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This memory suddenly felt profoundly significant to Burton, though he couldn’t fathom why.
A huge dragonfly hummed by overhead, with a man saddled upon its thorax and glowing paper lanterns trailing on ribbons behind it.
Burton watched it pass and was startled when a lock of hair fell over his eyes. He reached up and found himself possessed of a shoulder-length mane. For some strange reason, he imagined he’d always worn it short. He pushed his fingertips into its roots and along his scalp. No scars.
What is wrong with me?
He must have been daydreaming. He’d imagined something about a mechanical horse. His thoughts were jumbled and erratic. Fantasies were intruding into them. Berserkers. Spring Heeled Jack. Lord Palmerston.
He muttered, “I must be going barmy.”
The four copper towers of Battersea Castle were just ahead. He felt it to be his destination, so guided the woodlouse off the road and into the edifice’s decorative gardens. Frost had whitened the grass, hedgerows, and skeletal trees. The flowerbeds to either side of the path were barren.
“Pull yourself together,” he whispered as he drew his steed to a halt outside the castle’s gates.
“Beg pardon?” Spencer asked.
“Sorry. Nothing.”
As they climbed to the ground, Burton reeled to one side and would have fallen had Spencer not caught him by the wrist.
“Flamin’ heck, Boss! What’s got into yer?”
“Too many late nights.” Burton steadied himself. He put a hand to his ribs, to his left arm, to his chin. Ghostly pain inhabited them but didn’t hurt him.
Spencer said to the armadillidium, “Wait.”
It rolled itself into a ball. The king’s agent marvelled at the way the creature made of itself such a perfect sphere, completely protected by its armour, with the saddle balanced on top. It was astonishing. The achievements of the geneticists never ceased to amaze him. Sir Francis Galton certainly deserved all the honours he’d received.
Geneticists? Galton? Galton the lunatic? The father of that illegal science?
“Why are we riskin’ this visit?” Spencer asked. “The Master Guild of Engineers is defeated, an’ if Gladstone finds out we’re consortin’ wiv the enemy, ’e’ll likely ’ave us ’ung, drawn an’ quartered.”
“Gladstone is an ass,” Burton replied involuntarily. He looked up at the building, noting that, in contrast to its well-tended gardens, it appeared shabby and neglected. Many of its windowpanes were cracked. It didn’t feel right. Not at all.
He knocked on the door. A motor-driven mechanical guard opened it and ushered them through. Like so many of the devices created by the Master Guild, it was a rickety thing that wobbled on its wheels and coughed black smoke from a clanking oil-powered engine. It led the king’s agent and his companion to the tall i
Wending their way past the machinery, they arrived at the central work area, where they found Algernon Swinburne waiting with Charlie Babbage.
“Hey ho, fellow rabble-rousers!” the diminutive poet cried out. “Welcome to the dark heart of the insurgency. My hat, it’s like the jolly old Gunpowder Plot. What! What! What!”
Babbage said, “We’ve been waiting. Why are you late?”
“I don’t know,” Burton replied truthfully.
“We was at the Penfold Private Sanatorium,” Spencer put in. “Sister Raghavendra says they can’t save Monty Pe
Babbage waved a hand dismissively. “Immaterial. Immaterial.”
“Not to Monty,” Swinburne observed. “That’s his drinking arm.” He quivered and spasmed in his usual over-excitable ma
Isambard Kingdom Brunel trundled into view. One of his wheels squeaked a
“Hello, Lieutenant Burton,” he said. His voice sounded like bubbling liquid. “Mr. Spencer.”
Burton nodded a greeting then looked at the ruined attire spread out on one of the workbenches.
“Edward Oxford’s time suit,” he observed.
A recurrent dream. Or nightmare.
“Yes,” Brunel replied. “Charlie will explain. He feels he might have a solution to our problem.”
Babbage hissed impatiently. “Feels? Feels? Don’t impose the imprecision of emotions upon me, Brunel. My theories, premises, hypotheses—call them what you will—originate in logical thought. There is no room for doubt in science. Either something is, or it isn’t, or it’s unknown. If I say I have a solution, it’s because I do. My feelings don’t enter into it.”
“The terminology I employ has no influence upon the facts,” Brunel countered.
Babbage rasped, “Just the attitude that has weakened the Master Guild of Engineers to the point of extinction. Accuracy! Accuracy! I’ll have exactitude, if you please!”
“Must I stand here listening to you two squabbling?” Burton asked. “What is your proposition, Charlie?”
“That we give up the fight.”
Before Burton could respond, Swinburne screeched, “That’s it? That’s your idea? Gladstone’s dictatorship continues unabated, he’s taken Isabella Mayson as his unwilling mistress, Prince Albert is incarcerated in the Tower of London and due to be executed next week, the Libertines are employing their mediumistic powers to incite a war with Prussia, most of our allies are dead, and your great plan is to give up? By my Aunt Carlotta’s cruelly constraining corsets! Why would you propose such a thing? It’s perfectly monstrous!”
“I suggest it,” Babbage said, “so that we might start the rebellion from scratch.”
Burton looked from Babbage to Swinburne to Brunel and back at Babbage. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
The scientist placed his right hand on the time suit’s headpiece. “This,” he said, “contains what amounts to a synthetic intelligence, though one virtually incapacitated by the ravings of a madman. Nevertheless, by putting carefully considered questions to it, I have managed to ascertain that the suit transcends the natural flow of time by employing an extraordinarily sophisticated mathematical equation. What fragments of it I’ve had access to leave me convinced that, were I to extract it in full, I’d be able to construct a machine to emulate the function of the garment.”
Herbert Spencer said, “Yer mean t’ say, you could build another of the bloomin’ things?”
“If that is what I meant to say, I’d have said it,” Babbage responded. “No. The techniques available in the year 2202 are beyond even my understanding. Without them, we ca
Swinburne squawked, swiped a fist through the air, and hollered, “By crikey! We’ll be able to go back and nip that blighter Gladstone in the bud!”
Burton shook his head and muttered, “There’s a problem.”
He knew the plan wouldn’t work. In travelling back to alter the past, the rebels would simply create a new strand of history. This one, in which he now found himself, would remain unchanged.
Babbage misinterpreted the comment as a question. “There is. The helmet is almost drained of power. If you give me permission, I can transfer energy to it from the Nimtz generator. The process might possibly allow the intelligence to regain some measure of sanity, enabling it to repair itself and provide me with further information.”
“Permission?”
“The suit is yours.”
Burton sighed. He indicated his consent.
Babbage consulted his pocket watch and declared it to be nine o’clock on the fifteenth of February.