The Rise of the Automated Aristocrats (42 page)

“Don't be.”

Edward survived. He squeezed through the arched doorway and stood panting, his face red and sheeny, his hands trembling on his walking canes.

“Are you all right?” Rigby asked.

The minister brandished one of his sticks. “Proceed, Colonel.”

“You three,” Rigby said to the prisoners. “This castle is filled with clockwork men and the prime minister's guards. Any attempt to escape will be met with an immediate and lethal response. If that is understood, I'll order my machines to unhand you.”

“It's understood,” Burton said.

“Pah to you, Rigby,” Swinburne muttered. “And pah to you again. But I'll not cause a kerfuffle.”

“And you, Mr. Trounce? Will you turn berserker?”

“I'll choose a more opportune moment to wring your neck,” Trounce snarled.

“Very wise. I look forward to the attempt. Come with me. Accompany us, Minister.”

Edward's eyes flashed. Burton imagined him thinking,
“That was the last damned order I'll ever accept from you, mister!”

Rigby said, “Mr. Pinion?”

“This way, please.”

They traversed, with the machine, the length of the room to the screened off section. Bhatti remained behind and, intent on his own business, exited the chamber by way of a side door. The SPG units also stayed put, motionless, each ready to respond should Burton or his fellows cause trouble.

Leaning his canister-shaped head around the edge of the wooden barrier, Pinion said, “They are here, sir.”

Burton heard Disraeli's reply. “Send them through.”

Pinion stepped back. Rigby led Burton, Swinburne, Trounce, and the minister around the screen into a space that had been transformed into a plush and well-furnished office. They lined up in front of a large mahogany desk. A very highly polished clockwork man was sitting behind it, the light of three oil lamps scintillating and flashing across its plated surfaces, upon which intricate scrollwork had been etched.

With a quiet whirr, it directed its three vertical facial features at the colonel.

“Well done, Rigby. You have rounded up our miscreants. I presume there's a poet beneath the ragamuffin getup?”

Burton felt his heart hammering. The machine had spoken with Disraeli's voice.

“There is,” Rigby confirmed.

Turning its head slightly, the brass man appeared to scrutinise Edward Burton.

“Minister, when I heard you'd contacted the colonel, I had your chair brought here. Please make use of it.”

The armchair was to the left of the desk. Edward heaved his tremendous bulk across to it and settled with evident relief. All of a sudden, he ceased to be a breathless mountain of fat and became, instead, a commanding and decisive presence.

“I abandoned you, Prime Minister.”

“You did, sir,” Disraeli responded. “And it will take much to placate me. While I am convinced there is no waste of time in life like that of making explanations, I find that I require one.”

“My explanation stands before you,” the minister said, waving a hand toward the prisoners. “The moment you instigated Young England, I knew these fellows would cause trouble. Therefore I withdrew, because I was also certain they'd seek my support. In refusing it, I'd have shown my hand far too early in the game.”

“What mischief do they intend?”

“They are backed by William Gladstone and are in the early stages of mounting a rebellion against you.”

“Gladstone?” Disraeli said. “By God, that sanctimonious prig has not a single redeeming defect. So you hightailed it to avoid your brother, did you? And now you've laid your cards on the table?”

“I have. By vanishing, I established a position that would later prove advantageous. As it, indeed, has done. My familial loyalty was taken for granted when I reappeared, and, through it, those allies of my brother who remained at liberty were rounded up.”

Disraeli was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Allies who, like Sir Richard, are all members of your Ministry of Chronological Affairs. I am bound to suggest that all you have done is perform a much delayed cleansing of your own house.”

“The implication being that it is my fault these men have chosen to oppose you?”

“Is it?”

“No. They were out of my sphere of influence for more than a year. In their report of that period, there are obvious omissions. Lawless and his crew, who have demonstrated that they remain loyal to me, were not present during many of the key events and cannot give a full account of what occurred. Of one thing, however, I am convinced—”

The minister levelled a fat forefinger at his sibling.

“That individual is not Sir Richard Francis Burton.”

The prime minister's blank face showed nothing but reflected light and, through its topmost opening, tiny spinning gearwheels.

“Then who is he?”

“I believe him to be a
doppelgänger
from a parallel history.”

“So he
is
Sir Richard, but not
our
Sir Richard?”

“Precisely.”

“On what do you base that supposition?”

“On the fact that, while his objectives are unmistakable, his ability to carry them through is markedly lacking. My real brother would be causing you considerable difficulties by now. This person has merely blundered about and made an irritant of himself. His activities must be curtailed, of course, but more importantly, we must find out why he is here and what has become of our own man.”

Disraeli's neck buzzed again as he moved his head to regard the explorer. “Do you care to explain yourself?”

“I am Burton,” the other responded. “I am opposed to the foul scheme you call Young England. I believe the many black diamonds that have accrued in this time stream are causing a resonance that has driven you out of your mind and, in consequence—and for the good of the empire—you and your government must now be overthrown. Since you've made that impossible by democratic means, others must be resorted to. It was I who brought the stones here, therefore it falls to me to defeat you. Once I have achieved that, I shall recover the gems from wherever you've secreted them and will see to it that they are destroyed. Were you still human, I would hope that, after their destruction, you'd recover your sanity, see the error of your current policies, and be able to resume your duties and rectify the situation. However, I understand now that it has gone too far. I'm sorry, Mr. Disraeli. Sorry for you, and sorry for what I must do.”

The prime minister gave a slight nod. “I see. Sir Richard, let me tell you, what you regard as madness is, in fact, nothing more or less than a necessary and unequivocal response to the information you gathered during your voyage into the future. I have been ever of the opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded. History, at regular intervals, grows stale. Institutions that were once visionary become fossilised. Rather than fuelling progress, they hamper it. Old orders must either be refreshed or be overthrown. For stability's sake, I favour the first of those options, that experience and wisdom not be lost. You, apparently, do not.”

Burton's eyes, dark and fierce, took in every visible inch of the prime minister's new body: the gleaming brass, the lines of rivets and engraved decorations, the tiny gears and pistons, the springs and flywheels, the regulators and gyroscope.

He said, “I prefer my country to be run by men than by exaggerated clocks.”

“Clocks are more reliable than men,” Disraeli countered. “They have the measure of Time. Once Young England is fully established, we will keep the pace of change and evolution steady. No more racing at full pelt into the unknown. No more grappling with the unanticipated penalties of our haste. Power has only one duty, Sir Richard, and that is to secure the social welfare of the people. The doyens of Young England are now best placed to achieve that noble purpose, for we are no longer tainted by selfish motives. We are eternal, and we want for nothing. Whatever you are withholding from us—for you are certainly withholding something—and whatever the reason you have replaced the man we sent forward through history, you must forget it all. It no longer applies. The future you returned from is being rewritten, and the present you now inhabit is not the present you left.”

Burton's upper lip curled. “You are dehumanised, sir. How can you claim to know what is best for the people when you are no longer a person? This immortalising of the elite, dismantling of the middle class, and sentencing of the workers to inviolable slavery is utterly loathsome. All that you seek to establish must be erased.”

The prime minister flicked the digits of his right hand dismissively. “How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct. Your judgment is too much sentiment and too little sense. In politics nothing is contemptible. Your revolution, had you ever developed the wherewithal to begin it, would have amounted to nothing beyond mindless vandalism. You consider me insane, but
my
revolution will create a better and more stable world.”

Before Burton could respond, Swinburne shrieked, “My hat! What risible rubbish! What tedious tripe! What cretinous claptrap!”

“A fine example of your poetry, Mr. Swinburne,” the premier said, “which is, as ever, cluttered by alliteration while notably lacking in profundity. I'll have no more of it, if you please. Now, gentlemen, I am very busy and must bid you farewell. I will give you a few days to decide your own fate. If you choose to divulge the secrets you are keeping, the information will be gratefully received, and you will be extradited to the Indian work camps where you will toil for the remainder of your days. If you choose to remain tight-lipped, I must regard you as enemies of the empire, and you will be executed.”

Trounce exclaimed, “By thunder! You're the devil himself!”

“Nonsense. Take them down to the cells, Colonel.”

“And this man?” Rigby asked with a nod toward the minister.

“He and I have a great deal to discuss. I will inform you of his status when I've decided what it is.”

Rigby turned and signalled to the prisoners that they should precede him out of the enclosed area.

With a last withering glare at his brother, Burton led the way back into the main room where he, Trounce, and Swinburne were once again subjected to the unyielding grip of the SPG units. The group retraced its steps down the spiral staircase to the ground floor, crossed the Tool Room and, rather than returning to the armoury, entered the room beneath the chapel.

Rigby escorted them to a shadowy corner and there opened a door, revealing the top of another set of steps.

Oil lamps illuminated their descent, and Burton was surprised to find it a much longer one than he anticipated—the stairs extending far lower than the tower's original cellar, he was sure. He recalled that another Burton had described this place in the account entitled
Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon
, and, when the party came to a metal door, he experienced a powerful familiarity, and knew that beyond the barrier there were secret government chambers.

Rigby produced a key and unlocked the portal. They stepped through into a wide and stark hallway and proceeded along it. A man with a bucket and mop was cleaning the floor, upon which Burton noticed muddy footprints, and others were coming and going, passing in and out of doors to either side. The various portals bore signs: Conference Rooms 1 & 2, Offices A–F, Offices G–L, Administration Rooms, Laboratories 1–5, Medium Rooms 1–4, Vault, Weapon Shop, Monitoring Station, Canteen, and Dormitories.

The ghosts of events he'd never experienced haunted him. The underground complex and its closed off rooms suddenly felt like the depths of his own mind, filled with inaccessible spaces, populated by enigmas and incarcerated agonies.

By God, how many Burtons are there and which of them am I? How many struggles have I endured? How much trauma have I suffered? And now this.

At the end of the passage, Rigby opened a door marked
Security
. With a curt gesture, he had the SPG machines drag Burton, Swinburne, and Trounce through into a rectangular chamber. It contained a great many tall filing cabinets, a desk piled high with documents, and walls punctuated by six sturdy metal doors, each numbered.

A uniformed man, with legs terribly bowed by rickets, looked up from an open drawer and said, “Busy.”

“Jolly good!” Swinburne piped up. “We'll be on our way, then. Bye-bye!”

Rigby ignored the poet. “New inmates, Mr. Thresher. A room apiece.”

“Drat it! Don't I have work enough? Can you not see all the paperwork? There are hundreds of dratted babbages walking around this castle that could do the work, yet I—just one man—am expected to keep track of all the dratted prisoners.” He pointed to the tallest stack of documents on the desk. “That alone is from Green Park. These others come in every dratted morning from the other camps: Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Edin—”

Rigby cut him off. “I'm simply ordering you to open the doors, Thresher. And you'll do so at once and without further complaint. Nothing more is expected of you. A clockwork man will attend them when necessary.”

Thresher grunted, pushed the drawer shut, and unclipped a bunch of keys from his belt. “It's still a dratted inconvenience.”

Swinburne wriggled in his captor's unyielding metal hands. “Why don't you tell the colonel to bugger off, Mr. Thresher? My companions and I will promise not to bother you again.”

The gaoler said, “Cells three, four, and five.”

Rigby shrugged. “I don't care which. Just lock 'em up.”

“And shove Rigby into number six,” Swinburne suggested.

Thresher clicked his tongue despondently. “I'll have to add to the files. More dratted work.” He opened each of the cells and one after the other the prisoners were pushed into them; Swinburne into number three, Burton into four, and Trounce into five.