The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man

  Rasputin laughed, a nasty sound. “I congratulate you, tovarishch,” he said. “You are—umm—impressive. Speech you give Blavatsky—very interesting. No person can make future entirely vot they vish. Da. Da. This maybe is true. But I, Grigori Rasputin, am already in future. I speak to you now from future. Votever I change in past, still, future I am in. You die. You do not find African Eye. Yet here I have African Eye. It is—umm—big paradox, nyet?”

  “An intriguing situation,” Burton mused. “Whereas Edward Oxford travelled to his past and accidentally wiped himself out of the future, you are seeking to change the past from the future. You know that whatever your interference here, the consequences will never threaten your existence there, for if it did, how can you be interfering?”

  The king's agent stepped closer to the black diamond.

  “You must feel indestructible,” he said.

  “No man can stop me.”

  “Really?”

  Burton extended his hand toward the stone and was instantly stricken with paralysis.

  “Nyet, my enemy. Not even you. Now life of Blavatsky woman is finished, you I vill possess. You are close to prime minister, da? This is very good. Through you, I vill assassinate Palmerston.”

  A glowing, shapeless wraith oozed out of Blavatsky's shattered skull and began to slide down the strands of brain tissue and hair.

  Burton managed to move his mouth: “Maybe I can't stop you, Grigori, but I can warn you. Stay away from the Eye!”

  The Russian's voice sounded inside his head: “I think not. The diamond vill be—moct?”

  “A bridge.”

  “Da. It allow me to cross into you.”

  The wraith flowed over the diamond and seemed to soak into it. A long feeler of energy coiled out toward the famous explorer. Cold fingers closed around his brain.

  Straining, the king's agent managed to turn his head until he was looking at his valet.

  “Now would be a good time.”

  The clockwork man of Trafalgar Square gave up the charade of immobility, nodded its canister-shaped head, reached out with its mechanical arm, and plucked the Eye of Nāga from its ectoplasmic plinth.

  “Vot? The toy moves?”

  Rasputin's reaction was accompanied by a blaze of ectoplasmic energy. It sizzled across the room, and a bolt of it lashed at Burton and writhed over his body. He cried out with pain and dropped to his knees.

  The storm lessened but continued to splutter and jump around the library walls.

  “Vhy cannot I stop it? Things such as this, they not vork close to Rasputin unless I allow!”

  Burton pulled himself upright and said: “Yes, that was rather a giveaway, Grigori. When Blavatsky shared with me her vision of your future, it included details of your parlour trick; of how the guns of the British spies failed when they attacked you. I asked myself: why would the woman be afraid of assassins? The answer was that there was no reason for her to be. I therefore concluded that she wasn't responsible for all the stopped clocks, slack springs, and jammed trigger mechanisms.”

  “But this machine clockvork, da? How working now?”

  “Willpower. Allow me to introduce to you the philosopher Herbert Spencer. One of the most remarkable intellects I have ever encountered.”

  “Man? This is not man!”

  “In body, no, but Herbert Spencer died with the seven fragments of the Cambodian Eye in his possession. His intellect was imprinted upon them. Those fragments are now fitted into a babbage device designed specifically to process the kind of information they hold. In other words, what you took to be a machine is sentient. It possesses willpower enough to resist your attempts to interfere with its functioning, and it can do a great deal more. Are you aware of the legend of Kumari Kandam?”

  “Nyet! No more talk! Put stone down!”

  “The Eye was shattered by a man who possessed a perfectly ordered brain. When that happened, the intelligences previously bound together through means of the diamond were destroyed.”

  “Tovarishch! Vot is this nonsense?”

  “The Choir Stones still have that event imprinted upon them like a memory. If a sufficiently powerful mind—say, for instance, that of a philosopher whose thoughts are ordered by a babbage—could focus that memory upon another Eye, well, I suppose you're aware of the phenomenon of resonance?”

  “Nyet! Nyet!”

  “Where these stones are concerned, I believe only equivalence can lead to destruction. Let us see if that's the case. Proceed, please, Herbert.”

  The clockwork philosopher didn't move, but the glow from the room's ectoplasmic walls, floor, and ceiling suddenly dimmed, seeming to concentrate itself around the diamond held in his metal hand, and the bolts of energy that had been playing across the walls now arced inward and danced over the stone's facets. Simultaneously, the diamond's soft humming increased in volume and deepened in tone until it passed below the range of human hearing. To Burton, it felt as if invisible hands were pushing hard against his ears.

  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.
br />   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 café 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 café, 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?”

&nbs
p; “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.

  “Mediumistic 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.”