Mark Hodder - Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon

“All done,” he announced. He picked up his revolver. “We shall now send our friend Sir Richard Francis Burton into the future, where he'll witness the music of time in all its glory. It is a gift from the Naga to the race that destroyed us.”

Burton said, “Why?”

“Because you have to learn! If you don't, this world is doomed! It is in your hands now, soft skin-teach the lesson you learn today.”

“Hogwash!” Trounce spat.

“It's a terrible shame,” K'k'thyima said, “and I'm truly sorry, but, as has ever been the case, the Eye requires a sacrifice to activate it. Your essence will, however, be imprinted on the stone, if that's any consolation, William.”

He raised the pistol and shot Trounce through the head.

Burton screamed.

There was a blinding white flash.

The prodigious plant quivered and the huge red flower swung upward into a sunbeam and unfurled its outer layer of spiny petals to soak in the light and heat. The air bladders at the top of its stalk expanded like balloons then contracted, and the resultant squeak possessed an oddly dreamy tone.

“One, who is not, we see; but one, whom we see not, is;

Surely this is not that; but that is assuredly this.

“What, and wherefore, and whence? for under is over and under;

If thunder could be without lightning, lightning could be without thunder.”

The bloom shifted again with a woody creak and appeared to look back down at the two men, who sat on their harvestmen and gaped at it in utter astonishment.

Bertie Wells whispered the obvious: “It's a talking plant. A talking bloody plant!”

Two long narrow leaves, positioned a little way below the petals, stretched and curled in a gesture that resembled a man throwing out his hands. “So explain yourself, you rotter! Why did you ignore me for so long? Wasn't it obvious that I was calling you back? The poppies, Richard! The poppies!”

Burton turned off his harvestman's steam engine, toppled from his saddle, thumped onto the ground, and lay still.

Behind him, Wells hurriedly stopped his own machine, dismounted, and ran over to kneel at his friend's side.

“I say!” the flower exclaimed. “Who are you? What's wrong with Richard?”

“I'm Bertie Wells, and I think he's fainted. Probably out of sheer disbelief!”

“Ah,” said the bloom, and added:

“Doubt is faith in the main; but faith, on the whole, is doubt;

We cannot believe by proof; but could we believe without?

“Why, and whither, and how? for barley and rye are not clover;

Neither are straight lines curves; yet over is under and over.

“Two and two may be four; but four and four are not eight;

Fate and God may be twain; but God is the same as fate.”

“God is a proven fallacy,” Wells muttered distractedly as he took a flask from his belt and splashed water onto Burton's face.

“Indeed he is,” the plant agreed. “Darwin drove the sword home and left us with a void. What now, hey? What now? I say we should fill it with a higher sort of pantheism. What do you think, Mr. Wells?”

Without considering the fact that he'd somehow become engaged in a theological discussion with oversized vegetation-for he felt that to do so would lead to the inevitable conclusion that he'd gone completely barmy-Wells replied: “I feel man would be wise to work at correcting his own mistakes instead of waiting for intervention from on high, and should replace faith in an unknowable divine plan with a well-thought-out scheme of his own.”

“I say! Bravo! Bravo!” the plant cheered.

“Ask a man what he thinks, and get from a man what he feels;

God, once caught in the fact, shows you a fair pair of heels.”

Burton blinked, sneezed, lay still for a moment, then scrambled to his feet, swayed, and grabbed at one of his harvestman's legs for support.

He looked up at the flower.

It angled itself downward and squealed, “I didn't think you were the fainting type, Richard! A hangover, I suspect! Did you drink too much of my brandy? I exude it like sap, you know! A very ingenious process, even if I do say so myself!”

Very slowly, Burton replied, “You, Algernon, have got to be bloody joking.”

“What? What? Why?”

“A flower?”

“Oh! Ha-ha! Not just a flower-a whole bally jungle! What a wheeze, hey?”

“But is it-is it really you?”

The blossom twisted slightly, a gesture like a man angling his head to one side in contemplation. It refilled its air bladders and squeaked:

“Body and spirit are twins; God only knows which is which;

The soul squats down in the flesh, like a tinker drunk in a ditch.

“More is the whole than a part; but half is more than the whole;

Clearly, the soul is the body; but is not the body the soul?”

With a sudden jerk, the flower dropped until it was just inches from Burton's face.

“Is there something wrong with your memory, old horse?”

“Yes. There's a lot wrong with it. I've spent the past five years trying to piece it together while being pursued, shot at, and bombed.”

“And I suppose you've forgotten the poppy that sprouted from my hand?”

Burton flinched and put a hand to his head as an image flashed into his mind, bringing with it an overwhelming sense of loss. “Bismillah! I had! But I-wait! I think-I think-Culver Cliff!”

Swinburne shivered and rustled. “Unfortunately so.”

With watering eyes, Burton squinted at the surrounding rock face.

“I know this place. There's-”

He looked to his right, to where one of the plant's thick limbs crossed the ground and dug into the surrounding cliff. There was a dark opening in the root-like growth, and he could see that it was hollow.

Disparate recollections slotted together.

“There's a cave,” he said, hoarsely. “It's there! I remember now. A grotto! You killed Count Zeppelin!”

“Yes! The golden arrow of Eros straight into his eyeball! Good old Tom Bendyshe avenged! But the Prussian injected me with that horrible venom of his and the next thing I knew I was falling. It took me an age to grow back out of that pit and into daylight, I can tell you! Lucky for me that Zeppelin fell into it, too. He made very good fertilizer!”

A black pit.

Algernon Swinburne hanging by his fingertips.

A green shoot emerging from the back of the poet's hand. Petals unfurling. A red poppy.

“The poppies,” Burton whispered. “Now I understand.”

“Bloody typical!” the poet trumpeted. “I stretched myself to the absolute giddy limit to signpost the way back here, and you didn't even recognise what the confounded signs meant!”

“I'm sorry, Algy. Something happened to me in that cave-in Lettow-Vorbeck's temple! Yes, I remember now! It's in there, beyond the grotto!”

“Lettow-Vorbeck?” Swinburne asked.

Wells answered, “A German general, Mr. Swinburne. Apparently he's been trying to burn his way through your jungle to find this place.”

“The swine! I felt it, too! Very unpleasant!”

Burton murmured, “I lost my memory in that temple. The shock of your death was part of it, Algy, but there was more. And it ended with me being projected through time.”

Swinburne inflated his bladders, fluttered his petals, and said, “I know. You can imagine my surprise when, after having had nothing but Pox and Malady's foul-mouthed descendants for company for decade after decade, I suddenly saw you come stumbling into this clearing! You were ranting and raving like a Bedlam inmate! I tried to speak to you but you legged it through the gorge and out of the mountains like a man with the devil himself at his heels. By the way, what year is this?”