He realised that Lorena Brabrooke was peering up at him. “Sir?” She clapped her hands in front of his face. “Please. Say something. Snap out of it. I don’t think I can do this for much longer.”
He turned his head aside, coughed, closed and opened his eyes, looked back at her, and said, “Do what?”
“Lead you around like you’re a pack of zombies.”
“Zombie. Haitian. Supposedly an animated—” He stopped and blinked again. “Miss Brabrooke. We were on a train.”
“Yes, we were. From Gravesend. Then we took the London Underground.”
He shuddered. “Underground? No. I won’t go underground. I can’t bear to be enclosed.”
She displayed the gap in her teeth. “We’ve already done it. Look, you see? We’re at the museum.”
Burton heard Swinburne’s voice. “My hat! Where’s a good peasouper when you need one? My eyes are too full. Look at all these people. How did the city become so overcrowded?”
Algernon. And Daniel Gooch. Mick Farren, too.
The latter shook his head at Burton. “It’s doing my head in, man. I can’t imagine what it’s like for you.”
The king’s agent straightened and squared his shoulders. “I’m quite all right, Mr. Farren. Quite all right. Shall we proceed?”
“Yes!” Swinburne and Gooch pleaded in unison.
Lorena Brabrooke led them up the museum’s steps and into the entrance hall. It was like reliving the scene they’d earlier viewed on her Turing—an eerie repetition—and it continued as they ascended the stairs and navigated through corridors toward the Isambard Kingdom Brunel display.
And there he was.
The great engineer.
The brass man.
Suddenly, Burton felt perfectly fine.
It was a winter Tuesday, and early in the morning, so there were few other people around, and none near this particular exhibit.
Burton, Swinburne and Gooch stood and gazed at their old friend. Acting on an instinctive respect, Farren and Brabrooke withdrew a little.
Brunel, kneeling on one knee, was posed on a plinth in such a manner as to appear deep in contemplation. His hulking body was clean, polished, and glinting beneath a spotlight, which threw the eye sockets of his mask into deep shadow, serving to emphasise his stillness, as if his mind was so far withdrawn that a void had taken its place.
The big Gatling gun was raised up.
Tools extended from his wrists and fingers.
One of his arms ended in a stump.
He was just as he’d been a hundred and sixty-two years ago.
Brunel! The man around whom a cult of science and engineering had grown; the man they called “the Empire Builder,” who upon receiving hints of future technologies had used his boundless imagination and the materials of his era to reproduce ingenious approximations of them, transforming the civilised world, initiating the Great Age of Steam.
“He’s regarded as a national treasure,” Lorena Brabrooke said.
Burton glanced back at her. “The Anglo-Saxon Empire wouldn’t have existed without him, Miss Brabrooke. He was there at its inception, fighting alongside us to prevent the sabotage of the alliance between Britain and the Central German Confederation.”
She nodded, her eyes fixed on the exhibit.
The king’s agent stepped closer to the plinth. He leaned forward and peered up into Brunel’s eyes.
“Hello, my friend. It’s been quite some time.”
Nothing.
Swinburne asked, “Shall I kick him?”
Farren whispered, “Look to your right.”
The poet did so. Burton followed his gaze. On the other side of the large chamber, a constable was standing guard beside a door, its hands clasped behind its back, its small glittering black eyes upon the visitors. The pig creature was identical to the ones they’d seen in 1968, except that its stilted uniform was white.
They hastily turned their faces away from it.
Swinburne mumbled, “All right. No kicking.”
Brabrooke said, “Try again, Sir Richard.”
Conscious of the guard’s scrutiny, Burton kept his voice low. “Isambard, do you recognise me? It’s Burton. I’m here with Algernon Swinburne and Daniel Gooch. You remember Gooch, don’t you? All those projects you worked on together? The transatlantic liners? The atmospheric railways? Hydroham City? By heavens, man, he built your body!”
Gooch moved to Burton’s side. “Mr. Brunel, what happened to you? Won’t you speak? We’ve come a long way to see you. Do you know what year it is? 2022!”
“Babbage helped us,” Burton went on. “He designed a Nimtz generator. It allows the Orpheus to travel in time. What an undertaking that project was! The whole of the Department of Guided Science was given over to the job. All of your people laboured on it night and day, every man and every woman; that’s the measure of their loyalty to you, old man.”
Brunel didn’t respond, didn’t move. Not even a click emerged from him.
Swinburne pushed between them, stood on tiptoe, reached up, and snapped his fingers inches from the brass face. “Wake up, you confounded lazybones!” he demanded. “Get off your metal arse. We need your help.”
The chamber suddenly echoed with the tock tock tock of stilts as the guard crossed it.
“Now you’ve done it,” Lorena Brabrooke said. Under her breath, she continued, “Just follow its orders and, without incriminating yourselves, agree with whatever it says. Be careful.”
As the pig man drew closer, Burton whispered, “Behave, Algy.”
The constable stopped in front of them and snarled, “Don’t touch the exhibit.”
“I didn’t,” Swinburne objected. “I was just seeing how my hand reflected in its face.”
“T-bands,” the pig said. “All of you.”
Lorena Brabrooke stretched out her arm, showing the bracelet. Burton, Swinburne, Gooch and Farren followed her lead.
The guard reached out and knocked his own bracelet against theirs, one after the other.
“Jeremy Swinburne,” he stated. “Scriptwriter. Bendyshe Entertainments.”
“Um. Yes,” Swinburne agreed.
“Richard Burton. Actor. Bendyshe Entertainments.”
“Yes,” Burton said.
“Daniel Gooch. Director. Bendyshe Entertainments.”
“That’s me.”
“Michael Farren. Producer. Bendyshe Entertainments.”
Farren coughed. “Yeah.”
“Lorena Brabrooke. Production Assistant. Bendyshe Entertainments.”
“Yes, sir. We’re doing the initial research for a docudrama about Isambard Kingdom Brunel. We have to study him closely, but we won’t interfere with the display.”
The guard wrinkled its snout. “Shut up. I’m doing a background check.” Its beadlike eyes focused inward for a couple of seconds. “All right. You’re clear. Continue. Don’t touch.”
It turned and stalked back to its post. Tock tock tock.
“Phew!” Swinburne said. “What a perfectly dreadful brute.” He addressed Brabrooke. “Bendyshe Entertainments? We’re doing what with the what for the what?”
“Never mind,” she said. “It’s all a fiction.” She frowned at Burton, who was staring wide-eyed at Brunel. “Sir Richard?”
He didn’t reply.
She touched his arm. “Sir Richard?”
“It’s really over,” Burton murmured. “My world. The time I inhabited. He built it and now it’s all ended.”
They considered Brunel.
“A brief span and then we are gone,” Burton said. “Time is cruel.” He straightened and sighed. “I thought he, of all of us, would live forever.”
They remained in the museum for a further thirty minutes, standing close to Brunel, discussing his many projects and the people he’d known, hoping that Gooch was wrong and a spark of life remained, that the reminiscing would sink into the engineer and hook a memory, something to bring him out of his long, long fugue.