“Just sleep,” Burton said. He pointed his pistol and added, “Stun.”
Ptooff!
The technician fell backward. Her limbs spread outward. She twitched and became still.
“Poor thing,” Raghavendra said.
“The Lowlies are getting muddle-headed,” Swinburne observed. “We have to work as fast as we can. If we gain control of the Turing Fulcrum, maybe Lorena will find a way to use it to broadcast an encouraging message to them, something to calm them down.”
“And if we have to destroy it?” Burton asked.
“Then we’ll have to employ the old-fashioned method of word of mouth. We’ll recruit Mr. Grub. His was big and loud enough.”
Trounce retrieved his pistol. They moved past the prone woman and walked between two horizontal groupings of pipes to where a flat platform was positioned beneath a square hole in the ceiling.
Trounce said, “This lift will take us straight up to the second pump room on the palace roof. Inside, the air is heated and pressurised, but when we exit we’ll find the atmosphere too thin to breathe and freezing cold. Lorena will cause our BioProcs to compensate, but we’ll have to move fast, else the strain on our bodies will kill us.”
“It’s one thrill after another, isn’t it?” Swinburne commented.
The chrononauts mounted the platform, Trounce depressed a switch, and it rose through the opening into a dimly lit shaft. Looking up, Burton saw its four sides converging toward a far-distant vanishing point.
“It’s quite a way,” Trounce warned them all.
“And bloody slow,” Swinburne complained.
“When this is all over and done with,” Burton muttered, “I shall return to the desert where, in every direction, there’ll be nothing between me and the horizon.”
“Do you mean that?” Raghavendra asked. “Will you really go back?”
Burton looked into her eyes and felt a strange sensation in the middle of his chest, as if the lift was sinking rather than rising. “No,” he whispered. “I don’t suppose I ever will.”
He turned away from her.
Up and up the lift rose. After a while, the chrononauts became tired of standing, so sat and waited, glancing up frequently, hoping they’d see the top of the shaft.
“We must have travelled for miles,” Wells exclaimed after what felt like hours had passed.
“Up through the Underground,” Trounce said, “then out over the upper city, through the level of the royal parks, and on to the top of the palace. I doubt we’ve travelled a third of that distance yet, and we’ve been going for about thirty minutes, I’ll wager.”
“Just half an hour?” Swinburne protested. “Half a day, more like!”
“Funny,” Wells said, “how time feels different for everyone. I might say the day has dragged by, while you’ll say it’s raced. One man of fifty might feel sprightly, another feel that he’s in his dotage. I often wonder whether Chronos exists at all. Might it not be a figment of our imagination?”
“Could our imagination be the seed of all existence?” Burton added, remembering his earlier meditation—though it had occurred seventy-two years ago. “Is there any reality outside of it?”
“Is it possible,” Swinburne mused, “that the altitude is making you both delirious?”
Trounce chuckled. “And so the conversation is brought down to earth.”
“Great heavens!” Sadhvi Raghavendra cried out. “That’s a singularly inappropriate expression to use under our current circumstances.” She looked up. “No sign of our destination. It’s well past midnight already. It’ll be the small hours by the time we get to the roof. What can we expect, William?”
“We’re unlikely to find the greenhouse occupied at this time of night, so we’ll use it as our base of operations. Once we’re inside, I suggest you hold the fort, Sadhvi, while Carrots and I, and Richard and Bertie, split up and reconnoitre with the aim of establishing Her Majesty’s whereabouts. We may have to abduct a member of staff and drag them back for questioning.”
Raghavendra used her forefinger to give Trounce’s arm a hard prod. “So despite your childhood here in the twenty-third century, your nineteenth-century sensibilities haven’t seen any advancement. You still feel it necessary to deny the woman a meaningful role. Really, you’re thoroughly backward.”
“Not at all,” Trounce protested. “Any good general will tell you that the path of retreat must remain well guarded. If I were a chauvinist, I wouldn’t trust to leave the responsibility to you alone. If you want to exchange places with Carrots, I’ll be just as confident with you at my side.”
Raghavendra eyed Swinburne, who was compulsively drumming his left foot and wiggling his fingers.
“Thank you,” she said somewhat wryly. “I accept.”
The minutes ticked by, their number impossible to judge.
Burton squeezed his eyes shut.
You’re not underground. You’re rising high above it.
But I’m enclosed.
Not for much longer.
What if the lift mechanism freezes? What if we get stuck?
It won’t. This will end soon.
“The roof!” Wells exclaimed.
Praise Allah. Praise Jehovah. Praise Zeus. Praise every god that has or hasn’t ever existed.
The chrononauts got to their feet.
“Be ready,” Trounce whispered. “There might be another technician ahead of us.”
The platform slowed, slid up level with a floor, and came to a halt. They found themselves in a room very similar to the one they’d departed. It was unoccupied.
“Luck is with us,” Trounce muttered. He led them past heavy pipes, past a glowing control panel, and to a door. “This opens onto the roof. There’s a short distance to cross to the greenhouse.” He drew his pistol and put his finger to his earlobe. “Lorena?” then, after a pause, “We’re on the roof.” He listened to her reply then addressed his companions. “Our BioProcs are about to drive up our body temperatures and maximise our lung efficiency. It won’t feel pleasant. Follow my instructions exactly.”
Swinburne pulled his handgun from his waistband. Burton raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you sure, Algy? You’re a rotten shot.”
“Not with a pistol that does whatever I tell it.”
Suddenly, Burton felt overheated. His heart hammered. Dizziness and exhilaration gripped him. Too much oxygen!
Trounce eased open the door and led them through it. The roof beyond was clear of snow, being well above the clouds, and was illuminated by the lamps of the nearby greenhouse. The structure’s various angles and planes stood out with startling clarity in the frigid, still, and thin air.
“Softly, softly,” Trounce whispered.
Slowly, they proceeded toward the large rectangular block of glass. The light that shone from within it dazzled them, and Burton found himself squinting and averting his eyes. Nevertheless, he noticed that a plume of what appeared to be dense smoke was rising from the greenhouse’s roof.
Burton’s skin was burning, and his chest rose and fell with great rapidity, as if he was struggling for breath, though he felt no discomfort.
Swinburne whispered to him, “The upper city isn’t as closely monitored as the Underground and, as far as Lorena has been able to ascertain, the palace complex even less so. One of the benefits of elitism is that you’re granted a measure of privacy. Nevertheless, we’d be triggering alarms right now were it not for the destruction of the Embassy. Also, a full-scale information war has just commenced.”
“Information war? You mean Miss Brabrooke is accessing, infiltrating and manipulating?”
“Exactly that. She and her people are hard at work. Communications are being disrupted, reports falsified, files corrupted, diversions planted. If she’s judged it correctly—and I don’t doubt that she has—even a synthetic intelligence as powerful as the Turing Fulcrum will be thrown into confusion.”