Текст книги "Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon"
Автор книги: Mark Hodder
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Swinburne and Keller hung back while Burton and Trounce went over the rooms.
“Notebook!” the Scotland Yard man exclaimed, lifting a small bound volume from the bed. He flicked through it, page by page. “Nothing but odds on dogs. He was a gambler, this Pimlico fellow.”
“Ee were a loser,” Keller said. “Lost every bleedin' penny ee earned. Nearly alweez late wit' rent.”
“How was he employed?” Burton asked.
“At t' Pride-Manushi factory, packagin' velocipede parts what they send to salesrooms o'er in Coventry. But ee was laid off a fortnight since, after ee got nabbed fr' thievin'.”
Burton's eyebrows arched. “What happened?”
“Ee climbed through t' window at Cat n' Fiddle, skanked a couple o' bottles o' whisky, an' jumped straight out int' arms o' trappers. Spent a night in clink.”
Trounce frowned. “Just one night? After breaking into a public house?”
“Aye.”
“Where was he held?”
“Farrow Lane Police Station.”
Some minutes later, the detective inspector called to Burton, who was searching the kitchen: “Captain, your opinion, please.”
Trounce pointed down at the bare floorboards near the window. Burton stepped over, looked, and saw a small glob of something blackish and fibrous. He squatted, took a pencil from his pocket, scraped its end in the dried-up substance, then raised it to his nose.
He winced in disgust. “Stinks of tooth decay-and something else. Mr. Keller, did Pimlico use chewing tobacco?”
“Nah. Ee smurked Ogden's Flake, same as what ah does.”
Burton stood and addressed Trounce. “I've made a study of tobacco odours. I'm certain this is Kautabak, a Prussian brand. Not widely available in England.”
“And you think it was left by the foreigner? Our murderer is Germanic?”
“I suspect exactly that, yes.”
They spent another twenty minutes searching but found nothing of any further use.
“Well then,” Trounce said, “we'll take our leave of you, Mr. Keller.”
“Aye, an' ah'll not be sad t' see thee go,” the householder muttered.
As they descended the stairs, he added, “Ee were expectin' t' come int' brass, ee were.”
Trounce stopped. “What?”
“Pimlico. Ee were expectin' brass-were goin' t' pay me what ee owed in rent, or so ee said.”
“Money? From where?”
“Durn't knah.”
Outside the house, the Yard man looked up at the sky, which was now a pale overcast grey.
“As from today I'm officially on extended leave,” he said, “but I'll be damned if I'll leave this alone.” He turned to Burton and Swinburne. “Next stop, Farrow Lane. I want to know why Pimlico was released.”
They climbed back into their vehicles and took to the air. Once again, they had to search for a constable to give them directions. Fifteen minutes later, they landed outside the police station and Burton and Swinburne waited in their vehicles while Trounce entered to make his enquiries. He was gone for twenty minutes, during which time the poet discussed his latest project, Atalanta in Calydon, with his friend.
“I'm moved to heighten the atheist sentiment by way of a tribute to old Bendyshe,” he said. “He was determined to drive the last nails into the coffin that Darwin built for God.”
“Tom would have appreciated that,” Burton responded. “For all his larking around, he never had anything but praise for you, Algy, and he adored your poetry. He was one of your most dedicated advocates.”
An uncharacteristic hardness came to the poet's eyes. “Do you remember me once telling you about how, in my youth, I wanted to be a cavalry officer?”
“Yes. Your father wouldn't allow it, so you climbed Culver Cliff on the Isle of Wight to prove to yourself that you possess courage.”
“That's right, Richard. And at one point, I hung from that rock face by my fingertips, and I wasn't afraid. Since that occasion, I have never once shirked a challenge, no matter how dangerous. I don't baulk at the idea of warfare; of engaging with the enemy; of fighting for a principle. As a poet, my roots are deeply embedded in conflict.”
“What's your point, Algy?”
“My point is this: as of now, I'm on a mission of vengeance.”
The Royal Naval Air Service Station was situated some twenty miles east of Fryston. It had originally been established for the building of dirigibles, an endeavour the Technologists had abandoned after a sequence of disastrous crashes and explosions. Those failures had led to the development of rotating-wing flight mechanics, and a breathtaking example of that particular form of engineering ingenuity currently dominated the largest of the station's landing fields.
HMA Orpheuswas the most colossal rotorship Sir Richard Francis Burton had ever seen. Side-on, she appeared long and flat, two decks high, with a humped cargo hold slightly to the rear of centre, a conning tower at the front, and a glass-enclosed observation deck occupying her pointed prow. Eight flight pylons extended from either side of her-a total of sixteen, which made her the most powerful rotorship ever constructed.
Most of the crew and passengers were already aboard, ready for the short trip to London. Burton, Swinburne-sans laurel wreath-Captain Lawless, and Detective Inspector Trounce stood at the base of the boarding ramp, bidding farewell to Monckton Milnes and Sir Richard Mayne. The latter, nervous of flying, had opted to ride the atmospheric railway to the capital later in the week.
“So the fat Prussian bailed Pimlico out,” Trounce told the police commissioner. “He gave his name as Otto Steinruck, and an Essex address.”
Swinburne added, “Probably false.”
“No,” Trounce said. “The address had to be verified before his bail could be accepted. It exists and it's registered in his name.”
“You're off duty now, Detective Inspector,” Mayne said, “but if you want to pursue this in an official capacity during what little time you have left before your departure, then you have my permission.”
“I would, and thank you, sir.”
Mayne nodded, then looked up at the ship. “What a monster!” he exclaimed.
“The first of a new breed,” Lawless told him. “Mr. Brunel surpassed himself with this one!”
“And she'll take you all the way along the Nile?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
Burton said, “Mechanical devices refuse to function in the Lake Regions, Chief Commissioner. Some sort of emanation prevents it. Henry Morton Stanley's rotorchairs were found there, and their engines were as dead as a doornail. We fear that if the Orpheusflew too close she'd drop like a stone, and since we have no clear idea of where the zone begins, we have little choice but to go in on foot.”
“Besides which,” Lawless added, “this ship sacrifices economy for speed, so she'll need to stop for fuel, which can't be done in Central Africa.”
“So what's your route?” Monckton Milnes asked.
“Our first leg is London to Cairo,” Lawless replied, “the second Cairo to Aden, then we'll fly to our final stop, Zanzibar, where the collier ship Blackburnawaits us with a hold full of coal. The expedition will disembark, we'll refuel, offload the vehicles and supplies on the mainland, and head home.”
Burton added, “A hundred and fifty Wanyamwezi porters have been hired in Zanzibar and are already making their way inland with supplies purchased on the island. They'll deliver the goods to a village in the Dut'humi Hills and will await our arrival. When we get there, they'll be paid and fresh porters from the nearby Mgota tribes will be hired. We'll then push on and, hopefully, will reach Kazeh before we have to abandon the vehicles. From there, we'll hike north to the Lake Regions and the Mountains of the Moon.”
Lawless said, “Well, chaps, we'll never achieve any of that if we don't get under way, so I'd better check that my ship is flight ready. We'll be off in ten minutes. I'll leave you to say your goodbyes.” He gave a nod to Mayne and Monckton Milnes, touched a finger to the peak of his cap, and walked up the ramp and into the Orpheus.
Sir Richard Mayne drew Trounce aside and engaged him in a quiet conversation.
Monckton Milnes grasped Swinburne's hand and gave it a hearty shake. “Good luck, young 'un,” he said. “You stay safe, do you hear me?”
“Perfectly well, old horse,” Swinburne replied. “Don't you fret about me. I'll be fine. I'm too slight a morsel for a lion or crocodile to bother with, and I plan to keep myself soaked in gin to fend off the mosquitoes.”
“Good lad! I look forward to some inspired poetry upon your return.”
Swinburne caught Mayne's eye, gave him a salute, and boarded the ship.
“Are you sure he's up to it, Richard?” Monckton Milnes asked Burton. “As much as I admire him, he's the very last person I'd expect to be trekking through Africa.”
Burton gave a wry smile. “You know as well as I do that he's far from the delicate flower he appears. He's a tough little blighter and I need his insight into the Naga business. Anyway, he'd never forgive me if I left him behind.”
“And you? What of your health? Last time you tried for the Nile you were blinded and crippled for months on end.”
“True, but mostly because John Speke was pouring huge doses of Saltzmann's Tincture into me. But that aside, we have Sister Raghavendra with us. That should make a considerable difference to our well-being.”
Monckton Milnes nodded thoughtfully. “The Sisterhood of Noble Benevolence is a confoundedly strange organisation. I've never understood how they move around the East End without coming to harm. You know there's a rumour they possess some sort of supernatural grace that protects them?”
“I've heard as much, yes. It may be that their ability to heal and soothe is, indeed, supernatural. Perhaps it's another effect of the resonance from the Naga diamonds. Whatever the explanation, I'm sure she'll prove a most valuable member of the expedition.” Burton looked up at the grey sky. “Africa again,” he muttered. “Maybe this time-”
“You aren't obliged to put yourself through it, Richard,” Monckton Milnes interrupted. “Palmerston can find other pawns for his chess game.”
“For certain. But it's not just the diamond business. I want the Nile. Every day, I ask myself, ‘Why?’ and the only echo is, ‘Damned fool! The devil drives!’ That bloody continent has been shaping my life for nigh on a decade and I feel, instinctively, that it hasn't finished with me yet.”
“Then go,” said Monckton Milnes. “But Richard-”
“Yes?”
“Come back.”
“I'll do my level best. Listen, old chap, on the subject of Palmerston, there's something you might do for me while I'm away.”
“Anything.”
“I'd like you to keep an eye on him. Follow, especially, his foreign policies with regard to Prussia, the other Germanic states, and Africa. You are one of the most politically astute men I know, and you have a plethora of friends in high places. Use them. When I return, I'll need you to give me an idea of which way the wind is blowing where our international relations are concerned.”
“You think he's up to something?”
“Always.”
Monckton Milnes promised to do everything he could.
They shook hands and bade each other farewell.
Detective Inspector Trounce returned and joined Burton on the gangplank.
With a final wave to their colleagues, the two men entered the rotorship.
The great swathe of the world's territory that Britain had once controlled was still referred to, in its final days, as the Empire, even though there'd been no British monarch since the death of Albert in 1900. “The King's African Rifles” was a misnomer for the same reason. Traditions die hard for the British, especially in the Army.
Two thousand of the KAR, led by sixty-two English officers, had set up camp at Ponde, a village about six miles to the south of Dar es Salaam and four miles behind the trenches that stretched around the city from the coast in the northwest to the coast in the southeast. Ponde's original beehive huts were buried somewhere deep in a sea of khaki tents, and their Uzaramo inhabitants-there were fewer than a hundred and fifty of them-had been recruited against their will as servants and porters. Mostly, they dealt with the ignominy by staying as drunk as possible, by running away when they could, or, in a few cases, by committing suicide.
Perhaps the only, if not happy, then at least satisfied villager was the man who brewed pombe-African beer-who'd set up a shack beneath a thicket of mangrove trees from which to sell the warm but surprisingly pleasant beverage. The shady area had been furnished with tables and chairs, and thus was born a mosquito-infested tavern of sorts. No Askaris permitted! Officers and civilians only!
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 communique 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!”
Burton looked puzzled. “But there's more than this, surely? What of the Empire?”
Wells stopped in his tracks. “Richard,” he said quietly. “You have to understand. This is it.”
“It?”
“All that remains. The men commanding these two battalions of Askaris, plus perhaps three thousand in the British Indian Expeditionary Force, scattered groups of soldiers around the Lake Regions, maybe twenty thousand civilians and Technologists in our stronghold at Tabora, and whatever's left of the British European Resistance-there's nothing else.”
Burton looked shocked. “This is the Empire? What in heaven's name happened?”
“As I told you before, it all began here. By the 1870s, despite the efforts of Al-Manat, the German presence in Africa was growing. Palmerston was convinced that Bismarck intended a full-scale invasion. He believed that Germany was seeking to establish an empire as big as ours, so he posted a couple of battalions over here to prevent that from happening. The Hun responded by arming the natives, setting them against us. The conflict escalated. Palmerston sent more and more soldiers. Then, in 1900, Germany suddenly mobilised all its forces, including its Eugenicist weapons-but not here. It turns out that Bismarck never wanted Africa. He wanted Europe. France fell, then Belgium, then Denmark, then Austria-Hungary, then Serbia. The devastation was horrific. Britain fought wildly for five years, but our Army was divided. Almost a third of it was here, and when they tried to get home, Germany blockaded all the African ports. My God, what a consummate tactician Bismarck was! We didn't stand a chance. Then he gained Russia as an ally, and we were conquered. India, Australia, South Africa, and the West Indies all quickly declared their independence, British North America fell to a native and slave uprising, and the Empire disintegrated.”
Burton sent a breath whistling through his teeth. “And Palmerston was to blame?”
“Completely. His foreign policy was misjudged in the extreme. No one really understands why he was so obsessed with Africa. A great many Britishers have called for him to be tried and executed. After all, it's not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not pay with their own, and he was the greatest gambler of them all. But Crowley insists that he should be kept alive-that, somehow, the survival of Tabora, the last British city, depends on him.”
They reached an area where the tents thinned out and row after row of Mark II Scorpion Tanks were parked, hunkered down on their legs, claws tucked in, tails curled up.
Burton noted that, though the war machines' design was new to him, the technology appeared to have advanced little since his own age.
“Let's rest again for a moment,” Wells said. “This bloody leg is giving me gyp.”
“All right.”
Burton leaned against one of the arachnids and batted a fly from his face.
Memories were stirring. He was trying to recall the last time he'd met Lord Palmerston.
Shut the hell up, Burton! Am I to endure your insolence every time we meet? I'll not tolerate it! You have your orders! Do your bloody job, Captain!
The prime minister's voice echoed in a remote chamber of his mind but he was unable to associate it with any specific occasion.
“So he's at Tabora?” he asked.
“Palmerston? Yes. He's kept under house arrest there. I find it incredible that he still has supporters, but he does-my editor for one-so it's unlikely he'll go before the firing squad, as he deserves. You know he buggered up the constitution, too?”
“How so?”
“When he manipulated the Regency Act back in 1840 to ensure that Albert took the throne instead of Ernest Augustus of Hanover, he left no provision for what might happen afterward-no clear rules of succession for when Albert died. Ha! In 1900, I, like a great many others, was a staunch republican, so when the king finally kicked the bucket, I was happy to hear calls for the monarchy to be dismantled. Of course, equally vociferous voices were raised against the idea. Things got rather heated, and I, being a journalist, got rather too involved. There was public disorder, and I'm afraid I might have egged it on a little. When a man gets caught up in history, Richard, he loses sight of himself. Anyway, Palmerston was distracted, and that's when Bismarck pounced. I feel a fool now. In times of war, figureheads become necessary for morale. I should have realised that, but I was an idealist back then. I even believed the human race capable of building Utopia. Ha! Idiot!”
They slouched against the machines for a couple more minutes, the humidity weighing down on them, then resumed their trek, moving away from the tanks and up a gentle slope toward the ridge. The ground was dry, cracked, and dusty, with tufts of elephant grass standing in isolated clumps. There were also large stretches of blackened earth-“Where carnivorous plants have been burned away,” Wells explained. “At least we're not due the calamity of rain for a few more weeks. The moment a single drop touches the soil, the bloody plants spring up again.”
The Indian Ocean, a glittering turquoise line, lay far off to their right, while to their left, the peaks of the Usagara Highlands shimmered and rippled on the horizon.
“But let us not be diverted from our topic,” Wells said. “I'm trying to recall your biographies. If I remember rightly, in 1859 you returned from your unsuccessful expedition to find the source of the Nile and more or less retreated from the public eye to work on various books, including your translation of The Arabian Nights, which, may I add, was a simply splendid achievement.”
“The Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night,”Burton corrected. “Thank you, but please say no more about it. I've not completed the damned thing yet. At least, I don't think I have.”
He helped his companion past a fallen tree that was swarming with white ants and muttered, “It's odd you say that, though, about my search for the source of the Nile. The moment you mentioned it, I remembered it, but I feel sure I made a second attempt.”
“I don't think so. It certainly isn't recorded. The fountains of the Nile were discovered by-”
Burton stopped him. “No! Don't tell me! I don't want to know. If I really am from 1863, and I return to it, perhaps I'll rewrite that particular item of history.”
“You think you might get back to your own time? How?”
Burton shrugged.
“But isn't it obvious you won't?” Wells objected. “Otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation, for you'd surely do something to prevent this war from ever happening.”
“Ah, Bertie, there's the paradox,” Burton answered. “If I go back and achieve what your history says I never achieved, you'll still be here, aware that I never did it. However, I will now exist in a time where I did. And in my future there'll be a Herbert George Wells who knows it.”
“Wait! Wait! I'm struggling to wrap my brain around that!”
“I agree-it's a strain on the grey matter, especially if, like mine, it's as full of holes as a Swiss cheese. These days, I hear myself speak but have barely a notion of what I'm talking about.”
Burton pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from the back of his neck. “But something tells me that if you go back into the past and make an alteration, then a whole new sequence of events will spring from it, establishing an ever-widening divergence from what had been the original course of history.”
Wells whistled. “Yet that original has to still exist, for it's where you travelled back from.”
“Precisely.”
“So existence has been split into two by your act.”
“Apparently.”
“How godlike, the chronic argonaut,” Wells mused.
“The what?”
“Hum. Just thinking out loud.”
They joined a small group of officers who'd gathered at the top of the ridge. Wells indicated one of them and whispered, “That's General Aitken. He's in charge of this whole operation.”
Burton tugged at his khaki uniform jacket, which he considered far too heavy for the climate. He felt smothered and uncomfortable. Perspiration was running into his eyes. He rubbed them. As they readjusted, the vista that sprawled beneath him swam into focus, and all his irritations were instantly forgotten.
Seen through the distorting lens of Africa's blistering heat, Dar es Salaam appeared to undulate and quiver like a mirage. It was a small white city, clinging to the shore of a natural harbour. Grand colonial buildings humped up from its centre and were clustered around the port-in which a German light cruiser was docked-while a tall metal structure towered above the western neighbourhoods. Otherwise, the settlement was very flat, with single-storey dwellings strung along tree-lined dirt roads and around the borders of small outlying farms.
A strip of tangled greenery surrounded the municipality-“They look small from here, but those are the artillery plants,” Wells observed-and beyond them, the German trenches crisscrossed the terrain up to a second band of foliage: the red weed. The British trenches occupied the space between the weed and the ridge.
Like a punch to the head, Burton suddenly recalled the Crimea, for, as in that terrible conflict, the earth here had been torn, gouged, and overturned by shells. Flooded by heavy rains some weeks ago, the horrible landscape before him had since been baked into distorted shapes by the relentless sunshine. It was also saturated with blood and peppered with chunks of rotting human and animal flesh, and the stench assailed Burton's nostrils from even this distance. Bits of smashed machinery rose from the churned ground like disinterred bones. It was unnatural. It was hideous. It was sickening.
He unhooked his canteen from his belt, took a swig of water, and spat dust from his mouth.
“That's our target,” said Wells, pointing at the metal tower. “If we can bring it down, we'll destroy their radio communications.”
“Radio?” Burton asked.
Wells smiled. “Well I never! How queer to meet a man who isn't familiar with something that everyone else takes for granted! But, of course, it was after your time, wasn't it!”
