“Yes,” Trounce said. “That’s her. She took the throne five years ago, our first monarch since the death of King George the Fifth in 1905.”

“I know who she is,” Burton said. “I’ve seen her before. She appeared before me when I donned the time suit’s helmet.”

“I say!” Swinburne exclaimed. “Really?”

“She is—was—Edward Oxford’s wife.” Burton rubbed the sides of his head, his brow furrowing. “I should know her name. I’m positive it isn’t Victoria, but it escapes me.”

“Whatever it is,” Trounce said, “Spring Heeled Jack obviously sought her out.”

“And has literally put her on a pedestal,” Swinburne quipped. “Would she have known what—who—he was?”

“No,” Burton said. “Remember, Oxford wiped himself out of history. From her perspective, he has never existed.”

“It must have come as quite a shock to her when she ascended to the throne, then.”

“Shhh!” Trounce hissed. With his eyes, he indicated a group of constables who’d just rounded the corner from Blandford Street.

Following the former detective inspector’s lead, the chrononauts stood casually and listened while he explained to them that “the Lowlies are the workhorses of the Empire. They take pride in their practicality, in their uncompromising ability to get a job done, and benefit from the spiritual cleansing that comes with hard toil.” He continued in this vein until the stilt men had passed, then chuckled and said, “Trounce of the Yard, deceiving the police. Who’d have thought?”

“And indulging in pure fantasy, too,” Swinburne added. “Spiritual cleansing, my foot!”

“Let’s push on,” Trounce said.

“Workhorses,” Raghavendra echoed, as they resumed walking, “but why so many in military uniform?”

“The Empire is mobilising,” Swinburne answered. “We are soon to move against what used to be the United States of America and the United Republics of Eurasia.”

“War?”

“My hat! Hardly that, Sadhvi! The U.S.A. and U.R.E. are in no condition to resist. They battled each other for so long, with us supplying the munitions, that their various countries are utterly ruined. Their populations are decimated, and the old borders have gone.”

“Are they still fighting each other?”

“If you believe the propaganda.”

“Which you shouldn’t,” Trounce put in. “The Cannibal Club has infiltrated our government’s records, which offer a story far different to that given the public.”

Burton looked up at a billboard. SOCIALISM IS THE DEATH OF CIVILISATION.

Trounce followed his eyes. “There’s no socialism. There’s no longer any conflict. There hasn’t been for a long time. Those vast regions of the Earth are now occupied by countless small communities, which somehow manage to survive in unutterably harsh conditions. They function under a self-regulating anarchism somewhat similar to that which existed in Africa before the Europeans and Arabs destroyed it.”

“Why the lies?” Raghavendra asked. “Why is the Anglo-Saxon Empire telling its people that the rest of the world is filled with—with—”

“Savage socialists,” Swinburne offered. “Permanently at each other’s throats.”

She nodded.

“Simply to mesmerise everyone into believing that this—” Trounce made an all-encompassing gesture, “is the superior civilisation and that it’s threatened from without.”

Swinburne added, “And also to justify our forthcoming invasions of America and Eurasia and our subjugation of their inhabitants.”

“If we don’t destroy the Turing Fulcrum,” Trounce said, “Spring Heeled Jack will conquer the world.”

“Bloody hell!” Burton responded.

“That,” Swinburne said, “is exactly what it will be.”

The lower end of Baker Street was lined by much higher buildings than they’d seen so far in this subterranean world, some of them almost touching the brick ceiling, and was teeming with even more of the hideously deformed Lowlies. When a pack of naked goat men bundled past, drunk, rowdy, stinking, and unashamedly aroused, Sadhvi Raghavendra said, “Can’t you enable our AugMems, William, so we can share their illusion of a better world?”

Trounce looked surprised. “Like in 2130, you mean? Did I not say? This is what they see. The real world. The illusion of cleanliness was slowly phased out during the later twenty-one hundreds. It had done its job. The policy of ‘know your place’ has, through various methods, been so consistently and insidiously driven into the population over the course of three centuries that it’s now instinctive and can be maintained with just basic propaganda and mildly tranquillising BioProcs.”

“It’s—it’s repugnant!” Wells spluttered.

“But there’s hope, Bertie,” Swinburne said. “Look.”

He pointed ahead at a large placard that had emerged from the mist ahead.

Burton stumbled to a halt and gazed in shock at it.

Floating over the street, it declared, “THE ENEMY IS AMONG US! THIS IS THE FACE OF THE SOCIALIST FIEND!” Beneath the glowing words, there was a portrait of a brutal and scarred face.

It was Burton’s own.

The chrononauts uttered sounds of incredulity.

“It’s what I’ve hinted at,” Trounce said. “Spring Heeled Jack obviously remembers you, Richard. Fears you.”

“I don’t understand,” Burton said. He looked down at Swinburne. “How does this offer hope?”

The poet gave a happy smile and a compulsive jerk of his shoulder. “By nature, the human race is very, very naughty.”

“What?” The king’s agent turned to Trounce, seeking a more cogent explanation.

Trounce said, “What Algy means is that if you tell a child not to do something without properly explaining why it mustn’t be done, you can be sure that, the moment your back is turned, the child will test the prohibition.”

“Spring Heeled Jack has overplayed his hand,” Trounce continued. “It requires only a spark to light the fuse.” He pointed up at the placard. “That face is the spark.”

“I think I understand,” Wells said softly, “When the government is perceived as the people’s enemy, the enemy of the government is perceived as the people’s friend.”

Swinburne reached out and squeezed Burton’s arm. “And when BioProcs stop tranquillising because, for example, the local transmitting station has been blown up by a dastardly member of the Cannibal Club, then—”

Burton cleared his throat. “I see.”

Trounce said, “No doubt your Mr. Grub is now busily making your presence known. It adds greater urgency to our mission. We have to destroy the Fulcrum before the people drive themselves into sufficient a frenzy to take action, else there’s little doubt that wholesale slaughter will ensue, first when the government attempts to quell our own insurgents, and then when it sends them to enslave the remains of our neighbouring empires.”

“By God, Trounce. Have you loaded so much onto my shoulders? I’m just an explorer, an anthropologist, a writer.”

“You’ve become a figurehead, too.”

I just want to go home.

Burton looked at his friends, his eyes clouded with distress, aware that he’d just thought the words that had driven his enemy over the brink and into madness.

He felt his heart throbbing, moved his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and exhaled with an audible shudder.

Burton had often regarded emotions as a phenomenon of the body rather than of the mind. It was the body that instilled fear when destruction threatened and joy when survival was assured. To now achieve what was expected of him, he knew he’d have to transcend those corporeal impulses. He must become all intellect. He must be as hard and as cold as metal.

He glanced once again at the placard before saying to Trounce in a flat tone, “Let’s get going.”

They waited while a group of spiderish women herded a flock of geese past, then moved on to the junction with Oxford Street, the whole length of which appeared to be a teeming marketplace. Over the rooftops opposite, dark smoke stained the atmosphere. There was much shouting, a few screams, and many people running, scampering, hopping or scuttling back and forth.