He lowered his hand and regarded them, blinking, and panting slightly after what had become an increasingly impassioned speech.
Burton heard the engines he’d noticed before draw much closer. They idled, and he looked toward Down House, convinced they’d halted at the Darwin residence.
Trounce quietly cleared his throat and said, “Um. Where does God fit into your theory, Mr. Darwin?”
The scientist winced. He set off again along the path. They walked with him.
“My poor Emma,” he said. “My w-w-wife has laboured assiduously to assist me in preparing my thesis for publication, but in contemplating it, she has found, as did I, that her faith is eroded. She c-c-clings to it, Detective Inspector, whereas I—well, I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created, for example, parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars. There is no other conclusion to draw than that the universe we observe has precisely the properties we would expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”
Burton, who’d so often drawn this same conclusion but been unable to accurately express it or identify incontrovertible evidence to support it, looked at Darwin with admiration. “Sir, if, as you said, my solving of the Nile question was as impressive a feat as you have ever heard of, then I suggest you hold your own theory to a mirror, for the elegant explanation you have just given, though you might consider it curtailed in the extreme, is enough to convince me that you are on the brink of transforming the world of man. That a human brain can produce so profound an insight is—” He stopped, lost for words.
Darwin supplied them. “Bloody dangerous.”
“Dangerous?”
“You wanted to know what my half-cousin has done with my theory, Sir Richard. I will tell you. He has proposed a human intercession in the processes of natural selection. Rather than allow the successes and failures of survival to dictate the shape of species, he wants to decide for himself which strengths to breed and which weaknesses to eliminate.”
“But how is that different from the actions of, say, a pigeon breeder or a cattle farmer?” Burton asked.
“It is different because he intends that it be applied to the human species. Furthermore, rather than allowing physical characteristics to develop over long periods of time and in response to the environment, he advocates surgical intervention to hasten the process of evolution.”
“The warden at the hospital suggested that Mr. Galton believed that men can be made gods.”
“If, by gods, you mean beings with physical and mental powers that far exceed what is currently natural to us, then yes, that is what Francis seeks.”
Darwin, Burton, and Trounce all jerked their heads around toward the house.
“Was that a scream?” Trounce said.
“Emma!” Darwin gasped.
They left the path and started running across the grass. Burton rapidly drew ahead while Trounce helped the scientist along. The explorer heard children shouting and crying. Angling to the right, he rejoined the path where it entered the garden, raced past the white snakeroot flowers, and burst out of the bushes onto the lawn of Down House.
There were two steam spheres at the side of the residence, both empty but with their engines still ticking over and vapour curling from their funnels. Two of the Darwin children were lying dead or unconscious on the ground. The others were screaming in panic and running back and forth. A short, ape-like man had his arms around Mrs. Darwin, pinning her arms to her sides. She was facing away from him, and as Burton came into her line of sight, she saw him and yelled, “Get them away! Save my children! Save my children!”
Standing a little to the left of her, a second man, taller and thinner than the other, raised his right arm and pointed a green and very odd-looking pistol at the little boy named Leo. Burton, still running toward them, heard a sharp gasp—phut! The youngster hit the grass, rolled, and became still.
“Again,” the short man snarled at Emma Darwin. “Where is your husband?”
“We have company, Mr. Hare,” the taller man declared upon seeing Burton.
“Ah, so we do, Mr. Burke!”
Hare threw Mrs. Darwin aside and he and his companion turned to face the explorer. They were dressed identically in long black surtouts, black waistcoats, and knee-length breeches that gave way to pale yellow tights. Their white shirts had high cheek-scraping collars. Yellow cravats encased their necks. Their shoes were buckled and blocky-heeled.
Burton skidded to a halt in front of the taller man, Damien Burke, who said, “Good day to you, Mr. Darwin. I’m afraid I’ve frightened your children.”
He was slightly hunchbacked and extremely bald but with a short fringe of hair around his ears that curled into enormous “Piccadilly weeper” sideburns. His face hung in a naturally maudlin expression.
Burton said, “Sorry, wrong man,” and launched the heel of his hand up into Burke’s chin. The cracking blow sent Palmerston’s man sprawling backward and the weapon fell from his fingers. Burton had just enough time to register that, though pistol-shaped, it more resembled some sort of spineless cactus, before Hare crashed into him. The thug was immensely broad, with massive shoulders and long, thick arms. His head was crowned with an upstanding mop of pure white hair that angled around his square jawline to a tuft beneath the heavy chin. His pale grey eyes were deeply embedded in gristly sockets; he had a splayed, many-times-broken nose and an extraordinarily wide mouth filled with large flat teeth. The latter were displayed in full as Hare caught Burton around the neck, crushed his windpipe in the crook of his arm, grinned broadly, and bent him double.
Burton struggled for breath as small dots began to swim in front of his eyes. He reached down with both hands, wrapped them around Hare’s right knee, and dug his thumbs in beside the two big tendons there, brutally forcing them apart. Hare screeched and fell, dragging Burton down with him. The explorer stabbed an elbow into muscle-padded ribs, broke free as Hare’s grip loosened, and scrambled away from him.
He saw Darwin rushing to the fallen children and the other youngsters running to their mother.
Trounce hollered, “Burton!”
“Get the other one!” the explorer croaked, and was in the middle of gesturing toward Burke, who was getting to his feet, when Hare’s fist connected with the side of his head. Blocking the follow-up—more by luck than skill, for his senses were still reeling and he was off balance—Burton thudded his knee into Hare’s side and pushed himself away. He staggered to his feet and stood swaying. Hare faced him, still grinning, and assumed a fighting stance unfamiliar to the explorer but which he vaguely recognised as Oriental.
Off to the left, Trounce collided with Burke and they went down in a tangle of thrashing limbs.
Hare’s right fist swept forward. Burton moved to dodge the blow but it never arrived. Instead, his opponent used the mock punch as a counterbalance, swivelled, and kicked, his heel whipping up into Burton’s nose. The explorer was sent spinning backward, blood spraying around him. Without any awareness of what he was doing, he stopped himself from falling, parried a chopping hand, and—shooting out his arm—grabbed his opponent’s hair. He yanked inward and delivered a savage headbutt to Hare’s mouth, crushing the man’s lips into his teeth. His adversary slumped. Burton twisted his grip and sank his teeth into the other’s cheek, clamping hard until he felt hot blood welling. Hare shrieked and pushed him away with such force that Burton’s feet left the ground. The explorer thudded down, teetered, regained his equilibrium, and spat a lump of wet flesh onto the grass.