“Mr. Farren, your misgivings are entirely justified,” Bendyshe said. “Fortunately, we Cannibals have developed a means to intercede with the nanomechs’ functioning and turn them to our advantage. Provided you behave normally, nothing about you will raise suspicion. In addition, you’ll not register on any surveillance net, your movements will be cloaked, and communications between us will evade all monitoring.”
“That,” Farren replied, “I like.”
“Providing we behave normally,” Swinburne echoed doubtfully.
“Algy has a point,” Burton said. “To us, what you might regard as normal becomes ever more abnormal the farther forward into history we travel. There is also the matter of our behaviour being affected by the environment. Will the AugMems cause us to perceive this future world as a copy of our own? Do they render Saltzmann’s Tincture unnecessary?”
“No, Sir Richard, there’s a very good reason why they can’t give you an illusion of 1860s London. You’ll understand why later. However, there’s a compound in the yellow pill that’ll act much like Saltzmann’s, only without the side effects. You’ll need to take one every twenty-fours hours. I’ll leave you with a supply.”
“Then Patricia Honesty was true to her word,” Burton noted.
“She was always the most reliable of us,” Farren murmured. A strange expression crossed his face. Burton sympathised. It was difficult to process the notion that people who were alive yesterday were now long gone.
“If you all follow my lead,” Bendyshe said, “you’ll be fine.”
Sadhvi Raghavendra sighed. “I’m not wildly enthused by the prospect, gentlemen, but nothing ventured—” She swallowed the pills. Her colleagues followed suit.
Bendyshe stepped back to the hatch. He signalled to a group waiting outside the Concorde. They responded by ascending the stairs, entering the ship, and silently filing past the chrononauts.
“My team will carry your luggage to the new ship before transplanting the Nimtz generator and the babbage. Captain Lawless, Mr. Gooch, Mr. Krishnamurthy, will you assist with the engineering?”
“Of course,” Lawless said. “We’re becoming rather adept at it.”
“For the rest of you, it’s off to London we go.”
“Our third visit to the capital of the future,” Burton commented. “What shall we find there this time?”
“You’ll see indisputable evidence that Spring Heeled Jack is manipulating history. It will, I hope, give you some idea of what you’ll face when you reach 2202. As for whether it’s safe or not, we’ve done everything we can to disguise your presence. You should be able to move around freely and undisturbed. I do urge you, though, to watch your words in any circumstance where you might be overheard. Information is currency, and informers are everywhere.”
Burton gestured for Bendyshe to proceed. The Cannibal led them outside. It was an overcast night, and Bendyshe Bay was ill lit. They could see nothing beyond the field in which the Concorde had landed, though, in truth, they didn’t try, for their eyes were fixed in incredulity upon the two flying vessels beside which their own had landed.
“Rotorships!” Captain Lawless exclaimed.
Bendyshe pointed to the vessel on their left. “The Orpheus.”
“But it looks identical my old ship,” the airman observed.
“It is your old ship, sir. We have preserved it all these years. And it’s a good thing we did. Nowadays, that is the standard of technology available to the masses.”
Burton and Lawless exchanged a puzzled look. The king’s agent said, “Has there been some manner of reversal?”
“There has—a result of the failed uprising of the 2080s,” the Cannibal responded. They started across the grass toward the vessel. “The Empire was torn apart by seven years of rioting and civil disobedience. The people attempted to throw off the shackles imposed on them—literally, in the form of the bracelets—by the government. They failed. As a consequence of their actions, the division between the privileged minority and the underprivileged masses widened even farther. The latter were denied most of the advanced technologies. For them, it went retrograde. The more primitive varieties of steam machines were resurrected. The underclass has become very much like the workers of your own period, except they hardly know it.”
“Do you mean they’re drugged?” Wells asked.
“After a fashion. AugMems, which are injected at birth, enforce upon them an illusion of contentment. Their gruel tastes to them like honey, their relentless toil is imbued with false meaning, the filth in which they exist is perceived as comfort, and their empty lives are filled with distracting entertainments. They are happy because they are unable to recognise the severity of the limitations under which they labour.”
A man and three women met them at the foot of the old Orpheus’s boarding ramp. Bendyshe turned to Lawless, Gooch and Krishnamurthy. “You three will not witness the truth. Think yourselves lucky. May I introduce Jacob Hunt, Carolyn Slaughter, and Rebecca and Ben Murray? They’re overseeing the refit of the ship. If you’ll accompany them, please.”
“You won’t have any problems understanding the Orpheus, sirs,” Carolyn Slaughter said. “She’s hardly changed. Just a few additions.” She smiled at Lawless. “It’ll feel like coming home for you, I expect, Captain.”
Lawless, Gooch and Krishnamurthy bid their colleagues farewell and followed the Cannibals into the familiar ship. Bendyshe led the rest toward the other. “The Mary Seacole. We’ll fly her to the Battersea airfield.”
“It’s still there?” Detective Inspector Trounce exclaimed.
“Greatly expanded.”
“Mr. Bendyshe,” Wells said. “What did you mean by that comment, think yourselves lucky?”
“Only that the truth is rather disturbing.”
They ascended the ramp, entered the ship, and were escorted to its lounge where they settled on chairs and sofas and were served food and beverages by Bendyshe. Burton felt uncomfortable eating once again in such an informal manner, and suddenly longed for Mrs. Angell. You’ll not take your supper in the study, sir! Not again! If you want to eat, you’ll find your plate on the table in the dining room, where it bloomin’ well belongs!
“You spoke of the privileged and the underprivileged,” Wells said to Bendyshe, “but what has become of the middle class? Back in 1914, I thought they were poised to take over the Empire.”
“They were a relatively brief phenomenon,” Bendyshe answered. “They grew throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries but proved ungovernable. Before, in Sir Richard’s time, when there were simply the ‘Haves’ and ‘Have Nots,’ each individual knew his or her place in the world, and society, though not in the slightest bit fair, was at least stable. The middle classes were problematical. They always wanted more. They developed the notion that they could better themselves. They sought control. They felt they could be raised to the level of the elite, though they were rather less supportive of the idea that the lower classes might be raised to the middle. Such aspirations led them to instigate the failed revolution of the 2080s. Victory, they thought, was assured, for surely the minority wouldn’t employ brute force against a vast majority.”
Burton said, “They miscalculated?”
“Very. They didn’t know what we know, that those in power were under the sway of Spring Heeled Jack. The crackdown, when it came, was ferocious beyond belief. The constables killed millions. Literally millions.”
“Still stilted pigs?” Farren asked.
“Yes. Rather more mechanised than they were when they made their debut in the 1960s but essentially the same. They overwhelmed the rebellion, AugMems were employed to control the population, and the middle classes were forcibly thrust into the lower.”