The visitors stopped in front of him. The adult snapped, “Government inspection. Do not resist. Let us aboard.”

“We’re a cargo ship,” Burton said. “Empty.”

“Nonsense. You’re a vessel from the distant past and you’re carrying enemies of the state.”

“From the past?” Burton replied. “What do you mean by that?”

“You are chrononauts from the year 1860. And you, old son, are Sir Richard Francis Burton, the famous explorer.”

“Old son?”

The figure gave a bark of laughter. He and his companion reached up and pulled back their hoods.

“I’ve always been absolutely hopeless at playacting,” said Detective Inspector William Trounce.

“What ho! What ho! What ho!” cheered Algernon Charles Swinburne.

“Cloned!” Swinburne declared with an extravagant wave of his arms. “We were jolly well cloned!”

Sadhvi stammered, “But—but are you the same?”

Trounce tapped his head. “Humph! Memories and personalities intact. We recall everything. Is my bowler aboard? I still miss it.”

Bemusedly, unable to stop staring, Burton nodded.

Trounce reached up to smooth his moustache, even though it wasn’t there anymore. “By Jove, it’s good to see you after all this time.”

“Death defied,” Wells whispered in awe.

“To the lounge!” Swinburne exclaimed, stepping forward and giving a mighty jerk of his left elbow. “A toast to old friendships renewed. Nineteenth-century brandy, hurrah! Believe me, they don’t make it like they used to. By golly, I’ve missed it terribly. And all of you, too, of course. How the very devil are you?”

Burton suddenly pounced forward, caught the poet under the arms, yanked him off his feet, and whirled him around. “Algy! Algy! Bismillah! Algy!” He dropped him and lunged at Trounce, embracing him in a bear hug. “William, you old goat!”

“Steady on!” Trounce protested.

Swinburne screeched with laughter. “Three hundred and forty-two years!” he crowed. “That’s how long it’s taken!”

“To get here?” Sadhvi asked.

“No! For Beastly Burton to go soft!”

“Idiot!” Burton protested. “By Allah’s beard! Exactly the same idiot!”

“At your service,” Swinburne said with a melodramatic curtsey. “I say! Did someone mention a toast?”

“You did. And I wholeheartedly second the motion.”

Grinning helplessly, the reunited chrononauts closed the hatch and reconvened in the ship’s lounge where, to Swinburne’s evident delight, a decanter of brandy was produced. Swallowing his measure, the poet smacked his lips, gave a sigh of pleasure, and said, “At last. There are chemicals in everything, these days. Ruins the taste.” He sat back in his chair, crossed his legs, uncrossed them, kicked out the right, twitched his shoulders, raised his glass, and added, “I appear to be empty.”

Gooch provided a refill.

“Cloned,” Burton said. “Are you, then, your own son, Algy? Grandson?”

“Neither. I’m me. The same person, the same memories, an exact copy of the body. The only difference is that I’ve lived a second childhood and have a brother I never had before.”

“Brother?”

“This old duffer,” Swinburne said, cocking a thumb at Trounce.

Burton’s right eyebrow went up.

Trounce said, “Back in 2130, the Cannibals indulged in a little body snatching. Just like the old days, hey? Resurrectionists! DNA from our corpses was put on ice. Thirty-eight years ago, mine was used to create yours truly. Thus you now find me exactly the age I was when you last saw me. My great-grandfather was the Thomas Bendyshe you met; my father his clone, also named Thomas. My mother is Marianne Monckton Milnes. Of course, they’re not strictly speaking my biological parents, but she bore me and they both raised me. In 2179, this scallywag was created—” He indicated Swinburne. “Fifteen years my junior. Same surrogate parents. The timing was carefully arranged so that he, too, would today be the age he was when you saw him last.”

Burton pulled a cigar from his pocket, fumbled and dropped it into his lap, retrieved it, looked at it, then blinked at Trounce and said, “You—you spent a childhood together?”

“Yes!” Swinburne said. “You should have seen how skinny he was. And stubborn. An absolute mule.”

“As you can see,” Trounce said. “Carrots is every bit as loony as his previous incarnation.”

Burton smiled at the nickname, which he’d heard used before in reference to his redheaded friend, though never by Trounce.

“I was somewhat past my childhood when he was born,” the ex-detective went on, “but, yes, we were raised together, and for a specific purpose.”

“It being our arrival?” Krishnamurthy ventured.

“Exactly. Algy and I are now the leaders of the Cannibal Club.”

Sadhvi said, “What of Mick Farren, William. Was he also—um— reborn?”

Trounce sighed. “I’m afraid not. There was nothing left of him. I heard what he did. Brave chap! Funny, back in 1968, he scared me silly with that wild hair of his, but I came to like him more and more. A bad loss.”

“And Thomas Bendyshe?” Burton asked.

An expression of uneasiness passed across Trounce’s and Swinburne’s faces.

The poet said, “Offshoots of the family still oversee our finances. As for the direct line, Father—”

“A distraction was necessary,” Trounce put in.

“Distraction?”

“Spring Heeled Jack is in control of the Empire, there can be no doubt about it. You arrived at nine tonight, the fifteenth of February 2202, which as we know is a significant moment for him. For reasons that will become clear to you, we were concerned that he might be watching out for your arrival. Father gave him something else to think about.”

“What?” Burton asked.

“The destruction of the American Embassy. The Cannibals have bombed it.”

The king’s agent again looked at his unlit cigar. He bit his lip and returned it to his pocket. “William, don’t tell me the club is resorting to violence.”

“Humph! The embassy has been a fully automated affair for many years. There was no one in it. Even so, it’s a crucial hub in New Buckingham Palace’s surveillance network, and its destruction will have caused considerable disruption throughout the city.”

Burton said, “I see.” He considered his old friend. Trounce looked the same, though clean-shaven and with slightly longer hair, but his manner was rather less gruff, and his diction a little different. The king’s agent found it disconcerting.

Daniel Gooch poured Swinburne a third brandy and said, “I take it the Turing Fulcrum is still in operation?”

“It is,” Trounce confirmed. “There’s been no real progress for well over a century. Everyone is watched. Everything is recorded. Creativity is suppressed. Fortunately, we Cannibals have Lorena Brabrooke.”

“We met her ancestor in 2022,” Burton said.

“The same. Cloned. A bloomin’ prodigy. Her ability to evade detection and construct false identities borders on the artistic. Your nanomechs were automatically updated the moment you appeared over Bendyshe Bay. By now, the Turing Fulcrum has already registered you as non-threats. If we exercise due caution, we can leave the ship and proceed with the mission.”

“To locate and destroy the damn thing,” Burton said.

“Quite so. There’s no question that Spring Heeled Jack has infiltrated it, exists within it, and through it has taken complete control of the Empire, yet for all Lorena’s ability to interfere with what the Fulcrum does, she’s never been able to identify exactly where it is. It, on the other hand, has on a number of occasions got dangerously close to locating her, which is why we’ve until now hesitated to mount an all-out assault against it. Tonight will be different. She’ll employ her talents to the full to confuse it while we set out to finally run Spring Heeled Jack to ground.”