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They stepped into a smaller room. It was sparsely furnished,though its shelves and mantelpiece were crowded with esoterictrinkets and baubles. A camphor lamp hung low over a round table inthe middle of the chamber. The countess put a match to itswick.
She sat down.
Burton settled opposite.
He moistened his lips and said: “I'm-I'm afraid.”
She nodded silently. Her eyes shifted focus. She seemed to belooking right through him. In a barely audible voice, shewhispered: “The cycle is complete. The time of change is upon us.War is coming.”
“And I have a role to play.”
“Yes.”
“I feel… displaced.”
“You are. This is not your intended path.”
“Is it anybody's?”
“No. We live in a strange world, Captain, but soon, it will beeven stranger for both of you.”
“Both of us? Are you referring to my assistant?”
“Both of you, Captain Burton.”
“Explain.”
“I-I can't. I don't know how. I'm sorry. I feel-I feel that youare divided.”
“It's odd,” Burton replied. “That's something I have oftensensed myself, especially while in a malarial fever. I don't knowwhat it means.”
“Neither do I, but-but, somehow, I know that everything dependson it!”
Burton leaned back in his chair, his eyebrows shooting up.
“ What? ”
The countess shook her head and shrugged. “I can say nomore.”
A silence settled over them and they sat gazing questioningly ateach other until the prognosticator murmured: “Why did you come tosee me, Captain?”
Burton rubbed his gritty eyes. God, he was tired! He rested hisscarred hands on the table, looked down at them, and answered:“Countess, the future should be shaped by the past and the present.The past and the present should not be shaped by the future. Yet ontwo occasions now-or at least two that I'm aware of-men havereached back and interfered with the course of events. Just howmuch damage have they done? We must answer this question. I wantyou to look into the future that was meant to be.”
“Original history? That is impossible.”
“Is it? When you take route A over route B, does route B ceaseto exist?”
“No-but though I can sense the other path, I ca
Burton reached into his pocket. “I have something that willaugment your talent.”
He placed two black diamonds onto the table.
They hummed quietly.
“M ediumistic powers do not exist.”
Sir Richard Francis Burton let his statement hang in the air fora moment.
He continued: “In Victorian Britain-by which I mean our time asit would have been had Edward Oxford not interfered-astral bodies,mind reading, etheric energy, and spiritualism are, from ascientific standpoint, proven to be at best highly implausible and,in all probability, utter balderdash.”
The king's agent sat at the head of a long table in a grand hallin Buckingham Palace. There were nine others in attendance: theeugenically enhanced prime minister, Lord Palmerston; thevulture-faced secretary for war, Sir George Cornewall Lewis; theevasive-eyed chancellor of the Exchequer, William Gladstone; thegrey-bearded foreign secretary, Lord John Russell; themiserable-looking first lord of the Admiralty, Edward Seymour; thedeviant red-headed poet, Algernon Charles Swinburne; the aloofchief commissioner of Scotland Yard, Sir Richard Mayne; theclockwork philosopher, Herbert Spencer; and the steam-poweredengineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
Without any shadow of a doubt, it was the oddest gathering theroyal residence had ever seen.
There was one further presence: King Albert's eyes and ears hungabove the table like a bizarre chandelier-an apparatus comprised ofhearing trumpets and lenses, which swivelled this way and that tofollow the men as they spoke. The monarch was notoriouslyreclusive. Of those present, only Palmerston had met himface-to-face.
Brunel chimed: “You do not make sense, Sir Richard. Changing thecourse of history ca
“As you know to your cost,” Swinburne offered, eyeing hisfriend's yellowing bruises.
“It exists here,” Burton responded. “But in Victorian times, itdoes not.”
“Your witch saw with such clarity?” Palmerston demanded.
“She's a seer, not a witch, and yes, Prime Minister, with theaid of two of the black diamonds, Countess Sabina's clairvoyancewas accentuated to an extraordinary degree.”
“And the reason for the discrepancy?”
“The aforementioned gemstones. The Eyes of Naga.”
“How so?”
“As you know, the South American stone was discovered in Chileby Sir Henry Tichborne in 1796. He secreted it beneath the Crawlsat Tichborne House. If time had not been altered, the diamond wouldhave remained there until the building was demolished in the year2068. About a hundred and thirty years later, Edward Oxford cutshards from it and used them in the mechanism of his time-jumpingsuit.”
“By George!” Sir Richard Mayne exclaimed. “How far into thefuture did your countess look?”
“Into the alternative -that is to say original -future, she sawclearly to the end of this century. After that, her vision becameincreasingly murky. There were certain points of interest that shefocused on, the black diamonds being one of them, and she was ableto follow those developments much farther through time, to thedetriment of other matters. I should point out that she did so atgreat cost to herself and afterward collapsed with mentalexhaustion. I suggest some sort of compensation from the governmentmight be appropriate.”
“Be damned!” Palmerston exclaimed. “I'm going to employ thebloody sorceress! Pray continue, Captain.”
Burton cleared his throat and glanced at the contraption on theceiling as it rotated to face him. “So Oxford journeyed back to1840 and from there was thrown farther, to 1837, where he createdan immediate paradox, for now the splinters of the South Americanstone existed twice in the same time. They were in his suit andthey were also beneath the Tichborne estate. This caused them toresonate with each other, and because all three Eyes of Naga arechunks of the same aerolite, the Cambodian fragments started toresonate, too, producing the hum that led to their discovery. I'dwager the African diamond, wherever it is, also began to‘sing.’
“Being underground, Tichborne's treasure couldn't be heard, butthe reverberation caused the equivalent string in the familypiano-B below middle C-to let loose frequent twangs.”
“Astonishing,” Cornewall Lewis grunted. “A man appears in Londonand, in Hampshire, Cambodia, and probably Africa, diamonds serenadehis arrival!”
Burton nodded. “Yes, Mr. Secretary, astonishing indeed. But it'sonly half the story. I've spent the past few days in the BritishLibrary researching clairvoyance. Do you know when the first clear,incontrovertible evidence of mediumistic energies emerged?”
“When?”
“In 1837. Over the ensuing six years there were many recordedinstances. They all coincided with periods when Spring Heeled Jackwas active in our world. Then there were no more authenticatedoccurrences until last year. We now know that he jumped directlyfrom 1843 to 1861. The diamonds in his suit have been here eversince, and genuine clairvoyant powers have been demonstrated withincreasing frequency this past twelve months.”
Brunel clanged: “Then your hypothesis is that the diamonds’resonance has awakened in the human brain some power that wouldotherwise have remained dormant?”
“That is for your scientists to explore,” Burton replied. “Butin my opinion, etheric energy and all that goes with it is aproduct of the human organism and, yes, the resonance stimulatesit.”
Spencer scribbled in a notebook and held it up, displaying asingle word: Evolution?
Burton shrugged.
“Damnation!” Palmerston shouted. “If all that you say is true,bloody Rasputin would never have had the wherewithal to stick hisconfounded nose into our business had Oxford not done so first! Arewe now so vulnerable to meddlers and madmen from the future?”