The Rise of the Automated Aristocrats

  Bradlaugh looked at the others, sighed, strode over to the door, and rattled its handle.

  “Step away from the door,” Laughing Boy ordered.

  The cannibal returned to his bunk, sat, and sighed. “I have a stinking headache.”

  “So do I,” Hunt said.

  “And I,” Brabrooke put in. “I’ve had it for days.”

  Burton rested his elbow on his knee and his chin on his hand.

  The black diamonds. Wherever they are, their influence is being felt.

  He recalled the newspaper reports he’d seen before his incarceration.

  Clairvoyants dying. There’s too many of the confounded stones. I have to get out of here; find and destroy the bloody things.

  About an hour later—they had great difficulty in judging the passage of time—the hut shook as a familiar aching moan echoed across the city. HMA Eurypyle was approaching, its engines making the air pulsate.

  “I wonder where it takes the men?” Ashbee mused.

  “To the continent, I’ll wager,” Hunt said. “There to be sold into slavery.”

  “Do you really think so?” Brabrooke asked.

  “Disraeli is getting rid of the middling classes. What better way without committing genocide?”

  “By gad! The man will go down in history as one of the foulest fiends ever born.”

  “The problem with history,” Murchison interjected, “is that it clips along at a deucedly fast rate. When I was a nipper, the greater majority worked the land, and the most reliable farm implement one could purchase had four legs, ate hay, and provided manure. But these past few years—merciful heavens!—how we have sculpted nature to our own ends! Would any person of my childhood years have believed the metals of the earth could be fashioned into—” He flung out a hand toward Laughing Boy, “—into such as that? Would any give credence to the idea that a government—a British government, I say!—would so divide its people that those who labour can never shake off their yoke, that those who pursue leisure have the means to indulge their every whim, and that those who exist in the strata in-between are eliminated? Eliminated, I say! For I feel certain that we are subject to just such a cull. All this, within a single lifetime. History is accelerating, and now I fear it is out of control.”

  “Bravo!” Bradlaugh mumbled. “He’s seen the light.”

  “It’s despicable!” Murchison barked. He stood, stamped to the door, and bellowed, “I demand to be let out of here! I demand an explanation! I know my rights! I am president of the Royal Geographical Society!”

  “Here he goes again,” Hunt groaned.

  “I serve on the Royal Commission for the British Museum!”

  “You’re director-general of the British Geological Survey,” Bendyshe observed.

  “I’m director-general of the British Geological Survey!”

  “And director of the Royal School of Mines.”

  “And director of the Royal School of Mines!”

  “And of the Museum of Practical Geology.”

  “And of the Museum of Practical Geology!”

  “And you’re to be a baronet.”

  “And I am to be made a baronet!”

  “And you’re a gigantic pain in the backside.”

  “And I’m a gigan—How dare you, sir!”

  “Sit down, Sir Roderick,” Monckton Milnes said. “Matters are sufficiently dire without you ranting about the place.”

  Murchison levelled a finger at Burton. “I blame you for this. You’ve always been a troublemaker. Always too outspoken for your own good.”

  “Richard is as much a victim as the rest of us,” Murray objected.

  “Pish-tosh!” Murchison spat dismissively. “He’s been hoisted with his own petard, and we’ve been dragged up with him.”

  “Blown up,” Burton murmured.

  “What?”

  “One is not dragged up by a petard. One is blown up by it. A petard is a small bomb.”

  “It doesn’t bloody well matter what it is!” Murchison yelled.

  In a flash of inspiration, Burton suddenly realised that it mattered very much.

  Sooner than expected, his chance had come.

  Giving every indication that he’d lost his temper, he leaped to his feet and thundered, “I’ve had just about enough of you, Murchison! You’ve been a thorn in my side ever since Speke betrayed me.”

  Murchison looked taken aback. “Speke? What the blazes are you talking about?”

  Burton didn’t know. Speke had died in Berbera. There had been no betrayal. The man was a fallen colleague, nothing more, nothing less. Why think otherwise?

  He had no answer, and this was not the moment to dwell on mistaken memories.

  “You know damn well what I mean!” he yelled. “You’ve blocked me at every opportunity. I found the Nile’s source despite you, and you’ve hated me ever since.”

  “Good God, man! Have you lost your wits? What the devil are you gibbering about?”

  “Ease up, Richard,” Monckton Milnes put in, but then saw the explorer wink at him, and added, “Murchison is a snob and an ass, and you’ll not change that by shouting at him.”

  “What did you say?” Murchison practically screamed. “A what? A what, sir?”

  “Sit down,” Laughing Boy commanded. “Disruption will not be tolerated.”

  “I’ve always considered you a blackguard,” Monckton Milnes went on. “Not deserving of the positions you hold, that’s for certain. Did you bribe your way to the top?”

  Murchison’s eyes widened. His mouth worked, but only a strangled whine emerged. His face took on a deep-crimson hue.

  “Steady on,” Ashbee said. “I think this is going a little too far.” He, as Monckton Milnes had done, received a wink from Burton, who snarled, “Oh, be quiet, Ashbee. You aren’t qualified to comment. You’re nothing but a cheap hack.”

  “To hell with you!” Ashbee roared, jumping to his feet.

  “Sit down!” Laughing Boy repeated. The mechanism rose and took two steps forward. “Cease this immediately or guards will be summoned.”

  “Oh, shove it up your pendulum housing!” Bendyshe shouted.

  The clockwork man paced past Burton and Monckton Milnes into the middle of the room.

  Brabrooke and Bradlaugh, both catching on, got to their feet and engaged in a mock dispute.

  “I’m sick of your fat, bearded face!” Bradlaugh screamed.

  “Because it reminds you of your mother!” Brabrooke countered.

  Burton crept backward, reached up, and unclipped the oil lamp from its wall bracket. As soon as he drew it down, shadows sprang up on the opposite walls and arced across them. Laughing Boy, reacting to the altered illumination, turned. Without the slightest hesitation, the explorer smashed the lamp against the contraption’s head. Oil splashed, splattering through the three facial openings, and ignited.

  Burton stumbled away, his left hand and sleeve on fire, and fell onto a bunk, quickly smothering his limb with the blanket.

  “Push it into the corner!” he yelled, his voice harsh with pain.

  “Emergency!” Laughing Boy wailed. “I am being attacked! Assistance requested!”

  Brabrooke, Bradlaugh, and Ashbee hurled themselves across the cabin and barrelled into the machine. Knocked backward, it reeled into the corner, its head aflame.

  “Alert! Alert! Assistance requested!”

  Though it was verbalising its distress, Burton thought it highly likely that the machine possessed the internal communications he’d seen demonstrated by Grumbles, Sprocket, and the SPG units. Assistance was no doubt already on its way.

  “Bunk!” he croaked. “Pin it down. Quick.”

  Monckton Milnes, instantly understanding what the explorer meant, grabbed Hunt and hauled him over to the bunk opposite Burton. Together they pushed it, were quickly assisted by Brabrooke, and sent it squealing across the floorboards to crash into the brass man, slamming the machine against the wall.

  The door opened and a
mechanical guard stepped in.

  “Stop!” it commanded. “You are ord—”

  Murray threw himself down in front of it. The machine tripped over him and clanged face first onto the floor.

  With an ear-splitting clap, the booby trap in Laughing Boy’s head triggered. The explosion cracked the planks of the timber wall and shattered half of the bunk bed. Fragments of brass, wood, blankets, and straw showered across the room. Hot twisted metal scored a groove across Burton’s forehead. Another piece stabbed into Ashbee’s thigh.

  Burton pushed himself up, careless of the blood streaming down his face, clutched at Monckton Milnes’s arm, and shouted into his ear, “Don’t follow. You’ll be safer here.”

  “Here? Are you joking?”

  “It was only me they wanted to torture. Stay. I’ll come for you, I swear it.”

  With a last look into his friend’s eyes, Burton turned, ran at the burning wall, and pitched his full weight shoulder first into it. The planks, blackened, burning, and bulging outward, gave way with a splintering crash. With flames licking at his prison uniform, he plummeted out into the fog, hit the ground, rolled, regained his feet, and ran full pelt up Green Park’s slope.

  The timing was perfect. The fog was thicker than he’d ever seen it, the guards were preoccupied with the men being herded onto HMA Eurypyle, and when he came to the fence, he found himself almost at the exact midpoint between two of the new watchtowers, both of which were completely obscured by the foul cloud. Furthermore, there was a tree less than four feet from the barrier.

  He took an instant to slap at his burning clothes—his shirt was a tattered, bloodied, and charred mess—then calculated distances, ran at the tree, jumped, hit it left foot first, and kicked out, launching himself upward and outward toward the lip of the fence. His hands caught it but his body smacked down against the wood with such a bang that he felt certain he’d been heard.

  Speed was essential.

  Though the breath had been knocked out of him, he heaved himself up and over and fell onto the top of the wall that had originally bordered this part of the park. From there he toppled down onto the pavement of Piccadilly, landing with a painful thump.

  What the hell am I doing? This can’t be right. Life is not meant to be this way.

  “Any bones broken, mate?” came a voice.

  Burton looked up and saw a man with a broom standing less than six feet away.

  This has happened before. I’m repeating actions over and over.

  “No,” he said. “But I’m having a very bad time of it.”

  “Aye, it looks that way. Don’t worry about me, fella. I ain’t seen nuthink. You’d better scarper, an’ good luck to you.”

  The man stepped into the road and started to sweep the horse manure from it, somehow immune from the danger posed by the steam spheres, velocipedes, and carriages that passed to either side of him.

  Burton got to his feet, feeling his bruises and scrapes complaining. He wiped blood from his eyes, suddenly aware that his burned hand was a constant agony, and moved away. As he limped along, he tried to gather his thoughts, to formulate some sort of plan. He had to get to Norwood, but hiring a cab would be next to impossible—he was hardly dressed like a gentleman, and he was penniless, too. Walking through the concealing fog, despite the distance, would probably be easier.

  He headed toward Piccadilly Circus, ducking away from other pedestrians, keeping to the shadows, and wishing he possessed some means to summon Monty Penniforth.

  Send Pox now, Algy! Send Pox now!

  Frequently, he heard the clump clump clump of clockwork men. Those he glimpsed stamping through the pall were of the ordinary brass variety but, nevertheless, he avoided them.

  There were so many. They were everywhere.

  He thought about what Murchison had said.

  History is accelerating.

  Sirens sounded behind him.

  He heard police whistles.

  Again and again he tried to steer a course southward but at every turn he saw metal figures. Despite his every intention, he was forced in the opposite direction, dodging down side streets, flitting past Berkeley Square and Grosvenor Square, thinking that maybe he could skirt westward around Hyde Park then down into Chelsea.

  Clump clump clump.

  Blue-black machines with batons extended to the left of him.

  Duck into an alleyway.

  Emerge onto Oxford Street.

  Risk the traffic to get across.

  Yells. Curses. Hissing steam.

  A synthetic voice: “Stop that man!”

  Portman Square.

  Gasping for breath, choking on ash, his hand incandescent with pain, he fell into the patch of greenery at its centre, crawled across grass, scrambled to his feet, and collapsed onto a bench beneath a tree.

  The fog billowed around him.

  If he could just catch his breath.

  If he could just ignore the blistering skin of his hand.

  Montagu Place. The mews. Get my rotorchair and fly over the fog to Norwood. Yes. Yes. Yes.

  A throbbing paradiddle overhead. He looked up just as a searchlight clicked on, its beam slicing down through the branches of the tree, blinding him.

  “Don’t move,” an amplified voice instructed.

  Burton leaped up to run, but his knees gave way. Dark figures moved through the cloud all around him. A clockwork constable marched into sight, truncheon raised. “You are under arrest. Submit immediately.”

  The explorer had no strength to resist. On his knees, swaying, he looked up at the machine as, without provocation, it swiped its weapon at his head.

  Pain.

  Failure.

  Darkness.

  OUT OF THE FRYING PAN AND INTO THE FIRE

  On two occasions I have been asked, “Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?” I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

  —Charles Babbage

  Water, thrown over his head, brought Burton back to consciousness. He was hanging, suspended by the wrists, his toes barely touching the ground. The strain on his arms was excruciating.

  He opened his eyes and saw the water, stained pink with his blood, trickling down onto the floorboards and splashing around his bare feet.

  His boots had been removed. So had the remnants of his shirt.

  He looked up.

  He was in a shed—not hut 0 but another of identical dimensions, though lacking bunks. To his left, Sir Roderick Murchison, Captain Henry Murray, and Sir Edward Brabrooke were standing in line, all handcuffed. To his right, Thomas Bendyshe, Doctor James Hunt, Richard Monckton Milnes, and Sir Charles Bradlaugh were also shackled.

  In front of him, Commander Thaddeus Kidd, backed by four green-painted clockwork men, was holding a pistol to Henry Spencer Ashbee’s head.

  He said, “Welcome back, Sir Richard,” and pulled the trigger.

  Blood spattered over Bendyshe and Hunt.

  Ashbee flopped to the floor.

  The prisoners uttered sobbing cries.

  “A consequence,” Kidd said, “of your misjudged actions.”

  He put the gun onto a table and picked up a leather whip.

  “Colonel Rigby wants answers, and I can assure you that I am quite as determined as he to get them out of you. No doubt you think that by keeping your lips sealed you are saving the poet and your other fugitive friends. That is a misconception. They will be apprehended sooner or later. It is inevitable. The empire’s new security measures will net every traitor, every person complicit in the Chinese menace.”

  Burton snarled, “There is no Chinese menace, you bloody fool.”

  The whip snapped out and scored the skin of his stomach. He hissed with the pain of it.

  “If you have some notion,” Kidd went on, “that your knowledge of their whereabouts makes you indispensable, you are quite wrong. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether yo
u speak or not. As I say, they will be captured anyway. And as commander of this camp, I have the authority to decide whether it would be more beneficial for the empire to keep you and question you or to dispose of you in a manner that may demonstrate to the other detainees the futility of defiance.” He smiled nastily. “The latter course, I believe, holds greater value.” Kidd passed the whip to one of the mechanical guards. “His back. Forty lashes.”

  “No! Wait!” Monckton Milnes shouted.

  Kidd took two paces and punched him in the mouth. “Not another word! Not from any of you!”

  The brass man walked past Burton and positioned itself behind him.

  “Kidd,” the explorer whispered. “You’re a jumped-up little popinjay, so inflated by the pathetic fraction of power apportioned to you, so eager to emulate Rigby, that you’ve willingly become blind to the truth. Why don’t you open your eyes and—”

  With a loud slap, his back erupted with pain. His various wounds—the aching head and arms, the blistered hand, the scrapes and bruises—were utterly subsumed by it. The torment tore through his nerves, saturated his flesh, clawed into his bones. His ability to think, already blunted by the blow to his head, was halted.

  For the briefest moment, he sensed that his suffering was fading, but with this revelation came a second slap, and the agony was renewed.

  The inexorable punishment continued.

  Burton’s sense of himself retreated like the sea sucking back over pebbles. For a measureless period, he was far away, gathering, building, intensifying, then he came crashing back to break again—agonisingly—on pitiless reality.

  On and on it went, and each time he returned to himself, it was with less force, until the waves of pain had flattened out, and he was incapable of feeling anything more.

  He hung, physically and mentally suspended.

  Warm blood dribbled down the back of his legs.

  He dimly recognised that the world was shifting around him as he was cut down and carried out of the hut.

  Again, water splashed over his head.

  Somewhere far off, whistles blew and orders were barked.