Cryptozoic! by Aldiss Brian W.;

Author:Aldiss, Brian W.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Published: 1933-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWO

THE GREAT VICTORIAN PALACE

He stood under great elms and knew this was the place — his Dark Woman was nearby, very shadowy, her form erased a thousand times by the passers-by. At the end of the line of elms stood a great crystal fountain, its waters pouring in a circular pool. Fountain, pool, and elms were enclosed in a mighty glass arcade and flanked by bizarre statuary.

Bush knew this place and time; the Victorian mania in his childhood ensured that. This was 1851, when the Great Exhibition was held to testify to the upsurge of British wealth and power. He went over and stood by one gigantic statue that caught his fancy almost as much as it did the crowd’s. It was a German statue fashioned out of zinc, depicting a mighty Amazon woman riding a stallion bare-back and bare-breasted. She was about to plunge her lance into a tigress which, prompted by reasons of its own, was climbing up and over the horse’s shoulder.

The Victorians, in sculpture and painting, had been masters of “What will happen next?”, freezing one second of time into a question; their skill had been both lost and derided with the onset of photography and cinema and television and lasoids — all of which insisted on answering the question, rather than remaining content to pose it. Now he was faced with the same question in his own life, and must solve it with action. The Dark Woman was watching him. From her vantage point in time, she might well know what-happened-next-to-Eddie-Bush. It was not a comforting thought; he was pleased to think that she knew no more than he whether the Amazon or the tigress won their battle.

There were other what-would-happen-nexts involved with his personal equation; hanging about beneath the great zinc figure, he decided that the first one concerned Silverstone, alias Stein. He had been trained to assassinate Silverstone; clearly, the man had something that was dangerous to the Gleason régime — which Bush in his new mood saw was something to cherish. It was his duty to get to Silverstone and warn him — if Silverstone was still alive — for although Bush had personal reasons to know that Silverstone was well able to protect himself, he would probably have several of Gleason’s agents on his trail by now. Popular Action mind-travellers would be stretching throughout time, searching for Silverstone and any other potential troublemakers they could find; probably including Bush himself by now.

By such reasoning, his godlike Breedale thoughts came back to earth.

The obvious place to begin looking for Silverstone was Buckingham Palace.

He pushed invisibly through the crowds, even in this moment of preoccupation finding space to delight in their diversity, eccentricity, and flamboyance, so different from the levelled-down masses of his own day. Outside, the people were even less subdued. Carriages stood here, both private and for public hire, together with leathery men holding horses, or gentlemen riding them, singly or in groups. Bush thought that the Victorians seemed most themselves when these dark ambiguous animals were about.

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