The explorer turned to Wilde. “Did you bring me here to be maligned?”
“Please allow him a moment to get it out of his system, Captain. It's been pent up for half a century.”
“Prussian spy! Treasonous snake! You dirty collaborator!”
“I have no idea what he's talking about. Is he sane?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“How old is he?
“A hundred and thirty-four.”
“You never bloody told me!” Palmerston gurgled.
“Have you finally run out of insults, Pam?” Burton asked.
“Lord Palmerston, you insolent cur! You never told me!”
“Told you what?”
The misshapen figure squirmed and stretched spasmodically.
Wilde said, “Calm yourself, please, Lord Palmerston. We don't have time for tantrums.”
The ex-prime minister went limp. He glared at Burton with sulphurous hatred. The accordion-thing shook and rattled and groaned, expanded, blew out more steam, and squeezed shut.
“I sent you to Africa to find the Eye of Naga. You succeeded in your mission but you neglected to report that, in the course of retrieving it, you'd visited the future!”
“Sir,” Burton replied. “You must understand: you're berating me for something that, from my point of view, I haven't done yet.”
“You saw this damned war. You saw that the Germans were running rampant over the entire globe. You saw that the British Empire had been reduced to this one small enclave. Yet you purposely kept it from me! You were working for the Prussians all along!”
“No, I was not.”
“Then why?”
“How can I possibly account for decisions I haven't yet made?”
“Traitor!”
Burton looked at Oscar Wilde and gave a helpless shrug.
Wilde stepped forward. “Gentlemen, let us get straight to the point. Captain, if I might explain-Lord Palmerston is blamed by the majority of Britishers for the woeful position we find ourselves in.”
“Yes, Bertie Wells expressed such a sentiment.”
“Indeed. Fortunately, Bertie has acted counter to his views on the matter out of loyalty to me, for I, along with a few others, am of the opinion that Lord Palmerston only ever had the best interests of the Empire in mind when he made the decisions that led to this war.”
Burton looked at the monstrosity hanging in the frame and murmured, “I don't disagree. But, Quips, those ‘best interests’ were envisioned according to the manner in which he comprehended the influences at play: the political landscape; the perceived shape of society and culture; the advice of his ministers; and so forth. In my opinion, his judgement of those things was erroneous in the extreme, and so too, inevitably, were his decisions.”
Palmerston emitted a spiteful hiss.
Wilde nodded. “A fair statement, but is it not the case that the manner in which a man apprehends the present is shaped by his past?”
“Then where does the responsibility for his decisions lay? With Time itself? If so, then you're proposing that Palmerston is a victim of Fate.”
“I am. Furthermore, I submit that you are, too. So perhaps you should stop striving to understand what is happening and, instead, simply allow it to play out however it will. You've just learned that you'll return to the past, which, I'm sure, is very welcome news indeed. Bertie is currently making arrangements to ensure that you get out of Tabora. When you do so, I suggest that you placidly follow whatever sequence of events leads you home.”
Burton was suddenly filled with longing. How he missed Mrs. Angell, his comfortable old saddlebag armchair, his library, even Mr. Grub, the street vendor, whose pitch was on the corner of Montagu Place!
“Captain,” Wilde continued, “just as Lord Palmerston made his decisions according to how the past taught him to gauge the state of affairs, so, too, will you. In 1863, you'll determine-you diddetermine-not to reveal that you had survived for a number of years in a war-torn future where you witnessed the death of the British Empire. Our history books, such as they are, don't reveal anything that casts light on why you took this course of action. Biographies written about you don't even mention that you were the king's agent, for that was a state secret. They say the second half of your life was lived quietly, indulging in scholarly pursuits. This is only partially true. What really happened is that you exiled yourself to Trieste, on the northeastern coast of Italy, from there to watch the seeds of war sprouting. You died in that city in 1890, ten years before the Greater German Empire invaded its neighbouring countries.”
Sir Richard Francis Burton moistened his lips with his tongue. He raised his hand and put his fingertips to the deep and jagged scar on his left cheek, the one made by a Somali spear back in '55.
“Am I to take it that you're blaming me for the war?” he asked huskily.
“Yes!” Palmerston gurgled.
“No, not at all,” Wilde corrected. “People are wrong to condemn Lord Palmerston, and Lord Palmerston is wrong to condemn you. You do not represent the evils of this world, Captain Burton-you represent hope.”
“Because you think I can alter history?”
“Indeed so. Lord Palmerston and I were already aware that Crowley had, in 1914, detected an aberrant presence in Africa. When Bertie Wells told me-about eighteen months ago-that he'd met you, we realised what that aberration was and how it-you-could be employed to change everything.”
“So whatever the circumstances I find when I return to 1863, you want me to somehow suppress the reactions that my own past has instilled in me, ignore what I consider to be my better judgement, and-” he turned to face Palmerston,“-and tell you everything I've seen here during the past five years?”
“Tell me everything, Burton!”
“Should I even describe your present-um-condition?”
“I insist upon it. I would like the opportunity to die naturally, with a little grace, at a much earlier time.”
Burton sighed. “I'm sorry. It won't work.”
“Why not?” Wilde asked.
“I will most assuredly do as you suggest, and I might succeed in creating a history in which this war never happens. If so, I'll have the good fortune to live in it. But you won't. Here, nothing will change. You won't wink out of existence and wake up in a new world. Instead, a new history will branch off from the moment I change my actions, and it will run parallel to this one.”
“Is there then no hope for us?”
“If I understand the workings of time correctly, the only way to alter the circumstances in which you exist, as opposed to the future that lies ahead, would be to somehow change the past without leaving the present-like sitting on a tree branch and sawing it through behind you, at the trunk.”
“Isn't that what we're doing by making this request?”
“Asking a person to perform an action is not the same as performing that action yourself.”
“Captain, you're implying that time and history are entirely subjective.”
“Yes, I rather think I am.”
There came a knock at the door. It opened and the Masai guard poked his head into the room. “You have to get out of here,” he said. “They're on their way. They're going to move Lord Palmerston onto the Britannia.”
Wilde nodded and the guard withdrew.
“Don't allow them to move me!”
“The city is about to be destroyed, sir,” Wilde said. “A select few will attempt to escape in the sphere. It appears you'll be among them.”
Palmerston was silent for a moment, then: “Burton, do as we say. If it won't change this world, it will, at least, create another, better one, and Mr. Wilde and I can die knowing that somewhere, other versions of us lived better lives.”
Burton looked at Wilde, who nodded and said, “We have to go.”
“Wait!” Palmerston ordered. “Burton, I don't trust you. You have to demonstrate your loyalty.”
“How?”
“Obey my final order. Without question!”
“What is it?”
“I have received so many Eugenicist treatments that I cannot die a natural death. That fiend Crowley has been feeding off my mental energy like a damned vampire to supplement his mediumistic powers. I cannot stand it any more. Take out your pistol right this minute and shoot me through the head.”