The Return of the Discontinued Man

by Mark Hodder

  “Yet still it has managed to create this ghastly world,” Wells interjected.

  Trounce signalled for them to be quiet as they reached the side of the greenhouse. Crouching down, they peered through the glass.

  “My hat!” Swinburne hissed. “I’m already here.”

  Inside, from the waist-high growing troughs up to the high ceiling, from one side of the interior space to the other, there was a mass of red foliage, a great aggregation of fleshy leaves, tangled branches, exotic flowers, bulging pods, heavy gourds, luminescent fruits, and—especially in the upper reaches—thousands of huge fluffy seed heads. These were noticeably disintegrating, bits of them breaking off and floating out though ventilation grills to form the cloud Burton had noticed—not smoke, but seeds, red but rendered black by the starlight.

  “I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised by its presence,” the king’s agent murmured. “After all, it was the jungle that brought Spring Heeled Jack’s dictatorship to my attention. We wouldn’t be here were it not for the experiences it foisted upon me.”

  “I don’t see anyone inside,” Trounce said.

  He moved to the right until he came to a door, opened it, and quietly entered. Burton and the others filed in after him, senses alert. The change from frigid cloud to humid steam caused them to gasp and breathe heavily. Burton’s dizziness increased, and he felt blackness pressing in at the edges of his vision.

  Trounce put his finger to his ear and murmured, “We’re in.”

  Burton clutched his chest as his heart skipped arrhythmically. He sucked damp air into his lungs and fought to stay on his feet.

  The discomfort passed. His body stabilised. The chrononauts glanced at one another, satisfying themselves that all were well. They discarded their robes.

  “Let’s make certain we’re alone,” Trounce whispered.

  Carefully, without a sound, they spread out and moved through the verdant corridors, passing back and forth between the troughs. Pungent fragrances filled their lungs, and Burton felt a slight headiness, though it wasn’t nearly as overwhelming as that which he’d experienced in the Beetle’s factory.

  No one else was present.

  The king’s agent found a door that, when he cracked it open an inch, proved to be at the top of a stairwell. He closed it and turned to Trounce. “Here’s our route in.”

  “A preliminary survey then. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  “We’ll go down to the next floor, split into two teams, and separate. Let’s assess how populated it is downstairs. If you can render a member of the queen’s staff unconscious without detection, do so and bring them back here.” Trounce said to Swinburne, “You stay here, Carrots. If anyone enters, stun ’em.”

  “Rightio.”

  Burton turned and reached for the door handle again, but before he could grasp it, it suddenly moved and the door swung inward, bumping against him. With an exclamation, he stepped back and fumbled for his pistol. Before he could retrieve it, a young woman stepped in. She uttered a small exclamation and stared at them bemusedly.

  “Hallo, hallo!” Swinburne cried out. “What ho!”

  Burton gasped. His mouth fell open. He was overcome by an urge to rush forward and embrace her. His heart filled with love. Tears blurred his vision.

  Isabel! he thought. Isabel!

  But it wasn’t Isabel. The girl was short and broad rather than tall and graceful, dark rather than golden-haired. Though curvaceous and attractive, she couldn’t match his fiancée’s beauty.

  This love isn’t mine. It’s Oxford’s.

  A name popped into his mind.

  “Jessica,” he said.

  Her eyes widened. “You—you know me, sir? My real name?”

  “Jessica,” he repeated. “Jessica Cornish.”

  “But—but—I haven’t been called that for—for—” She moved forward, put her hands out toward him and hesitated, her expression alternating between fear and wonder. “How?”

  Trounce said gruffly, “Queen Victoria.”

  “Yes.” Tears spilled onto her cheeks. “They—he—calls me Victoria. But I’m—I’m Jessica Cornish. How do you know me? Who are you people? Why are you here?”

  Trounce slipped behind her and pushed the door shut. He levelled his pistol and muttered, “This is a spot of luck. But be careful, Richard.”

  “Lower your weapon,” Burton said. He looked down at the queen. “For how long have you been the monarch, Miss Cornish—Your Majesty?”

  “Jessica, please. Just Jessica. It feels—it’s so good to hear that name again. I was chosen five years ago.”

  “And prior to that?”

  “I lived in Aldershot. I was nobody. A nanny.” She clenched her hands beneath her chin. “Who are you? Can you help me?”

  “Help you?”

  “I never wanted to be the queen. I don’t know why I am.”

  “Miss Cornish,” Swinburne said. “The proclamations. The ones you issue. Might I ask where they come from?”

  “Him.”

  “Him?”

  “The prime minister.”

  Swinburne looked at Trounce. “A prime minister? I didn’t know we had one.”

  “It’s news to me,” Trounce said. “What of the Turing Fulcrum, Miss Cornish?”

  “The—what?”

  “The device that guides the government. Perhaps it advises the prime minister?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Trounce’s eyes moved from Jessica Cornish to Swinburne to Burton.

  The queen stepped closer to Sadhvi Raghavendra, instinctively seeking the support of her own gender. Raghavendra smiled at her, laid a hand gently on her upper arm, and said to Trounce, “She’s innocent, William. A victim. It’s plain to see.”

  The queen nodded. There was an almost childish pleading in her eyes, helplessness.

  Burton asked, “This prime minster, when was he elected?”

  “He never was.”

  “I mean, when did he assume his position?”

  The queen leaned closer to Raghavendra. “Um. Forty years ago, I think.”

  “2162?”

  “Yes.”

  “The year the original Edward Oxford was born,” Burton mused.

  “He’ll be angry,” the queen said. “You shouldn’t be here. When they finish with that poor man, he’ll come looking.”

  “Who are they?” Burton asked. “And what man?”

  “The ministers. The traitor.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  She put her hands over her face and emitted a quavering moan. “Oh. Oh. They are terrible. Terrible! Their entertainments. So cruel. Torture!”

  Trounce reached out and gripped her wrist, not gently. “They have a captive?” he rasped. “What are they doing to him? Tell me!”

  “Steady,” Burton murmured.

  Recoiling from Trounce, the queen said, “He blew up the American Embassy.”

  “Father!” Swinburne croaked.

  “They injected him with nanomechs. The machines are eating him from the inside.”

  “And they call it entertainment?” Trounce snarled. “By God! Where?”

  “In the House of Lords. Five floors down.”

  Trounce’s eyes blazed. Jessica Cornish moaned. “I have to go. I shouldn’t be talking to you. I’ll be punished. Let me go. Let me go.”

  “It’s all right,” Raghavendra said soothingly. “We’re here to help you, Jessica. Will you trust us? Perhaps we can give you your freedom.”

  “He won’t let you. He’ll kill you all. He’ll punish me for speaking with you. You don’t understand. The prime minister is dangerous. Very dangerous.”

  “Miss Cornish,” Swinburne said. “What happens here tonight will be the culmination of events that date all the way back to 1837. No danger will dissuade us from doing what must be done.”

  Burton turned to speak to Trounce but stopped when he saw his friend’s eyes. The former detective appeared
to be almost paralysed by anger, as if he could think only of charging down the stairs with his pistol blazing, yet knew this would be a fatal error. He stood battling with himself, trembling with fury, his mouth opening and closing.

  Since being reunited with him, Burton had allowed Trounce to take the lead, conceding to his greater knowledge of this future world. Burton, though, was the commander of the mission, and he saw that he must now reassert himself in that position.

  “Sadhvi,” he said, “Miss Cornish will feel undoubtedly more comfortable with you. Take her across to the pump room and wait for us there. We’ll either join you or send for you when our business is done. If neither of those happens and you judge that you’ve waited long enough, make your way back, with our guest, to the Orpheus. In the meantime, describe to her who we are and why we are here.”

  The queen moaned and shook her head. “They’ll send equerries to search for me.”

  “We’ll take care of that. Sadhvi, go.”

  Swinburne added, “Cross the roof as rapidly as possible. Remember, the queen has no adapted nanomechs in her system. Miss Cornish, you’ll experience considerable discomfort outside. It’s extremely cold and the air is thin. Have courage. You’ll only have to traverse a short distance.”

  With a brusque nod of acknowledgment, Raghavendra pulled the queen away through the foliage and toward the door to the palace roof.

  Swinburne put his finger to his ear and muttered instructions to Lorena Brabrooke. Sadhvi Raghavendra, at least, would be protected out there.

  “It’ll be a while before we can speak with Lorena again,” he told them when he’d finished. “She’s now setting out to disrupt all the palace’s internal communications. Our BioProcs won’t escape the effects.”

  Burton raised his pistol. “We four shall stay together. The Turing Fulcrum may have been using the faux queen as its public mouthpiece, but apparently a prime minister is providing a rather more assertive one, too. We need to get at him. First, though, let’s rescue Tom Bendyshe.”

  Trounce growled, “And if anyone stands in our way, by God, I’ll kill them.”

  Burton, Swinburne, Trounce and Wells quietly descended from the rooftop greenhouse to Buckingham Palace’s uppermost storey. The staircase, being more of a service route than a feature of the palace’s opulent interior, did not go down any farther. In order to reach the next floors, they needed to find the grand central stairwell. There were lifts, of course, but these were more often used by the palace’s inhabitants and thus presented the chrononauts with a greater danger of discovery and entrapment.

  Trounce and Swinburne both recalled from the architectural plans that the main staircase ran through the middle of the building and was located somewhere to their left. It was more for show than function, so they hoped to use it without being detected.

  They moved out of the shadows at the end of the stairs and along a corridor, past the entrance to an elevator, and on to a junction with a much larger and more elegantly decorated passageway. There was a purple carpet running along its floor, its walls bore countless portraits—all of Jessica Cornish—and crystal chandeliers hung from its ceiling every twenty feet along its length. Doors gave way to rooms on either side. Narrow, baroquely carved sideboards stood between them, holding vases of red flowers, small statuettes and framed pictures, all of the queen.

  Burton put his head around the corner and looked to the right. Far away, the hallway ended at double doors. He looked to the left. A white stilted figure was striding toward him.

  “Stay where you are!” it shouted. “You are not recognised. Your presence is unauthorised.”

  “Damn!” Burton cursed. “We’re discovered.”

  Swinburne stepped past him and raised his Penniforth Mark II.

  “Head. Kill.”

  The pistol spat—ptooff!—and the stilted figure fell to the floor. They ran to it, and Burton saw a round hole exactly between where its eyes would be had it a human face. He stepped to a door and, holding his own weapon ready, opened it, revealing an unoccupied bedchamber.

  “Drag it in here, we’ll hide it under the bed.”

  While this was being done, he asked, “So constables patrol the palace, William?”

  “This isn’t a constable,” Trounce responded. “It’s an equerry, one of her majesty’s personal attendants. Basically, it’s exactly the same thing but with a different title. As you can see, it’s identical to the creatures that started appearing in London back in 1860. Fortunately, they don’t carry truncheons, which makes it a little easier for us.”

  “Who, besides the queen, lives here?”

  “All the ministers of the government and their lackeys. The higher echelons of the Uppers. Also, I presume, our mysterious prime minister, whomever he might be.”

  They closed the bedroom door and continued on along the hallway. It ended at another junction. Burton whipped around the corner, facing to the right, gun raised. Trounce did the same, facing left.

  “Head! Kill!” they chorused.

  Ptooff! Ptooff!

  Wells helped Burton to retrieve his victim while Swinburne assisted Trounce. They hoisted the equerries back to the junction and barged into what proved to be another sleeping chamber. A man, on the bed, sat up. He was bald-headed, attired in bright-pink pyjamas, and so morbidly obese that he resembled a gigantic wobbling blancmange. In a bizarrely singsong voice, he warbled, “Hey there! What’s this all about, then?”

  Swinburne pointed his pistol. “Stun.”

  Outspreading ripples marked the point of impact. The man looked down at his stomach. “Ouch! That hurt! How dare you!”

  His eyes rolled up into his head, and he plopped backward onto his pillows.

  The chrononauts discovered that the mattress, straining beneath its occupant’s weight, was too close to the floor to provide a hiding space, so instead shoved the two equerries into a wardrobe.

  “For how long will Mr. Humpty Dumpty remain unconscious?” Wells enquired.

  “Long enough,” Swinburne replied. “I expect he’ll be famished when he wakes up.”

  They returned to the junction. Halfway along the left-hand branch, they saw the head of the main stairwell and ran toward it, their feet padding on the soft, luxurious carpet.

  They jerked to a stop at the top of the steps, weapons directed downward, but no one was ascending.

  Faintly, from far below, an incoherent shout echoed, whether one of anger or merriment, pleasure or pain, they couldn’t discern.

  Treading carefully, they went down, passing polished suits of armour standing on display to either side of every tenth step, gauntlets clasped around the grips of broadswords, the blades’ tips resting between pointed sollerets.

  A Grecian-style statue dominated the landing of the next floor. It portrayed Jessica Cornish, naked but for flowing material around her hips and a laurel wreath on her head.

  As they rounded to the next flight, two female voices floated up to them.

  “Why, my dear Baroness, I feel thoroughly wearied to the bone.”

  “Of course you do, my lady. It is exceedingly late. I, too, must take to my bed. This whole business has quite exhausted me. I’m certain I’ll lie awake fretting over it.”

  “Nonsense! You’re being far too theatrical. It will blow over. It’s merely a hiccup of some sort.”

  “Hiccup? How can a hiccup so thoroughly detach the government from its people? Do you not perceive the seriousness of our position? The palace is utterly cut off, dear thing. Utterly! Worse still, we’ve lost all control over the commoners. The implications are frightful.”

  “You suggest they might break the law, Baroness?”

  “No. I suggest they might indulge in unfettered breeding.”

  “Heaven forbid! Now I shall have nightmares.”

  Burton said, “Good evening, ladies.”

  The two Uppers stopped in their tracks and looked at him. He saw them register, with mutual gasps of consternation, the pistol he was brandishing
at them. Their eyes flickered as they took in Swinburne, Trounce and Wells, all standing at his back.

  “If you attempt to call for help, I’ll shoot you,” he said.

  Both women were exceedingly skinny—almost emaciated—and possessed of protruding joints and absurdly large breasts. Their faces were painted so heavily they resembled masks, and they had ridiculously tall and extravagant wigs balanced precariously on their heads. The pair wore gowns of a vaguely Elizabethan design.

  “Who on earth are you?” the one on the left asked.

  “My name is Burton. And you are?”

  “I am the Baroness Hume of Goldaming, heiress to the sugar beet estates of Sir Jacquard Hume, the Marquis of Norwich and the Norfolk Broads. My companion is Lady Felicity Pye of the Brick Lane Pyes, wife of Earl John Pye, overseer of Bethnal Green Road and chairman of the Pye and Keating Corporation. Burton, you say? What more? Your title, if you please.”

  “I am Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, Knight of the Order of St Michael and St George, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.”

  “Oh my dear thing!” Lady Felicity Pye cried out. “Why didn’t you say so? Can we be of some assistance?”

  “You could tell me how to find the House of Lords.”

  “You don’t know? How marvellously extraordinary! Why, you must go down another three flights, turn right, go all the way to the end of the hallway, right again, and it’s straight ahead. The entertainment is already under way, so you’d better hurry up.”

  “Forgive me for asking,” Baroness Hume said, “but is that a gun? Why are you pointing it at us?”

  “To assure you both of a thoroughly good night’s sleep.”

  “Oh, how perfectly terrific!”

  “Would you both sit down, please?”

  “Sit down? On the stairs? Is it a game?”

  “It is.”

  “Hooray!”

  The women sat and clapped their hands eagerly.

  Burton said, “Stun both.”

  Ptooff! Ptooff!

  “Take one of them over your shoulder, William. Algy, Bertie, you carry the other. I’ll find a room in which to deposit them.”