The Strange Affair Of Spring Heeled Jack Part 50

It was a long, cold wait and he didn't see Burton.

At three in the morning he gave up and moved ahead to the next night, September 10.

Again, nothing.

The next night the club members gathered, had a good time, and departed at two in the morning.

Burton wasn't among them.

Spring Heeled Jack tried the next evening, and the next, and kept going, waiting hour upon hour until exhaustion overwhelmed him and he slept, slumped against the chimney. He awoke at dawn, swore at himself, and moved through time again.

In the early hours of Tuesday the seventeenth, he finally caught sight of his man.

Sir Richard Francis Burton stumbled out of Bartoloni's at one o'clock in the morning.

He was quite plainly drunk.

As he staggered along, Spring Heeled Jack followed, hopping from rooftop to rooftop, his eyes fixed on the man below.

He trailed his quarry through the streets and alleys, and wondered whether the explorer had any destination in mind, for he appeared to be wandering aimlessly.

Oxford took a great leap over the canyon of Charing Cross Road, landed on a sloping roof, slid down it, got a grip, and sprang to the next building.

He kept moving across the city like a bizarre gra.s.shopper.

Something big and white flapped overhead. It was an enormous swan, dragging a box kite behind it. A man looked down at him from the canvas carriage and yelled: "What the d.i.c.kens is that?"

Spring Heeled Jack ignored him, dismissing the swan and its pa.s.senger as an illusion, for such things didn't exist in the Victorian Age, and followed his prey into a seedy section of the city until, eventually, Burton entered a long, lonely alley.

"This will do!" whispered the stilt-walker to himself.

He raced ahead, soared over warehouses, and, after waiting for another of those crazily designed penny-farthings to pa.s.s by, he dropped into the thoroughfare below.

A huge metal lobsterlike thing rounded a corner and clanked toward him. Multiple arms beneath it flashed this way and that, picking litter off the street. He watched it as it lurched by, amazed by the sight, and suddenly wondered if somehow he was on another planet. As it pa.s.sed the mouth of the alleyway down which Burton was approaching, the contraption sounded a siren. The eerie ululation echoed into the distance and was then drowned by a terrific hiss as steam poured from the back of the mechanism and billowed across the cobbles.

Spring Heeled Jack lurched through the cloud and entered the alley.

He emerged from the steam and faced his enemy.

Sir Richard Francis Burton stopped and looked up at him, then stumbled backward and pressed himself against the side of the pa.s.sage.

"Burton!" said the time traveller, stalking toward the famous Victorian. "Richard Francis b.l.o.o.d.y Burton!"

He jumped at the man and hit him, sending him spinning across to the opposite wall.

"I told you once to stay out of it!" he spat. "You didn't listen!"

He grabbed the explorer by the hair and glared into his face.

"I'll not tell you again! Leave me alone!"

"W-what?" gasped Burton.

"Just stay out of it! The affair is none of your d.a.m.ned business!"

"What affair?"

Oxford snarled, "Don't play the innocent! I don't want to kill you. But I swear to you, if you don't keep your nose out of it, I'll break your f.u.c.king neck!"

"I have no idea what you're talking about!" cried Burton.

"I'm talking about you organising forces against me! It's not what you're meant to be doing! Your destiny lies elsewhere. Do you understand?"

He slammed his forearm into Burton's face.

"I said, do you understand?"

"No!" the man gasped.

"Then I'll spell it out for you," growled Oxford. He yanked the explorer around, shoved him against the wall, and punched him three times in the mouth.

"Do what-you're supposed-to do!"

Burton raised a hand in weak protest.

"How can I possibly know what I'm supposed to do?" he mumbled. Blood oozed from his mouth.

Spring Heeled Jack jerked the explorer's head up and looked directly into his eyes.

"You are supposed to marry Isabel and be sent from one f.u.c.king miserable consuls.h.i.+p to another. Your career is supposed to peak in three years when you debate the Nile question with Speke and the silly sod shoots himself dead. You are supposed to write books and die."

"What the h.e.l.l are you babbling about?" Burton shouted. "The debate was cancelled. Speke shot himself yesterday-he's not dead!"

Edward John Oxford, the scientist and historian, froze. How could this be? He knew the facts. They couldn't be wrong. They were well doc.u.mented. Speke's death was one of the great mysteries of the period. Biographers had endlessly debated it, wondering whether it was suicide or an accident! Slowly, he absorbed the things he'd seen, the strange machines and the weird animals.

"No!" he said softly. "No! I'm a historian! I know what happened. It was 1864 not 1861. I know-"

He stopped. What had he done? How could so much have changed?

"G.o.d d.a.m.n it!" he groaned. "Why does it have to be so complicated? Maybe if I kill you? But if the death of just one person has already done all this-?"

Burton suddenly slipped out of his hands and shoved him hard. Oxford lost his balance, staggered away, and fell against the opposite wall.

They stood facing each other.

"Listen to me, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" said Oxford tightly. "For your own good, next time you see me, don't come near!"

"I don't know you!" answered Burton. "And, believe me, if I never see you again, I'll not regret it one iota!"

The time traveller was opening his mouth to reply when his control unit malfunctioned and sliced him through with an electric charge. He yelled in agony and almost collapsed from the pain of it.

He looked across at his adversary and suddenly saw him clearly, as if a curtain of fog had lifted. He marvelled at the brutal lines of the man's bloodied face.

"The irony is," he said, "that I'm running out of time. You're in my way, and you're making the situation much worse."

"What situation? Explain!" demanded the explorer.

A ripple of electric shocks ran through Oxford. He flinched. His muscles jerked. The suit sounded an alarm in the centre of his skull. It was dying.

"Marry the b.i.t.c.h, Burton," he groaned. "Settle down. Become consul in Fernando Po, Brazil, Damascus, and wherever the f.u.c.k else they send you. Write your d.a.m.ned books. But, above all, leave me alone! Do you understand? Leave nze the f.u.c.k alone!"

He crouched low then sprang into the air.

Perhaps his warning would be enough.

Perhaps Alicia Pipkiss would be undefended when he returned to the Alsop field.

Perhaps he could go home.

He landed in the thick of battle.

IN COLD BLOOD.

Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause; He n.o.blest lives and n.o.blest dies who makes and keeps his selfmade laws.

-SIR RICHARD FRANc13 BURTON -here he is!" yelled one of the Rakes.

Burton turned back and looked at the spot he'd just left. Spring Heeled Jack was standing over the ashes of the fallen loup-garou. Ribbons of steam curled around him.

"s.h.i.+t!" screamed the stilt-walker. "Why didn't you f.u.c.king listen, Burton!"

Two Rakes dived at the tall lanky figure and knocked him sideways to the ground. Burton made to move toward them but a sixth sense warned him that danger was at his back. He dodged and something sizzled past his neck, gouging a furrow through the skin, burning the edges of the wound. Twisting, he found himself facing a Technologist who was holding a strange crossbowlike weapon. A belt of pointed bolts hung beneath it and the man was in the act of pulling back a lever that, the instant Burton looked, caused the topmost bolt to clunk up into the snub barrel. The Technologist raised the weapon and pointed it at the king's agent. At the same moment, to his right, a Letty Green villager who was wielding a hatstand like a staff swung it into the chest of a Rake. His victim, thrown off balance, floundered into the gunman; the crossbow gave a sharp puff of compressed steam and the bolt ripped through Burton's coat, missing his thigh by inches. The edges of the hole caught fire.

Burton slapped the material and lunged at the man, caught him around the waist, and sent him cras.h.i.+ng down. He knocked him senseless with a left hook and s.n.a.t.c.hed up the weapon. There was some sort of heating element beneath the grip. Four thin pipes pa.s.sed from it into a cylinder positioned over the barrel. He pulled back the lever at the side of the crossbow as he'd seen the man do. The next bolt slotted into place.

Sheathing his blade, Burton took aim at one of the slavering werewolves. With the steam from the rotors.h.i.+p above, and the swaying lights from the circling rotorchairs, the scene of the battle crawled with dark and distorting shadows, making it difficult to focus on the target; nevertheless, his aim was true, and the bolt tunnelled through the beast's brain. The wolf-man fell, twitched, and lay still.

Burton reloaded and looked around in time to see three Rakes hoisting Spring Heeled Jack above their heads and running with him up the slope toward the western end of the field. He lifted the crossbow and shot one of the three in the leg. The man fell with a cry of pain and lay jerking spasmodically while the other two dropped the struggling time traveller. One of them caught the next bolt in his shoulder and went down with a screech. The remaining man began to spin bolas, his eyes fixed on Burton. The king's agent shot him in the arm before he could let fly.

"Trounce! Honesty!" bellowed Burton, spotting the two men fighting nearby. "Jack is here! Help me!"

Detective Inspector Honesty was engaged in fisticuffs with a huge brute of a man, a Technologist who, by the state of his clothes and skin, was evidentially employed to stoke the boilers of the gargantuan s.h.i.+p hovering above. The svelte Yard man was dwarfed by him, yet, miraculously, seemed to avoid every swipe of the mammoth fists while planting his own again and again on the blocklike jaw above him. Even as Burton watched, the Technologist's knees wobbled and gave way. The big man dropped to a sitting position, and-bane-his head snapped to the left as Honesty's fist met the solid jawbone. Bang!-it was smacked to the right. The Technologist lay down and slept.

The slim detective shook his hands, flexed his fingers, and ran over to Burton with a smile on his face.

Detective Inspector Trounce, meanwhile, was displaying a much more basic form of combat. Truncheon in hand, he was moving from Technologist to Technologist, Rake to Rake, walloping them over the head.

He, too, paced over to Burton.

"The fight is moving up the field!" he shouted. "They have more men than us! We're losing constables fast, Captain!"

"Where's your jumping Jack character?" asked Honesty, wiping a spot of blood from his goggles.

"There!" said Burton, but as he pointed to where Edward Oxford had fallen, the stilt-man suddenly bounded up and sprang away, a shower of sparks and blue flame trailing behind him.

"After him! Don't let him escape!"

Oxford took two mighty strides, plucked a shovel out of a villager's hand, whacked the man on the head with it, then started laying about himself indiscriminately.

Trounce and Honesty sprinted toward him.

Burton raised the crossbow and took aim at Spring Heeled Jack's left leg. He began to apply pressure to the trigger.

A blade slid out of his upper right arm, then withdrew.

With a cry of pain, Burton dropped the Technologist weapon, its bolt sizzling into the air.

He turned and faced Laurence Oliphant.

"From behind, Oliphant?" he asked, stepping back and drawing his blade left-handed.

"I'm not feeling gentlemanly today," answered the albino. "Fighting with my off-hand doesn't agree with me; though I have, at least, evened things up on that score."

"How is your paw? Haven't you licked it better yet? And a bullet in the arm just above it. Poor little kitten."

Their swords clicked together.

Blood ran down the fingers of Burton's right hand and dripped onto the gra.s.s.

"I see you have my blade," observed Oliphant. "I want it back. I had it specially made. It's a very fine piece."

"That's true. It's wonderfully balanced," agreed Burton. "I have it in mind to keep it as a souvenir, something to remember you by after I run it through you. Don't you find it nicely ironic that the blade you commissioned is the one that'll pierce your dastardly heart?"

They circled each other.

Oliphant's sword blurred through the air. Burton countered it with ease and p.r.i.c.ked the panther-man's shoulder.

"My my!" exclaimed the king's agent. "You aren't nearly so fast today!"

Oliphant bared his canines.

Over his opponent's shoulder, Burton saw Trounce knocked to the ground by a wolf-man. Detective Inspector Honesty crossed to his colleague, pulled out a pistol, and put a bullet through the monster's skull. He looked up and saw Burton, then raised his pistol and pointed it at the back of Oliphant's head. Burton shook his own slightly, as if to say, "No. This one is mine."

Honesty gave a curt nod and plunged back into the battle, chasing after Spring Heeled Jack.