“Where?” Burton asked the machine.
“Above. You.”
Richard Francis Burton began to climb.
“What are you doing?” Crowley shouted from below. “Stop, damn your eyes!”
Burton ignored the old man, hauling himself up on wooden rafters and metal framework to a matrix high above. In the space where the great bell once hung suspended was a crystalline structure, like a giant snowflake. Inside this was six black stones that glinted in the milky light coming in through gaps in the top of the clock tower.
“Stop!” Crowley croaked. “My working will not be interrupted!”
Burton ignored him. “Tell me where the Map of Time is hidden,” said Burton to the machine.
The bellows wheezed. The cylinders of wax turned on their great spindles. “I. Kept. It. On. My. Person. At. All. Times,” the machine said. “Safest. Place.”
“Blast!” said the explorer. How would he get it from him now?
He reached the top of the tower, and the Wold-Newton stones. Crowley seethed below him with wheezy, inchoate rage. “Blast you, Burton! I need those stones intact.”
Burton went to where they were secured in the crystalline lattice. The way they caught the light reminded him of the crystalline control levers of the Time Machine. The explorer removed a penknife from his pocket and went to work, prying the first stone free. It was big as a marble, and cut into facets like a diamond. He stared into it and thought he could see universes. The faces of the other Burtons he had met danced within each facet. He held it between thumb and forefinger, then tossed it into the whirring mechanism below. It caught in the teeth of two cogs and was ground into dust.
He went to work on the other stones, freeing all six of them and dashing them to powder while Crowley fumed helplessly. At some point he had called for assistance; Burton could hear many booted feet running up the stairs that led into the top of the tower.
“Thank. You,” said the Thinker. Without the Wold-Newton stones, there was nothing else pinning his soul to the machine. With a puff of smoke and the smell of burnt wiring, Mycroft Holmes was no more.
Burton felt a wave of dizziness smash into him, sensed this undone causality collapsing in upon itself, and he fell from the rafters and down into clockwork and wires and components he did not have names for. One name escaped his lips.
“Isabel.”
11. Things to Come
Burton opened his eyes and found himself lying on the deck of Nebogipfel’s strange craft once more. Herbert’s doppelganger helped the explorer to his feet.
“How did you enjoy your jaunt through things to come?” Nebogipfel asked with a sneer.
“I could have done without it,” Burton declared, removing the Time Machine from his wrist and dashing it to the floor. “Why did you send me into the future?”
“To show you what is possible,” said Nebogipfel. “To show you what my glorious work in your time has wrought. Splendid, isn’t it? A Britain ruled by a mad magician and a clockwork mind! An empire that will reshape the world in numerous and untold ways. And it’s all my doing.”
Burton sat up. Nebogipfel hadn’t been watching him. He didn’t know what he had done. “You’re insane. Time is not clay that you can mold however you like, only to smash it all and start again.”
“Oh, but it is,” said Nebogipfel. “I’ve just proven it to you. I am the God of Time.” Nebogipfel spun in a circle, arms outstretched. The Morlocks watched him impassively through their smoked goggles.
“Poor Herbert never really understood what his invention represents. He journeyed through Time as one on a sight-seeing trip, a passive observer, a voyeur who acted as if all that he was witnessing couldn’t be altered, as if the future in which he found himself couldn’t be changed for the better. Or worse.”
“But he did change it,” observed Burton. “He freed the gentle Eloi from the cruel Morlocks.” He stared at Nebogipfel’s companions self-consciously as he said this.
“But not at the source, when it could have done some good,” said Nebogipfel. “And he chose the wrong side; the descendants of the aristocracy and landed gentry he has always inwardly railed against, rather than the poor Morlocks, children of the poor, put-upon working class. I seek to correct that error.”
“You’re taking one error and adding to it a thousand-fold,” said Burton. “Herbert sought to learn from Time. You seek only to control it.”
“No. That’s not it at all. Don’t you see from your own wanderings? You can’t control it. Whatever we touch is irrevocably altered in ways we cannot foresee. That is the beautiful and terrible nature of Time.”
While Nebogipfel was dancing about, Burton moved closer to the raised control panel where Miss Hemlock’s wrist-mounted Time Machine lay. Now he was close enough to touch it. He reached for it, elbowing a Morlock in the nose who tried to stop him.
“No!” Nebogipfel exclaimed, reaching for the explorer. But it was too late. Burton gripped the miniature Time Machine tightly, thumbing its tiny lever. Nebogipfel and his tableau of Morlocks faded from view.
The sun was climbing high overhead as Burton completed his tale and finished off the brandy. Herbert stared at him, blinking. Weena was in the next room, singing softly and arranging unusual flowers in a vase, heedless of the explorer’s presence.
“Where did you get the brandy?” asked the Time Traveler.
Burton looked down at the empty bottle. “Oh. On the way here I stopped by my home and grabbed a bottle. I needed a drink, and figured you could as well, given all I had to tell you. And here we are.”
“Yes,” said Herbert, arching an eyebrow. “Here we are. I still can’t believe I have a mischievous doppelganger who has befriended the bloody Morlocks.”
“Neither can I. But I’ve seen them with my own eyes. What horrors this future holds.”
“Horrors that are now spreading,” said Herbert. “But what can be done about it? I’m sorry I ever built that bloody thing.” He pointed. In a far corner of the hut was the Time Machine, its crystalline levers removed.
“I was hoping you might have some idea how to stop him. After all, Nebogipfel is you.”
Herbert sat on the edge of his bed, cradling his head in his hands. “Bloody hell, Captain Burton. This is all so confusing. And frustrating. To think that I have an evil twin who has been mucking about through Time with those bloody awful Morlocks. And all because I came here in the first place.”
“I know it’s a lot to take in,” said Burton. “I know how confusing it must be. But you might be our only hope in stopping all this.”
The Time Traveler nodded and stood. “Care to take a walk with me?”
Herbert whispered something to Weena and gave her a peck on the cheek. Then the explorer and the Time Traveler walked down the gently sloping green hill toward the plain where the Palace of Green Porcelain and the White Sphinx stood. “Nebogipfel won’t come here,” Herbert said.
“How do you know that?” asked Burton.
“Because he can’t risk my discovering him. And because I am always at peace here. More peace than I have ever felt at any other time or place in my life.”
“But what does it matter that he doesn’t come here? He’s got all of Time and Space to play with.”
“His ability to move about isn’t the issue,” said Herbert. “The issue is with me. He thinks of this far future time as my complacent prison, one in which I am content to remain while he plays about causing trouble.”
Burton shrugged. “So?”
“So,” said the Time Traveler. “What is the one thing this self-described God of Time wants? What’s the one thing that his mastery over all of Time and Space can’t give him? He gave you a hint when he repeated some of your first words to me, when we met aboard Nemo’s Nautilus.”