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“Aye. It's an adaptation of an instinct what's inherent in the body.”
“And you suspect that your transference into this brass mechanism might have robbed you of your conscience?”
“I don't know whether it has or hasn't, Boss. I just wonder. I need to test it.”
They sat a little longer, then Burton was overcome by weariness and retired to the tent.
Travel the following morning proved the easiest since their arrival in Africa. The ground was firm, trees-baobabs-were widely spaced, and undergrowth was thinly distributed. Small flowers grew in abundance.
As they entered this district, Pox and Malady launched themselves from Spencer's shoulders and flew from tree to tree, rubbing their beaks together and insulting each other rapturously.
“It's love,” Swinburne declared.
Almost before they realised it, they found cultivated land underfoot and a village just ahead. It was too close to avoid, so hongowas paid and, in return, a hut was assigned for their use.
They rested and took stock.
Sadhvi's medicine was driving the fever out of Burton. He ached all over but his temperature had stabilised and strength began to seep back into his limbs.
Trounce, though, was suffering. The spear wound in his arm had become slightly infected, and his legs were ulcerating again.
“I shall be crippled at this rate,” he complained. He sat on a stool and allowed Swinburne to roll up his trouser legs.
“Yuck!” the poet exclaimed. “What hideous pins you have, Pouncer!”
“You're not seeing them at their best, lad.”
“Nor would I want to! Now then, it just so happens that I'm the sole purveyor of Sister Raghavendra's Revitalising Remedies. Incredible Cures and Terrific Tonics, all yours for a coil of wire and three shiny beads! What do you say?”
“I say, stop clowning and apply the poultice or I'll apply the flat of my hand to the back of your head.”
Swinburne got to work.
“Shame you can't do nothin' for mine,” Spencer piped.
Burton, who, with Bombay, had been parleying with the village elders, walked over and plonked himself on the ground beside the Yard man.
“We need to navigate in a slightly more northeasterly direction,” he said. “It will save us from having to pass through a densely populated region.”
They departed before sun-up the next morning, descended into a deep and miry watercourse, struggled through bullrushes, then climbed to the peak of a hill just as the sun threw its rays over the horizon. The next few hours were spent crossing uneven ground cut through with marshy rivulets, each filled with tall, tough reeds. There were cairns dotted over the land for as far as the eye could see, as well as stubby malformed trees in which hundreds of black vultures sat in sinister contemplation.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of Death,” Swinburne a
“Spongy-brained measles rash!” Pox added.
A steep incline led them up onto firmer ground and into a forest. The two parakeets once again left Spencer's shoulders and travelled overhead, with Pox teaching Malady new insults.
Burton rode onto a fairly well-defined trail.
“This is the path I think Speke is following,” he said.
“Wow!” Bombay answered. “It is the one he took before, when I was with him.”
“Then we should proceed with caution.”
They stopped to eat, then rode on at a brisk pace until they emerged from the trees at the head of a shadowed valley. Its sides were thickly wooded and a clear stream ran through its middle with reasonably open ground to either side. There were pandana palms in profusion, rich groves of plantains, and thistles of extraordinary size. In the distance, the land rolled in high undulations to grassy hills, which Burton identified as the districts of Karague and Kishakka.
Late in the afternoon, they approached a village and were surprised when the inhabitants, upon sighting them, ran away.
“By Jove! That hasn't happened since we had the harvestman,” Trounce observed.
Riding among the huts, they noticed that the usual stocks of food were missing. There were also a couple of ominous-looking stains on the ground in the central clearing.
“It looks like they received some non-too-friendly visitors,” the king's agent said. He unpacked two boxes of beads from one of the horses and placed them at the entrance to the chief's dwelling. “Let's leave them a gift, if for no other reason than to demonstrate that not all muzungo mbayaare bad.”
The remainder of the day was spent travelling through the rest of the valley before crossing fine, rising meadowlands to a stratified sandstone cliff, beneath which they rested for the night.
Another early start. Hilly country. Herds of cattle. Forests of acacias.
All around them, the trees were alive with a profusion of small birds, whistling and chirping with such vigour that, for the entire day, the men had to raise their voices to be heard above the din.
They left the boisterous tree-dwellers behind as the sun was riding low in the sky and drew to a halt on a summit, looking across a broad, junglethick basin. On the far side, they spotted movement on the brow of a hummock. Trounce lifted the field glasses, clipped them onto his head, and adjusted the focusing wheels.
“About twenty men,” he reported. “On foot. And one of those plant-vehicle things.”
“Let me see,” Burton said.
His friend passed the magnifying device and Burton looked through it, watching the distant group as it disappeared from view.
“Speke,” he said.
They decided to stop where they were, quickly set up the camp, and without bothering to eat first immediately fell into an exhausted sleep.
Herbert Spencer stood outside the tent, leaning on his staff. His shadow lengthened, turned a deep shade of purple, then dissipated into the gathering gloom. When they awoke in the morning, he was still there. Burton wound him up.
“I say, Herbert, is your mind still active when your spring is slack?” Swinburne asked as he prepared their breakfast.
“Yus, lad.” The mechanical man tapped a gloved finger to his scarf-enshrouded head. “The babbage in here interprets the electrical field held in the diamonds an' translates its fluctuations as speech an' movement. In the other direction, it cha
“It must feel like you're trapped. I should probably go mad under such circumstances.”
“You're already mad,” Trounce put in.
One of the horses had died during the night. They redistributed its load, then, after eating, began the trek down the slope to the edge of the jungle. When they reached it, they found the verdure to be extravagantly abundant and chaotic, pressing in to either side of the narrow trail. Speke's party had passed this way recently, but there was very little evidence to suggest it, and guiding the horses past the thorny bushes and dangling ant-covered lianas proved extremely difficult.
“I'll set to with me machete, Boss,” Spencer a
He unsheathed his blade and began to swipe at the undergrowth. A man would have been exhausted by this very quickly but the clockwork philosopher's mechanical arm hacked without pause, widening the path, until four hours later they emerged onto a huge flat rock as big as a te
Spencer moved onto it, stumbling slightly, then laid down his blade, pulled a 54-bore Beaumont-Adams revolver from his waistband, and said: “Shall we stop here awhile?”
Burton glanced at Trounce and replied, “Yes, I think William's ulcers are paining him. We'll lay up until the day's heat abates a little.”