Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon bas-3

by Mark Hodder

  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.

  CHAPTER 13

  The Source

  “We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.”

  — Oscar Wilde

  While Sir Richard Francis Burton was in Africa, electricity came to London. Now, in early 1864, thick cables were clinging to the walls of the city's buildings, looping and drooping over its streets, dripping in the fog, and quietly sizzling as they conveyed energy from Battersea Power Station across the nation's capital.

  Street lamps blazed. House and office windows blazed. Shop fronts blazed. The permanent murk effortlessly swallowed the light and reduced it to smudged globes, which hung in the impenetrable atmosphere like exotic fruits.

  In the gloomy gullies between, pedestrians struggled through an unyielding tangle of almost immobile vehicles. The legs of steam-driven insects were caught in the spokes of wheels, panicky horses were jammed against chugging machinery, crankshafts were hammering against wood and metal and flesh.

  Animalistic howls and screams and curses sounded from amid the mess.

  And to this, Burton had returned aboard His Majesty's Airship Dauntless.

  The vessel was the first of her type, the result of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's solving of the gas-filled dirigible problem. Design faults had been corrected and unstable flammable gasses replaced. The Dauntless was a triumph.

  A slow but long-range vessel, she was propelled by electric engines, which, lacking springs, should have been impervious to the deleterious influence that had so far prevented any machine from piercing Africa's heart.

  Unfortunately, this had proved not to be the case.

  Following the Nile upstream, the ship had reached the northern outskirts of the Lake Regions. Her engines had then failed. However, the wind was behind her, so Captain Lawless allowed the vessel to be borne along, powerless, until the air current changed direction, at which point he'd ordered her landing on the shore of a great lake.

  The crew set up camp.

  There were two passengers on board: John Petherick and Samuel Baker, both experienced explorers from the Royal Geographical Society. They prepared an expedition, intending to head south to search for Burton. The day prior to their planned departure, he and Speke had come stumbling into the camp.

  Lawless and his engineers had taken it for granted that the engines were still dysfunctional. Burton, though, knew that the Naga were no longer present in the black diamonds, so their influence should have vanished.

  He was correct. The engines functioned perfectly. The Dauntless flew home and landed at an airfield some miles to the southeast of London. Damien Burke and Gregory Hare, Palmerston's odd-job men, were there to greet it. They took possession of the fourteen black diamonds-the seven fragments of the Cambodian Eye and the seven of the African.

  “All the Naga stones are in British hands now, Captain Burton,” Burke said. “You've done excellent work for the Empire, isn't that so, Mr. Hare?”

  “It most certainly is, Mr. Burke!” Hare agreed.

  John Speke was taken into custody.

  “He's a traitor,” Burke observed. “The irony of it is that he'll no doubt be incarcerated in our chambers beneath the Tower of London, which is where the Eyes will go, too. One of the most disreputable men in the country held in the same place as what might well be our most precious resource. Such is the way of things.”

  Burton was taken to Penfold Private Sanatorium in London's St. John's Wood, where, for three weeks, the Sisterhood of Noble Benevolence fussed over him.

  As his strength increased, so too did his anxiety. He had a terrible decision to make. By telling Palmerston about the future and revealing to him his fate, he might persuade him to abandon plans to use the Eyes of Naga as a means for mediumistic espionage against Prussia; might convince him that sending troops to Africa would lead to disaster. But if he succeeded in this, it would mean no reinforcements for the Daughters of Al-Manat. Bertie Wells had told him that the female guerrilla fighters survived at least into the 1870s. In changing history, Burton would almost certainly condemn Isabel Arundell, Isabella Mayson, and Sadhvi Raghavendra to much earlier deaths.

  Obviously, the future he'd visited had occurred because he'd favoured Al-Manat's survival over the 130-year-old Palmerston's direct order. As much as he loved Isabel, he had no idea why he might have done such a thing, for, in anyone's estimation, could three lives-even those three-be worth the savagery and destruction of the Great War?

  He wrote much about this in his personal journal, examining the problem from every angle he could think of, but though he produced pages and pages of cramped handwriting, he could find no answer.

  The solution finally came with a visit from Palmerston himself.

  Two weeks into his treatment, Burton was sitting up in bed reading a newspaper when the door opened and the prime minister stepped in, announcing: “I'd have come earlier. You know how it is. Affairs of state. Complex times, Captain Burton. Complex times.”

  He took off his hat and overcoat-revealing a Mandarin-collared black suit and pale blue cravat-and placed them on a chair. He didn't remove his calfskin gloves.

  Standing at the end of the patient's bed, he said, “You look bloody awful. Your hair is white!”

  The king's agent didn't reply. He gazed dispassionately at his visitor's face.

  Palmerston's most recent treatments had made his nose almost entirely flat. The nostrils were horizontal slits, as wide as the gash-like mouth beneath. A dimple had been added to the centre of his chin. His eyebrows were painted on, high above the oriental-looking eyes.

  “You'll be pleased to hear, Captain, that not only do I fully endorse your recommendations, but I have acted upon them even in the face of virulent opposition led by no less than Disraeli himself,” he announced.

  Burton looked puzzled. “My recommendations, Prime Minister?”

  “Yes. Your reports confirmed my every suspicion concerning Bismarck's intentions. Obviously, we cannot allow him to gain a foothold in East Africa, so British troops have already been conveyed there by rotorship, and I have more on the way. It's by no means a declaration of war on my part, but I do intend
that they offer resistance to any efforts made by Prussia to claim territories.”

  Burton's fingers dug into the bedsheets beneath him. “My-my reports?” he whispered hoarsely.

  “As delivered to us by Commander Krishnamurthy. A very courageous young man, Burton. He will be given due honours, of that you can be certain. And I look forward to receiving the remainder of your observations-those made between Kazeh and the Mountains of the Moon. Do you have them here?”

  “N-no,” Burton stammered. “I'll-I'll see that they're delivered to you.” He thought: Bismillah! Krishnamurthy!

  “Post-haste, please, Captain.”

  Burton struggled for words. “I–I wrote those reports before I had-before I had properly assessed the situation, Prime Minister. You have to-to withdraw our forces at once. Their presence in Africa will escalate hostilities between the British Empire and Prussia to an unprecedented degree.”

  “What? Surely you don't expect me to allow Bismarck free rein?”

  “You have to, sir.”

  “Have to? Why?”

  “Your actions will-will precipitate the Great War, the one that Countess Sabina has predicted.”

  Palmerston shook his head. “The countess is working with us to prevent exactly that. She and a team of mediums have already employed the Naga diamonds to great effect.” He pointed at Burton's newspaper. “No doubt you've read that a second Schleswig conflict has broken out between Prussia, Austria, and Denmark. We precipitated that, my dear fellow, by means of undetected mediumistic manipulations. I intend to tangle Bismarck up in so many minor difficulties that he'll never have the strength to challenge us in Africa, let alone establish his united Germany!”

  Burton squeezed his eyes shut and raised his hands to his head in frustration. It was too late. The circumstances that would lead to all-out war had already been set into motion!

  He thought rapidly. Now he understood the 130-year-old Palmerston's claim that he-Burton-had never revealed his visit to the future. The king's agent knew the way the prime minister's mind worked. Having already outmanoeuvred Benjamin Disraeli-a formidable political force-to get his way, Palmerston wouldn't under any circumstances backtrack, not even on his own advice! So what would he do instead? The answer was obvious: the prime minister would attempt to outguess his future self by ordering a preemptive strike; he'd throw every resource he could muster into defeating Bismarck before Prussia could properly mobilise its military might; and in doing that, in Burton's opinion, he was much more likely to incite the war at an earlier date than to prevent it.

  Burton felt ensnared by inevitability.

  “What's the matter?” Palmerston asked. “Should I call a nurse?”

  The explorer took his hands from his head, feeling the ridges of his tattoo sliding beneath his fingertips.

  “No, Prime Minister. I have a headache, that's all.”

  “Then I won't disturb you any further, Captain.” Palmerston picked up his coat, shrugged it back on, took up his top hat, and said: “We've blown hot and cold, you and I, but I want you to know that I have renewed faith in you. You've done a splendid job. Absolutely splendid! Thanks to your actions, the Empire is secured.”

  He turned and departed.

  Burton sat and stared into space.

  A week later he was released from hospital and returned to his home at 14 Montagu Place.

  Mrs. Angell, his housekeeper, was horrified at his appearance. He looked, she said, as if he'd just been dug out of an Egyptian tomb.

  “You'll eat, Sir Richard!” she pronounced, and embarked on a culinary mission to restore his health. She also cleaned around him obsessively, as if the slightest speck of dust might cause his final ruination.

  He put up with it stoically, too weak to resist, though there was one item he wouldn't allow her-or the maid, Elsie Carpenter-to touch, let alone dust: the rifle that leaned against the fireplace by his saddlebag armchair.

  It was an anomaly, that weapon, and the image of it arose again and again in his Sufi meditations, though he couldn't fathom why.

  A few days after his homecoming, a parakeet arrived at his study window. “Message from thick-witted Richard Monckton Milnes, otherwise known as Baron hairy-palmed Houghton. Message begins. I will call at three o'clock, bum-slapper. Message ends.”

  The new 1st Baron Houghton arrived on time and found Burton wrapped in his jubbah and slumped in his armchair beside the fireplace, with a cheroot in his mouth, a glass of port in his hand, and Fidget the basset hound stretched out at his feet. Whatever greeting Monckton Milnes had planned died on his lips at the sight of the explorer. He stood in the doorway of the study, his mouth hanging open.

  Burton removed his Manila, set down his glass, and gave a half-grin. “What you see is the much-recovered model,” he said, rising to his feet. He crossed to his friend and shook his hand. “You should have seen the state of me before! Hang up your coat, old man, and take a seat. Congratulations on your peerage. Would you prefer me to bow or pour you a drink?”

  “Hell's bells, Richard! You look twenty years older!”

  “I'm four years older. No, five, counting the year since you last saw me, the rest is down to the vicissitudes of Africa.”

  His visitor sat down and accepted a glass of port.

  “By heavens, it's good to see you again. But five years? What are you talking about?”

  “It will require a suspension of disbelief on your part.”

  “A little over a year ago you told me that Spring Heeled Jack was a man from the future and that history had been changed. Is what you have to tell me more incredible even that that?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes, it is.”

  “Ouch! Very well, fire away. You talk and I'll drink.”

  Over the course of the next two hours, Burton told his friend everything that had happened in Africa, and he withheld nothing.

  A long silence followed as Monckton Milnes digested the tale, along with the copious amount of port he'd gulped.

  Burton showed him the rifle and pointed out the inscription on its stock: Lee-Enfield Mk III. Manufactured in Tabora, Africa, 1918.

  “You have to change history,” his guest said softly.

  “That's the problem,” Burton replied. “To do so I have to outmanoeuvre myself, as well as Palmerston.”

  “And if you succeed,” Monckton Milnes interjected, “if you create yet another branch of history, you'll just be adding to the chaos poor Algernon warned of.”

  Burton sucked at his cigar. “Not so much poor Algernon. He seemed very content with his new form. But yes, you're correct. He told me to put an end to all the divergences, despite that doing so would wipe out the history in which he currently resides. How, though, am I to do that?”

  He looked down at the rifle that lay across his legs. “How am I to do that?”

  Quite without warning or obvious reason, the last words Burton had ever heard Detective Inspector Honesty speak leaped into his mind with such clarity they might have been muttered into his ear: “Needs pruning, hard against the stem.”

  Monckton Milnes, as Burton had requested, had spent the past year surreptitiously monitoring the prime minister. He reported that Palmerston had secretly quadrupled military spending, had reshuffled his cabinet so that it contained the most martial of his party's ministers, and was steadfastly refusing to make a decision regarding British America's slave population.

  Burton thanked his friend, bade him goodbye, and spent the rest of the afternoon meditating.

  That evening, he met Maneesh Krishnamurthy for dinner at the Athenaeum Club on Pall Mall. They grabbed each other by the elbows and shared a wordless greeting. Both grinned stupidly, both looked into the other's eyes, and both saw pain and loss.

  They settled in the lounge and shared a bottle of wine.

  “I've started on these foul-tasting things,” the police commander said, opening a platinum cigarette case and pulling forth one of the little tubes of Latakia tobacco. “Much worse than
my old pipe, but I had to trade the damned thing to get out of a jam at Madege Madogo and I haven't the heart to replace it. It was a gift from my cousin, bless him.”

  “I miss him,” Burton murmured. “I miss them all.”

  He raised his glass in a silent toast. Krishnamurthy followed suit. They drained them in a single swallow and poured over-generous refills.

  “Sir Richard, I know I look like I've been starved, beaten, and dragged backward through a thorn bush, but if you don't mind me saying so, you look considerably worse. What in blue blazes happened to you?”

  “Time, Maneesh. Time happened to me.”

  For the second time that day-and only the second time since he'd got back-Burton gave an account of what had occurred after he and Krishnamurthy parted company outside Kazeh.

  “By James, it's unbelievable, Sir Richard, but looking at what's happening in the world today, I can easily see how it might develop into the hellish conflict you describe.”

  “Unfortunately not might, but will”

  They drank more. Too much. Krishnamurthy described his journey from Kazeh back to Zanzibar. Burton's head began to swim.

  A concierge approached. “Excuse me, sir,” he said. “A message for you. It arrived by runner.”

  Burton took the proffered note. He looked at Krishnamurthy. “This will be from Palmerston.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Because the only way a runner would know I'm here is if it was sent by someone who's having me watched.”

  He opened the note and read:

  This morning, a military court found Lieutenant John Hanning Speke guilty of treason. He will be executed by firing squad at dawn on Friday. His final request is to see you. This has been permitted. Please attend with due dispatch. Burke and Hare will escort.

  Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston

  Burton cursed and passed the note to his friend.

  Krishnamurthy read it and said, “Because he aided the Prussians?”

  “Yes. But he was never acting under his own volition. From the very inception of this whole affair, Speke has been manipulated and taken advantage of.”