“No, sir. My apologies.”
Trounce leaned close to Burton and whispered, “By Jove! A tetchy old goat, isn’t he?”
Gooch said, “We’re pretty sure the same burst of energy is what incapacitated Isambard.”
Babbage rapped his knuckles against the Field Preserver. “Thus what is imprinted is, in essence, a thought from the insane mind of Edward Oxford. Burton, I want you to order the functional helmet to access the recording then employ your own intellect to analyse it. You will experience it as an intention, a memory or perhaps an emotion, which you’ll feel as if it’s your own. I believe that, within that frozen thought, you may detect evidence of whoever issued the command that initiated the suit’s disappearance. You might also discover where it has gone.”
He lifted the pristine helmet and the framework that surrounded it. Burton regarded it for a moment. “Very well. Let’s get it over and done with.”
He moved to the throne-like chair and sat. Gooch stepped forward and gave assistance to Babbage, both pushing the headpiece down over Burton’s cranium. The king’s agent felt soft padding pressing against his hair and encasing his skull so completely that only his face was visible to the others.
Babbage leaned over his Field Amplifier, examining its dials.
Gooch asked Burton, “Do you hear it, sir?”
“Hear what?”
“The voice of the synthetic intelligence.”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“You have to wake it. Wait. We need to make a few adjustments first.”
The Field Preserver began to hum.
“Now, Sir Richard,” Gooch said. “Think the words engage interface.”
“What do they mean?”
Babbage growled, “Must you question every statement? Just do as Mr. Gooch says.”
Burton did, and in his mind a male voice answered, “Ready,” causing him to jump in surprise.
“Y-yes,” he stammered. “Now I hear it.”
Babbage rubbed his hands together. “Bravo! Tell it to search for external connections.”
Burton thought, Search for external connections.
“One found,” the voice declared immediately.
“It says it’s found one.”
“That’s the Field Amplifier. Good. Order it to connect and display.”
Burton issued the instruction.
“Warning, the source is corrupted,” came the response.
The king’s agent relayed the words to Babbage, who replied, “Tell it to disregard and proceed.”
Disregard and proceed, Burton thought. He looked at William Trounce, who was observing the proceedings with his arms folded and a disapproving expression on his face. Suddenly, the Scotland Yard man faded, overlaid by a scene that materialised in front of Burton’s eyes. The king’s agent saw a woman standing in a garden, pregnant, holding a tea towel. She was pretty, with long black hair, large brown eyes, and a short, thick, but curvaceous and attractive body. She looked directly at him and smiled.
He loved her.
He wanted to return to her in time for supper.
He heard himself say, in a voice that wasn’t his own, “Don’t worry. Even if I’m gone for years, I’ll be back in five minutes.”
The woman disappeared into a blazing white inferno.
Pain seared into his mind.
He screamed.
The interviewer asked, “Mr. Oxford, how does it feel to single-handedly change history?”
“I haven’t changed history,” Burton replied. “History is the past.”
“Let me rephrase the question. How does it feel to have altered the course of human history? I refer to your inventing of the fish-scale battery, which so efficiently emulates photosynthesis, and which has given us the clean and free power that lies at the heart of all our current technologies.”
“I don’t really know how it makes me feel,” Burton responded. “I’m an ordinary man, like any other. My concerns are with my family and with contributing whatever I can to society.”
The interviewer chuckled. “Hardly ordinary, sir. Physicist, engineer, historian, philosopher—you are just thirty-five years old, and already your name is up there with geniuses like Galileo, Newton, Fleming, Darwin, Einstein, Temple, Clavius the Fourth, the Zhèng Sisterhood—”
“Stop, please!” Burton protested. “We’re lucky enough to live in a world where those who want to explore to the limits of their abilities are encouraged and given the resources to do so. I work in my particular fields and others work in theirs. We have astounding musicians, engineers, artists, designers, architects, storytellers, athletes, chefs, and so forth. However, those people who are content to operate at a more sedate level are as extraordinary in their own right as anyone you might call a genius. The miracle of existence is that everyone is utterly unique. Each and every one of us should be equally celebrated.”
“But don’t you find it astonishing that it’s your creation, in particular, that’s arguably caused the biggest change to culture since the Industrial Revolution?”
“Why ‘in particular’?”
“Because of where you come from.”
“Aldershot?”
The interviewer smiled. “Not geographically. Genetically.”
Burton frowned. “Genetically? To what are you referring?”
“You’re a historian. You yourself have identified the Victorian Age as the beginning of the modern world. Have you not researched your own ancestry? If one of your forebears had succeeded in his perfidy, there’d have been no Victorian Age at all.”
“Perfidy? That’s a marvellously old-fashioned word. My partner would approve of it. She works at a language revivification centre.”
The interviewer laughed. “It’s funny how the language changes, isn’t it? Like clothes, what was once outdated is now fashionable again. But to return to the question, I’m referring to your family tree. You are descended from another Edward Oxford, who lived from 1822 to 1900. When he was eighteen years old, he attempted to assassinate Queen Victoria. Fortunately, both the shots he fired missed her. Don’t you find it fascinating that we have one Oxford who might have prevented the commencement of the modern age and another Oxford who has, through his genius, ended it by enabling the authentic freedoms of trans-modernity?”
“My studies of the period have been focused on industrial development, so no, I wasn’t aware of this other Oxford,” Burton answered. He felt a little uncomfortable. “And, to be honest, I don’t find it particularly fascinating. It’s a function of the human mind to link events into a narrative and to separate history into chapters, but those are conceptual impositions that don’t necessarily reflect the true nature of time. There is no actual correlation between what I have done these past few years and what my ancestor did—or attempted to do—” He made an instantaneous mental calculation and continued, “three hundred and fifty-seven years ago.”
“Then you don’t think the Oxfords are genetically predisposed to change—or to attempt to change—history?”
“Like I said, history is the past. It can’t be changed.”
“Let us face in the other direction then, and look into the future. What next for Edward Oxford?”
“I expect my next projects to grow out of my current studies of the Tichborne diamond.”
“Which is?”
“A large black gemstone discovered over a hundred years ago in a labyrinth beneath the old Tichborne estate in Hampshire. It has extraordinary electromagnetic properties, for which I hope to find a practical application.”
“Such as?”
“It might be capable of storing brainwaves in such a fashion that they continue to function.”
“Continue to—do you mean—to think?”
“Yes. A person’s conscious mind could be stored within the structure of the stone.”