Large glass bulbs also hung from the frame, and were connected to the figure by tubes through which pink liquid was pumping. Each one held an organ: a throbbing heart, pulsating lungs, things that quivered and twitched.
Burton saw all this in a single glance, then his eyes rested on the man's face and he couldn't look away.
It was Palmerston.
Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, was bald, and the skin of his face was stretched so tightly that it rendered him almost featureless. But despite the eyes being mere slits, the nose a jagged hole, and the mouth a horribly wide frog-like gash; despite that the ears had been replaced by two brass forward-pointing hearing trumpets, riveted directly into the sides of his skull; despite all this, it was plainly Palmerston.
The old man's eyes glittered as he watched his visitors enter.
Wilde closed the door and stepped to one side of it. He gently pushed Burton forward. The king's agent approached and stopped in front of the man who'd once been prime minister. He tried to think of something to say, but all that came out was: “Hello.”
Just above Palmerston's head, an accordion-like apparatus suddenly jerked then expanded with a wheeze. It gave a number of rapid clicks, expelled a puff of steam, then contracted and emitted a sound like a gurgling drain. Words bubbled out of it.
“You filthy traitorous bastard!”
Burton recoiled in shock. “What?”
“You backstabbing quisling!”
The explorer turned to Wilde. “Did you bring me here to be maligned?”
“Please allow him a moment to get it out of his system, Captain. It's been pent up for half a century.”
“Prussian spy! Treasonous snake! You dirty collaborator!”
“I have no idea what he's talking about. Is he sane?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“How old is he?
“A hundred and thirty-four.”
“You never bloody told me!” Palmerston gurgled.
“Have you finally run out of insults, Pam?” Burton asked.
“Lord Palmerston, you insolent cur! You never told me!”
“Told you what?”
The misshapen figure squirmed and stretched spasmodically.
Wilde said, “Calm yourself, please, Lord Palmerston. We don't have time for tantrums.”
The ex-prime minister went limp. He glared at Burton with sulphurous hatred. The accordion-thing shook and rattled and groaned, expanded, blew out more steam, and squeezed shut.
“I sent you to Africa to find the Eye of Nāga. You succeeded in your mission but you neglected to report that, in the course of retrieving it, you'd visited the future!”
“Sir,” Burton replied. “You must understand: you're berating me for something that, from my point of view, I haven't done yet.”
“You saw this damned war. You saw that the Germans were running rampant over the entire globe. You saw that the British Empire had been reduced to this one small enclave. Yet you purposely kept it from me! You were working for the Prussians all along!”
“No, I was not.”
“Then why?”
“How can I possibly account for decisions I haven't yet made?”
“Traitor!”
Burton looked at Oscar Wilde and gave a helpless shrug.
Wilde stepped forward. “Gentlemen, let us get straight to the point. Captain, if I might explain—Lord Palmerston is blamed by the majority of Britishers for the woeful position we find ourselves in.”
“Yes, Bertie Wells expressed such a sentiment.”
“Indeed. Fortunately, Bertie has acted counter to his views on the matter out of loyalty to me, for I, along with a few others, am of the opinion that Lord Palmerston only ever had the best interests of the Empire in mind when he made the decisions that led to this war.”
Burton looked at the monstrosity hanging in the frame and murmured, “I don't disagree. But, Quips, those ‘best interests’ were envisioned according to the manner in which he comprehended the influences at play: the political landscape; the perceived shape of society and culture; the advice of his ministers; and so forth. In my opinion, his judgement of those things was erroneous in the extreme, and so too, inevitably, were his decisions.”
Palmerston emitted a spiteful hiss.
Wilde nodded. “A fair statement, but is it not the case that the manner in which a man apprehends the present is shaped by his past?”
“Then where does the responsibility for his decisions lay? With Time itself? If so, then you're proposing that Palmerston is a victim of Fate.”
“I am. Furthermore, I submit that you are, too. So perhaps you should stop striving to understand what is happening and, instead, simply allow it to play out however it will. You've just learned that you'll return to the past, which, I'm sure, is very welcome news indeed. Bertie is currently making arrangements to ensure that you get out of Tabora. When you do so, I suggest that you placidly follow whatever sequence of events leads you home.”
Burton was suddenly filled with longing. How he missed Mrs. Angell, his comfortable old saddlebag armchair, his library, even Mr. Grub, the street vendor, whose pitch was on the corner of Montagu Place!
“Captain,” Wilde continued, “just as Lord Palmerston made his decisions according to how the past taught him to gauge the state of affairs, so, too, will you. In 1863, you'll determine—you did determine—not to reveal that you had survived for a number of years in a war-torn future where you witnessed the death of the British Empire. Our history books, such as they are, don't reveal anything that casts light on why you took this course of action. Biographies written about you don't even mention that you were the king's agent, for that was a state secret. They say the second half of your life was lived quietly, indulging in scholarly pursuits. This is only partially true. What really happened is that you exiled yourself to Trieste, on the northeastern coast of Italy, from there to watch the seeds of war sprouting. You died in that city in 1890, ten years before the Greater German Empire invaded its neighbouring countries.”
Sir Richard Francis Burton moistened his lips with his tongue. He raised his hand and put his fingertips to the deep and jagged scar on his left cheek, the one made by a Somali spear back in '55.
“Am I to take it that you're blaming me for the war?” he asked huskily.
“Yes!” Palmerston gurgled.
“No, not at all,” Wilde corrected. “People are wrong to condemn Lord Palmerston, and Lord Palmerston is wrong to condemn you. You do not represent the evils of this world, Captain Burton—you represent hope.”
“Because you think I can alter history?”
“Indeed so. Lord Palmerston and I were already aware that Crowley had, in 1914, detected an aberrant presence in Africa. When Bertie Wells told me—about eighteen months ago—that he'd met you, we realised what that aberration was and how it—you—could be employed to change everything.”
“So whatever the circumstances I find when I return to 1863, you want me to somehow suppress the reactions that my own past has instilled in me, ignore what I consider to be my better judgement, and—” he turned to face Palmerston,“—and tell you everything I've seen here during the past five years?”
“Tell me everything, Burton!”
“Should I even describe your present—um—condition?”
“I insist upon it. I would like the opportunity to die naturally, with a little grace, at a much earlier time.”
Burton sighed. “I'm sorry. It won't work.”
“Why not?” Wilde asked.
“I will most assuredly do as you suggest, and I might succeed in creating a history in which this war never happens. If so, I'll have the good fortune to live in it. But you won't. Here, nothing will change. You won't wink out of existence and wake up in a new world. Instead, a new history will branch off from the moment I change my actions, and it will run parallel to this one.”
“Is there then no hope for us?”
“If I understand the
workings of time correctly, the only way to alter the circumstances in which you exist, as opposed to the future that lies ahead, would be to somehow change the past without leaving the present—like sitting on a tree branch and sawing it through behind you, at the trunk.”
“Isn't that what we're doing by making this request?”
“Asking a person to perform an action is not the same as performing that action yourself.”
“Captain, you're implying that time and history are entirely subjective.”
“Yes, I rather think I am.”
There came a knock at the door. It opened and the Masai guard poked his head into the room. “You have to get out of here,” he said. “They're on their way. They're going to move Lord Palmerston onto the Britannia.”
Wilde nodded and the guard withdrew.
“Don't allow them to move me!”
“The city is about to be destroyed, sir,” Wilde said. “A select few will attempt to escape in the sphere. It appears you'll be among them.”
Palmerston was silent for a moment, then: “Burton, do as we say. If it won't change this world, it will, at least, create another, better one, and Mr. Wilde and I can die knowing that somewhere, other versions of us lived better lives.”
Burton looked at Wilde, who nodded and said, “We have to go.”
“Wait!” Palmerston ordered. “Burton, I don't trust you. You have to demonstrate your loyalty.”
“How?”
“Obey my final order. Without question!”
“What is it?”
“I have received so many Eugenicist treatments that I cannot die a natural death. That fiend Crowley has been feeding off my mental energy like a damned vampire to supplement his mediumistic powers. I cannot stand it any more. Take out your pistol right this minute and shoot me through the head.”
Without hesitation, Burton drew his revolver, raised the weapon, looked Palmerston in the eyes, and pulled the trigger.
“They probably heard that!” Wilde exclaimed. “We'd better leg it!”
They left the cell and raced down the corridor. The Masai ushered them into the records room. Burton saw that the tunnel entrance was normally concealed behind a tall filing cabinet.
“Go through and I'll slide it back,” the guard said. “Then I'll hold them at bay until I'm dead or out of ammo.”
“You're a good fellow, so you are,” Wilde said as he stepped through the opening.
“The word is out,” the Masai replied. “It was announced on the wireless minutes ago. Everyone knows what's coming. It's the end. I might as well go out with a bang!” He vanished from view as he slid the filing cabinet into place.
“The fool!” Burton hissed. “Why doesn't he come with us?”
“Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it's always from the noblest motives,” Wilde replied. “Come on! Let's not make his death in vain!”
It took them fifteen minutes to reach the other end of the passage. They stepped out into Wilde's basement and the ex-editor panted: “I'm pooped!”
“You never abandoned your diet of gobstoppers and butterscotch, I take it?” Burton ventured.
“I never expected to be running along secret corridors at the age of sixty-four!” Wilde replied. “Up the stairs with you!”
They ascended, stopped at the front door, and Wilde opened it a crack and peeked out.
“Good!” he exclaimed. “Your motor-carriage is still there. The guards will take you to Bertie.”
“You'll come too, of course!”
Wilde took Burton's hand and shook it. “No, old friend. This is where we must say goodbye. I'm too old to go hurrying out into the depths of Africa.”
“But Quips! You'll be killed!”
“Yes. But thanks to the help you gave me when I was a boy, I have lived, Captain, and to live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
“But—”
“I want to spend my last hours with the man I love.”
Burton put a hand to his friend's shoulder. “I'm glad you found happiness in this ugly world. What's his name?”
“Paul. He was a shopkeeper in his younger days—what people call a very ordinary man, but it happened that he brought to me extraordinary peace of mind and contentment.”
Burton smiled, and his eyes filled with tears. “I fear I may weep in front of you again, Quips.”
“The clock is ticking. Be off with you, man!”
Burton loosed an unsteady breath, opened the door, and stepped out into the hot mist of the Taboran night. He crossed to the motor-carriage where the three guards waited. One of them opened its door and gestured for him to enter.
“Captain!” Oscar Wilde called from the doorway.
The explorer turned.
“If the processes of time and history truly are subjective, do not be afraid of the past. If people tell you that it is irrevocable, do not believe them. The past, the present, and the future are but one moment. Time and space, succession and extension, are merely accidental conditions of thought. The imagination can transcend them.”
Oscar Wilde smiled and closed the door.
Dawn wasn't far off. Tabora was enveloped in steam. A great crowd of people milled through it, moving alongside the motor-carriage in an easterly direction.
“Are they trying to leave the city?” Burton asked.
“I suppose so,” one of the Tommies replied. “But to make it through Hell's Run, you either have to be in a very fast vehicle or crawling along on your own, keeping low and out of sight. A mob like this will never make it. They'll be slaughtered!”
“It's certain death if they stay,” one of the other men noted, “so it's worth taking the risk. I'm going to chance it, for sure.”
Burton watched in horror as shadowy forms occasionally emerged from the pall: people with fear in their eyes, carrying bags and bundles and children, looking hunted and desperate.
“Bismillah!” he muttered. “Nowhere to go, and very little chance of getting there. This is ghastly.”
With delays and diversions, the vehicle made slow progress, and the three soldiers became increasingly nervous.
“I'm sorry, sir. We didn't count on this.”
Screams and shouts came out of the cloud.
A line of steam spheres shot past.
Burton heard a gunshot.
The motor-carriage moved on.
Finally, they drew to a stop and the Tommies disembarked. The king's agent followed and was escorted to a door in the side of a warehouse. Stepping through, he entered a very expansive and well-lit space.
“Good! You made it!” Bertie Wells called.
The little war correspondent was standing beside one of two big harvestman machines. They were of the variety Burton had become familiar with here in the future—with a saddle on top of the carapace instead of a seat inside it—but they were slung rather lower to the ground than he'd seen in other models, with the middle joints of the legs rising high to either side of the body.
“Built for speed!” Wells announced.
“I assume we're to escape the city on these things?”
“Yes. We have to set off now while fortune favours us.”
“In what manner is it doing that?”
Wells grinned. “The lurchers are attacking the Germans! Hell's Run is clear!”
“The lurchers? Why?”
“No one knows!”
Burton turned to his escort: “You men heard that?”
They nodded.
“So get going! Get out of the city. Africa's a big continent. Find a quiet valley, build a village, live off the land, stay out of trouble.”
“And learn to speak German,” one of the men said.
“Yes, that might be advisable.”
They saluted and hastily departed.
Burton joined his friend by the giant arachnids. There were bulging pannier bags hanging against their sides. Wells reached up and patted one. “Food and supplies to keep us going for at
least a couple of weeks.” He touched a long leather sheath. “And Lee-Enfield sniper rifles. I'll start the engines. You go and open up.” He indicated large double doors. Burton strode over and, with some difficulty, slid them apart. It was lighter outside: dawn was breaking. Mist rolled in around him as he returned to the now chugging harvestmen. Wells was already mounted on one. Burton reached up to the other's stirrup and hauled himself into its saddle. He took hold of the two control levers.
“Follow me!” Wells called.
The two spiders clanked out of the warehouse and onto a wide thoroughfare. For half a mile, the machines scuttled along the road, weaving in and out between other vehicles, with crowds surging along to either side of them. Then they passed the last outlying building and Wells led the way off the road and onto the dusty savannah, leaving the fleeing Taborans behind. He stopped his vehicle and Burton drew his own to a halt beside him. The mist was thinning and, through it, the huge orange globe of the sun was visible ahead of them.
“We'll go eastward across country,” Wells said. “If we stay a little north of the exodus, we'll be closer to the German forces but free of the crowds.”
“What's your destination, Bertie?”
“My only objective is to get past the end of Hell's Run. After that, I don't know. Where do we have to go to get you home to 1863?”
“To the Mountains of the Moon.”
Wells shook his head. “We'll not get through the Blood Jungle. It's impassable.”
“Nevertheless.”
The war correspondent lifted his shoulders and let them drop. “Whatever you say. Onward!”
“Wait!” Burton snapped. He pointed to Wells's left, at the ground.
His friend looked down. “What the hell?” he uttered in astonishment.
A line of poppies was sprouting out of the hard earth.
Wells looked at Burton, a baffled expression on his face.
“It keeps happening,” the king's agent said. “They bloom right in front of me, in an instant.”