The Rise of the Automated Aristocrats (31 page)

“Your lantern, William?”

The detective inspector made a sound of acknowledgment and produced his light. Moments later, it illuminated a catacomb; a tall, long, and narrow vaulted passage of elegant brickwork with three arched doorways on either side, which, as they passed along it, they saw opened onto narrower but longer corridors. Coffins lay in wall niches, and decorative wrought-iron gates opened onto small bays and loculi in which individuals and families had been interred.

At the far end of the passage, they came to a blank wall. Burton used his right foot to nudge a brick at the base of it. There was a soft clunk. He put his shoulder to the wall and pushed. A square section of it swung inward, revealing a long, dusty corridor. It was barely wider than his shoulders and sloped downward.

Burton led his companions in, and, as the portal swung shut behind them, reflected that his fear of enclosed spaces appeared to have left him. No surprise after a year spent entrapped in a metal body.

The memory of that experience felt very remote.

Too, the fact that he was entering a hiding place previously used by the creature who'd killed Isabel had little effect on him. He ought to feel uneasy but didn't. The recollection of her death contained no depth of emotion, no regret or sorrow.

From behind him, Trounce's lamp cast weird shadows.

They proceeded forward until, once again, they were confronted by a featureless wall. Burton pressed another brick to open a concealed door then led them out into a vault of coffin-filled alcoves and gated bays. It was illuminated by oil lamps and cluttered with machinery. These catacombs, he knew, were beneath the Dissenters' Church. They were wider, taller, and more extensive than the neighbouring tunnels and consisted of many more passages, which branched off from the central corridor. This, though also crowded with machinery and workbenches, appeared rather more organised than the others. It was quiet. They saw only one person—a woman—attending to chemical apparatus.

“Good evening,” Burton said, as they drew closer to her. “Or do I mean morning?”

“Sir Richard!” she exclaimed, looking up. “We weren't expecting you. Everyone is asleep.”

“As I would very much like to be. We'll speak with Mr. Gooch at a more convenient hour. Is there anywhere we can lay our heads?”

She nodded and pointed toward the mouth of a passage. “We've cleared out the bays along there. You'll find some unoccupied. The bedding is a bit makeshift, I'm afraid, but it suffices. If you'd like to wash first, go right to the end. You'll find basins, jugs of water, soap and towels. There's also a contraption of pipes and—well—it's an—um—it's our facilities, if you see what I mean.”

“I do. It all sounds marvellous. Will you tell Daniel we're here when he rises, but not to disturb us? We've had an exhausting night. And ask him to have a look at this.” He held up the metal head and placed it on a worktop.

“Oh! I've not seen one like that before. Yes, I'll tell him. Pleasant dreams.”

“Unlikely.”

Less than thirty minutes later, the three men were, as Penniforth had predicted, in the land of Nod.

In the morning, Burton, Swinburne, and Trounce breakfasted from the considerable supplies the ex-DOGS personnel had accrued in their hideout. They then joined Daniel Gooch at a workbench.

“This is remarkable,” the engineer told Burton, lifting the metal head of the downed Special Patrol Group constable. He turned it so the explorer could see the exposed inner workings. “You'll note that the babbage is of a completely different design. A little larger. As far as I can see, it's been inspired by the Turing additions to the Mark Three in the
Orpheus
.”

Burton peered at the mechanism. “But why the increase in size? The Turing machinery we encountered in the future was tiny—some of it microscopic.”

“It was,” Gooch agreed. “But though we can ascertain the function of Turing components, we still haven't the capacity to reproduce them on such a small scale. This, I am certain, is Babbage's best effort to mimic that future machinery by employing contemporary techniques and materials. No one but he could have done it. For all that it's clumsier and less powerful than a Turing of 2202, it's nevertheless a significant advancement over our previous probability calculators. The man is a bloody genius. This is magnificent!”

Trounce, standing with Swinburne on the other side of the workbench, and sporting a very black eye, grumbled, “Humph! You might be less enthusiastic if it directed a machine that thumped you with a baton.”

“I dare say,” Gooch conceded.

Burton pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I can only conclude that Charles is producing these machines for the government. He departed the power station with forethought and in a carefully arranged manner, taking all his work with him. It's unlikely then that he's being forced to do anything against his will. My suspicion is that he was recruited by the prime minister last October, though what might have been promised to him, and what motivated Disraeli at that time, I cannot fathom.”

Swinburne hopped into the air and swiped a fist. “Dizzy is an absolute cad! A total bounder! Our audience with him was an utter farce!”

Burton nodded his agreement. “I believe so. He was considerably more knowledgeable than he appeared to be. For a start, he'd no doubt already read
The History of the Future
, which Babbage's contraptions had snatched from Maneesh and Sadhvi the day before we met with him.”

“He's gone mad,” Trounce opined. “It's the only explanation.”

They fell silent for a few moments.

Gooch raised the brass head. “I wonder where these things are being manufactured. The equipment used to assemble clockwork men at Battersea Power Station was removed—along with everything else—by government men when the Department of Guided Science was disbanded. Wherever it was taken, I daresay that's where we'll find old Babbage.”

“Even if we locate it, what—” Trounce began. Gooch cut him off with a loud exclamation.

“Wait! I could—yes! By heavens, I think you may have given me the means!” He turned the head. Its exposed artificial brain somewhat resembled an unpeeled artichoke. With the forefinger of his left supplementary hand, he pointed to a small, leaf-shaped, metal panel that lay flush with its surface. “It'll take me some considerable time to study the whole thing—or, rather, what I can of it without setting off the booby trap—but I can tell you right now what this is. It's the equivalent of the component I removed from Grumbles, the part containing the grain of black diamond dust. Only this, instead of diamond, holds a flake of crystalline silicate.”

“It performs the same function?” Burton asked.

“Yes, it does, and that might be the key.”

“How so?”

“The Field Amplifier hasn't worked. One grain of diamond just doesn't offer sufficient information for the apparatus to analyse. However, I'm pretty certain I can construct instruments that, if attached to three or four of these new probability calculators and positioned at widespread points around the city, could be used to triangulate the source of the transmission. It might lead us to the factory, or to Babbage, or to our missing people, or to all three.”

“Or just to Rigby,” Trounce commented. “He's in charge of the confounded things.”

“I understand that,” Gooch countered, “but through this component they're able to consult with one another over a distance, and no doubt he can direct them from afar, as well. With all the Special Patrol Group constables, that amounts to a lot of information whizzing back and forth. I'll wager it has to be sorted by a central device, a powerful synthetic intelligence that can process it all before boosting the individual elements along the resonance existing between the flakes of silicate. Find that, and I'll wager you'll find Babbage fussing over it.”

“The
Orpheus
brain?” Burton asked.

“That's my supposition.”

Swinburne asked, “How many heads would you require in order to locate it?”

“A minimum of three; more for greater accuracy.”

“So you want us to go around decapitating mechanical policemen?”

Gooch turned his metal palms upward. “That will be necessary, yes.”

“Hoorah! Count me in!”

Burton calmed his friend with a sharp gesture. After a moment's thought, he said, “Daniel. How long will your instruments take to construct?”

Gooch gave a four-armed shrug. “I only just had the idea. I haven't designed them yet. I'll need to experiment with this constable's babbage. Give me a few days.”

“In that case, I suggest we delay our beheading spree until you're ready. When we make that move, we'll be confirming ourselves as enemies of the state. Until then, I think it best we operate as stealthily as we can. In order to do that, I must first send Monty on a mission.”

The big cabbie was at the other end of the catacomb, drinking coffee, smoking his pipe, and reading a newspaper. As Burton approached him, he caught a glimpse of the headline: CHINESE BOMB THREAT TO LIVERPOOL SHIPYARDS.

Lies.
The politics of fear mongering
.

A side headline declared: INEXPLICABLE DEATH OF KING'S SPIRITUALIST.

“Monty, I have a job for you.”

The task took five minutes to explain but all morning for Penniforth to complete. While he waited, Burton meditated in one of the bays. There was a contradiction at the heart of recent events that he couldn't get to grips with. Babbage hated the working classes. Disraeli, by contrast, glorified them—mostly, the explorer suspected, because their existence gave stark definition to the upper classes. The prime minister was apparently bent on sharpening the contrast by nipping the emerging middle class in the bud. What, then, was in it for Babbage? Why was he cooperating with Young England?

At a little after midday, Burton's contemplation was interrupted by Penniforth's return. He had Bram with him, and their arrival was announced by Pox, who was sitting on the youngster's head.

“Blundering dangle arms! Intolerable blots!”

Burton, Swinburne, and Trounce joined their allies in the main vault.

Penniforth, whose giant frame was weighed down by suitcases, hatboxes, and bags, placed the load upon the floor. “You were right, guv'nor. Your house is bein' watched.”

“We went a-sneaking through the mews, so we did,” Bram declared excitedly. “Hallo, Cap'n! Hallo, Mr. Swinburne! Hallo, Mr. Fogg! Cor! Did you get thumped?”

“I did, lad,” Trounce confirmed. “And for the umpteenth time, I am not your Macallister Fogg fellow.”

“O' course not, sir!” Bram said. He tapped the side of his nose and gave the detective inspector an exaggerated wink.

Trounce responded with a despairing sigh.

“Sack of grease!” Pox commented.

“We got everythin' on your list,” Penniforth told Burton. “Mrs. Angell helped us to pack it. I think she sneaked in a pork pie.”

Swinburne laughed. “Good old Mrs. A!”

The cabbie lifted two long clothbound items. “I 'ope these are the right ones.”

Taking them, Burton unwrapped one to reveal a shiny and oddly shaped sword, somewhat similar to a narrow question mark in form.

“It's a
khopesh
,” he said, in answer to Trounce's enquiring expression. “A type of scimitar, evolved from an axe, and widely used by the Egyptians and Canaanites. Strong and sharp enough that—if swung with sufficient force—it'll slice through the neck of a clockwork man.” He paused before adding, “I hope.”

He put the weapons aside. “But we have some work to do before we go headhunting. Monty, Bram, get yourselves some lunch. Algy, William, help me with the luggage, will you?”

The three of them dragged the bags, boxes, and cases along the passage to the bays they'd adopted as their bedrooms. Burton nodded toward a stone plinth. “Sit.”

Swinburne hoisted himself onto it and sat with his feet swinging. Trounce settled next to him, looking puzzled. He watched as Burton opened a large carpetbag, then he leaned over and looked into it. “By Jove! Are we going to—?”

“We are,” Burton said.

A little under an hour later, Daniel Gooch uttered a cry of surprise as three complete strangers walked out into the main gallery.

The tallest of the trio, whose complexion marked him as a native of a sunnier clime, was dressed in a pale-grey John Bull top hat with a matching knee-length frock coat, tightly buttoned up to the neck, dark trousers, and polished black boots. He had a monocle lodged in the socket of his left eye, possessed badly pockmarked cheeks, and wore his mustachios long, waxed, and twisted at the ends into very long upsweeping points.

Doffing his hat, revealing that his hair was parted in the middle and slick with Macassar oil, he bowed extravagantly and said in a lilting accent, “Good day to you, sir. I am Count Palladino of Brindisi. It is my great pleasure to be visiting your country. You have met my companions?”

At his side, a fat fellow with a thick beard, sunken eyes, and clothes that had seen better days, nodded a greeting and mumbled, “Isaiah Clutch. Metalworker. At your service.”

The most diminutive of the three, a filthy, black-haired guttersnipe bedecked in rags, offered a broad smile—displaying chipped and rotten teeth—and croaked, “What 'o, matey! Slippery Ned Beesley's me name, an' chimley sweepin's me game. Got a flue what wants a-scrubbin'?”

Gooch stammered, “I—I—who are—are you—you surely aren't—Sir Richard?”

Count Palladino threw his head back and gave a bark of laughter. “Yes, Daniel, it's me.”

“Trounce,” Clutch grunted.

“And me, Algernon,” Slippery Ned Beesley added, unnecessarily. “Ain't we a picture, though?”

“Good Lord! You're unrecognisable!”

“I'm glad to hear it,” Burton said. “We need to be if we're to move around freely.” He turned to address Trounce. “A risky mission for you, William. Go loiter in Whitehall and make contact with those of your colleagues you can still trust. Find out how many in Scotland Yard are disgruntled, how many we might rely on if—if—”