The Return of the Discontinued Man (A Burton & Swinburne Adventure)

by Mark Hodder

  “Ah,” Wells said. “You mean the Anglo-Saxon genius for parliamentary government continues to assert itself; there is a great deal of talk and no decisive action?”

  “Right on! Exactly that! And it’s like, the middle classes respected these people, ’cos that’s the traditional way of things, so there’s been no challenge to ’em.”

  Patricia Honesty added, “The people we refer to as straights or squares, Mr. Swinburne, are the ones who blindly stick with the status quo even if it’s plainly festering and useless; the ones who’re incapable of changing course; who haven’t the guts or imagination to do so. They have no ability to adapt and evolve.”

  “And the deviants?” Burton asked.

  “Rock ‘n’ roll, man!” von Lessing enthused.

  “Good Lord!” Wells exclaimed. “What is rocking role?”

  “Rock and roll,” Mark Packard clarified, “is where it’s at, and we reckon it’s going to change the world.”

  Burton’s brow creased. He looked at von Lessing, who explained, “It’s fast rhythmic music. It came out of the States—America—having evolved from the blues, jazz and swing.”

  The chrononauts all stared at him blankly.

  Von Lessing continued, “Styles of music that can all be traced back to America’s slave population, which brought from Africa a storytelling tradition accompanied by an intense beat and a sort of call-and-response chant.”

  “At last,” Burton murmured. “Something I’m familiar with. The musical storytelling you refer to is—according to legend—said to have originated in the Lake Regions of Central Africa.” He looked first at Swinburne and then at Wells. “The Mountains of the Moon. Significant.”

  “Those peaks appear to have an inordinate involvement with human affairs,” the poet noted.

  “What?” von Lessing asked.

  “We’re piecing together a jigsaw,” Burton told him. “Please continue. What bearing does this music have on the political situation?”

  “So, uh, yeah, rock and roll really took off in the fifties and it kinda galvanised the kids, gave them a sort of independent identity, I guess. Made them rebellious.”

  “Created the teenager,” Patricia Honesty put in.

  “What is a teenager?”

  She smiled. “In your day, Mr. Burton—um, I mean, Sir Richard—there was no transition from childhood to adulthood. You were a kid until you got a job, and then you were an adult, whatever your age. Nowadays, between thirteen and twenty, there’s a sort of rite of passage. Teenagers have their own culture, their own music, their own fashion.”

  “They think for themselves,” von Lessing said. “And now this freethinking is extending into some of the older generation, too. We’re sick of the establishment, the straights, and we’re making plenty of noise about it.”

  Herbert Wells asked, “And that’s the deviation you spoke of?”

  Von Lessing laughed. “Yeah, man. You see, this is what happened; the government saw the people were getting restless and losing respect for their so-called ‘betters.’ By sixty-four, Harold Wilson was elected as prime minister. This dude reckoned the only way to keep the populace happy was by making the weakening Empire strong again, to prove our superiority. To do that, he revived a banished technology; one that only the British had knowledge of. He made eugenics legal, and it quickly developed into what’s now called genetics.”

  Burton gasped. “Eugenics! We’d seen signs that it would return. Had this Wilson fellow no idea of the dangers?”

  “I don’t think he cared,” von Lessing responded.

  “Interfering with nature,” Jason Griffith muttered. “It stinks, man. Really stinks.”

  Wells said to Burton, “I believe it was banished in your age because the early experiments were bedevilled by unexpected consequences?”

  “They were,” Burton confirmed. “For every advantage the science’s founder, Francis Galton, bred into his subjects, a counterweight occurred quite spontaneously. He once created a stingless bee. He didn’t anticipate that it would also develop such speed of flight that, when it collided with his assistant, it went through him like a bullet, killing him instantly.”

  “No wonder it was outlawed,” Wells muttered.

  “And now it’s back,” von Lessing said, “as a part of the futile manoeuvrings of a stagnant leadership. The kids have had enough. They’ve started to protest. They want a revolution. Most don’t know anything about Spring Heeled Jack or your mission to find him, but we Cannibals have started to see signs of him in the new genetically altered—er—products. So we recruited this guy, Mick Farren, ’cos he’s a strong voice in the underground movement. He runs an antiestablishment newspaper and keeps careful track of what the government is up to. He’s also in a band, so has influence with the freaks. If it comes to it, we want to be prepared and able to offer some sort of resistance against the mad intelligence.”

  “In a band? You mean like a brass band?” Swinburne asked. “How can that possibly work? And what are freaks? Eugenic creations?”

  “Ha! No, man. It’s all guitars and drums and singing now. The freaks—the turned-on kids—dig it. Mick’s respected and he has insight. He’s a good cat to have on our side. People would follow him.”

  “Literally a cat?” Swinburne asked. “Medically raised to a human degree of evolution?”

  “No. Cat. Dude. Bloke. Chap. Fellow.”

  “Oh.”

  With a glance, Burton and Swinburne made a silent pact to allow certain peculiarities of the future’s language pass them by without further comment.

  Burton said, “And Spring Heeled Jack?”

  Von Lessing replied, “Today, in London, there’s going to be a mass demonstration against our alliance with America and against American aggression in South East Asia. The police are expected to show up in force. I want you to see them.”

  “Why?” Burton asked.

  Von Lessing glanced around at his colleagues. “We—we want your opinion of them.”

  Detective Inspector Trounce looked puzzled. “Of the police?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Without preconceptions, I take it,” Burton said. “Except you’ve already indicated that you’ve detected Spring Heeled Jack’s influence. In the police?”

  “Yep.”

  “You have me intrigued.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t want to put any ideas in your head, so what say we finish for now and get some grub? Are you hungry?”

  Burton wasn’t but felt it impolite to refuse, so the meeting broke up and the chrononauts were served an early—and thankfully small—lunch. Burton wasn’t sure what it consisted of. Some elements of it were laden with salt, others with sugar, and it all left a nasty chemical aftertaste.

  Jane Packard told them, “Eddie, Karl and I will go ashore with you at Margate to meet with Mick and travel into London. You have a little while to hang loose before we arrive.”

  “Hang loose,” Sadhvi Raghavendra said when they were left alone. “How unpleasantly descriptive.”

  “I wonder what their poetry is like?” Swinburne mused.

  “I dread to think,” Wells said. “Will we understand a word anyone says when we reach 2202?”

  Burton said, “In my visions of Oxford’s native time, everything was perfectly comprehensible and there was some mention of language rehabilitation. New words are introduced as time passes, others go in and out of style, but the foundations remain. In my opinion, it’s the form of society itself that’s more likely to mystify us.”

  “It’s already doing so,” Trounce muttered. “Music as a political force? Children defying the government? By Jove! What a madhouse!”

  For a further half hour, they discussed what they’d learned from the current crop of Cannibals. Burton felt pride that his brother and Tom Bendyshe had secretly amassed—and so wisely invested—such funds that the organisation could afford the Concorde jump jet. It impressed him beyond measure. Too, he was gratified that his friends, the original club
members, had so efficiently passed their cause down to their descendants. This new generation struck him as strange, strikingly unceremonious in attitude, scruffy in appearance, but undoubtedly committed and trustworthy.

  After a while, Eddie Brabrooke poked his head into the cabin. “Time to go ashore, folks.”

  They put on their coats—but were told to leave their hats, which had gone out of fashion—and followed him up onto the deck. A motorboat was bobbing on the water next to the yacht. Burton looked toward the shore and Margate’s seafront. He’d known the town as a major holiday destination, and it had hardly changed at all except that, even from this distance, it had obviously lost its gloss and become shabby and neglected.

  Bidding adieu to those who were remaining behind, Burton and his companions followed Brabrooke, Karl von Lessing and Jane Packard down a rope ladder and into the boat. The woman at its tiller greeted them and introduced herself as distantly related to Richard Monckton Milnes.

  She steered them to the side of the town’s promenade and, as they ascended a slippery set of stone steps, said, “See you when you get back.”

  Burton stood and examined with interest the people who were strolling along the seafront. Though many of the men were suited, the overall impression was of a major drop in the standards he was used to, both in terms of attire and manner. As for the women, there was a scandalous amount of flesh on display. Dresses and skirts, which never revealed even an ankle in his era, had diminished in size so radically that even naked thighs were unashamedly exposed for all to see.

  “Hardly the Utopia I was hoping for,” Wells muttered. “It smacks more of Sodom and Gomorrah.”

  “Indeed,” the king’s agent agreed.

  Don’t be judgemental, he told himself. Don’t think of them as English. Be the ethnologist.

  “There’s Mick,” von Lessing said, waving at man who was striding toward them.

  “Lord help us,” Trounce muttered.

  Mick Farren was all hair. It framed his face in a great bushy nimbus. The detective inspector couldn’t take his eyes off it.

  Burton, whose travels had exposed him to an endless variety of strange sights, was able to look beyond the extravagant halo. He saw a slim youth of medium height, dressed in worn blue canvas trousers—perhaps the uniform of his generation—a black shirt, a short black jacket made from leather, and boots that reminded the king’s agent of those worn by Spain’s vaqueros. Farren’s long and, by the looks of it, oft-broken nose might have dominated the face of another man, but in him it was eclipsed by the eyes, which, as he came closer, were revealed to be direct, sullen and challenging.

  “Sir Richard,” he said, shaking Burton’s hand.

  “Mr. Farren.”

  Few people could meet and hold Burton’s gaze. Farren did. The king’s agent felt himself being assessed.

  He passed the test.

  In a surprisingly soft and cultured tone—Burton was half expecting a cockney accent—Farren continued, “The Orpheus was called to 1968 because I recommended it. I hope what you see today will justify my decision.” He turned to the others. “Miss Raghavendra, Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Trounce, Mr. Wells—I’m honoured to meet you all. I expect this time period will strike you as lurid and uncultured. That’s because it is.” He smiled slightly. “If you’ll follow me, I have a couple of cars parked around the corner. We’ll drive you to London.”

  “What are cars?” Trounce asked as they followed Farren away from the promenade and into a street lined with shops.

  “Diminutive of ‘autocarriage,’” Herbert Wells put in. “They were invented during my childhood as an alternative to the old steam spheres.” He pointed to a yellow metal box at the side of the road a little way ahead. It was mounted on four wheels and had glass windows. “By the looks of it they’ve become rather more sophisticated than the rickety contraptions of 1914.”

  As they emerged onto a wider thoroughfare, five of the vehicles whipped past at a tremendous velocity, steam whistling from pipes at their rear.

  “Like a landau,” Swinburne observed, “but with the driver and the engine inside.”

  It being Sunday, the town was fairly quiet and the shops were closed. Burton examined the contents of their display windows and only understood half of what he saw. Everything appeared garish, plentiful, and cheaply manufactured.

  “What are those rods?” Sadhvi enquired, pointing at the rooftops.

  Karl von Lessing answered, “Television aerials, Miss Raghavendra. Television is like radio but with moving pictures, a little theatre in your sitting room. The aerials pick up the signals.”

  “Moving pictures?” Swinburne exclaimed. “You mean, like a zoetrope?”

  “A what?” von Lessing asked.

  The poet cried out and aimed a kick at thin air. “How are we ever to communicate?”

  The group came to two parked cars. Trounce and Raghavendra joined Eddie Brabrooke and Karl von Lessing in one, while Swinburne, Wells and Jane Packard squeezed into the back of the other, with Burton in the front beside Farren. The king’s agent watched closely as Farren manipulated steering rods and a footplate—a very similar arrangement to that of the old steam spheres and rotorchairs.

  “Steam?” Burton asked, as the car rolled out into the road.

  “Yep,” Farren responded. “The Yanks favour petroleum engines, but they’re unreliable as hell. Anglo-Saxon steam technology is still where it’s at. Over the past century or so, we’ve learned how to squeeze the most out of the least. It was Formby coal in your day, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “We use a process called muon-catalysation now, which is powered by an extension of the Formby treatment. We can make a marble-sized lump of coal blaze like a sun for a whole day, and a vehicle can run on twelve gallons of heavy water for almost two hundred miles at speeds of up to sixty miles an hour.”

  “Heavy water?”

  “Yeah, man. That’d take me a week to explain.”

  The car accelerated, and Margate was quickly left behind. As the vehicle swept westward, Burton and Swinburne saw that the little seaside towns—Herne Bay and Whitstable—which had flourished in the mid-1800s, were now, like Margate, in a sad state of dilapidation, while the countryside between them had been rendered a characterless patchwork by intensive farming.

  Further inland, the Kentish towns of Faversham, Sittingbourne and Gillingham were vastly expanded, but the new buildings struck the chrononauts as soulless and unprepossessing, and by the time they reached Gravesend they were shocked to find themselves already on the outskirts of the capital. London was immensely expanded.

  As they swept into the densely built-up outer reaches of the city, with other vehicles flowing around them, Burton asked, “You are a musician, Mr. Farren?”

  “Mick, please. I’m a singer and songwriter, among other things.”

  “In a band?”

  “The Deviants.”

  “And music has become a political force?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Farren reached down to a knob on the control panel in front of him and gave it a twist. The car’s cabin was immediately filled with a harsh blend of trumpets, guitars and other instruments that Burton couldn’t identify. The cacophony sounded vaguely Spanish and was accompanied by three or four male voices singing in harmony.

  “Ouch!” Swinburne exclaimed. “What a racket!”

  “The song is called ‘The Legend of Xanadu,’ Mr. Swinburne,” Farren said. “By Dave, Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich.”

  “My hat! What are they? Dwarfs? What happened to the seventh?”

  Farren gave a throaty chuckle.

  “I presume the song refers to the Empire’s difficulties with China,” Burton said. “Though I fail to understand the Spanish motif.”

  Farren shook his bushy head. “No, Sir Richard. This is what’s known as pop music—pop, short for popular. Its only function is as commercial entertainment. It has very little meaning. I doubt the kids even know where Xanadu i
s. Let’s try a different station.”

  Keeping his eyes on the road ahead, Farren twisted another control knob. The music dissolved into crackles, whines, howls and snatches of conversation before settling into an urgent and primitive-sounding rhythm over which an American-accented voice sang about “breaking on through to the other side.”

  “Rock music,” Farren revealed. “This band is called The Doors.”

  “How is it different to pop?” Burton asked.

  Farren thought for a moment. “I guess rock music is less about commerce and more about cutting through the surface of civilisation to find an authenticity within each of us.”

  Burton considered this and said, “That was one of the aims of the original Cannibal Club when Doctor James Hunt and I first founded it. I must admit, we didn’t much pursue the objective.”

  “We were too busy getting three sheets to the wind,” Swinburne added.

  “Nevertheless, it’s yet another curious coincidence,” the king’s agent muttered.

  Farren said, “What you intended at the club’s inception is now more important than you ever envisioned. The people are so distracted by bread and circuses they’ve lost any sense of themselves. They don’t realise they’re being enslaved by the system.”

  Swinburne leaned forward. “By which you mean the system of governance established and run by the upper classes?”

  “Exactly,” Farren answered. “Except, if you scrape away the layers of illusion, I’m pretty sure you’ll find a single presence at the rotten core of it.”

  Burton looked at him. “Edward Oxford?”

  “Yep.”

  They caught their first glimpse of police constables at the junction of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road. A tower—the tallest any of the chrononauts had ever seen—dominated the area, an unsightly edifice of concrete and glass.

  “Centre Point,” Mick Farren said. “Completed last year. Thirty-two storeys, all completely empty. An eyesore and total waste of money.”