“It’s too much,” Sadhvi mumbled. “We’re losing our minds.”
Burton turned to Farren. “Mick, we can’t hold out for another day. Not without a dose of Saltzmann’s. You have to get us back to the Orpheus. We’ll stay aboard her until the refit is completed.”
Farren gave a curt nod. “I’ll drive you back to the yacht.” He addressed von Lessing. “Karl, Eddie’s with Jane. She’s badly hurt. Maybe even—maybe even dead. Will you stay and track them down?”
Von Lessing paled. “Yeah. I’ll check the hospitals. What a bloody mess.”
They bid him farewell. Raghavendra and Wells joined Trounce in the back of the car while Burton climbed into the front with Farren. They set off back toward Margate. No one spoke. Farren was lost in his own thoughts, and as for the chrononauts—
They just felt lost.
It was evening by the time they boarded the yacht. Burton and his companions had little idea of where they were or what they were doing. The Cannibals guided them to bunks, and they all fell into an instant and profound sleep.
Burton awoke at noon on the following day in an unfamiliar room and with the taste of Saltzmann’s haunting the back of his throat. He was lying on a bed—more like a shelf projecting from a concave wall—and still wearing yesterday’s clothes, which were torn and stained with blood and dust.
He sat up, looked at his hands, and noted that the knuckles were cut and bruised. Slowly, recent memories seeped back into his conscious mind.
Standing, he looked out of a porthole and saw a broad triangular wing beyond which, past a narrow strip of coastline, the sea sparkled brightly. He was obviously on the Concorde—the new Orpheus—and when he turned to face the tiny cabin, he saw that his suitcases had been transferred to it from the old ship. He opened an inner door and found an en suite bathroom. Forty minutes later, he was clean, dressed in fresh clothes, and feeling a great deal better.
Burton exited into a very narrow corridor with doors running down either side of it. He’d asserted from the shape of the wing that the prow was to his left, so he followed the passage along to a door. It opened onto a long, narrow tubular lounge. A group rose to greet him: Captain Lawless, Gooch, Krishnamurthy, Raghavendra, Mick Farren, Patricia Honesty, Trevor Penniforth, and Jason Griffith.
“How do you feel?” Sadhvi asked.
“Fair to middling,” he answered, taking a seat and fishing a cheroot from his pocket. “Much more myself. The others?”
“Still in their beds. Algy is in good shape. Mr. Wells required stitches and will need to rest a while. William had a hard time of it. I’ve sedated him and dosed him with more of that accursed Saltzmann’s than my principles should allow, but without it I’m concerned he might lose his sanity.”
“And with it?”
“After plenty of sleep, I think he’ll return to us.”
“I’m sorry, man,” Farren murmured. “My fault. I could have summoned the Orpheus to any day, and I went and picked the day of a bloody riot.”
“We couldn’t have known, Mick,” Patricia Honesty put in.
“It doesn’t matter,” Burton said, lighting his Manila. “What’s important is that we saw evidence of Spring Heeled Jack’s presence.”
Krishnamurthy frowned. “I don’t understand. If he’s here in 1968, how and why and where?”
Burton gave a nod of thanks to Griffith, who’d placed a plate of sandwiches and a cup of coffee before him.
“Conspiracy theory,” Farren muttered.
“Mr. Farren?” Burton said.
“The Automatic Computing Engine.”
“And what is that?”
“There was this dude, Alan Turing, who I guess you could call Charles Babbage’s successor. He was a genius mathematician who, in 1950, is rumoured to have invented an equivalent to one of the old babbage probability calculators, except using a different and more powerful technology. Turing claimed great things for his machine, and for a few years he was the toast of the Anglo-Saxon Empire. His device would return to us the global dominance we enjoyed back in your age, and which we’d been steadily losing to our allies, the Americans. It would lead to the total mechanisation of our industries, allowing each and every one of us to live comfortably, pursuing our individual interests. No more drudgery. No more working classes being oppressed by the system.” He finished sarcastically, “Yeah, right on!”
“It didn’t happen?”
“In 1952, he was prosecuted for being a homosexual.”
Burton raised an eyebrow. “The state takes an interest in people’s sexual preferences?”
“Obsessively. He was publicly humiliated, experimented on, and two years later died from cyanide poisoning. Suicide, apparently, but there are those—the Cannibal Club among them—who think he was murdered.”
“Because?”
“Because the Automatic Computing Engine never appeared. The government claimed they examined it and found nothing but a prototype based on dodgy theoretical work. It was unsound and unworkable.”
Gooch interjected, “But you have other ideas?”
“Too right. I think the government lied and continued to develop it in secret. I think fourteen years after its inventor’s death, the Automatic Computing Engine is something quite different to what he intended. He envisioned a Utopia. The government, I suspect, has plans for exactly the opposite. If the machine really exists, I don’t know how it’s being used, but something very bad is happening behind the scenes, and if you discover that the crazy presence of Edward Oxford has somehow infiltrated the device, and that it’s manipulating government policies, then I won’t be the slightest bit surprised.”
“By God,” Krishnamurthy muttered. “How can we fight something we can’t see?”
Burton responded, “By moving forward through time until it’s in plain sight.”
Sadhvi Raghavendra sighed and held up a hand, palm toward him. “I understand your impatience and the sense of urgency, but remember, Richard, that the advantage of our ability to transcend the limitations of time is that we aren’t required to hurry. I insist that we all rest for another day. We have casualties.”
Nathaniel Lawless added, “To be frank, I’m not confident I’m sufficiently au fait with this new ship’s systems, either. I’d like to study her for a while longer before our next hop.”
Penniforth smiled and rumbled, “Your Mark Three ain’t comfortable, neither, Cap’n. Without Mr. Gooch, we wouldn’t ’ave known how to connect the thing, an’ we certainly don’t know how to tell it what’s what.”
Gooch added, “The babbage will work it out for itself, but it’ll have to experiment for a bit, so yes, I agree, we should stay put for another day.”
“We’re still on the Dutch coast?” Burton asked.
Patricia Honesty answered, “Yep. This is Bendyshe Bay—private land owned by the Foundation. We’re secluded and perfectly safe.”
“Good. In that case, by all means, we’ll rest before we make our next foray into the future.”
“The year 2000?” Lawless asked.
Burton shook his head. “No. Change of plan. Our first two legs consisted of fifty-four years each. Let’s add another fifty-four. Next stop, 2022.”
Jason Griffith stood and fetched a file from a bookshelf. He handed it to Burton. “A little something to keep you occupied. The History of the Future, volume two.”
Burton groaned. “I haven’t read a single page of volume one, yet.”
“Karl is our historian,” Griffith said, “but he’s not as meticulous as your brother was, which is why the second chunk of history you jumped through has made for a slimmer file. Easier to read, man.”