Rites of Passage (4 page)

Burns tucked the weapon into his waist-band.

“Now,” said the Sentinel, “how to locate the individual you call Prince Albert?”

“Leave that to me,” Burns said, withdrawing a communicator from his waistcoat pocket. He activated the device and slipped it into his ear.

A second later a high, querulous voice said, “Burns? What is it? I’m entertaining the King of Belgium.”

“Your Majesty. My sincere apologies, but it is vital that I enquire as to the whereabouts of his Highness the Prince.”

“Albert? But why–?”

“Time is off the essence, your Majesty. If you could apprise me of his whereabouts?”

Burns willed Victoria to tell him that Albert had taken to his sick-bed, and his heart sank when the reply came. “Why, he is presently at the Crystal Palace, overseeing some technical business or other.”

“Thank you, your Majesty. Forgive me, but I will explain everything at our very next meeting.”

He pulled the communicator from his ear before Victoria could reply, and turned to the Sentinel. “As I feared, he is at Hyde Park.”

The hatch opened above their heads and they rose to the muddy surface of the Thames.

“To Hyde Park we go,” cried the Sentinel in the guise of the urchin mudlark, “for the very safety of the country, and the world, is at stake!”

~

T
hey took a Hansom first to Kensington, and bade it wait while Burns dashed to his garret and changed his ruined boots and breeches; at the same time he affected a quick disguise, donning a false moustache and a fair wig he kept for such occasions. Five minutes later they were rattling south towards Hyde Park.

“I made the acquaintance of Turqan-in-Albert’s-guise earlier today at Buckingham Palace,” Burns explained. “Albert knows of my work as a Guardian, and as Turqan has access to his every memory... With luck he will fail to recognise me in this get up. But how to go about this business, Sentinel?”

After a moment’s contemplation, the Sentinel replied. “It should be, if all goes well, a simple matter. We need merely apprehend the Prince long enough for me to get one shot on target. After that, of course, we will need to locate the crystals.”

Burns gazed out at the passing streets, the buttery light of a hundred gas-lamps reflecting off piled snow and illuminating the continued fall. It
should
be a simple matter, but in his experience it boded ill to presume victory before the event. They were, after all, in opposition to a skilled practitioner in the ways of deceit and subterfuge. He fingered the butt of the weapon and told himself to keep his wits about him.

Five minutes later they arrived at Hyde Park, alighted and paid the driver. Despite the late hour, crowds still thronged the park in order to witness the architectural miracle of the Crystal Palace. Burns, with the Sentinel-in-Tommy skipping along beside him, hurried across the snow-covered grass towards the rearing edifice of the Palace, shining like a vast diamond against the night sky. Almost two thousand feet long and five hundred wide, it rose to a height of a hundred feet – a wonder indeed in which to exhibit the myriad marvels of the modern age.

Burns pushed through the crowds milling around outside the Palace. Tall, arched entrance-ways lined the length of the building, each one posted with a guard of Peelers pacing back and forth and stamping to ward off the cold.

Burns led the Sentinel along the length of the palace, to where the crowds thinned; he spotted an entrance patrolled by a lone bobby, and saw his opportunity.

He approached the bewhiskered custodian and concocted a sorry tale. He was exhibiting an invention within – none other than the Greenwood Helical Elevator – but had left earlier without assuring that it had shut down correctly; he needed now to return, with his apprentice Tommy, in order to ensure its safe deactivation.

“And your exhibitor’s pass, sir?”

“That’s the very deuce of it, my good man. In my haste to return I quite forgot the pass, but I can offer this.” And from his waistcoat he produced a crisp pound note.

The bobby goggled, then looked right and left to ensure the transaction went unobserved. He took the proffered note with alacrity and hissed, “Now slip inside, sir, and the boy. Quick smart!”

Burns and the Sentinel needed no second telling; they passed through the arched entrance, from cold and darkness into the warmth and gas-lit illumination of a veritable wonderland.

Crowds of workmen and supervisors filled the glass-walled Palace, milling hither and thither with the industry of ants. Right and left, seemingly as far as the eye could see, great displays of industrial, scientific and technological wonder receded into the distance, cordoned off by heavy red braid as if they were museum exhibits. Burns beheld bulbous tanks and pistons, engines and cranks, a multitude of industrial muscle miraculous – from his perspective – for its primitive might. Truly the human race combined indomitability and curiosity; to progress from an agrarian culture to this in so relatively short a time was little short of wondrous.

A tug at his sleeve brought him back to the present. A muck-smeared face grinned up at him. “There,” said the Sentinel, pointing.

The footprint of the Palace was laid out in the form of a great cross, at its centre a transept in which stood the base of a tiled fountain, currently shut off. In the fountain itself, which looked for all the world like a shallow paddling pool, a dozen workmen were hauling on ropes and pulleys as a sprawling, resplendent chandelier was hoisted, inch by inch, high into the glass dome overhead.

Burns and the Sentinel made their way towards the fountain, which was surrounded by other workmen who had downed tools in order to watch the laborious ascent of the chandelier.

They were standing beside a sweating workman who smiled at their astonished expressions and commented, “We had it up not two days ago, sirs. And then what? Just today Albert hisself, bless his whiskers, ’ad us haul it down and replace all the blessed gas-lights with some new-fangled bulbs. Strike me dead, but it isn’t as if his Highness has to do the haulin’, is it?”

The workman moved off, mopping his brow, and the Sentinel hissed to Burns, “Look! Behold the pendant crystals that form the mass of the chandelier.”

Burns stared. “Not the memory crystals?”

“The very same. My guess is that when the chandelier is in place and activated, the dissemination process will commence.”

Burns scanned the workmen hauling on the pulleys, and beside them a group of dignitaries. Among them was the tall, ramrod straight figure of Prince Albert himself, staring at the chandelier and making the occasional comment to an aide.

Burns nudged the Sentinel and pointed.

“Our man,” said the Sentinel. “Very well, follow me.”

He elbowed his way through the crowd and hurried around the central fountain. If anyone saw the importunate urchin, clad in mud-soaked rags, they failed to comment as they watched the gradual ascent of the chandelier.

The Sentinel ducked under a cordon and approached something which resembled a loom, and Burns joined him. He peered out, across the floor, at the Prince.

From the waistband of his ragged trousers, the Sentinel pulled the disequaliser, and aimed. “One quick shot,” he breathed, “and who knows how many human lives will be spared.”

The urchin sighted along the length of the weapon, and his grubby finger depressed a red stud. A short hiss was the only result; Burns looked at the group of dignitaries. The Prince remained standing, chatting to an aide as if nothing untoward had occurred.

The Sentinel cursed and looked up at Burns. “I hardly dared fear this outcome–”

“It didn’t work?” Burns ventured, his heart racing.

“The devil is utilising a soma-shield, Burns, rendering my disequaliser useless. I underestimated the resolve of my foe.”

“Is there nothing we can do?”

The Sentinel considered, then said, “By the very fact that Turqan inhabits a new body, this means that the shield is portable – some device the Prince has about his person. If we could in some way wrest the shield from him, then the disequaliser could do its business.”

“But how to do this without alerting Turqan to our presence? He will no doubt be armed.”

The Sentinel nodded. “Armed and deadly.”

Burns considered for a minute. At length he said, “I have an idea, but it would mean delaying the attack until much later, and gaining entry to Buckingham Palace.”

The Sentinel looked up at him. “You can gain admittance?”

“I think so. One moment.” He plugged his communicator into his ear and reached Queen Victoria for the second time that night, chancing her ire.

“Burns, what is it this time? We’re just about to start the desert course.”

“My apologies, but events necessitate the interruption. I have a vital request to make, one on which rests the very future of the nation.”

“Burns, I have never known you overstate the case, and Heaven knows how extraordinary past cases have been! Very well, my good man, out with it.”

A minute later Burns terminated the conversation and pulled the communicator from his ear. “Done,” he said.

“There is one small problem,” the Sentinel said. “I am afraid I might not be able to sustain my habitation of the boy for much longer. Perhaps another thirty minutes, an hour at most. Any longer, and I would fear for my safety.”

Burns nodded. “I’m sure the boy and I can capture Turqan – though immediately we have the small matter of the memory crystals to deal with.”

“I have given this due consideration,” the Sentinel said. “Hand me the stunner.”

Burns guessed the Sentinel’s intent and passed him the weapon. Above the fountain, the chandelier was reaching the apex of the dome. Burns made out three sets of pulleys attached to the central boss of the fixture, controlled by three teams of two men situated equidistant around the transept. Now the Sentinel aimed at the first of these teams.

In an aside to Burns, he said, “I have no qualms about extinguishing thousands of Kyrixian individuals. If you could have seen the crimes his kind perpetrated across the galaxy...”

He fired twice, quickly, and the two workmen at the first station collapsed instantly and released their grips on the ropes. Overhead, the chandelier canted with a rattling, glockenspiel tintinnabulation.

Cries arose from the watchers below.

The Sentinel took aim and fired again. The second set of workmen collapsed, and the chandelier – suspended now by a single rope – swung like a pendulum.

Burns saw the third set of workmen hauling upon their ropes like a desperate tug-o’-war team, their heels skidding across the tiles.

Turqan-in-Prince Albert ran towards them, exhorting effort...

The Sentinel fired a third time, the workmen collapsed, and amid high-pitched screams the chandelier commenced a sudden plummet.

Those spectators directly below the object scattered in short order, and the dignitaries could only watch as the glittering missile of brass and crystal dropped a hundred feet and crashed into the tiled fountain with the sound of musical thunder.

The crystals shattered into a million pieces and scattered across the floor of the Palace like an explosion of diamonds.

Burns gazed across at the figure of Prince Albert, who had given vent to a soul-rending cry and folded to his knees. His hands sifted through the shattered crystals and they fell through his fingers like water.

Dignitaries and aides rushed to his side, attempting to console the stricken Prince, little realising that no consolation would be sufficient.

Burns said, “Now to Buckingham Palace!” and together he and the Sentinel left the cover of the loom and slipped through the chaotic melee.

As they crossed Hyde Park at a run, the Sentinel said, “I fear my time in this guise is limited, Burns. Here, take the disequaliser. You know what to do.”

A minute later they climbed aboard a Hansom and sped north.

~

T
ommy Newton would recall the next fifteen minutes for the rest of his long life.

The last thing he recalled was the interior of the strange sunken vessel, the wizened, staring manikin, and the sudden lethargy that had overtaken him. Then, as if suddenly awakening, he found himself no longer aboard the vessel but crouched behind a screen in what he took to be a toff’s bedroom, going by the bulky outline of the four-poster bed illuminated in the dim lamp-light.

The next he knew, someone was gripping his elbow and breathing into his ear. “Fear not, Tommy,” said Bartholomew Burns. “All is well. Keep quiet and do exactly as I say. Understood?”

Tommy nodded, then realising his gesture could not be seen, whispered, “Understood, guv.” He paused, then said, “One thing – where the ’ell are we?”

Burns murmured, his breath hot in Tommy’s ear, “You might find this hard to believe, Tommy, but we are in Queen Victoria’s bed-chamber.”

“Bleedin’ ’ell!” Tommy expostulated. “And how did I come to be here?”

“That, Tommy, is what is known as a long story. Suffice it to say that we are engaged in a mission to save the life of Prince Albert himself.”

Tommy goggled up at Burns’s dim outline, and only then noticed that the man was gripping what looked like some sort of bulbous pistol.

“You mean, someone’s going to break in and threaten his Highness’s life?”

It was a second before the reply came. “Not exactly, Tommy. Soon, I hope, Prince Albert will return, and then I will render him... unconscious.” Burns gestured with the weapon. “That, I hope, will be sufficient to save the day.”

“You’re talking in riddles, mister, is all I can say.”

“Shh!” Burns said.

Tommy stiffened as, from beyond the screen, someone gave a muffled moan, and then resumed snoring. Tommy chanced a peek around the brocaded screen and made out a humped figure lying on its back in the bed, genteel snores issuing from its small, pointed nose.

“Is that...?” he began.

“No other,” Burns responded.

“Lord strike me sightless!” Tommy gasped.

He shook his head. Just this morning he had slept the sleep of the innocent in his barrel home, and now here he was in Queen Victoria’s bed-chamber.