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

say!” Swinburne screeched.
    The driver clicked his tongue sympathetically. “Got you into a scrap, did he? Caused a rumpus? You look proper done over, you do, if yer don’t mind me a-sayin’ so.”
    “He did, I am, and I don’t. Good evening.”
    “Night, sir.”
    The landau departed.
    Battersea Power Station stood tall before them, its four copper rods rising high, like chimneys, scraping the underside of the blanketing cloud. Both men knew the rods extended even farther below the edifice, penetrating deep into the Earth’s crust. Brunel had designed the station to render geothermal energy into electricity. It was one of his few failures, and generated only sufficient power to light itself.
    They started across the broad patch of wasteland that separated the station from Queenstown Road. Burton limped, pain stabbing through him with every step. Their feet sank into the snow, which was already lying a foot deep, startlingly pink beneath the illuminations of Brunel’s creation.
    “Red snow,” Swinburne muttered. “Spring Heeled Jack. Men from the future. Multiple Burtons. And he calls me a loony!”
    Off to their right, a gargantuan rotorship rose from the nearby Royal Navy Air Service Station. Light glowed from the many portholes along its sides, and its spinning wings sent a deep throbbing through the atmosphere. It powered into the sky on an expanding cone of starkly white steam until it was swallowed by the cloud. A lozenge of fuzzy luminescence marked its position as it slid southward.
    “The Sagittarius ,” Burton noted. “According to the Daily Bugle , it’s off to China today.”
    “To bomb the Qing Dynasty into submission at the behest of Lord Elgin,” Swinburne added. “That man is the consummate politician. He possesses not one jot of conscience. Can we return to the matter at hand? Edward Oxford? Did we encounter him tonight?”
    “The problem is that the apparition resembled Oxford’s time suit only in that it was mounted on stilts,” Burton responded. “It was a mechanism, not a man.”
    “So if not him, what?”
    “In design it appeared more advanced than Oxford’s invention. I wonder, then, whether its origins lie even farther into the future than 2202. Conversely, it said it served Queen Victoria, meaning it must have come from some point during her reign, between 1837 and 1840.”
    “Which makes no sense at all.”
    “As you say. And why was it hunting for me? And why didn’t it know what to do with me when it found me? And why did it—did it—wait. Stop.” Burton gasped, stumbled to a halt, and leaned heavily on his cane. “I just need a moment.”
    “Not far to go,” Swinburne said. “Then warmth, brandy, and a chair to sit in. Sadhvi shouldn’t take too long to get here, either. She’ll soon have you as right as rain.”
    “I share your—your faith in her abilities,” Burton mumbled. “Nevertheless—”
    He fished the bottle of Saltzmann’s Tincture from his pocket.
    “Please,” Swinburne pleaded. “You promised.”
    “I have to break my word, Algy. I’m sorry, but my legs are folding beneath me. I can barely function.”
    “Just hold on a little longer.”
    “I can’t.” Burton sucked in a juddering breath, uncorked the bottled, raised it to his lips, and downed the contents.
    “All of it?” Swinburne shrieked. “You’re only meant to take a teaspoonful!”
    “Nonsense.”
    “You’re out of your bloody mind!”
    Burton felt honey-like warmth oozing through arteries and spreading into capillaries. His aches immediately shifted to one side, as if vacating his wounds. He felt the odd sensation that countless possibilities stretched away from him into an infinitude of futures.
    The tincture had never acted with such rapidity.
    He was thankful for it.
    “Better,” he said after a minute had passed. “Let’s get out of this snow.”
    They trudged onward, Swinburne glaring angrily at the explorer, and came to the power station’s big double gate,