Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon

“We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are.”

–THE TALMUD

The plant was roughly the shape of a boat. It moved on thick white roots that grew in tangled bunches beneath its squat, flattened, and elongated stem. From this, ten white flowers grew in pairs, aligned in a row. Their petals were curled around the men who sat in them, forming extremely comfortable seats. Sir Richard Francis Burton was in one of the middle blooms. Generalmajor Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck was sitting beside him. Schutztruppen occupied the others. The driver's head was pierced just above the ears by thorny tendrils through which he controlled the conveyance. The soldier beside him was positioned behind a seedpod, which, to Burton, looked exactly like a mounted gun. From the rear of the vehicle, three long leaves curved upward and forward like a canopy, protecting the passengers from the sun.

It was a bizarre conveyance. It was also a very fast one.

They'd left Stalag IV at Ugogi yesterday and were travelling along a well-defined trail—almost a road—in a westerly direction.

As the landscape unfolded around them, another unfolded inside Burton. His lost memories were returning, and each one inserted itself into his conscious mind with a violent stab that made his eyes water and caused a curious sensation in his sinuses, as if he'd accidentally snorted gunpowder instead of snuff.

The vehicle scuttled over the Marenga M'khali desert, and he recognised it. A grassy plain, a jungle, and rolling savannahs—he'd seen them all before. He was familiar with every hill, every nullah. He'd walked this route.

He remembered his companions and felt the hollow grief of untimely deaths. He knew who Al-Manat had been.

Isabel. Whatever became of you?

As if reading his thoughts, Lettow-Vorbeck said, “This road, it is built on the old trail that you followed so many years ago, ja?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“And the other trail, the one parallel to it, to the north, that is now our Tanganyika Railway Line, which the Greater German Empire employs to bring civilisation to Africa, and which your people attack and sabotage with such tedious frequency.”

Burton shrugged. He was sick of this war. He'd had more than enough of the twentieth century.

The plant raced across dusty ground and climbed into the Ugogo region.

“Nearly two hundred miles westward,” the generalmajor informed him, “then we shall steer north to avoid Tabora. An inconvenience, but one that we'll not have to put up with for much longer.”

“The ‘final solution’ you spoke of before?”

“Ja. It is on its way, even now, Herr Burton. We have a great flying ship, the L.59 Zeppelin, following inland the river that so obsesses you. I speak of the Nile, of course.”

Another missing shard of Burton's memory slammed into place, causing him to catch his breath and stifle a groan.

Lettow-Vorbeck continued, “The name Zeppelin is a very suitable one for das Afrika Schiff, I think, for it is widely held that a Zeppelin was present at the start of the war, and now a Zeppelin will be present at its end!”

The generalmajor suddenly frowned and peered inquisitively at his prisoner. “Ja, ja,” he said, thoughtfully. “You, also, were in Africa when all this began. Perhaps you met the Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin of whom I speak? Maybe you can enlighten our historians and tell us how and where he died, for this is a great mystery.”

Burton shook his head. “No, sir, I didn't and I cannot.”

“Hmm, so you say, aber ich denke, dass Sie mehr wissen. Richtig?”

“No. I know nothing more.”

The road bisected a rolling plain then ran through a chaotic jungle that had been burned back from the thoroughfare and was held at bay by tall wire fences.

Lettow-Vorbeck pointed. “You see there, the unkontrollierbare Anlagen!”

The “uncontrollable plants” were lurchers. There were many hundreds of them writhing against the barrier.

“We will see more as we approach the Lake Regions, for they are much more numerous near the Blutdschungel. What a nuisance they are!”

The hot air blew against Burton's face as the vehicle raced along, then the sun set and he fell asleep. When he awoke, it was early morning, and they were leaving the Uyanzi region and entering another blistering desert.

He stretched and yawned and said, “Generalmajor, where is all the wildlife? I haven't seen an elephant for years!”

“Elephants are extinct, mein Freund. As for the other creatures, our Eugenicists have adapted a great many for frontline warfare, and the rest have sought refuge in less battle-torn areas of the country; the South, primarily, where you British have no presence and where civilisation prospers in harmony with nature.”

“No presence? South Africa was part of the British Empire in my day.”

“That is so, and the Boers and the Zulus were not happy about it. My people offered them full independent rule, and, with our military assistance, they overthrew you. It took less than a year to drive the British out. After that, it was simply a case of establishing strong trade and industrial relations, and, before many years had passed, the South was very willingly incorporated into the Greater German Empire.”

They soon left the desert and the road began to snake between small domed hills, finally emerging from a valley into a wide basin. The ground was torn up and dried into grotesque configurations; the trees were nothing but stumps; burned wreckage was strewn about; but there was something in this old battlefield that Burton recognised—its contours told him that this was where the village of Tura had stood. There was no sign of the settlement.

The driver shouted something.

“Ah,” Lettow-Vorbeck said. “Now we leave the road and travel north. Later we shall go west again. You are hungry?”

“Yes.”

The generalmajor snapped an order and the man sitting in front of Burton lifted a hamper onto his lap, opened it, and started to pass back packets of sliced meat, a loaf of bread, fruit, and other comestibles. With a shock, Burton noticed that the soldier's face was covered with short bristly fur and that his jaws extended forward into a blunt muzzle. His mouth was stretched into a permanent and nasty smile. A hyena.

They sped out of the hills onto a wide expanse of flatland broken only by a long ridge that ran along to the north of them.

The sun was high in the sky. The scenery around them jiggled in and out of focus as if struggling to maintain its reality.

“How will the L.59 Zeppelin destroy Tabora?” Burton asked.

Lettow-Vorbeck gave a peal of laughter and slapped his thigh. “Hah! I was wondering how long it would take before you asked me that!”

“I assumed you'd inform me that it's top secret.”

“So warum bitten Sie jetzt?”

“Why do I ask now? Because this journey is interminable, Generalmajor, and I'm bored. Besides, it occurs to me that since I'm your prisoner, and I don't even know where Tabora is, and the attack is imminent, there can be little harm in you telling me.”

“Ja, das ist zutreffend. Very well. In forty-eight hours, the L.59 Zeppelin will drop an A-Bomb on the city.”

“And what is that?”

“You are aware of the A-Spores, ja?”

“An obscene weapon.”

“Quite so. Quite so. But very effective. The bomb will deliver, from a very high altitude, a concentrated dose of the spores to the entire city. The Destroying Angel mushroom is among the most toxic species of fungus in the world, Herr Burton. Its spores kill instantly when they are breathed, but they are easily resisted with a gas mask. Not so the ones in the bomb, for they have been specially bred to such microscopic size that they will penetrate the pores of a person's skin. No one will escape.”

“Barbaric!”

“Hardly so. It is a very sophisticated weapon.”

“And still you claim the Greater German Empire is a superior civilisation?”

“It is you British who have driven us to such extremes.”

“I hardly think that—”

The plant suddenly lurched to the left and the driver screamed: “Gott im Himmel! Was ist das? Was ist das?”

Burton looked to the right. The most incredible machine he'd ever seen was mounting the ridge. It was completely spherical, a gigantic metal ball about two hundred feet in diameter and painted a dark jungle green. A wide studded track was spinning at high speed vertically around it, providing the motive force. Burton guessed that the same gyroscopic technology that kept penny-farthings upright in his time was here employed to prevent the sphere from rolling to its left or right.

Four long multi-jointed arms extended from the sides of it. The upper pair ended in lobster-like claws, the lower in spinning circular saw blades. These were obviously used to tear through whatever vegetation couldn't be simply rolled over.

Three rows of portholes and cannon ports ran horizontally around the orb, and four curved chimneys pumped steam into the air from just below its apex.

A puff of smoke erupted from its hull. A loud bang followed, and another, even louder, as an explosion threw up the earth ahead of the German transport.

“Warning shot!” Burton shouted. “You have to stop! You'll never outrun it!”

“Halt! Halt!” Lettow-Vorbeck yelled.

The plant jerked to a standstill. The generalmajor stood, drew his pistol, pushed the barrel into the side of Burton's head, and waited as the sphere drew closer.

“I am sorry, Herr Burton, I will kill you rather than allow you back into British hands, but let us first see what they have to say.”

There was a hard thud.

Lettow-Vorbeck looked down at the hole that had just appeared in the middle of his chest and muttered, “Himmelherrgott! Just that?”

He collapsed backward out of the plant.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

One after the other, in quick succession, the Schutztruppen slumped in their seats.

The rolling sphere drew to a stop, casting its shadow over the German vehicle. Burton watched as a thin wedge opened from it, angling down to form a sloping platform with a door at the top. There was a figure framed in the portal.

“Don't just sit there, you chump!” Bertie Wells called. “Come aboard!”

It was named the SS Britannia, and was captained by General Aitken himself—the director of all British military operations in East Africa—whom Burton remembered from the bombing of Dar es Salaam back in 1914.

“It's good to see you again, Bertie!” the famous explorer enthused as Wells and three British Tommies led him through the ship toward the bridge. “What happened to you? And how did you end up aboard this behemoth?”

“Adventures and perils too numerous to recount happened to me, Richard, but eventually I made my way to Tabora like everyone else. Practically every free Britisher in Africa—perhaps in the entire world—is there now.”

“Bismillah!” Burton swore, grabbing at his friend's arm. “Praise to Allah that you rescued me now and not two minutes earlier!”

“What do you mean?”

“First, answer me this: how were my captors shot with that kind of precision at such a distance? I've never seen anything like it!”

“Marksmen with the new Lee-Enfield sniper rifles. A remarkable weapon—the most accurate long-range rifle ever manufactured.”

“And these marksmen, would they have recognised the men they were shooting?”

“As Germans? Of course! The uniform is unmistakable.”

They passed through a room lined with gun racks then rounded a corner into a corridor along which many men were moving.

“You should have examined the bodies, Bertie, instead of just leaving them there.”

“Why so?”

“Because one of them was Generalmajor Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck.”

Wells stumbled to a halt, his mouth hanging open, eyes wide. His three companions stopped, too, but instinctively retreated a few paces, displaying a typically British sensitivity to Wells and Burton's need for a moment of privacy. Nevertheless, having heard the pronouncement, they gaped.

“Wha—what?” Wells stuttered, then his voice rose to a squeal: “We just killed Lettow-Vorbeck? We killed him? Are you sure?”

“He was holding a pistol to my head when he took a bullet through the heart.”

Wells smacked a fist into his palm and let loose a whoop of triumph. “Bloody hell! This could change everything!”

“No, Bertie, it's too late.”

“Too late? What do you mean, it's too late?”

Very quietly, Burton said: “In forty-eight hours, a German flying ship is going to drop a bomb on Tabora.”

“That's nothing new. The plants fly over, we shoot 'em down.”

“This one will be at a high altitude, and it's carrying an A-Bomb.”

“A what?”

In a whisper, Burton explained, and as he did so, his friend's burn-scarred and sun-browned face turned white. Wells looked to the right and left, gestured to the three guards, indicating that they should wait, then pulled Burton back along the passage and into the gun room. He spoke quietly and urgently: “We have to tell Aitken, but don't give away too much about yourself. Keep your true identity under wraps, for starters. The situation is complicated, and there's no time to fill you in right now. Suffice to say, your impossible presence in Africa has been detected. Colonel Crowley himself sent us to rescue you—”

“Your so-called wizard of wizards?”

“Yes. Apparently he's been aware of an anomaly on the continent since 1914 and has been trying to identify it ever since. He finally traced it to the Ugogi Stalag, then homed in on you as you were being transported. He sent the Britannia to intercept the vehicle and retrieve you.”

“But he doesn't know who I am?”

One of the Tommies appeared in the doorway, cleared his throat, and jerked his head to suggest that they should move on. Wells gave a slight nod. He guided Burton back into the corridor and they followed a few steps behind the three soldiers. They came to a staircase and started up it.

“All Crowley knows is that you don't belong in 1918,” Wells whispered. “I think, through you, he's hoping to unlock the secrets of time travel.”

“Lettow-Vorbeck had the same idea.”

“Listen, this is important. My old editor, the man who used to run the Tabora Times before it folded, needs to see you. I don't know the full story, but there are moves being made, and we can't allow you to fall under the wizard's spell.”

“What does that mean?”

“Crowley is a tremendously powerful mesmerist. Once pierced by those fiendish eyes of his, you'll have no willpower of your own.”

“I'm no mean mesmerist myself,” Burton pointed out.

Wells grunted. “I remember reading that. You're no match for our chief medium, though. But my editor has connections. He pulled a few strings and arranged that these men—” he gestured toward the three soldiers, “—and myself be aboard the Britannia. We're going to kidnap you.”

“Kidnap?”

They reached the top of the stairs and started down a short passage.

“Just trust me, Richard.”

The Tommies stopped at a door. One of them opened it, and Wells led Burton through onto the bridge.

The explorer found himself in a chamber filled with consoles and levers, wheels, pipes, and gauges. There were twelve crewmembers at various stations, but Burton's attention immediately centred on a tall man standing before a wide curved window.

“Private Frank Baker, sir,” Wells announced.

The man turned. He was slim, with sad eyes, unevenly arranged features, and a clipped moustache, wearing a dark uniform with a double row of silver buttons and a peaked cap. He looked Burton up and down.

“You've attracted the attention of men in high places, Baker,” he said. His voice was sharp and precise, with a nasal twang. “Why?”

Burton saluted. He staggered.

“It's all right,” Aitken said. “Steady yourself. We're going over some hills.”

“I didn't realise we were moving,” Burton answered.

“The only time you'll feel it is on rough terrain, and even then not much. It's like being on an ocean liner. Answer the question.”

“I honestly haven't the vaguest idea why there's any interest in me at all, sir. I've been in a POW camp for two years.”

“And before that?”

“Civilian Observer Corps at Dar es Salaam and Tanga, then a guerrilla fighter until I was captured at Dut'humi.”

“Where were they taking you?”

“To the Lake Regions, but they didn't tell me why.”

“Sir,” Wells interjected. “Apparently one of the men we just shot dead was Lettow-Vorbeck.”

Burton watched as Aitken's Adam's apple bobbed reflexively. All the crew members turned and looked at the general. He cleared his throat, glared at them, and snapped, “Attend your stations!”

“There's something else, sir,” Wells added. “I think you might prefer to hear it in private.”

Aitken gazed at the little war correspondent for a moment, gave a brusque nod, then turned away and issued a sequence of orders to the bridge crew concerning the velocity and course of the ship. He returned his attention to Burton and Wells, jabbed a finger at them, and said, “You and you—follow me.”

They did so, trailing after him back out into the corridor and through a door into the captain's office. Aitken positioned himself behind a desk but remained standing with his hands held behind his back.

“What do you have to tell me, Wells?”

“I think it best that Baker explains, sir.”

“I don't give two bloody hoots who does the talking, just get on with it!”

Speaking slowly and clearly, Burton told him about Lettow-Vorbeck's A-Bomb.

Moments later, General Aitken collapsed into his chair.

Burton was confined to a cabin with Bertie Wells as his guard. He'd washed, thrown away his prison uniform, and dressed in clean, tick-free battle fatigues. A cup of tea and a plate of sandwiches had been provided.

“They've radioed ahead,” Wells told him. “And so have I.”

“And the city's being evacuated?”

“Evacuated? To where? There's no place to go. Tabora has been under siege for half a century, and all the rest of Africa is under German control. My guess is they'll try to get as many people as possible into underground bunkers. Whether that'll save them or not remains to be seen. If the spore cloud is dense enough, I don't suppose there'll be anywhere safe.”

“Yet we're going back?”

“To rescue the top brass.”

“And take them to—?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. I suppose it's possible there's another British enclave somewhere, a place only the bigwigs know about. Or maybe we'll head into one of Africa's wildernesses and lay low while Crowley experiments on you.”

“I don't like the sound of that.” Burton took a bite out of a sandwich and frowned thoughtfully while he chewed and swallowed. “Who did you radio?”

“I sent a coded message to my editor, told him about the A-Bomb.”

“Will he be able to get to safety?”

“Probably not. As I say, the city is surrounded.”

“Then how do we get in? How does the Britannia come and go?”

“We manage to keep a passage—we call it Hell's Run—open through the besieging German forces to the east of the city. The most ghastly fighting occurs along its borders, but Crowley and our mediums focus their efforts there and have so far prevented the Germans from closing the route.”

A siren started to blare.

“That's the call to battle stations!”

The door opened and an Askari stepped in. “You're both ordered to the bridge,” he said. “Tabora just radioed a message that's put the wind up Aitken. We're approaching the city now.”

“What message?” Wells asked as they followed the African out of the room.

“I don't know the details, Lieutenant.”

They passed along corridors and up stairs, with men rushing around them and the siren howling continuously. The moment they entered the bridge, Aitken rounded on Burton and snapped: “Baker, did Lettow-Vorbeck tell you anything about lurchers? Have the Germans regained control of them?”

“He pointed out a crowd of the plants,” Burton replied, “and said they're most numerous up near the Blood Jungle, but control? No, quite the opposite.”

“Well, that's damned strange. Tabora reports that thousands of them are approaching the city from the north.”

Burton and Wells looked at each other. The explorer shook his head and shrugged, baffled.

“We're currently racing straight down the middle of Hell's Run, well away from German peashooters,” Aitken said. “When was the last time you were here, Baker?”

“I've never been to Tabora, sir.”

“You haven't? Well, take a peek out of the window. We're almost there.”

Burton and Wells stepped over to the glass and looked out across the African landscape. The Britannia was travelling at a tremendous speed over flat ground. To the north and south of her, black clouds humped up into the blue sky. Lightning flickered inside them. Puffs of smoke rose from the ground beneath. There were flashes. Tiny dots could be seen flying through the air.

“Those are the edges of Hell's Run,” Wells murmured. “As you can see, the Hun weathermen are at work. The storms are more or less constant, as is the fighting beneath them. Tabora is behind the hills you see ahead of us.”

As he examined the terrain, Burton was overcome by a sense of déjà vu. He struggled for breath and clutched at Wells's arm.

The Britannia shot up a slope, over the crest of a hill, sank into the valley beyond, navigated up the next slope, and reached the second summit. Burton saw a wide plain stretched out below. Much of it was obscured by a blanket of dirty steam, which was particularly dark and opaque straight ahead, where, from out of the pall, there rose a tall rock topped with green vegetation.

“Kazeh!” Burton croaked. “Tabora is Kazeh!”

“Kazeh is under siege!”

Sir Richard Francis Burton, Algernon Swinburne, and Isabel Arundell had ridden back through the night to where Trounce and the expedition were bivouacked. All three of them were coated with dust and thoroughly exhausted, but there was no time to rest.

Burton fired his rifle into the air to rouse the camp and yelled: “Hopa! Hopa! Pakia!”

Trounce responded to the announcement with: “By the Prussians? Are there that many of them?”

“There's enough! We have to get moving! If they take the town, we won't be able to resupply for the next leg of the safari.”

“But what the blazes are they up to?”

“It's the key to central East Africa, William. Whoever controls Kazeh controls the region all the way from Lake Tanganyika to Zanzibar, and up to the Mountains of the Moon. My guess is they mean to drive the Arabs out and make of it a Prussian base of operations.”

Burton ordered Saíd bin Sálim to have the porters take up their loads. Mirambo silently appeared beside him and asked, “Will the coming day be that in which we fight?”

“Yes. I bid thee prepare thy warriors, O Mirambo.”

“We are always prepared, muzungo mbáyá. It is wise to be so when devils such as thee walk the land.”

The African stalked away.

Krishnamurthy, Spencer, Isabella Mayson, Sister Raghavendra, and Sidi Bombay gathered around the king's agent. He described to them the scene he'd witnessed.

Krishnamurthy asked, “Can we get into the town from the west?”

“Yes,” Burton replied. “If we follow the hills south, remaining on this side of them, then cross when—”

“No. We can't enter the town at all,” Isabel Arundell interrupted.

They all looked at her, surprised.

“It would be suicidal. I have a hundred and twenty fighters and another ninety or so on the way. Mirambo has two hundred boys. The Prussians already greatly outnumber us and there are a thousand more fast approaching. If we're in the town when they arrive, we'll be pinned down and we'll likely never get out again.”

Burton nodded thoughtfully. “You're the expert in guerrilla tactics,” he said, “and I'll bow to your expertise. What do you recommend?”

Isabel positioned herself directly in front of him and placed her hands on his shoulders. “The king made you his agent, Dick, and you have your orders. What is the distance from here to the Mountains of the Moon?”

“Something under two hundred miles.”

“Then go. Forget about resupplying in the town. You and your people take two horses each and the bare essentials in supplies. No porters. Nothing but what you can carry. Travel as fast as you can. It's a race, remember? I have no doubt that John Speke is already on his way.”

“And you?” Burton asked.

“Mirambo and I will lead our forces against the Prussians.”

William Trounce interjected: “But why, Isabel? If we're going to bypass the town, why risk yourselves in battle at all?”

Isabel stepped back and pulled the keffiyeh from her head. The sickle moon had just risen over the horizon and its pale light illuminated her long blonde hair.

“Because despite these robes, I'm British, William. If what we saw at Mzizima, and what we are witnessing here at Kazeh, are the first skirmishes in a clash of empires, then it's my duty to defend that to which I belong—besides which, if we don't keep the Prussians occupied here, they'll be able to rapidly establish outposts all the way to the Mountains of the Moon, making it almost impossible for you to get there.”

For a long moment, no one spoke.

Isabella Mayson cleared her throat. “Richard,” she said, “if you don't mind, I think I would like to stay and join the Daughters of Al-Manat.”

“And I,” added Sister Raghavendra. “Besides, you'll probably travel more quickly as a smaller group.”

The explorer looked from one woman to the other, then his gaze went past Isabel and his eyes locked with Swinburne's, and even in the dim light, the poet could see in them a great depth of despair.

“I'm afraid Isabel is right,” the poet said quietly. “We can't allow Speke to reach the Eye of Nāga before us. Equally, we can't let Kazeh fall to the Prussians. The only option is to split the expedition.”

Burton leaned his head back and considered the stars. Then he closed his eyes and said, “And you, William?”

Trounce stepped forward and spoke in a low, gruff voice: “Am I supposed to run off and leave women to fight?”

Isabella Mayson whirled around to face him. “Sir! The fact that I wrote a book about cookery and household management doesn't mean I'm incapable of putting a bullet through a man's head! Have you forgotten this—” She pulled back her hair to reveal the notch in her right ear. “I fought by your side at Dut'humi. Was I any less effective than you? Did I scream? Did I faint? Did I start knitting a shawl?”

“No, of course not! You're as brave as they come. But—”

“No buts! No medieval nonsense about honour and chivalry! There isn't time for such indulgence! We have a job to do! Yours is to accompany Sir Richard and to retrieve that diamond!”

“Well said!” Isabel Arundell put in.

They all looked at Burton, who was standing stock-still.

Gunfire rattled from the town.

The cough of a lion sounded from afar.

Pox, on Herbert Spencer's head, muttered something unintelligible, and Malady responded with a click of his beak.

“All right! Enough!” Burton snapped, opening his eyes. “Sadhvi, will you prepare for us a pack of remedies and treatments?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“Take Algy with you and instruct him in their use. Maneesh—”

Krishnamurthy moved closer. “Yes?”

“I'm sorry, but I have to give you a very difficult mission. Sidi Bombay says an aggressive tribe called the Chwezi live among the Mountains of the Moon, so there's every chance that we won't make it out. It's imperative that the government learns what is happening here. For that reason, I'm going to entrust you with my journals and reports. I want you and Saíd and his men to trek all the way back to Zanzibar. I'm going to pay our remaining porters to accompany you as far as Ugogi. There, you can hire more. Once you reach the island, catch the first ship home and report to Palmerston.”

Krishnamurthy straightened his back and squared his shoulders. “You can rely on me, sir.”

“I don't doubt it, my friend.”

Burton next addressed Trounce and Bombay: “You two, Algy, Herbert, and I will depart at sun-up. Work with Isabella to get everything prepared. I'll join you presently. First though—” he took Isabel Arundell by the arm and steered her away, “—you and I need to talk.”

They walked a short distance, then stopped and stood, listening to the battle and watching dark shapes moving across the plain near the horizon.

“Elephants,” Isabel murmured.

“Yes.”

“You don't have to say anything, Dick. I'm familiar with your hopelessness when it comes to goodbyes.”

He took her hand. “Did you know that, had history never changed, this is the year we'd be celebrating our honeymoon?”

“How do you know that?”

“Countess Sabina. Palmerston's medium.”

“I ought to slap your face for reminding me that you broke our engagement.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I know. Do you think we'd have been happily married?”

“Yes.”

He was silent a moment, then: “Isabel, I—I—”

She waited patiently while he struggled to express himself.

“I'm filled with such regret I can barely stand it,” he said, his voice breaking. “I've done everything wrong. Everything! I should never have accepted the king's commission. I panicked. Speke had ruined my career and reputation. Then he put a bullet into his head and people said it was my fault!”

“Which is when Palmerston threw you a lifeline.”

“He did, but even with the situation as it was, I'm not certain I'd have accepted his offer had Spring Heeled Jack not assaulted me the night before.”

“There you have it, Dick. You regret a decision you made, but how much can you blame yourself when you were under the influence of such extraordinary circumstances? We all like to fool ourselves that we are independent and that our minds are our own, but the truth is we're always swayed by events.”

Burton smacked his right fist into his left palm. “Yes! That's exactly it! My decisions were made according to context. But have I ever properly understood it? Since the advent of Spring Heeled Jack, I feel like I've not had a firm grip on events at all. It's all slipped away from me. It feels to me as though things that should have occurred over a long stretch of history are all piling up at once—and it's too much! It's too confusing! Bismillah! I can sense time swirling through and around me like some sort of discordant noise. But—”

Burton paused and raised his hands to his head, pushing his fingertips into his scalp and massaging it through the hair, as if to somehow loosen blocked thoughts.

“What is it?”

“I have this feeling that time is—is—like a language! Damn it, Isabel! I have mastered more than thirty tongues. Why does this one elude me? Why can't I make any sense of it?”

Burton's eyes momentarily reflected the moonlight and Isabel saw in them the same torment Swinburne had spotted minutes ago.

He continued: “Tom Bendyshe, Shyamji Bhatti, Thomas Honesty—all dead; and we—we have pushed through pain and fever and discomfort to the point of utter exhaustion. That is the context in which I have to now judge my decisions, but I don't comprehend the significance of it! Surely there has to be one! Why can't I translate the language of these events?”

“I have never before known a man with your depth of intellect, Dick, but you're demanding too much of yourself. You haven't slept. You're overwrought. You're trying to do what no man—or woman—can do. The workings of time are obscure to us all. Your Countess Sabina, who has insight into so much more than the rest of us—does she understand it?”

“No. If anything, the more of it she observes, the more confused she gets.”

“Perhaps, then, it cannot be deciphered by the living, which is why meaning is assigned retrospectively, by those who inhabit the future. By historians.”

“Who weren't even a part of the events! Are future historians better placed to interpret the life of Al-Manat than you are? Of course not! But will their reading of your life make more sense than anything you can tell me now—or at any other point while you're alive? Yes, almost certainly.”

“Are you afraid of how history will judge you?”

“No. I'm afraid of how I'm judging history!”

Isabel gave a throaty chuckle.

Burton looked at her in surprise and asked, “What's so funny about that?”

“Oh, nothing, Dick—except I imagined that perhaps you took me aside to tell me that you love me. How silly of me! Why on earth didn't I realise it was for nothing more than a philosophical discussion!”

Burton looked at her, then looked down and directed a derisive snort at himself.

“I'm an idiot! Of course I love you, Isabel. From the moment I first laid eyes on you. And it gives me a strange kind of comfort to know that there's another history, and in it we are together, and not parted by—” He gestured around them. “This.”

“I always thought that if anything was going to come between us it would be Africa,” she said.

“But it wasn't,” Burton replied. “It was the Spring Heeled Jack business.”

“Yes.” Isabel sighed. “But I suspect that, somehow, those events, just like the River Nile, have their source here.”

The freshly risen sun turned the plain the colour of blood. From the summit of a hill, Burton, Swinburne, Trounce, Spencer, and Sidi Bombay looked down upon it and watched as the expedition divided into three. One group, led by Maneesh Krishnamurthy, was heading back in the direction they'd all come; another—the Daughters of Al-Manat—was riding away, along the base of the hills, intending to set up camp among the trees to the southeast of Kazeh; while the third—Mirambo and his men—was moving into the forest directly east of the town.

Burton, with a savage scowl on his face, muttered, “Come on,” pulled his horse around, and started along a trail that led northward. There were two horses, lightly loaded with baggage, roped behind his mount. Trounce had two more behind his. Swinburne's horse led the eighth animal, upon which Herbert Spencer was rather awkwardly propped, and the ninth horse was tethered behind that. The clockwork man wasn't heavy—his mount could easily carry him—but he'd only thus far ridden a mule sidesaddle, and wasn't used to the bigger beast.

Sidi Bombay's horse led no others, for the African frequently rode ahead to scout the route.

Traversing a long valley, they moved through the trees and, thanks to the scarcity of undergrowth and the canopy sheltering them from the sun, made rapid progress. They didn't stop to rest—nor did they speak—until they reached the edge of a savannah midway through the afternoon; and when they sat and shared unleavened bread and plantains, the conversation was desultory. Each man was preoccupied, listening to the distant gunfire, dwelling on those from whom they'd parted. Even the three screechers, Pox, Malady, and Swinburne, were subdued.

“We'll endure the heat and keep going,” Burton muttered.

They resumed their journey, shading themselves beneath umbrellas, guiding their horses over hard, dusty ground, watching as herds of impala and zebra scattered at their approach.

The rest of the day passed sluggishly, with the interminable landscape hardly changing. The climate had all four men so stupefied that they frequently slipped into a light sleep, only to be awakened by Spencer shouting: “The bloomin' horses are stoppin' again, Boss!”

Shortly before sunset, they erected their one small tent beside a stony outcrop, ate, then crawled under the canvas to sleep. Sidi Bombay wrapped himself in a blanket and slumbered under the stars. Spencer, having had his key inserted and wound, kept guard.

In the few seconds before exhaustion took him, Swinburne remembered the clockwork philosopher's book, and the phrase: Only equivalence can lead to destruction or a final transcendence.

He wondered how he'd come to forget about it; why he hadn't mentioned it to anyone; then he forgot about it again and went to sleep.

Sir Richard Francis Burton dreamt that he was slumbering alone, in the open, with unfamiliar stars wheeling above him. There was a slight scuffing to his left. He opened his eyes and turned his head and saw a tiny man, less than twelve inches high, with delicate lace-like wings growing from his shoulder blades. His forehead was decorated with an Indian bindi.

“I don't believe in fairies,” the explorer said, “and I've already looked upon your true form, K'k'thyima.”

He sat up, and blinked, and suddenly the fairy was much larger, and reptilian, and it had one or five or seven heads.

“Thou art possessed of a remarkable mind, O human. It perceives truth. It is adaptable. That is why we chose thee.”

Burton was suddenly shaken by a horribly familiar sensation: an awareness that his identity was divided, that there were two of him, ever at odds with each other. For the first time, though, he also sensed that some sort of physical truth lay between these opposing forces.

“Good!” the Nāga hissed. “Still we sing, but soon it will end, and already thou hears the echo of our song.”

“What are you suggesting? That I'm sensing the future?”

The priest didn't answer. His head was singular. His head was multiple.

Burton tried to focus on the strange presence, but couldn't.

“I dreamt of you before,” he said. “You were in Kumari Kandam. This, though, is Africa, where the Nāga are known as the Chitahuri or the Shayturáy.”

“I am K'k'thyima. I am here, I am in other places. I am nowhere, soft skin, for my people were made extinct by thine.”

“Yet the essence of you was imprinted on one of the Eyes; you lived on in that black diamond until it was shattered.”

Again, the Nāga chose not to respond.

A flash drew Burton's eyes upward. He saw a shooting star, the brightest he'd ever witnessed. It blazed a trail across the sky, then suddenly divided into three streaks of light. They flew apart and faded. When he looked down, the Nāga priest was gone.

He lay back and woke up.

“It's dawn, Boss. I can still hear shots from Kazeh.”

Herbert Spencer's head was poking through the entrance to the tent. It was wrapped in a keffiyeh but the scarf was pulled open at the front and the polymethylene suit beneath was visible, as were the three round openings that formed the philosopher's “face.” Through the glass of the uppermost one, Burton could see tiny cogs revolving. Spencer was otherwise motionless.

A moment passed.

“Was there something else, Herbert?”

“No, Boss. I'll help Mr. Bombay to load the horses.”

The philosopher withdrew.

Swinburne sat up. “I think I shall take lunch at the Athenaeum Club today, Richard, followed by a tipple at the Black Toad.”

“Are you awake, Algy?”

The poet peered around at the inside of the tent.

“Oh bugger it,” he said. “I am.”

Burton shook Trounce into consciousness and the three of them crawled into the open, ate a hasty breakfast, packed, and mounted their horses.

Burton groaned. “I'm running a fever.”

“I have some of Sadhvi's medicine,” Swinburne said.

“I'll take it when we next stop. Let's see how far we can get today. Keep your weapons close to hand—we don't know when we might run into Speke.”

They moved off.

Most of the day was spent crossing the savannah.

Vultures circled overhead.

The far-off sounds of battle faded behind them.

They entered a lush valley. Clusters of granite pushed through its slopes, and the grass grew so high that it brushed against the riders' legs.

“Wow! This is the place called Usagari,” Bombay advised. “Soon we will see villages.”

“Everyone move quietly,” Burton ordered. “We have to slip past as many as we can, else the few boxes of beads and coils of wire we're carrying will be gone in an instant.”

After fording a nullah, they rode up onto higher ground and saw plantations laid out on a gentle slope. Bombay led them along the edges of the cultivated fields, through forests and thick vegetation, and thus managed to pass four villages without being spotted. Then their luck ran out, and they were confronted by warriors who leaped about, brandishing their spears and striking grotesque poses that were designed to frighten but which sent Swinburne into fits of giggles.

After much whooping and shouting, Bombay finally established peaceful communication. The Britishers paid three boxes of beads and were given permission to stay at the village overnight. It was called Usenda, and its inhabitants proved much more friendly than their initial greeting had suggested. They shared their food and, to Swinburne's delight, a highly alcoholic beverage made from bananas, and gave over a dwelling for the explorers' use. It was a poor thing constructed of grass, infested with insects, and already claimed by a family of rats. Trounce was too exhausted to care, Swinburne was too drunk to notice, and Burton was so feverish by now that he passed out the moment he set foot in it. They all slept deeply, while Spencer stood sentry duty and Bombay stayed up late gossiping with the village elders.

When they departed the next day, the king's agent was slumped semi-aware in his saddle, so Trounce took the lead. He successfully steered them past seven villages and out of the farmed region onto uninhabited flatlands where gingerbread palms grew in abundance. It was easy going but took two days to traverse, during which time Burton swam in and out of consciousness. His companions, meanwhile, grew thoroughly sick of the unchanging scenery, which offered nothing to suggest that they might be making any progress.

At last, they came to the edge of a jungle and began to work their way through it, with Trounce and Spencer leading the way while Swinburne and Bombay guided the horses behind them. Burton remained mounted and insensible.

For what felt like hours, they fought with the undergrowth, until Spencer pushed a tangle of lianas out of their path and they suddenly found themselves face to face with a rhinoceros. It kicked the ground, snorted, and moved its head from side to side, squinting at them from its small, watery eyes.

They raised their rifles.

“Absolute silence, please, gentlemen,” Trounce whispered. “The slightest noise or movement could cause it to charge us.”

“Up your sooty funnel!” Pox screamed.

“Pig-jobber!” Malady squawked. “Cross-eyed slack-bellied stink trumpet!”

The rhino gave a prodigious belch, turned, and trotted away.

“My hat!” Swinburne exclaimed. “Malady has been learning fast!”

“Humph!” Trounce responded. “Next time we're confronted by a wild beast, I won't bother to unsling my rifle. I'll just throw parakeets.”

It was close to nightfall by the time they broke free of the mess of vegetation and found a place to camp. Burton recovered his wits while the others slept, and he sat with Spencer, listening to the rasping utterances of lions and the chuckles and squeals of hyenas.

“How're you feelin'?” the philosopher asked.

“Weak. How about you?”

“Phew! I'll be glad when all this walkin' an' ridin' is over an' done with. It's playin' merry havoc with me gammy leg.”

“Your leg is just dented, Herbert.”

“Aye, but it aches somethin' terrible.”

“That's not possible.”

“Aye. Do you think, Boss, that I've lost some qualities that a man possesses only 'cos he's flesh?”

“What sort of qualities?”

“A conscience, for example; a self-generated moral standard by which a man judges his own actions. Old Darwin said it's the most important distinction between humankind an' other species.”

“And you think it's a characteristic of corporeality?”

“Aye, an evolution of a creature's instinct to preserve its own species. Compare us to the lower animals. What happens when a sow has a runt in her litter? She eats it. What happens if a bird hatches deformed? It's bloomin' well pecked to death. What do gazelles do with a lame member of the herd? They leave it to die, don't they? Humans are the dominant species 'cos we're heterogeneous, but to support all our individual specialisations, we have to suppress the natural desire to allow the weak an' inferior to fall by the wayside, as it were, 'cos how can we evaluate each other when reality demands somethin' different from every individual? A manual labourer might consider a bank clerk too physically weak; does that mean he should kill the blighter? The clerk might think the labourer too unintelligent; is that reason enough to deny him the means to live? In the wild, such judgements apply, but not in human society, so we have conscience to intercede, to inhibit the baser aspects of natural evolution an' raise it to a more sophisticated level. As I suggested to you once before, Boss, where mankind is concerned, survival of the fittest refers not to physical strength, but to the ability to adapt oneself to circumstances. The process wouldn't function were it not for conscience.”

Burton considered this, and there was silence between them for a good few minutes.

Spencer picked up a stone and threw it at a shadowy form—a hyena that had wandered too close.

“You're suggesting,” Burton finally said, “that conscience has evolved to suppress in us the instinct that drives animals to kill or abandon the defective, because each of us is only weak or strong depending on who's judging us and the criteria they employ?”

“Precisely. Without conscience we'd end up killin' each other willy-nilly until the whole species was gone.”

“So you associate it with the flesh because it ensures our species' physical survival?”

“Aye. It's an adaptation of an instinct what's inherent in the body.”

“And you suspect that your transference into this brass mechanism might have robbed you of your conscience?”

“I don't know whether it has or hasn't, Boss. I just wonder. I need to test it.”

They sat a little longer, then Burton was overcome by weariness and retired to the tent.

Travel the following morning proved the easiest since their arrival in Africa. The ground was firm, trees—baobabs—were widely spaced, and undergrowth was thinly distributed. Small flowers grew in abundance.

As they entered this district, Pox and Malady launched themselves from Spencer's shoulders and flew from tree to tree, rubbing their beaks together and insulting each other rapturously.

“It's love,” Swinburne declared.

Almost before they realised it, they found cultivated land underfoot and a village just ahead. It was too close to avoid, so hongo was paid and, in return, a hut was assigned for their use.

They rested and took stock.

Sadhvi's medicine was driving the fever out of Burton. He ached all over but his temperature had stabilised and strength began to seep back into his limbs.

Trounce, though, was suffering. The spear wound in his arm had become slightly infected, and his legs were ulcerating again.

“I shall be crippled at this rate,” he complained. He sat on a stool and allowed Swinburne to roll up his trouser legs.

“Yuck!” the poet exclaimed. “What hideous pins you have, Pouncer!”

“You're not seeing them at their best, lad.”

“Nor would I want to! Now then, it just so happens that I'm the sole purveyor of Sister Raghavendra's Revitalising Remedies. Incredible Cures and Terrific Tonics, all yours for a coil of wire and three shiny beads! What do you say?”

“I say, stop clowning and apply the poultice or I'll apply the flat of my hand to the back of your head.”

Swinburne got to work.

“Shame you can't do nothin' for mine,” Spencer piped.

Burton, who, with Bombay, had been parleying with the village elders, walked over and plonked himself on the ground beside the Yard man.

“We need to navigate in a slightly more northeasterly direction,” he said. “It will save us from having to pass through a densely populated region.”

They departed before sun-up the next morning, descended into a deep and miry watercourse, struggled through bullrushes, then climbed to the peak of a hill just as the sun threw its rays over the horizon. The next few hours were spent crossing uneven ground cut through with marshy rivulets, each filled with tall, tough reeds. There were cairns dotted over the land for as far as the eye could see, as well as stubby malformed trees in which hundreds of black vultures sat in sinister contemplation.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of Death,” Swinburne announced.

“Spongy-brained measles rash!” Pox added.

A steep incline led them up onto firmer ground and into a forest. The two parakeets once again left Spencer's shoulders and travelled overhead, with Pox teaching Malady new insults.

Burton rode onto a fairly well-defined trail.

“This is the path I think Speke is following,” he said.

“Wow!” Bombay answered. “It is the one he took before, when I was with him.”

“Then we should proceed with caution.”

They stopped to eat, then rode on at a brisk pace until they emerged from the trees at the head of a shadowed valley. Its sides were thickly wooded and a clear stream ran through its middle with reasonably open ground to either side. There were pandana palms in profusion, rich groves of plantains, and thistles of extraordinary size. In the distance, the land rolled in high undulations to grassy hills, which Burton identified as the districts of Karague and Kishakka.

Late in the afternoon, they approached a village and were surprised when the inhabitants, upon sighting them, ran away.

“By Jove! That hasn't happened since we had the harvestman,” Trounce observed.

Riding among the huts, they noticed that the usual stocks of food were missing. There were also a couple of ominous-looking stains on the ground in the central clearing.

“It looks like they received some non-too-friendly visitors,” the king's agent said. He unpacked two boxes of beads from one of the horses and placed them at the entrance to the chief's dwelling. “Let's leave them a gift, if for no other reason than to demonstrate that not all muzungo mbáyá are bad.”

The remainder of the day was spent travelling through the rest of the valley before crossing fine, rising meadowlands to a stratified sandstone cliff, beneath which they rested for the night.

Another early start. Hilly country. Herds of cattle. Forests of acacias.

All around them, the trees were alive with a profusion of small birds, whistling and chirping with such vigour that, for the entire day, the men had to raise their voices to be heard above the din.

They left the boisterous tree-dwellers behind as the sun was riding low in the sky and drew to a halt on a summit, looking across a broad, junglethick basin. On the far side, they spotted movement on the brow of a hummock. Trounce lifted the field glasses, clipped them onto his head, and adjusted the focusing wheels.

“About twenty men,” he reported. “On foot. And one of those plant-vehicle things.”

“Let me see,” Burton said.

His friend passed the magnifying device and Burton looked through it, watching the distant group as it disappeared from view.

“Speke,” he said.

They decided to stop where they were, quickly set up the camp, and without bothering to eat first immediately fell into an exhausted sleep.

Herbert Spencer stood outside the tent, leaning on his staff. His shadow lengthened, turned a deep shade of purple, then dissipated into the gathering gloom. When they awoke in the morning, he was still there. Burton wound him up.

“I say, Herbert, is your mind still active when your spring is slack?” Swinburne asked as he prepared their breakfast.

“Yus, lad.” The mechanical man tapped a gloved finger to his scarf-enshrouded head. “The babbage in here interprets the electrical field held in the diamonds an' translates its fluctuations as speech an' movement. In the other direction, it channels sensory information about the environment from this brass body to the gemstones, which the field interprets as sound an' sight. When the babbage has no bloomin' power, I have no idea what's happenin' around me, but I can still think.”

“It must feel like you're trapped. I should probably go mad under such circumstances.”

“You're already mad,” Trounce put in.

One of the horses had died during the night. They redistributed its load, then, after eating, began the trek down the slope to the edge of the jungle. When they reached it, they found the verdure to be extravagantly abundant and chaotic, pressing in to either side of the narrow trail. Speke's party had passed this way recently, but there was very little evidence to suggest it, and guiding the horses past the thorny bushes and dangling ant-covered lianas proved extremely difficult.

“I'll set to with me machete, Boss,” Spencer announced, limping to the front of the party.

He unsheathed his blade and began to swipe at the undergrowth. A man would have been exhausted by this very quickly but the clockwork philosopher's mechanical arm hacked without pause, widening the path, until four hours later they emerged onto a huge flat rock as big as a tennis court, surrounded on all sides by lush green vegetation.

Spencer moved onto it, stumbling slightly, then laid down his blade, pulled a 54-bore Beaumont-Adams revolver from his waistband, and said: “Shall we stop here awhile?”

Burton glanced at Trounce and replied, “Yes, I think William's ulcers are paining him. We'll lay up until the day's heat abates a little.”

“I'm fine,” the Scotland Yard man protested.

“Wow! It is a good place to rest, Mr. Trounce,” said Sidi Bombay.

Pox and Malady, who'd been snuggled together on Spencer's head, suddenly squawked and flew into the trees.

“Yes, William,” the brass man said in his hooting voice. “You should take the weight off your feet.”

He lifted his gun, aimed carefully between Trounce's eyes, and pulled the trigger.