Mark Hodder - Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon

Zeppelin's fist lashed out and caught him in the stomach. The crystal shattered on the rocky ground as Swinburne dropped it and doubled over. The count grabbed him by the neck and dug his claws in. He pushed himself to his feet and, standing behind the poet, yanked him around to face Burton and lifted him into the air.

Swinburne's eyes bulged. His face began to turn blue. He jerked and kicked in Zeppelin's grip. Black lines of venom crawled under his skin as the talons sank in.

“Don't!” Burton screamed.

“He is very irritating to me, Herr Burton!” Zeppelin explained, shaking his victim.

Swinburne's tongue protruded. His eyes started to roll up into his head.

“Let him go!” Trounce bellowed.

“I will be certain to do so, Herr Policeman-when he is dead! But see! He has a little life left in him still! How he kicks!”

With his last vestiges of strength, the poet reached into his jacket and pulled from it Apollo's gold-tipped arrow of Eros. He jerked it upward and backward over his shoulder. The point sank into Zeppelin's right eye.

With an agonised shriek, the Prussian reeled back, teetered on the edge of the sinkhole, and plunged into it, dragging Swinburne with him.

Suddenly: silence.

Burton and Trounce knelt, staring, unable to comprehend that their companion was gone. An incalculable interval passed; perhaps a moment, maybe an hour; to the two men, it felt as though time wasn't moving at all; then John Speke moaned and shifted and everything snapped back into focus.

“I say, chaps!” came Swinburne's voice. “Culver Cliff!”

Burton loosed a bark of laughter. On a previous occasion, when his assistant had been dangling over a precipice and holding on by his fingertips, he'd referred to that youthful escapade of his, when he'd climbed Culver Cliff on the Isle of Wight. It had become a symbol of his apparent indestructibility.

“Hold on!” Burton called. He struggled to his feet, his wrists still bound behind him, paced over to the lip of the well, and knelt beside it. Swinburne was just below, hanging on to a narrow shelf with both hands. His neck was bruised purple, and blood flowed from the puncture marks in it.

“William!” Burton snapped. “Get over here, put your back to me, and untie these confounded knots. Can you hang on there for a little longer, Algy?”

“Yes, Richard. But I feel jolly peculiar.”

It was no wonder: the capillaries of the poet's face were black and appeared to be writhing beneath the skin. Small white buds were pushing through at the corners of his nose, and, even as Burton watched, leaves started to open amid his friend's long hair, like a laurel wreath.

“Hurry, William!” he hissed as he felt Trounce's fingers getting to work.

The whites of Swinburne's eyes suddenly turned green.

“I'm thirsty,” he said.

“Almost there!” Trounce grunted.

“And my arms are aching,” the poet added.

“Got it!” the Scotland Yard man announced, and Burton felt the ropes loosen. He yanked his wrists free, threw himself on his stomach, and reached down to his assistant.

“Grab hold!”

Hanging on to the ledge with just his left hand, Swinburne stretched the right up toward Burton.

“My hat!” he exclaimed and drew his hand back a little, for a bright-red flower had suddenly bloomed from the back of it. “It's-it's a poppy, Richard!”

His fingers slipped from their hold.

Swinburne dropped into darkness.

“Have you got him?” Trounce asked.

Burton didn't reply.

“Richard?”

The Yard man crawled around on his knees to face the explorer.

“Richard? Richard? Do you have him?”

The king's agent remained still, his tears dripping into the void beneath his face.

“Oh no,” Trounce whispered huskily. “Oh no.”

Burton untied Trounce.

John Speke stirred and sat up.

“Dick,” he groaned. “I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry for everything.” He touched the babbage embedded in his skull. “It was this damned thing. Every time I wound it up, it forced decisions upon me. I've been like an opium addict with it. Unable to stop!”

“But now?” Burton asked, dully. He felt remote. Disengaged. Broken.

“It was all about coming here,” Speke responded. “The wretched thing was designed to make me fetch the black diamond for the Technologist and Rake alliance. When you killed the madmen behind that scheme, the compulsion to come here remained, but I had no sponsor, so it forced me to find one.”

“The Prussian government.”

“Yes. I guided Zeppelin here, and as soon as I set foot in the place, the device, having realised its purpose, stopped working.”

An expression of sheer torment passed over his face.

“I still have the addiction, Dick. I'm on fire with the urge to wind it up again! But Babbage booby-trapped it. If I use it even once more, a timing mechanism will activate and it will explode!”

Herbert Spencer broke his pose and stepped forward. He spoke in an uncharacteristically precise voice: “The man you refer to was rather precious about his contraptions, wasn't he? I understand he booby-trapped them all to prevent others from discovering the secret of their construction.” He aimed his pistol at the king's agent. “This revolver will operate perfectly well while it's in my grasp, Sir Richard. Don't you think it rather regrettable that destructive forces must so often be employed to achieve one's ends?”

Burton gasped and clutched at Trounce's arm for support.

Spencer made a piping noise that may have been a chuckle. “Pretending to have lost motive energy is by no means an original trick but it is an effective one. As you can see, I have power in my mainspring.”

“What-what are you playing at, Herbert?” Burton stammered. “Why didn't you help us?”

“The song must be sung in the proper manner.”

“Song? What are you talking about?”

“The Song of the Naga. Let us not stand here discussing it. A demonstration will be far more effective. If you would all please step over to that outcrop of blue crystal-” The brass man gestured with his revolver toward the wall of the cavern where a tall formation of amethyst hunched up from the floor. They moved to it. There was a low opening in the wall behind, a space big enough for a man to crawl into.

Spencer said, “Go in first, please, Mr. Speke; then you, William; and you last, Sir Richard.”

One by one, they entered what proved to be little more than a winding tube. Patches of phosphorescence illuminated its length.

Burton fought to quell his rising panic. He had an irrational fear of enclosed spaces. The passage into the grotto had been bad enough, but this was far worse.

As they inched along, flat on their stomachs, the clockwork man explained: “The fact of the matter is that I'm not Herbert Spencer and never have been. When he died in close proximity to the Cambodian diamonds, his mind was imprinted onto them, just as you thought, but it never had the power to motivate this mechanical body. It was I who did so, using his personality as a bridge-or a filter, if you will-through which to interact with you. Spencer is, I'm afraid to say, thoroughly suppressed. The poor man! I can feel his frustration, his eagerness to help you!”

“Then who are you?” the king's agent asked, fighting to keep his voice steady.

“I am K'k'thyima, high priest of the Naga.”

Burton, whose mind had barely functioned since the loss of Swinburne, struggled to make sense of this revelation.

“I dreamt of you. You sounded different.”

“As I said, I employ the mind of Herbert Spencer in order to communicate. I could chin-wag more like what he bloomin' well does, if'n it'll make you feel more comfy, like.”