The Return of the Discontinued Man (A Burton & Swinburne Adventure) Read Online Free PDF Page A

tail. Got to shovel more coal into the furnace. Just a tick. Half a minute. Quick as a flash, like. I shan’t keep you. It won’t take long.”
    The hatch slammed shut.
    “He certainly took his time telling us how fast he’s going to be,” Swinburne observed. “Where were we? Ah, yes, Abdu El Yezdi is going to realise that the Nāga arranged his experiences from the start. That’s when his trials will really begin.”
    “Quite so. The reptiles will tattoo black diamond dust into his scalp, it being required for a technique they’ll then employ to send him forward through time to 1914, where for five years he’ll endure the terrible global conflict and witness its devastating effect on Africa. Traumatised, with his memory in pieces, he’ll evade the British psychic Aleister Crowley and make his way back to the Mountains of the Moon, there to return to 1863. The Nāga will inform him that the experience was a parting gift, intended to give him a better understanding of the nature of time. They’ll then be liberated from the diamond, which El Yezdi will take back with him to England.”
    “As gifts go, that one was lousy.”
    “I can’t disagree. It certainly influences his subsequent determination to restore history to its original single stream. Emulating the Nāga’s method, and taking the diamonds and damaged time suit with him, he’ll travel back to Green Park in 1840.”
    “Hooray! We can return to the past tense. It feels so much more normal .”
    “I quite agree.”
    The carriage rocked as the driver climbed back up to his seat. The engine gave a roar, settled into a more subdued chugging, and the vehicle jerked back into motion. Burton hissed and clutched at his arm.
    “All right?” Swinburne murmured.
    “Yes. So my counterpart waited for history to repeat itself, which it did: Edward Oxford arrived in 1840, having jumped from 2202. My other self immediately killed him and took possession of his undamaged suit. Thus Oxford couldn’t be thrown to 1837, history wouldn’t be altered, and everything would be back as it should be.”
    “Except it wasn’t. Somehow, he failed to prevent Victoria’s assassination.” Swinburne shook the now empty flask and heaved a forlorn sigh.
    “Correct. El Yezdi had created yet another strand of history, this one that you and I inhabit, and he was trapped in it, knowing that a younger version of himself, the nineteen-year-old me , was already here.”
    “Two Burtons,” Swinburne mused. “How perfectly dreadful.”
    The one at his side gave a wry smile. “I’m glad I was oblivious to the fact until last year.”
    The poet held up the empty brandy flask. “I wish I was a little more oblivious. All this is giving me a terrible thirst. I also feel obliged to remind you that our current conversation was begun with the intention of perhaps shedding light on what or who it was that wrecked Bartolini’s and beat you black and blue. We appear to be no closer to any insight.”
    “I want to outline events in their proper order that we may think clearly.”
    “Where hopping through time is concerned, I’m not sure there’s any such thing as a proper order. And do you really think clarity of thought is possible after going through a window headfirst? You’re ambitious, I’ll give you that. Well, carry on. You have my undivided attention.”
    “Now that the brandy is gone.”
    “Precisely. What happened next, oh Scheherazade?”
    “With the Eyes of Nāga and the two time suits—one damaged, one not—in his possession, Abdu El Yezdi—he now took that name—went into hiding, aided by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Charles Babbage, and over the next two decades influenced them, along with our key thinkers and politicians, to shape our world into one that, he hoped, would avoid the terrible war he’d witnessed.”
    “The scene: 1859. Enter Richard Francis Burton, stage left, El Yezdi’s younger self, native to the history he’d created. You.”
    “And,