Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon bas-3

by Mark Hodder

  “Listen carefully,” Burton said, addressing the prisoners. “You are facing east, toward Zanzibar. However, if you walk straight ahead, you will find yourselves among the villagers and slaves we have just liberated and they will surely tear you limb from limb. You should therefore turn to your left and walk some miles north before then turning again eastward. In the morning, the sun will guide you, but now it is night, a dangerous time to travel, for the lions hunt and the terrain is treacherous in the dark. I can do nothing to make the ground even, but I can at least give you some protection against predators. Thus, your leader holds a pistol loaded with six bullets. Unfortunately, he is blind, so you must advise him where to point it and when to pull the trigger to ward off anything that might threaten you, but be cautious, for those six bullets are the only ones you have. Perhaps if walking all the way to Zanzibar is too challenging a prospect for you-well, there are six bullets and there are six of you. Need I say more?”

  “Surely thou cannot expect us to walk all the way to the coast in chains?” Tippu Tip protested.

  “Didst thou not expect just that of thy captives?” Burton asked.

  “But they are slaves!”

  “They are men and women and children. Now, begin your journey, you have far to go.”

  “Allah have mercy!” one of the men cried.

  “Perhaps he will,” Burton said. “But I won't.”

  The man at the back of the line wailed, “What shall we do, el Murgebi?”

  “Walk, fool!” the slave trader barked.

  The chain gang stumbled into motion and slowly moved away.

  “Tippu Tip!” Burton called after it. “Beware of Abdullah the Dervish, for if I set mine eyes on thee again, I shall surely kill thee!”

  No one slept that night.

  The liberated slaves carried the dead Arabs and Prussians along the path and into the fields, leaving them in a distant corner, intending to dig a mass grave when daylight returned. A number of Isabel's women stood guard over the corpses to prevent scavengers getting to them. The Africans were too afraid to do the job, believing that vengeful spirits would rise up and attack them.

  Of the four hundred slaves, most had been taken from villages much farther to the west. This turned out to be a blessing, for Burton's porters had been so terrified by the sounds of battle and proximity of slavers that they'd overpowered Said and his men and had melted away into the night. No doubt they were fleeing back the way the expedition had come. Fortunately, their fear had outweighed their avariciousness and they'd departed without stealing supplies. The released slaves agreed to replace the porters on the understanding that each man, as he neared his native village, would abandon the safari in order to return home. Burton calculated that this would at least cover the marches from Dut'humi to distant Ugogi.

  The Arab camp was stripped of its supplies, which were added to Burton's own and stored in the village's bandani. Tippu Tip's mules were also appropriated.

  A large fire was built and the plant vehicles were chopped up and thrown into the flames.

  The Daughters of Al-Manat corralled their hundred and eight horses.

  “We're starting to lose them to tsetse bites,” Isabel informed Burton. “Twelve, so far. These animals were bred in dry desert air. This climate is not good for them-it drains their resistance. Soon we'll be fighting on foot.”

  “Fighting whom?”

  “The Prussians won't give up, Dick. And remember, John Speke almost certainly has a detachment of them travelling with him.”

  “Hmm. Led by Count Zeppelin, no doubt,” Burton muttered.

  “He may be taking a different trail from us,” Isabel observed, “but at some point we're bound to clash.”

  Swinburne bounded over, still overexcited, and moving as if he'd come down with a chronic case of St. Vitus's dance.

  “My hat, Richard! I can't stop marvelling at it! We were outnumbered on both sides yet came out of it without a scratch, unless you count the five thousand three hundred and twenty-six that were inflicted by thorns and hungry insects!”

  “You've counted them?” Isabel asked.

  “My dear Al-Manat, it's a well-educated guess. I say, Richard, where the devil has Tom Honesty got to?”

  Burton frowned. “He's not been seen?”

  “Not by me, at least.”

  “Algy, unpack some oil lamps, gather a few villagers, and search the vegetation over there-” He pointed to where he'd last seen the Scotland Yard man. “I hope I'm wrong, but he may have been hit.”

  Swinburne raced off to organise the search party. Burton left Isabel and joined Trounce at the bandani. The detective was rummaging in a crate and pulling from it items of food, such as beef jerky and corn biscuits.

  “I'm trying to find something decent for us to chow on,” he said. “I don't think the villagers will manage to feed everybody. I put Herbert over there. He still needs winding.”

  Burton looked to where Trounce indicated and saw the clockwork man lying stiffly in the shadow of the woodpile. The king's agent suddenly reached out and gripped his friend's arm. “William! Who found him?”

  “I did. He was in a hollow under a tree.”

  “Like that?”

  “Yes. What do you mean?”

  “Look at him, man! He had Arabian robes covering his polymethylene suit. Where are they?”

  “Perhaps they hindered his movement, so he took them off. Why is it important?”

  Burton's jaw worked. For a moment, he found it impossible to speak. His legs felt as if they couldn't hold him, and he collapsed down onto a roll of cloth, sitting with one arm outstretched, still clutching Trounce.

  “Bismillah! The bloody fool!” he whispered and looked up at his friend.

  Trounce was shocked to see that the explorer's normally sullen eyes were filled with pain.

  “What's happened?” he asked.

  “Tom was next to me when the Prussians and Arabs started to powwow,” Burton explained huskily. “We were near Herbert, just a little way past him. The parley threatened to ruin our entire plan. The Arab who lost patience with the conflab and ran out shooting saved the day for us. Except-”

  “Oh no!” Trounce gasped as the truth dawned.

  “I think Tom may have crawled back to Herbert, taken his robes, put them on, and-”

  “No!” Trounce repeated.

  They gazed at each other, frozen in a moment of anguish, then Burton stood and said, “I'm going to check the bodies.”

  “I'm coming with you.”

  They borrowed a couple of horses from Isabel and, by the light of brands, guided their mounts along the path to the fields then galloped across the cultivated ground to where the dead had been laid out. Dismounting, they walked up and down the rows, examining the corpses. The Prussians were ignored, but each time either man came to a slaver, he bent and pulled back the cloth that covered the corpse's face.

  “William,” Burton said quietly.

  Trounce looked up from the man he'd just inspected and saw the explorer standing over a body. Burton's shoulders were hunched and his arms hung loosely.

  Something like a sob escaped from the Scotland Yard man, and the world seemed to whirl dizzyingly around him as he staggered over to his friend's side and looked down at Thomas Manfred Honesty.

  His fellow detective was wrapped in the robes-ragged and blood-stained-that he'd borrowed from Spencer. He'd been riddled with bullets and must have died instantly, but it was no consolation to Trounce, for the little man, who'd mocked him for nearly two decades over his belief in Spring Heeled Jack, had, in the past couple of years, become one of his best friends.

  “He sacrificed himself to save us,” Burton whispered.

  Trounce couldn't reply.

  They buried Thomas Honesty the next morning, in the little glade to the north of the village.

  Burton spoke of his friend's bravery, determination, and heroism.

  Trounce talked hoarsely of Honesty's many years of police service,
his exemplary record, his wife, and his fondness for gardening.

  Krishnamurthy told of the respect the detective inspector had earned from the lower ranks in the force.

  Swinburne stepped forward, placed a wreath of jungle flowers on the grave, and said:

  “For thee, O now a silent soul, my brother,

  Take at my hands this garland, and farewell.”

  Sister Raghavendra softly sang “Abide with Me,” then they filed back along the trail to the village, a subdued and saddened group.

  For most of the rest of the day, Burton and his fellows caught up with lost sleep. Not so William Trounce. He'd found a large flat stone on the slope beneath the village, and, borrowing a chisel-like tool from one of the locals, he set about carving an inscription into it, sitting alone, far enough away from the huts that his chipping and scraping wouldn't disturb his slumbering companions. It took him the better part of the day to complete it, and when it was done, he took it to the glade, placed it on the grave, and sat on the grass.

  “I'm not sure I really understand it, old chap,” he murmured, “but apparently the whole Spring Heeled Jack business sent us all off in a different direction. None of us is doing what we were supposed to be doing, although I rather think I would have carried on as policemen no matter what.”

  He rested a hand on the stone.

  “Captain Burton says this history we're in isn't the only one, and, in any of the others, meddlers like Edward Oxford might be at work, and whenever they tamper with events, they cause new histories. Can you imagine that? All those different variations of you and me? The thing of it is, my friend, I hope-I really hope-that, somewhere, a Tom Honesty will be tending his garden well into old age.”

  He sat for a few minutes more, then bent over and kissed the stone, stood, sighed, and walked away.

  The tear he left behind trickled into the inscription, ran down the tail of the letter “y,” and settled around a seed in Swinburne's wreath.

  CHAPTER 8

  To Kazeh

  Omne solum forti patria.

  (Every region is a strong man's home.)

  — Sir Richard Francis Burton's motto

  The clangour of the parade bell sounded and voices hollered: “Aufwachen! Aufwachen!”

  In Barrack 5, Compound B, of Stalag IV at Ugogi, Sir Richard Francis Burton and his fellow prisoners of war dragged themselves wearily from their bunks, quickly put on their grey uniforms, and tumbled out onto the dusty parade ground, which was baking in the afternoon heat.

  Obeying shouted orders, they arranged themselves into three rows, facing forward, blinking and screwing up their faces as the glare of the white sky burned the sleep out of their eyes.

  “What now?” the man to Burton's right grumbled. “Surely they can't be sending us back to the pass already?”

  “They'll work us to death as long as they get the blasted road built,” another man growled.

  They were referring to the passage the prisoners had been carving through the Usagara Mountains. Burton and his fellows had originally been incarcerated at Stalag III, near Zungomero, on the other side of the range. From there, they'd been escorted out daily, in a chain gang, to work on the road. When the halfway point had been reached, three months ago, they'd been marched to this new POW camp at Ugogi to commence the second half of the route.

  From his place midway along the second row, Burton looked up at the guard towers. The man-things in them, standing with their mounted seedpods trained on the prisoners, appeared rather more alert than usual.

  Over to the left, the gates in the high barbed-wire fence surrounding the compound were swinging shut, and inside, a large plant had just drawn to a halt, squatting down on its roots. A group of German officers stepped out of the vehicle.

  “Bloody hell!” a man gasped. “That's Lettow-Vorbeck!”

  “Which one?” Burton asked.

  “The small bloke with the wide-brimmed hat. What the hell is he doing here?”

  Burton watched as the officer, with a swagger stick under his right arm and a leather briefcase in his left hand, met with Oberstleutnant Maximilian Metzger, the camp commandant. They conversed for a few minutes then marched over to the lined-up prisoners and started walking from one end of the first row to the other. They gave each man a cursory glance, reached the end of the line, then proceeded down the second row.

  When they reached Burton, they stopped and Metzger said: “Hier, Generalmajor! Hier ist der gesuchte Mann!”

  Lettow-Vorbeck examined Burton's face. He pulled a photograph from his pocket, looked at it, and nodded.

  “Sehr Gut gemacht! Bringen Sie ihn her!”

  Metzger signalled to two rhino guards. They stamped over, took Burton by the elbows, and dragged him out of the line. He was taken across the parade ground, into the commandant's office, and pushed into a chair opposite a heavy desk. The guards stood to attention to either side of him.

  Lettow-Vorbeck entered and barked: “Lassen Sie uns allein!”

  The guards clicked their heels and thudded out.

  There was a clockwork fan revolving on the ceiling. Burton leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and allowed the air to wash over his face. He was weary to the bone.

  “Do you know who I am?” Lettow-Vorbeck said, in strongly accented English.

  Without opening his eyes, Burton replied: “Generalmajor Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck. You command the German forces in East Africa.”

  “That is correct. Sehr gut. So.”

  Burton heard a chair scrape on the floor and creak as the other man sat down. There was a soft thump-the briefcase being swung up onto the desk-and a click as it was opened.

  “I have here a file in which you feature with some considerable prominence.”

  Burton didn't respond. He was hungry and thirsty, but most of all he needed to sleep.

  “Private Frank Baker, captured on the western slopes of the Dut'humi Hills two years ago. You were alone-a refugee from the failed British assault on the Tanganyika Railway.”

  There was a long moment of silence. Burton had still not opened his eyes. He thought about Bertie Wells and the night they'd slept in the open, beside Thomas Honesty's grave. The temperature had plummeted after sunset, and during the hours of darkness both of them developed a fever. Burton's dreams had been filled with violence; with scenes of Prussians and Arabians slaughtering each other-and he'd woken up soaked with dew, filled with memories, and cursing himself. How could he have forgotten there was a village nearby? Just along the trail!

  Wells was in the grip of hallucinations, which-to judge from his babbling monologues-involved insects crawling out of the moon, invisible madmen, and three-legged harvestmen. With what little strength remained to him, Burton had hauled the war correspondent to his feet and dragged him along an overgrown trail that eventually opened into another clearing where a decrepit village stood. Its menfolk were long gone-conscripted-and the remaining villagers were elderly and half-starved. Burton left Wells with them while he went to hunt game.

  But he'd become the prey. Three lurchers had blundered out of the undergrowth and pursued him across boggy ground and into thick jungle. It was peculiar; he felt certain they could have caught him, but instead they appeared to be herding him along.

  One of them sprouted poppies as it floundered after him.

  By the time he'd eluded them, he was lost and in the grip of malaria.

  The Germans found him unconscious at the side of a trail. Since then, he'd spent nearly two years in the Stalag III POW camp before his recent transfer to Ugogi.

  Large parts of his memory had returned. He knew he was the king's agent. He was aware that Algernon Swinburne, William Trounce, Thomas Honesty, Maneesh Krishnamurthy, Herbert Spencer, Sister Raghavendra, Isabella Mayson, and Isabel Arundell had travelled to Africa with him. But he didn't know why, what had become of them, or how he'd been transported into the future.

  He'd been here for four years. Four years!

  Why? For wha
t purpose?

  “Why?” Lettow-Vorbeck said.

  Burton opened his eyes and met those of the generalmajor. Behind the officer's head, pencil-thin shafts of light shone through the slats of the window shutter. Motes of dust entered them, blazed, then vanished into the shade. Against this illumination, Lettow-Vorbeck's features were very dark-almost silhouetted-but by some quirk, his eyes shone with an almost feral intensity.

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you British so destructive? Do you not believe in evolution?”

  “Evolution? What do you mean?”

  The officer drummed the fingers of his right hand on the desktop.

  “The Greater German Empire seeks to advance the human species. We wish to liberate every man and every woman from slavery so that each can fulfil his or her greatest potential. So each can become an Ubermensch. Perhaps this translates as ‘Over Man,’ ja?”

  Burton gave a snort of disdain. “I don't think your Askaris feel particularly liberated.”

  “Nein. Nein. And it is the fault of your people. We are forced to employ the Africans to oppose British assaults on the infrastructure we are building here. Were it not for your people, Africa would have atmospheric railways and well-developed cities by now. And Europe would be a paradise, where trivial jobs and the necessities of survival are taken care of by plant life, leaving the human species free to explore its best potentials. Instead, we must assign our resources on both continents to resisting your vandalism.”

  Burton's breath whistled from between his teeth. “It's always the same,” he said. “A madman creates a plan for the future of humanity, and, in unleashing it, causes untold suffering. Generalmajor, do I really need to point out that your vegetation is proliferating without check, or that while many individuals may be capable of advancing themselves, most are content to be well fed and sheltered and wish for little more?”

  Lettow-Vorbeck nodded thoughtfully. “Es trifft zu, what you say of our plants. But that situation will be corrected once hostilities cease. As for your suggestion that the populace is not willing or able to evolve-I cannot agree. It is typical British thinking, for you built your Empire on the premise that an educated and privileged minority should benefit from the labours of a downtrodden majority.”