From the corner of his eye, he saw Trounce fall. The detective didn’t get up.
Burke called, “Do you require assistance, Mr. Hare?”
Hare, standing with his eyes fixed on Burton, his massive arms hanging and blood bubbling from the hole in the left side of his face, made a dismissive gesture then charged at Burton like a stampeding bull. He leaped, revolved through the air, and kicked. Burton ducked, snatched at the man’s ankle, and using Hare’s own momentum spun and slammed him down. Palmerston’s thug tried to dodge away but Burton sprang forward and swung his boot into the man’s head, once, then again, and a third time.
Hare flopped back and lay still.
Using his sleeve to wipe the blood from his mouth, Burton looked up and, though his vision was blurred, saw Mrs. Darwin collapsed with children crying over her prone form; saw Trounce motionless on the sward; and saw Burke dragging an unconscious Darwin to one of the steam spheres. He started toward the two vehicles but hadn’t taken more than two steps before meaty fingers closed around his left wrist and jerked him around. He found himself face to face with the ruined features of Gregory Hare and mumbled, “Why won’t you bloody well stay down?”
Hare gave a malignant hiss, raised his hand, and chopped it into Burton’s forearm. A horrible crunch sounded. Burton fell to his knees as white-hot pain flared through him.
“Mr. Hare!” Burke shouted. “It is time to leave.”
“I have to finish this one, Mr. Burke.”
“No time to waste on irrelevancies. Come along.”
Hare, with blood streaming down his neck and soaking into his clothes, glared down at Burton and said, “You’d better pray we never meet again.”
He stumbled off toward the vehicles.
Burton saw Burke sit the senseless Darwin against one of the spheres, open a hatch at the rear of the vehicle, then lift the scientist and bundle him into what was obviously a storage compartment.
Hare reached the other sphere and clambered into it. With a puff of steam, it rolled, turned, and sped away from the house and onto the Luxted Road.
Damien Burke slammed the hatch shut, drew the strange cactus-like pistol from his jacket, and pointed it at Burton.
“Don’t move!” he said.
Burton snarled and forced himself to his feet, cradling his broken left arm in his right.
There came that soft sound again—phut!—and a seven-inch spine embedded itself into the lower-left side of Burton’s waistcoat.
He gingerly moved his arm aside and looked down at the quill. The front half of it was glistening with a clear substance. He took hold of the dry end and plucked it out.
The second sphere went rumbling after the first.
Tottering across the lawn, Burton bent over Trounce and felt his heart. The Scotland Yard man was still alive. One of the spines was sticking out of his shoulder. Burton pulled it out, shook the detective, but received only a groan in response.
He moved over to little Leo. The boy was also deeply unconscious but alive, with one of the needles in him.
Burton approached the other children, all gathered around their mother. He selected the eldest, a girl of about sixteen years, squatted down next to her, and put his hand on her shoulder.
“What’s your name?”
“Etty,” she replied, tearfully.
“Look,” he said, and taking by its tip the spine that was in Emma Darwin’s neck, withdrew it.
“See where it’s wet?” he said. “That is what has sent your mother to sleep. Go to the other children and take out the needles, but be careful only to hold them by the dry parts. Do you understand?”
She nodded, her lower lip trembling. “Yes, sir.”
“Good girl. They’ll all wake up. My friend will, too.” He nodded toward Trounce. “And when he does, he’ll get help for you all.”
“What of my father, sir?” she said.
“I’m going after him now.”
Burton straightened and, despite himself, gave a yelp as he felt the broken bones of his forearm grind together. He walked unsteadily to the bottom of the garden, climbed into his rotorchair, and turned the small wheel that set the engine in motion. A minute later, the machine soared upward. He steered it, one-handed, over the house, and followed the road to the northwest: the direction in which the spheres had rolled.
It was a clear day and he could see for miles. Ahead, the road curved northward, and farther on, to the northeast. He saw the two vehicles rounding that second bend and entering the village of Downe. Burton surveyed the field-patched countryside beyond the settlement. He saw that the road exited Downe and ran on through gently undulating meadows. It was bordered on either side by woods and high hedgerows and, a couple of miles ahead, bent sharply to the left.
He pushed his toes into the rotorchair’s footplate, sending the machine surging forward, and shoved the middle flight lever, which caused the contraption to drop like a stone. He cried out through gritted teeth as pain almost blinded him then yanked the lever back. The rotorchair swooped over the ground, levelling out a mere ten feet above it, and shot across the fields at terrifying speed.
As the crow flies, Captain Burton. As the crow flies.
The air forced tears from the explorer’s eyes. He passed the spheres, far off to his right, drew ahead of them, and came to the sharp bend. Shielded by trees, he jerked his rotorchair to a halt, set it down in the middle of the road just beyond the curve, and momentarily passed out.
The sound of approaching engines brought him back to his senses. He coughed, spat blood, and dived out of the flying machine just as the lead sphere rounded the bend at high speed and, with no time to stop, slammed into it. Both vehicles detonated with a deafening boom and disappeared into a ball of fire. The sound tore into the far distance and left silence behind it.
Raggedly, Burton, hit by the blast, pirouetted with infinite slowness through the air.
I can’t do this by myself.
He watched with detached fascination as the flame-filled world revolved majestically around him.
What of your self-sufficiency? What of your intractable independence?
Fragments of spinning metal glinted in the sunlight.
I need a different perspective. The way I apprehend things—the manner in which I and Trounce and Slaughter and Monckton Milnes view the world—it just won’t suffice.
The branches of a tree embraced him, easing through his clothes and skin.
That’s because the world isn’t what you think it is.
Darkness swept in from all sides.
Exactly.
“Hope thou not much, and fear thou not at all.”
—ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
NO!
TO THE CENTRAL GERMAN CONFEDERATION!
NO!
TO A GERMAN EMPIRE!
NO!
TO A BRITISH–GERMAN ALLIANCE!
DO NOT BELIEVE THE LIES.
EVERY GERMAN EMPLOYED MEANS A BRITISH WORKER IDLE.
EVERY GERMAN FACTORY BUILT MEANS BRITISH TRADE LOST.
The distant chimes of Big Ben.
Burton counted them.