The curious case of the Clockwork Man bas-2

by Mark Hodder

Rasputin's voice hammered furiously against the inside of his cranium: “Nyet! Do not do this thing! Let me go! Let me go, tovarishch! I vill return to my time! ”

  “Too late. But look on the bright side, Grigori, you've achieved your aim-you've avoided your assassins. It will not be water that kills you.”

  Tiny fractures zigzagged across the Eye, and, as each appeared with a faint tink, it seemed to Burton that a small entity was expelled, yet as hard as he might look, he couldn't quite bring the things into focus. At the very periphery of his vision, he could see that the library was rapidly filling with them, but when he turned his head, he saw nothing.

  “Vot are these lizards? Get them avay from me! Get them avay! They put their claws into me! Nyet! Nyet!”

  Etheric energy banged and clapped around the gem, increasing in intensity, whipping out and sizzling up the walls and across the ceiling and floor.

  “Most people see them as fairies,” Burton told the dying Russian. “They're remnants of an ancient race-nothing but preserved memories. Rather too difficult in nature for us humans to comprehend, so we tend to impose a more palatable myth on top of them. But, of course, you don't have any fairy stories in Russia, do you? They aren't a part of your folklore.”

  Rasputin screamed. “ They are tearing me apart! ”

  “Really? I suggest you fight back. If there's one thing I've learned from you, it's that damaging memories can be overcome. After all, Grigori, it's all in the past, isn't it?”

  “ Nyet! Nyet! ”

  Rasputin let loose an appalling howl of agony. It pierced Burton's head like a spear. The explorer staggered and gritted his teeth. Blood spurted from his nose.

  Spencer turned his brass head.

  “No!” Burton managed to gasp. “Don't stop!”

  A jagged line of bright blue fire lashed out from a splintering facet of the Eye and enveloped him. It yanked him into the air and held him there. He convulsed helplessly. Capillaries haemorrhaged beneath his skin. The etheric lightning jerked and he was thrown up and slammed into the ceiling then dropped to the floor, where he lay in the grip of a seizure as the fizzling energy snapped away from him.

  Pushed beyond the threshold of endurance, his mind seemed to disassociate, and awareness of his physical pain left him. It was no relief. His consciousness was rent by a mortal shriek of anguish-the Mad Monk's death throes as the fracturing diamond tore him to pieces.

  It was too much for the king's agent. The world overturned, slid away, grew dark, and was gone.

  Sir Richard Francis Burton was dead.

  He knew it because he could feel nothing.

  There was no world, there were no sensations, there was nothing required, there was nothing desired, there was no past, there was no future.

  There was only peace.

  A metal finger poked him in the ribs.

  He opened his eyes expecting to see, as ever, orange light flickering over a canvas roof.

  He saw snow.

  He sat up.

  No, not snow-flakes of dead ectoplasm falling from the library ceiling, vanishing before they touched the floor.

  He pushed himself to his feet, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped the blood from his face.

  With a loud crack, Madam Blavatsky's corpse dropped. It crashed onto the plinth, which disappeared in a cloud of dust.

  Burton turned away from the sight of her crushed skull and horribly folded carcass and found that Herbert Spencer was standing at his side. The brass man held out his cupped hands. The king's agent looked into them and counted.

  “Seven fragments. Is that all of them?”

  Spencer nodded.

  “Good. Hold on to them, will you? The bloody things give me a headache. Let's get out of here. And Herbert-”

  The brass head regarded him.

  “Thank you.”

  Burton recovered a chair from a crumbling and fast-disappearing mound of ectoplasm and used it to smash his way through the calcifying substance blocking the door and corridor beyond. The mediumistic material was fading from existence with increasing rapidity, and by the time he and his mechanical companion had descended to the Venetia's ground floor, nothing of it remained to be seen.

  They stepped out into the fogbound Strand. It was strangely silent.

  Burton swayed, struck by a wave of dizziness, and clutched at his companion's arm for support.

  “Give me a moment,” he muttered.

  The next thing he knew, he was looking up at the anxious faces of Algernon Swinburne and Detective Inspector Trounce.

  “Did I pass out?”

  “Pillock!” screeched Pox from the poet's shoulder.

  “Evidently,” Trounce said. “Lord Nelson carried you out of the fog. How's our enemy?”

  “Dead. The show is over. And he's not Lord Nelson. Give me a hand, would you?”

  Looking perplexed, Trounce reached down and hauled Burton to his feet.

  “Not Nelson? Is it a different device?”

  Pox hopped from Swinburne to the clockwork man's head and whistled: “Beautiful sweetheart!”

  “No,” Burton said. “It's our mutual friend Mr. Herbert Spencer.”

  Trounce frowned. “What?”

  “There's no time to explain, old man. Suffice it to say that Sir Charles Babbage was a genius.”

  “No time? I thought you said Blavatsky is dead?”

  “She is, and so is Rasputin. I have to go. There's someone I need to see before I collapse onto my bed to sleep for a week.”

  “Shall I come with you, Richard?” Swinburne asked, with a trace of anxiety in his voice.

  “No, Algy. I have to do this alone.”

  He turned to the brass philosopher. “Hand me a couple of the diamonds, would you?”

  Spencer dropped two stones into the explorer's waiting palm.

  Burton slipped them into his waistcoat pocket, turned, and staggered off into the fog.

  “Hey!” called Trounce after the fading figure. “Who the dickens is Rasputin?”

  “Give Herbert a pen and paper,” came the receding reply. “He'll write you an explanation!”

  Trounce scratched his head and mumbled: “By Jove! If he's just defeated the Blavatsky woman and brought all this nonsense to an end, you'd think he'd look a mite happier about it!”

  The fog thickened.

  Burton picked his way through corpses and debris, gave a curt greeting to the constables he encountered, left the Strand, made his way along Haymarket, and passed through Piccadilly Square.

  It was maybe five or six in the morning-he was waiting for Big Ben to chime-and there was a faint glow overhead as dawn struggled to penetrate the murk. The city was absolutely silent.

  He walked along Regent Street, passing broken windows and gutted shops. He couldn't shake the feeling that the world was crumbling around him.

  The riot was over. Blavatsky was dead. Rasputin's mind had been shredded and the present was free of his sinister influence.

  Yet something was deeply, deeply wrong.

  The vapour swirled around him, muffling his footsteps, as he entered Oxford Circus and turned left.

  A weighty despondency was settling over him, exactly like that he'd experienced in Aden after returning from Africa's Lake Regions. It was the notion that, despite his every effort, a job had not been completed.

  “What is it?” he muttered. “Why do I feel that I've failed?”

  He came to Vere Street and stopped outside a narrow building sandwiched between a hardware shop and the Museum of Anatomy. It had a bright yellow door and a bay window, behind which a deep blue curtain hung.

  Taped against the inside of the window there was a notice that read: The astonishing COUNTESS SABINA, seventh daughter, CHEIROMANTIST, PROGNOSTICATOR, tells your past, present, and future, gives full names, tells exact thought or question on your mind without one word spoken; reunites the separated; removes evil influences; truthful predictions and satisfaction guaranteed. Consultations from 11 A.
M. until 2 P.M. and from 6 P.M. to 9 P.M. Please enter and wait until called.

  Burton looked at his reflection in the glass. His fierce countenance was a patchwork of red and purple bruises.

  “None of this is your doing,” he said, “but Chance has put you in the thick of it. Now you have to play the game to the finish.”

  His eyes moved to the notice.

  Prognosticator.

  He leaned forward and rested his forehead against the cold glass.

  The African Eye will be found.

  He was suddenly short of breath and started gulping in mouthfuls of air.

  Found by you.

  “Bismillah,” he gasped. “Bismillah. It's all gone to hell.”

  An early-morning cafe had opened across the street. Burton took a moment to even out his breathing then walked over to it, entered, and asked for a coffee.

  “You're the first bloomin’ customer I've had in days,” the proprietor grumbled, glancing curiously at the explorer's battered features. “You fancy a round of buttered toast? It's on the house, mate.”

  “That would be very welcome,” Burton answered. “Thank you.”

  He sat quietly, sipping coffee and eating toast until a light came on and glowed through the fog from the upper window of the building opposite. He gave it forty minutes or so, then left the cafe, crossed the road, and knocked on the door.

  He waited, and, after a few moments, knocked again.

  The countess opened the door. She wore a long, shapeless midnight-blue gown.

  “Countess Sabina,” he said. “My apologies. I know it's early.”

  “Captain Burton. My goodness, what has happened to you? Were you run over by one of those dreadful omnipede things?”

  He managed a wry grin. “Something like that, yes. I require your talents. It's a matter of great importance.”

  She gazed at him silently for a moment, her eyes unfathomable, then nodded and stepped aside.

  He entered and followed her along a short passageway, through a doorway hung with a thick velvet curtain, and into the room beyond. It smelled of sandalwood. Wooden chairs stood against its undecorated walls.

  They stepped into a smaller room. It was sparsely furnished, though its shelves and mantelpiece were crowded with esoteric trinkets and baubles. A camphor lamp hung low over a round table in the middle of the chamber. The countess put a match to its wick.

  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 be looking right through him. In a barely audible voice, she whispered: “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 be even 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 you are divided.”

  “It's odd,” Burton replied. “That's something I have often sensed myself, especially while in a malarial fever. I don't know what it means.”

  “Neither do I, but-but, somehow, I know that everything depends on it!”

  Burton leaned back in his chair, his eyebrows shooting up.

  “ What? ”

  The countess shook her head and shrugged. “I can say no more.”

  A silence settled over them and they sat gazing questioningly at each other until the prognosticator murmured: “Why did you come to see me, Captain?”

  Burton rubbed his gritty eyes. God, he was tired! He rested his scarred 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 on two occasions now-or at least two that I'm aware of-men have reached back and interfered with the course of events. Just how much damage have they done? We must answer this question. I want you 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 cease to exist?”

  “No-but though I can sense the other path, I cannot see along it. We are too far past the junction. It is beyond my ability.”

  Burton reached into his pocket. “I have something that will augment 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 for a moment.

  He continued: “In Victorian Britain-by which I mean our time as it would have been had Edward Oxford not interfered-astral bodies, mind reading, etheric energy, and spiritualism are, from a scientific 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 hall in Buckingham Palace. There were nine others in attendance: the eugenically enhanced prime minister, Lord Palmerston; the vulture-faced secretary for war, Sir George Cornewall Lewis; the evasive-eyed chancellor of the Exchequer, William Gladstone; the grey-bearded foreign secretary, Lord John Russell; the miserable-looking first lord of the Admiralty, Edward Seymour; the deviant red-headed poet, Algernon Charles Swinburne; the aloof chief commissioner of Scotland Yard, Sir Richard Mayne; the clockwork philosopher, Herbert Spencer; and the steam-powered engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

  Without any shadow of a doubt, it was the oddest gathering the royal residence had ever seen.

  There was one further presence: King Albert's eyes and ears hung above the table like a bizarre chandelier-an apparatus comprised of hearing trumpets and lenses, which swivelled this way and that to follow the men as they spoke. The monarch was notoriously reclusive. Of those present, only Palmerston had met him face-to-face.

  Brunel chimed: “You do not make sense, Sir Richard. Changing the course of history cannot alter the laws of physics. Whatever etheric energy might be, it plainly does exist.”

  “As you know to your cost,” Swinburne offered, eyeing his friend's yellowing bruises.

  “It exists here,” Burton responded. “But in Victorian times, it does not.”

  “Your witch saw with such clarity?” Palmerston demanded.

  “She's a seer, not a witch, and yes, Prime Minister, with the aid of two of the black diamonds, Countess Sabina's clairvoyance was 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 Chile by Sir Henry Tichborne in 1796. He secreted it beneath the Crawls at Tichborne House. If time had not been altered, the diamond would have remained there until the building was demolished in the year 2068. About a hundred and thirty years later, Edward Oxford cut shards from it and used them in the mechanism of his time-jumping suit.”

  “By George!” Sir Richard Mayne exclaimed. “How far into the future did your countess look?”

  “Into the alternative -that is to say original -future, she saw clearly to the end of this century. After that, her vision became increasingly murky. There were certain points of interest that she focused on, the black diamonds being one of them, and she was able to follow those developments much farther through time, to the detriment of other matters. I should point out that she did so at great cost to herself and afterward collapsed with mental exhaustion. I suggest some sort of compensation from the government might be appropriate.”

  “Be damned!” Palmerston exclaimed. “I'm going
to employ the bloody sorceress! Pray continue, Captain.”

  Burton cleared his throat and glanced at the contraption on the ceiling as it rotated to face him. “So Oxford journeyed back to 1840 and from there was thrown farther, to 1837, where he created an immediate paradox, for now the splinters of the South American stone existed twice in the same time. They were in his suit and they were also beneath the Tichborne estate. This caused them to resonate with each other, and because all three Eyes of Naga are chunks of the same aerolite, the Cambodian fragments started to resonate, too, producing the hum that led to their discovery. I'd wager the African diamond, wherever it is, also began to ‘sing.’

  “Being underground, Tichborne's treasure couldn't be heard, but the reverberation caused the equivalent string in the family piano-B below middle C-to let loose frequent twangs.”

  “Astonishing,” Cornewall Lewis grunted. “A man appears in London and, in Hampshire, Cambodia, and probably Africa, diamonds serenade his arrival!”

  Burton nodded. “Yes, Mr. Secretary, astonishing indeed. But it's only half the story. I've spent the past few days in the British Library 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 recorded instances. They all coincided with periods when Spring Heeled Jack was active in our world. Then there were no more authenticated occurrences until last year. We now know that he jumped directly from 1843 to 1861. The diamonds in his suit have been here ever since, and genuine clairvoyant powers have been demonstrated with increasing frequency this past twelve months.”

  Brunel clanged: “Then your hypothesis is that the diamonds’ resonance has awakened in the human brain some power that would otherwise have remained dormant?”

  “That is for your scientists to explore,” Burton replied. “But in my opinion, etheric energy and all that goes with it is a product of the human organism and, yes, the resonance stimulates it.”

  Spencer scribbled in a notebook and held it up, displaying a single word: Evolution?

  Burton shrugged.

  “Damnation!” Palmerston shouted. “If all that you say is true, bloody Rasputin would never have had the wherewithal to stick his confounded nose into our business had Oxford not done so first! Are we now so vulnerable to meddlers and madmen from the future?”