“ Da. But I must tell you: I am to make different-umm-schedule for us both. My death, I vill delay; yours vill be much more soon, nyet? ”

“ Nyet,” Burton replied.

Grigori Rasputin chuckled maliciously.

The rivulets of blood that had been trickling from Madam Blavatsky slowed to irregular drips. Burton could see that the woman was close to death.

“So let me venture a guess,” he said. “Your clairvoyance revealed to you the circumstances of your future betrayal and demise, and the subsequent fate of your country. You could have saved yourself by simply avoiding the assassins, but still there would be Germany, still Nietzsche, and, in all probability, still more assassins. So you traced the history of the war back to its origins, seeking a way to alter its course, intending to prevent your own murder and the disaster that would befall Russia afterward.”

“Entirely correct, tovarishch.”

“It just so happened that while you were looking back through time, Madam Blavatsky was peering forward.”

“ Da. We touch.”

“And you projected your astral body into her mind.”

“ Da. It vas easy for such as Rasputin. In future, I have Eye of Naga. I use it to transfer into woman.”

“And to your good fortune, it just so happened that she existed at exactly the point in history where the seeds of the war were planted, if you'll forgive the unintentional pun.”

“Pun? Vot is that?”

“I refer to Richard Spruce's eugenically altered plant life, the devastation of Ireland, and his and the Eugenicists’ subsequent defection to Germany.”

“Ah. So.”

“And the Naga diamonds, Grigori-you say you have one?”

“Cambodian and African stones are, in war, used to- povyshenia? ”

“Enhance.”

“-minds. I have African. Germany has others. Of South American diamond, nyet, it is not found in my time. I make Blavatsky find it in yours.”

“Leading her to the Tichbornes. So, the African Eye will be found, will it? Interesting.”

“Found by you.”

“What?”

“No matter. I change that. You die today.”

“I think not.”

Rasputin laughed, a nasty sound. “I congratulate you, tovarishch ,” he said. “You are-umm-impressive. Speech you give Blavatsky-very interesting. No person can make future entirely vot they vish. Da. Da. This maybe is true. But I, Grigori Rasputin, am already in future. I speak to you now from future. Votever I change in past, still, future I am in. You die. You do not find African Eye. Yet here I have African Eye. It is-umm-big paradox, nyet? ”

“An intriguing situation,” Burton mused. “Whereas Edward Oxford travelled to his past and accidentally wiped himself out of the future, you are seeking to change the past from the future. You know that whatever your interference here, the consequences will never threaten your existence there, for if it did, how can you be interfering?”

The king's agent stepped closer to the black diamond.

“You must feel indestructible,” he said.

“No man can stop me.”

“Really?”

Burton extended his hand toward the stone and was instantly stricken with paralysis.

“ Nyet, my enemy. Not even you. Now life of Blavatsky woman is finished, you I vill possess. You are close to prime minister, da? This is very good. Through you, I vill assassinate Palmerston.”

A glowing, shapeless wraith oozed out of Blavatsky's shattered skull and began to slide down the strands of brain tissue and hair.

Burton managed to move his mouth: “Maybe I can't stop you, Grigori, but I can warn you. Stay away from the Eye!”

The Russian's voice sounded inside his head: “I think not. The diamond vill be -moct?”

“A bridge.”

“ Da. It allow me to cross into you. ”

The wraith flowed over the diamond and seemed to soak into it. A long feeler of energy coiled out toward the famous explorer. Cold fingers closed around his brain.

Straining, the king's agent managed to turn his head until he was looking at his valet.

“Now would be a good time.”

The clockwork man of Trafalgar Square gave up the charade of immobility, nodded its canister-shaped head, reached out with its mechanical arm, and plucked the Eye of Naga from its ectoplasmic plinth.

“ Vot? The toy moves? ”

Rasputin's reaction was accompanied by a blaze of ectoplasmic energy. It sizzled across the room, and a bolt of it lashed at Burton and writhed over his body. He cried out with pain and dropped to his knees.

The storm lessened but continued to splutter and jump around the library walls.

“ Vhy cannot I stop it? Things such as this, they not vork close to Rasputin unless I allow! ”

Burton pulled himself upright and said: “Yes, that was rather a giveaway, Grigori. When Blavatsky shared with me her vision of your future, it included details of your parlour trick; of how the guns of the British spies failed when they attacked you. I asked myself: why would the woman be afraid of assassins? The answer was that there was no reason for her to be. I therefore concluded that she wasn't responsible for all the stopped clocks, slack springs, and jammed trigger mechanisms.”

“ But this machine clockvork, da? How working now? ”

“Willpower. Allow me to introduce to you the philosopher Herbert Spencer. One of the most remarkable intellects I have ever encountered.”

“ Man? This is not man! ”

“In body, no, but Herbert Spencer died with the seven fragments of the Cambodian Eye in his possession. His intellect was imprinted upon them. Those fragments are now fitted into a babbage device designed specifically to process the kind of information they hold. In other words, what you took to be a machine is sentient. It possesses willpower enough to resist your attempts to interfere with its functioning, and it can do a great deal more. Are you aware of the legend of Kumari Kandam?”

“Nyet! No more talk! Put stone down! ”

“The Eye was shattered by a man who possessed a perfectly ordered brain. When that happened, the intelligences previously bound together through means of the diamond were destroyed.”

“Tovarishch! Vot is this nonsense? ”

“The Choir Stones still have that event imprinted upon them like a memory. If a sufficiently powerful mind-say, for instance, that of a philosopher whose thoughts are ordered by a babbage-could focus that memory upon another Eye, well, I suppose you're aware of the phenomenon of resonance?”

“ Nyet! Nyet! ”

“Where these stones are concerned, I believe only equivalence can lead to destruction. Let us see if that's the case. Proceed, please, Herbert.”

The clockwork philosopher didn't move, but the glow from the room's ectoplasmic walls, floor, and ceiling suddenly dimmed, seeming to concentrate itself around the diamond held in his metal hand, and the bolts of energy that had been playing across the walls now arced inward and danced over the stone's facets. Simultaneously, the diamond's soft humming increased in volume and deepened in tone until it passed below the range of human hearing. To Burton, it felt as if invisible hands were pushing hard against his ears.

Rasputin's voice hammered furiously against the inside of his cranium: “Nyet! Do not do this thing! Let me go! Let me go, tovarishch! I vill return to my time! ”

“Too late. But look on the bright side, Grigori, you've achieved your aim-you've avoided your assassins. It will not be water that kills you.”

Tiny fractures zigzagged across the Eye, and, as each appeared with a faint tink, it seemed to Burton that a small entity was expelled, yet as hard as he might look, he couldn't quite bring the things into focus. At the very periphery of his vision, he could see that the library was rapidly filling with them, but when he turned his head, he saw nothing.

“Vot are these lizards? Get them avay from me! Get them avay! They put their claws into me! Nyet! Nyet!”