Evolution Expects Read online

  His fall was abruptly halted by a strong hand which grasped him by his left wrist and pulled. Ulysses winced as his shoulder flared in pain, but he held on and felt nothing but relief as the dark stranger hauled him back up onto the waterfront.

  “You want to take better care of yourself,” came a strangely distorted voice.

  Ulysses rolled onto his knees, gasping for air, and then staggered clumsily to his feet.

  “Thank you,” he managed through teeth-gritting pain and breathlessness, craning his head to properly see what his bat-like saviour really looked like.

  But there was no-one there.

  Ulysses turned his gaze back to the black waters of the Thames, but there was no sign of the Limehouse Golem either. It had sunk to the bottom of the befouled river without leaving any trace other than the choppy vortex amidst the roiling waves where it had entered the water and, of course, the trail of destruction that wound back through Limehouse to the synagogue. The droid had been swallowed up by the darkness, along with Spring-Heeled Jack.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Personal Touch

  ULYSSES CLIMBED DOWN from the cab that was now infused with the mingled aromas of Thames effluent, black mud and plaster dust, pausing to pay the driver double to make up for the state he had left the vehicle in. He stepped onto the pavement outside his Mayfair residence and was surprised to see a young woman standing halfway up the steps to the front door, her stance – and the way she had pulled her shawl tight about her shoulders – suggesting that she had been waiting some time.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as he approached her, “do I know you?”

  “Not in the Biblical sense. Not yet at any rate, and you’re not likely to smelling like that neither,” she replied in a broad cockney accent.

  “I know that voice,” Ulysses said, peering up into the girl’s face, hidden beneath the curled tresses of her long black hair and the shawl. On seeing the dark tone of her skin, as smooth and warm as ebony, and catching the reflection of the gas-lamps in her chocolate-coloured eyes, his suspicions were instantly confirmed.

  “It’s Eliza, isn’t it? I didn’t recognise you with your clothes on.”

  “Hark at him! Mr Lah-di-dah. And I didn’t recognise you all covered in shit and stinking like an open sewer. What happened to you anyway? Go for a midnight swim in the Thames, did you?”

  Before Ulysses could think of a suitable riposte, the door opened.

  “Good evening, sir,” Nimrod said, affecting his most aloof and condescending tone. “I was going to ask how the evening’s endeavours panned out but I think that considering your condition and present company” – at this the manservant gave the young whore a withering gaze – “it might be indiscreet.”

  “Well, it’s been eventful, I’ll grant you that,” Ulysses admitted, giving his put-upon butler a weak smile, “but nothing a glass of cognac and a hot bath can’t put right.”

  “Very good, sir. I shall run one for you now.” The butler took a step back to allow Ulysses into the house. As he did so, he made a point of not looking the young woman in the eye.

  “All in good time, old boy,” Ulysses said, his weariness making way for his indefatigable curiosity. “All in good time. We have a visitor.”

  “Yes,” the manservant said, drawing out the single syllable, “I know.”

  “He’s had me waiting out here half the night!”

  “I did ask this young woman” – Nimrod emphasised the word ‘woman’ as if to suggest that he could have chosen something much more demeaning – “if she would mind coming round to the tradesmen entrance in the morning, but she was most adamant.”

  “Tradesmen’s entrance? Will you listen to him? Do I look like a tradesman?”

  “Well you have chosen to work in the world’s oldest profession,” Nimrod threw back.

  “Yes, yes, alright. That’s enough,” Ulysses said making a placating motion with his hands. Nimrod and Eliza both took a breath as if they were about to speak. “Both of you,” Ulysses added more firmly. “Now perhaps we could resolve this matter inside and not on the street, if that’s alright with you?”

  Nimrod maintained his air of aloof indifference while the young woman glared at him, pouting in annoyance as Ulysses ushered her inside.

  “You should have called me, sir.” Nimrod’s tone was chiding.

  “I would have done, old chap, but my personal communicator was damaged during an encounter with the Limehouse Golem. And I do believe I ran into that terror of the streets Spring-Heeled Jack. The rogue who’s been terrorising the whole of London.”

  “All in the course of one evening, sir? It has been an eventful night.” Nimrod’s nose wrinkled in disgust at the distinctive aroma of blocked drains that Ulysses trailed after him into the house. “I’ll see about that bath now, sir, if you don’t mind.”

  Nimrod raised a last disapproving eyebrow in Eliza’s direction and then turned on his heel and made for the stairs.

  “Alone at last,” Ulysses said, giving the young woman a broad grin. It was not reciprocated.

  “If you say so,” Eliza replied, still looking none too impressed and making a point of keeping her distance.

  “Ah, come on. Give a man a break, can’t you?” Ulysses sighed. “If you had any idea what I’ve been through this evening, I think you might make the effort to be a little more sympathetic.”

  “You want sympathy? Fine, but it’ll cost you,” the whore replied cocking her head on one side and giving him a coy look. For the first time since he had given her the brush off back at the Queen of Hearts House of Sin, something of the made-up, skimpily-dressed prostitute emerged from beneath the loose fitting white blouse and long ochre skirt.

  “Now that’s more like it,” Ulysses said, the smile returning to his face. “So, much as I would like to believe that you couldn’t leave things as they were between us back at Her Majesty’s Temple of Venus, tell me, what is it that really brings you to my door at this time of night?”

  “The Queen sent me.”

  “I see. Then you have a message for me?”

  “I do. She told me to tell you that the bugger went to Bethlehem,” Eliza repeated, enunciating each word separately, as if recalling an exact phrase she had been forced to memorise. “Her Maj said you’d know what that meant.”

  “Indeed,” Ulysses confirmed, eyes twinkling.

  He turned, as if he was about to make his way after his manservant and then turned back to the girl, patting the pockets of his jacket as if looking for something, sending a cloud of dried plaster dust and caked on mud into the air amidst the priceless ormolu antiques.

  Finding what he was looking for at last, he took out his wallet and, rifling through it, pulled out several notes. “There you are, my dear. For your trouble.”

  The young woman whipped the money from Ulysses’ fingers before he had time to change his mind and stuffed the folded bills down the front of her blouse.

  “Thank you, sir,” she said, giving him a curtsey.

  “You don’t mind seeing yourself out, do you?” Ulysses said, nodding towards the door. “Only I think that I’m long overdue this bath.”

  “’Course not. It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, sir,” Eliza fixed him with a long languid look from those cocoa brown eyes, looking up at him demurely from beneath long black lashes.

  “Likewise,” Ulysses said, suddenly enraptured by her alluring gaze.

  “Right you are then,” she said, with a suggestive giggle. “I’ll be seeing you, Mr Quicksilver.” And with that she skipped back down the hallway in the direction of the door.

  ULYSSES LAY IN the bath, eyes closed, savouring the sensation of knotted muscles relaxing in the camomile and lavender-scented water, the many cuts and bruises he had sustained – more than he had been aware of at the time – stinging all over his body.

  He tested his damaged shoulder. It had been a recurring problem ever since he had first injured it during his aerial battle with the dasta
rdly Black Mamba over the Himalaya Mountains. Perhaps he should get Doctor Doppelganger to replace that for him too.

  He eased himself back under the bubbles, so that his whole body was submerged. Subconsciously he stroked at the leathery flesh of his chimpanzee arm. The feel of it reminded him once again that it was an alien thing and should never have been a part of him. But then, given the circumstances, Nimrod had been given little choice other than to let the insane, yet undeniably talented, vivisectionist work on him again. Under careful supervision from Ulysses’ loyal manservant, Doktor Seziermesser had to put right the terrible wrong he had done him. But it wouldn’t be long now before he waved goodbye to his ape’s arm for good.

  Ulysses closed his eyes and his body tensed as the memory of that grim, formaldehyde-scented operating theatre beneath the Umbridge Estate came to mind, and was soon joined by bloody visions of scalpel blades and a huge fanged maw. Ulysses remembering gagging at the smell of death and the iron tang of old man Haniver’s blood.

  The visage of the snarling Barghest beast, like some manifestation of hell, morphed into the twisted face of Josiah Umbridge, waving serpent-like atop its transplanted neck, and this in turn became the pitiful face of the human-cockroach, staring down at him from the corner of the ceiling inside the dead doctor’s office, begging him to help.

  Ulysses’ eyes snapped open. The Queen of Hearts had come good again. So the victim of this unexpected transformation had been carted off to the Royal Bethlem Hospital in Lambeth, or Bedlam, as it was more commonly known. It made sense, for how could anybody who had undergone such a metamorphosis remain sane? He thought of Umbridge the industrialist again. The terminally-ill Umbridge was a perfect example.

  So he now knew where he would be heading, first thing in the morning – or rather, as soon as he had broken the night’s fast with a slap-up Full English; Mrs Prufrock’s signature dish.

  There were still other questions to be resolved though. He and the publicity-shy vigilante Spring-Heeled Jack might have seen off the Limehouse Golem, but he had yet to determine who had been behind its attacks. And then, concerning the cockroach-wretch again, what was it that had triggered his terrible transformation so quickly?

  Other grotesque images came unbidden into his mind then; the dissolving fishy-features of the doomed Professor Galapagos, and the howling faces of the de-evolved apemen. A terrible thought wormed its way inside Ulysses’ brain. Could it really be happening all over again?

  The click of the bathroom door opening roused him from the depths of his deliberations, although he kept his weary eyes closed. Despite the horrors that haunted his dreams, sleep would not be long in coming this night – at least for what was left of it.

  “Ah, Nimrod. Is that my night cap? Thank you. If you’d be so kind as to leave it on my bedside table and then feel free to turn in for the night yourself.”

  The unexpected touch of the hands on his shoulders sent a jolt of shock through his body and he rose within the bath suddenly, sending a wave of soapy water cascading over the side of the large cast iron tub.

  But then the hands began to caress his aching shoulders, smooth fingertips applying skilful pressure, massaging the night’s stresses and strains from his tired muscles.

  Ulysses relaxed, sinking back into the warm water and letting out a sensuous groan of pleasure.

  Slowly the hands slipped down past his neck to his chest, the fingers teasing at the hair they found there.

  The first touch of warm lips against his neck was another crackling thrill of stimulating excitement, putting him into a heightened state of arousal.

  “If you charge for sympathy, I hate to think what this is going to cost me,” he murmured.

  The lips were there at his neck again, and then the tingling sensation of breath on his ear.

  “This one’s on the house,” Eliza whispered, sending ripples across the surface of the bath as she slipped her hands beneath the water.

  Act Two

  Strange Brew

  February 1998

  There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something better tomorrow.

  Orison Swett Marden

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Weather Machine

  AS THE PRIME Minister took the stand, the chattering hubbub of the gathered reporters hushed and the press conference came to order. Devlin Valentine looked out across the sea of expectant faces.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the press,” he began. “Welcome.”

  The crowd of journalists, photographers and cameramen were silent now. This was what they had been waiting for, to hear Prime Minister Valentine speak.

  “Thank you for waiting so patiently. As you know, we are all gathered here, this afternoon, for one very exciting reason; to hear about the greatest advancement the empire of Magna Britannia has seen since the Moon landings. It gives me very great pleasure to reveal to you all, for the first time, the one thing that is going to make more of a difference to the lives of Londoners – those faithful servants of the throne who labour night and day within our glorious capital to make this magnificent city what it is – than anything else since the invention of the steam engine.”

  With a grand sweep of his hand, Devlin Valentine drew the journalists’ attention towards the cloth-draped easel on the far side of the dais.

  “I give you – the Jupiter Station!” he announced triumphantly.

  On cue an aide pulled the drape from the easel, revealing the framed print beneath. Beneath the glass was a magnificently detailed technical drawing of something that looked not unlike the Heisenberg-Steinmeyer Orbital Station – that remained in geo-stationary orbit many miles above Greenwich, monitoring interplanetary traffic entering and leaving Earth’s atmosphere – and was shown from almost every conceivable angle.

  The press conference’s attendees expressed all the various responses Valentine had been hoping for, from gasps of amazement to excited murmurings that filled the room with a heightened sense of anticipation.

  He surveyed the room again, letting those present enjoy their moment of wonder and enthusiastic discussion and smiled to himself.

  The day-to-day business of running an empire was a ceaseless and thankless task – there was the ongoing Chinese situation to manage, that had taken a turn for the worse following recent events in the Pacific, there were rumours concerning the Russian royal family, some of the ancient Romanian bloodlines being said to be gaining undue influence over those in power there, and talk that Germany was mobilising for war again – but this was his pet project, the means by which he would make his enduring stamp upon the face of Londinium Maximum.

  The development of the Jupiter Station was the one thing of which he was most proud, the one thing that he wanted more than anything, with which he would make his mark on the world stage, while at the same time being seen to have learnt from his predecessors’ mistakes.

  He didn’t want another Darwinian Dawn on his hands. Magna Britannia was not about to fall into chaos and ruin on his watch; he would not allow it!

  He turned to study the plans again. He never tired in taking pleasure from seeing them.

  From side on, the Jupiter Station looked like a ring of metal and glass, in aspect not unlike Joseph Paxton’s famous glasshouse constructions that had so influenced architectural developments throughout the twentieth century, from the undersea habitation domes of cities like Pacifica and Atlantis City, to the first structures put up on Mars – their modular design making them ideal for the rapid construction of buildings of almost any size.

  Protruding above and below this outer service ring was the near-spherical polyhedral structure of the central Hub. This housed the station’s control room and helm. Projecting above and below these were shown various transmitters and aerials as well as other devices, inscrutable to the untrained eye.

  From above and below, it could be seen that the whole thing was circular in form, and at least as wide as two rugby pitches p
laced end to end. The outer ring was connected to the central Hub via six tubular arms; three were access corridors, the other three mainly for structural support but also carrying other services throughout the station. It looked not unlike a spoked wheel.

  The plans on display now even included a cross section of the outer ring – that was shaped like a huge torus – as well as a detailed artist’s impression of the interior of the control room.

  As the excitable clamour began to die down, Devlin Valentine took control again, addressing those assembled, his voice reverberating from the speakers placed around the room.

  “That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, the Jupiter Station – the world’s first Atmosphere Regulation and Stimulation Engine, or, if you prefer and as you and your colleagues have already dubbed it, the world’s first Weather Machine!”

  Valentine held his dramatic pause until he knew that he had the whole crowd before him on tenterhooks. Then he continued.

  “The launch of the Jupiter Station will herald a new age of improved living and working conditions for the people of this fair city. For Londinium Maximum is a fair city, and I want all the nations of the world to see that too, and they will when the Smog lifts!”

  There were more gasps from the packed room.

  “Yes, you heard me correctly, ladies and gentlemen. When the Jupiter Station is operational, the toxic Smog that had blighted our city for the last 150 years will be gone at last. And with the Smog gone, public health will improve, infant mortality will drop, living conditions will become better for all, life expectancy will rise and we will enter the next century with a new, healthy and prosperous future ahead of us all.

  “Magna Britannia will no longer just be the Workshop of the World. Our empire will also be the leading power safeguarding the future of Planet Earth.