Original history!
Oxford is fascinated by it. The structure of the stone is unique. He whispers, “Even more sensitive than a CellComp. More efficient than a ClusterComp. More capacity than GenMem.”
What is he talking about?Burton wonders.
The dream twists away and repositions itself inside a day a few weeks later.
The diamond is filled with the remnant intelligences of a prehistoric race. They have inveigled their way into Oxford's mind.
He starts to think about time.
He becomes obsessed.
He becomes paranoid.
It happens that he shares his name with a distant ancestor who, in a fit of insanity, had attempted to assassinate Queen Victoria. A voice, from somewhere behind his conscious mind, insists: “That man besmirched your family's reputation. Change it. Correct it.”
Why does this obscure fact suddenly matter? Why should he care about a forgotten incident that occurred near three hundred and fifty years ago?
It matters.
He cares.
He can think about little else.
The reptilian intelligence plants another seed.
Slowly, in Oxford's mind, a theory concerning the nature of time blossoms like a pervasively scented exotic flower. Its roots dig deeper. Its lianas entangle him. It consumes him.
He works tirelessly.
The dream convulses and fifteen years have passed.
Oxford has cut shards from the diamond and connected them to a chain of DNA-StringComps and BioProcs. They form the heart of what he calls a Nimtz Generator. It is a flat circular device. It will enable him to move through time.
To power it, he's invented the fish-scale battery, and has fashioned thousands of these tiny solar-energy collectors into a one-piece tight-fitting suit. He's also embedded an AugCom into a round black helmet. It will act as an interface between his brain and the generator. It will also protect him from the deep psychological shock that he somehow knows will afflict anyone who steps too far out of their native time period.
The boots of the costume are fitted with two-foot-high spring-loaded stilts. They appear wildly eccentric but they offer a simple solution to a complex problem, for when the bubble of energy generated by the Nimtz forms around the suit, it must touch nothing but air.
Oxford will literally jump through time.
It is the evening of 15th February, 2202. Nine o'clock. A Monday. His fortieth birthday.
Oxford dresses in attire suitable for the 1840s. He pulls his time suit on over the top of it and clips on his stilts. He attaches the Nimtz Generator to his chest and puts the helmet on his head. He picks up a top hat and strides out of his workshop and into the long garden beyond.
His wife comes out of the house, wiping her hands on a towel.
“You're going now?” she asks. “Supper is almost ready!”
“I am,” he replies, “but don't worry-even if I'm gone for years, I'll be back in five minutes!”
“You won't return an old man, I hope!” she grumbles, and runs a hand over her distended belly. “This one will need an energetic young father.”
He laughs. “Don't be silly. It won't take long.”
Bending, he kisses her on the nose.
He instructs the suit to take him to five-thirty on the afternoon of 10th June, 1840. Location: the upper corner of Green Park, London.
He looks at the sky.
“Am I really going to do this?” he asks himself.
“Do it!” a voice whispers in his head, and before he can consciously make a decision, he takes three long strides, jumps, hits the ground with knees bent, and leaps high into the air. A bubble forms around him and he vanishes with a small detonation, like a little clap of thunder.
Pop!
Sir Richard Francis Burton jerked awake and tepid water slopped over the edge of his bath.
He shivered, sat up, and looked around his study, trying to identify the source of the noise. His attention was drawn to a thin wisp of steam rising from a tubular contraption on one of his three desks. He reached for a towel then stood, stepped out of the bath, and wrapped the thick cloth around himself. He crossed to the desk. The glass and brass apparatus was his direct connection to the prime minister and the king. Burton retrieved a canister from it, snapped it open, and pulled out a sheet of paper. He read the words: Be prepared to receive the prime minister at 2 a. m.
“Curse the man! That's all I need!”
Pox twitched a wing and chirped, “Stink fermenter!”
Burton looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was half-past one.
Rapidly drying himself, he went into his dressing room and put on loose white cotton trousers and a shirt, then wrapped his jubbah-the long and loose outer garment he'd worn while on his pilgrimage to Mecca, which he now used as a night robe-over the top of them. He slid his feet into pointed Arabian slippers and wound a turban around his damp hair.
By two o'clock, the bathtub had been removed, another Manila cheroot had been smoked, and Burton had sat and pondered his strange dream. There was much about it that he didn't understand-the curious glass desk, the sparsely furnished room in which it stood, some of the words that Edward Oxford had uttered-yet it seemed vividly real.
Did I just glimpse a distant future? The one that was meant to be before Oxford interfered?
Hearing the coughing of steam engines and rumble of wheels in the street outside, he stepped to the window and looked out in time to see Lord Palmerston's armoured six-wheeled mobile castle draw up.
He went downstairs and opened the front door.
Palmerston was standing on the step, with his odd-job men Gregory Hare and Damien Burke on either side of him.
“Do you consider that suitable attire, Captain Burton?” the prime minister asked.
“For two o'clock in the morning? Yes, sir,” Burton replied, moving aside to let the men enter. “Do you consider it a suitable hour for visiting?”
“One cannot run an Empire and maintain respectable hours, sir.”
“Up to the study, if you please.”
Burton closed the door and followed them upstairs, noting that the prime minister's men were dressed, as ever, in outlandishly old-fashioned outfits.
“Last time I saw this room,” Palmerston said as he entered the bookcase lined chamber, “it was all but destroyed.”
“You're referring to the occasion when we were attacked and you hid in my storeroom?” Burton responded.
“Now, now, Captain. Let us not get off on the wrong foot.”
Palmerston placed his hat on one of the desks and took off his calfskin gloves. His fingernails were painted black. He didn't remove his tightly buttoned velvet frock coat but smoothed it down then sat in Burton's favourite saddlebag armchair and crossed his legs. He pulled a silver snuffbox from his pocket and said, “We must talk. I would have been here earlier but the streets were impassable.”
Burke and Hare each sat at a desk. Burton took the armchair opposite Palmerston, who asked, “Your expedition is equipped and ready for departure?”
“It is.”
“Good. Good. All running smoothly, then?”
“Yes. Unless you count two attempts on my life, one of which resulted in the death of my good friend Thomas Bendyshe.”
Palmerston jerked forward. “What did you say?”
“A man named Peter Pimlico tried to poison me. He was hired by a Prussian named Otto Steinruck, who then killed him by strangulation to keep him quiet. And, earlier this evening, somebody sent a bullet my way.”
Damien Burke, tall, hunchbacked, extremely bald, and sporting the variety of side whiskers known as “Piccadilly Weepers,” cleared his throat and said, “This Germanic individual, Captain Burton-did you find out anything about him?”
“Only that he's portly, wears a large moustache, has pointed claw-like fingernails, and chews Kautabak tobacco.”
Burke glanced at Gregory Hare, who was short and muscular, with white hair and a broad, pugnacious face. “Ah-ha,” he said. “Do you agree, Mr. Hare?”