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Buried alive. By God, would the nightmare never end?
He struggled to concentrate—balance, step, move—but couldn’t. His mind kept throwing up disjointed images: Isabel, the African sava
He was cold. Fatigued beyond measure. Scared. He needed Saltzma
A choir of voices said, “I can hear you. Stay back if you value your life.”
“Crowley,” he called. The word echoed into the darkness.
“Burton! Is that you? Escaped? Bravo, man! Bravo! I certainly didn’t expect you. Come forward, by all means.”
The explorer splashed on and rounded a bend. His lamps illuminated a tall, freakish figure bent over a trolley on which a large cylinder rested.
Crowley’s weird eyes assessed him and the thin-lipped, needle-toothed mouth twisted into a mocking grin. “Look at you! I wish I’d thought of do
“And possess a cranium full of it,” Burton added.
“Now now, Sir Richard. I would have thought you above such petty insults.”
“Give it up. I’ll not let you explode the bomb.”
“How do you intend to stop me? I have twice your strength and the device is on a timer. Twenty minutes from now—boom!—the new world begins.”
“The new?” Burton sneered. “There’s nothing new about the subjugation of a population to a madman’s lust for power. Sulla did it. Caesar did it. Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Bonaparte—need I go on?”
“Please don’t. I bore so very easily.”
“The event above us—that is the birth of a new world, Crowley. It is the avoidance of war; the establishment of a permanent peace; the begi
Crowley waved his hand dismissively. “You’re a fool, Burton. I was born sixteen years from now, in 1875, and saw forty-three years of history develop before I travelled back to this time. You have no conception of the scale of the conflict I lived through. It devastated nation after nation; killed whole generations; gave rise to evils beyond anything you can possibly imagine. The Germans rampaged across the globe like a plague of locusts, murdering every man, woman, and child who stood in their way, and millions who didn’t. They have to be stopped.”
“What happened in your history will not happen in this.”
“It will. Certain events occur, in varying forms, in all the histories—sometimes earlier, sometimes later, but they are inevitable. Perhaps we might term them evolutionary, for through them the community of mankind alters and develops, and the business of living takes on a different character. The war must come. But the British Empire has to win it.”
“I’ll not accept that the business of living is dependent upon the business of death for its development.”
“Life and death have always been indivisible. The one is undertaken in the shadow of the other.”
“So you’re doing mankind a favour by blowing up i
“Politicians are never i
“Perhaps not, but what of their wives and children?”
“What is the suffering of hundreds compared to the suffering of millions?”
“That’s the idle argument of one who entirely lacks compassion. No such should be allowed power.”
“Allowed, Burton?” Crowley said disdainfully. “I require no permission. I am a superior human. I’m aligned with every possible version of myself. I’m attuned to the ebb and flow of time. I accept its opportunities and relish its challenges. I see all the possibilities, all the choices, and all the outcomes. You oppose me for what you believe will be the consequences of my actions, but I see those consequences, and I know them to be preferable to the alternatives, for I have seen those, too—lived through them!”
Burton drew the rapier from his cane. “You’ll not meddle with history, Crowley. Not in this world. It is not yours. It’s—” Burton stumbled over the final word, and finished lamely, “—mine.”
Bismillah! How could he argue against Crowley when he himself was guilty of interfering with the natural course of events? His elder self, Abdu El Yezdi, had been manipulating for two decades!
He stood hesitantly, the sword-tip wavering.
There was no moral high ground.
This confrontation was suited only to the sewers.
“I can’t begin to describe,” Crowley said, “the depth of my disappointment. You aren’t what I imagined at all. I thought you far-sighted—a man who pushes to the limits then looks beyond them—but you are blind. Worse, you can’t string together a cogent objection. You oppose me out of nothing but indignation. You are of the species Vegrandis humanus—a diminutive human, and nothing more. Bring your blade to me. I no longer require you at my feet. I shall put you out of your misery.”
Burton snarled, splashed two steps forward, and jerked to an abrupt halt. He heaved at the chain, but it had reached its limit; he could proceed no farther.
Crowley threw his head back and roared with laughter. His multiplicity of voices echoed up and down the tu
“You can’t even do that! Pathetic creature!” Crowley leaned over the bomb and examined a dial. “Ten minutes remaining, Burton. Then, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, my reign will begin. Here—” he pushed the trolley forward a little, “—a fighting chance. If you amount to anything more than a man who scrabbles around looking for river sources and fabled mountains, you’ll have defused the bomb by the time I reach an access hatch and climb out of here.”
He turned and started to walk away.
Burton sheathed his rapier, reversed it, and holding it by its end tried to hook the trolley with its handle. He stretched and strained but just couldn’t reach. The trolley was a mere half-inch too far from him.
Crowley stopped and looked back. His skin was a pale purple in the lamplight. His black eyes were pitiless.
“I thought not,” he said. “Just an explorer.”
He continued down the tu
“No!” Burton barked. He slid his cane back into his harness. “I haven’t been an explorer since you murdered Isabel Arundell.”
Crowley halted and swung around. “Then what?”
Burton straightened. “I am Sir Richard Francis Burton, the king’s agent.” He lifted the police whistle hanging from the cord around his neck, put it to his lips, and blew it as hard as he could. Its high-pitched shriek reverberated deafeningly in the confined space. He dropped it, slammed shut his helmet’s faceplate, and quickly turned the butterfly screws that locked it tight.
From far behind him, a loud clank sounded, followed by a deep, reverberating boom.
Crowley frowned. His mouth moved but Burton couldn’t hear what he said.
The sewage flowing around Burton’s legs suddenly rose to his waist, causing him to stagger. A rumbling turned into a roar. Unable to resist, Burton turned and looked back. A wall of brown sludge, moving at breathtaking speed, shot down the tu
Hold on.
I can’t.
If I can, you can. Death has come for me, but it isn’t your time. I’ll stay with you until the crisis has passed.