Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon (Burton & Swinburne) (22 page)

He steps to the stone, leans over it, and, with one of his long forked tongues licks blood from its surface. He then dips the same tongue into a bowl containing black diamond dust.

With the organ extended, he returns to Kaundinya—who bows down—and runs it delicately over the human's shaven scalp, leaving a swirling, glittering hieroglyph.

K'k'thyima steps back. Kaundinya straightens.

The High Priest says: “Thou art invited into the Great Fusion, O Emissary. Dost thou accept the Joining?”

“I accept.”

The crowd emits a throbbing susurration, a repetitive refrain. All the gathered priests extend and quiver their multiple neck crests, a dazzling display of vibrating colour.

From somewhere, a throbbing rhythm pulses and a melody of heart-wrenching beauty swells through the temple. Layer after layer is added to it. Its refrains are bafflingly complex, and they are constructed from tones that no human instrument has ever produced; tones that no human being can even properly comprehend.

Kaundinya tries to meet K'k'thyima's eyes but is unable to focus on any single head. He feels the music and the lizard's mesmeric power overwhelming all but one tiny and very well-concealed part of his consciousness, and he allows it.

He looks at the black diamond. His eyes fixate upon it. He feels himself pulled into its depths, the essence of his individuality breaking apart, distributing itself among the planes and lines and points and angles of the great stone.

Kaundinya remains passive as thousands upon thousands of other minds touch his. He loses his sense of independence and becomes enmeshed, soaking into a vast multiple consciousness.

He wills his identity farther and farther into the diamond. He fills it; exists in every part of it; becomes an ingredient in its very existence.

He is one with the Nāga.

He exists with them in the Eternal Now.

All but one tiny part of him.

Kaundinya is no ordinary man. Through rigorous education, meditation, and ritual, he has attained the absolute pinnacle of intellectual order and emotional discipline. Here, at the dawn of human history, his self-control is unmatched; and it will remain so until the end of that history.

The Nāga have been surreptitiously probing his mind from the moment he started to live among them. They have found only good intentions, only a desire for peace between the human race and their own.

Kaundinya's true purpose has never been exposed.

Now, the moment has arrived.

He flexes the one small knot of awareness that has not melted into the Joined and turns it inward, probing deep into the physical matter of his own brain.

He locates a major blood vessel and he wrenches at it.

A massive haemorrhage kills him in an instant, and at the moment his consciousness is destroyed, it sends an inexorable shockwave through the structure of the diamond.

The stone fractures and explodes into seven fragments.

The Joined are ripped apart.

Millions of Nāga drop dead.

The retorts of the shattering gem echo through the temple like rifle fire. The pieces fall from the plinth to the floor, their facets glinting like stars.

Rifle fire and stars.

Rifle fire. Stars.

Rifle fire. Stars.

Sir Richard Francis Burton opened his eyes.

It was night.

Stars filled the sky.

Rifle fire echoed across the desert.

A man screamed.

A camel brayed.

Voices argued in one of the languages of the Arabian Peninsula.

His eyelids scraped shut, time overbalanced and dropped away, and he opened them again and saw the dawn.

A figure climbed into view and stood looking down at him. A breeze tugged at her robes—for it was undoubtedly a woman, Burton could tell that from the curve of her hip, against which she rested the butt of her rifle.

“No,” she said, in English. “It cannot possibly be you.”

Her voice was deep and warm but filled with shock.

He tried to speak but his tongue wouldn't move. His skin was afire, yet the core of him, having suffered the night, was as cold as ice. He could feel nothing but pain.

The woman slipped and slithered down the sand then strode to his side and knelt, laying her weapon to one side. Her face was concealed by a
keffiyeh
and remained in shadow—silhouetted against the deep-orange sky. She unhooked a flask from her belt, unscrewed its top, and dribbled water onto his lips. It trickled into his mouth, through his teeth, over his tongue, and was so good that he passed out from the sheer relief of it.

When awareness returned, he was inside a tent and sunlight was beating against its roof. Sister Raghavendra smiled down at him.

“Lie still, Sir Richard,” she said. “I have to apply more ointment to your skin.”

“Give him warm water mixed with a spoonful of honey, please, Sadhvi.”

The voice was the same melodious one he'd heard before. Impossibly familiar.

He tried to look but a stab of pain prevented him from turning his head.

Sister Raghavendra drizzled sweet liquid into his mouth.

“We were rescued,” she said.

Consciousness escaped him yet again, only to be summoned back by the tinkle of camel bells and the flapping of the tent's canvas as it was battered by the
simoon
—the strong hot desert wind.

He'd been propped up into a semi-reclining position, with his back and head supported by soft pillows. Sadhvi Raghavendra was sitting to his left, Algernon Swinburne to his right. The owner of the deep female voice was standing at his feet, with her face still concealed by her Arabian headdress.

She was a tall woman, slender but curvaceous, and she radiated confidence and power. Her large clear eyes, above the scarf, were of a scintillating blue.

She reached up, pulled the material aside, smiled prettily, and said, “Are you
compos mentis?
You've been ranting about reptiles and temples and diamonds.”

He tested his voice. “I think—” and found that it worked, albeit harshly. “I think my mind is in better order, though my body is burned to a crisp. Hello, Isabel.”

“Hello, Dick.”

Isabel Arundell, who'd once been his fiancée, was wearing a long white cotton shirt, white pantaloons, and an
abba
—a short-sleeved cloak of dark green woven from the finest of wools. A sword, a dagger, and a flintlock pistol were held in place by a multicoloured sash circling her slender waist. She manoeuvred them out of the way as she lowered herself onto a cushion and sat with her legs tucked to one side.

Burton rasped, “I thought you were running around with Jane Digby in Damascus.”

Sadhvi handed him a canteen. He drank from it sparingly, knowing from experience that gulps would cause excruciating stomach cramps.

“We parted ways,” Isabel replied. “I found her morals to be wanting.”

“My hat, Richard!” Swinburne piped up. “We've experienced a miraculous intervention! Miss Arundell is leading a merry band of Amazonian warriors. They came galloping to our rescue on the most beautiful horses you've ever seen and gave the Disciples of Ramman a proper thrashing!”

Burton looked from his assistant back to Isabel, a question in his eyes.

She smiled again and said, “I seem to have acquired the habit of collecting about me women who've suffered at the hands of their husbands. When I opened a refuge in Damascus, there were objections from those same men. The continued existence of the place soon became untenable, so my companions and I left the city to live as Bedouins. We travelled south, through Syria, collecting more women on the way, until we arrived in Arabia, where we've survived by raiding the bandits who plunder the caravans.”

“Extraordinary!” Burton wheezed. “How many of you are there?”

“A little over two hundred.”

“Great heavens!”

“We saw a plume of steam, went to investigate, and discovered your downed ship. It was abandoned and a lot of supplies had been left behind. Don't worry—we have them with us. Then we followed your trail and happened upon the brigands.”

“The women are armed to the teeth!” Swinburne enthused. “And they revere Miss Arundell as if she were the goddess herself! Guess what they call her!”

“Please, Algernon!” Isabel protested.

“What?” Burton asked.

“Al-Manat!”

Hardly we find the path of love, to sink the Self, forget the “I,”
When sad suspicion grips the heart, when Man,
the
Man begins to die:
[…]
How Thought is imp' otent to divine the secret which the gods defend,
The Why of birth and life and death, that Isis-veil no hand may rend.

Eternal Morrows make our Day; our
Is
is aye
to be
till when
Night closes in; 'tis all a dream, and yet we die, – and then and THEN?

And still the Weaver plies his loom, whose warp and woof is wretched Man
Weaving th' unpattern'd dark design, so dark we doubt it owns a plan.
[…]
Cease, Man, to mourn, to weep, to wail; enjoy thy shining hour of sun;
We dance along Death's icy brink, but is the dance less full of fun?

–S
IR
R
ICHARD
F
RANCIS
B
URTON
,
T
HE
K
ASÎDAH OF
H
ÂJÎ
A
BDÛ
E
L
Y
EZDÎ

“It only requires a scientist to be told what variety of thing to look for, and where best to look, and it is inevitable that the thing will be found. So it was in the earliest days of Eugenics. The hints had been of the vaguest. They were passed from a madman to a drunkard, and from the drunkard to an engineer, and from the engineer to a naturalist, and from the naturalist to Mr. Francis Galton. Whether they seeded themselves in Mr. Galton's brain in anything resembling their original form seems doubtful—we all know how information is corrupted by travel—and yet, in that magnificent, terrifying mind of his, they blossomed, and he dazzled us all with his brilliance. Mr. Charles Darwin, in particular, was enthused to the point where, I regret to say, moral and ethical boundaries ceased to exist for him. To some extent, this happened to all of us in that little band of scientists. Unquestionably, I am now ashamed of certain of my actions whilst under the influence of that great wave of fervour and creativity that overtook us. And I feel somewhat responsible, too, for the dark turn Eugenics very quickly took after it was established as a unique scientific discipline, for it was I who, under Mr. Galton's direction, conjoined his and Mr. Darwin's brains, using techniques that I have since discovered are many, many decades ahead of their proper time. The thing that Darwin/Galton became, as a consequence of that operation, I now regard as a monstrosity, but while it existed I was in its thrall, and much against my better judgement, I was a principal in the horrible path that Eugenics trod. Oh that I could travel back and change everything! The death of Darwin/Galton liberated me and restored my proper senses, but with them I now suffer to witness the villainies of Eugenics; I see the terrifying speed at which its ghastly techniques develop; I see how it has moved so far beyond the original concept of guided evolution that it now perverts life dreadfully. Perhaps it is true that, as many claim, Mr. Darwin killed God. The existence of Eugenics rather suggests to me, I fear, that he did not, at the same time, succeed in destroying the devil.”

–F
ROM
T
HE
E
UGENICISTS:
T
HEIR
H
ISTORY
AND
T
HEIR
C
RIMES
BY
F
LORENCE
N
IGHTINGALE
, 1865

E
dward Oxford thudded onto grass and bounced on his spring-heeled boots. Glancing around, he saw a rolling park surrounded by tall glass buildings whose sides flashed with advertising, and in the near distance, the ancient form of the Monarchy Museum, once known as Buckingham Palace, in which the relics of England's defunct royal families were displayed. A sonic boom echoed as a shuttle headed into orbit. People buzzed overhead in their personal fliers. His AugCom was functioning.

He checked that he was still holding the top hat he'd carried with him, then ran into the wooded corner of the park, not noticing that, in the long grass to his left, a white-haired man was lying unconscious with a sniper rifle, a jewel case, and a portmanteau bag at his side.

Oxford ducked into the trees and pushed through the undergrowth until he felt safe from prying eyes. He detached the Nimtz Generator from his chest and put it on the ground, pulled off his stilted boots and placed them beside it, then stripped off his fish-scale battery suit and draped it over a low branch. Reaching up to his helmet, he hesitated, then switched off the AugCom and removed the headgear. A foul stench assaulted his nostrils, a mix of raw sewage, rotting fish, and burning fossil fuels. He started to cough. The air was thick and gritty. It irritated his eyes and scraped his windpipe. He fell to his knees and clutched at his throat, gasping for oxygen. Then he remembered that he'd prepared for this and fumbled in his jacket pocket, pulling out a small instrument that he quickly applied to the side of his neck. He pressed the switch, it hissed, he felt a slight stinging sensation, and instantly he could breathe again. He put the instrument away and rested for a moment. The inability to catch his breath had been a perceptive disorder rather than a physical one. The helmet had protected him from the idea that the atmosphere was unbreathable; now a sedative was doing the job.

Unfamiliar sounds reached him from the nearby road: horses' hooves, the rumble of wheels, the shouts of hawkers.

He stood and straightened the reproduction mid-Victorian-era clothes that he'd worn beneath his time suit, placed the top hat on his head, and made his way to the edge of the thicket. As he emerged from the trees, a transformed world assailed his senses, and he was immediately shaken by a profound uneasiness.

There were no AugCom illusions now, and only the grass was familiar. Through dense, filthy air, he saw a massive expanse of empty sky. The tall glass towers of his own age were absent, and London clung to the ground. To his left, Buckingham Palace, now partially hidden by a high wall, looked brand new. Quaintly costumed people were walking in the park—no, he reminded himself, not costumed; they always dressed this way!—and their slow pace appeared entirely unnatural.

Despite the background murmur, London slumbered under a blanket of silence.

He started to walk down the slope toward the base of Constitution Hill, struggling to overcome his growing sense of dislocation.

Behind him, unseen, the unconscious man regained his wits, snatched up his things, staggered to his feet, and stumbled into the trees.

“Steady, Edward,” Oxford muttered to himself. “Hang on, hang on. Don't let it overwhelm you. This is neither a dream nor an illusion, so stay focused, get the job done, then get back to your suit!”

He reached the wide path. The queen's carriage would pass this way soon. My God! He was going to see Queen Victoria! He looked around. Every single person was wearing a hat or bonnet. Most of the men were bearded or had moustaches. The women held parasols.

Slow motion. It was all in slow motion.

He examined faces. Which belonged to his ancestor? He'd never seen a photograph of the original Edward Oxford—there were none—but he hoped to recognise some sort of family resemblance.

He stepped over the low wrought-iron fence lining the path, crossed to the other side, turned around to face the hill, and loitered near a tree. People started to gather along the route. He heard a remarkable range of accents and they all sounded ridiculously exaggerated. Some, which he identified as working class, were incomprehensible, while the upper classes spoke with a precision and clarity that sounded wholly artificial. Details kept catching his eye, holding his attention with hypnotic force: the prevalence of litter and dog shit on the grass; the stains and worn patches on people's clothing; rotten teeth and rickets-twisted legs; accentuated mannerisms and lace-edged handkerchiefs; pockmarks and consumptive coughs.

“Focus!” he whispered.

He noticed a man across the way, standing in a relaxed but rather arrogant manner and looking straight at him with a knowing smile on his round face. He had a lean figure and a very large moustache.

Can he see that I don't belong here?

A cheer went up. The queen's carriage had just emerged from the palace gates, its four horses guided by a postilion. Two outriders trotted along ahead of the vehicle; two more behind.

Where was his ancestor? Where was the gunman?

Ahead of him, an individual wearing a top hat, blue frock coat, and white breeches reached under his coat and moved closer to the path. Slowly, the royal carriage approached.

Is that him?

Moments later, the forward outriders came alongside. The blue-coated man stepped over the fence and, as the queen and her husband passed, he took three strides to keep up with their vehicle, then whipped out a flintlock pistol and fired it at them. He threw down the smoking weapon and drew a second.

Oxford yelled, “No, Edward!” and ran forward.

They detected Zanzibar first with their nostrils, for, prior to the island darkening the horizon, the sultry breeze became laden with the scent of cloves. Then the long strip of land hove into view at the edge of the sapphire sea, its coral-sand beaches turned to burnished gold by the fierce sun.

“By Jove,” William Trounce whispered. “What's the word for it? Sleepy?”

“Tranquil,” Krishnamurthy suggested.

“Languidly basking in sensuous repose,” Swinburne corrected.

“Whatever it is,” said Trounce, “it's splendid. I feel as if I'm inside one of Captain Burton's tales of the Arabian Nights.”

“More so than when you were actually in Arabia?” the poet enquired.

“Great heavens, yes! That was just sand, sand, and more sand. This is…romantic!”

“Seven weeks!” Krishnamurthy grunted. “Seven weeks on a blasted camel. My posterior will never recover.”

Ahead, the land swelled seductively, coloured a reddish brown beneath its veils of green, which wavered and rippled behind the heavy curtain of air.

“What do you think, Algy?” Trounce asked. The members of Burton's expedition were all on first-name terms now—one of the more positive effects of their gruelling trek through central Arabia. They were also all burned a deep brown, with the exception of Swinburne, whose skin was almost as crimson as his hair had been before the sun bleached it the colour of straw.

The poet looked up at the detective, then followed his gaze to the prow of the ship—the Indian Navy sloop of war
Elphinstone
—where he saw Sir Richard Francis Burton standing with Isabel Arundell.

“If you're asking me whether the romance of Zanzibar is infectious, Pouncer, then I take it you haven't read Richard's account of his first expedition.”

“There's little time for reading at Scotland Yard, lad. And, for the umpteenth time, don't call me Pouncer.”

Swinburne grinned cheekily. “Apparently, the island's infections are nothing to celebrate. By the same token, I'd suggest that Richard and Isabel's relationship is probably not exactly as it appears from here.”

He was correct. In fact, had he been able to eavesdrop upon their conversation, Swinburne would have reported to Trounce that Isabel was giving Burton “what for.”

“You're a pig-headed, self-absorbed, stubborn fool,” she said. “You have never failed to underestimate me or to overestimate yourself.”

Burton fished a cigar from his pocket. “Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked.

“You'll not drive me away with tobacco fumes.”

He put a flame to the Manila, inhaled the aromatic smoke, and gazed down at the water that gurgled and sparkled against the hull below. A few yards away, a shoal of flying fish shot out of the sea and glided some considerable distance before plunging back in.

Isabel pulled a small straw-coloured cylinder from a pouch at her waist and raised it to her lips. She struck a lucifer and lit its tip.

Burton smelled the tart fumes of Latakia and looked at her, raising his eyebrows.

“Good grief! Surely that's not a cigarette?”

“All the rage since the Crimea,” came her murmured reply. “Do you object to a woman smoking?”

“I—well—that is to say—”

“Oh, stop stammering like an idiot, Dick. Let's set it out plainly, shall we? You disapprove of my lifestyle.”

“Nonsense! I simply asked you why you have chosen to live as a Bedouin when you belong to the House of Wardour, one of the richest families in Britain.”

“The implication being?”

“That you could have Society at your feet; that the comforts and advantages of an aristocratic life are yours to enjoy. You aren't Jane Digby, Isabel. She fled England after her scandalous behaviour made it impossible for her to remain there. Not so, you. So why endure the hardships and dangers of the nomadic life?”

“Hypocrite!”

“What?”

“How often have you railed against the constrictions and restraints of the Society you now endorse? How often have you purposely provoked outrage and challenged social proprieties at dinner tables with your shocking anecdotes? How often have you styled yourself the outsider, the man who doesn't fit in, the noble savage in civilised clothing? You glory in it, and yet you denounce Miss Digby! Really! They call you Ruffian Dick. I call you Poseur Dick!”