Evolution Expects

by Jonathan Green

  Rather than look at the ever-increasing distance he had to fall if Jack lost his grip, Ulysses forced his head up and, despite the pressure of the wind against his face, peered at the yellow-painted Smog layer above them, the silhouette of the Weather Station dominating his field of vision as they drew closer to it.

  The Jupiter Station was an impressive piece of work and no mistake, a credit to those men who had toiled long and hard to bring Prime Minister Valentine’s vision to fruition. The torus must have a circumference of over a thousand yards, Ulysses considered. He had no idea what this outer ring contained, but he assumed that hidden within was the esoteric technology that would allow the Jupiter Station to alter London’s weather. And, of course, somewhere within the Weather Machine there was stored thousands of gallons of whatever it was the chemical plant had been set to produce. And there, at the back of his mind, was the fear that he knew precisely who had taken control of the station.

  The Weather Station was only a matter of a few hundred yards away now. Then it was only fifty, and then Spring-Heeled Jack was soaring past it. For a moment Ulysses thought he saw desperate faces, pressed up against the glass of a broad viewing window, and he hoped that their approach wasn’t being tracked.

  Now that he was seeing the Jupiter Station from above, he could see jutting walkways, landing stages and dirigible tether-points, along with a proliferation of aerials and other, curious antennae. It was as wide across as two rugby pitches were long, the myriad glass panels in the steel-framed sections of its outer ring sparkling like diamonds against the sun-washed sky beyond the pollution belt of the ever-present Smog.

  The Jupiter was designed to be manned twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, month in and month out, its crew constantly monitoring the changing weather patterns over the capital and using the station’s advanced technology to influence the weather as necessary, the intention being to eventually rid London of its permanent pall of Smog. Crews would spend a week on board at a time, rotating shifts during that time, with a permanent crew of eight. When it was time for a shift change, the work-teams would be swapped over by dirigible ferry.

  “Prepare for landing,” Jack shouted in his ear.

  Ulysses wondered just precisely how he was supposed to prepare for landing when the only thing holding him up in the air in the first place was Spring-Heeled Jack’s sure grip. Double-checking his grip on his cane, he tensed his body, knees bent ready to absorb the shock.

  He heard the pitch of the jetpack’s engines abruptly drop as Jack adjusted their speed. However, they were still hurtling towards the Jupiter, the brass handrail surrounding one particular pier rushing to meet them.

  Ulysses tensed as his feet barely cleared the railing and Jack let go.

  He crashed down onto the pier, his momentum bowling him forwards into the opposite rail. For a moment he lay there, on his back, one arm dangling off the side of the platform, staring up at the cerulean bowl of the sky.

  A bat-winged shadow soared above him, as Spring-Heeled Jack turned and made his own approach.

  Having taken a few good deep breaths, Ulysses scrambled to his feet as Jack cut the power to the engines and dropped – the wings of his cape extending on either side of him – landing on the pier in a crouch.

  At the far end of the pier stood the massive curving side of the Jupiter, an ornamented iron door giving access to the vessel beyond.

  Ulysses could really begin to appreciate just how big the Weather Station was, now that he was on board it.

  “This way,” he said, setting off at a trot, buffeted by the strong winds making themselves felt up here.

  The door was not locked, but then why would it be? Whoever it was that had taken over the Jupiter hadn’t been expecting any uninvited guests.

  Ulysses opened the door and stepped into the gloom of an entrance pod. After the glare of the sunny spring day outside, he found himself in almost total darkness. What he could make out was the narrow corridor that led off from this space, connecting the access hatch with the main arterial passageway running throughout the body of the craft.

  And although he could see little other than the gangway ahead, his finely attuned sixth sense screamed danger.

  “Get down!” Ulysses shouted, hoping Jack would hear him over the keening of the wind, as he threw himself flat.

  At that moment, a pair of uniformed crewmen turned into the passageway, guns raised. Either they had heard the intrusive noise of the wind through the open hatch or they had felt the accompanying draft. Whatever the reason for their presence, their eyes fell first on Ulysses – scrabbling to free his pistol from its holster as he rolled out of their line of fire – and then on Jack, suddenly clearly silhouetted in the open doorway.

  They opened fire.

  Ulysses looked on in horror as the vigilante was hit twice in the chest. Jack staggered backwards, reeling, and then fell, the buffeting wind sending him tumbling over the side of the air-pier and out of sight.

  As appalled acceptance of the vigilante’s fate hit him, a split second later Ulysses realised the true extent of danger that his heightened senses had been alerting him to. It hadn’t been the crewmen, something else was hiding in the darkness.

  Eyes blazed in the darkness and, with a grating of gears and the roar of furnace power, a massive shape unfolded from the gloom and his blood ran cold.

  Ulysses trained his pistol on the metal behemoth and let off a couple of shots, which spanged off the stone-like surface of the droid’s carapace.

  A massive hand closed over Ulysses’ own, bending the gun barrel out of shape, and he could feel the bones inside his hand grating together as the automaton lifted him clear of the floor.

  Just when he thought his hand was going to be crushed to a pulpy mess, a tinny voice – as if heard over a tannoy – spoke through the automaton.

  “Stop! Bring this one to me.”

  And as Ulysses stared into the golem-droid’s face once again, and despite the hot pain blooming in his hand, he couldn’t help thinking that there was something strangely and unpleasantly familiar about the voice.

  But surely it couldn’t be, he thought, his mind suddenly awhirl, for it was a voice he had thought he would never hear again.

  It was the voice of a dead man.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Rainmaker

  SPRING-HEELED JACK CLUNG to a metal rung on the underside of the Weather Station as he carefully fixed another of his limpet mines to the superstructure. No bigger than the palm of his hand, the mine was held in place by a powerful electromagnet. Once activated, a red light on the device informed him that it was armed.

  Thomas Sanctuary reached into a container on his utility belt and, finding it empty, tried the next. He didn’t have many of the magnet mines left. Glancing back along the length of the Jupiter Station from his precarious position slung beneath the vessel, he could see a string of twinkling red lights. He was going to have to make the last few mines count.

  He had planted the devices in several strategic positions – from the great turbine fans positioned beneath the outer ring of the station and cavorite-shielded ballast tanks, to the seams where the pre-fabricated sections of the ship had been bolted together. Unlike the small grenades he had made use of in the sewer tunnels, each of the mines was set to detonate remotely, the trigger unit attached to the vigilante’s utility belt.

  Thomas’s intention was that each of the explosions would have a domino effect on the structure. A strategically blown joint could result in a whole supporting arm tearing away from the central Hub. A small detonation underneath a fuel store would cause a chain reaction of larger explosions that could cause the station to disintegrate entirely.

  But the total detonation of the mines was only to be initiated as a last resort if the mission of wresting control of the Jupiter Station from whoever had taken it failed. Thomas hoped that, right at that moment, Ulysses Quicksilver was inside the craft, putting that very plan into action. But when he considered t
he attack by the crewmen that had could so easily have sent him plummeting to his death, somehow he doubted it was going to be quite as simple as that.

  He looked down at his dented breastplate. The two concave impact marks were clear to see. He couldn’t pretend that his chest didn’t hurt – he imagined that when he finally got the chance to remove the suit he would find that the bruising covered much of his chest. But without the armour plating he would have been dead.

  After being shot, momentarily stunned, he had dropped a good few hundred feet through the Smog layer before he had been able to extend his cape and pull himself up out of his death-dive. He had then been able to reactivate his jetpack and return to the Weather Station.

  He was glad that he had taken the opportunity to return to Sanctuary House after escaping from the Fleet sewer and recharge the jetpack’s fuel tanks, as well as emptying his store of micro-mines.

  Gunning the throttle of the jetpack, Thomas swung himself free of the underside of the Station, coming up slowly on the outer face of the ring, well away from any viewing ports. Of course he didn’t know what other manner of detection devices there might be on board. But, if the terrorists were tracking him, they hadn’t sent anyone to deal with him yet.

  Moving cautiously towards another landing stage, cape outstretched to give him greater control over his approach, Thomas came down on the Jupiter Station. Another ornamented iron door awaited him at the hub-ward end of the airship mooring point.

  Giving the distant ground one last glance – barely able to make out Hyde Park through the pall of the Smog now – his pulse pounding inside his head, he approached the door, one hand hovering over the grenade pocket of his utility belt.

  It was time to play the hero once again.

  WITH THE LIMEHOUSE Golem’s massive hands clamping his arms to his sides, Ulysses Quicksilver was carried onto the bridge of Weather Control, at the heart of the Jupiter Station.

  He found himself looking down into the centre of operations located at the bottom of the Hub. The control room was surrounded by a panoramic window, giving those working within – monitoring weather patterns and striving to influence them accordingly – a three-hundred-and-sixty degree view of the city beneath, seen through a network of glass and steel that reminded Ulysses of the great glasshouses of Kew.

  The golem came to stand at the edge of a curved platform that ran around the entire circumference of the control room, three equidistantly placed iron grille staircases leading down into Weather Control itself.

  Beneath Ulysses stood three banks of equipment made up of what appeared to be a combination of Babbage Engine consoles and monitoring equipment. It was obviously from here that the meteorologists hoped to be able to influence the weather, dispersing the clouds on a rainy day to bring sun to the shadowed streets beneath, or cool breezes when there was a sweltering heat wave.

  At the centre of the room atop a raised dais stood the station commander’s throne. Sitting upon it now was a hunched elderly gentleman, apparently relishing his chance to laud it over everyone. As the golem-droid entered the chamber, the old man looked up and gave a gasp of delight as he caught sight of Ulysses trapped within the monster’s clutches.

  “Excellent, you’re here at last,” the old man said with manic glee. He steepled his fingers before him, elbows resting on the arms of the commander’s chair. “Now we can make a start.”

  “You’ve been expecting me?” Ulysses asked.

  “No, not precisely. But seeing that you are here now, you can bear witness to my final triumph. And I can proceed in the certain knowledge that there is nothing you can do to stop me this time.”

  It was that voice again. But could it really be him? Was this twisted figure really Uriah Wormwood?

  They never had found a body, and although Ulysses had hoped that the former Prime Minister, and unrepentant megalomaniac, really had died in the airship collision with Tower Bridge, a part of him had half-expected that this moment might come. All the same, it didn’t stop Ulysses from feeling shocked to the very core of his being.

  That shock was doubled as his eyes darted from the old man to the flame-haired nurse at his side.

  It was all starting to make sense. Ulysses had been certain that the late Professor Galapagos’ de-evolution serum had been the catalyst for the insect regressions but he had barely even entertained the idea that his arch-nemesis would be behind it all. But considering the DNA-warping effects of the serum, coupled with the identity of the voice he heard speak through the golem-droid and the presence of Kitty Hawke, who had also seemingly risen from the dead – although not entirely unscathed, judging by the ostentatious patch covering her left eye – it could only mean one thing. The unthinkable – the end of the world as he knew it. The end of the empire.

  Ulysses quickly took in the control room’s occupants, hostages and hostage-takers alike.

  Even though he hadn’t at first recognised Uriah Wormwood there was no mistaking Kitty Hawke. Her hair might be a fiery shade of crimson now, rather than auburn, but he would have recognised that figure anywhere. She was a femme fatale of the first order; the last time they had met, she had tried to kill him.

  She was wearing the most outrageously provocative white and red medical uniform, that made her look more like one of the girls from the Queen of Hearts’ Temple of Venus rather than an actual member of the nursing profession. It was all high heels, fish-net stockings, short belted dress, unbuttoned at the front to create a plunging neckline and expose far too much of her cleavage.

  She was smiling at him provocatively, the eyebrow above the scarred orbit covered by the clinical white eye-patch arched suggestively. Her skirt was split at the side to reveal a small pistol holster above her stocking top, the holster for the same small pistol she was toying with carelessly in her right hand. The demure Miss Genevieve Galapagos, that had been her creation, was long gone!

  As he watched her intently, she blew him a kiss from her pouting, full red lips. “Hello, lover,” she said. “It’s been too long.”

  “Not as far as I’m concerned,” Ulysses growled in reply.

  A lab-coated scientist was manning the main instrument panel below the command position, with a crewman – whom Ulysses took to be the pilot – at the console next to him, standing behind the ship’s wheel. Two further smartly turned out crewmen manned the two remaining consoles. But there was no indication that these men were being coerced to work for Wormwood. So Ulysses could only assume that they were in on the whole thing.

  A third of the way around the walkway on which the golem stood, stood the Prime Minister Devlin Valentine, an armed guard at his side.

  “Good morning, Prime Minister,” Ulysses said, nodding at Valentine.

  Devlin Valentine threw him a look of annoyance. “Quicksilver, isn’t it?” he said, as he took in Ulysses’ dishevelled appearance.

  “Yes, sir. It’s a pleasure to meet you at last.”

  “And I you. I only wish it was under more convivial circumstances. I have followed your exploits with interest.”

  “Enough!” the old man shouted. This was his moment and he wasn’t going to let anybody ruin it for him. “When you two are quite ready we can begin!”

  “Begin what? What’s going on, Beaufort-Monsoon?” the Prime Minister demanded, the fear that his crowning glory was about to come crashing down about his ears furnishing him with the courage to challenge the old man.

  “Oh, I think we know each other well enough now, Valentine, that we can dispense with such formalities.”

  “What do you mean? What formalities?”

  “I think we can dispense with aliases now, don’t you, Wormwood?” Ulysses chipped in.

  The old man bristled, the dandy having stolen his thunder.

  “Wormwood?” Devlin Valentine gasped. “The Wormwood? Uriah Wormwood?”

  “The very same!”

  “I had hoped you were dead,” Ulysses said.

  The man Valentine had referred to as Beaufort-Mo
nsoon, had dispensed with his bottle-bottom glasses and was now peeling the last of the latex rubber mask from his face.

  Although he was now recognisable as Ulysses’ former government contact and Prime Minister Valentine’s predecessor, it was not the same face Ulysses had last seen aboard the zeppelin that had carried them both away from Hyde Park and the jubilee debacle. Half the flesh of his face had melted like wax and reset in a knot of raw and twisted tissue.

  “Hardly charitable of you, Quicksilver,” the old man chided, sounding smug at the same time, “but as you can see I am very much – what’s the expression? – alive and kicking.”

  “Hardly kicking though, are you?” Ulysses remarked, with a nod towards the old man’s wheelchair.

  “Ah, do not let appearances deceive you. That always was your problem, as I recall.” He stood up.

  “So how did you escape the zeppelin?” Ulysses asked, trying not to appear too startled by the old man’s latest revelation.

  “As you can see,” Wormwood said, pointing to his scarred face, “I didn’t escape unscathed.”

  “There was no coming back from that inferno.”

  “And yet here we are.”

  It was clear to Ulysses now that everything that had happened since Prime Minister Valentine came to power had all been part of Wormwood’s plan. In the last eight months he had simply picked up from where he had left off.

  Ulysses considered everything he had discovered over the last few days: the de-evolution to an insect-like state of various members of London’s populace brought on, in part at least, by the consumption of Dr Feelgood’s Tonic Stout, a drink that had taken the capital, and beyond, by storm; the secret chemical production plant where Feelgood’s patent panacea was manufactured, and combined with Wormwood’s secret formula; and then there was the second solution that had been pumped all the way to the Jupiter Station’s hangar on Hampstead Heath.