It was eleven in the morning, and the individual who now thought of himself as Sir Richard Francis Burton was sitting at one of the tables. It was an oppressively humid day and the temperature was rising. The sky was a tear-inducing white. The air was thick with flies.
He'd refused pombe—it was far too early—and had been provided with a mug of tea instead, which sat steaming in front of him. His left forearm was bandaged. Beneath the dressing there was a deep laceration, held together by seven stitches. His face, now more fully bearded, was cut and bruised. A deep gash, scabbed and puckered, split his right eyebrow.
He dropped four cubes of sugar into his drink and stirred it, gazing fixedly at the swirling liquid.
His hands were shaking.
“There you are!” came a high-pitched exclamation. “Drink up. We have to get going.”
He raised his eyes and found Bertie Wells standing beside him. The war correspondent, who looked much shorter and stouter in broad daylight, was leaning on crutches and his right calf was encased in a splint.
“Hello, old thing,” Burton said. “Take the weight off. How is it?”
Wells remained standing. “As broken as it was yesterday and the day before. Do you know, I snapped the same bally leg when I was seven years old? You were still alive back then.”
“I'm still alive now. Get going to where?”
“Up onto the ridge so we can watch the bombing. The ships should be here within the hour.”
“Can you manage it? The walk?”
Wells flicked a mosquito from his neck. “I'm becoming a proficient hobbler. Would you do me a favour, Sir Richard? Next time I pontificate about the unlikelihood of a direct hit, will you strike me violently about the head and drag me clear of the area?”
“I'll be more than happy to. Even retrospectively.”
“I must say, though, I thoroughly enjoyed the irony of it.”
“Irony?”
“Yes. You affirm that you are quite impossibly in the land of the living, and seconds later, you almost aren't!”
“Ah, yes. Henceforth, I shall choose my words with a little more care. I did not at all enjoy being bombed and buried alive. And please drop the ‘Sir.’ Plain old ‘Richard’ is sufficient.” He took a gulp of tea and stood up. “Shall we go and watch the fireworks, then?”
They left the makeshift tavern and began to move slowly through the tents, passing empty-eyed and slack-faced soldiers, and heading toward the northern border of the encampment.
The air smelled of sweat—and worse.
“Look at them,” Wells said. “Have you ever seen such a heterogeneous throng of fighting men? They've been recruited from what's left of the British South Africans, from Australia and India, from the ragtag remains of our European forces, and from all the diverse tribes of East and Central Africa.”
“They don't look at all happy about it.”
“This isn't an easy country, as you know better than most. Dysentery, malaria, tsetse flies, mosquitoes, jigger fleas—the majority of the white men are as sick as dogs. As for the Africans, they're all serial deserters. There should be double the number of soldiers you see here.”
They passed alongside a pen of oxen. One of the animals was lying dead, its carcass stinking and beginning to swell.
“Do you have a thing about poppies?” Wells asked. “You pulled one from your pocket just before we got bombed, and now I see you have a fresh one pinned to your lapel.”
“I think—I have a feeling—that is to say—the flower seems as if it should mean something.”
“I believe it symbolises sleep—or death,” Wells responded.
“No, not that,” Burton said. “Something else, but I can't put my finger on it.”
“So you're still having trouble with your memory, then? I was hoping it'd returned. As you might imagine, I've been beside myself with curiosity these past few days. I have so many questions to ask.”
“Odd scraps of it are back,” Burton replied. “It's a peculiar sensation. I feel thoroughly disassembled. I'll submit to your interrogation, but if you manage to get anything out of me, you must keep it to yourself.”
“I have little choice. If I publicised the fact that you're alive, my editor would laugh me right out of the news office and straight into the European Resistance, from which I'd never be seen again.” Wells jerked his head, coughed, and spat. “These bloody flies! They're all over me! The moment I open my mouth, there's always one eager to buzz into it!” He saluted a passing officer, then said, “So what happened? Did some quirk of nature render you immortal, Richard? Did you fake your own death in 1890?”
“No. I have the impression that I came here directly from the year 1863.”
“What? You stepped straight from three years before I was born into the here and now? By what means?”
“I don't know.”
“Then why?”
“I don't know that, either. I'm not even sure which future this is.”
“Which future? What on earth does that mean?”
“Again, I don't know—but I feel sure there are alternatives.”
Wells shook his head. “My goodness. The impossibilities are accumulating. Yet here you are.”
“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 communiqué 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!”