At length the hansom came to a halt before an elegant Georgian house upon Brentford’s historic Butts Estate. The cabbie climbed down from his mount, opened an umbrella and then a passenger door. The passenger emerged, a large and noble-looking gentleman, clad in a fashionable Westbury coat of green Boleskine tweed, with matching double-brimmed topper. He stepped down from the cab and sheltering beneath the umbrella, he addressed the cabbie.
“Put the cost of this journey on my account,” said he.
“But sir,” the cabbie protested. “Your account now stands at twenty guineas.”
“Due to the generosity of my tipping,” said the gentleman. “Shelter my person beneath your brolly to yonder doorway and then take your leave without further complaint. Lest I take my business elsewhere in the future.”
The cabbie did as he was bid and returned grumbling to his cab. The gentleman stood in the porch of the elegant Georgian house and perused the brass doorplate. Inscribed upon it were the words
CHARLES BABBAGE
Mathematician and Inventor
The gentleman rapped upon the door with his cane and presently the door was opened.
An attractive young woman looked out at the gentleman. She had a head of glowing auburn hair and a most remarkable pair of Charlies.
The gentleman’s eyes strayed towards these Charlies.
“Mr Rune,” said the attractive young woman. “My husband is away upon business and has not returned home yet. I understood that your appointment with him was at three. You are more than an hour early.”
“A wizard is never early,” quoth Hugo Rune. “Nor is he ever late. He is always where he should be, when he should be. Time, dear lady, is everything. Time is the name of the game.”
“Quite so, Mr Rune. Then will you come inside?”
“I will, dear lady, I will.”
The rain continued to fall and time continued to pass.
At two-thirty of that rainy afternoon clock, Mr Charles Babbage returned home. He did not knock upon his own front door. He entered by using his key, and he used this key with stealth. And it was also with stealth that he crept up the stairs towards his marital bedroom, and with stealth that he turned the knob on the door, before he flung the door open – to reveal an erotic scene that caused him considerable distress.
“Mary,” cried Mr Charles Babbage. “Mary, my love, how could you?”
The sexual position that Mr Babbage’s wife Mary was presently engaged in with Mr Hugo Rune was, and is still, known as Taking Tea with the Parson. You won’t find it catalogued in the Kama Sutra; it is somewhat too advanced for that.
“It’s not what you think,” cried the fragrant Mary, disentangling her limbs with considerable difficulty. “It’s—”
“A Tantric massage to relieve tension,” said Mr Hugo Rune, seeking his undergarments.
“It is what it is.” The face of Mr Babbage was now the colour of a smacked bottom. It matched the colour of his wife’s smacked bottom. “You, you swine!” Mr Babbage addressed Mr Rune, who was now struggling into his trousers. “You have betrayed me, sir. Betrayed my trust. You promised me an introduction to Her Majesty the Queen, God bless Her, to gain royal patronage for my Analytical Engine. You told me that my computer would change the world as we know it.”
“And it will, sir, it will.” Rune now sought his shirt.
“It was all a trick, so that you could defile my wife.”
“I assure you sir, it was not. Your inventions will change the world.”
“Not through any help of yours, you rogue. Out of my house. I never wish to see your face again.”
“No, I beseech you.” Rune was now in his coat and putting on his hat. “Your inventions will change the world. Do not let this unfortunate and trifling incident deprive the world of your genius.”
“No more!” Mr Babbage waved his hands about. “No more work upon calculating engines for me. This is all my fault, leaving my wife alone, whilst I worked upon my machines. My darling, please forgive me.”
“Oh,” said the fragrant Mary. “Then consider yourself forgiven. But don’t let it happen again.”
“No,” cried Rune. “This must not be.”
“Out of my house, sir. I am done with science. It all ends here.”
“No,” cried Rune once more.
But Mr Babbage ushered him from the house, with no small force and many angry words.
The rain continued to fall and Hugo Rune now stood in it.
“Damned bad luck,” said a voice.
Rune turned to view a lad who lounged in the porch, a tall thin lad, dressed all in black with a blondy head of hair.
“And who are you?” Rune asked.
“Starling,” replied the lad. “Will Starling.”
“Away about your business, boy.”
“But you are my business,” said the lad. “Or were. You have failed, Mr Rune. Failed in your attempt to introduce Babbage to the Queen, to gain royal patronage for his inventions that would alter the Victorian age and advance it into a technological super future.”
“What?” went Rune.
“Ah, ‘what’, is it? Just like my other self. I have come from the future. I arranged for Mr Babbage to return home early, to catch you doing what comes so naturally to you. You never could resist the ladies, could you, Rune? So simple a downfall. And now I say farewell to you. My work here is done.”
“Why have you done this?” Rune asked.
“You’ll know that in forty-nine years, on the eve of the twentieth century. Will it seem like forty-nine years, or simply a second or two?”
And with that said, the blondy haired lad vanished away.
“No,” cried Hugo Rune. “No and no and no.”
45
And “No!” once more cried Hugo Rune in the sawdust ring of Count Otto’s flying circus.
“But yes,” said Will’s other self, all present once again.
“What has happened?” Will asked Rune. “What did he do?”
“He returned to the past. He changed history. He stopped me from introducing Babbage to Her Majesty the Queen. He’s effectively wiped out every piece of Victorian supertechnology as if it never existed.”
And all over London the lights were going out, the electric lights. And one by one the Tesla towers and each and every bit of technology that had come into being through the work of Charles Babbage vanished away and was gone. And then the lights of London returned, the gaslights of London, that is.
“Do something, Barry,” whispered Will.
“Take you home, chief? It’s all I can offer you.”
“Take me back in time. Let me put this right.”
“No can do, chief, not in my remit. You know that.”
“Mr Rune,” Will whispered. “Now would be the time for you to finally demonstrate your magic”
“Yes,” said Rune. “Indeed,” and he twiddled his thumbs.
Will’s other self took the athame from Count Otto’s hand, knelt over the Colonel and cried aloud, “Great Satan, God of this world, accept the sacrifice and hearken to these words. The future is yours through me. I will be your power on Earth. The Loved One, adored by all. I will cast down every other church but yours. Hearken to these words, these perfected words. Accept the sacrifice and bring the love to me.”
And words spilled from the mouth of Count Otto Black. The words of the Great Spell, the Big Magic Spell, the spell that moulded time and space, the spell that had been brought to absolute perfection through computer technology. And the awful words jarred the air, sending terrible vibrations that rattled the teeth of the rich and famous and knocked the lady’s straw hat off.