The Return of the Discontinued Man

  The king’s agent peered around with his good eye—the other was still slitted—and recognised one of Battersea Power Station’s private rooms.

  He leaned back, emitting a slight groan. His head was aching abominably. “What happened?”

  “According to Gooch, you told the helmet to connect to Babbage’s device, then screamed and passed out. How do you feel?”

  “My skull is throbbing. By God! How many visions can a man endure? I saw through Edward Oxford’s eyes, Algy.”

  “Which Oxford? The sane one or loopy one?”

  “The sane, in the far future, at the moment when he realised that travelling backward through history might be possible.”

  Burton winced and pressed his hand against his temple. “For sure, I’ll not be allowing Babbage to place anything on my head ever again. Did he gain anything?”

  “Quite the opposite. But you did. Feel your scalp.”

  Burton ran his fingers through his hair. The scars on his head felt raised, gritty, and extremely tender. He winced. “What happened?”

  “The helmet tattooed you. Wait, I’ll fetch Babbage. He can explain it better than I.”

  “Tattooed?” Burton muttered, as his friend scampered from the room.

  Minutes later, the poet returned with Babbage and Gooch.

  “Are you in pain, Sir Richard?” the latter asked.

  “A little. What’s this about a tattoo?”

  Babbage barked, “Adaptive application!”

  “In English, if you please, Charles.”

  The scientist tut-tutted irascibly. “I told you before. The helmet’s components can rearrange themselves to change their function. The BioProcs extracted black diamond dust from their own inner workings and injected it into your scalp, following the line of your scars.”

  Gooch added, “You may remember that Abdu El Yezdi’s scalp was similarly tattooed by the Nāga at the Mountains of the Moon. In his case, it was required to enable a procedure that sent him through time independent of the suits, though other factors, of a complex nature, were involved. He never fully explained the process to us, which means we can’t reproduce it.”

  “I wouldn’t let you if you could,” Burton growled. “So what is the point of this confounded liberty?”

  “We don’t know,” Babbage said. “I shall have to keep you under observation. Run some tests.”

  “Most certainly not. I’ve been subjected to quite enough, thank you very much.”

  “Did the synthetic intelligence apprehend anything from the Field Amplifier?” Gooch asked.

  Burton nodded—and immediately regretted it as pain lanced through his cranium. He said, “Perhaps,” then recounted his visions, first of the woman, then of Oxford and the black diamond.

  “The woman was his wife,” he finished, “pregnant in the initial vision, which was overlaid onto my view of the workshop, but not in the more involved and vivid second, which took me to a period before they were married, and in which I was so utterly immersed that I thought myself him. My—that is to say, Oxford’s—love for her was exceedingly strong.”

  He stopped and swallowed as an ache squeezed at his heart. He wanted to see Isabel. It was a torture to know that in some other versions of this world, she still lived.

  Why can I not be one of those other Burtons? One of the more fortunate ones?

  He went on, “But there was no trace of lunacy in the memory, so I wonder whether it came from the functioning helmet rather than from the imprint in the Field Preserver.”

  “You’re probably correct,” Babbage said. “The confounded headpiece erased all the data from my device, injected the diamond dust into you, and immediately ceased to function. We have nothing of Edward Oxford remaining except for what’s in your scalp, and that won’t last for long.”

  “The tattoo will come out?”

  “No, it’s too deep. What I mean to say is that the traces of Oxford inside it will soon be overwritten. Being in such proximity to your brain, the dust is within its electrical field. Your thoughts will quickly expunge the knowledge they contain. It’s a tragedy. Genius is being replaced by the prosaic.”

  “Charmed, I’m sure,” Burton muttered.

  Swinburne said, “It appears that every time you conduct an experiment, Charles, we lose something.”

  Babbage bared his teeth.

  Gooch made an observation. “For the second time, an intelligence to which we attribute no sentience has acted independently. There has to be interference. A meddler.”

  “No. I don’t believe so,” Burton said. He looked at Babbage. “Prior to the damaged suit’s disappearance, you stated that if it had been the only one in our possession—if Abdu El Yezdi had never given you a pristine version—you would have transferred power from its Nimtz generator to its helmet, hoping to instigate self-repair mode.”

  Babbage put his fingertips to his chin and tapped it. “I did say that, yes. It would have been the obvious course of action.”

  “Well, what if all your counterparts in all the alternate histories—none of whom had a functional suit—did exactly that, all at precisely the same moment, nine o’clock on the fifteenth of February, 1860?”

  The old man gazed at Burton, his mind obviously racing. His left eyebrow twitched upward. His mouth fell open. He put his hands together and rubbed them. “There—there—there would be the possibility that—that—by God!—that through means of resonance, the insane fragments of Edward Oxford’s consciousness would—would link together across the parallel realities.”

  “And in consequence?”

  Babbage suddenly clapped his hands and yelled, “By the Lord Harry! Active pathways!” He hugged himself and started to pace up and down at the foot of Burton’s bed, his eyes focused inward.

  “Active pathways,” Swinburne said. “Oh, how you mingle incompatible words, Babbage. What are active pathways?”

  Babbage answered as if addressing himself rather than the poet. “A thought is a burst of subtle electrical energy that flows through the brain, following paths between the cells. Every notion creates new routes. The damaged helmet couldn’t function because only one route was imprinted into the diamond dust—Spring Heeled Jack’s final thought. It is a static conceptual matrix, the frozen obsession of a dying madman. However—”

  He stopped, frowned, placed his fingertips to his head and tapped away.

  They waited.

  “However. However. However. If a resonation spanned the different realities, then a potentially infinite number of—of—”

  He stumbled to a halt again.

  “I think I understand,” Daniel Gooch murmured. He turned to Burton. “Consider it three-dimensionally. From above, you could look down and see a single path following one particular route. From ground level, though, you might see that it is actually countless paths laid one atop the other, opening up countless new avenues on the vertical.”

  “Enabling the synthetic intelligence to become conscious?” Burton asked.

  “Trans-historically,” Gooch confirmed.

  “You just made that word up!” Swinburne protested.

  “I mean it to suggest the notion that the intelligence, which lacked the capacity for independent action in any single history, might have gained it by extending itself across every iteration of reality.”

  Babbage whispered, “Sentient. But still insane!”

  “So no one caused the damaged suit to vanish,” Gooch mused. “It did it all by itself. But where did it go?”

  Burton said, “Back to where—or rather, to when—it originally came from. The year 2202.”

  “You gleaned all this from the functioning helmet?” Swinburne asked. “Is it alive, too?”

  Gooch answered, “Was, in a manner of speaking. Not now. Inevitably, it must have also been influenced by the resonance. Whatever intelligence has been formed by the multiple iterations of the suit, the sole undamaged helmet was probably the only sane element of it.” He narrowed his eyes at the king’s a
gent. “Now it appears to be a part of you. Intriguing!”

  Babbage stopped pacing and peered at Burton. “Whence this theory? I demand to know!”

  The king’s agent climbed out of the bed and crossed to where his clothes were folded upon a chair. He started to dress. “I have witnessed your counterparts in other histories, Charles. In all of them, he did exactly what you’ve stated you would do. I watched him connect the damaged suit’s helmet to the Nimtz generator and in every case the suit vanished.”

  “You witnessed?” Gooch interjected. “Did you visit a medium?”

  “No, Daniel. My mind was projected into my other selves.”

  “By what means?”

  “Through the influence of a medical tonic called Saltzmann’s Tincture.”

  “Ridiculous!” Babbage barked. “A magical potion? Pure fantasy! And if it were true, it would imply that someone brewed the concoction specifically so you’d be warned of the advent of this new intelligence. Who? How is it possible?”

  Burton buttoned his shirt. “The identity of our ally remains a mystery. It’s one I intend to solve.”

  Accompanied by Swinburne, the king’s agent took a cab home. The sky was clear and the day’s cold had a sharp bite. In the hansom’s cabin, they shivered and their breath clouded from their nostrils.

  While his friend waited in the vehicle, Burton entered number 14 and, two minutes later, emerged with Fidget.

  “Is the beast really necessary?” Swinburne huffed, folding his legs up onto the seat as Burton climbed in. “Haven’t I suffered enough?”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” Burton said, “but you haven’t been beaten black and blue, rendered unconscious, and tattooed against your will.”

  “Nevertheless, I value my ankles. They’re a vital part of me. They keep my feet attached to my legs.”

  Burton bumped his cane against the roof of the cabin. The hansom jolted into motion.

  “I say, Richard, are we caught up in a feud between two Edward Oxfords, one demented and the other with his marbles intact?”

  “I posit but a single Oxford consciousness. One that betrayed itself when its single fragment of sanity indicated to me where the rest had fled.”

  “That’s how you interpret what you saw?”

  “With regard to the initial vision of Oxford’s pregnant wife, certainly. The longing for her was overwhelming.”

  “So he’s jumped back to 2202 to find her,” Swinburne mused.

  “The tragedy of it being that he won’t arrive in the 2202 from which he came, for it no longer exists. He wiped it out of existence when he changed the past. That, I believe, is what the second part of the vision was attempting to show me.”

  “Surely he must know? Isn’t it the very fact that sent him over the edge?”

  “It is, but perhaps 2202 is the only point of reference remaining to him.”

  “No,” Swinburne said. “There’s another.”

  “What?”

  “The man who killed him. Sir Richard Francis Burton. Which might explain why he’s sending his henchmen back in time to beat seven bells out of you.”

  “I should consult with Doctor Monroe at Bethlem Hospital,” Burton murmured. “He might offer useful insight into the workings of an unsound mind.”

  The king’s agent looked out of the cab’s window. Flowers crammed the city’s every nook and cranny, clung to every untrodden surface. He murmured, “Are we to be overgrown? I wonder how this foliage fits into the picture?”

  They travelled to Oxford Street and disembarked outside Shudders’ Pharmacy.

  “I just sent a boy with a message for you,” the old man exclaimed as they entered his shop. “A box of two hundred bottles was dropped off an hour ago. An extraordinary amount. They normally only bring twenty at a time.”

  “Dropped off by whom, Mr. Shudders?”

  “The usual young lads.”

  “By wagon?”

  “Yes. Why such a large delivery, though? I’m most puzzled.”

  “Will you take us through to the back yard, please?”

  The pharmacist gestured for them to follow and led them out into the little cobbled area.

  “Did the wagon come in?” Burton asked.

  “It did.”

  “Then it’ll have some of that anise adhered to its wheels.” Burton turned to Swinburne, “Let’s see if Fidget can earn back the money I paid for him.”

  “And once he’s done his job,” the poet responded, “perhaps you’ll return him to Mr. Toppletree?”

  “I think not.”

  Burton pulled the basset hound across to the gates, squatted, and watched the dog as it snuffled around, tail wagging, obviously excited by the strong odour.

  “Follow, Fidget! Follow!”

  The hound strained at its lead and loosed a gruff bark.

  “Come on!” Burton called. “He’s caught the scent! Thank you, Mr. Shudders.”

  “My pleasure,” Shudders mouthed, looking thoroughly perplexed.

  Burton and Swinburne raced after Fidget as he plunged out of the gate and into Poland Street.

  “He’s taking us to the last piece of the puzzle!” Burton cried out. “I feel sure of it!”

  It was quite the foot-slog. Fidget dragged them out into Oxford Street’s traffic, and amid the cursing of indignant drivers they wove their way through panting vehicles and whinnying horses, in and out of billowing clouds of hot steam and gritty smoke, along to Holborn and up onto the Hackney Road. They arced around the northern border of the fire-ravaged and now overgrown Cauldron, then south down Saint Leonard Street all the way to Limehouse Cut Canal.

  “Back into the East End!” Swinburne cried out.

  The waterway marked a straight border at the edge of the vanished slums, the ruins of which were now completely buried beneath an amassed tangle of red. Facing the jungle, the flame-blackened sides of factories loomed over the channel.

  All but one of the buildings were active, with fumes belching out of their towering chimneys and wagons arriving and departing from their loading bays. The exception was a seven-storeys-high derelict with nary a windowpane that wasn’t either cracked or broken.

  “My hat, Richard!” Swinburne said. “Isn’t that the place Abdu El Yezdi wrote of in his first account? The home of the mysterious boy known as the Beetle?”

  “It is. In the history El Yezdi came from, the lad was head of the League of Chimney Sweeps, which doesn’t exist in our variant of reality.”

  “Yet we have Locks Limited,” the poet murmured. “Without the K, I’ll warrant. L.O.C.S.—League of Chimney Sweeps.”

  Fidget guided them around to the front of the abandoned factory, and there they found a wagon parked by a double door. The basset hound stopped by one of its wheels, pressed his nose against its rim, gave a bark, then cocked his leg and wetted it.

  “Phew! There’s nothing like a fast hike across the city to keep the cold at bay. We must have walked five miles, at least,” Swinburne said. “What a nose the little devil possesses, to have followed the trail all that way.”

  He paced over to a dirty window and squinted through the fractured glass. “Have a look at this!”

  Burton joined him and saw that thick scarlet leaves completely blocked the view. The jungle was inside the building.

  The king’s agent moved to the doors, tried them, and found them to be secured. He rapped on the portal with the head of his cane.

  No response.

  Swinburne hammered his knuckles against the window. “Hallo! Hallo! Anyone at home?” A narrow wedge of glass toppled from the pane and clinked onto the ground by his feet.

  They waited. Nothing.

  Burton bent and examined the door’s keyhole. “It’s a basic deadlock. I’ll have it open in a jiffy.”

  He retrieved a set of picks from his pocket and got to work. It took him less than a minute. There came two clicks, a clunk, and a loud creak as he pulled the doors open.

  His breath hissed out through h
is teeth in a little cloud.

  Swinburne gave a squawk of surprise.

  The doors opened onto a tunnel through dense vermilion vegetation. Very little light filtered in through the factory’s dirty windows, but among the crowded leaves and tangled branches, strange fruits hung, glowing like little lanterns.

  “A fairy grotto!” Swinburne exclaimed.

  “A fiery grotto,” Burton corrected. He took a cautious step forward. “This tunnel hasn’t been cut or even cultivated. The plant appears to have grown into an arched pathway quite naturally. How thoroughly odd.” He moved a little farther into the building. “Shall we see where it goes?”

  He closed the door behind them and tied the end of his dog’s lead to its latch. “Wait here, Fidget.”

  Very slowly, listening for any sound, they proceeded through the closely packed verdure.

  The jungle’s leaves showed enormous variety, some being smooth-edged, others crinkly. Its flowers ranged from tightly bunched petals to splayed blooms, some as small as daisies, others wider than Burton’s arm span. Branches went from bulky limbs to spindly twigs. All were contorted and twisted, curling this way and that, corkscrewing, bending and dividing in every direction, ending in buds and fruits and big gourd-like growths.

  The scent was delicious, heady, and intoxicating. Burton started to feel—albeit faintly—the same euphoria that Saltzmann’s gave him, and, as they moved forward into the factory, he noted that Swinburne appeared to be fast slipping into a state of reverie.

  They rounded one tight bend after another.

  “A labyrinth?” Swinburne whispered. His voice was slurred.

  “A single path,” Burton noted, “folding back and forth but gradually guiding us to the centre.”

  “What Minotaur awaits us, I wonder?”

  They kept going.

  Burton noted that the floor was carpeted with a springy layer of fibrous roots, all matted together, and that the plant was somehow generating heat, for the atmosphere felt warm and humid.

  “I feel very peculiar,” Swinburne mumbled.