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A band of light blazed across the horizon.
Burton waved a fly away from his face and shaded his eyes.
“Bismillah!” he exclaimed. “Look at the size of it!”
“Is it a mirage?” Swinburne asked, squinting.
“No, Algy. That's it. That's the lake!”
“Ukerewe? Are you sure? It looks like the sea! Perhaps we've walked right across Africa-or we've wandered in an enormous circle!”
Burton cast his eyes around the landscape, taking in every topographical detail, making rapid mental calculations, adding it to his knowledge of the country to the southwest, around Lake Tanganyika.
“I think he was right all along,” he murmured. “I think Speke got it. Ukerewe has to be the source!”
“But I don't want him to be right!” Swinburne objected. “He doesn't deserve it!”
They continued west.
The ground rose and fell, rose and fell, and rolled away to the hazy horizon. Through the moisture-heavy air, distant peaks faded into view, dark green at their base, blanching up to such a pale blue that they merged with the sky. Hovering above, as if floating, their jagged peaks were white.
“It's wonderful!” Swinburne enthused, jerking and waving his arms. “Snow in the middle of Africa! No one will believe it!”
“Our destination!” Burton a
“Wow! I do not want to go there again,” Sidi Bombay said softly. “But I shall because I am with you, and I am certain you will pay me very well indeed.”
Yet another horse succumbed. The men were all on foot now, the baggage divided between the remaining animals. There wasn't much of it. Burton had no idea how they were going to make it back to Zanzibar.
As they progressed, villagers turned out to greet them and to press food and weapons into their hands. Word had spread like wildfire across the lands between the lake and the mountains, and now the air throbbed with drums-a deep, thunderous booming, ominous and threatening and incessant.
“I don't think we'll be taking Speke by surprise,” Swinburne commented.
In one settlement, the p'haziled them into a hut where four men lay groaning. Their skin was lacerated, in some places to the bone, and none were likely to live.
Bombay translated: “Warriors attacked Mr. Speke's people but the jungle thing killed many. Wow! Five died in this village, and the p'hazisays that in the next, Karagu, you will discover all the men gone, for there was a very big battle there.”
“How far behind Speke are we?” Burton asked.
“He says the wicked muzungo mbayaare four or five villages ahead.”
“We're too done in to catch up with him today. Ask if we can stay here overnight.”
Permission was granted, and the Britishers slept with drums pounding through their dreams.
In the morning, the women intoned a warlike chant as the expedition set off again. Burton, Swinburne, Trounce, Spencer, Bombay, and the twenty Wanyambo marched out of the village and onto marshy plains studded with rounded knolls, each topped by an umbrella cactus. They pushed through tall grasses where buffalo were numerous and mosquitoes were legion.
At noon, they arrived at Karagu, which was nestled against a strip of jungle, and found it half-wrecked and filled with keening women. The men, as the p'hazihad stated, were all dead.
On Burton's behalf, Bombay promised the women that vengeance would soon fall upon those responsible.
The expedition rested and ate a light meal, then prepared to move on.
“Kwecha!” Burton called. “Pakia! Hopa! Hopa!”
The Wanyambo gathered at the edge of the jungle. One of them shouldered through a screen of vegetation to the path beyond. He suddenly howled and came flying back out, cartwheeling over the heads of his fellows, spraying blood onto them. He thudded to the ground and lay still.
“What the-” Trounce began, then tottered back as the Prussian plant vehicle burst out of the undergrowth and plunged into the warriors. He cried out in horror as the thing's spine-covered tendrils lashed like whips, opening skin, sending blood splashing. The Wanyambo yelled in agony as their flesh was sliced and torn. Sidi Bombay was hoisted into the air and flung into the trees. The village women screamed and raced away. Trounce instinctively drew his pistol, aimed at the plant, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He threw the weapon down in disgust and swore at himself.
“Stop it!” Swinburne shouted. He hefted a spear and charged forward, plunging the shaft into the centre of the repulsive bloom. Its point sank into the driver's stomach but had little effect. A thorny appendage slashed across the poet's forehead and sent him spi
The Wanyambo fought desperately, dodging and ducking, lunging in then backing away. They fell over one another and became wet with each other's blood. They went down and struggled up again. They threw and jabbed their spears until the huge weed-like thing was bristling with shafts. But despite their efforts, the plant continued to lurch back and forth, with the Prussian cradled in its bloom screeching furiously in incomprehensible German.
Burton looked this way and that, hoping to see fire somewhere in the village-sticks burning beneath a cooking pot, anything that he might fling at the plant to set it alight-but there was nothing. He snatched a spear from the ground and started to circle the monstrosity, looking for an opening that would allow him to leap in and drive the weapon through the Prussian's head. He got too close; a thick ropey limb smacked against his torso and ripped upward, shredding his shirt and flaying a long strip of skin from his chest. He stumbled and dropped to his knees.
“Stay back, Boss!” a voice piped.
A bundled mass of robes dived past Burton and launched itself into the writhing vegetation. Herbert Spencer landed on top of the driver and was immediately entwined by creepers. His robes and polymethylene suit were ripped apart as he fought with the frenzied, flailing appendages. A thick coil whipped around him, its thorns gouging deep scratches into his brass body.
The philosopher groped downward and forced his right hand into the fleshy petals. His three brass fingers slid over the driver's face. The man hollered and the plant shook and bucked as two of Spencer's digits found his eyes. The philosopher put his full weight on his arm and drove his fingers through the back of the Prussian's eye sockets and into the brain behind. The vehicle convulsed. Burton ran over and thrust his spear through the man's neck, severing the spine. The plant's tendrils flopped down, a tremor ran through it, then it was still.
Spencer fell backward and clanged onto the ground.
“Oof!” he piped.
The Wanyambo-those who weren't dead, unconscious, or in too much pain to notice-stared at him in astonishment. A metal man!
Burton tottered away from the Eugenicist creation, pulled what remained of his shirt off, and pressed the material against the deep laceration that angled up over his chest onto his left shoulder. He groaned with the pain of it, but, upon looking at the African warriors, saw that many had suffered much worse injuries.
He made his way over to Swinburne, who was crawling out from beneath the collapsed hut. Blood was streaming down the poet's face, dripping onto his clothing.
The king's agent called to Trounce, who was standing dazed. “William, are you hurt?”
“What? Huh, no.”
“Come and bandage Algy, would you?”
The Scotland Yard man dragged a hand over his face as if to clear his mind, nodded, then ran over to the horses, which were being held on the far side of the village by a woman who'd had the foresight and courage to stop them from stampeding away. Pox and Malady were huddled on the saddle of one. The parakeets had slept through the entire drama.