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Two years later, now a lanky, straggle-haired youth, he emergesfrom the mountains, intoxicated with a sense of his own importanceand in no doubt that he will gain control of his country and makeof it a great power. He has seen it. It has been prophesied. It isthe future.
Before his twentieth birthday, he marries and comes to hate hiswife, has children and is repelled by them, and indulges inaffairs-many affairs-before walking out of his home, never toreturn. He travels back and forth across Russia, and, after threeyears, makes his way to Saint Petersburg.
Soon the whole city knows him. They call him the “Mad Monk.” Heis the holy man who heals the sick, who sees the future, and whogets drunk and seduces married women and their daughters.
The tsaritsa comes to him, drawn by his reputation as a miracleworker. Her son is dying. Rasputin eases the boy's suffering. Hegains the royal family's trust. By now he is an alcoholic and asexual deviant, but he has the tsar's ear.
A new century dawns.
For years, Britain and Prussia-now United Germany-have beenengaging in skirmishes in Central Africa. The tensions deepen, andBritain's Technologists begin an arms race with Germany'sEugenicists. The British government is nervous. It has come toregard eugenics as an insidious evil, a menace to civilisation, anantithesis to freedom and the rights of man.
The prime minister seeks to publicly downplay the growing threatfrom the foreign power. After all, the British Empire is massive.It counts North America, India, the Caribbean, Australia, and hugechunks of Africa among its many territories. What can acomparatively small nation like Germany do against such a globalpower?
Then Britain's reclusive monarch, King Albert, dies, agedninety. Lord Palmerston's masterful manipulation of theconstitution had given Albert the throne after the assassination ofQueen Victoria, but has now left it with no obvious successor.
The republican movement gains popular support. The country isthrown into crisis. The government is distracted.
Germany invades France.
Germany invades Belgium.
Germany invades Denmark.
Germany invades Austria-Hungary.
Germany invades Serbia.
They all fall.
The Greater German Empire is born.
Britain declares war.
Emperor Herbert von Bismarck sends his chancellor, FriedrichNietzsche, to Russia to win the backing of the tsar.
Secretly, Nietzsche also meets with Grigori Rasputin. It's thefirst time they've encountered each other in the flesh, but formany months they've been in mediumistic contact, for Nietzsche,like Rasputin, is profoundly clairvoyant. He is also a profligate,drug-addict, and sadomasochist.
They have a plan.
Rasputin will manipulate the tsar into allying Russia withGermany. When the British are defeated and their Empire is carvedup, assassinations will be arranged. The Bismarck and Romanovdynasties will be destroyed. Together, Nietzsche and Rasputin willbecome the supreme rulers of the entire Western world. Theyconvince themselves that they will be strict but benign.
It begins.
Tsar Nicholas has no resistance to Rasputin's mesmericinfluence. Russia declares war against Britain.
For three appalling years, the conflict rages, spreading acrossthe whole world, with the British Technologists’ steam machines onone side and the German Eugenicists’ adapted flora and fauna on theother.
An entire generation of men is slaughtered.
Europe is battered until it is little more than one gigantic,muddy, blood-soaked field.
Britain falters, but fights on, and when the British AmericanStates join the conflict, Germany is bruised and, for the firsttime, retreats.
Russian troops arrive in the nick of time. There is anothergreat push forward. For two more years, the battles seethe back andforth over Europe's devastated territories, until finally, thebiggest empire the world has ever seen topples and falls.
The war ends. The spoils are divided. The treachery follows.
Tsar Nicholas and his entire family are rounded up and shot inthe head. Bismarck is garrotted. His family and supporters areexecuted.
Friedrich Nietzsche rises to power, receives life-prolongationtreatments, and begins a near-century-long reign of terror thatwill earn him the sobriquet The Devil's Dictator.
Britain, from its deathbed, makes one final gesture of defiance.Two days before Rasputin is to be named president of Russia, threemembers of the palace staff surround him. They are British spies.They produce pistols and, at point-blank range, pull the triggers.All three guns jam. Rasputin has long feared assassination, andprojects around himself a permanent mediumistic energy field thatalters the structure of springs, robbing them of their power. Notrigger mechanism will function anywhere near him.
He laughs in the faces of the would-be killers, and, with acareless gesture, causes their brains to boil in their skulls.
The following day, he is poisoned with cyanide. Realising thathe's the subject of a second assassination attempt, he slows downhis metabolism and begins to consciously secrete the poison outthrough his pores. Four men corner him and hack at him with an axe.They bludgeon him into submission, bind him hand and foot, and wraphim in a carpet. Rasputin is carried to the ice-bound Neva Riverand thrown in.
Despite his terrible wounds, it is-as he's known it would be allhis life-the water that kills him.
He dies believing the British have had their revenge.
He is wrong.
The assassins are German.
The year is 1916, and Nietzsche, now the most powerful man inthe world, considers himself well rid of the Mad Monk. Russia,without a visionary in control, will never pose a threat. It isleft isolated, friendless, ungoverned, and poverty-stricken.
With millions of its sons killed in the war, the sprawlingcountry's agricultural infrastructure collapses. Famine decimatesthe population. A harsh winter does the rest.
Russia's death is lonely, lingering, and catastrophic.
“There!”
The woman's voice hissed through Burton's skull.
He gulped in air and a tremor shook his body as consciousnessreturned.
“There!” she repeated. “That is why I do what I do! I have seenMother Russia die, and I will not allow it! No! I shall changehistory! I shall ensure that Britain is in no condition to opposeGermany! I shall see to it that the World War is over in monthsrather than years! I shall cause your workers to bring this countryto its knees! And when the terrible war comes-for there is nostopping it-Germany will wipe your weakened, filthy Empire from theEarth without need of Russia's aid. And while it is doing so,Rasputin will be making the homeland strong, and when the war isdone and Germany is weakened, he will strike! There will be a newEmpire-not Britain's, not Germany's, but Russia's! ”
You're insane.
“No. I am a prophet. I am the saviour of my country. I am theprotector of Rasputin, the death of Britain, and the destroyer ofGermany. I am Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, and Destiny is mine tomanipulate!”
She pushed deeper into his mind. Burton opened his mouth toscream but could make no sound. It felt as if his cranium wasfilling with maggots.
“Dorogoi!” she exclaimed. “You killed Babbage! How gratifying!But what is this? Even more guilt? My, my, Gaspadin Burton, what abrilliant mind you have, but so filled with fears andinsecurities-and so many regrets! I see now that killing you is notenough, for there is something you fear more, and that shall beyour punishment: I will cause your own weaknesses to deprive you ofyour reason!”
Her mesmeric power intensified. It overwhelmed his crumblingresistance. His capacity for independent thought was summarilycrushed and immobilised.
A fracture opened. Burton's subtle and corporeal bodies lostcohesion. His mind began to splinter. His viewpoint suddenlychanged and he found himself hovering outside his own body. Hewatched the intelligence fade from his own eyes.