A guard opened the doors in response to their knock and ushered them through. “Mr. Babbage is in the workshop, sirs,” he said, peering with interest at the limp, sheet-concealed figure.

They entered, crossed the quadrangle, and went into the workshop. A technician gestured for them to follow him. They did so, trailing between the machines to the central work area.

Yet again, Burton looked upon Charles Babbage, who, with Daniel Gooch, was attending to a throne-like chair beside which the Field Preserver was suspended. The undamaged time suit was on a bench beside it. The men were tinkering with a great mass of wires that stretched between the hanging box and a framework that surrounded the suit’s helmet.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel was standing nearby, completely motionless. Trounce stood in front of him, peered at the metal face, and muttered, “Dead as a doornail.”

Gooch looked up at them as they placed the Spring Heeled Jack on a worktop and removed the sheet. “Sir Richard! You’ve captured one of the mechanisms!”

“I have,” Burton said. “Though I suffered a drubbing in the process.”

“So I see. My goodness, you’ve certainly been in the wars lately.” Gooch approached and started to examine the prone figure. “My stars! This looks like flesh.”

“It is. How’s Brunel?”

“In a total fugue. I checked his probability calculator and it seems fine. We’re leaving him for a while to see whether he comes out of it naturally.”

Burton looked at Babbage, who was so deeply engrossed in his work he had neither glanced up from it nor acknowledged the new arrivals. “I understand my presence is required, Daniel? Why?”

“Charles can explain it best.” Gooch called to the scientist, waited a moment, then, when the old man failed to respond, shouted more loudly, “Charles!”

The elderly scientist finally tore his eyes from the box and looping wires. He clapped his hands together, cried out, “Ah! Burton! Excellent! Just the man!” but then saw the stilted figure and, for the next fifteen minutes, utterly ignored everyone while he pored over it.

Finally, he addressed Gooch. “Have this stored in ice. Send for Mr. Lister. His medical knowledge is required. This mechanism has biological components. Our investigation of it might be more autopsy than dismantlement. Incredible! Incredible!”

Gooch called over a group of technicians and issued orders. Three of them carted the corpse away. A fourth hurried off to summon Lister.

“We shall proceed with our experiment while we await his arrival,” Babbage asserted. He jabbed a finger first at Burton then at the throne. “You. Sit.”

The king’s agent stayed put and folded his arms across his chest. “I’ll not subject myself to anything before you explain it to my satisfaction.”

Babbage gave a cackling laugh. “Ha! The primitive man views scientific processes as the darkest of sorceries, is that it? Don’t you worry, sir. No harm shall come to you. All you have to do is wear the helmet for a few moments and issue an instruction that it will accept from only you.”

Gooch added, “As you know, Sir Richard, Abdu El Yezdi allowed Mr. Babbage to ask questions of the functioning helmet but strictly forbade him to issue it with commands. We still follow that dictate.”

“An absurd precaution,” Babbage spat. “My research is needlessly crippled.”

“My counterpart saw the suit give rise to unhealthy enthusiasms in certain scientists,” Burton commented. “He no doubt intended that you be spared the same.”

“I’m not subject to childish passions.”

“I’m glad to hear it. To return to the matter in hand, what instruction?”

Babbage pressed his fingertips together. “Ah. The instruction. Yes. At the moment the outfit vanished, it broadcast its electromagnetic field with such strength that it was inscribed into my Field Preserver. The reverse of what I intended.”

“The experiment was supposed to record the contents of the healthy headpiece, not the damaged,” Maneesh Krishnamurthy clarified.

“That is what I just indicated, young man. Do you intend to add unnecessary observations to everything I say?”

“No, sir. My apologies.”

Trounce leaned close to Burton and whispered, “By Jove! A tetchy old goat, isn’t he?”

Gooch said, “We’re pretty sure the same burst of energy is what incapacitated Isambard.”

Babbage rapped his knuckles against the Field Preserver. “Thus what is imprinted is, in essence, a thought from the insane mind of Edward Oxford. Burton, I want you to order the functional helmet to access the recording then employ your own intellect to analyse it. You will experience it as an intention, a memory or perhaps an emotion, which you’ll feel as if it’s your own. I believe that, within that frozen thought, you may detect evidence of whoever issued the command that initiated the suit’s disappearance. You might also discover where it has gone.”

He lifted the pristine helmet and the framework that surrounded it. Burton regarded it for a moment. “Very well. Let’s get it over and done with.”

He moved to the throne-like chair and sat. Gooch stepped forward and gave assistance to Babbage, both pushing the headpiece down over Burton’s cranium. The king’s agent felt soft padding pressing against his hair and encasing his skull so completely that only his face was visible to the others.

Babbage leaned over his Field Amplifier, examining its dials.

Gooch asked Burton, “Do you hear it, sir?”

“Hear what?”

“The voice of the synthetic intelligence.”

“I don’t hear anything.”

“You have to wake it. Wait. We need to make a few adjustments first.”

The Field Preserver began to hum.

“Now, Sir Richard,” Gooch said. “Think the words engage interface.”

“What do they mean?”

Babbage growled, “Must you question every statement? Just do as Mr. Gooch says.”

Burton did, and in his mind a male voice answered, “Ready,” causing him to jump in surprise.

“Y-yes,” he stammered. “Now I hear it.”

Babbage rubbed his hands together. “Bravo! Tell it to search for external connections.”

Burton thought, Search for external connections.

“One found,” the voice declared immediately.

“It says it’s found one.”

“That’s the Field Amplifier. Good. Order it to connect and display.”

Burton issued the instruction.

“Warning, the source is corrupted,” came the response.

The king’s agent relayed the words to Babbage, who replied, “Tell it to disregard and proceed.”

Disregard and proceed, Burton thought. He looked at William Trounce, who was observing the proceedings with his arms folded and a disapproving expression on his face. Suddenly, the Scotland Yard man faded, overlaid by a scene that materialised in front of Burton’s eyes. The king’s agent saw a woman standing in a garden, pregnant, holding a tea towel. She was pretty, with long black hair, large brown eyes, and a short, thick, but curvaceous and attractive body. She looked directly at him and smiled.

He loved her.

He wanted to return to her in time for supper.

He heard himself say, in a voice that wasn’t his own, “Don’t worry. Even if I’m gone for years, I’ll be back in five minutes.”

The woman disappeared into a blazing white inferno.

Pain seared into his mind.

He screamed.

The interviewer asked, “Mr. Oxford, how does it feel to single-handedly change history?”

“I haven’t changed history,” Burton replied. “History is the past.”

“Let me rephrase the question. How does it feel to have altered the course of human history? I refer to your inventing of the fish-scale battery, which so efficiently emulates photosynthesis, and which has given us the clean and free power that lies at the heart of all our current technologies.”