For the past two years, Palmerston had been receiving Eugenicist lifeextension treatments. Though seventy-seven years old, he currently had a life expectancy of about a hundred and thirty. To match this, he'd received a cosmetic overhaul. The loose skin of his face had been tightened, the fatty deposits removed, and the discolorations eliminated. Paralysing toxins had been regularly injected into the wrinkles on his forehead and around his eyes and mouth, smoothing them out and giving his face the clean contours of a young man-or, thought Burton, of a waxwork, because, in his opinion, the prime minister appeared to have wandered out of Madam Toussaud's. There was nothing natural about him; he was a shiny mockery of himself, a freakish caricature, his face too white and masklike, his lips too red, his sideburns too bushy, his curly hair too long and black, his midnight blue velvet suit too tight and foppish, his eau de cologne too liberally applied, and his movements too mannered.
"I say!" declared the prime minister. "It's not the first time you've been knocked around, is it? I remember when you came back from Abyssinia with those dreadful wounds on your face. You seem to have a nose for trouble, Burton."
"I think it's more a case of trouble having a nose for me," muttered the adventurer.
"Hmm. Be that as it may, when I look back over your history I see one disaster after another."
Palmerston leafed through a report on his desktop. The desk was an extremely big, heavy affair of carved mahogany. Burton noticed with amusement that, just below its lip, there ran around it a horizontal band decoratively carved with scenes of a highly erotic nature.
There were not many items on the desk: a blotting pad, a silver pen in its holder, a letter rack, a carafe of water and a slender glass, and, to the prime minister's left, a strange device of brass and glass which sporadically emitted a slight hiss and a puff of vapour. Burton could make neither head nor tail of it, though he saw that part of the mechanism-a glass tube about as thick as his wrist-disappeared into the desk.
"You served under General Napier in the East India Army and undertook intelligence missions for him, I believe?"
"That's correct. I speak Hindustani, among other languages, and I make up well as a native. I suppose it made me a logical choice."
"How many languages do you speak?"
"Fluently? Twenty-four, so far, plus a few dialects."
"Good gracious! Remarkable!"
Palmerston pushed on through the pages. Burton found it astonishingand ominous-that so much had been written about him.
"Napier speaks highly of you. His successor, Pringle, does not."
"Pringle is a cretinous toad."
"Is he, indeed? Is he? Bless my soul, I shall have to be a little more rigorous in my choice of appointments, then, shan't l?"
Burton coughed lightly. "My apologies," he said. "I spoke out of turn."
"According to these reports, speaking out of turn is another of your specialisms. Who was Colonel Corsellis?"
"Is, sir-he still lives. He was acting CO of the Corps when I met him."
Palmerston tried to raise his brows but they remained motionless on his taut face. He read aloud:
"Here lies the body of Colonel Corsellis,
The rest of the fellow, I fancy, in hell is."
The corner of Burton's mouth twitched. He'd forgotten that youthful doggerel.
"To be fair, he did ask me to write something about him."
"I'm sure he was delighted with the result," replied Palmerston, witheringly. His fingers tapped impatiently on the desk. He looked at Burton thoughtfully. "You were on active service with the 18th Bombay Native Infantry from '42 to '49. It appears to have been seven years of recurring insubordination and frequent sick leave."
"All the men fell ill, sir. India, at that time, was not conducive to good health. As for the insubordination-I was young. I have no other excuse."
Palmerston nodded. "We all commit errors of judgement in our youth. For most of us, they are forgiven and relegated to the past, where they belong. You, however, seem to have a rather stubborn albatross slung around your neck. I refer, of course, to your misjudged investigation in Karachi and the rumour that has attached to it."
"You mean my report concerning male brothels?"
"Yes."
"General Napier was concerned that a great number of British troops were visiting them. He asked me to find out exactly how corrupting the establishments and the practices therein might be. I did my job. I found out."
"You probed too far, according to Pringle."
"An interesting choice of words."
"His, Burton, not mine."
"Indeed. I have often thought that when a man selects one word over another he often reveals far more of himself than he intended."
"And what, in your opinion, does Pringle reveal?"
"The man maliciously besmirched my reputation. He accused me of indulging in the acts of depravity I was sent to investigate. His hounding of me amounted to an irrational obsession which, I believe, suggests but one thing."
"That being?"
"His ill-repressed desire to perform those very acts himself"
"That's quite an accusation."
"It's not an accusation, it's a supposition, and one made in a private interview. Compare that to the frenzied objections he made, in public, to my entirely imagined behaviour. His allegations have haunted my career ever since. He almost ruined me."
Palmerston nodded and turned a page.
"You were subsequently passed over for a position as chief interpreter?"
"In favour of a man who spoke but one language aside from his own, yes."
"That seems rather absurd."
"I'm pleased that someone finally recognises the fact."
"You sound bitter."
Burton didn't answer.
"So you left the East India Company army on medical grounds?"
"I was sick with malaria, dysentery, and ophthalmia."
"And syphilis," added Palmerston.
"Thank you for reminding me. The doctors didn't think I'd live. For that matter, neither did I."
"And your health now?"
"The malaria flares up now and again. A course of quinine usually quells it."
"Or a bottle of gin or two?"
"If necessary."
Another sheet of tightly written notes was turned aside.
"You returned to England in 1850 on sick leave, then prepared for your now famous pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina."
"That's correct, Prime Minister. May I ask why we're reviewing my history?"
Lord Palmerston cast him a baleful look. "All in good time, Burton."
The old man surveyed the next page, then, flicking a quick glance of embarrassment at the explorer, reached into a drawer and retrieved a pair of pince-nez spectacles, which he ruefully clipped to the bridge of his nose. Their lenses were of smoked blue glass.
He cleared his throat. "Why did you do it?"
"The pilgrimage? I was curious. Bored. Restless. I wanted to make a name for myself."
"You certainly achieved that. You completed the entire journey in disguise, as a native, speaking only Arabic?"
"Yes, as Abdullah the dervish. I wanted to be treated as one of the brethren, not as a guest. It has long been my view that an outsider, in any culture, is offered but a fragment of the truth, and that carefully dressed for his consumption, to boot. I desired authenticity."
"And you killed a boy to avoid being exposed as a non-Muslim?"
"I am, it seems, accused of that crime on a daily basis. Only last night, the question was asked of me for the umpteenth time. Did I kill a boy? No, Prime Minister, I did not. I am not guilty of murder; not of a boy nor of a woman nor of a man nor even of a dog."