Текст книги "Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon"
Автор книги: Mark Hodder
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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 29 страниц)
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.”
Without hesitation, Burton drew his revolver, raised the weapon, looked Palmerston in the eyes, and pulled the trigger.
“They probably heard that!” Wilde exclaimed. “We'd better leg it!”
They left the cell and raced down the corridor. The Masai ushered them into the records room. Burton saw that the tunnel entrance was normally concealed behind a tall filing cabinet.
“Go through and I'll slide it back,” the guard said. “Then I'll hold them at bay until I'm dead or out of ammo.”
“You're a good fellow, so you are,” Wilde said as he stepped through the opening.
“The word is out,” the Masai replied. “It was announced on the wireless minutes ago. Everyone knows what's coming. It's the end. I might as well go out with a bang!” He vanished from view as he slid the filing cabinet into place.
“The fool!” Burton hissed. “Why doesn't he come with us?”
“Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it's always from the noblest motives,” Wilde replied. “Come on! Let's not make his death in vain!”
It took them fifteen minutes to reach the other end of the passage. They stepped out into Wilde's basement and the ex-editor panted: “I'm pooped!”
“You never abandoned your diet of gobstoppers and butterscotch, I take it?” Burton ventured.
“I never expected to be running along secret corridors at the age of sixty-four!” Wilde replied. “Up the stairs with you!”
They ascended, stopped at the front door, and Wilde opened it a crack and peeked out.
“Good!” he exclaimed. “Your motor-carriage is still there. The guards will take you to Bertie.”
“You'll come too, of course!”
Wilde took Burton's hand and shook it. “No, old friend. This is where we must say goodbye. I'm too old to go hurrying out into the depths of Africa.”
“But Quips! You'll be killed!”
“Yes. But thanks to the help you gave me when I was a boy, I have lived, Captain, and to live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
“But-”
“I want to spend my last hours with the man I love.”
Burton put a hand to his friend's shoulder. “I'm glad you found happiness in this ugly world. What's his name?”
“Paul. He was a shopkeeper in his younger days-what people call a very ordinary man, but it happened that he brought to me extraordinary peace of mind and contentment.”
Burton smiled, and his eyes filled with tears. “I fear I may weep in front of you again, Quips.”
“The clock is ticking. Be off with you, man!”
Burton loosed an unsteady breath, opened the door, and stepped out into the hot mist of the Taboran night. He crossed to the motor-carriage where the three guards waited. One of them opened its door and gestured for him to enter.
“Captain!” Oscar Wilde called from the doorway.
The explorer turned.
“If the processes of time and history truly are subjective, do not be afraid of the past. If people tell you that it is irrevocable, do not believe them. The past, the present, and the future are but one moment. Time and space, succession and extension, are merely accidental conditions of thought. The imagination can transcend them.”
Oscar Wilde smiled and closed the door.
Dawn wasn't far off. Tabora was enveloped in steam. A great crowd of people milled through it, moving alongside the motor-carriage in an easterly direction.
“Are they trying to leave the city?” Burton asked.
“I suppose so,” one of the Tommies replied. “But to make it through Hell's Run, you either have to be in a very fast vehicle or crawling along on your own, keeping low and out of sight. A mob like this will never make it. They'll be slaughtered!”
“It's certain death if they stay,” one of the other men noted, “so it's worth taking the risk. I'm going to chance it, for sure.”
Burton watched in horror as shadowy forms occasionally emerged from the pall: people with fear in their eyes, carrying bags and bundles and children, looking hunted and desperate.
“Bismillah!” he muttered. “Nowhere to go, and very little chance of getting there. This is ghastly.”
With delays and diversions, the vehicle made slow progress, and the three soldiers became increasingly nervous.
“I'm sorry, sir. We didn't count on this.”
Screams and shouts came out of the cloud.
A line of steam spheres shot past.
Burton heard a gunshot.
The motor-carriage moved on.
Finally, they drew to a stop and the Tommies disembarked. The king's agent followed and was escorted to a door in the side of a warehouse. Stepping through, he entered a very expansive and well-lit space.
“Good! You made it!” Bertie Wells called.
The little war correspondent was standing beside one of two big harvestman machines. They were of the variety Burton had become familiar with here in the future-with a saddle on top of the carapace instead of a seat inside it-but they were slung rather lower to the ground than he'd seen in other models, with the middle joints of the legs rising high to either side of the body.
“Built for speed!” Wells announced.
“I assume we're to escape the city on these things?”
“Yes. We have to set off now while fortune favours us.”
“In what manner is it doing that?”
Wells grinned. “The lurchers are attacking the Germans! Hell's Run is clear!”
“The lurchers? Why?”
“No one knows!”
Burton turned to his escort: “You men heard that?”
They nodded.
“So get going! Get out of the city. Africa's a big continent. Find a quiet valley, build a village, live off the land, stay out of trouble.”
“And learn to speak German,” one of the men said.
“Yes, that might be advisable.”
They saluted and hastily departed.
Burton joined his friend by the giant arachnids. There were bulging pannier bags hanging against their sides. Wells reached up and patted one. “Food and supplies to keep us going for at least a couple of weeks.” He touched a long leather sheath. “And Lee-Enfield sniper rifles. I'll start the engines. You go and open up.” He indicated large double doors. Burton strode over and, with some difficulty, slid them apart. It was lighter outside: dawn was breaking. Mist rolled in around him as he returned to the now chugging harvestmen. Wells was already mounted on one. Burton reached up to the other's stirrup and hauled himself into its saddle. He took hold of the two control levers.
“Follow me!” Wells called.
The two spiders clanked out of the warehouse and onto a wide thoroughfare. For half a mile, the machines scuttled along the road, weaving in and out between other vehicles, with crowds surging along to either side of them. Then they passed the last outlying building and Wells led the way off the road and onto the dusty savannah, leaving the fleeing Taborans behind. He stopped his vehicle and Burton drew his own to a halt beside him. The mist was thinning and, through it, the huge orange globe of the sun was visible ahead of them.
“We'll go eastward across country,” Wells said. “If we stay a little north of the exodus, we'll be closer to the German forces but free of the crowds.”
“What's your destination, Bertie?”
“My only objective is to get past the end of Hell's Run. After that, I don't know. Where do we have to go to get you home to 1863?”
“To the Mountains of the Moon.”
Wells shook his head. “We'll not get through the Blood Jungle. It's impassable.”
“Nevertheless.”
The war correspondent lifted his shoulders and let them drop. “Whatever you say. Onward!”
“Wait!” Burton snapped. He pointed to Wells's left, at the ground.
His friend looked down. “What the hell?” he uttered in astonishment.
A line of poppies was sprouting out of the hard earth.
Wells looked at Burton, a baffled expression on his face.
“It keeps happening,” the king's agent said. “They bloom right in front of me, in an instant.”
“It's impossible, Richard. How can they grow so fast? Have the Eugenicists made them?”
“Howis one thing, Bertie, but I'm more interested in why!”
They watched as the flowers opened, a long line of them, snaking unevenly into the haze.
“North,” Burton muttered. “Bertie, I want to follow them.”
“It will take us straight into the German trenches. If the Hun doesn't do for us, the lurchers will.”
“Maybe.”
Wells reached down and unclipped the sheath containing his rifle. He took his pistol from its holster, checked that it was fully loaded, then slipped it back into place. He looked at Burton, smiled, and, in his high-pitched squeaky voice, said, “Well then: in for a penny, in for a pound!”
The two harvestmen scurried northward, following the line of red flowers, and disappeared into the mist.
“What the devil are you playing at?” William Trounce roared. “You nearly gave me a bloody heart attack!”
Herbert Spencer lowered the pistol, which, when he'd pulled the trigger, had done nothing.
“Herbert! Explain yourself!” Burton demanded.
“I'm sorry, William,” Spencer said. “I didn't mean to scare you.”
“How in blue blazes can shooting at a man's head not scare him, you tin-headed dolt?”
“But I didn't shoot, an' that's the point.”
“Not for want of trying! I clearly saw you squeeze the trigger!”
“So did I,” Swinburne added. He'd drawn his own weapon and was pointing it uncertainly at the philosopher.
“Yus, an'-as I expected-nothin' bloomin' well happened, did it!”
Burton paced forward and snatched the gun out of Spencer's hand. “As you expected? What are you talking about?”
“When we stepped onto this rock, Boss, I felt every spring in me body go slack. We've entered the Eye of Naga's area of influence. None o' the guns will work now. Nor will any other mechanical device. Henry Morton Stanley couldn't fly his rotorchairs any farther than this. You'll remember they was found by Arabs, an' they weren't functionin' at all.”
Swinburne directed his gun at the sky and squeezed the trigger. It felt loose under his finger. The weapon didn't fire.
Trounce scowled. “Firstly, Spencer, there was no need for a bloody demonstration, especially one that involved me! You've been fitted with voice apparatus-ruddy well use it! Secondly, why are you still standing?”
Burton answered before Spencer could. “We encountered this same emanation when we went after the South American Eye. The fact that Herbert's mind is embedded in the Cambodian stones gives him the ability to neutralise it.”
“I say, Herbert!” Swinburne exclaimed. “If you radiate an opposing force, could you cast it wide enough to make our guns work? It would give us one up on the Prussians!”
“Perhaps a gun I was holdin' meself,” Spencer replied.
“By thunder!” Trounce yelled furiously. “You see! What if your magic rays, or whatever they are, had worked on the pistol in your hand? You'd have blown my bloody head off!”
“All right, all right,” Burton growled impatiently. “Let's leave it be. But if you ever pull a stunt like that again, Herbert, I'll throw your key into the middle of the Ukerewe Lake.”
“I'm sorry, Boss.”
Leading the horses, they moved to the edge of the rock, which the jungle overhung, and settled in the shade. The trees around them were crowded with blue monkeys that had fallen silent when the men appeared but which now took up their distinctive and piercing cries again– Pee-oww! Pee-oww! – and began to pelt the group with fruit and sticks. Sidi Bombay shouted and waved his arms but the tormentors took no notice.
“Confound the little monsters!” Trounce grumbled. “We'll not get any peace here!”
Swinburne removed the dressings from the detective's legs and applied fresh poultices. He checked the wound on his friend's arm. It was red and puckered but the infection had disappeared.
They abandoned the clearing and plunged back into the jungle, the men trailing behind Spencer as he swiped his machete back and forth, clearing the route. Pox and Malady had elected to sit on one of the horse's saddles rather than in their habitual position on the clockwork philosopher's head, causing Swinburne to wonder whether Spencer had fallen out of favour with the two parakeets as well.
The poet struggled with his thoughts. Hadn't he noticed something about the brass man's philosophical treatise back in Ugogi? Something unusual? What was it? Why couldn't he remember? Why was a part of him feeling ambivalent about Spencer? It didn't make sense-Herbert was a fine fellow!
Moving to Burton's side, he opened his mouth to ask if the explorer shared his misgivings. Instead, he found himself saying, “It's awfully humid, just like in the coast regions.”
“Humph!” Burton replied, by way of agreement.
It was near sundown by the time they stumbled wearily out of the vegetation. They were at the base of a hill, with a wide, clear, and shallow stream crossing their path.
The horses drank greedily. One of them collapsed.
“It's done for, poor thing,” Trounce said. “I'd put a bullet through its brain if I could. It's the proper thing to do.”
“If our guns worked,” Burton responded, “that would alert Speke to our presence.”
“Allow me,” said Spencer, limping over to the stricken animal. He bent, took its head in his hands, and twisted it with all his mechanical might. The horse's neck popped. It kicked and died.
They moved half a mile upstream, washed, ate, and set up camp.
Burton spoke to Pox: “Message for Isabel Arundell. Please report. Message ends. Go.”
Pox blew a raspberry, took to the air, and disappeared over the jungle.
“Weasel thief!” Malady screeched, and flew after his mate.
The men sat quietly for a little while then entered the tent and almost immediately fell into a deep slumber.
Dawn came, and so did a warning from their clockwork sentry: “Rouse yourselves, gents! Twenty men approachin' an' they don't look very cheerful!”
Burton, Swinburne, and Trounce crawled into the open and rubbed the sleep from their eyes. They found Spencer and Bombay watching a gang of men, some way off, marching toward them. Their hair was fashioned into multiple spikes and held in place with red mud, their faces striped with ridged scars, their noses adorned with copper rings, and their shadows stretched across the golden hillside. They were armed with spears and held long oval shields.
“Wow! They are Wanyambo,” Sidi Bombay advised. “A peaceful people.”
“Not if their expressions are anything to go by,” Burton observed. “Do you speak their language, Bombay?”
“Yes. I shall talk with them.” The African set off to greet the newcomers, braving their scowls and brandished weapons. Burton and his friends watched as an argument commenced, gradually cooled to a heated debate, then settled into a passionate discussion, and, finally, became a long conversation.
Bombay returned. “Wow! These fine warriors are from the village of Kisaho. They say the muzungo mbayaarrived at Kufro, which is nearby, and took all the food and weapons from the people. Wow! The jungle moved among them and killed nine men.”
“The Prussian plant vehicle!” Burton murmured.
“And a mighty wizard took the chief by the neck and turned him into a tree which killed three more villagers by sucking out their blood. The men had to burn it to kill it.” Bombay gestured back toward the Wanyambo. “These from Kisaho came to fight you but I told them that, although you are ugly and strange, you are an enemy of the wizard and you have come to punish the wicked white men. They will help.”
“Tell them we will be honoured if they join us. Ask them to send a man running ahead to inform the villages that we are approaching, and that we are here to avenge the dead.”
This was done, and the Britishers packed their tent and set off up the hill, following the warriors over its brow and down into the forested valley beyond.
They passed along a dirt path bordered by fruit-bearing trees and fragrant flowery shrubs, then stepped out into cultivated fields where peas grew in profusion. While they were crossing these, Pox and Malady returned.
“Message from Isabel Arundell. The Arabs are holding stinking cesspit Kazeh. My witless reinforcements from Mzizima have arrived but Prussian numbers are building steadily. We're keeping them occupied. Isabella and Sadhvi are safe. Mucous-bag Mirambo is injured but will recover. When you get home, tell Palmerston to send troops as a matter of urgency. May Allah guide and protect you. Bettawfeeq!”
“That means ‘good luck,’” Burton explained in response to a puzzled look from Trounce.
“Are you going to send the bird to Maneesh?” the police detective asked.
“No. I fear it's too great a distance by now.”
The whole day was spent crossing valleys and hills. On the next, they trekked over an alluvial plain until they reached the Kitangule Kagera, a river that, according to Speke's account of his earlier expeditions, flowed into the Ukerewe Lake. Crossing it proved so awkward that their supplies got soaked and another of the horses died.
The swelling terrain on the other side was alive with antelope, which scattered as the twenty Wanyambo led the Britishers up to the crest of a hill. From there they saw, stretching for miles and miles to their right, a rich, well-wooded, swampy plain containing large open patches of water.
A band of light blazed across the horizon.
Burton waved a fly away from his face and shaded his eyes.
“Bismillah!” he exclaimed. “Look at the size of it!”
“Is it a mirage?” Swinburne asked, squinting.
“No, Algy. That's it. That's the lake!”
“Ukerewe? Are you sure? It looks like the sea! Perhaps we've walked right across Africa-or we've wandered in an enormous circle!”
Burton cast his eyes around the landscape, taking in every topographical detail, making rapid mental calculations, adding it to his knowledge of the country to the southwest, around Lake Tanganyika.
“I think he was right all along,” he murmured. “I think Speke got it. Ukerewe has to be the source!”
“But I don't want him to be right!” Swinburne objected. “He doesn't deserve it!”
They continued west.
The ground rose and fell, rose and fell, and rolled away to the hazy horizon. Through the moisture-heavy air, distant peaks faded into view, dark green at their base, blanching up to such a pale blue that they merged with the sky. Hovering above, as if floating, their jagged peaks were white.
“It's wonderful!” Swinburne enthused, jerking and waving his arms. “Snow in the middle of Africa! No one will believe it!”
“Our destination!” Burton announced. “The Mountains of the Moon!”
“Wow! I do not want to go there again,” Sidi Bombay said softly. “But I shall because I am with you, and I am certain you will pay me very well indeed.”
Yet another horse succumbed. The men were all on foot now, the baggage divided between the remaining animals. There wasn't much of it. Burton had no idea how they were going to make it back to Zanzibar.
As they progressed, villagers turned out to greet them and to press food and weapons into their hands. Word had spread like wildfire across the lands between the lake and the mountains, and now the air throbbed with drums-a deep, thunderous booming, ominous and threatening and incessant.
“I don't think we'll be taking Speke by surprise,” Swinburne commented.
In one settlement, the p'haziled them into a hut where four men lay groaning. Their skin was lacerated, in some places to the bone, and none were likely to live.
Bombay translated: “Warriors attacked Mr. Speke's people but the jungle thing killed many. Wow! Five died in this village, and the p'hazisays that in the next, Karagu, you will discover all the men gone, for there was a very big battle there.”
“How far behind Speke are we?” Burton asked.
“He says the wicked muzungo mbayaare four or five villages ahead.”
“We're too done in to catch up with him today. Ask if we can stay here overnight.”
Permission was granted, and the Britishers slept with drums pounding through their dreams.
In the morning, the women intoned a warlike chant as the expedition set off again. Burton, Swinburne, Trounce, Spencer, Bombay, and the twenty Wanyambo marched out of the village and onto marshy plains studded with rounded knolls, each topped by an umbrella cactus. They pushed through tall grasses where buffalo were numerous and mosquitoes were legion.
At noon, they arrived at Karagu, which was nestled against a strip of jungle, and found it half-wrecked and filled with keening women. The men, as the p'hazihad stated, were all dead.
On Burton's behalf, Bombay promised the women that vengeance would soon fall upon those responsible.
The expedition rested and ate a light meal, then prepared to move on.
“Kwecha!” Burton called. “Pakia! Hopa! Hopa!”
The Wanyambo gathered at the edge of the jungle. One of them shouldered through a screen of vegetation to the path beyond. He suddenly howled and came flying back out, cartwheeling over the heads of his fellows, spraying blood onto them. He thudded to the ground and lay still.
“What the-” Trounce began, then tottered back as the Prussian plant vehicle burst out of the undergrowth and plunged into the warriors. He cried out in horror as the thing's spine-covered tendrils lashed like whips, opening skin, sending blood splashing. The Wanyambo yelled in agony as their flesh was sliced and torn. Sidi Bombay was hoisted into the air and flung into the trees. The village women screamed and raced away. Trounce instinctively drew his pistol, aimed at the plant, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He threw the weapon down in disgust and swore at himself.
“Stop it!” Swinburne shouted. He hefted a spear and charged forward, plunging the shaft into the centre of the repulsive bloom. Its point sank into the driver's stomach but had little effect. A thorny appendage slashed across the poet's forehead and sent him spinning away, with red droplets showering around him. He crashed into the side of a wrecked hut, which collapsed under the impact, burying the poet beneath sticks and dried mud.
The Wanyambo fought desperately, dodging and ducking, lunging in then backing away. They fell over one another and became wet with each other's blood. They went down and struggled up again. They threw and jabbed their spears until the huge weed-like thing was bristling with shafts. But despite their efforts, the plant continued to lurch back and forth, with the Prussian cradled in its bloom screeching furiously in incomprehensible German.
Burton looked this way and that, hoping to see fire somewhere in the village-sticks burning beneath a cooking pot, anything that he might fling at the plant to set it alight-but there was nothing. He snatched a spear from the ground and started to circle the monstrosity, looking for an opening that would allow him to leap in and drive the weapon through the Prussian's head. He got too close; a thick ropey limb smacked against his torso and ripped upward, shredding his shirt and flaying a long strip of skin from his chest. He stumbled and dropped to his knees.
“Stay back, Boss!” a voice piped.
A bundled mass of robes dived past Burton and launched itself into the writhing vegetation. Herbert Spencer landed on top of the driver and was immediately entwined by creepers. His robes and polymethylene suit were ripped apart as he fought with the frenzied, flailing appendages. A thick coil whipped around him, its thorns gouging deep scratches into his brass body.
The philosopher groped downward and forced his right hand into the fleshy petals. His three brass fingers slid over the driver's face. The man hollered and the plant shook and bucked as two of Spencer's digits found his eyes. The philosopher put his full weight on his arm and drove his fingers through the back of the Prussian's eye sockets and into the brain behind. The vehicle convulsed. Burton ran over and thrust his spear through the man's neck, severing the spine. The plant's tendrils flopped down, a tremor ran through it, then it was still.
Spencer fell backward and clanged onto the ground.
“Oof!” he piped.
The Wanyambo-those who weren't dead, unconscious, or in too much pain to notice-stared at him in astonishment. A metal man!
Burton tottered away from the Eugenicist creation, pulled what remained of his shirt off, and pressed the material against the deep laceration that angled up over his chest onto his left shoulder. He groaned with the pain of it, but, upon looking at the African warriors, saw that many had suffered much worse injuries.
He made his way over to Swinburne, who was crawling out from beneath the collapsed hut. Blood was streaming down the poet's face, dripping onto his clothing.
