Mark Hodder - Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon

“You damned well know it doesn't work like that! I'm here, now, and I won't disappear if I rip your bloody cogs out!”

“Perhaps not, but even if you had the strength to overpower me-which I assure you, you don't-do you really want to create yet another history-one that denies a path home to that alternate you, condemning him to exile in Africa of 1918?”

Burton swayed. Speke, looking bemused, steadied him. “What happened to you, Dick? You didn't go anywhere but your appearance is-is-”

Burton looked down at William Trounce's body. His face twisted into an expression of fury, then one of utter despair.

“I have spent four years in the future, John,” he said, “and now I must prevent that future from occurring.” He turned back to K'k'thyima. “How?”

The high priest shuffled back to the other side of the altar. He reached up and began to work the Eye out of its housing.

“That's the question, isn't? How will you ever know whether what you're doing is, from the perspective of the time you just visited, any different from what you did?”

The black diamond came loose. K'k'thyima stepped back and held it up.

“You are on your own, Sir Richard. The Naga are finally departing this world. We leave you to sing the final verse of our song.”

The phosphorescence around the walls suddenly dimmed, its blue light concentrating around the diamond, and small crackles and snaps sounded, increasing in volume. Bolts of energy started to sizzle over the stone's many facets, then flared out, dancing across its surface and down K'k'thyima's arm. The Eye hummed, the sound rapidly deepening, causing Burton's and Speke's ears to pop before it passed below the range of human hearing.

Tiny fractures zigzagged across the Eye, and as each appeared, with a faint tink! , a small entity was expelled. To Speke's astonishment, they appeared to be tiny people with the wings of butterflies and dragonflies-fairies! — but Burton knew it was an illusion; that they appeared this way because the human mind wasn't able to process the things' true appearance, and so replaced it with a marvel from mythology. To him, the ejected forms were sparks of reptilian consciousness, sensed rather than seen. He'd witnessed the same dance around the South American stone when it had shattered.

The energy built to a storm-like frenzy, banging and clapping and sending out streaks of blue lightning that sputtered up the walls and across the floor and ceiling.

Speke cried out in fear: “What's happening, Dick?”

The king's agent yelled, “He's breaking the stone!”

Moments later, with a loud detonation, the enormous black diamond cracked and fell apart, dropping out of the brass man's hand and falling to the floor in seven equally sized pieces.

The room became still.

The bolts of energy vanished.

The smell of ozone hung in the air.

K'k'thyima bent and retrieved the stones.

“Equivalence! Though one or two or even all of the Eyes remain whole in some versions of history, in this one they are all divided into seven, thus, across all the realities, the Naga can now transcend or die.” He directed his misshapen face at Burton. “Our gratitude, Sir Richard. The Naga thank you for the role you've played in our release.”

“Oh just bugger off, why don't you?” the king's agent growled. He suddenly staggered, made a grab at Speke, missed, and fell to the floor, where he sat with his eyes open but glazed. Speke squatted beside him and felt his forehead.

“Feverish,” he muttered. “And exhausted beyond endurance, by the looks of it.”

“I don't know what to do,” Burton mumbled. “How do I seal my own fate, Bertie?”

“Who's this Bertie he keeps mentioning?” Speke asked K'k'thyima.

“I don't know, Mr. Speke. Let's get him up.” The brass man bent and hooked a metal hand through Burton's arm. Speke took the cue and supported the explorer on the other side. They pulled him upright and sat him on the altar.

“You had better be off, gentlemen,” K'k'thyima said. “Our work here is done, at least for the next fifty-five years.”

He opened Burton's shirt pocket and slipped the seven pieces of the African Eye into it. “You need to unscrew my speaking apparatus to expose the babbage. Remove the seven Cambodian stones and take them with you back to London. Leave my winding key on the altar, please. The babbage will have one function left to perform, which it'll fulfil in 1918, as you have seen.”

“Damn you to hell,” Burton whispered.

“On the contrary, I have chosen to transcend. Goodbye, Sir Richard Francis Burton.”

K'k'thyima became silent.

For a few moments, the king's agent sat and did nothing, while Speke watched and fidgeted nervously; then the explorer stood and detached the clockwork man's speaking device. He pulled seven black diamonds out of the exposed babbage and put them into his pocket.

The brass device walked to the other side of the altar, saluted, and stopped moving.

Burton picked up his rifle and said to Speke: “Help me carry William outside. I want to bury him in the open.

It was night when they emerged into the cliff-ringed arena, both weary to the bone after manoeuvring Trounce's corpse through the narrow subterranean passages. To Burton, the bowl-shaped space felt strangely empty. He peered around it, remembered where he'd seen flowers growing on a mound, and, with Speke's help, laid Trounce to rest there, piling rocks onto him by the starlight.

Chwezi warriors stepped out of the shadows. Silently, they escorted the two men through the gorges on either side of the mountain, leading them each by the arm in utter darkness.

When they reached the spot where Sidi Bombay had fallen, Burton found his friend's corpse undisturbed, and a second burial mound was built before they continued on.

The king's agent, asleep on his feet, lost all awareness of the environment and his own actions until, suddenly, they emerged from the Mountains of the Moon and found the Wanyambo sitting around a small crackling fire. The warriors stared in superstitious dread at the Chwezi and backed away. The mountain tribe broke its silence. Words of reassurance were spoken. An oath was sworn. Obedience was demanded. Agreement was reached. The groups banded together-thirty men in all-and continued on eastward toward the Ukerewe Lake.

It was mid-morning by the time they reached the first village. Its inhabitants, fearing the Chwezi, immediately offered shelter and sustenance. Burton, not knowing what he was doing, crawled into a beehive hut and slept.

When he awoke, he was being borne along on a litter with Speke walking at his side. The lieutenant looked down and said, “You've been in a fever for three days. How are you feeling?”

“Weak. Thirsty. Hungry. Where's my rifle?”

“One of the Africans is carrying it.”

“Get it. Don't take it from me again.”

Another day. Another village. They stopped. They ate and drank.

Later, the king's agent sat with Speke in the settlement's bandani and watched the sun oozing into the horizon.

“Where are we, John?”

“I'm not certain. About a day's march from the northwestern shore of the lake, I hope. I didn't know what to do. Without this damned thing to help me-” he tapped the babbage embedded in the left side of his skull, “-I find it almost impossible to make decisions, so I'm following what it had originally intended me to do upon gaining the diamond, which is to circumnavigate the water to its northernmost point, then march northward. I think the Chwezi understood my intentions, though I've only been able to communicate through sign language.”

Burton checked his pockets. The fourteen stones were still there.

“It seems as good a plan as any,” he said. “As long as the Chwezi remain with us, the locals will supply what we need and we'll avoid demands for hongo.”