“And you?”
His grin eased to a gentle smile, and he gazed reflectively at the horizon. “Didn’t you know? I was high-born to start with.”
She snuggled up to him while they watched the clouds sail by.
Chapter 20
“He’s the key to it all, Agnes. I think he always was-the loss of his wife and son turned him against everything and everyone. We’ve seen it time and again, greatness lying dormant until a person is visited by profound adversity. Nothing rouses creativity like a personal challenge. In his case, a challenge from Fate unlocked some deep, miraculous vault in his brain. He may have done it for love or for hate, or for the thing that drives all men to trample his fellow men.”
“What’s that?”
“Power. The power mankind has sought ever since it first began to question its limitations. The power we are destined, ultimately, to achieve, if we survive that long without destroying ourselves. At the moment, God alone possesses it, and we are but the dazzled viewers glimpsing it through His heavenly nickelodeon.”
“Blasphemy!”
“No, Agnes. I don’t believe that. No, I see it as blasphemy to deny man his rightful ascendancy. If the Leviacra stand for anything, it is for the limitlessness of our potential. God himself made us this way, with the gift of evolution. He wants us to rise above our antecedents until we are subject to no law or force beyond our control. We may have only glimpsed the vastness of that potential so far, but I firmly believe we are close to filling that glimpse with an entirely new perception of how the universe works, the way the slenderest beam of light might shine through a crack into an untouched sanctum, illuming little but hinting at immeasurable opportunity. Reardon has lit the torch, Agnes. He must join our ranks, but he must never-”
On the far side of his grogginess, the sound of a key fiddling in its lock suddenly confirmed what Cecil had been wrestling with. He had not died. He was not dead. The notion peeled away several layers of mental skin he’d grown during a forever sleep. How long had he been out? He was too weak to open his eyes. But the voices he’d been listening to in his dream were not from a dream after all. Agnes? Agnes Polperro? Was that harpy standing over him right now, with someone, a high-up in the Council?
“Is he-” Another familiar, male voice began.
“You know, I think he just might be!” The garrulous man kept his reply to a vociferous whisper, but Cecil’s hearing was uncommonly acute, a phenomenon often experienced by those who wake after sleeping for long periods. “Stay with him, Wallingford. As soon as he’s lucid, reassure him. Confide in him. You and Agnes have my full confidence.”
“Yes, sir,” said the man who’d just entered.
“Thank you, sir,” said Miss Polperro.
Quiet footsteps across what sounded like linoleum. The key in the lock. More whispering, this time impossible to discern. Lorne Wallingford, government minister, member of the Whig cabinet? Agnes Polperro, Leviacrum representative, bitch responsible for banishing Embrey and Verity to prehistory? The man who’d just left had spoken like one of those uppity university bods, part scientist, part philosopher, all windbag. But anyone in a position to delegate to Wallingford had serious clout. This had to be somewhere away from public scrutiny, most likely inside the Leviacrum tower itself. Perhaps the infirmary floor.
“Professor Reardon?”
He rolled his head on the pillow, swallowed repeatedly until the saliva gave his dry, flaky throat some semblance of lubrication. The unpleasant metallic taste almost made him retch. He moved his fingers, then the toes in his left foot. His right foot…didn’t respond. He yawned, mashed his eyes closed before opening them with tender, jittery blinks. It took minutes for them to become accustomed to the medium light in the infirmary ward. An empty ward-his was the only bed, and but for handsome landscape paintings adorning the pale blue walls it was a bare, depressing room, far too big for its current one-patient function. He felt marooned somehow, left behind by all that was good in the world. Then a prick of self-importance tickled him, and he recalled the almost reverential manner in which the mysterious overseer had spoken of him to Agnes Polperro.
Yes, he had something they wanted. Wanted badly. The secret to large-scale time travel-a bargaining chip he might use to procure all sorts of things. And then there were his friends…
What happened to Billy? Tangeni? The others? Did they make it to Tromso?
“We’re very glad you’ve recovered, Professor Reardon.” Wallingford’s crooked back and hawkish stare reminded Cecil of a rhamphorhynchus, a small, prehistoric lizard-like bird with a hideous countenance.
“I’m-” he swallowed the dryness once more, “-I’m not.”
“Oh, come now, sir. You are the most talked-about man in all the empire-nay, the world. To us here in the Leviacrum, your achievement has outstripped that of any scientist who ever lived. Surely that is worth waking up to.”
Cecil didn’t respond. This feeble buttering-up preamble wasn’t worthy of such a noted diplomat as Wallingford-it reeked of desperation.
“We’ll get straight to the point, then.” Miss Polperro pressed the bridge of her thick-rimmed spectacles higher up her nose and strode forward. Her chin still bore the dark print of his uppercut, but the bruise had healed somewhat. He guessed a week had passed. “I make no apologies for my actions in the prelude to the time jump, Professor, as I still maintain, no matter how it turned out, that having the boy accompany us was too great a risk. In my opinion we were lucky.”
She nursed the bruise on her chin with a handkerchief.
“That being said, I never meant you personally any ill-will during our time spent in prehistory, as any witness will attest. No, my sole preoccupation was to return as many British residents as possible to our own time, and that we achieved together, Professor. While you reassembled your machine, I ensured the men in my charge remained alive and motivated. We may have clashed on a technicality, but I want you to know that I hold you in the highest esteem as both a scientist and a gentleman. Whatever transpired during those weeks adrift in time after the initial cataclysm, you have little to reproach yourself over. In fact you have earned the utmost respect of the Council.”
Careful words designed to divorce his culpability from his achievement. Cecil sensed they were about to focus on the latter, while the former would be glossed over. Good news and bad news apportioned with guile, packaged for surreptitious ends-politics at work if ever he’d heard it.
He lifted his head a fraction, enough to see to the foot of his bed. Again, only his left toes responded. Recalling the awful weight pinning his right leg in the factory and Tangeni’s words-” Whatever happens, you have lost that leg, Professor. Nothing can be done”-he reached down under the blanket. The smooth, metallic surface shocked him for a moment. It began part way down his thigh and clearly represented a full, artificial limb-under cover, the foot appeared equal in size to his natural left one.
“How long was I unconscious?” he asked, to distract from the shocking new revelation.
“In a coma for two days, sedated for a further four. But you’ll want to see what Professor Sorensen has invented for you.” Before Cecil could protest, Miss Polperro peeled back the blanket to reveal his newfangled perambulatory gift. He tried shutting his eyes but it was no use. He had to know.
A shiny brass leg shaped in every way like a human one, with a complex knee joint governed by gears and levers, it was both a monstrosity and thing of unparalleled beauty. Extraordinary care and craftsmanship had wrought it, not to mention an ingenuity far surpassing any artificial appendages he’d ever seen or read about. Sorensen had always been brilliant but this almost defied belief.
“When you are well again our technicians will instruct you on how to walk on it.” She tapped the metal shin with her knuckles. A slight vibration tickled his upper thigh.
Wallingford stepped forward, thumbing his lapels. “We would also like to invite you to join our most elite committee, the Atlas Club, wherein you will immediately be appointed to the Leviacrum Council itself. Such is our
