by Mark Hodder
His thoughts returned again and again to the process of ageing and somehow became entwined with the structures and themes of the novels. Individuals, he realised, were defined by the stories they created about themselves, and those stories adhered closely to common motifs. His own, though, did not. It was all askew and had been from the very start. His childhood, those transient years spent being dragged by his restless parents from town to town, city to city, country to country—Tours, Richmond, Blois, Sienna, Perugia, Florence, Rome, Pisa, Naples, Pau, Lucca—had not allowed for any thematic development. Only wanderlust had been imprinted upon him, so that, in his adulthood, he’d jumped from one situation to another without any feeling of continuity. It wasn’t until he’d become too physically frail to continue his compulsive travelling that he’d formed anything resembling a sense of established identity. Age had calmed him. Age had given him a story. Age had—
“Age?” he asked the room. “Age? What am I thinking? I’m forty. Why the hell do I keep imagining myself older?”
He paced up and down, his hands to his face.
His wounds were mostly healed, but his mind was feeling increasingly damaged. He didn’t want to think, didn’t want to confront the incongruity that lay at the heart of him.
He tried to distract himself with exercise: press-ups and jumps, lifting furniture and stretching techniques he’d learned as a youth in India, a discipline known as hathavidya.
Just once, he attempted to meditate, but it gave rise to such odd memories that he stopped and didn’t try again.
This isolation is driving me mad. God! What of Swinburne and Trounce? How are they faring?
He raised his face and yelled, “Algy! William! Can you hear me? Are you there?”
No response.
No one but the clockwork man visited.
One day—or it may have been a night, he had no way of telling—he was lying fully clothed on the bed trying to overcome persistent insomnia when, for no apparent reason, he suddenly thought of his friend Doctor John Steinhaueser.
“Poor old Styggins!” he muttered, employing Steinhaueser’s nickname.
He recalled a dream he’d had in 1860, shortly after returning from a tour of America. In it, his right canine had dropped out to fall at his feet in a splash of blood. Later, he’d learned that on the same night, Steinhaueser, who was travelling through Switzerland at the time, had suffered an embolism and died.
Wait. How could that have happened? It is 1861. I spent all of last year in the future. I never went to America.
And Steinhaueser hadn’t died that way; he’d been murdered by a vampiric creature from a parallel history, the same that had killed Isabel.
Bismillah!
Burton sat up and swung his feet to the floor.
“Vampire? Styggins dead? Who was it then, at home with me in Trieste? Who at my side when we rescued a bird from—”
He stopped.
Trieste? That hadn’t been Steinhaueser. It was—it was—
Trieste?
When had he ever lived in Trieste?
He jumped up and looked around the bedchamber, his eyes flicking from left to right.
Trapped! Trapped beneath the tower! Trapped in a machine! Trapped in an old decaying body! Trapped with nothing but pain!
Nothing made any sense.
He stumbled across to the water basin in the corner, gazed into the mirror on the wall above it, and saw a face that was far too young in appearance.
“By God,” he croaked. “I’m not me. I’m not me.”
Behind him, a voice said, “So the minister was correct. Who, then, are you? Which Burton—and from where and when?”
Whirling, he swayed back against the basin, his eyes wide, his mouth working silently.
Burton. I am Burton.
Colonel Rigby was standing in the doorway with a clockwork man at his shoulder—whether the one that brought the food, or another, it was impossible to tell.
“Who?” Rigby repeated. “Why are you here? Where is the man you’ve replaced?”
“I—I haven’t—I don’t know.”
“Come, come. Enough of your evasiveness. You’ve had plenty of time to think matters through. You surely must have realised by now that reticence will get you nowhere. Let’s have it all out in the open, shall we?”
He made a gesture. His mechanical companion responded to it by striding forward, reaching out, digging his fingers into the front of Burton’s shirt, and dragging him out of the bedroom and into the main chamber, thrusting him forward into its middle.
Staggering, Burton bumped into the table and almost fell.
Rigby said, “Introduce yourself. Explain it all.”
“You know who I am, damn you!”
“Perhaps I do. Perhaps I know you better than you know yourself, hey? Certainly, I know that you’re less than half the man I thought you. By God! Look at you. What a wretch. What a ruin. What a pale shadow of the person who was once the king’s agent.” The colonel slowly paced around his prisoner, gazing at him with disdain. “There’s no life left in your eyes. Have you really broken so easily?”
Burton ground his teeth. “I’m perfectly fine.”
“You are? Have you recovered from your injuries?”
The explorer cleared his throat and gave a hesitant nod. “Sufficiently.”
“And you still have spirit?”
Burton stared at the other man but made no reply.
Rigby removed his jacket, threw it onto a chair, and rolled up his shirtsleeves.
“Good. Then prove to me you’re the man of old. The Burton I knew in India.”
“What?”
“Let’s be at it. Hand to hand. Fair and square. A final reckoning. If you beat me—” He turned and addressed the clockwork man. “If I’m defeated, either because I’m unconscious or because I’ve said the word submit, you will escort Sir Richard from this cell, you’ll release Swinburne and Trounce, and you’ll escort the three of them out of the tower and to their liberty. Is that understood?”
The brass figure nodded.
Rigby said to Burton, “But if you prove no match for me, I’ll wash my hands of you and give you over to clockwork men for torture. They’ll go about their business with precision and neither qualm nor conscience. Unpleasant, to say the least. So decide. Speak or fight, which will it be?”
“There is no truth to tell, Rigby. I have nothing to say.”
The colonel sighed. “Retribution it is, then.”
Burton opened his arms, palms up. “Retribution? For what?”
Rigby adopted a boxing posture. “For everything you denied me. Raise your fists. Defend yourself.”
“I’ve denied you nothing. Surely you don’t still hold a grudge because I performed better than you in a few language exams twenty-odd years ago?”
Rigby snapped his teeth together. “That was just the start of it. I’m the king’s agent. I have access to all the records. I’ve read your reports. Or your counterpart’s—whoever wrote the confounded things. I know what you did to me in Africa.”
“The Mountains of the Moon business? The Burton of that account was another man. As was the Rigby.”
“As much as I suspect you of being other than you claim, it makes little difference in the wider scheme of things. Perhaps we are who we are, no matter how many histories we straddle. I know what the other version of Swinburne became, and I know that I could have been the same were it not for you.”
Burton blinked. He lowered his hands and laughed. “Are you in earnest? You hate me because an alternate version of me burned an alternate version of you before he could transform into a sentient jungle? Do you realise how utterly preposterous that is?”
“Raise your damned fists, man.”
“To fight over such an absurdity?”
“You witnessed yourself how the jungle plays a key role in human evolution.”
“And you would have such a power? Ha! What a bloody disaster that would be for the human race.�
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Rigby made a sound of impatience. “Stop. Here, take this.”
Stepping forward, he smacked the bunched knuckles of his right hand into Burton’s mouth.
Rocking back, the explorer bared his teeth. “You blackguard! I’ll be damned if I’ll be your punch bag.”
Rigby started to circle, his eyes predatory, his expression one of utmost cruelty. He stepped in and launched a right hook, but Burton jerked out of the way and countered it with a left jab. He missed his target, feinted to the left, and got a punch home, his fist thudding into Rigby’s ribs. Retaliation came at lightning speed: one, two, to his chin and left cheek. The explorer’s head snapped to the side, and he rocked on his heels, his vision dimming.
Rigby was a powerful man.
A third blow brushed Burton’s ear as he instinctively twisted and ducked beneath it. Heaving up from the hip, his answering punch caught the colonel again in the ribs—the same spot—causing the man to double over and step back, winded.
Burton lunged forward, aiming for a Thuggee wrestling hold, but as his arms encircled Rigby, his own momentum was used against him, and the room suddenly whirled as he was levered up and over to be sent crashing down onto the table, which broke and collapsed beneath him.
He lay stunned amid the splinters.
The clockwork man suddenly sprang forward, bent over him, and pulled at his clothing. “Get up!” it commanded. “Good Lord! Is this version of you incapable even of putting up a decent fight? Consider what that other Burton achieved. When all was lost, he still summoned resources enough to invade this base and rob its vault. Its vault! And you can’t even give a good account of yourself when it comes to basic fisticuffs. I’m thoroughly alarmed to witness such weakness. It’s not at all what I’d expect from my own brother.”
The voice was Edward’s.
Burton stared in horror up at the near-featureless head. “Oh God, no!” he rasped. “You’ve actually done it.”
“My service to the empire will endure.”
“No!” Burton yelled. “You idiot! You stupid bloody idiot!”
He pushed the metal arms away and rolled onto his hands and knees, but before he could rise, brass digits clamped around his neck and held him down. Distractedly, Burton noticed that his brother’s mechanical feet were caked with a blueish mud.
“Colonel Rigby has overstepped the mark,” the minister said. “He had no right to offer you your freedom. However, what’s done is done, so I suggest you find the wherewithal to put up a decent fight, Richard. You’re going to have to dig deep. The other Burton did so. Follow his example.”
“I’ll not have your advice, you double-crossing bastard,” Burton growled.
Rigby barked, “Let him up! Let’s get this over with.”
The clockwork man loosed its grip and stepped back.
Burton pushed himself up, turning to face Rigby just as the other came at him like a charging bull. Sheer luck allowed the explorer to get in the first punch, a ferocious left hook square to the chin, snapping Rigby’s head back, but momentum carried the other man forward, and a moment later they went at it, practically toe to toe, swinging wildly.
Knuckles impacted against Burton again and again. His head was singing, and he was half-blinded by his own blood, the half-healed laceration in his forehead having reopened. Rigby fared no better. His right eye was closing and red gore poured from his mashed lips. However, though they may have been evenly matched in size and power, Burton’s strength was quickly sapped by his existing injuries, and he started to flounder beneath his opponent’s crashing attacks. He weaved and ducked as best he could but was caught over and over, wilting under the onslaught of rapid-fire short hooks and uppercuts until he fell into a clinch, holding and panting for air, desperately hoping his head would clear.
Rigby was not even remotely a gentleman. His knee came up into Burton’s groin and as his opponent sagged, he gripped him by the hair, yanked his head back, and delivered a crunching headbutt to his face.
Again, Burton hit the floor. A booted foot ploughed into his side. A red mist clouded his vision. Rigby dropped on top of him, pinning his arms with his knees, and set about him, battering what resistance remained out of him, driving the explorer to the periphery of unconsciousness but holding back just enough that its promised relief was deferred.
How long the brutal punishment lasted Burton would never know. He was aware only of pain and humiliation until it finally occurred to him that the beating had stopped, and with pinprick vision, he saw that Edward was pulling Rigby back.
“That’s quite sufficient, I think, Colonel,” the minister said.
“Not until I’ve crippled him,” Rigby protested.
“No. Leave something for our mechanical interrogators. We’ll see how many sessions with them he can endure before he finally tells us what we need to know.”
“I want him ruined.”
“He will be. Come. Let’s have someone tend to your bruises.”
Rigby looked down at Burton and spat on him. “I expected more. I’m disappointed. You are nothing. You’re pathetic. I wash my hands of you.”
He and Edward departed.
Burton lay still and bled onto the carpet.
Through puffed and slitted lids, he stared at the ceiling.
Hours passed.
He didn’t move.
A NEW FUTURE
Nothing that is morally wrong can be politically right.
—William E. Gladstone
AN UNEXPECTED ALLY EMERGES
The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation.
—Auguste Rodin
To possess an identity, a person requires a past and a present. The prisoner had too many of both. His memories conflicted with one another. He was in different places and in different circumstances at precisely the same moment, and the moment itself was uncertain.
He remembered fighting both a man from the future and the cabal of scientists who’d sought to capture that individual, intent on experimenting with multiplying histories.
He remembered discovering the presence of the black diamonds in the world and becoming aware of their pernicious influence.
He remembered that the collective consciousness of a prehuman race was contained within the gemstones but wondered whether they were real at all or, perhaps, rather a symbolic expression of a primitive and buried aspect of human sentience.
He remembered that he’d created the history he now inhabited.
He remembered that every bizarre event had culminated in him becoming something that transcended what was currently considered human; that it had called itself the Beetle; and that its presence was so paradoxical it must consume itself like the worm Ouroboros.
He remembered living into his old age, dying, and at that instant being transported into the past.
My existence is impossible.
Occasionally, he reached up with both hands to check his head, convinced it should feel somehow multiplied.
Many heads in the same space.
One. Three. Five. One.
Plainly, he was losing his mind.
If time was passing at all, the clockwork servant that delivered the meals—he could now see that it was not the same machine as his brother—provided the only measure, but he knew that it purposely appeared at irregular intervals to keep him disorientated. Sometimes it felt like he’d only just eaten when the next plate arrived. Occasionally, he was tormented by hunger between one repast and the next.
The mental confusion even crept into the material world when, while he was attempting to sleep, he turned and was stabbed in the flank by a sharp object in his pocket. Puzzled that anything should be there—he’d been searched and divested of his every possession on the Orpheus—he retrieved the item, sat up, and gazed at it uncomprehendingly.
He strained to understand. He ate two meals, bathed, smoked a cigar, and spent hour
s contemplating his find.
Finally, he dared to give it a name.
A set of lockpicks.
He laughed. Reality was such a jumble that now his imagination was manifesting objects that could not possibly be there.
He concealed the picks beneath his mattress and forgot about them.
Perhaps more time passed.
The door clicked.
Rigby?
No, the servant.
Food.
Eat.
Sit.
Sleep.
Nothing.
Except—
Amid the cacophonous impressions and tattered memories, he began to sense a presence that was not a variation of his own. There was something else out there. He felt mental fingers groping for him. They brushed the peripheries of his mind. Cold. Calculating. Inhuman.
He flinched away from them.
Illusion, like the lockpicks.
He was on the bed and, turning onto his side, slid his hand under the mattress to reassure himself that the picks weren’t there.
But they were.
He pulled them out, laid back, and held them over his face, turning the slim tools this way and that, examining every part of them.
If these are real, then—
He didn’t want to continue that line of thought, didn’t want to consider the possibility that what he vaguely perceived might also be real. A powerful intellect. An other. Watching. Waiting. Planning.
How could lockpicks have found their way into my pocket?
Unless someone put them there.
Edward.
He sat up and looked around, frowned, and ran his fingers over his stubbled jawline.
Edward. He fumbled at my clothing during my fight with Rigby. Why such clumsiness from a machine? It must have been purposeful. The picks are real. He slipped them to me.
With a small cry of astonishment, he threw himself off the bed and moved into the main room.
Come on. Come on. Think.
What was it his brother had said?
