne said.

  Trounce led them around the prone form.

  “He’ll wake up in due course,” the poet noted. “I can’t blame him for his actions. He’s waking from a BioProc haze; realising the unadulterated truth of his existence. There’ll be anger and violence before the people identify, and move against, their true enemy.”

  They filed through a maze of twisting and turning rubbish-strewn passages, traversing a district that, in Burton’s time, had been among the most prosperous in the city, but that was now much how he imagined Hades to be: confined, hot, dangerous and seedy.

  Finally, the group emerged into Berkeley Square. Once a smart area filled with the well-off, it now resembled a mist-veiled crater in the middle of a shantytown.

  “You’ll recall this,” Swinburne said to the king’s agent as they reached the centre of the paved space. “Though not fondly.” He kicked the toe of his left boot against a metal manhole. “Not exactly the same one, but close enough.”

  Burton remembered and felt himself go pale. Last year, or rather, three hundred and forty-three years ago, he’d climbed down through a very similar metal lid into Bazalgette’s sewers, there to have a final showdown with an invader from a parallel history.

  “The sewer was rebuilt and greatly expanded many years ago,” Swinburne said, “but it still follows the course of the Tyburn River. This hatch leads down to a maintenance tunnel that runs alongside it. It’s a lot drier than the sewer but also a lot narrower.”

  “We—we have to go—to go even farther underground?” Burton stammered.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “We’ll be all right,” Trounce said. “As long as we don’t run into any spider sweeps.”

  The diameter of the tube was such that Burton, the tallest of the group, had to bend his back in order to pass along it. The physical discomfort only added to his distress. He felt like he was in his grave. The weight of the double-layered city pressed down, liable to crush the conduit at any moment.

  His jaw was clamped shut. The muscles at its sides flexed spasmodically. Sweat trickled from his brow, and his legs were trembling so much he felt sure his companions must notice.

  He said nothing, just followed Trounce, putting one foot in front of the other, holding his arms out and letting his fingertips slide along the inner surface, keeping his eyes half shut and mentally chanting, Allāhu Allāhu Allāhu Haqq, which, unfortunately, quickly turned into, I am I am I am trapped.

  The maintenance tunnel was dark. Trounce had produced a small mechanical torch from his pocket and with this was illuminating their path, but the blackness retreated only a little way ahead and rushed in to follow closely at their heels.

  Don’t let that light go out! Don’t let it happen!

  Finally, Burton couldn’t hold his curiosity at bay any longer and had to ask, “Algy, what are spider sweeps?”

  “Children who’ve been gene
tically adapted for the purpose of keeping pipes such as this clean,” Swinburne answered.

  “Children,” Burton murmured. “Good.”

  “Good at their job, yes,” the poet agreed, “on account of the venom they spray to dissolve whatever dirt their coat of razor-sharp spines can’t scrape off.”

  Burton’s mouth went dry. “Nevertheless, they’re just children.”

  “Oh yes. There’s none above the age of ten.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Because the younger ones eat the elders.”

  “Oh.”

  “They’re extremely aggressive.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And territorial.”

  “I see.”

  “And, I daresay, with the effect of the nanomechs wearing off, they won’t hesitate to attack us.”

  “Thank you for alerting me.”

  “Beneath their spines, they’re armour-plated. I should think our bullets would just bounce off them.”

  “That’s unfortunate.”

  “I’m thankful to be as small as I am, really. I’m just a morsel. A crumb. I wouldn’t want to encounter them if I was a big lump of juicy meat like, for example, you are.”

  “That’s quite enough, thank you.”

  “Don’t you want to hear about their extendible mandibles?”

  “No, I think I get the picture.”

  They continued on through the cramped tunnel.

  Burton tried to imagine open skies, wide Arabian vistas, and distant mountains. Instead, his mind delivered a remembrance of Boulogne and Isabel. He tried to dismiss it, but each wave of claustrophobia brought it closer.

  I shouldn’t be walking through a tunnel in the future. I should be strolling along a promenade with her. She should be my wife.

  He felt brittle and taut, needed a distraction, something to divert his attention from the hollowness within and the constriction without.

  He asked, “Algy, do you remain an atheist?”

  “My hat! Of course! Why do you ask?”

  “Because you died and were resurrected.”

  “Must you remind me of my murder? It hurt.”

  “You were dead for nearly fifty years.”