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“Here I am,” Burton agreed.
“An anachronic man,” Wells muttered. He stopped to adjust his crutches.
Moans emerged from a nearby tent, its inhabitant obviously wracked by fever. The sound of his misery was drowned out as a group of Askaris filed past, singing a mournful song. Burton listened, fascinated by their deep voices, and was able to identify the language as Kichagga, a dialect of Kiswahili, which suggested the men were from the Chagga tribes that originated in the north, from the lands below the Kilima Njaro mountain.
They were far from home.
So was he.
“I once discussed the possibility of journeying through time with young Huxley,” Wells said, as the two of them got moving again. “It was his assertion that no method would ever be invented, for, if it were, then surely we'd have been overrun by visitors from the future. It didn't occur to either of us that they'd actually come from the past. You say you don't know how it was achieved? But was it through mechanical means or a-I don't know-a mental technique?”
“I have no idea. Who's Huxley?”
“A boy I was acquainted with. He had a prodigious intellect, though he was almost entirely blind and hardly out of short trousers. He was killed when the Hun destroyed London. I don't understand, Richard-how could movement through time have been possible in the 1860s yet remain a secret today?”
“My guess is that-that-that-wait-who is-was-is Palmerston?”
“Pah! That villain! In your day, he was prime minister.”
“Yes!” Burton cried. “Yes! I remember now! He had a face like a waxwork!”
“What about him?”
“I think he might have suppressed the fact that the boundaries of time can be breached.”
“The devil you say! I should have known! That wily old goat! Does he know you're here?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Maybe my editor would help you to contact him.”
“I have no means of sending a communique into the past.”
“I mean now, here in 1914.”
Burton exclaimed, “Surely you don't mean to suggest that he's still alive?”
“Ah. You didn't know. Yes, he's with us. Famously so. Or perhaps ‘notoriously so’ would be a more accurate assessment. He's a hundred and thirty years old!”
“Bismillah!” Burton gasped. “Palmerston! Alive! Is he still prime minister?”
“No, of course not. There's been no such thing since the Germans overran Europe. And let me tell you: few men who ever lived have had as much blood on their hands as Palmerston. He called us to war. We were making the future, he said, and hardly any of us troubled to think what future we were making.” Wells waved his hand at the tents that surrounded them. “Behold!”
Burton looked puzzled. “But there's more than this, surely? What of the Empire?”
Wells stopped in his tracks. “Richard,” he said quietly. “You have to understand. This is it.”
“It?”
“All that remains. The men commanding these two battalions of Askaris, plus perhaps three thousand in the British Indian Expeditionary Force, scattered groups of soldiers around the Lake Regions, maybe twenty thousand civilians and Technologists in our stronghold at Tabora, and whatever's left of the British European Resistance-there's nothing else.”
Burton looked shocked. “This is the Empire? What in heaven's name happened?”
“As I told you before, it all began here. By the 1870s, despite the efforts of Al-Manat, the German presence in Africa was growing. Palmerston was convinced that Bismarck intended a full-scale invasion. He believed that Germany was seeking to establish an empire as big as ours, so he posted a couple of battalions over here to prevent that from happening. The Hun responded by arming the natives, setting them against us. The conflict escalated. Palmerston sent more and more soldiers. Then, in 1900, Germany suddenly mobilised all its forces, including its Eugenicist weapons-but not here. It turns out that Bismarck never wanted Africa. He wanted Europe. France fell, then Belgium, then Denmark, then Austria-Hungary, then Serbia. The devastation was horrific. Britain fought wildly for five years, but our Army was divided. Almost a third of it was here, and when they tried to get home, Germany blockaded all the African ports. My God, what a consummate tactician Bismarck was! We didn't stand a chance. Then he gained Russia as an ally, and we were conquered. India, Australia, South Africa, and the West Indies all quickly declared their independence, British North America fell to a native and slave uprising, and the Empire disintegrated.”
Burton sent a breath whistling through his teeth. “And Palmerston was to blame?”
“Completely. His foreign policy was misjudged in the extreme. No one really understands why he was so obsessed with Africa. A great many Britishers have called for him to be tried and executed. After all, it's not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not pay with their own, and he was the greatest gambler of them all. But Crowley insists that he should be kept alive-that, somehow, the survival of Tabora, the last British city, depends on him.”
They reached an area where the tents thi
Burton noted that, though the war machines' design was new to him, the technology appeared to have advanced little since his own age.
“Let's rest again for a moment,” Wells said. “This bloody leg is giving me gyp.”
“All right.”
Burton leaned against one of the arachnids and batted a fly from his face.
Memories were stirring. He was trying to recall the last time he'd met Lord Palmerston.
Shut the hell up, Burton! Am I to endure your insolence every time we meet? I'll not tolerate it! You have your orders! Do your bloody job, Captain!
The prime minister's voice echoed in a remote chamber of his mind but he was unable to associate it with any specific occasion.
“So he's at Tabora?” he asked.
“Palmerston? Yes. He's kept under house arrest there. I find it incredible that he still has supporters, but he does-my editor for one-so it's unlikely he'll go before the firing squad, as he deserves. You know he buggered up the constitution, too?”
“How so?”
“When he manipulated the Regency Act back in 1840 to ensure that Albert took the throne instead of Ernest Augustus of Hanover, he left no provision for what might happen afterward-no clear rules of succession for when Albert died. Ha! In 1900, I, like a great many others, was a staunch republican, so when the king finally kicked the bucket, I was happy to hear calls for the monarchy to be dismantled. Of course, equally vociferous voices were raised against the idea. Things got rather heated, and I, being a journalist, got rather too involved. There was public disorder, and I'm afraid I might have egged it on a little. When a man gets caught up in history, Richard, he loses sight of himself. Anyway, Palmerston was distracted, and that's when Bismarck pounced. I feel a fool now. In times of war, figureheads become necessary for morale. I should have realised that, but I was an idealist back then. I even believed the human race capable of building Utopia. Ha! Idiot!”
They slouched against the machines for a couple more minutes, the humidity weighing down on them, then resumed their trek, moving away from the tanks and up a gentle slope toward the ridge. The ground was dry, cracked, and dusty, with tufts of elephant grass standing in isolated clumps. There were also large stretches of blackened earth-“Where carnivorous plants have been burned away,” Wells explained. “At least we're not due the calamity of rain for a few more weeks. The moment a single drop touches the soil, the bloody plants spring up again.”
The Indian Ocean, a glittering turquoise line, lay far off to their right, while to their left, the peaks of the Usagara Highlands shimmered and rippled on the horizon.