They struggled, locked together.
“Give it up!” Burton pleaded.
“Let go of me!” the would-be assassin yelled. “My name must be remembered. I must live through history!”
I must live through history. I must live through history.
The words throbbed into the future, echoed through time.
The second flintlock detonated, the recoil jolting both men.
The back of Queen Victoria’s skull exploded.
Burton gripped the gunman, shook him, and heaved him off his feet.
His ancestor fell backward, and his head impacted against the low cast-iron fence. There was a crunch, and a spike suddenly emerged from the man’s eye. He twitched and went limp.
“You’re not dead!” Burton exclaimed, staggering back. “You’re not dead! Stand up! Run for it! Don’t let them catch you!”
The assassin lay on his back, his head impaled, blood pooling beneath him.
Burton stumbled away.
There were screams and cries, people pushing past him.
He saw Victoria. She was tiny, young, like a child’s doll, and her shredded brain was oozing onto the ground.
No. No. No.
This isn’t happening.
This can’t happen.
This didn’t happen.
Burton backed away, feeling terrified, fell, got up again, shoved his way out of the milling crowd, and ran.
“Get back to the suit,” he mumbled as his legs pumped. “Try something else.”
He raced up the slope and ran into the trees.
His heart was pounding.
He pushed through to where he’d left the time suit.
I’ll go farther back. I’ll change this.
He suddenly registered that someone was behind him. Before he could turn, an arm encircled his neck and squeezed with agonising force, crushing his throat. He saw his suit, the boots and headpiece, just feet away. He reached for them, but it was hopeless. He knew he was going to die.
A man hissed in his ear, “You don’t deserve this, but I have to do it again. I’m sorry.”
Do it again?
He felt his head being twisted.
My neck! My neck! Get off me!
His vertebrae crunched.
White light flared.
He felt suspended, as if time had halted.
He heard Charles Babbage’s voice.
“It is nine o’clock on the fifteenth of February, 1860.”
“It is nine o’clock on the fifteenth of February, 1860.”
“It is nine o’clock on the fifteenth of February, 1860.”
“It is nine o’clock on the fifteenth of February, 1860.”
“It is nine o’clock on the fifteenth of February, 1860.”
The voice overlaid itself again and again, as if thousands of Babbages were speaking at once.
Flee! Burton thought. Get away from here! Back home! Back home in time for supper! Back home! Back home in time!
It was one o’clock in the afternoon on Monday the twentieth of February, and fourteen individuals were gathered in the library of suite five at the Royal Venetia Hotel. They were not particularly comfortable, for the room was bursting at the seams with books and the group had difficulty finding places to sit or stand among them. The volumes, which ranged from boys’ adventure novels to esoteric tracts, from political memoirs to philosophical treatises, lined every wall from floor to ceiling, were stacked high on the deep red carpet, and were piled haphazardly in every corner.
Sir Richard Francis Burton’s brother, Edward, presided over the meeting. Morbidly obese, with a face disfigured by scars, he was wrapped, as was his habit, in a threadbare red dressing gown and occupied an enormous wing-backed armchair of scuffed and cracked leather. There was a half-empty tankard of ale on the table beside him. His clockwork butler, Grumbles—with his canister-shaped head of brass cocked slightly to one side—was standing nearby, ready to refill the glass.
“So the jungle is dying?” Edward asked.
“Withdrawing might be the better term,” Burton replied. “In a few days, nothing of it will remain except mulch. It has fulfilled its purpose. London will soon be clear of its unseasonal blooms.”
“Sentient herbage. Utterly preposterous.”
“That’s not the least of it. The jungle and Algernon are one and the same.”
Edward Burton glowered at the king’s agent, then at Detective Inspectors William Trounce and Sidney Slaughter, Police Constable Thomas Honesty, Sadhvi Raghavendra, Daniel Gooch, Charles Babbage, Richard Monckton Milnes, Captain Nathaniel Lawless, Maneesh Krishnamurthy, Shyamji Bhatti and Montague Penniforth. Together, these individuals comprised the secretive Ministry of Chronological Affairs, of which he was the head.
“All of you give credence to this fantasy, I suppose?” he asked.
“I trust Sir Richard’s judgement,” Gooch said.
“Likewise,” Trounce muttered. “Which means I may have to start doubting my own.”
The others nodded, apart from Babbage, who appeared to be counting his fingers.
The minister addressed Swinburne. “And what do you make of it, young man?”
The poet kicked spasmodically, accidentally knocking over a stack of books, and shrilled, “It’s delicious! The jungle is me and I am it and we are one and the same. Or some such.”
“That isn’t much help.”
“May I partake of a bottle of your ale, Minister? I feel sure it will clarify my thoughts.”
Edward Burton impatiently waved his permission.
Burton said, “We know that in Abdu El Yezdi’s native history, when he trekked to the Mountains of the Moon, a version of Algy went with him. El Yezdi never explained what happened to his companion, but he does record that a Prussian agent, Count Zeppelin, followed them, and that the man possessed venomous talons—a product of eugenics. As fantastic as it sounds, the toxin caused an individual named Rigby to transform into vegetation. It appears that the same fate befell the poet.”
From the sideboard to which he’d moved, and with a bottle in one hand and a glass in the other, Swinburne said, “The other jolly old Swinburne is now a plant-based consciousness. It possesses a unique perception of time and is aware of every variant of history. It was able to send its roots through into our world to warn us what has happened. Simply splendid! I feel thoroughly proud of it, him, and myself!”
Edward gave a puff of incredulity. He lifted his ale, gulped it down, and jabbed a fat forefinger toward his brother. “It inflicted the visions upon you?”
“They weren’t visions exactly,” Burton corrected. “The jungle worked with the Beetle and the children under his command to produce Saltzmann’s Tincture from its fruits. Through a vague mesmeric influence, and over the course of half a decade, it introduced the decoction to me and slowly increased its potency. The most recent doses caused my awareness to slide from one iteration of history to another, drawing my attention to the advent of what we might term the Spring Heeled Jack consciousness, which was created when all the Charles Babbages across all the histories performed the same experiment at the same moment.”
“It knew ahead of the event that it would occur?”
“As I say, the jungle has a unique perception.”
“And what of your experiences as Edward Oxford?”
Burton paused to light a cheroot. “The one sane fragment of Spring Heeled Jack caused black diamond dust to be injected into my scalp. It was an act of suicide, for my own thoughts would soon overwrite it. However, before that occurred, I received from it memories of the time suit’s construction and the final moments of its inventor. It was a message, or rather, it was the gift of an essential item of information.”
“What information?”
“Before I answer that, I think you should hear what the jungle showed Algy.”