game. Dressed in an orange suit, a green bow tie and a blue top hat, Dr Phibes invited visitors to come into his fairground tent and challenge him to a game of chess for four shillings. The contemptuous manner in which he inflicted defeat on his male opponents and the chivalry with which he allowed the ladies to beat him made him a celebrity, and people clamoured to challenge him. His creator, the inventor Alan Tyrell, boasted that his doll had even beaten the world chess champion, Mikhail Chigorin.
However, his profitable appearances at travelling fairs ended abruptly when one opponent became incensed when the insolent doll trounced him in less than five moves and then, adding insult to injury, amicably offered him his wooden hand to shake. Seized with rage, the fellow rose from his seat and, before the fairground barker could stop him, pulled a revolver from his pocket and shot the doll straight through the chest, showering orange splinters everywhere. The loud report alarmed the crowd, and the assailant managed to flee during the commotion before the barker had a chance to demand damages. Within minutes he found himself alone with Dr Phibes, who was leaning slightly to one side in his seat.
The barker was wondering how he would explain all this to Mr Tyrell, when he saw something that startled him. Dr Phibes was wearing his usual smile, but a trickle of blood was oozing from the bullet hole in his chest. Horrified, the barker hurriedly pulled the curtain across, and walked over to the automaton. After examining the doll with some trepidation, he discovered a small bolt on its left side. Drawing it back, he was able to open Dr Phibes as if he were a sarcophagus. Inside, covered with blood and dead as a doornail, was the man with whom, unbeknown to him, he had been working all these months. His name was Mies Shackleton: a miserable wretch who, having no other means of supporting his family, had accepted the trickery Tyrell had offered him after discovering his talent for chess.
When the inventor arrived at the tent and discovered the calamity he refrained from informing the police about what had happened, fearing he would be arrested for fraud. He silenced the barker with a generous sum and simply reinforced Dr Phibes with an iron plate to protect his new occupant from the wrath of future opponents. But Miles’s substitute was nowhere near as skilled at chess as his predecessor: Dr Phibes’s reputation began to wane and eventually vanished altogether, rather like Miles Shackleton, who disappeared off the face of the earth. More than likely, he was buried in a ditch between fairgrounds.
When at last his family learned from the fairground man what had become of him, they decided to honour him in the only way they could: by relaying his sad tale through the generations, like a torch whose flame, more than a century later, lit the pupils of the executed youth who, after lifting himself off the ground, glanced back at Solomon’s palace with hatred, and murmured to himself, although in fact he was speaking to history: ‘Now it’s my turn to kill you.’
At first with faltering, then resolute steps, he disappeared into the ruins, determined to fulfil his destiny, which was none other than to become Captain Derek Shackleton, the man who would defeat the king of the automatons.
Chapter XX
Gilliam Murray’s words evaporated like a spell, leaving his listeners plunged in a profound silence. Casting her eyes quickly around the hall, Claire saw that the moving tale Murray had told – doubtless in the form of an allegory, perhaps to mitigate the crude reality of such frightful events – had succeeded in awakening the interest of the gathering, as well as creating a certain sympathy for Captain Shackleton and even his enemy, Solomon, whom she suspected Murray had deliberately made more human. In any case, she could tell from Ferguson’s, Lucy’s and even Charles Winslow’s awed expression that they were anxious to arrive in the future, to be part of these momentous events, if only as witnesses, and to see how Murray’s story unravelled. Claire thought that her face undoubtedly bore a similar look, although for quite different reasons: what had impressed her about the story was not so much the automaton conspiracy, the destruction of London or the ruthless slaughter the dolls had perpetrated against her species, but Shackleton’s determination, his personality, his bravery. This man had built an army out of nothing and restored the world’s hope, not to mention surviving his own death. How would a man like him love?
After the welcoming speech, the group, led by Murray, headed off through a maze of galleries lined with clocks to the vast warehouse where the Cronotilus was awaiting them. An appreciative murmur rose from the crowd at the sight of the vehicle standing polished and ready. It differed in every way from an ordinary tram except in shape and size; its numerous additions made it look more like a gypsy caravan. Its everyday appearance was buried beneath a riot of shiny chrome pipes studded with rivets and valves that ran along its sides like the tendons in a neck. The only part left exposed were two exquisitely carved mahogany doors. One was the entrance to the passenger compartment, while the other, slightly narrower, led to the driver’s cabin, which, Claire deduced, must be partitioned off from the rest of the vehicle since it had the only windows that were not blacked out. She felt relieved that at least the driver would be able to see where he was going. The porthole-shaped windows in their carriage were darkened, as Murray had said they would be. No one would be able to see the fourth dimension and the monsters that lived there would not glimpse their terrified faces, framed in the windows like cameo portraits.
Attached to the front of the vehicle was a sort of battering ram, like those on ice-breakers, no doubt with the alarming function of ploughing through any obstacle in its path, clearing the way at all costs. A complicated steam engine had been attached to the rear, bristling with rods, propellers and cogwheels. This puffed and blew from time to time, like some sea creature, and let out a gasp of steam that playfully lifted the ladies’ skirts. However, what made it impossible for the vehicle to be described as a tram was the turret built on its roof, where at that very moment, having clambered up a small ladder bolted to the side, two gruff-looking fellows armed with rifles and a box of ammunition were taking their positions. Claire was amused to see there was also a periscope between the gun turret and the driver’s cabin.
The driver, a gangling youth with an idiotic grin, opened the door of the passenger compartment and stood to attention beside it, next to the guide. Like a colonel inspecting his troops, Gilliam Murray walked slowly past the passengers, casting a severe but compassionate eye over them. Claire watched him pause in front of a lady clutching a poodle.
‘I’m afraid your little dog will have to stay behind, Mrs Jacobs,’ he said, smiling affably.
‘But I won’t let go of Buffy for a moment,’ the woman demurred.
Murray shook his head kindly, yanked the dog away from her with a swift gesture, as if he were pulling out a rotten tooth, and deposited it in the arms of a female assistant. ‘Eliza, will you please see to it that Buffy is cared for until Mrs Jacobs’s return?’
Murray resumed his inspection, ignoring Mrs Jacobs’s feeble protests. Grimacing theatrically, he stopped in front of two men carrying suitcases. ‘You won’t be needing these either, gentlemen,’ he said, relieving them of their luggage.
He then asked everyone to place their timepieces on the tray Eliza was about to pass round, reaffirming that this would diminish the risk of being attacked by the monsters. When everything was to his liking, he planted himself in front of the group, smiling at them with almost tearful pride, like a marshal about to send his troops on a suicide mission. ‘Well, ladies and gentlemen, I do hope you enjoy the year 2000. Remember what I said: obey Mr Mazursky at all times. I shall await your return, champagne at the ready’
After this fatherly farewell, he stepped aside to make way for Mazursky, who politely asked them to climb on board the time-tram.
