'It's true!' shouted another. 'We're going to burn the accursed place to the ground!'
The constable shook his head. 'You'll be doing no such thing!'
Suddenly one of the women screamed and pointed at the field. They turned and saw the dirty cloud parting as a dreadful apparition came hopping toward them. The tall, gangling creature was familiar to them all; it had been associated with Old Ford ever since it attacked Jane Alsop twenty-three years ago on the very spot where they were standing. It was Spring Heeled Jack!
With cries of terror, the villagers scattered as the grotesque bogeyman ploughed into them, swinging a shovel left and right while shrieking, 'Get away! Get away!'
The constables were mown down by his frenzied attack. The villagers raced away. The cottage was left unprotected.
The stilt-man threw the shovel aside and vaulted over the gate, stalked up the pathway, and slammed his shoulder into the front door. It swung open. He bent and peered into the hallway.
A young woman was standing in it. She held a pistol levelled at his head.
'Tell me, girl-do you have a birthmark on your chest?' he demanded.
'I'm not Alicia Pipkiss,' she replied coolly. 'She's been taken to a place of safety. You'll never find her.'
He expelled a sulphuric hiss of fury and for a second Sister Raghavendra thought he was going to pounce upon her, but then a voice rang out: 'Edward John Oxford!'
Spring Heeled Jack whirled around.
Sir Richard Francis Burton was standing at the gate.
He held a strange weapon in his hand.
He pulled the trigger.
A bolt crackled through the air and thudded into the time suit's control unit.
Oxford screamed and convulsed as lines of energy writhed up and down his body.
He tottered, nearly fell, crouched, leaped, and vanished.
'Bismillah! Where the hell has he gone now?' muttered Burton.
He heard his name called from the battlefield. It was Detective Inspector Trounce, who was waving his bowler above his head to attract the explorer's attention. He strained to hear what the man was shouting.
'He's here! He's here! The Technologists have him!'
When Spring Heeled Jack leaped out of 1861 with the energised crossbow bolt embedded in his suit's control unit, he had no clear idea of a destination. His mind had been pushed to the brink of unconsciousness by an electrical discharge. He jumped without considering a landing place and, for a split second, or possibly an eternity, he floated beyond time.
He fragmented.
All the elements that had made Edward Oxford the man he was separated from one another and drifted apart. Decisions taken were unmade and became choices; successes and failures reverted to opportunities and challenges; characteristics disengaged and withdrew to become influences.
He lost cohesion until nothing of him remained except potential.
Yet, set apart from this strange process, something observed and wailed and grieved as it watched itself disintegrate into ever smaller components.
It was that same something that clung despairingly to one final possibility; that issued a last command to the ebbing time suit; that hoped against all evidence to the contrary that another attempt to dissuade the original Edward Oxford from assassinating Queen Victoria might-just mightwork, and wipe this crazy version of history out of existence.
Spring Heeled Jack popped into existence above Green Dragon Alley on February 27, 1838, hit the ground, fell, and dragged himself into an angle in the narrow passageway.
He pulled the suit's cloak over his head, seeking darkness and a moment to remember, to gather his thoughts.
Who was he?
Where was he?
Why was he here?
What must he do?
There was a name: Edward Oxford-the Original.
And a place: the Hat and Feathers.
And an enemy: Burton.
And a voice: 'Are you sick, Mister? Shall I fetch help?'
He pulled the cloak aside and looked up. A young girl was standing looking at him; a child, also female, just behind her.
He had to rape her, or someone like her.
Rape?
What was he thinking? He'd never done anything like that in his life; he wasn't capable of such brutality! Why was he contemplating such a foul act? Why was his head filled with all this violence? Rape and ripping girls' dresses and assassination and fighting and-
He screamed at the horror of all he'd done and all he'd considered doing.
A jagged line of energy lashed out from his helmet and struck the girl in the face.
She was thrown onto the muddy cobbles. She started to convulse.
The younger girl scrambled over to her, shouting, 'What have you done? Help! Help!'
Spring Heeled Jack pushed himself to its feet and yelled, 'This is your fault, Burton!'
As he paced away along the alley-less a man than a disjointed bundle of possibilities-he was jolted again and again by shocks.
An emergency program in the damaged control unit suddenly activated. A voice in Spring Heeled Jack's head ordered him to jump into the air. Reflexively, he did so. With its very last resource, the suit flipped him back to where he'd come from, moving him a little to the west to prevent him from colliding with himself.
Thirty seconds after he'd leaped away from Burton, he dropped onto the Alsop field straight into the hands of the retreating Technologists.
'The Technologists have Oxford!' shouted Detective Inspector Trounce as Burton approached. 'They're making away with him.'
Burton peered through the gloom at the battle raging at the top of the field. Policemen, led by Detective Inspector Honesty, together with what remained of the Letty Green villagers, were engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a line of Rakes who were holding them at bay while, farther up the field, the Technologists swarmed up the ropes to the rotorship, whose prow was slowly passing over the western line of trees.
Swinburne and his chimney sweeps, swooping around the vast platform, were unable to do further damage to it, having run out of things to throw.
Even as he watched, Burton saw Spring Heeled Jack, who appeared to be unconscious, being hauled up into the massive flying machine.
'If you're fighting them buggers, we're with you!' came a voice. He turned and saw an elderly man leading a group of villagers. They were all squinting, their eyes watering as particles of soot drifted into them.
'Old Carter the Lamp-lighter at your service, sir!' declared the man. 'We're from Old Ford, and we're sick to the back teeth of Spring Heeled Jack!'
'Good man!' said Trounce. He pointed to the struggling men. 'Do what you can!'
'Aye, sir! Come on, lads, let's have at 'em!'
He led the villagers away.
Burton pulled his shirt from his trousers, ripped a strip from its hem, and, with Trounce's help, bound his bleeding arm.
He glanced toward the rotorship. He knew what he had to do. There was no question. No doubt. No doppelganger haunting him with alternatives.
'I need a rotorchair,' he told the Yard man. 'I'm going to see if I can wave one of them down.'
'Use this,' said Trounce, handing over his police whistle.
Burton ran back to the bottom of the field, where the soot was less dense, and began signalling to the flying machines as they passed overhead, waving his arms and blowing short blasts on the whistle. The fourth to fly by
