The scene blurred and reshaped itself. Now the SS Britannia was lying motionless and damaged on the floor of a wide shallow crater.
The Pico Santa Isabel. Fernando Po.
The steam sphere wavered, became a transparent globe of shifting colours, and was suddenly a crystal ball, on a table, with a complex symbol reflected in it.
Burton looked up at Count Sobieski. Perdurabo addressed him through the Russian’s toothless mouth.
“The future you have just witnessed is disastrous not only for our countries, but for the human race. It will set back our natural development and long delay the emergence of individuals like myself—a new species that has dominion over nature and even time itself. It is of utmost importance, therefore, that we alter the present in order to avoid its catastrophic consequences. Do you agree?”
“Yes,” Burton said.
“Very good. As I am sure you are aware, the British government is about to enter into an alliance with a newly formed Central German Confederation. This will give the Germanic states a new cohesion and the means to create a powerful manufacturing base. The seed of German expansionism is being planted right now. We can’t allow it. The Germans must be weakened, not strengthened.”
Burton was aware of an acute mesmeric influence needling into his consciousness. He didn’t resist, but retreated into the protected area of his mind, and from there said, “I can’t doubt what you say. Hell, when a man sees something like that with his own eyes, he ain’t gonna sit back an’ do nothin’.”
“Then you’ll join our crusade against this abomination? You’ll undertake a task for us, one that will save your country from the horror you’ve just witnessed?”
“For sure.”
“Good, Mr. Harris! Very good! Your task is a simple one. Are you aware of a man named Abraham Lincoln?”
“Yup! Who isn’t?”
“A year from now he will be elected as president of your country. His opposition to slavery will cause the Southern states to rebel and plunge America into a bloody civil war. The British Empire can ill-afford a potential ally to be so distracted. Thus we have to reshape history. The conflict must be avoided so America is free to join us in an incisive attack on Germany. There is only one way to achieve this, Mr. Harris, and you are the key.”
Perdurabo paused. His black eyes glittered.
Burton said, “Tell me what to do.”
“You must return to America at once and shoot Abraham Lincoln dead.”
“I had during the fever-fit, and often for hours afterwards, a queer conviction of divided identity, never ceasing to be two persons that generally thwarted and opposed each other.”
—RICHARD F. BURTON, THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA
Burton was led out of the League of Enochians Gentlemen’s Club by the same route through which he’d entered, guided by a man named Doyle, who ducked back into Brundleweed’s without having uttered a single word.
The explorer could feel the aftermath of Perdurabo’s mesmeric influence and was strongly inclined to book passage to America, there to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.
He liberated the enclosed portion of his mind. It flooded into the rest and drowned the insistent suggestion. Lincoln would be safe from him, and from Thomas Lake Harris, too.
It was half-past midnight by the time the explorer met Swinburne outside the Queen’s Arms. The pub had just closed and the poet was leaning against a lamppost, careless of the rain that was pattering on and around him, quietly reciting poetry to himself. The velocipedes were standing at the side of the road.
He looked up as the explorer approached. “Hallo! Hallo! You’re still in one piece, then? Was it worth it?”
“Most definitely. Are you sober?”
“Horribly. It’s a thoroughly objectionable state. What next?”
“How awake are you? We haven’t had much sleep recently.”
“Wide.”
“To Battersea Power Station, then. I have the measure of our enemy. Let us now meet our mysterious ally, if that he be.”
“Rather!” Swinburne enthused.
They mounted their vehicles, started the engines, and went rattling down St. Martin’s Lane. The streets were mostly empty and quiet but for the hiss of rain, so they rode side by side while Burton described what had occurred in the club.
“You have to warn Disraeli,” Swinburne said. “The signing ceremony is not even two days hence, and is surely Perdurabo’s target. The entirety of the British and German governments will be gathered in Green Park. The royal families, too. He could kill them all in one fell swoop.”
“How, though?” Burton pondered. “The event will be wrapped in the tightest security possible. Even if he has an army of assassins at his disposal, they’d never get past the guards, and the Orpheus will be hovering over the park, too, bristling with her new guns.”
Crossing Trafalgar Square, they steered into Whitehall and parked their penny-farthings. While Swinburne guarded them, Burton entered Scotland Yard. Pepperwick was off duty and had been replaced by the night clerk. The man examined the explorer’s authorization then said, “Can I help you, sir?”
“Are Detective Inspectors Trounce or Slaughter on duty?”
“All our officers are on extended duty tonight due to the unrest in the East End, but I think I saw Detective Inspector Slaughter come in a few minutes ago. Hold on a minute.”
He turned to the speaking tubes, selected the one connected to Room 14, and through it confirmed Slaughter’s presence.
“Go right up, sir.”
Burton found Slaughter in his office nursing a pint of milk. His clothes were dirty, his jacket sleeve torn, and a large bruise marked the left side of his forehead.
“Bloody chaos!” the policeman announced as the explorer entered. “The Cauldron is boiling over. Half the population is frightened out of its wits and fleeing north into Hackney, and the other half is ranting about Germanic perfidy and pushing westward into the city, apparently intent on smashing its way to parliament. We’re trying to hold them back but they’re like wild animals.”
“The League of Enochians Gentlemen’s Club is at the root of it,” Burton said.
“So Trounce told me. Can’t we raid the place?”
“You can. Have your men knock down the doors. You’ll find an underground tunnel connecting the club to the basement of the Brundleweed jewellery shop, so be sure to go in that way, too. Arrest them all.”
“By George!” Slaughter exclaimed. “If we can stop ’em from fanning the flames, that’ll be something. I’ll organize it at once. We’ll have the Enochians behind bars before the night is done.”
Burton rejoined Swinburne and they set off down Millbank. The reek of the Thames assaulted their nostrils.
The Vauxhall Bridge tollbooths were closed at night, so they traversed the river unimpeded and turned right by the Belmont Candle Factory onto Nine Elms Lane.
The rain intensified. Both men were wet through, and Burton felt ice clawing out of the ache in his left forearm and invading his flesh.
Please! Not a fever. Not now.
The four tall copper rods of Battersea Power Station glimmered ahead.
“‘To all the four points it shall batter thee,’” Swinburne quoted. “I hope Abdu El Yezdi is waiting for us. I shall have to take him to task over that childish doggerel.”
“Indeed,” Burton agreed. “Had it been rather more sophisticated, I might have got the message a little sooner. As it was—though it was staring me in the face—I couldn’t see the wood for the trees.”
A stretch of wasteland extended from the base of the station, separating it from the Royal Navy Air Service Station. It was too uneven to drive across, so they dismounted, turned off the engines, and pushed their penny-farthings along. The whole area was illuminated by the lights of the airfield, which even at this time of night was a hive of activity, with ground crew working in and around a truly gargantuan rotorship that dwarfed even the mighty Orpheus.