Terry Pratchett - The Long Utopia

Hackett glared at him. ‘What the devil do you mean?’

And Burdon asked, more calmly, ‘Practising on whom?’

‘On more of your sort.’ Radcliffe began to pace, calm, thoughtful. ‘Here’s what you fellows need to understand. Your day is done, you and your flash tricks. You were always something of an indulgence of the old Prince, God rest him. But once he had gone it was clear that Her Majesty had always found you rather repulsive. “More shadows than men,” she said of you.

‘Meanwhile I and many of my colleagues have always been suspicious of the power you wield, and the notion that it is only through your own good will that we can have any surety that you will not turn your powers against your own government. Why, every one of you when he’s had the chance has used his talent to enrich himself, has he not? You, Burdon, with your phantom gold mine, and you needn’t think we haven’t unravelled the truth about that. You, Valienté, with your absurd act as the Great Elusivo.’

‘What, are you a critic now? I got good notices in my time. Why, once in the Observer— ’

‘Even you, Hackett! Pious and pompous as you are now, you weren’t so as a younger man, were you? I’ve a file on you as thick as my arm. No, you’re too dangerous to be allowed to run around uncontrolled, d’ye see? And then there’s the whiff of—’ He sought the right word. ‘The whiff of the unnatural about you. We’re British, by God, a manly race. And we don’t want your shifty, slippery sort pollutin’ the blood, no matter how useful you may occasionally be – and, I’ll grant you, you have been. Well, we’ve decided to bring you in – beginning with you three, among the first to present yourselves here all those years ago – what colossal arrogance you showed then! And now the first to be taken down.’

But not the last, Luis realized in a sudden panic, not the last. Now he feared for his family, for Ella and Robert.

Radcliffe said, ‘And believe me, you’ll never see daylight again. As you can see, we have learned how to deal with your kind.’

‘By practising,’ Burdon said. ‘You told us that. Answer my question, then: on whom?’

‘On whomever we could find. We’ve had the scientists working on it, chaps at the Royal Society, devising a programme of testing. Anybody we suspected might have your sort of faculty – the soldier who mysteriously dodged the bullets copped by everybody else in battle, the particularly prolific thief, the particularly persistent jail-breaker – that sort. And then we tested them to see if they could Waltz, or not.’

Hackett looked appalled. ‘How, man?’

‘By stressing them. Wall a man up in some sarcophagus. Set him in front of a firing squad. Chuck him in a cage and sink it in the Thames; if he can skip out he’ll do so, you see. Mostly it fails – and, no, we didn’t kill ’em all, but it’s no waste if we had. One in a thousand, or less, showed signs of what you can do. And once they’ve stepped out you might think they’d be away scot free and beyond our reach, but many of ’em didn’t even know they had the capability before being forced to use it – they had always just escaped unconsciously – and then almost all of ’em came right back again, and straight into the arms of my bonny lads in their red coats. Once we had ’em, it was down into a basement under the Royal Society for all of them. Very systematic people, these scientists. Very methodical. Although, if there’s something in the brain that enables this Waltzing business, well, they ain’t found it yet.’

‘You’re talking about vivisection,’ Hackett said. ‘You monster.’

Radcliffe bridled at that, and leaned over him. ‘You’re the monster, man! Not me! D’ye not even see that clearly?’ He straightened up and resumed his pacing. ‘What we have learned is how rare this ability of yours is. After all, the threat of violent death has been a common occurrence during human history; if Waltzing was any more prevalent you’d think we’d have noticed by now.

‘Anyhow the government, as expressed through the rather discreet agency for which I work, has come to the decision that for the likes of you, rare isn’t enough: extinct would be preferable. We’re considering how to persuade friendly governments to come over to that way of thinking, and be done with you once and for all. Certainly once Britain is cleansed we’ll be going out into the colonies with a similar programme.’ He came to Luis, and looked him in the eyes, the mouth, as if inspecting a prize horse. ‘We’ll be merciful. No scragging for you, which is all you deserve.’

‘“Scragging”,’ Luis reflected back. ‘Come a long way, haven’t you? But there are times when it slips, Radcliffe. Your mouth’s like a Whitechapel sewer.’

Radcliffe curled his lip. ‘Takes one to know one, Valienté. You’ll even be comfortable for a while, you and your families, down here in the dark.’ He straightened up. ‘But when the last of you dies, in this cellar or another, that will be the end of it. So much for the Knights of Discorporea. Ha!’

‘We’ll see,’ said Fraser Burdon.

‘What’s that?’

Burdon looked over at Hackett and Luis. ‘Widdershins,’ he said.

Hackett snapped, ‘What? Impossible, man. We’re in a damn cellar.’

Burdon shrugged, and his shackles rattled. ‘Suit yourself. You with me, Luis? On my count. One, two—’

Luis, unbelieving, Waltzed—

And found himself in another hole in the ground, this one rough-walled, in a dark relieved only by the light of candles. But his shackles were gone – and so was his chair, and, emerging into thin air in a sitting posture, he fell back on to a rocky floor with a jolt hard enough to make his head throb anew.

He struggled to rise. ‘Burdon? Hackett?’

‘Valienté?’ It was Hackett’s voice; he must be as bewildered as Luis, and was ten years older too, but he had his customary tone of command. ‘Just sit tight.’ He held up a candle to reveal crudely cut walls all around, and what might be a wooden-lined shaft up to the surface. The two of them were alone in here. Hackett asked, ‘Where the devil are we?’

And Luis laughed, and lay back on the cold ground. ‘In a mine. I see it now – a mine cut by Burdon; we mined together in America, remember? We’re in a shaft in a stepwise parallel of Windsor. That’s how you Waltz out of a cellar. By staking out the ground in advance, and cutting a hole in the precise same location widdershins .’

‘My God, you must be right. But Burdon must have planned this months, even years ahead! Knowing that some day he’d need it. What a suspicious mind the man must have.’

‘He was right, though, wasn’t he?’

‘So he was … Where is he, by the way? Why’s he not in here with us? Now I see I always underestimated him. Won’t make that mistake again.’

There was a slight puff of air that made the candles flicker. Burdon stepped out of the shadows and walked forward into the candlelight.

Hackett demanded, ‘What have you been up to, man? Why didn’t you come over with us?’

‘Well, I did. But once I was free of those iron shackles I took a few paces and went back.’ He held up something, a blade, dripping dark. ‘A detail I needed to tidy up.’

‘Oh, Burdon,’ Luis said, feeling oddly disappointed. ‘You killed them?’

‘Only that bastard Radcliffe. And he deserved it, don’t you think? For what he did to those wretches in the coffins and the underwater cages. For what he intended to do to our families.’

‘Our families,’ Hackett said. ‘We must get out of this cellar, walk somewhere we can Waltz back safely—’