Placing his feet softly and applying pressure to each step with infinite care, he silently ascended. As he neared the gallery, he dropped to all fours. He could clearly hear Isambard Kingdom Brunel's ringing, and with his remarkable ear for languages was soon able to discern words. The famous engineer was actually speaking English, but his mechanically generated voice possessed such a bell-like quality that, for most men, the sound obscured the meaning. His current audience, though, evidentially followed him, as did the man who now wriggled forward on his belly across the gallery to the balustrade and peered down through its carved uprights.
"The experimental ornithopters have proven too unstable to fly," Brunel was saying. "Human reactions are not fast enough to make the constant adjustments to yaw and pitch required to keep them in the air. We are seeking a mechanical means to achieve this. A babbage would be the obvious solution, but Sir Charles is currently working in seclusion and refuses to share his knowledge."
"Then force him!" came a harsh voice from below Burton. He could not see its author but the words were spoken in a grating tone that sounded wholly unnatural to the eavesdropper.
"We do not know his current location," chimed Brunel. "And, besides, he is extremely well protected."
"Find a way! Nurse Nightingale, your report, if you please. Have you found a solution to your problem?"
There were six individuals below gathered around a long banqueting table, the end of which disappeared beneath him. Next to Brunel sat Lau rence Oliphant, his white face swollen and cut, one eye a mere slit, his right hand encased in plaster. Opposite him, upon a cylindrical metal base, stood a thronelike seat. In it, Darwin sat with his huge head supported by a brace. The long metal needles were still embedded in his cranium, held in place by a circlet, with wires running from them into cables which coiled across the floor and out of the room's veranda doors. Another cable ran from the base of the chair into the electric brain of the Galton body, which stood silently nearby, blank-eyed and motionless.
Nurse Florence Nightingale was also present at the table. She was a thin, severe-faced woman, tightly corseted in a dark dress, her hair pinned back and concealed by a white bonnet.
"No, sir," she said, her voice surprisingly soft. "In every case but one, where we've raised an animal up to a human level of evolution, spontaneous combustion has sooner or later destroyed the beast. Mr. Oliphant, of course, is the exception. He is the only instance where parts of a human brain-the original Laurence Oliphant's-have been grafted to the animal's. We are currently raising a second white panther, which will not receive a brain graft. If it survives, we will know that combustion is a risk associated with the species used. If it doesn't, we shall experiment further with human-to-animal brain grafts. I should also point out that since taking a beating from Captain Burton, Mr. Oliphant's temperature has been fluctuating erratically. We are monitoring the situation."
"I'm fine," mumbled Oliphant. He spoke awkwardly through split lips and broken teeth.
"Thank you, Nurse," came the horrible voice from below. "Darwin, what progress?"
"We have so far treated nineteen chimney sweeps. Nine were rejected and destroyed on the basis of their height. The rest have been liberated."
"Will they remember?" interrupted the voice.
"No. Mr. Oliphant used mesmeric influence to dominate their minds and block all memory of what occurred to them while in our hands. We will continue the programme until a hundred boys have received the treatment. As you know, we have revised our theory of pangenesis and have incorporated into it the work of the German monk Gregor Mendel. We shall see, in the children of our sweeps, and their grandchildren and subsequent generations, the new theory-which we have named Genetic Inheritance-in action. The male offspring will become smaller until an average height of just three feet is established. With each generation, the descendants will also grow thick bristly hair-spines, almost-over their entire body. Thus they will become ideally suited to their vocation; able to fit into any flue, scraping off the soot with their bristles. Living brushes!
"If the experiment succeeds with this group of workers-which we selected due to their relative unimportance in social terms-then we will expand it to create specialists in all fields of society. Of course, our ability to monitor the future generations is dependent upon you."
"You need not worry about that," snapped the voice. "I will uphold my part of the deal. The time is drawing near."
"Then tell us!" demanded Darwin. "It is time we knew the truth about Spring Heeled Jack!"
A figure shuffled into view. Burton stifled a gasp. It was an orangutan, a large red-haired ape! Like Galton, the top of its head was missing, but rather than machinery, it had been replaced by a bell jar filled with a yellowish liquid in which the creature's brain was immersed.
The mysterious Mr. Belljar.! thought Burton.
The primate, walking with its knuckles to the floor, circled the table.
"I brought you here for that very purpose," it grated. "Though I warn you, the story is unbelievable and contains references to things you will not understand; things that I don't understand! Parts of it I shall tell from my own experience. Other parts were told to me by a man who spoke in a strange accent, who used the English language in a way I have never heard it spoken before, and who said a great deal that was incomprehensible."
Burton tensed. His two cases had become one, and had led him to this group of rogue scientists. Now, finally, he was going to learn who-or what -Spring Heeled Jack was, and how the stilt-man fitted into the picture.
"Gentlemen, dear lady, for me the story began in 1837, shortly after I gained notoriety for a childish prank in Melton Mowbray a month after I purchased and moved into this estate."
Bismillah! thought the king's agent. Henry Beresford didn't die two years ago! That ape is the Mad Marquess of Waterford!
"But the true beginning of the tale begins a great many years from now. It begins, my friends, far into the future!"
BEING THE TRUE HISTORY OF SPRING HEELED JACK
Who you think you are is who you ARE.
But what if you think you are nobody?
What if you banish all the limits that define YOU?
What then?
WHO ARE YOU?
PREVENTION
Every time we are faced with a choice, and we are faced with them every minute of every day, we make a decision and follow its coarse into the future. But what of the abandoned options? Are they like unopened doors? Do alternative futures lie beyond them? How far would we wander from the coarse we have steered were we to go back and, just once, open Door A instead of Door B?
His name was Edward John Oxford, and he was born in the year 2162. He was a physicist, engineer, historian, and philosopher. At the age of thirty, he invented the fish-scale battery, a flake of material no bigger than a fingernail, which soaked up solar energy on one side and stored it in vast amounts on the other. The battery transformed technology and technology transformed the world.