The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack - Mark Hodder [103]
"The body of Francis Galton we employ as a limb, for we are confined to this machinery which Isambard Kingdom Brunel designed to support us. Unfortunately, the human body is unable to maintain two brains without mechanical assistance."
"Wait!" protested Swinburne.
"It interrupts," harmonised Darwin. "We should not feel this sensation of impatience, for have we not already established that the poetical mind operates outside the logic of the scientific mind? We cannot expect it to restrain its impulses until it has heard all the information we wish to present. Yes, we agree. We must indulge the creature. What is it, Algernon Charles Swinburne?"
The little flame-headed poet, stretched out and strapped down, with machines sizzling, spitting, and shooting bolts of lightning all around him, felt as if he were trapped in a nightmare. With the squashed, gargoylelike face of Darwin peering down at him and the figure of Galton standing nearby, motionless but for the winking lights atop his head, the scene could have been a painting by Hieronymus Bosch come to life.
Fighting his rising hysteria, Swinburne shook his head and tried to order his thoughts.
"The Origin of Species made you famous-or should I say notorious-two years ago," he said. "When the church issued death threats against you, you went into hiding, but by then your face was familiar to the general public and it certainly didn't have that horrible big bonce towering over it. In other words, the machinery encasing you wasn't required until a later date. Yet '59 is also the year Brunel died, therefore he cannot possibly have designed it."
Again, the horrid rattle sounded.
"The poet makes a logical argument, though the solution to the apparent paradox is simple."
"Oh, really?" said Swinburne, sarcastically. "Please enlighten me!"
"Brunel," came the response. "Step forward."
To the left of the throne, one of the huge pieces of machinery suddenly rose from the floor with a loud hiss of steam and clanged forward.
The most famous and successful engineer in the world, if this was truly Brunel, was no longer the short, dark-haired, cigar-chomping man of memory.
He stood on three triple-jointed metal legs. These were attached to a horizontal disk-shaped chassis affixed to the bottom of the main body, which, shaped like a barrel lying on its side, appeared to be constructed from wood and banded with strips of studded brass. There were domed protrusions at either end of it, each bearing nine multijointed arms, each arm ending in a different tool, ranging from delicate fingers to slashing blades, drills to hammers, spanners to welders.
A further dome rose from the top of Brunel's body. From this, too, arms extended-six in all-though these were more like tentacles, so long and flexible were they. Each ended in a clamplike hand.
At various places around the body, revolving cogwheels poked through slots in the wood, and on one shoulder-it was impossible to say whether it was the left or right because Brunel had no discernible front or back-a pis- tonlike device slowly rose and fell. On the other, something resembling a bellows pumped up and down, making a ghastly wheezing noise. Small exhaust pipes expelled puffs