The Strange Affair Of Spring Heeled Jack Part 34

"Be careful, Richard."

Burton crept along the corridor until he reached a junction. Straight ahead, the hallway widened considerably and was free of dust and debris. To his left, a short pa.s.sage led to large double doors with inset gla.s.s panels out of which light streamed. They revealed a ballroom beyond, with a gallery circling it and large chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. A lumbering machine stood within view and Burton recognised it from Swinburne's description: Isambard Kingdom Brunel. He could hear the m.u.f.fled sound of bells ringing; Brunel was talking to someone.

The king's agent returned to his friend.

"They're here, Algy, in the ballroom. There's a gallery overlooking it. I'm going to find my way up to it. Your help has been invaluable but your job here is done. I want you to take the lantern, retrace our steps, get out through the window, and rejoin Detective Inspector Trounce."

"No, Richard-I'm coming with you!" replied Swinburne stubbornly.

"I forbid it, Algy. If you want to be my a.s.sistant, you have to learn to take orders!"

"Your a.s.sistant, Richard? Are you really offering me a job?"

"If you can demonstrate the self-discipline required, then yes, I think you possess qualities that can be of considerable help to me. Moreover, I believe you'll benefit from the experience. As I say, though, obeying orders unquestioningly is a requirement of the role."

"Then obey I shall," said Swinburne, and without further word, he took the proffered lantern and walked back the way they'd come.

Burton waited until his friend had disappeared from sight, then, keeping his head low, ran across the junction to the other side of the corridor. He moved ahead until the gloom enveloped him. If this ballroom was anything like the many he'd visited in the past, there should be a staircase to the gallery nearby. Pulling a box of lucifers from his pocket, he struck one and moved ahead until its unsteady glow revealed a door. Opening this, he entered a large cloakroom. He saw a staircase rising up to his left. Light entered the room from the top of it. He blew out his match.

Placing his feet softly and applying pressure to each step with infinite care, he silently ascended. As he neared the gallery, he dropped to all fours. He could clearly hear Isambard Kingdom Brunel's ringing, and with his remarkable ear for languages was soon able to discern words. The famous engineer was actually speaking English, but his mechanically generated voice possessed such a bell-like quality that, for most men, the sound obscured the meaning. His current audience, though, evidentially followed him, as did the man who now wriggled forward on his belly across the gallery to the bal.u.s.trade and peered down through its carved uprights.

"The experimental ornithopters have proven too unstable to fly," Brunel was saying. "Human reactions are not fast enough to make the constant adjustments to yaw and pitch required to keep them in the air. We are seeking a mechanical means to achieve this. A babbage would be the obvious solution, but Sir Charles is currently working in seclusion and refuses to share his knowledge."

"Then force him!" came a harsh voice from below Burton. He could not see its author but the words were spoken in a grating tone that sounded wholly unnatural to the eavesdropper.

"We do not know his current location," chimed Brunel. "And, besides, he is extremely well protected."

"Find a way! Nurse Nightingale, your report, if you please. Have you found a solution to your problem?"

There were six individuals below gathered around a long banqueting table, the end of which disappeared beneath him. Next to Brunel sat Lau rence Oliphant, his white face swollen and cut, one eye a mere slit, his right hand encased in plaster. Opposite him, upon a cylindrical metal base, stood a thronelike seat. In it, Darwin sat with his huge head supported by a brace. The long metal needles were still embedded in his cranium, held in place by a circlet, with wires running from them into cables which coiled across the floor and out of the room's veranda doors. Another cable ran from the base of the chair into the electric brain of the Galton body, which stood silently nearby, blank-eyed and motionless.

Nurse Florence Nightingale was also present at the table. She was a thin, severe-faced woman, tightly corseted in a dark dress, her hair pinned back and concealed by a white bonnet.

"No, sir," she said, her voice surprisingly soft. "In every case but one, where we've raised an animal up to a human level of evolution, spontaneous combustion has sooner or later destroyed the beast. Mr. Oliphant, of course, is the exception. He is the only instance where parts of a human brain-the original Laurence Oliphant's-have been grafted to the animal's. We are currently raising a second white panther, which will not receive a brain graft. If it survives, we will know that combustion is a risk a.s.sociated with the species used. If it doesn't, we shall experiment further with human-to-animal brain grafts. I should also point out that since taking a beating from Captain Burton, Mr. Oliphant's temperature has been fluctuating erratically. We are monitoring the situation."

"I'm fine," mumbled Oliphant. He spoke awkwardly through split lips and broken teeth.

"Thank you, Nurse," came the horrible voice from below. "Darwin, what progress?"

"We have so far treated nineteen chimney sweeps. Nine were rejected and destroyed on the basis of their height. The rest have been liberated."

"Will they remember?" interrupted the voice.

"No. Mr. Oliphant used mesmeric influence to dominate their minds and block all memory of what occurred to them while in our hands. We will continue the programme until a hundred boys have received the treatment. As you know, we have revised our theory of pangenesis and have incorporated into it the work of the German monk Gregor Mendel. We shall see, in the children of our sweeps, and their grandchildren and subsequent generations, the new theory-which we have named Genetic Inheritance-in action. The male offspring will become smaller until an average height of just three feet is established. With each generation, the descendants will also grow thick bristly hair-spines, almost-over their entire body. Thus they will become ideally suited to their vocation; able to fit into any flue, sc.r.a.ping off the soot with their bristles. Living brushes!

"If the experiment succeeds with this group of workers-which we selected due to their relative unimportance in social terms-then we will expand it to create specialists in all fields of society. Of course, our ability to monitor the future generations is dependent upon you."

"You need not worry about that," snapped the voice. "I will uphold my part of the deal. The time is drawing near."

"Then tell us!" demanded Darwin. "It is time we knew the truth about Spring Heeled Jack!"

A figure shuffled into view. Burton stifled a gasp. It was an orangutan, a large red-haired ape! Like Galton, the top of its head was missing, but rather than machinery, it had been replaced by a bell jar filled with a yellowish liquid in which the creature's brain was immersed.

The mysterious Mr. Belljar.! thought Burton.

The primate, walking with its knuckles to the floor, circled the table.

"I brought you here for that very purpose," it grated. "Though I warn you, the story is unbelievable and contains references to things you will not understand; things that I don't understand! Parts of it I shall tell from my own experience. Other parts were told to me by a man who spoke in a strange accent, who used the English language in a way I have never heard it spoken before, and who said a great deal that was incomprehensible."

Burton tensed. His two cases had become one, and had led him to this group of rogue scientists. Now, finally, he was going to learn who-or what -Spring Heeled Jack was, and how the stilt-man fitted into the picture.

"Gentlemen, dear lady, for me the story began in 1837, shortly after I gained notoriety for a childish prank in Melton Mowbray a month after I purchased and moved into this estate."

Bismillah! thought the king's agent. Henry Beresford didn't die two years ago! That ape is the Mad Marquess of Waterford!

"But the true beginning of the tale begins a great many years from now. It begins, my friends, far into the future!"

BEING THE TRUE HISTORY.

OF SPRING HEELED JACK.

Who you think you are is who you ARE.

But what if you think you are n.o.body?

What if you banish all the limits that define YOU?

What then?

WHO ARE YOU?.

-LIBERTINE PROPAGANDA.

PREVENTION.

Every time we are faced with a choice, and we are faced with them every minute of every day, we make a decision and follow its coa.r.s.e into the future. But what of the abandoned options? Are they like unopened doors? Do alternative futures lie beyond them? How far would we wander from the coa.r.s.e we have steered were we to go back and, just once, open Door A instead of Door B?-HENRY DE LA PoER BEREsiORD, THE 3RD MARQUESS OF WATERFORD -is name was Edward John Oxford, and he was born in the year 2162. He was a physicist, engineer, historian, and philosopher. At the age of thirty, he invented the fish-scale battery, a flake of material no bigger than a fingernail, which soaked up solar energy on one side and stored it in vast amounts on the other. The battery transformed technology and technology transformed the world.

A journalist asked, "How does it feel to single-handedly change history?"

"I haven't changed history," he replied. "History is the past."

He chuckled, as if enjoying a private joke, for though he was a genius, he was also an eccentric and obsessive, and the past was his primary fixation; specifically, the year 1840, which was when his ancestor, also named Edward Oxford, had fired two pistols at Queen Victoria.

Both shots had missed, and the original Oxford had been acquitted on grounds of insanity and committed to Bedlam. Years later, he was released and emigrated to Australia, where he met and married the granddaughter of a couple he'd known back in London, prior to his crime. History didn't record her name, just that she was far younger than he, which wasn't unusual for the period. They began a family whose descendants wound through the generations to the Edward John Oxford of 2162.

The fish-scale battery couldn't change the past. It was, however, an element of a far grander project that could, for its inventor had created it to power time-travel technology.

Edward John Oxford had a plan: he was going to visit 1840 to clean the stain from his family name.

There were, of course, numerous technical challenges, the relations.h.i.+p between time and s.p.a.ce being the most awkward of them. He solved this by "tethering" his device to gravitational constants: the Earth's core and distant galaxies whose position remained comparatively static. This enabled him to select an exit point in the past relative to his terrestrial position in the present; and if that exit point was already occupied by something, his device was programmed to s.h.i.+ft him to a safe place nearby.

It was an essential function, but it caused an immense drain on his batteries, so, retaining it as an emergency measure, he found another way to minimise his chances of materialising inside a solid object.

There can be no doubt that the insanity of his ancestor had resurfaced in the inventor, for his solution was bizarre to say the least. Oxford wove his miniaturised time-travel technology into a suit, the boots of which he mounted on two-foot-high spring-loaded stilts. With these, he could leap twenty feet into the air, vanish from his current time, and appear in the past twenty feet above the ground in nothing more solid than air molecules.

It was crazy, but it usually worked, and when it didn't, the programming took over and moved him out of danger.

There was also a psychological issue. Oxford knew that in travelling to the Victorian age he was risking severe disorientation. He therefore included in his suit a system whereby Victorian reality would be, from his perspective, overlaid with his own twenty-second-century reality. His helmet would alter the way his brain interpreted sensory data, so that when he looked at a hansom cab, he would see and hear a modern taxi; when he observed Victorian people, he would see citizens of his own time; and towering over the skyline of 1840, he would see the skysc.r.a.pers of the 2200s. Also, because the sense of smell is most intimately connected with memory, he ensured that his would be completely nullified.

He knew that moments after his arrival in the past, he'd have to remove his suit and face Victorian London without the filter. This would only be for a short period though, and, once he'd completed his mission, he'd quickly don the suit and crank up the illusion. He hoped that he could thus avoid culture shock.

On his fortieth birthday, Edward John Oxford completed his preparations.

He dressed in mock Victorian clothing, then pulled his time suit on over the top. It was a white one-piece garment of fish-scale batteries, with a rubberised cloak hanging from the shoulders that he could wrap around himself to protect the suit when it wasn't charging.

He affixed the round, flat control unit to his chest and lowered the heavy helmet, which was large, black, and s.h.i.+ny, over his head. Intricate magnetic fields flooded through his skull. Information began to pa.s.s back and forth between his brain and the helmet's powerful processor.

Bouncing on the stilts, and with a top hat in his hand, he left his laboratory and tottered into the long garden beyond.

His wife came out of the kitchen-the house was at the other end of the garden-and walked over to him, wiping her hands on a towel.

"You're going now?" she asked. "Supper is almost ready!"

"Yes," he replied, "but don't worry-even if I'm gone for years, I'll be back in five minutes!"

"You won't return an old man, I hope!" she grumbled, and ran a hand over her distended belly. "This one will need an energetic young father!"

He laughed. "Don't be silly. This won't take long."

Bending, he kissed her on the nose.

It was nine in the evening, on February 15, 2202.

He instructed the suit to take him to five thirty on the afternoon of June 10, 1840; location: the upper corner of Green Park, London.

He looked at the sky.

"Am I really going to do this?" he asked himself.

In answer, he took three long strides, hit the ground with knees bent, then projected himself high into the air. His wife saw a bubble form around him and he vanished.

Edward Oxford literally jumped through time.

A moment of disorientation.

A short fall.

He thudded onto gra.s.s and bounced.

Glancing around he saw a rolling park surrounded by tall gla.s.s buildings with advertising flas.h.i.+ng upon their sides. In the near distance was the ancient form of the Monarchy Museum, once known as Buckingham Palace, where the relics of England's defunct royal families were displayed.

A sonic boom echoed as a shuttle headed into orbit. People zipped overhead in their personal fliers.

Oxford ran into the wooded corner of the park, ducked into the trees, and pushed through the undergrowth until he felt safe from prying eyes. Then he stripped off the time suit and draped it over a low branch.

He reached up to his helmet, switched it off, and removed it.

A foul stench a.s.saulted his nostrils: a mix of raw sewage, rotting fish, and burning fossil fuels.

He started to cough. The air was thick and gritty. It irritated his eyes and sc.r.a.ped his windpipe. He fell to his knees and clutched at his throat, gasping for oxygen. Then he remembered that he'd prepared for this and fumbled in his jacket pocket, pulling out a small instrument, which he applied to the side of his neck. He pressed the switch, it hissed, he felt a slight stinging sensation, and instantly he could breathe again.

Oxford put the instrument away and rested for a moment. His inability to catch his breath had been a perceptive disorder rather than a physical one. The helmet had protected him from the idea that the atmosphere was unbreathable; now a sedative was doing the job.

Unfamiliar sounds reached him from the nearby road. Horses' hooves, the rumble of wheels, the shouts of hawkers.

He stood and straightened his clothes, placed the top hat on his head, and made his way to the edge of the thicket. As he emerged from the trees, a transformed world a.s.sailed his senses, and he was immediately shaken by a profound uneasiness.

Only the gra.s.s was familiar.

Through dense, filthy air, he saw a ma.s.sive expanse of empty sky; the tall gla.s.s towers of his own time were absent, and London clung to the ground. Ahead, Buckingham Palace, now partially hidden by a high wall, looked brand new.

Quaintly costumed people were walking in the park-no, not costumed, he reminded himself; they always dressed this way-and their slow pace appeared entirely unnatural to him.

Despite the background murmur, London seemed to be slumbering under a blanket of silence.

He started to walk down the slope toward the base of Const.i.tution Hill, struggling to overcome his growing sense of dislocation.

"Steady, Edward," he muttered to himself. "Hang on, hang on. Don't let it overwhelm you. This is neither a dream nor an illusion, so stay focused, get the job done, then get back to your suit!"

He reached the wide path. The queen's carriage would pa.s.s this way soon. My G.o.d! He was going to see Queen Victoria!

He looked around. Every single person he could see was wearing a hat or bonnet. Most of the men were bearded or wore moustaches. The women held parasols.

Slow motion. It was all in slow motion.

He examined faces. Which belonged to his ancestor? He'd never seen a photograph of the original Edward Oxford-there were none-but he hoped to see some sort of family resemblance. He stepped over the low fence lining the path, crossed to the other side, and loitered near a tree.

People started to gather along the route. He heard a remarkable range of accents and they all sounded ridiculously exaggerated. Some, which he identified as working cla.s.s, were incomprehensible, while the upper cla.s.ses spoke with a precision and clarity that seemed wholly artificial.

Details kept catching his eye, holding his attention with hypnotic force: the prevalence of litter and dog s.h.i.+t on the gra.s.s, the stains and worn patches on people's clothing, rotten teeth and rickets-twisted legs, accentuated mannerisms and lace-edged handkerchiefs, pockmarks and consumptive coughs.