Swinburne stepped forward. “My dear fellow,” he said. “You have been liberated. We are your saviours, not your enemy. Do not misdirect your newfound discontent.”
“Shut yer mouth yer bleedin’ midget an’ hand summick over.”
The poet sighed. “Then with regret, I have no choice but to give you this.”
He drew his pistol from his waistband. “Between the eyes. Stun.”
The weapon made a spitting sound—ptooff!
The man flopped to the ground.
“Well done, Carrots,” Trounce muttered.
“Poor blighter,” Swinburne said.
Trounce led them around the prone form.
“He’ll wake up in due course,” the poet noted. “I can’t blame him for his actions. He’s waking from a BioProc haze; realising the unadulterated truth of his existence. There’ll be anger and violence before the people identify, and move against, their true enemy.”
They filed through a maze of twisting and turning rubbish-strewn passages, traversing a district that, in Burton’s time, had been among the most prosperous in the city, but that was now much how he imagined Hades to be: confined, hot, dangerous and seedy.
Finally, the group emerged into Berkeley Square. Once a smart area filled with the well-off, it now resembled a mist-veiled crater in the middle of a shantytown.
“You’ll recall this,” Swinburne said to the king’s agent as they reached the centre of the paved space. “Though not fondly.” He kicked the toe of his left boot against a metal manhole. “Not exactly the same one, but close enough.”
Burton remembered and felt himself go pale. Last year, or rather, three hundred and forty-three years ago, he’d climbed down through a very similar metal lid into Bazalgette’s sewers, there to have a final showdown with an invader from a parallel history.
“The sewer was rebuilt and greatly expanded many years ago,” Swinburne said, “but it still follows the course of the Tyburn River. This hatch leads down to a maintenance tunnel that runs alongside it. It’s a lot drier than the sewer but also a lot narrower.”
“We—we have to go—to go even farther underground?” Burton stammered.
“I’m afraid so.”
“We’ll be all right,” Trounce said. “As long as we don’t run into any spider sweeps.”
The diameter of the tube was such that Burton, the tallest of the group, had to bend his back in order to pass along it. The physical discomfort only added to his distress. He felt like he was in his grave. The weight of the double-layered city pressed down, liable to crush the conduit at any moment.
His jaw was clamped shut. The muscles at its sides flexed spasmodically. Sweat trickled from his brow, and his legs were trembling so much he felt sure his companions must notice.
He said nothing, just followed Trounce, putting one foot in front of the other, holding his arms out and letting his fingertips slide along the inner surface, keeping his eyes half shut and mentally chanting, Allāhu Allāhu Allāhu Haqq, which, unfortunately, quickly turned into, I am I am I am trapped.
The maintenance tunnel was dark. Trounce had produced a small mechanical torch from his pocket and with this was illuminating their path, but the blackness retreated only a little way ahead and rushed in to follow closely at their heels.
Don’t let that light go out! Don’t let it happen!
Finally, Burton couldn’t hold his curiosity at bay any longer and had to ask, “Algy, what are spider sweeps?”
“Children who’ve been genetically adapted for the purpose of keeping pipes such as this clean,” Swinburne answered.
“Children,” Burton murmured. “Good.”
“Good at their job, yes,” the poet agreed, “on account of the venom they spray to dissolve whatever dirt their coat of razor-sharp spines can’t scrape off.”
Burton’s mouth went dry. “Nevertheless, they’re just children.”
“Oh yes. There’s none above the age of ten.”
“Excellent.”
“Because the younger ones eat the elders.”
“Oh.”
“They’re extremely aggressive.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And territorial.”
“I see.”
“And, I daresay, with the effect of the nanomechs wearing off, they won’t hesitate to attack us.”
“Thank you for alerting me.”
“Beneath their spines, they’re armour-plated. I should think our bullets would just bounce off them.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“I’m thankful to be as small as I am, really. I’m just a morsel. A crumb. I wouldn’t want to encounter them if I was a big lump of juicy meat like, for example, you are.”
“That’s quite enough, thank you.”
“Don’t you want to hear about their extendible mandibles?”
“No, I think I get the picture.”
They continued on through the cramped tunnel.
Burton tried to imagine open skies, wide Arabian vistas, and distant mountains. Instead, his mind delivered a remembrance of Boulogne and Isabel. He tried to dismiss it, but each wave of claustrophobia brought it closer.
I shouldn’t be walking through a tunnel in the future. I should be strolling along a promenade with her. She should be my wife.
He felt brittle and taut, needed a distraction, something to divert his attention from the hollowness within and the constriction without.
He asked, “Algy, do you remain an atheist?”
“My hat! Of course! Why do you ask?”
“Because you died and were resurrected.”
“Must you remind me of my murder? It hurt.”
“You were dead for nearly fifty years.”
“I know. What a thoroughly beastly waste of time.”
“But do you remember anything of it?”
“Nothing at all. Except—”
The poet was quiet for a moment, and the silence of the tunnel was broken only by their footsteps and Burton’s laboured respiration.
Trounce said, “Blinkers.”
“Yes!” Swinburne cried out. His voice echoed. “Yes. Blinkers. That’s exactly it, Pouncer.”
“Don’t call me Pouncer. And keep your voice down, Carrots.”
“Blinkers?” Burton asked.
“Like racehorses wear,” Trounce said. “So they aren’t distracted by anything; so they see only the track ahead of them.”
“Intriguing,” Herbert Wells put in. “Or it would be if it made any sense. Would you explain, William?”
“Um. Blinkers is as far as I can get.”
“Algy?” Burton asked.
“Soho Square,” the poet said. “2130. I was running toward the flier, I reached out to grab your hand, there was a terrible pain, then nothing. My next memories are of my childhood, of my mother and father and old Pouncer, here and—as I matured—of a growing awareness of who I’d been before and, in fact, still was. It’s very peculiar, I can tell you, to recollect yourself as an older person in the distant past. My early teens were very difficult—”
“Teens?” Burton interrupted, then immediately remembered what Mick Farren had told him. “Ah, yes, I’m sorry. Go on.”
“I felt oddly divided,” Swinburne said.
“It was the same for me,” Trounce added.
The maintenance tunnel was curving toward their left. From the right, the muffled sound of flowing water could be heard. It sounded as if it was moving at great pressure.
Not water. Sewerage. I am trapped. I am trapped.
Swinburne continued, “But the mixed recollections were soon reconciled by the awareness of our mission. It helped to keep me on the straight and narrow.”
“Plus,” Trounce said, “we were both carefully fostered by Father—Tom Bendyshe—and knew from an early age that we’d find our purpose on the fifteenth of February, 2202—today—with the arrival of the Orpheus.”