Pax Britannia: Unnatural History

by Jonathan Green

  A Meeting with Methuselah

  The partially rusted pull grated as Ulysses tugged on it and a moment later, somewhere deep within the house, he heard the clattering of an ancient bell. Then he waited. The old man didn't keep any servants; he preferred not to be disturbed even by domestic help while he worked, and his work was his life.

  The debacle at the museum the previous night had prevented Ulysses from pursuing the most direct course of action regarding Professor Galapagos' disappearance. Despite taking off after the fleeing apeman in Ulysses' Silver Phantom, following the altered beast as it had swung from lamp post to lamp post down the Cromwell Road, Nimrod had had to give up the chase when the creature had scrambled up the side of a building and taken to the rooftops. There was no way he could have abandoned the car and still kept up with the apeman on foot.

  After Ulysses had broken the tragic news to Genevieve Galapagos that her father had somehow become some kind of degenerate apeman, the girl had gone to pieces. She had refused the offer of something to eat, and a bed, at the Quicksilver residence - seemingly placing a portion of the blame for what had happened to her father at Ulysses' door - but Ulysses had insisted that Nimrod drive her home. He promised that he would contact her as soon as he knew anything more.

  So it was that as the smog-laden sky over London began to lighten with the coming dawn, Ulysses found himself at the house of Dr Methuselah.

  Although he was currently seen to be pursuing the Galapagos case, at the same time the mystery of the professor's transformation was inextricably linked to the mission that had been forced upon him by Uriah Wormwood. The more Ulysses could discover about what had happened to Professor Ignatius Galapagos, the more likely he was to find out what had really happened regarding the theft from the Natural History Museum. It seemed highly unlikely that the ape-like Galapagos - if it was truly he - would have had the wits to take his own difference engine, for some unfathomable reason. There had to be another felon involved, and somehow the two of them were connected. If he could track the errant professor down Ulysses Quicksilver was sure that he would eventually find his thief.

  A clattering of bolts being drawn back and keys being turned stirred Ulysses from his reverie. The heavy black door creaked opened a crack. It was still secured by a chain, and a wizened bespectacled face looked up at Ulysses.

  "What do you want?" the old man snapped in a voice that was high-pitched and cracked with age.

  "Dr Methuselah, it is so good to see you again," Ulysses said, smiling broadly.

  "Is it?" Dr Methuselah blinked at him myopically from behind bottle-bottom lenses.

  "It's me, doctor, Ulysses. Ulysses Quicksilver?"

  The hunched figure looked Ulysses up and down, his face twisted into a scowl.

  "I thought you were dead."

  "Yes, I get that a lot."

  "So, if you're not dead, what do you want?"

  "Your help, doctor, as ever."

  This request solicited the same response it always did. "You don't get something for nothing in this world. You can pay?"

  "You can do this for me right away?"

  "If you can pay me right now I can."

  "You know I'm good for the cash," Ulysses said, feigning hurt. "At least I hope you do."

  "You'd better come in then. You're letting in a draught."

  The door closed, there was the rattle of the chain being unhooked, and then it opened fully to admit Ulysses to the house. Once he was over the threshold the stooped Dr Methuselah ushered him inside and shut the door behind him.

  "Do you know what time it is?"

  "I didn't think you kept conventional working hours."

  "I don't, but that's not the point," the old man grumbled, and set off down the mahogany-panelled hallway. The musty smell of the place and the decaying décor all added to the character of the house.

  As the ageing doctor shuffled down the corridor, Ulysses was better able to take in his appearance. Nothing had changed since the last time he had visited. Methuselah's clothes were filthy, covered in all manner of curious chemical stains. He had several days' growth of white stubble speckling his bony chin and hollow cheeks. He seemed to be permanently stooped and an unwashed odour hung about him like a mantle.

  Ulysses followed Methuselah through the darkened house and into the back room that served as the curmudgeon's laboratory. Not that it looked or smelt like one. Floor to ceiling bookcases covered almost every available wall space, stuffed with yellowed tomes and rolls of parchment. More books were piled in tottering towers on the floor. There was no natural light in the room. Any windows that there might once have been were now barricaded by bookcases or covered by cork pinboards on which the doctor's meticulously ink-drawn autopsy studies were displayed. The air was thick with the unpleasant combination of formaldehyde, mothballs and tobacco smoke.

  Along the length of the room was a timber-top workspace. All manner of curious, scientific or medical equipment cluttered its surface. There were jars with unnaturally shaped things floating in brackish liquid and Ulysses saw a half-dissected creature pinned out on a slab that might have been a deformed toad or could equally have been, even more horribly, a deformed human foetus. Another table was covered with a mess of electrical gadgetry.

  "So what do you want me to look at?" the doctor asked.

  Ulysses reached into the pocket of his frock coat and took out the evidence bag containing the sample he had taken from Galapagos' office. "I want you to take a look at this."

  "Very well." Methuselah took the bag and peered at the reddish-brown hairs inside through his thick-lensed spectacles. Ulysses couldn't help noticing that the doctor's fingernails were black with grime.

  Having scrabbled around within the clutter of his workspace to find a pair of tweezers, the doctor placed the hairs on a slide, which he then inserted beneath the rotating lenses of a brass microscope. Methuselah put one lens of his glasses to the viewing piece and, with no small amount of huffing and puffing and unintelligible muttering, twiddled a variety of brass wheels to focus the device and magnify what he saw.

  The doctor paused while he pulled up a stool, so that he might continue his study of the specimen in relative comfort.

  Ulysses looked for a seat himself, but there were no more available. It wasn't that there wasn't any furniture in the room it was just that every available surface was covered with the paraphernalia of the doctor's work. Instead he leant over the doctor's shoulder to watch what Methuselah was doing. The doctor's malingering body odour assailed Ulysses' nostrils, catching in the back of his throat. Ulysses pulled back before the festering smell made him gag. He occupied himself instead by distractedly poking at piles of papers with his cane, examining some of the titles on Methuselah's bookshelves and taking a closer look at some of his Da Vinci-like anatomical drawings.

  "Darwin's eyes!" the old man suddenly exclaimed.

  "What is it, Dr Methuselah?" Despite the poor state of the old man's personal hygiene, Ulysses was back at his side again.

  The doctor of forensics looked round sharply. "No, I'm not ready to present my findings yet," he snapped cantankerously.

  "Very well, doctor," his client said soothingly, "take as long as you need."

  With that the doctor went back to his work, which was now accompanied by him noisily sucking his teeth. He extracted a cogitator keypad from somewhere on his desk and it was only then that Ulysses realised that, amongst everything else crammed into the shelf space above Methuselah, was a cathode ray unit. As the doctor began to type sequences of numbers into the machine the screen began to warm up with a rising hum, turning from black to a glowing green.

  After a few more minutes there was another gasp from the absorbed doctor.

  "Where did you get these hairs?" Methuselah asked, unable to hide the astonishment and excitement in his voice.

  "You know better than to ask that doctor," Ulysses chided.

  Methuselah grunted and muttered something that Ulysses strongly suspected
was either blasphemous or a personal slight against him.

  There was now an image on the difference engine's view screen. Ulysses assumed it was a magnified cross-section of what Methuselah could see through his microscope. Streams of data scrolled up the side of the screen in a repeating pattern. Knowing a little about the science of biology he recognised what he was seeing in the flickering emerald lines as cells. To understand anymore he would need the expert to explain it to him.

  "If we extrapolate the data back to the original source," the doctor said, thinking aloud rather than addressing Ulysses directly, "and if my hypothesis is correct," the doctor tapped something into the difference engine's brass-faced keypad, a series of confusing images now being relayed by the screen, "... we find... Yes!" he declared triumphantly. "An exact match!"

  "With what, doctor?"

  "Hmm?" Methuselah seemed to have become absorbed in his work to the point of practically forgetting that Ulysses was still there. "What?"

  "An exact match with what?"

  "Oh, an exact match with human DNA of course."

  A feeling of self-satisfied vindication settled like a warm mist over Ulysses. "I love it when I'm right," he said, smiling to himself. He couldn't say he was surprised; it was what he had suspected ever since he had visited the scene of the crime and heard of the disappearance of Professor Galapagos. He had just needed someone with the scientific knowledge to prove that his hunch had been more than just that. He still had no idea, though, what could have caused such a degeneration in the evolutionary biologist.

  "Doctor, I appreciate your candour but if you can see to putting what you have discovered into layman's terms. And start at the beginning."

  Methuselah sighed in irritation at the thought of having to dumb down his findings for this dandy.

  "Take a look at this," the doctor said in a weary tone, nodding at the thinking machine's monitor. He typed something else into the Babbage engine and the magnified image of cells appeared on the screen again. "What you are looking at here is one of the hairs you brought me but at the cellular level."

  "I realise that, doctor. But what is it that they have revealed to you?"

  "If you let me finish I could tell you."

  "Of course, doctor. I am sorry. Please continue."

  "Very well," Methuselah said, almost grudgingly. "These are hair cells from a member of the primate family. There is nothing particularly remarkable about that until we observe them at a molecular level."

  The image on the screen flickered and blurred, reforming to show Ulysses something he had never seen before in his life.

  "What am I looking at now?" he asked, staring uncomprehendingly at the spiralling ribbons of bonded molecules.

  "This," said Methuselah, unable to hide the tone of smugness from his own voice, "is the stuff of life itself. You are gazing upon the very building blocks of all life on this planet. This is the double helix of deoxyribonucleic acid. DNA."

  "That's DNA?" Ulysses uttered incredulously.

  "The very same. Chains of only four different nucleotides, combined in an infinite number of ways results in the vast biodiversity we witness on this planet. From snails to whales, from the lumbering leviathans of the Jurassic that are still with us today to the mosquito that feeds on its blood, every living thing is the result of strings of genetically coded information carried by the strands of DNA wrapped up inside its cells."

  "But you said that you had found human DNA here and yet now you tell me that these are hairs from some kind of ape." It was not that Ulysses did not believe the doctor; it was just that he wanted to understand more completely what could possibly have happened for this to be the case.

  "I was just getting to that. The DNA sample inside these hairs is unstable."

  "Unstable? How do you mean?"

  "It is unravelling, as it were."

  "Doctor, I still don't fully under..."

  "How can I put this any more plainly?" Methuselah said, the frustration he felt rising in his voice. "These are now the hairs of a primate but they once belonged to a man, a human being, like you or I. These hairs have somehow devolved into those belonging to one of Man's evolutionary ancestors. And the process is ongoing."

  Now Ulysses felt genuine surprise. "It's still happening?"

  "The genetic make-up of the sample is steadily reverting to previous evolutionary forms. Imagine it! The very essence of life unravelling, de-evolving, if you will, back into the amino acids and bacteria from which we were first formed. What we are looking at here is a veritable history lesson in the creation of the human race from baser forms of life on this planet. As each layer of history peels away, these cells here are changing into a prior evolutionary form, as the very DNA held inside each of them is continually re-written at a genetic level."

  "So when will this metamorphosis reach its conclusion?"

  "I won't know for sure without continued observation."

  "Humour me. Give me a hypothesis."

  "Well, looking at the sample I have here, there's no reason to suggest that it won't stop until it reaches the beginning."

  "You might as well be speaking in riddles, doctor."

  "I mean at what we understand to be the beginning of all life on this planet. These cells are already beginning to display characteristics of those of a reptile. There is no evidence to suggest that they will not continue to regress until the biological matter under this microscope has dissolved back into the component parts that make up all life on this planet, effectively into a protoplasmic soup."

  For a moment neither man spoke as they both digested the import of the doctor's revelation.

  "Quicksilver, where is the poor wretch these hairs came from?"

  "I wish I knew," Ulysses said with a heartfelt sigh.

  "He needs to be studied, quarantined perhaps."

  "What, and dissected, doctor?" Ulysses challenged, putting a sarcastic emphasis on the word 'doctor'.

  "No, for his own safety."

  "Well, when I catch up with him again, I'll be sure to tell him to look you up. Now, what do I owe you for your services?"

  Methuselah stared at Ulysses, mouth agape, until the mention of payment reminded him that morals were all very well for men of the cloth but that they didn't cover gambling debts or keep a man in opium. "We'll call it ten guineas - cash."

  Ulysses opened his wallet with a flourish, took out the agreed fee and handed it over to the old man, who was watching his every move with the avaricious hunger of a gold prospector.

  "Thank you for your time, doctor." Placing his wallet back inside his jacket pocket Ulysses turned to go.

  "What about the sample?" Methuselah asked.

  "Keep it," Ulysses said, turning at the door to the workroom. "And I'll pay you for any other information you might be able to impart after further observation. I'll see myself out."

  Back on the street Ulysses took a moment to clear his lungs of the acrid smell of preserving fluid and savour the honest tarry smell of the London streets. Delving deep into a pocket he pulled out the teak and brass handset of his personal communicator. He flicked it open and extended its aerial. He waited whilst a train clattered by overhead, then keyed in Genevieve's number.

  It rang three times before there was the click of a receiver being lifted at the other end and he heard Genevieve's voice. "Hello?" was all she said, but even that one simple response made Ulysses' stomach flutter with a frisson of excitement. He surprised himself with such a psychosomatic reaction. He hadn't realised how sorry he had been to cause her so much distress only hours before and how unhappy he had felt at the abruptness of their parting.

  "Genevieve, it's Ulysses. Please don't hang up."

  "I have nothing to say to you."

  "But I have more news," he gabbled.

  There was no response from the other end of the line. Was she still there? "Genevieve?"

  "What news?" Her tone was flat with suppressed emotion.

  "I'd rather not discuss it over th
e phone. Let's meet up."

  Again there was a pause. "Where?"

  Ulysses thought fast. His mind was awhirl with their last encounter among the prehistoric exhibits and Dr Methuselah's talk of DNA and evolutionary genetic heritage. One place came immediately to mind, but he thought it best to avoid the Natural History Museum for the time being. He didn't want Scotland Yard getting in the way of his private business again and somewhere public and open was always best if you wanted to avoid arousing suspicion.

  "London Zoo," he said, "the Challenger Enclosure. Then I can share with you what I have discovered."

  "Very well." Her tone had softened. "I'll meet you there at ten o' clock tomorrow morning." The connection went dead.

  Ulysses closed the communicator and stowed it back in his pocket. Soon he would have to convince Genevieve of the horrifying truth regarding her father's disappearance and no doubt batter her emotions once more.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Terrible Lizards

  "Thank you for agreeing to meet with me," Ulysses said.

  Breaking eye contact Genevieve redirected her gaze at the floor, demonstrating the same demure tendencies she had shown on their first meeting. "Well seeing as how I am your client and I am paying you to assist me in this matter it would be foolish not to. You said you had some news."

  "That's right."

  "I was surprised to hear from you so soon," she admitted. "In fact, I was surprised to hear from you again at all."

  "Why? What do you mean?"

  "After the way I... overreacted. I was overly emotional."

  "That's hardly surprising when you consider all that you have experienced. I should have been more tactful."

  "I may not have known you for very long, Mr Quicksilver, but I already know that you are a hopeless liar."

  "Is that so?" The disarming smile came easily to Ulysses' lips.

  Genevieve returned the expression, also returning the soul-searching gaze of her rich russet eyes to his.

  "You are a champion of the truth. And no matter how painful that truth might be, it should be known and faced up to."