by Mark Hodder
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The noise was gradually superseded by the sound of a man howling in pain and distress.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 Naga 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 Naga 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 Naga 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 Naga can now transcend or die.” He directed his misshapen face at Burton. “Our gratitude, Sir Richard. The Naga than
k 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 Burto
n, 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.