“Nutty,” Swinburne interjected. “Absolutely bonkers.”
“I was going to say disoriented.”
Burton drew on his cheroot and blew out a plume of blue smoke. “If the Spring Heeled Jack mind is still coalescing into a functioning entity, perhaps they reflect its incompleteness.”
Edward Burton signed for Grumbles to refill his glass. “It has to be stopped.”
“Yes,” the king’s agent replied.
“What, brother, do you suggest we do?”
Turning to Babbage, Burton said, “Charles?”
Daniel Gooch reached out and prodded the preoccupied scientist, who looked up, blinked, and said, “I’m not to blame. The probability of all my selves performing the experiment at the same moment is so low as to be virtually inconceivable. The only explanation is that time itself possesses an agenda.”
“No one regards you as the source of the problem,” Burton said. “But you might have the solution.”
“How so?”
“In one of the alternate histories, you proposed to apply the principles of the time suit to a specially constructed vehicle in order to send a group of us through history.”
“Did I, indeed?” Babbage exclaimed.
“Microscopic components reproduced in macroscopic form. Could you do it?”
“Hmm!” Babbage raised his fingers to his head—tap tap tap!—and muttered, “I’ve just finished designing the Mark Three probability calculator. It has nowhere near the power of the suit’s helmet, but I daresay it could be adapted to the task. We also have plenty of the black diamond shards. However, without the mathematical formula that enables the procedure—”
Burton reached up and, aping the scientist’s habitual gesture, tapped his own head. “I have the equation. That was the message given to me by the diamond dust, by the undamaged helmet. The jungle helped me to understand it.”
Babbage gave a shout of excitement and leaped to his feet. “You can recall it?”
“If I put myself into a mesmeric trance, I should be able to retrieve the memory. I warn you, though, that writing out the formula will probably take some days. It is exceedingly complex.”
“By the Lord Harry!” Babbage exclaimed. He wrung his hands eagerly then stopped and frowned. “Hmm. But it won’t solve the principal difficulty, which is that to duplicate the suit’s function I’d have to create a machine the size of a room. It would need to be inside a very large vehicle, and a flying one at that.”
Burton addressed Nathaniel Lawless. “Captain?”
Lawless’s face turned as white as his finely trimmed beard, and he stammered, “Surely—surely you don’t mean to—to—to pilot the Orpheus into the future?”
“Yes!” Babbage shouted. “Yes! I could adapt your rotorship!”
“Pah!” Edward Burton barked. “Dick, this is an absurd notion! You mean to take the fight to Spring Heeled Jack? To the year 2202? What will you do when you get there? You’ll be hopelessly lost. A fish out of water. A centuries-old antique!”
“Richard,” Monckton Milnes added softly, “the shock of finding himself outside of his own era turned Oxford into a raving lunatic. What’s to prevent the same from happening to you?”
“The jungle had two hundred bottles of Saltzmann’s delivered to my pharmacist,” Burton said. “A small dose each day will be sufficient to counter the deleterious effects.”
Sadhvi Raghavendra protested, “On what do you base that supposition?”
“I’ve been using the tonic for five years. I’m well acquainted with its effects.”
She gave a dismissive wave of a hand. “It turned you into an addict.”
“A froth-mouthed gibbering imbecile,” Swinburne added.
“Hardly that, Algy. And the addiction is already easing now that its purpose is achieved.”
Raghavendra arched an eyebrow at him and said nothing more.
“I repeat,” Edward Burton murmured. “What will you do?”
Burton smoked. He narrowed his eyes. He drawled, “Whatever is necessary. We’ll work it out when we get there. The advantage is ours.”
“And how, may I ask, do you draw that conclusion?”
“Because we can plan ahead.” Burton nodded toward Thomas Honesty. “Tom has a baby on the way.” He indicated Montague Penniforth and Detective Inspector Slaughter. “Monty already has a little boy, and Sidney a daughter. My Cannibal Club is populated by eligible bachelors. I propose that we transform it into a secret and elite organisation whose members will pass down to their descendants the details of our mission. We’ll move forward through time in a series of jumps, stopping to meet with them along the way. They’ll advise us with regard to social and technological developments. They’ll keep their eyes open for Oxford’s presence and will tell us if it manifests ahead of 2202, and will also assist us in avoiding detection.” He spoke to Honesty, Slaughter and Penniforth. “How about it, gentlemen? Will you join the group? Will you become Cannibals?”
Honesty jerked his head in assent.
Slaughter wiped a line of milk from his moustache. “A family mission, is it? In for a penny, in for a pound, that’s what I say.”
Penniforth gave a thumbs-up.
Edward Burton said, “Brother, please tell me you’re joking. By heavens, the whole endeavour is doomed from the start.”
“If you have a better idea, let’s hear it.”
The minister picked at his fingernails for a moment before, in a quiet tone, saying, “How can it possibly work? Won’t you simply create yet another alternate history?”
Burton turned to Babbage. “Charles?”
“You intend to make a change to the future, not to the past,” the old man said. “Our reality is—from the present moment onward—thus suspended between two possibilities: you will come back from the future or you won’t. For you, as you travel forward through time to 2202, the history you pass through will not be in any way defined by the answer, for you won’t yet have provided it.”
“What? What? What?” Swinburne screeched.
Ignoring him, Burton asked, “But if we ask someone from the future what became of us?”
“They simply won’t know,” Babbage replied. “Every consequence of your return—or consequence of your none return—will remain in an indefinite state until you actually do one or the other.”
“And if we do return, will we be able to act on the knowledge gained from the future?”
“Yes.”
“So we’d be creating yet another branch of history.”
“From the perspective of the future you’ve returned from, yes, but subjectively, no.”
“Aargh!” Swinburne shrieked. “How can time be subjective?”
“My dear boy!” Babbage exclaimed. “How can it not be?”
“I’m hearing words,” Trounce grumbled, “but if you threw them into a bag, gave it a good shake, and poured them out, the results would make just as much sense to me.”
The minister held up a hand to halt the discussion. “All right. All right. Let us suppose I finance the project. Who would you take with you, Dick?”
“A small company,” the king’s agent answered. “Volunteers only.”
“Me,” Swinburne said.
“And me,” Sadhvi Raghavendra put in. “You’ll need my medical expertise, especially if you’re dosing yourselves with that horrible tincture.”
“It’s utterly preposterous,” Detective Inspector Trounce declared. “Whatever it is. Nevertheless, you can count on me. Perhaps I’ll eventually understand what I’m becoming involved with.”
“The Orpheus is my ship,” Lawless stated. “I’ll not give her over to anyone else, so I’m in, too. But crew?”
“How much can be automated?” Burton asked Babbage.
“A lot. The Mark Three will fly her. I’ll give the Orpheus a brain.”