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Trounce stepped forward.
“Back, William! I intend no harm to your friend! See, I'm putting down the pistol now-” he placed his revolver next to Burton's head, “-but I'll slice his throat if you come any closer.”
Trounce bit his lip and gave a curt nod. He returned to his former position.
The brass man took hold of Burton's hair and, working quickly, began to slice it off.
“You have a most remarkable mind, Sir Richard,” he said. “When you wandered into this diamond's range of influence during your first expedition, we immediately recognised that you were the soft skin we'd been waiting for.”
Burton winced as the blade scraped across his scalp.
The priest continued: “The one with an open and enquiring intellect; an observer, sufficiently separated from his own culture to be able to easily absorb the ways of others; one not disorientated by the unusual or unfamiliar.”
“Why is that of any significance?”
K'k'thyima removed the last few strands of hair from the explorer's head and said, “William, Mr. Speke, I have to perform a delicate operation now. Do not interfere. If you try anything, he'll die, and so will you. Is that understood?”
Both men nodded.
The clockwork man put down the knife and took up a small bowl. It was partially filled with a sticky paste.
“Excellent!” he exclaimed. “The Batembuzi prepared everything well!”
He dipped the bowl into a chalice, scooping black diamond dust into it, then used a small instrument to work the dust into the paste. Limping to the head of the altar, he employed the same instrument to paint an intricate hieroglyph on Burton's naked scalp.
“It is of significance, Sir Richard, because it gives you the wherewithal to remain sane while experiencing history beyond the boundaries of your natural lifespan.”
“Beyond the-” Burton began. He stopped and his eyes widened. “You surely don't intend to send me through time!”
“I intend exactly that.”
The Naga priest finished painting, put the bowl aside, and reversed the instrument he was holding. Its other end was needle-sharp.
“This will hurt,” he said, and started to jab the point over and over into Burton's skin, working at such speed that his hand became a blur.
Burton groaned and writhed in pain.
“Time, Sir Richard. Time. Time. Time. You soft skins have such a limited sense of it. You think it's the beat of a heart, that its pulses are regular, that it marches from A to B to C. But there's much more to time than mere rhythm and sequence. There's a melody. There are refrains that arise and fade and arise again. Time can change pitch and timbre and texture. Time has harmonies. It has volume. It has accents and pauses. It has verses and choruses. Your understanding of it is tediously horizontal, but it has all these vertical aspects, too.”
William Trounce snorted. “Even if all that gobbledegook is true,” he growled, “so bloody well what?”
“Just this, Detective Inspector: when the ripples of consequence spread out from an action taken, they go in all directions, not just forward, as you soft skins would have it. All directions.”
“Ruddy nonsense!”
K'k'thyima straightened up from his task and said, “Do you happen to have a handkerchief?”
Trounce shook his head, but Speke reached into his pocket, pulled out a square of cotton, and passed it to the clockwork priest. K'k'thyima used it to wipe the blood and excess paste from the explorer's freshly etched tattoo.
“All done,” he a
Burton said, “Why?”
“Because you have to learn! If you don't, this world is doomed! It is in your hands now, soft skin-teach the lesson you learn today.”
“Hogwash!” Trounce spat.
“It's a terrible shame,” K'k'thyima said, “and I'm truly sorry, but, as has ever been the case, the Eye requires a sacrifice to activate it. Your essence will, however, be imprinted on the stone, if that's any consolation, William.”
He raised the pistol and shot Trounce through the head.
Burton screamed.
There was a blinding white flash.
CHAPTER 12
“In despair are many hopes.”
The prodigious plant quivered and the huge red flower swung upward into a sunbeam and unfurled its outer layer of spiny petals to soak in the light and heat. The air bladders at the top of its stalk expanded like balloons then contracted, and the resultant squeak possessed an oddly dreamy tone.
“One, who is not, we see; but one, whom we see not, is;
Surely this is not that; but that is assuredly this.
“What, and wherefore, and whence? for under is over and under;
If thunder could be without lightning, lightning could be without thunder.”
The bloom shifted again with a woody creak and appeared to look back down at the two men, who sat on their harvestmen and gaped at it in utter astonishment.
Bertie Wells whispered the obvious: “It's a talking plant. A talking bloody plant!”
Two long narrow leaves, positioned a little way below the petals, stretched and curled in a gesture that resembled a man throwing out his hands. “So explain yourself, you rotter! Why did you ignore me for so long? Wasn't it obvious that I was calling you back? The poppies, Richard! The poppies!”
Burton turned off his harvestman's steam engine, toppled from his saddle, thumped onto the ground, and lay still.
Behind him, Wells hurriedly stopped his own machine, dismounted, and ran over to kneel at his friend's side.
“I say!” the flower exclaimed. “Who are you? What's wrong with Richard?”
“I'm Bertie Wells, and I think he's fainted. Probably out of sheer disbelief!”
“Ah,” said the bloom, and added:
“Doubt is faith in the main; but faith, on the whole, is doubt;
We ca
“Why, and whither, and how? for barley and rye are not clover;
Neither are straight lines curves; yet over is under and over.
“Two and two may be four; but four and four are not eight;
Fate and God may be twain; but God is the same as fate.”
“God is a proven fallacy,” Wells muttered distractedly as he took a flask from his belt and splashed water onto Burton's face.
“Indeed he is,” the plant agreed. “Darwin drove the sword home and left us with a void. What now, hey? What now? I say we should fill it with a higher sort of pantheism. What do you think, Mr. Wells?”
Without considering the fact that he'd somehow become engaged in a theological discussion with oversized vegetation-for he felt that to do so would lead to the inevitable conclusion that he'd gone completely barmy-Wells replied: “I feel man would be wise to work at correcting his own mistakes instead of waiting for intervention from on high, and should replace faith in an unknowable divine plan with a well-thought-out scheme of his own.”
“I say! Bravo! Bravo!” the plant cheered.
“Ask a man what he thinks, and get from a man what he feels;
God, once caught in the fact, shows you a fair pair of heels.”
Burton blinked, sneezed, lay still for a moment, then scrambled to his feet, swayed, and grabbed at one of his harvestman's legs for support.
He looked up at the flower.
It angled itself downward and squealed, “I didn't think you were the fainting type, Richard! A hangover, I suspect! Did you drink too much of my brandy? I exude it like sap, you know! A very ingenious process, even if I do say so myself!”