Mark Hodder - Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon

They hefted their bags, took up their spears, and started to scrabble up steep loose shale, sending rivulets of stone clattering down behind them.

Sir Richard Francis Burton, Algernon Swinburne, William Trounce, Herbert Spencer-with his discoloured, scratched, and dented body unencumbered by robes or polymethylene-and Sidi Bombay entered the Mountains of the Moon, and more than one of them had a question on his mind.

How many of us will come back?

Burton and Wells drew their harvestmen to a halt at the top of an incline and turned the vehicles to face the way they'd come. Beneath the mechanised spiders' feet, poppies grew in abundance. The red flowers weaved away in an irregular line, disappearing into the hazy distance, back toward the dirty grey smudge that marked the position of Tabora.

High overhead, looking enormous even though it was flying at a very high altitude, the L.59 Zeppelin drifted closer to the city.

It was a remarkable craft-a vegetable thing, like a gargantuan pointed cigar with ruffled seams on its sides. All along this join, oval bean-like growths swelled outward, and even from afar, it was apparent that they'd been hollowed out and fitted with portholes.

A giant purple flower grew from the rear of the vessel, similar in appearance to a tulip. Its petals were opening and closing, throbbing like a pulsing heart, driving the ship through the air.

“It's magnificent,” Wells said. “And utterly horrible.”

“Horrible because we know what it's carrying,” Burton replied. “I wonder how big an area the A-Bomb will destroy? Surely the spores will drift?”

“Perhaps they're potent for only a few minutes,” Wells mused. “But even if the effects are of short duration and confined to the city, thousands of people are going to die. There simply hasn't been time for everyone to get out. Look! Those dots rising up from Tabora-that's a squadron of hornets!”

“We need a rotorship.”

“There are none. Our last was brought down more than a year ago.”

The hornets-twelve of them-raced across the shrinking distance between the city and the German vessel. As they neared the bomb carrier, they exploded one after the other and fell to the earth trailing smoke behind them.

“No!” Wells shrilled. “What the hell happened?”

“There!” Burton pointed. “See the trails of vapour curving out from the Zeppelin? The Germans must have some sort of manoeuvrable shells.”

“By heavens, Richard. Has it reached Tabora already? I can't tell.”

“Any time now,” Burton replied. “Be prepared to-”

Without warning, the sun erupted from the ground beneath the city. A blinding light blazed outward, and though Burton squeezed his eyes shut in an instant and clapped his hands over them, still he could see it. He heard Wells scream.

“Bertie, are you all right?” he yelled.

Wells groaned. “Yes. I think-I think it's passed.”

Burton, realising that his friend was right, lowered his hands and opened his eyes. Wherever he looked, he saw a ball of fire.

“The damned after-image has blinded me,” he said.

“Me too.”

They sat with hands held to faces, waiting for their retinas to recover.

A strong wind hit them.

“Shockwave!” Wells exclaimed.

“No! It's going in the wrong direction,” Burton noted, puzzled.

They looked up, blinking, vision returning.

A dense yellow mass of Destroying Angel spores was bubbling up from where the city stood-and as the two men watched, the billowing substance slowly revolved, as if around a central axis.

“The wind!” Wells said. “It's the blasted Hun weathermen! They're keeping that damned mushroom cloud in check, concentrating it in the city, preventing it from drifting!”

Burton moaned: “Quips! Poor Quips! Bismillah, Bertie! How many have just died?”

“Tens of thousands,” Wells said, and his voice was suddenly deep and oily and unpleasant. “But I am not one of them.”

Burton looked at the little war correspondent and was shocked to see that every visible part of his eyes had turned entirely black. There was a terrible menacing quality about them, and Burton couldn't tear his own away.

Wells gestured at the dying city.

“The generals are eager to locate a safe haven,” he said, “so, regrettably, the SS Britannia is rolling in an easterly direction and will soon turn south, whereas you, I see, are heading north. Why is that, Private Frank Baker? Hah! No! That won't do! That won't do at all! Let us call you by another name. Let us call you Sir-Richard-Francis-Burton.” He enunciated Burton's name slowly, emphasising each syllable, as if to drive home the point that he knew the explorer's true identity.

“Bertie?” Burton asked, uncertainly.

“Obviously not! Tell me, how did you do it?”

“How did I do what? Who are you?”

“Control the lurchers-make them open up a route through the besieging German forces?”

“Crowley?”

“Yes, yes! Now answer the question!”

“I didn't.”

“What? You didn't control them? Then who-or what-did?”

“I have no idea. What do you want, Colonel?”

“I have seven black diamonds, Sir Richard, the fragments of the South American Eye of Naga. There is much about them I do not understand.” The black eyes glittered. The king's agent felt them penetrating his soul. “For example, you, sir, who should be three decades dead-your metaphorical fingerprints are all over them. Are they somehow responsible for transporting you from your time to mine?”

Burton didn't respond.

Wells-Crowley-regarded him silently.

The wind gusted past them.

“I shall tell you a secret, Sir Richard Francis Burton-something that, were it known by the generals aboard this ship, would prompt my immediate execution.”

“What?”

“I am in contact with Kaiser Nietzsche.”

“You're a collaborator?”

“Not in the sense you mean it. The German emperor and myself share a talent for clairvoyance. We've both detected through the diamonds that other realities exist, and that other versions of ourselves inhabit them. We want to know more. Your presence here appears to have some bearing on the matter.” Wells gave an elaborate shrug and his oleaginous voice took on a carefree airiness. “But here we are: you fleeing in one direction and me fleeing in the other. Very inconvenient! I really should do away with this Wells fellow. He acted against me. But I shall allow him to live, for I sense that he's a vital ingredient in the shape of things to come.”

“Crowley,” Burton said. “Nietzsche dropped a bomb on you.”

Wells emitted a thick chuckle. “Ah! So you doubt his commitment to me? Do not concern yourself. He gave me fair warning, and it was preordained that I would get away.”

“You knew Tabora would be destroyed? You allowed all those people to die? Your countrymen?”

“Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people. The end of the British Empire was long overdue. I merely bowed to the inevitable.”

“In the name of Allah, what kind of man are you?”

“Allah? Don't be ridiculous. And as for what I am, perhaps the embodiment of the Rakes, who, if I remember rightly, prospered in your age.”

“You're an abomination!”

“I'm an individual who shares with Nietzsche the desire to create a superior species of man.”

For the first time since he'd taken possession of Wells, Crowley took his eyes from Burton. He looked at the yellow cloud enveloping Tabora.