Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon

“In despair are many hopes.”

–ARABIC PROVERB

The prodigious plant quivered and the huge red flower swung upward into a sunbeam and unfurled its outer layer of spiny petals to soak in the light and heat. The air bladders at the top of its stalk expanded like balloons then contracted, and the resultant squeak possessed an oddly dreamy tone.

“One, who is not, we see; but one, whom we see not, is;

Surely this is not that; but that is assuredly this.

“What, and wherefore, and whence? for under is over and under;

If thunder could be without lightning, lightning could be without

thunder.”

The bloom shifted again with a woody creak and appeared to look back down at the two men, who sat on their harvestmen and gaped at it in utter astonishment.

Bertie Wells whispered the obvious: “It's a talking plant. A talking bloody plant!”

Two long narrow leaves, positioned a little way below the petals, stretched and curled in a gesture that resembled a man throwing out his hands. “So explain yourself, you rotter! Why did you ignore me for so long? Wasn't it obvious that I was calling you back? The poppies, Richard! The poppies!”

Burton turned off his harvestman's steam engine, toppled from his saddle, thumped onto the ground, and lay still.

Behind him, Wells hurriedly stopped his own machine, dismounted, and ran over to kneel at his friend's side.

“I say!” the flower exclaimed. “Who are you? What's wrong with Richard?”

“I'm Bertie Wells, and I think he's fainted. Probably out of sheer disbelief!”

“Ah,” said the bloom, and added:

“Doubt is faith in the main; but faith, on the whole, is doubt;

We cannot believe by proof; but could we believe without?

“Why, and whither, and how? for barley and rye are not clover;

Neither are straight lines curves; yet over is under and over.

“Two and two may be four; but four and four are not eight;

Fate and God may be twain; but God is the same as fate.”

“God is a proven fallacy,” Wells muttered distractedly as he took a flask from his belt and splashed water onto Burton's face.

“Indeed he is,” the plant agreed. “Darwin drove the sword home and left us with a void. What now, hey? What now? I say we should fill it with a higher sort of pantheism. What do you think, Mr. Wells?”

Without considering the fact that he'd somehow become engaged in a theological discussion with oversized vegetation—for he felt that to do so would lead to the inevitable conclusion that he'd gone completely barmy—Wells replied: “I feel man would be wise to work at correcting his own mistakes instead of waiting for intervention from on high, and should replace faith in an unknowable divine plan with a well-thought-out scheme of his own.”

“I say! Bravo! Bravo!” the plant cheered.

“Ask a man what he thinks, and get from a man what he feels;

God, once caught in the fact, shows you a fair pair of heels.”

Burton blinked, sneezed, lay still for a moment, then scrambled to his feet, swayed, and grabbed at one of his harvestman's legs for support.

He looked up at the flower.

It angled itself downward and squealed, “I didn't think you were the fainting type, Richard! A hangover, I suspect! Did you drink too much of my brandy? I exude it like sap, you know! A very ingenious process, even if I do say so myself!”

Very slowly, Burton replied, “You, Algernon, have got to be bloody joking.”

“What? What? Why?”

“A flower?”

“Oh! Ha-ha! Not just a flower—a whole bally jungle! What a wheeze, hey?”

“But is it—is it really you?”

The blossom twisted slightly, a gesture like a man angling his head to one side in contemplation. It refilled its air bladders and squeaked:

“Body and spirit are twins; God only knows which is which;

The soul squats down in the flesh, like a tinker drunk in a ditch.

“More is the whole than a part; but half is more than the whole;

Clearly, the soul is the body; but is not the body the soul?”

With a sudden jerk, the flower dropped until it was just inches from Burton's face.

“Is there something wrong with your memory, old horse?”

“Yes. There's a lot wrong with it. I've spent the past five years trying to piece it together while being pursued, shot at, and bombed.”

“And I suppose you've forgotten the poppy that sprouted from my hand?”

Burton flinched and put a hand to his head as an image flashed into his mind, bringing with it an overwhelming sense of loss. “Bismillah! I had! But I—wait! I think—I think—Culver Cliff!”

Swinburne shivered and rustled. “Unfortunately so.”

With watering eyes, Burton squinted at the surrounding rock face.

“I know this place. There's—”

He looked to his right, to where one of the plant's thick limbs crossed the ground and dug into the surrounding cliff. There was a dark opening in the root-like growth, and he could see that it was hollow.

Disparate recollections slotted together.

“There's a cave,” he said, hoarsely. “It's there! I remember now. A grotto! You killed Count Zeppelin!”

“Yes! The golden arrow of Eros straight into his eyeball! Good old Tom Bendyshe avenged! But the Prussian injected me with that horrible venom of his and the next thing I knew I was falling. It took me an age to grow back out of that pit and into daylight, I can tell you! Lucky for me that Zeppelin fell into it, too. He made very good fertilizer!”

A black pit.

Algernon Swinburne hanging by his fingertips.

A green shoot emerging from the back of the poet's hand. Petals unfurling. A red poppy.

“The poppies,” Burton whispered. “Now I understand.”

“Bloody typical!” the poet trumpeted. “I stretched myself to the absolute giddy limit to signpost the way back here, and you didn't even recognise what the confounded signs meant!”

“I'm sorry, Algy. Something happened to me in that cave—in Lettow-Vorbeck's temple! Yes, I remember now! It's in there, beyond the grotto!”

“Lettow-Vorbeck?” Swinburne asked.

Wells answered, “A German general, Mr. Swinburne. Apparently he's been trying to burn his way through your jungle to find this place.”

“The swine! I felt it, too! Very unpleasant!”

Burton murmured, “I lost my memory in that temple. The shock of your death was part of it, Algy, but there was more. And it ended with me being projected through time.”

Swinburne inflated his bladders, fluttered his petals, and said, “I know. You can imagine my surprise when, after having had nothing but Pox and Malady's foul-mouthed descendants for company for decade after decade, I suddenly saw you come stumbling into this clearing! You were ranting and raving like a Bedlam inmate! I tried to speak to you but you legged it through the gorge and out of the mountains like a man with the devil himself at his heels. By the way, what year is this?”

“I arrived in 1914. It's now 1918.”

“My hat! Really?”

The flower angled upward as if regarding the sky.

“One and two are not one; but one and nothing is two;

Truth can hardly be false, if falsehood cannot be true.”

It turned back to the two men.

“I find it rather difficult to measure time these days. I've had such a different sense of it since I—er—took root, so to speak. It's not at all the way I used to think of it. Can you conceive of time as a thing filled with paradoxes and echoes? What a magnificent poem it would make!

“Once the mastodon was; pterodactyls were common as cocks;

Then the mammoth was God; now is He a prize ox.

“Parallels all things are; yet many of these are askew;

You are certainly I; but certainly I am not you.

“Springs the rock from the plain, shoots the stream from the rock;

Cocks exist for the hen; but hens exist for the cock.

“God, whom we see not, is; and God, who is not, we see;

Fiddle, we know, is diddle, and diddle, we take it, is dee.”

Swinburne arched his thick stalk and shook with a peal of high-pitched laughter. Leaves drifted down from his higher branches.

Wells leaned close to Burton and whispered, “I'm of the opinion that your friend, the giant plant, is rip-roaringly drunk!”

The explorer appeared not to hear the little war correspondent. “Vertical as well as horizontal qualities,” he mumbled to himself. “Who else spoke to me about the nature of time?”

Swinburne loosed a sound that resembled a belch and directed his petals back at Burton.

“But for all my newfound perception,” he said, “upon your appearance, I instantly recognised that you weren't where—or, rather, when—you belong; and I certainly didn't relish the thought of you being out there, beyond the mountains, among the savages.”

“Actually, there aren't many left,” Wells put in. “Most of those that remain are Askaris now.”

Swinburne gave a scornful hiss. “I'm not referring to the Africans, Mr. Wells. I mean the Europeans!”

“Ah. Quite so.”

“The barbarities that have been committed on this continent in the name of one ideology or another, this social policy or that—quite dreadful! And I mean to put an end to it. I shall soon have the strength to make the German vegetation—the red weed and the venomous plants—whither and die. Already I've gained influence over those horrible things the Prussians once employed as vehicles—”

Wells cried out: “Then it was you! You took control of the lurchers! You cleared the route out of Tabora for us!”

“Is that what you call them? Yes, of course it was me. Now I shall use them to rid this land of its armies. My influence is growing, Mr. Wells. My roots will one day reach from coast to coast. And when they do, I shall make a Utopia of Africa!”

“Utopia!” Wells's eyes glistened with hope.

“For as long as this version of history exists, Africa will be an Eden.”

The flower bobbed low, until it was level with their faces.

“But,” it squeaked, “this history should not exist. You have to go back, Richard, and you have to put an end to all such divergences.”

Bertie Wells frowned and looked from the vermillion blossom to Burton and back again. “Mr. Swinburne,” he said, “Richard has explained the phenomenon of alternate histories to me. Why can they not exist concurrently?”

“Time is a complex thing. It is like music. In addition to its rhythm, there is—”

“A melody,” Burton interjected. “Refrains, pitch, timbre, and texture. Time has harmonies, volume, accents, and pauses. It has verses and—Bismillah! I've heard this before—from—from Herbert Spencer!” He looked confused. “But not Herbert Spencer.”

“Good old tin-head!” Swinburne exclaimed. “I wonder what became of him?”

Burton pointed to where Swinburne's hollow root blocked the cave mouth. “He's in there!”

“I say! Is he? Was he then involved in your transportation here?”

The explorer struggled for an answer. Something felt very wrong. The clockwork philosopher had been a friend and ally, yet, for reasons he couldn't determine, when he thought of him now, he felt threatened and distrustful. “He was,” he said, and immediately felt he'd uttered an untruth.

“Then you must go to him,” Swinburne said. “And he must return you to 1863. For, to answer Mr. Wells's question, these alternate histories are proliferating and turning time into a cacophony. Imagine ten orchestras playing different tunes in the same theatre. The musicians would lose their way. Some would play the wrong melody by mistake. Musical expressions would be misplaced and mixed up. There'd be pandemonium. And that is what's happening. If this situation is allowed to continue unchecked, the borders between each version of reality will be breached. Diverse technologies will become horribly intermingled. People's personalities will be bent entirely out of shape. Events will develop in increasingly eccentric directions.”

“But how can I reverse the damage?” Burton asked.

“I haven't a clue! I'm just a poet! But you'll find a way.”

The king's agent looked at the opening in Swinburne's root. He didn't want to enter the cave; didn't want to see the grotto or the temple; and, especially, he didn't want to see Herbert Spencer.

He noticed a flower-strewn mound. It looked like a grave. The back of his mind seemed to flex, as if to divulge a secret, but the information didn't come—only deep sadness.

He addressed Wells: “Algy is right, Bertie. And that means I have to leave you now. I have to enter the temple.”

“I'm coming with you.”

“There's no need, and it might be dangerous.”

“I've seen this thing through with you from the start. I need to be there at the finish.”

Burton considered a moment, then nodded.

“Algy,” he said, turning back to the vermillion blossom. “I'm sorry this happened to you.”

“Sorry?” the poet responded. “Don't be sorry! This is everything I could have hoped for! My senses are alive, Richard! And what senses! I've never felt so engaged with life! So intoxicated by it! Finally, I feel the inexpressible poetry of sheer being! It's wondrous!”

Burton reached up and placed a hand on the side of the flower. “Then I'm happy for you, my friend.”

Swinburne's petals squeezed into a pucker, and the flower slid forward and placed a dewy kiss on the explorer's forehead.

Drawing away, Swinburne said, “Off you go.”

Burton reached up to his vehicle's saddle and lifted down his rifle. Seeing this, Wells stepped back to his harvestman and did the same. They walked together across the glade to the opening in the plant's root.

The king's agent looked back. The huge red flower had risen up into the sunbeam. Its petals were open. A trio of butterflies danced around it. He smiled and moved into the hollow limb.

Swinburne whispered:

“A wider soul than the world was wide,

Whose praise made love of him one with pride,

What part has death or has time in him,

Who rode life's lists as a god might ride?”

Sir Richard Francis Burton and Herbert George Wells walked through the hollow root and down into the grotto. They stepped out of an opening in the limb, crossed the chamber, and wriggled through the narrow tube in its wall to the shelf overlooking the vast cavern. After following the path down, they were met by the Batembuzi, who shepherded them to the Temple of the Eye.

The war correspondent gazed in disbelief at the monolithic edifice. “By gum,” he said. “It dwarfs even the pyramids!” He glanced nervously at their escorts. “It's funny, though—I always imagined that it'd be the workers who ended up as troglodytes, rather than the priests.”

“Historically, priests have probably lived underground more often than any other segment of the world's population,” Burton commented.

Wells gave a dismissive grunt. “The power of faith over rationality.”

“I used to think they were the opposite ends of a spectrum,” Burton answered. “Now I'm not so certain.”

“Surely you're not resurrecting God, Richard?”

“No. But perhaps I'm resurrecting myself.”

“Ah. Faith in oneself. When confronting the unknown, perhaps that's the only thing one can truly hope for.”

“I certainly have nothing else.”

“You have my friendship.”

Burton looked at Wells, reached out, and patted his shoulder.

“Yes. I do.”

They trudged along the central thoroughfare, reached the steps to the temple entrance, climbed them, and passed through the tall double doors. The Batembuzi ushered them to the foot of the staircase then slunk away and were absorbed into the shadows.

“Are they even men?” Wells asked.

“I have no idea, but, according to legend, the Nāga managed to breach the natural divide between species to produce half-human offspring.”

They ascended to the hall, walked between its statues, and stopped at the gold-panelled doors.

Burton gripped a handle and said, “The last of my lost memories are in here, Bertie. Do you really want to face them with me?”

“Most assuredly!”

The king's agent swung the door open and they entered the chamber beyond.

He recognised it instantly. Everything was as it had been fifty-five years ago, except: “The Eye has gone!” Burton pointed to the empty bracket at the tip of the upside-down pyramid.

“That's the guarantee that you'll return to 1863,” Wells replied, “for obviously you removed the diamond and took it to London.”

Burton added, “Where it was recovered by the Germans after the destruction of the city. I go back knowing that will happen, so why do I allow it?”

“You'll find out! I say! This must be your Mr. Spencer!” He pointed to the floor.

The clockwork man was lying beside the altar. His brass body was battered, scratched, and discoloured, its left leg bent out of shape and footless. What passed for his face was disfigured by a big indentation on the left side. The speaking apparatus had been removed from his head and was sitting on the nearby block, among the various instruments.

Burton pointed out the exposed babbage to Wells.

“Do you see the seven apertures? They're where the Cambodian diamonds were fitted. They contained Spencer's mind and—and—”

“What is it, Richard?” Wells asked, noticing his friend's pained expression.

“K'k'thyima! I was wrong, Bertie—it wasn't ever Spencer! It was a Nāga priest named K'k'thyima. He used the power of the diamonds to send me into the future—but I don't understand; the diamonds are gone, so how can I return?”

Wells pointed to something on the altar.

“Perhaps that holds the answer.”

Burton looked and recognised the key that wound the clockwork man. He picked it up.

“Help me turn this thing onto its stomach,” he said, squatting beside the brass machine.

Wells did so, then watched as Burton inserted the key into a slot in the device's back and twisted it through a number of revolutions.

The two men stood back.

A ticking came from the figure on the floor. A click and a whir and a jerk of the footless leg, then it rolled over, sat up, and struggled upright. It looked at Sir Richard Francis Burton, saluted, and pointed at the altar.

A tremor ran through Burton's body. “Of course. I have black diamond dust tattooed into my scalp. It must be connected through time to the Eye in sixty-three.”

He hesitated. “I'm torn, Bertie. My instincts object, but have I any other choice but to go through with this?”

“All the evidence tells us that you did, and therefore will. Hmm. I wonder. Does Fate eliminate paradox? Could Fate be a function of the human organism?”

Burton climbed onto the altar and lay down. He rested his sniper rifle between his body and left arm. “If it is, then perhaps these multiple histories are disrupting it, making us prone to paradox after paradox.”

“Then you know what you have to do, Richard.”

“What?”

“You have to seal your own fate.”

Wells stood back as the clockwork man circled the altar, closing the manacles around Burton's wrists and ankles.

The explorer began: “Whatever the case, I—” then stopped with a strangled gasp as, without warning, the last missing fragment of memory returned to him.

“Oh no!” he hissed. “No no no!” He looked at Wells and bellowed: “Get the hell out of here, Bertie! Run! Run!”

“What—?”

“Run for your life! Get out!” Burton screamed, his voice near hysterical.

The clockwork man suddenly lunged at the war correspondent, grabbed his head with both hands, and twisted it violently. Bone cracked. Wells slumped to the floor.

“No!” Burton howled.

A bright flash.

The blinding light lingered in John Speke's one functional eye.

The gunshot left bells clanging in his ears.

The noise was gradually superseded by the sound of a man howling in pain and distress.

William Trounce fell against him and thudded onto the floor.

Speke blinked rapidly.

Vision returned.

Burton was on the altar. His head was thrown back and he was screaming hysterically. He'd undergone a shocking transformation. Where, seconds ago, his head had been shaved, tattooed, and smeared with blood, now it was covered by long snowy white hair. Where his face had been gaunt and savage and strong, now it was frail and lined and brutalised, as if the explorer had aged, and suffered intolerably.

His clothes were different. He was terribly emaciated. There was a rifle beside him.

K'k'thyima stepped back and placed the revolver on the block with the various instruments.

“Most satisfactory,” he said. “A sacrifice was made and our intrepid traveller has returned. Mr. Speke, would you calm him down, please.”

Speke breathed a shuddery exhalation and stepped to the altar. He took Burton by the shoulders and shook him slightly.

“Dick! Dick! It's all right, man! It's all right! Stop!”

Burton's eyes were wild. His lips were drawn back over his teeth. His screams gave way to words: “Bertie! Get out! Get out!”

“It's me, Dick! It's John! John Speke!”

“Get out. Get out. Get out.”

Speke slapped him hard.

“Dick! Look at me! It's John!”

Burton's eyes fixed on him, focused, and sanity gradually bled back into them.

“Is it you, John?” he croaked. “John Speke?”

“Yes, it's me. We're in the Nāga temple. Do you remember?”

“I remember death. So much death.”

Tears flowed freely and a sob shook the king's agent. “I have lost my mind. I can't take any more of it. Algy was—was—then William, and Bertie!” Burton looked over to K'k'thyima and suddenly screamed: “Get me out of these shackles, you damned murdering lizard!”

“Welcome back, Sir Richard,” the Nāga priest said. He limped to the explorer's side and clicked open the manacles on Burton's left wrist and ankle, then moved around the altar, leaned past Speke, and liberated the other two limbs.

Burton sat, swung around, pushed himself to his feet, and sent a vicious right hook clanging into the side of the brass man's head. He stifled a groan as pain lanced through his hand, but was satisfied to see that he'd just created the big dent he'd noticed in the clockwork man's face in 1918.

“You bastard!” he hissed. “I'm going to tear you apart!”

“I wouldn't recommend it, soft skin. Don't forget where you are. This is 1863. You need me to remain here, in this room and in one piece, for fiftyfive years, else how can I return you from 1918?”

“You damned well know it doesn't work like that! I'm here, now, and I won't disappear if I rip your bloody cogs out!”

“Perhaps not, but even if you had the strength to overpower me—which I assure you, you don't—do you really want to create yet another history—one that denies a path home to that alternate you, condemning him to exile in Africa of 1918?”

Burton swayed. Speke, looking bemused, steadied him. “What happened to you, Dick? You didn't go anywhere but your appearance is—is—”

Burton looked down at William Trounce's body. His face twisted into an expression of fury, then one of utter despair.

“I have spent four years in the future, John,” he said, “and now I must prevent that future from occurring.” He turned back to K'k'thyima. “How?”

The high priest shuffled back to the other side of the altar. He reached up and began to work the Eye out of its housing.

“That's the question, isn't? How will you ever know whether what you're doing is, from the perspective of the time you just visited, any different from what you did?”

The black diamond came loose. K'k'thyima stepped back and held it up.

“You are on your own, Sir Richard. The Nāga are finally departing this world. We leave you to sing the final verse of our song.”

The phosphorescence around the walls suddenly dimmed, its blue light concentrating around the diamond, and small crackles and snaps sounded, increasing in volume. Bolts of energy started to sizzle over the stone's many facets, then flared out, dancing across its surface and down K'k'thyima's arm. The Eye hummed, the sound rapidly deepening, causing Burton's and Speke's ears to pop before it passed below the range of human hearing.

Tiny fractures zigzagged across the Eye, and as each appeared, with a faint tink!, a small entity was expelled. To Speke's astonishment, they appeared to be tiny people with the wings of butterflies and dragonflies—fairies!—but Burton knew it was an illusion; that they appeared this way because the human mind wasn't able to process the things' true appearance, and so replaced it with a marvel from mythology. To him, the ejected forms were sparks of reptilian consciousness, sensed rather than seen. He'd witnessed the same dance around the South American stone when it had shattered.

The energy built to a storm-like frenzy, banging and clapping and sending out streaks of blue lightning that sputtered up the walls and across the floor and ceiling.

Speke cried out in fear: “What's happening, Dick?”

The king's agent yelled, “He's breaking the stone!”

Moments later, with a loud detonation, the enormous black diamond cracked and fell apart, dropping out of the brass man's hand and falling to the floor in seven equally sized pieces.

The room became still.

The bolts of energy vanished.

The smell of ozone hung in the air.

K'k'thyima bent and retrieved the stones.

“Equivalence! Though one or two or even all of the Eyes remain whole in some versions of history, in this one they are all divided into seven, thus, across all the realities, the Nāga can now transcend or die.” He directed his misshapen face at Burton. “Our gratitude, Sir Richard. The Nāga thank you for the role you've played in our release.”

“Oh just bugger off, why don't you?” the king's agent growled. He suddenly staggered, made a grab at Speke, missed, and fell to the floor, where he sat with his eyes open but glazed. Speke squatted beside him and felt his forehead.

“Feverish,” he muttered. “And exhausted beyond endurance, by the looks of it.”

“I don't know what to do,” Burton mumbled. “How do I seal my own fate, Bertie?”

“Who's this Bertie he keeps mentioning?” Speke asked K'k'thyima.

“I don't know, Mr. Speke. Let's get him up.” The brass man bent and hooked a metal hand through Burton's arm. Speke took the cue and supported the explorer on the other side. They pulled him upright and sat him on the altar.

“You had better be off, gentlemen,” K'k'thyima said. “Our work here is done, at least for the next fifty-five years.”

He opened Burton's shirt pocket and slipped the seven pieces of the African Eye into it. “You need to unscrew my speaking apparatus to expose the babbage. Remove the seven Cambodian stones and take them with you back to London. Leave my winding key on the altar, please. The babbage will have one function left to perform, which it'll fulfil in 1918, as you have seen.”

“Damn you to hell,” Burton whispered.

“On the contrary, I have chosen to transcend. Goodbye, Sir Richard Francis Burton.”

K'k'thyima became silent.

For a few moments, the king's agent sat and did nothing, while Speke watched and fidgeted nervously; then the explorer stood and detached the clockwork man's speaking device. He pulled seven black diamonds out of the exposed babbage and put them into his pocket.

The brass device walked to the other side of the altar, saluted, and stopped moving.

Burton picked up his rifle and said to Speke: “Help me carry William outside. I want to bury him in the open.

It was night when they emerged into the cliff-ringed arena, both weary to the bone after manoeuvring Trounce's corpse through the narrow subterranean passages. To Burton, the bowl-shaped space felt strangely empty. He peered around it, remembered where he'd seen flowers growing on a mound, and, with Speke's help, laid Trounce to rest there, piling rocks onto him by the starlight.

Chwezi warriors stepped out of the shadows. Silently, they escorted the two men through the gorges on either side of the mountain, leading them each by the arm in utter darkness.

When they reached the spot where Sidi Bombay had fallen, Burton found his friend's corpse undisturbed, and a second burial mound was built before they continued on.

The king's agent, asleep on his feet, lost all awareness of the environment and his own actions until, suddenly, they emerged from the Mountains of the Moon and found the Wanyambo sitting around a small crackling fire. The warriors stared in superstitious dread at the Chwezi and backed away. The mountain tribe broke its silence. Words of reassurance were spoken. An oath was sworn. Obedience was demanded. Agreement was reached. The groups banded together—thirty men in all—and continued on eastward toward the Ukerewe Lake.

It was mid-morning by the time they reached the first village. Its inhabitants, fearing the Chwezi, immediately offered shelter and sustenance. Burton, not knowing what he was doing, crawled into a beehive hut and slept.

When he awoke, he was being borne along on a litter with Speke walking at his side. The lieutenant looked down and said, “You've been in a fever for three days. How are you feeling?”

“Weak. Thirsty. Hungry. Where's my rifle?”

“One of the Africans is carrying it.”

“Get it. Don't take it from me again.”

Another day. Another village. They stopped. They ate and drank.

Later, the king's agent sat with Speke in the settlement's bandani and watched the sun oozing into the horizon.

“Where are we, John?”

“I'm not certain. About a day's march from the northwestern shore of the lake, I hope. I didn't know what to do. Without this damned thing to help me—” he tapped the babbage embedded in the left side of his skull, “—I find it almost impossible to make decisions, so I'm following what it had originally intended me to do upon gaining the diamond, which is to circumnavigate the water to its northernmost point, then march northward. I think the Chwezi understood my intentions, though I've only been able to communicate through sign language.”

Burton checked his pockets. The fourteen stones were still there.

“It seems as good a plan as any,” he said. “As long as the Chwezi remain with us, the locals will supply what we need and we'll avoid demands for hongo.”

Speke nodded and glanced at the other man. There was a disturbing lifelessness to Burton's voice, as if a large part of him had simply switched off.

The next afternoon, after mindlessly slogging over hill after hill, they caught sight of the great lake, stretching all the way to the horizon.

In a voice still devoid of emotion, Burton said, “I apologise, John. Had I seen this with my own eyes during our initial expedition, I would never have doubted your claims.”

“It was my fault you didn't see it,” Speke answered. “I became obsessed with the idea that my name alone should be forever associated with the solving of the Nile problem.”

“The diamond influenced your judgement as soon as we were within range of it.”

“Perhaps. Do you think we'll make it home?”

Burton looked down at himself. His tick-infested 1918 army fatigues were torn and rotting. His boots were cracked.

“I have reason to believe we will.”

“And what then?”

Burton shook his head and shrugged.

Just before sunrise, they set out again. For a short time, Burton walked, then his legs gave way and he collapsed onto the litter. He drifted in and out of consciousness. Fever raged through him like a forest fire.

Sometimes he opened his eyes and there was blue sky; other times, the Milky Way. On one occasion, he rolled his head to the right and saw a mirror-smooth expanse of water covered by thousands of pelicans.

For a long time, he saw nothing.

A hand shook his shoulder.

“Isabel,” he muttered.

“Dick! Wake up! Wake up!”

He opened his eyes and looked upon John Speke's lined, heavily bearded features, and his own reflected in the other's black, brass-ringed left-eye lens. He pushed himself up and found that a little strength had returned to him.

“What is it?”

“Listen!”

Burton looked around. They were on a slope. It concealed the landscape ahead and to the right, but on the left jungled hills rolled away before climbing to faraway mountains.

In front, from beyond the crest of the incline, mist was clouding into the sky.

A constant roar filled his ears.

“That sounds like—”

“Falling water!” Speke enthused. “Can you walk?”

“Yes.”

The lieutenant took Burton's arm and helped him to his feet. With a gesture to the Chwezi and Wanyambo warriors, he indicated that they should stay put.

The two Britishers walked slowly toward the summit, Burton leaning heavily on his companion. The sun burned their faces. Mosquitoes darted around them. The air was heavy and humid.

They reached the top.

Below them, the earth was cut by a wide and deep rift into which, from the edge of the Ukerewe, a great mass of water hurtled. Thundering beneath billowing vapour, it crashed and splashed and frothed over rounded rocks, and cascaded through the arch of a permanent rainbow. Fish leaped from it, flashing in the sunlight, and birds darted in and out of the rolling cloud.

There could be no doubt.

It was the source of the River Nile.

Burton thought: Here it begins. Here it ends. Not the source, but just another part of a circle.

They stood silently for a long while, deafened by the sound of the falling water, then Speke roused himself, leaned close to Burton, put his mouth to the explorer's ear, and shouted: “We've done it, Dick! We've discovered it at last!” He clutched his companion's elbow. “And we did it together!”

Burton tore himself away and Speke took a step back, shocked by the ferocious expression on the other man's face.

“You can have it! I want nothing more to do with it! It's yours, Speke! The whole damned thing is yours!”

Over the next few days, they followed the river north, struggled across an extensive quagmire, pushed through thickets of water hyacinth, and found themselves on the shore of a second lake, smaller and much shallower than the Ukerewe. It was completely covered with water lilies and smelled of rotting vegetation.

“What shall we name it?” Speke asked.

“Why name it at all?” Burton growled. “It is what it is. A bloody lake.”

The lieutenant shook his head despairingly and walked away. He couldn't understand the other's mood at all. Burton had hardly spoken since their discovery of the falls. He wasn't even bothering to acquire the Chwezi language, which was entirely out of character, for in Speke's experience Burton was driven by a mania to conquer every foreign tongue he encountered.

The Wanyambo warriors, now far from home and unwilling to go any farther, left them.

Over the next three days, the Chwezi guided the two Britishers around the southern shores of the lake to where, at its western tip, the river flowed out of it.

They followed the waterway. The land was boggy and swarming with snakes. Foul-smelling gasses bubbled out of the ground.

The sun rose and set and rose and set, and they lost count of the days. Mosquitoes bit every inch of their exposed skin. Their clothes fell to pieces and had to be replaced with cotton robes, donated by villagers. They wound rough cloth around their now bootless feet and walked with staffs, looking like a couple of heavily bearded skeletons, burned almost black, too exhausted to communicate, or even to think.

One of their guides, who'd been scouting ahead, returned and spoke quietly to his companions. He approached Burton and Speke and jabbed his finger first at one, then at the other, then toward a ridge that lay just to the south of the river, a couple of miles to the west.

He rejoined the other Chwezi and, as a man, they disappeared into the undergrowth.

Suddenly, the Britishers were alone.

“Well then,” Speke said, shading his one functioning eye and peering at the nearby high land. “I suppose we're meant to go up there.”

They set off through sucking mud and shouldered past stiff bullrushes until the terrain sloped upward, became firmer underfoot, and they climbed to the top of the ridge. On the other side of it, the Nile flowed into another vast lake, and on the near shore, just half a mile away, an air vessel was hovering about forty feet from the ground. It was a gargantuan cigar-shaped balloon with a long cabin affixed beneath it and pylons, with rotor wings at their ends, extending out horizontally from its sides. The ship, which must have been close to a thousand feet in length, was painted with a Union Jack and bore on its side the name HMA Dauntless.

A large camp of Rowtie tents lay in the shadow of the vessel.

Burton suddenly spoke: “John, I have to make a request of you.”

“What is it?”

“Tell them nothing. Not now, and not when we return to London. Don't let on anything of what we've experienced here. The future may depend on it.”

“Dick, I—”

“I need your word on it.”

“Very well. You have it.”

Burton took Speke's hand and shook it.

They stumbled down toward the camp and had crossed half the distance when they were spotted. A shout went up, men started running toward them, came close, and gathered around. One of them stepped forward.

“By James!” he exclaimed. “Is that you, Sir Richard?”

Burton's vision was swimming. The man in front of him blurred in and out of focus. Slowly, recognition dawned.

“Hello,” the king's agent whispered. “I'm very happy to see that you've recovered from your injuries, Captain Lawless.”

Everything toppled over and darkness rushed in.