Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon (Burton & Swinburne) (38 page)

On the fourth day, the safari left the region behind with heartfelt expressions of relief and entered the Kigwa Forest, a wide strip of gum trees and mimosas spread over uneven, sloping land. The boles were widely spaced but the sparse canopy nevertheless provided a little shade and for the first time in many weeks they weren't bothered by mosquitoes or flies.

They camped among the trees, dappled by shafts of pollen-thick light, with butterflies flitting around them and birds whistling and gabbling overhead. The scent of herbs filled their nostrils.

“We've travelled almost six hundred miles,” Burton said. He was sitting on a stool in front of the main Rowtie, massaging his left calf, which felt bruised after his bout of cramps. Trounce was on a chair at a folding table.

The Scotland Yard man's beard reached halfway to his chest, and he'd had enough of it. He was attempting to crop it close to his chin with a pair of blunt scissors. “But how long has it taken us?” he asked.

“That's the question. It took me a hundred and thirty-four days to reach this spot during my previous expedition. I feel we've been considerably faster but I couldn't tell you by how much. It's very peculiar. All of us appear to have lost track of time. Do you want a hand with that, William? You appear to be struggling.”

“If you wouldn't mind,” the other man answered. “It's my bloody arm. The spear wound still hurts like blazes when I move it. So are you suggesting that something is having an adverse influence on us?”

Trounce stuck out his chin. Burton stood, took the scissors, and attacked his friend's facial hair.

“Perhaps. But the Mountains of the Moon are still at least two hundred miles away, so if the Eye of Nāga is responsible, then its emanations are reaching a damned long way.”

“If it didn't affect your timekeeping back in fifty-seven,” Trounce said, “then why would it be doing so now?”

“The only explanation I can think of is that there's an intelligence directing it.”

“Which knows we're here? I don't like the sound of that.”

“Nor I.”

A few minutes later, Burton finished his hacking and held up a small round mirror so Trounce could examine the results.

“By Jove!” the detective exclaimed. “It's made no difference at all! I still look like a confounded Robinson Crusoe!”

Burton smiled, turned away, and watched as the Daughters of Al-Manat rolled out their prayer mats and began to praise Allah. He looked at Mirambo's warriors, sitting in a group on small portable stools, sharpening their weapons and cleaning their matchlocks. He observed Saíd redistributing the baggage among the remaining porters. He examined the horses and mules and saw that many were covered in tsetse bites. They wouldn't survive much longer.

A commotion over to his left attracted his attention. It was Swinburne, leaping around like a possessed forest sprite.

“Look! Look!” the poet cried, jabbing his finger in Herbert Spencer's direction.

Burton turned his eyes toward the robe-wrapped clockwork philosopher and saw that he was approaching with Isabella Mayson at his side. He had a colourful parakeet on each shoulder.

“Pox is back!” Swinburne cheered.

“Slippery sewer-sniffer!” Pox cawed.

“And he's been courting!”

“She's
been courting,” Isabella corrected.

Swinburne gave a screech. “What? What? You mean Pox is—is—?”

“Is a girl, yes. She always has been. I believe I pointed that out when I first introduced you to her.”

Swinburne looked flummoxed. “I—I—I suppose the bad language caused me to assume the reverse.”

“Danglies-clutcher!” Pox added.

The other bird let loose a piercing squawk.

“Parakeets usually mate for life,” Isabella told Burton, “so perhaps you'd like to give a name to the new member of your family.”

The king's agent groaned. “You don't mean to say I'll have to accommodate two of the beastly things when we return to London?”

Spencer piped, “At least only one of 'em will insult you, Boss.”

“Sheep-squeezing degenerate!” Pox crowed.

“Monkey cuddler!” her mate added.

“Oh no!” Burton moaned.

“My mistake,” Spencer admitted.

“Hah!” Swinburne cried out. “Malady is learning!”

They all looked at him.

“It's the perfect name,” he said. “Don't you think Pox and Malady sound like they belong together?”

There was a pause, then William Trounce threw his head back and let loose a roar of laughter. “On the button, Algernon!” he guffawed. “On the blessed button! Oh my word! What more fitting remembrance of this endeavour could you have, Richard, than to leave Africa with a Pox and a Malady? Ha ha ha!”

Burton shook his head despairingly.

“Cheer up!” Swinburne grinned. “If I remember rightly, when you were a young soldier returning from India and its whorehouses, you brought back similar!”

Trounce doubled over and bellowed his mirth.

“Algy, there are ladies present,” Burton said, glowering at his assistant.

Isabella made a dismissive gesture. “I rather think Africa has stripped me of all the social niceties, Richard. Try as any of you might, you'll not induce a fit of moral outrage in me!”

“I say! Could we make an attempt anyway?” Swinburne enthused.

“Certainly not.”

Krishnamurthy came running over. “Shhh!” he urged. “Stop making such a confounded racket! Listen!”

They did so, and heard gunfire snapping and popping faintly in the far distance.

“Speke,” Swinburne whispered.

“How far?” Trounce asked.

“It's difficult to say,” Burton responded, “but we'd better stay on our toes.”

The next morning, they proceeded with caution and with four Wanyamwezi scouting a little way ahead. Gunfire continued to crackle faintly from the west. It sounded like a battle was being fought. Burton unpacked all the spare rifles and distributed them among Mirambo's warriors, replacing the ancient matchlocks. He and the rest of his expedition kept their own guns cleaned, oiled, and loaded.

The forest was fairly easy going, its canopy high and the undergrowth light. Nevertheless, it required two more marches to traverse. When they finally emerged from it, they found themselves in a long valley through which sweet water bubbled in a wide stream. The hills to either side were swathed in bright-yellow grain, blazing so brightly that the travellers were forced to walk through it with eyes slitted, and the heat was so ferocious that Herbert Spencer compared this part of their trek to “walkin' on the surface of the bloomin' sun itself!”

The terrain gradually opened onto a flat plain, empty but for stunted trees. On the horizon ahead, low forested hills could be seen, though they folded and jumped in the distorting atmosphere. From the other side of them, the noise of battle raged on. The sound was carrying a long way.

They walked and walked and yet felt as if they made no progress.

“I can't judge the distance,” Trounce muttered. “Those hills are like the mirages we saw back in Arabia. One minute they spring up right in front of us, the next they're not there at all.”

“They're fairly close,” Burton advised.

“And so is one heck of a scrap by the sound of it!”

“Wow! It is from Kazeh!” Sidi Bombay noted.

Burton walked back along the line of porters and mules to where Swinburne was striding along. The poet had a rifle slung across his shoulder and was holding an umbrella over his head.

“I'm going to gallop ahead to take a peek over those hills, Algy. Will you join me? Can you bear it during the hottest part of the day?”

“Rather! Anything to break the monotony of this flatland.”

They stopped and waited for Isabel Arundell, who was riding near the middle of the column, to catch them up.

“I need two of your fittest horses,” Burton said as she drew abreast of them. “Algy and I are going to reconnoitre.”

“Very well, but I'm coming with you. If we're joining a battle, I want to see for myself how best to deploy my women.”

“Very well.”

Mounts were selected, supplies were packed into saddlebags, and the threesome rode back to the head of the safari.

Burton took the field glasses from Trounce and informed him of their intentions. “You're in charge while we're gone. Keep going until the heat gets too much. You'll not make Kazeh in a single march, or even the base of the hills, so stop when you must but don't erect the tents. Get what rest you can.”

They kicked their heels into the sides of their mounts and raced away, leaving a cloud of dust rolling in their wake.

It took them an hour to catch up with one of Mirambo's scouts. They stopped to greet him and offer water but he ignored them, as if by doing so he could make the
muzungo mbáyá
cease to exist.

The entire afternoon was spent pushing the horses to their limits until, with the sun swelling and melting in front of their eyes, they arrived at the edge of the plain and threw themselves down beside a narrow stream. They drank deeply and washed the dust from their faces, splashed their steeds to cool them, then left them reined to trees but with enough slack to be able to reach the water.

Gunfire stammered and echoed around them.

“They've been fighting for three days, at least,” Isabel noted.

“We'll take a look at the combatants presently,” Burton said. “First, eat, rest, and attend to your weapons.”

This was duly done, and slightly under an hour later they climbed the hill, passing through the trees, descended the other side, scrambled up the next slope, and crawled onto its summit. They looked out over the twilit plain on the other side. The sun had just set and the western horizon was blood-red, the sky above it deep purple and flecked with bright stars.

The land beneath was considerably more verdant than the ground they'd just crossed; large tracts had obviously been irrigated; there were grain fields and many trees, the latter casting very long shadows.

A little to the north, a monolithic verdure-topped outcrop of rock dominated the otherwise flat landscape, and just to the south of it, right in front of them, there was a small town, little more than a wide scattering of wooden houses and shacks, with a few larger residences at its centre.

Lights flashed all along its eastern and northern borders and the noise of gunfire punctured the African night.

Burton whispered, “The Prussians have Kazeh under siege!”

“We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are.”

–T
HE
T
ALMUD

T
he plant was roughly the shape of a boat. It moved on thick white roots that grew in tangled bunches beneath its squat, flattened, and elongated stem. From this, ten white flowers grew in pairs, aligned in a row. Their petals were curled around the men who sat in them, forming extremely comfortable seats. Sir Richard Francis Burton was in one of the middle blooms. Generalmajor Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck was sitting beside him.
Schutztruppen
occupied the others. The driver's head was pierced just above the ears by thorny tendrils through which he controlled the conveyance. The soldier beside him was positioned behind a seedpod, which, to Burton, looked exactly like a mounted gun. From the rear of the vehicle, three long leaves curved upward and forward like a canopy, protecting the passengers from the sun.

It was a bizarre conveyance. It was also a very fast one.

They'd left Stalag IV at Ugogi yesterday and were travelling along a well-defined trail—almost a road—in a westerly direction.

As the landscape unfolded around them, another unfolded inside Burton. His lost memories were returning, and each one inserted itself into his conscious mind with a violent stab that made his eyes water and caused a curious sensation in his sinuses, as if he'd accidentally snorted gunpowder instead of snuff.

The vehicle scuttled over the Marenga M'khali desert, and he recognised it. A grassy plain, a jungle, and rolling savannahs—he'd seen them all before. He was familiar with every hill, every
nullah.
He'd walked this route.

He remembered his companions and felt the hollow grief of untimely deaths. He knew who Al-Manat had been.

Isabel. Whatever became of you?

As if reading his thoughts, Lettow-Vorbeck said, “This road, it is built on the old trail that you followed so many years ago,
ja?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“And the other trail, the one parallel to it, to the north, that is now our Tanganyika Railway Line, which the Greater German Empire employs to bring civilisation to Africa, and which your people attack and sabotage with such tedious frequency.”

Burton shrugged. He was sick of this war. He'd had more than enough of the twentieth century.

The plant raced across dusty ground and climbed into the Ugogo region.

“Nearly two hundred miles westward,” the generalmajor informed him, “then we shall steer north to avoid Tabora. An inconvenience, but one that we'll not have to put up with for much longer.”

“The ‘final solution’ you spoke of before?”

“Ja.
It is on its way, even now, Herr Burton. We have a great flying ship, the
L.59 Zeppelin
, following inland the river that so obsesses you. I speak of the Nile, of course.”

Another missing shard of Burton's memory slammed into place, causing him to catch his breath and stifle a groan.

Lettow-Vorbeck continued, “The name
Zeppelin
is a very suitable one for
das Afrika Schiff
, I think, for it is widely held that a Zeppelin was present at the start of the war, and now a Zeppelin will be present at its end!”

The generalmajor suddenly frowned and peered inquisitively at his prisoner.
“Ja, ja,”
he said, thoughtfully. “You, also, were in Africa when all this began. Perhaps you met the Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin of whom I speak? Maybe you can enlighten our historians and tell us how and where he died, for this is a great mystery.”

Burton shook his head. “No, sir, I didn't and I cannot.”

“Hmm, so you say,
aber ich denke, dass Sie mehr wissen. Richtig?”

“No. I know nothing more.”

The road bisected a rolling plain then ran through a chaotic jungle that had been burned back from the thoroughfare and was held at bay by tall wire fences.

Lettow-Vorbeck pointed. “You see there, the
unkontrollierbare Anlagen!”

The “uncontrollable plants” were lurchers. There were many hundreds of them writhing against the barrier.

“We will see more as we approach the Lake Regions, for they are much more numerous near the
Blutdschungel
. What a nuisance they are!”

The hot air blew against Burton's face as the vehicle raced along, then the sun set and he fell asleep. When he awoke, it was early morning, and they were leaving the Uyanzi region and entering another blistering desert.

He stretched and yawned and said, “Generalmajor, where is all the wildlife? I haven't seen an elephant for years!”

“Elephants are extinct,
mein Freund.
As for the other creatures, our Eugenicists have adapted a great many for frontline warfare, and the rest have sought refuge in less battle-torn areas of the country; the South, primarily, where you British have no presence and where civilisation prospers in harmony with nature.”

“No presence? South Africa was part of the British Empire in my day.”

“That is so, and the Boers and the Zulus were not happy about it. My people offered them full independent rule, and, with our military assistance, they overthrew you. It took less than a year to drive the British out. After that, it was simply a case of establishing strong trade and industrial relations, and, before many years had passed, the South was very willingly incorporated into the Greater German Empire.”

They soon left the desert and the road began to snake between small domed hills, finally emerging from a valley into a wide basin. The ground was torn up and dried into grotesque configurations; the trees were nothing but stumps; burned wreckage was strewn about; but there was something in this old battlefield that Burton recognised—its contours told him that this was where the village of Tura had stood. There was no sign of the settlement.

The driver shouted something.

“Ah,” Lettow-Vorbeck said. “Now we leave the road and travel north. Later we shall go west again. You are hungry?”

“Yes.”

The generalmajor snapped an order and the man sitting in front of Burton lifted a hamper onto his lap, opened it, and started to pass back packets of sliced meat, a loaf of bread, fruit, and other comestibles. With a shock, Burton noticed that the soldier's face was covered with short bristly fur and that his jaws extended forward into a blunt muzzle. His mouth was stretched into a permanent and nasty smile. A hyena.

They sped out of the hills onto a wide expanse of flatland broken only by a long ridge that ran along to the north of them.

The sun was high in the sky. The scenery around them jiggled in and out of focus as if struggling to maintain its reality.

“How will the
L.59 Zeppelin
destroy Tabora?” Burton asked.

Lettow-Vorbeck gave a peal of laughter and slapped his thigh. “Hah! I was wondering how long it would take before you asked me that!”

“I assumed you'd inform me that it's top secret.”

“So
warum bitten Sie jetzt?”

“Why do I ask now? Because this journey is interminable, Generalmajor, and I'm bored. Besides, it occurs to me that since I'm your prisoner, and I don't even know where Tabora is, and the attack is imminent, there can be little harm in you telling me.”

“Ja, das ist zutreffend.
Very well. In forty-eight hours, the
L.59 Zeppelin
will drop an A-Bomb on the city.”

“And what is that?”

“You are aware of the A-Spores,
ja?”

“An obscene weapon.”

“Quite so. Quite so. But very effective. The bomb will deliver, from a very high altitude, a concentrated dose of the spores to the entire city. The Destroying Angel mushroom is among the most toxic species of fungus in the world, Herr Burton. Its spores kill instantly when they are breathed, but they are easily resisted with a gas mask. Not so the ones in the bomb, for they have been specially bred to such microscopic size that they will penetrate the pores of a person's skin. No one will escape.”

“Barbaric!”

“Hardly so. It is a very sophisticated weapon.”

“And still you claim the Greater German Empire is a superior civilisation?”

“It is you British who have driven us to such extremes.”

“I hardly think that—”

The plant suddenly lurched to the left and the driver screamed:
“Gott im Himmel! Was ist das? Was ist das?”

Burton looked to the right. The most incredible machine he'd ever seen was mounting the ridge. It was completely spherical, a gigantic metal ball about two hundred feet in diameter and painted a dark jungle green. A wide studded track was spinning at high speed vertically around it, providing the motive force. Burton guessed that the same gyroscopic technology that kept penny-farthings upright in his time was here employed to prevent the sphere from rolling to its left or right.

Four long multi-jointed arms extended from the sides of it. The upper pair ended in lobster-like claws, the lower in spinning circular saw blades. These were obviously used to tear through whatever vegetation couldn't be simply rolled over.

Three rows of portholes and cannon ports ran horizontally around the orb, and four curved chimneys pumped steam into the air from just below its apex.

A puff of smoke erupted from its hull. A loud bang followed, and another, even louder, as an explosion threw up the earth ahead of the German transport.

“Warning shot!” Burton shouted. “You have to stop! You'll never outrun it!”

“Halt! Halt!” Lettow-Vorbeck yelled.

The plant jerked to a standstill. The generalmajor stood, drew his pistol, pushed the barrel into the side of Burton's head, and waited as the sphere drew closer.

“I am sorry, Herr Burton, I will kill you rather than allow you back into British hands, but let us first see what they have to say.”

There was a hard thud.

Lettow-Vorbeck looked down at the hole that had just appeared in the middle of his chest and muttered,
“Himmelherrgott!
Just that?”

He collapsed backward out of the plant.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

One after the other, in quick succession, the
Schutztruppen
slumped in their seats.

The rolling sphere drew to a stop, casting its shadow over the German vehicle. Burton watched as a thin wedge opened from it, angling down to form a sloping platform with a door at the top. There was a figure framed in the portal.

“Don't just sit there, you chump!” Bertie Wells called. “Come aboard!”

It was named the SS
Britannia
, and was captained by General Aitken himself—the director of all British military operations in East Africa—whom Burton remembered from the bombing of Dar es Salaam back in 1914.

“It's good to see you again, Bertie!” the famous explorer enthused as Wells and three British Tommies led him through the ship toward the bridge. “What happened to you? And how did you end up aboard this behemoth?”

“Adventures and perils too numerous to recount happened to me, Richard, but eventually I made my way to Tabora like everyone else. Practically every free Britisher in Africa—perhaps in the entire world—is there now.”

“Bismillah!” Burton swore, grabbing at his friend's arm. “Praise to Allah that you rescued me now and not two minutes earlier!”

“What do you mean?”

“First, answer me this: how were my captors shot with that kind of precision at such a distance? I've never seen anything like it!”

“Marksmen with the new Lee-Enfield sniper rifles. A remarkable weapon—the most accurate long-range rifle ever manufactured.”

“And these marksmen, would they have recognised the men they were shooting?”

“As Germans? Of course! The uniform is unmistakable.”

They passed through a room lined with gun racks then rounded a corner into a corridor along which many men were moving.

“You should have examined the bodies, Bertie, instead of just leaving them there.”

“Why so?”

“Because one of them was Generalmajor Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck.”

Wells stumbled to a halt, his mouth hanging open, eyes wide. His three companions stopped, too, but instinctively retreated a few paces, displaying a typically British sensitivity to Wells and Burton's need for a moment of privacy. Nevertheless, having heard the pronouncement, they gaped.