by Mark Hodder
“I'll be more than happy to. Even retrospectively.”
“I must say, though, I thoroughly enjoyed the irony of it.”
“Irony?”
“Yes. You affirm that you are quite impossibly in the land of the living, and seconds later, you almost aren't!”
“Ah, yes. Henceforth, I shall choose my words with a little more care. I did not at all enjoy being bombed and buried alive. And please drop the ‘Sir.’ Plain old ‘Richard’ is sufficient.” He took a gulp of tea and stood up. “Shall we go and watch the fireworks, then?”
They left the makeshift tavern and began to move slowly through the tents, passing empty-eyed and slack-faced soldiers, and heading toward the northern border of the encampment.
The air smelled of sweat-and worse.
“Look at them,” Wells said. “Have you ever seen such a heterogeneous throng of fighting men? They've been recruited from what's left of the British South Africans, from Australia and India, from the ragtag remains of our European forces, and from all the diverse tribes of East and Central Africa.”
“They don't look at all happy about it.”
“This isn't an easy country, as you know better than most. Dysentery, malaria, tsetse flies, mosquitoes, jigger fleas-the majority of the white men are as sick as dogs. As for the Africans, they're all serial deserters. There should be double the number of soldiers you see here.”
They passed alongside a pen of oxen. One of the animals was lying dead, its carcass stinking and beginning to swell.
“Do you have a thing about poppies?” Wells asked. “You pulled one from your pocket just before we got bombed, and now I see you have a fresh one pinned to your lapel.”
“I think-I have a feeling-that is to say-the flower seems as if it should mean something.”
“I believe it symbolises sleep-or death,” Wells responded.
“No, not that,” Burton said. “Something else, but I can't put my finger on it.”
“So you're still having trouble with your memory, then? I was hoping it'd returned. As you might imagine, I've been beside myself with curiosity these past few days. I have so many questions to ask.”
“Odd scraps of it are back,” Burton replied. “It's a peculiar sensation. I feel thoroughly disassembled. I'll submit to your interrogation, but if you manage to get anything out of me, you must keep it to yourself.”
“I have little choice. If I publicised the fact that you're alive, my editor would laugh me right out of the news office and straight into the European Resistance, from which I'd never be seen again.” Wells jerked his head, coughed, and spat. “These bloody flies! They're all over me! The moment I open my mouth, there's always one eager to buzz into it!” He saluted a passing officer, then said, “So what happened? Did some quirk of nature render you immortal, Richard? Did you fake your own death in 1890?”
“No. I have the impression that I came here directly from the year 1863.”
“What? You stepped straight from three years before I was born into the here and now? By what means?”
“I don't know.”
“Then why?”
“I don't know that, either. I'm not even sure which future this is.”
“Which future? What on earth does that mean?”
“Again, I don't know-but I feel sure there are alternatives.”
Wells shook his head. “My goodness. The impossibilities are accumulating. Yet here you are.”
“Here I am,” Burton agreed.
“An anachronic man,” Wells muttered. He stopped to adjust his crutches.
Moans emerged from a nearby tent, its inhabitant obviously wracked by fever. The sound of his misery was drowned out as a group of Askaris filed past, singing a mournful song. Burton listened, fascinated by their deep voices, and was able to identify the language as Kichagga, a dialect of Kiswahili, which suggested the men were from the Chagga tribes that originated in the north, from the lands below the Kilima Njaro mountain.
They were far from home.
So was he.
“I once discussed the possibility of journeying through time with young Huxley,” Wells said, as the two of them got moving again. “It was his assertion that no method would ever be invented, for, if it were, then surely we'd have been overrun by visitors from the future. It didn't occur to either of us that they'd actually come from the past. You say you don't know how it was achieved? But was it through mechanical means or a-I don't know-a mental technique?”
“I have no idea. Who's Huxley?”
“A boy I was acquainted with. He had a prodigious intellect, though he was almost entirely blind and hardly out of short trousers. He was killed when the Hun destroyed London. I don't understand, Richard-how could movement through time have been possible in the 1860s yet remain a secret today?”
“My guess is that-that-that-wait-who is-was-is Palmerston?”
“Pah! That villain! In your day, he was prime minister.”
“Yes!” Burton cried. “Yes! I remember now! He had a face like a waxwork!”
“What about him?”
“I think he might have suppressed the fact that the boundaries of time can be breached.”
“The devil you say! I should have known! That wily old goat! Does he know you're here?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Maybe my editor would help you to contact him.”
“I have no means of sending a communique into the past.”
“I mean now, here in 1914.”
Burton exclaimed, “Surely you don't mean to suggest that he's still alive?”
“Ah. You didn't know. Yes, he's with us. Famously so. Or perhaps ‘notoriously so’ would be a more accurate assessment. He's a hundred and thirty years old!”
“Bismillah!” Burton gasped. “Palmerston! Alive! Is he still prime minister?”
“No, of course not. There's been no such thing since the Germans overran Europe. And let me tell you: few men who ever lived have had as much blood on their hands as Palmerston. He called us to war. We were making the future, he said, and hardly any of us troubled to think what future we were making.” Wells waved his hand at the tents that surrounded them. “Behold!”
Burton looked puzzled. “But there's more than this, surely? What of the Empire?”
Wells stopped in his tracks. “Richard,” he said quietly. “You have to understand. This is it.”
“It?”
“All that remains. The men commanding these two battalions of Askaris, plus perhaps three thousand in the British Indian Expeditionary Force, scattered groups of soldiers around the Lake Regions, maybe twenty thousand civilians and Technologists in our stronghold at Tabora, and whatever's left of the British European Resistance-there's nothing else.”
Burton looked shocked. “This is the Empire? What in heaven's name happened?”
“As I told you before, it all began here. By the 1870s, despite the efforts of Al-Manat, the German presence in Africa was growing. Palmerston was convinced that Bismarck intended a full-scale invasion. He believed that Germany was seeking to establish an empire as big as ours, so he posted a couple of battalions over here to prevent that from happening. The Hun responded by arming the natives, setting them against us. The conflict escalated. Palmerston sent more and more soldiers. Then, in 1900, Germany suddenly mobilised all its forces, including its Eugenicist weapons-but not here. It turns out that Bismarck never wanted Africa. He wanted Europe. France fell, then Belgium, then Denmark, then Austria-Hungary, then Serbia. The devastation was horrific. Britain fought wildly for five years, but our Army was divided. Almost a third of it was here, and when they tried to get home, Germany blockaded all the African ports. My God, what a consummate tactician Bismarck was! We didn't stand a chance. Then he gained Russia as an ally, and we were conquered. India, Australia, South Africa, and the West Indies all quickly declared their independence, British North America fell to a native and slave uprising, and the Empire disintegrated.”
Burton s
ent a breath whistling through his teeth. “And Palmerston was to blame?”
“Completely. His foreign policy was misjudged in the extreme. No one really understands why he was so obsessed with Africa. A great many Britishers have called for him to be tried and executed. After all, it's not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not pay with their own, and he was the greatest gambler of them all. But Crowley insists that he should be kept alive-that, somehow, the survival of Tabora, the last British city, depends on him.”
They reached an area where the tents thinned out and row after row of Mark II Scorpion Tanks were parked, hunkered down on their legs, claws tucked in, tails curled up.
Burton noted that, though the war machines' design was new to him, the technology appeared to have advanced little since his own age.
“Let's rest again for a moment,” Wells said. “This bloody leg is giving me gyp.”
“All right.”
Burton leaned against one of the arachnids and batted a fly from his face.
Memories were stirring. He was trying to recall the last time he'd met Lord Palmerston.
Shut the hell up, Burton! Am I to endure your insolence every time we meet? I'll not tolerate it! You have your orders! Do your bloody job, Captain!
The prime minister's voice echoed in a remote chamber of his mind but he was unable to associate it with any specific occasion.
“So he's at Tabora?” he asked.
“Palmerston? Yes. He's kept under house arrest there. I find it incredible that he still has supporters, but he does-my editor for one-so it's unlikely he'll go before the firing squad, as he deserves. You know he buggered up the constitution, too?”
“How so?”
“When he manipulated the Regency Act back in 1840 to ensure that Albert took the throne instead of Ernest Augustus of Hanover, he left no provision for what might happen afterward-no clear rules of succession for when Albert died. Ha! In 1900, I, like a great many others, was a staunch republican, so when the king finally kicked the bucket, I was happy to hear calls for the monarchy to be dismantled. Of course, equally vociferous voices were raised against the idea. Things got rather heated, and I, being a journalist, got rather too involved. There was public disorder, and I'm afraid I might have egged it on a little. When a man gets caught up in history, Richard, he loses sight of himself. Anyway, Palmerston was distracted, and that's when Bismarck pounced. I feel a fool now. In times of war, figureheads become necessary for morale. I should have realised that, but I was an idealist back then. I even believed the human race capable of building Utopia. Ha! Idiot!”
They slouched against the machines for a couple more minutes, the humidity weighing down on them, then resumed their trek, moving away from the tanks and up a gentle slope toward the ridge. The ground was dry, cracked, and dusty, with tufts of elephant grass standing in isolated clumps. There were also large stretches of blackened earth-“Where carnivorous plants have been burned away,” Wells explained. “At least we're not due the calamity of rain for a few more weeks. The moment a single drop touches the soil, the bloody plants spring up again.”
The Indian Ocean, a glittering turquoise line, lay far off to their right, while to their left, the peaks of the Usagara Highlands shimmered and rippled on the horizon.
“But let us not be diverted from our topic,” Wells said. “I'm trying to recall your biographies. If I remember rightly, in 1859 you returned from your unsuccessful expedition to find the source of the Nile and more or less retreated from the public eye to work on various books, including your translation of The Arabian Nights, which, may I add, was a simply splendid achievement.”
“The Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night,” Burton corrected. “Thank you, but please say no more about it. I've not completed the damned thing yet. At least, I don't think I have.”
He helped his companion past a fallen tree that was swarming with white ants and muttered, “It's odd you say that, though, about my search for the source of the Nile. The moment you mentioned it, I remembered it, but I feel sure I made a second attempt.”
“I don't think so. It certainly isn't recorded. The fountains of the Nile were discovered by-”
Burton stopped him. “No! Don't tell me! I don't want to know. If I really am from 1863, and I return to it, perhaps I'll rewrite that particular item of history.”
“You think you might get back to your own time? How?”
Burton shrugged.
“But isn't it obvious you won't?” Wells objected. “Otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation, for you'd surely do something to prevent this war from ever happening.”
“Ah, Bertie, there's the paradox,” Burton answered. “If I go back and achieve what your history says I never achieved, you'll still be here, aware that I never did it. However, I will now exist in a time where I did. And in my future there'll be a Herbert George Wells who knows it.”
“Wait! Wait! I'm struggling to wrap my brain around that!”
“I agree-it's a strain on the grey matter, especially if, like mine, it's as full of holes as a Swiss cheese. These days, I hear myself speak but have barely a notion of what I'm talking about.”
Burton pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from the back of his neck. “But something tells me that if you go back into the past and make an alteration, then a whole new sequence of events will spring from it, establishing an ever-widening divergence from what had been the original course of history.”
Wells whistled. “Yet that original has to still exist, for it's where you travelled back from.”
“Precisely.”
“So existence has been split into two by your act.”
“Apparently.”
“How godlike, the chronic argonaut,” Wells mused.
“The what?”
“Hum. Just thinking out loud.”
They joined a small group of officers who'd gathered at the top of the ridge. Wells indicated one of them and whispered, “That's General Aitken. He's in charge of this whole operation.”
Burton tugged at his khaki uniform jacket, which he considered far too heavy for the climate. He felt smothered and uncomfortable. Perspiration was running into his eyes. He rubbed them. As they readjusted, the vista that sprawled beneath him swam into focus, and all his irritations were instantly forgotten.
Seen through the distorting lens of Africa's blistering heat, Dar es Salaam appeared to undulate and quiver like a mirage. It was a small white city, clinging to the shore of a natural harbour. Grand colonial buildings humped up from its centre and were clustered around the port-in which a German light cruiser was docked-while a tall metal structure towered above the western neighbourhoods. Otherwise, the settlement was very flat, with single-storey dwellings strung along tree-lined dirt roads and around the borders of small outlying farms.
A strip of tangled greenery surrounded the municipality-“They look small from here, but those are the artillery plants,” Wells observed-and beyond them, the German trenches crisscrossed the terrain up to a second band of foliage: the red weed. The British trenches occupied the space between the weed and the ridge.
Like a punch to the head, Burton suddenly recalled the Crimea, for, as in that terrible conflict, the earth here had been torn, gouged, and overturned by shells. Flooded by heavy rains some weeks ago, the horrible landscape before him had since been baked into distorted shapes by the relentless sunshine. It was also saturated with blood and peppered with chunks of rotting human and animal flesh, and the stench assailed Burton's nostrils from even this distance. Bits of smashed machinery rose from the churned ground like disinterred bones. It was unnatural. It was hideous. It was sickening.
He unhooked his canteen from his belt, took a swig of water, and spat dust from his mouth.
“That's our target,” said Wells, pointing at the metal tower. “If we can bring it down, we'll destroy their radio communications.”
“Radio?” Burton asked.
Wells sm
iled. “Well I never! How queer to meet a man who isn't familiar with something that everyone else takes for granted! But, of course, it was after your time, wasn't it!”
Burton glanced uneasily at the nearby officers, who were peering at the sea through binoculars.
“Keep your voice down, please, Bertie,” he said. “And what was after my time?”
“The discovery of radio waves. The technique by which we transmit spoken words and other sounds through the atmosphere to literally anywhere in the world.”
“A mediumistic procedure?”
“Not at all. It's similar to the telegraph but without the wires. It involves the modulation of oscillating electromagnetic fields.”
“That's all mumbo jumbo to me. What are they looking at?”
Wells turned to observe the officers, then raised his binoculars and followed the men's gaze.
“Ah ha!” he said. “The rotorships! Have a squint.”
He passed the binoculars to Burton, who put them to his eyes and scanned the eastern sky, near the horizon, until two dark dots came into view. As they approached, he saw they were big rotorships, each with twelve flight pylons, wings spinning at the top of the tall shafts. The black flat-bottomed vessels were rather more domed in shape than those from his own time, and he could see guns poking out of portholes along their sides.
“Astraea and Pegasus,” Wells said. “Cruiser class. The Pegasus is the one on the right.”
“They're fast. What are those little things flying around them?”
“Hornets. One-man fighters. They'll swoop in to shoot at the ground defences.”
“Actual insects?”
“Yes. The usual routine. Breed 'em big, kill 'em, scrape 'em out, shove steam engines into the carapaces. The method hasn't changed since your day. Look out! The Konigsberg is bringing her cannon to bear!”
Burton directed the glasses to the city's harbour and saw that the decks of the seagoing vessel were swarming with men. A gun turret, positioned in front of its three funnels, was turning to face the oncoming rotorships. A few moments later, orange light blazed from the muzzle. Repetitive booms, lagging a few seconds behind the discharges, rippled out over the landscape, becoming thin and echoey as they faded away.
