Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon Page 3

  He looked at Cornewall Lewis, who shrugged and stated, “I'm the secretary for war, Sir Richard. My job is to protect the Empire, not right its wrongs.”

  “Protect it, or expand it, along with its iniquities, sir?”

  Monckton Milnes cleared his throat. “Now, now, Richard,” he said, softly. “This isn't really the occasion, is it?”

  Burton bit his lip and nodded. “My apologies, Sir George—I spoke out of turn. I've been rather sensitive to such matters since the Tichborne riots.”

  Cornewall Lewis opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by Swinburne, who suddenly screeched: “What? What? Has the world gone giddy? How can I possibly be guzzling my drinks at this rate? I swear I've barely tasted a drop!”

  Burton frowned down at his assistant. “Algy, please remember that you are Apollo, not Dionysus,” he advised. “Try to regulate your imbibing.”

  “Regulate? Regulate? What in blue blazes are you jabbering about, Richard? Nobody drinks more regularly than me!”

  The poet gazed at his empty glass with an expression of bemusement, then signalled to another waiter. Behind him, Bendyshe and Bradlaugh smothered their chuckles.

  “Anyway,” said Gooch, “when the nippers arrive, the crew will be complete.” He produced a slip of paper from between the pages of his notebook. “I have the complete roster here, sir.”

  Lawless took the note, read it through, and nodded his approval.

  “May I see that, Captain?” Burton asked.

  “Certainly.”

  The king's agent took the list and scrutinised it. He read:

  Commanding Officer: Captain Nathaniel Lawless

  First Officer: William Samuel Henson

  Second Officer: Wordsworth Pryce

  Helmsman: Francis H. Wenham

  Assistant Helmsman: Walter D'Aubigny

  Navigator: Cedric Playfair

  Meteorologist: Arthur Bingham

  Chief Engineer: Daniel Gooch

  Engineer: Harold Bloodmann

  Engineer: Charles Henderson

  Engineer: Cyril Goodenough

  Engineer: James Bolling

  Chief Rigger: Gordon Champion

  Rigger: Alexander Priestley

  Rigger: Winford Doe

  Fireman: Walter Gerrard

  Fireman: Peter Etheridge

  Stoker: Thomas Beadle

  Stoker: Gwyn Reece-Jones

  Funnel Scrubber: Ronald Welbergen William Cornish

  Funnel Scrubber: Michael Drake Tobias Threadneedle

  Steward/Surgeon: Doctor Barnaby Quaint

  Assistant Steward/Surgeon: Sister Sadhvi Raghavendra

  Quartermaster: Frederick Butler

  Assistant Quartermaster: Isabella Mayson

  Cabin Boy: Oscar Wilde

  “I trust Quips is living up to my recommendation?” Burton asked the captain.

  “Quips?”

  “Young Master Wilde.”

  “Ah. An appropriate nickname—he's a very witty young man. How old is he? Twelve-ish?”

  “He celebrated his ninth birthday a couple of months ago.”

  “Good Lord! That young? And an orphan?”

  “Yes. He lost his entire family to the Irish famine. He stowed away aboard a ship to Liverpool, made his way to London, and has been working there as a paperboy ever since.”

  “Well, I must say, I'm impressed by his industry. There's an unpleasant amount of bureaucracy associated with the captaincy of a rotorship and the youngster picked up the paperwork in a flash and keeps it better organised and up to date than I could ever hope to. Furthermore, I find that whenever I say ‘hop to it,’ he's already hopped. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Oscar Wilde captains his own ship one day.” Lawless ran his fingers over his beard. “Sir Richard, what about these young ladies? Having women serving as crew isn't entirely without precedent, but are you sure it's wise to take the Sister with you on your expedition? Africa is harsh enough on a man, isn't it? And what about all that dashed cannibalism? Won't she be considered too dainty a morsel to resist?”

  “It is indeed a cruel environment, as I know to my cost,” Burton answered. “However, Sister Raghavendra is from India and possesses a natural immunity to many of the ills that assail a European in Africa. Furthermore, her medical skills are exceptional. I wish she'd been with me on my previous excursions. I assure you she'll be well looked after all the way to Kazeh, where she'll remain with our Arabian hosts while the rest of us hike north to the supposed position of the Mountains of the Moon.”

  “And the cannibals?”

  The corners of Burton's mouth twitched slightly. “Those few tribes that feast on human flesh do so in a ritualistic fashion to mark their victory in battle. It's not as common a phenomenon as the storybooks would have you believe. For a daily meal of arm or leg, you'll have to go to the other side of the world, to Koluwai, a small island to the southeast of Papua New Guinea. There they will very happily have European visitors for dinner—and I don't mean as guests. Apparently, we taste like pork.”

  “Oof! I'm rather more in favour of lamb chops!” Lawless responded.

  Cornewall Lewis interrupted: “You'll leave her with Arabians? Can they be trusted with the fair sex?”

  Burton clicked his tongue impatiently. “Sir, if you choose to believe the lies propagated by your own government, that is up to you, but despite the calumnies that are circulated in the corridors of parliament, I have never found the Arabian race to be anything less than extraordinarily benevolent, courteous, and entirely honourable.”

  “I meant only to suggest that there might be a risk in leaving a woman of the Empire in non-Christian hands, Sir Richard.”

  “Christian? Do you then stand in opposition to Darwin's findings? Do you also believe that your God favours some races over others?”

  “I use the word merely out of habit, as a synonym for civilised,” Cornewall Lewis protested.

  “Then I'm to take it you don't consider the Arabians civilised, despite that they invented modern mathematics, surgical instruments, soap and perfume, the windmill, the crankshaft, and a great many other things; despite that they realised the Earth is a sphere that circles the sun five hundred years before Galileo was tortured by your Christian church for supporting the same notion?”

  The secretary for war pursed his lips uneasily.

  “That reminds me,” said Monckton Milnes. “Richard, I have the manuscript we discussed—the Persian treatise.”

  “The what?”

  “The translation you were looking for.” He stepped forward and hooked his arm through Burton's. “It's in the library. Come, I'll show you. Excuse us please, gentlemen, we shan't be long.”

  Before Burton could object he was pulled from the group and propelled through the guests toward the door.

  “What blessed treatise?” he spluttered.

  “A necessary fiction to remove you from the battlefield,” Monckton Milnes hissed. “What the blazes has got into you? Why are you snapping like a rabid dog at Cornewall Lewis?”

  They left the room, steered across a parlour, past a small gathering in the reception hall, entered a corridor, and stopped at a carved oak door. Monckton Milnes drew a key from a pocket in his costume, turned it in the lock, and, after they had entered into the room beyond, secured the door behind them.

  They were in his famous and somewhat notorious library.

  He pointed to big studded leather armchairs near the fireplace and snapped: “Go. Sit.”

  Burton obeyed.

  Monckton Milnes went to a cabinet, retrieved a bottle and glasses from it, and poured two drinks. He joined Burton and handed one to him.

  “Vintage Touriga Nacional, 1822, one of the finest ports ever produced,” he murmured. “It cost me a bloody fortune. Don't gulp it down. Savour it.”

  Burton put the glass to his nose and inhaled the aroma. He took a taste, smacked his lips, then leaned back in his chair and considered his friend.

  “My apologies, dear f
ellow.”

  “Spare me. I don't want 'em. I want an explanation. By God, Richard, I've seen you angry, I've seen you defeated, I've seen you wild with enthusiasm, and I've seen you drunk as a fiddler's bitch, but I've never before seen you jittery. What's the matter?”

  Burton gazed into his drink and remained silent for a moment, then looked up and met his friend's eyes.

  “They are making a puppet of me.”

  “Who are? How?”

  “The bloody politicians. Sending me to Africa.”

  Monckton Milnes's face registered his surprise. “But it's what you've wanted!”

  “Not under these circumstances.”

  “What circumstances? Stone me, man, if you haven't been handed a rare opportunity! The Royal Geographical Society was dead set against you going, but Palmerston—the prime minister himself!—forced their hand. You have another chance at the Nile, and no expedition has ever been so well funded and supported, not even Henry Stanley's! Why do you grumble so and flash those moody eyes of yours? Explain!”

  Burton looked away, glanced around at the book-lined walls, and at the erotic statuettes that stood on plinths in various niches, pulled at his jacket and brushed lint from his sleeve, took another sip from his glass, and, reluctantly, returned his attention to Monckton Milnes.

  “It's true, I have long wanted to return to Africa to finish what I began back in fifty-seven,” he said. “To locate, once and for all, the source of the River Nile. Instead, I'm being dispatched to find and bring back a damned weapon!”

  “A weapon?”

  “A black diamond. An Eye of Nāga.”

  “What is that? How is a diamond a weapon? I don't understand.”

  Burton suddenly leaned forward and gripped his friend's wrist. A flame ignited in his dark eyes.

  “You and I have known each other for a long time,” he said, a slight hoarseness creeping into his voice. “I can trust you to keep a confidence, yes?”

  “Of course you can. You have my word.”

  Burton sat back. “Do you remember once recommending to me the cheiromantist Countess Sabina?”

  Monckton Milnes grunted an affirmation.

  “These past weeks, she's been employing her talent as a seer for Palmerston. Her abilities are prodigious. She's able to catch astoundingly clear glimpses of the future—but not our future.”

  His friend frowned, took a swallow from his glass then laid it aside and rubbed a hand across his cheek, accidentally smudging the red harlequin makeup that surrounded his left eye.

  “Whose, then?”

  “No, you misunderstand. I mean, not the future you and I and everyone else in the world will experience.”

  “What other future is there?” Monckton Milnes asked in bewilderment.

  Burton held his gaze, then said quietly, “This world, this time we live in, it is not as it should be.”

  “Not as—You're speaking in blessed riddles, Richard!”

  “Do you recall all the hysteria eighteen months or so ago when people started to see Spring Heeled Jack left, right, and centre?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “It wasn't newspaper sensationalism. He was real.”

  “A prankster?”

  “Far from it. He was a man from the future. He travelled back from the year 2202 to 1840 to prevent his ancestor, with whom he shared the name of Edward Oxford, from shooting at Queen Victoria. His mission went terribly wrong. What should have been a botched assassination attempt succeeded thanks to his interference. It altered everything his history had recorded and, what's more, it wiped him out of his own time.”

  Monckton Milnes sat motionless, his eyes widening.

  “While he was trying to escape from the scene of the assassination,” Burton continued, “Oxford's strange costume, which contained the machinery that enabled him to move through time, was damaged by a young constable with whom we are both acquainted. In fact, he's here tonight.”

  “Wh—who?”

  “William Trounce. He was just eighteen years old. His intervention caused Oxford to be thrown back to the year 1837, where he was taken in and looked after by Henry de La Poer Beresford.”

  “The Mad Marquess?”

  “Yes. While in his care, Oxford dropped vague hints about the shape and nature of the future. Those hints led directly to the establishment of the Technologist and Libertine castes and their offshoots, and sent us down a road entirely divorced from that which we were meant to tread. History altered dramatically, and so did people, for they were now offered opportunities and challenges they would not have otherwise encountered.”

  Monckton Milnes shook his head wonderingly. “Are—are—are you spinning one of your Arabian Night yarns?” he asked. “You're not in earnest, surely?”

  “Entirely. I'm telling you the absolute truth.”

  “Very well. I shall—I shall attempt to suspend my incredulity and hear you out. Pray continue.”

  “Trapped in what, for him, was the distant past, Oxford began to lose his mind. He and the marquess, who himself was a near lunatic, cooked up a scheme by which Oxford might be able to reestablish his future existence by restoring his family lineage. This involved making short hops into the future to locate one of his ancestors, which he managed to do despite that his suit's mechanism was rapidly failing. One of those hops brought him to 1861. Beresford had, by this time, formed an alliance with Charles Darwin and Francis Galton. They intended to trap Oxford, steal his suit, and use it to create separate histories, moulding each one as they saw fit, manipulating us all. I had to kill them, and Oxford, to protect the world from their insane plans.”

  Monckton Milnes stared at Burton in shock. His mouth worked silently, then he managed to splutter: “This—this is beyond the realms of fantasy, Richard. Everyone knows that Darwin was murdered by religious extremists!”

  “False information issued by the government. You'd better take another swallow of this fine port. There's a great deal more to the tale.”

  Monckton Milnes, forgetting his earlier directive to Burton, downed his drink in a single swig. He looked at the empty glass, stood up, paced over to the cabinet, and returned with the bottle.

  “Go on,” he said, pouring refills.

  “Countess Sabina can see far more clearly into the other history—the original one—than she can into ours, perhaps because none of the decisions we make here can have an effect there. The histories are quite different, but there is one thing common to both. There is a war coming. A terrible war that will encompass the world and decimate an entire generation of men. That is why the prime minister wants the African diamond.”

  “War? My God. So what is it, this diamond? Why is it so important? What's it got to do with Spring Heeled Jack?”

  “Are you familiar with the fabled Nāga?” Burton asked.

  Monckton Milnes furrowed his brow. “I—yes—I believe—I believe I've come across references to them in various occult texts. Weren't they some sort of pre-human race?”

  “Yes. There are carvings of them at Angkor Wat. They are portrayed as seven- or five-headed reptiles.”

  “So?”

  “When this planet was young, an aerolite—a huge black diamond—broke into three pieces in its atmosphere. One piece fell to Earth in what became South America, another in Africa, and the last in the Far East. The Nāga built civilisations around the impact sites. They discovered that the diamonds possessed a very special property: they could store and maintain even the most subtle of electrical fields, such as those generated by a living brain. The Nāga used them to fuse their minds, to form a sort of unified intelligence.”

  “If any of that is true, how can you possibly know it?”

  “That will become apparent,” Burton responded. He went on speaking in a low and urgent tone: “The human race waged war on the Nāga, and the reptiles became extinct. The diamonds were lost until, in 1796, Sir Henry Tichborne discovered one—the South American stone.”

  “Tichborne!”
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  “Indeed. He brought it home and hid it beneath his estate. In the history that was meant to be, it remained there until just prior to the future Edward Oxford's time, when it was discovered after Tichborne House was demolished. Oxford cut small shards from it and used them in the machinery of his time suit. When he arrived in the past, those shards suddenly existed in two places at once. They were in his suit and they were also still a part of the diamond under the estate. This paradox caused a strange resonance between them, which extended even to the two as yet undiscovered Nāga diamonds. It caused them all to emit a low, almost inaudible musical drone. This led to the recovery of the Far Eastern stone, in Cambodia, which had been shattered into seven pieces when the humans conquered the Nāga many millennia ago.”

  “My head is spinning,” Monckton Milnes murmured.

  “Not just yours,” Burton said. “The resonance also awoke a hitherto dormant part of the human mind. It made mediumistic abilities possible. Thus Countess Sabina, and thus a Russian named Helena Blavatsky.”

  “The woman they say destroyed the Rakes last year?”

  “Quite so. She stole two of the Cambodian stones and used them to peer into the future.”

  “Which future—ours or the other one?”

  “Ours. And in that future, in the year 1914, another Russian, a clairvoyant named Grigori Rasputin, was gazing back at us.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he foresaw that the Great War, which was in his time raging, would lead to his assassination and the decimation of his beloved Russia. He came looking for the events that sparked off the conflict, and he found them here, in the 1860s.”

  Monckton Milnes regarded his friend through slitted eyes. “Are you referring to our role in the American hostilities?”

  “No. The world war will pitch us against united German states, so I'm of the opinion that the recent Eugenicist exodus to Prussia, which was led by the botanist Richard Spruce and my former partner John Speke, might be the spark that lights the flame.”