Mark Hodder - Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon

“Let's rest again for a moment,” Wells said. “This bloody leg is giving me gyp.”

“All right.”

Burton leaned against one of the arachnids and batted a fly from his face.

Memories were stirring. He was trying to recall the last time he'd met Lord Palmerston.

Shut the hell up, Burton! Am I to endure your insolence every time we meet? I'll not tolerate it! You have your orders! Do your bloody job, Captain!

The prime minister's voice echoed in a remote chamber of his mind but he was unable to associate it with any specific occasion.

“So he's at Tabora?” he asked.

“Palmerston? Yes. He's kept under house arrest there. I find it incredible that he still has supporters, but he does-my editor for one-so it's unlikely he'll go before the firing squad, as he deserves. You know he buggered up the constitution, too?”

“How so?”

“When he manipulated the Regency Act back in 1840 to ensure that Albert took the throne instead of Ernest Augustus of Hanover, he left no provision for what might happen afterward-no clear rules of succession for when Albert died. Ha! In 1900, I, like a great many others, was a staunch republican, so when the king finally kicked the bucket, I was happy to hear calls for the monarchy to be dismantled. Of course, equally vociferous voices were raised against the idea. Things got rather heated, and I, being a journalist, got rather too involved. There was public disorder, and I'm afraid I might have egged it on a little. When a man gets caught up in history, Richard, he loses sight of himself. Anyway, Palmerston was distracted, and that's when Bismarck pounced. I feel a fool now. In times of war, figureheads become necessary for morale. I should have realised that, but I was an idealist back then. I even believed the human race capable of building Utopia. Ha! Idiot!”

They slouched against the machines for a couple more minutes, the humidity weighing down on them, then resumed their trek, moving away from the tanks and up a gentle slope toward the ridge. The ground was dry, cracked, and dusty, with tufts of elephant grass standing in isolated clumps. There were also large stretches of blackened earth-“Where carnivorous plants have been burned away,” Wells explained. “At least we're not due the calamity of rain for a few more weeks. The moment a single drop touches the soil, the bloody plants spring up again.”

The Indian Ocean, a glittering turquoise line, lay far off to their right, while to their left, the peaks of the Usagara Highlands shimmered and rippled on the horizon.

“But let us not be diverted from our topic,” Wells said. “I'm trying to recall your biographies. If I remember rightly, in 1859 you returned from your unsuccessful expedition to find the source of the Nile and more or less retreated from the public eye to work on various books, including your translation of The Arabian Nights , which, may I add, was a simply splendid achievement.”

“The Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night,” Burton corrected. “Thank you, but please say no more about it. I've not completed the damned thing yet. At least, I don't think I have.”

He helped his companion past a fallen tree that was swarming with white ants and muttered, “It's odd you say that, though, about my search for the source of the Nile. The moment you mentioned it, I remembered it, but I feel sure I made a second attempt.”

“I don't think so. It certainly isn't recorded. The fountains of the Nile were discovered by-”

Burton stopped him. “No! Don't tell me! I don't want to know. If I really am from 1863, and I return to it, perhaps I'll rewrite that particular item of history.”

“You think you might get back to your own time? How?”

Burton shrugged.

“But isn't it obvious you won't?” Wells objected. “Otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation, for you'd surely do something to prevent this war from ever happening.”

“Ah, Bertie, there's the paradox,” Burton answered. “If I go back and achieve what your history says I never achieved, you'll still be here, aware that I never did it. However, I will now exist in a time where I did. And in my future there'll be a Herbert George Wells who knows it.”

“Wait! Wait! I'm struggling to wrap my brain around that!”

“I agree-it's a strain on the grey matter, especially if, like mine, it's as full of holes as a Swiss cheese. These days, I hear myself speak but have barely a notion of what I'm talking about.”

Burton pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from the back of his neck. “But something tells me that if you go back into the past and make an alteration, then a whole new sequence of events will spring from it, establishing an ever-widening divergence from what had been the original course of history.”

Wells whistled. “Yet that original has to still exist, for it's where you travelled back from.”

“Precisely.”

“So existence has been split into two by your act.”

“Apparently.”

“How godlike, the chronic argonaut,” Wells mused.

“The what?”

“Hum. Just thinking out loud.”

They joined a small group of officers who'd gathered at the top of the ridge. Wells indicated one of them and whispered, “That's General Aitken. He's in charge of this whole operation.”

Burton tugged at his khaki uniform jacket, which he considered far too heavy for the climate. He felt smothered and uncomfortable. Perspiration was running into his eyes. He rubbed them. As they readjusted, the vista that sprawled beneath him swam into focus, and all his irritations were instantly forgotten.

Seen through the distorting lens of Africa's blistering heat, Dar es Salaam appeared to undulate and quiver like a mirage. It was a small white city, clinging to the shore of a natural harbour. Grand colonial buildings humped up from its centre and were clustered around the port-in which a German light cruiser was docked-while a tall metal structure towered above the western neighbourhoods. Otherwise, the settlement was very flat, with single-storey dwellings strung along tree-lined dirt roads and around the borders of small outlying farms.

A strip of tangled greenery surrounded the municipality-“They look small from here, but those are the artillery plants,” Wells observed-and beyond them, the German trenches crisscrossed the terrain up to a second band of foliage: the red weed. The British trenches occupied the space between the weed and the ridge.

Like a punch to the head, Burton suddenly recalled the Crimea, for, as in that terrible conflict, the earth here had been torn, gouged, and overturned by shells. Flooded by heavy rains some weeks ago, the horrible landscape before him had since been baked into distorted shapes by the relentless sunshine. It was also saturated with blood and peppered with chunks of rotting human and animal flesh, and the stench assailed Burton's nostrils from even this distance. Bits of smashed machinery rose from the churned ground like disinterred bones. It was unnatural. It was hideous. It was sickening.

He unhooked his canteen from his belt, took a swig of water, and spat dust from his mouth.

“That's our target,” said Wells, pointing at the metal tower. “If we can bring it down, we'll destroy their radio communications.”

“Radio?” Burton asked.

Wells smiled. “Well I never! How queer to meet a man who isn't familiar with something that everyone else takes for granted! But, of course, it was after your time, wasn't it!”

Burton glanced uneasily at the nearby officers, who were peering at the sea through binoculars.

“Keep your voice down, please, Bertie,” he said. “And what was after my time?”

“The discovery of radio waves. The technique by which we transmit spoken words and other sounds through the atmosphere to literally anywhere in the world.”