Leaning against a lamppost, Burton rubbed his eyes. The taste of brandy burned uncomfortably at the back of his throat. He noticed a flier pasted to the post and read it:
Work disciplines your spirit
Work develops your character
Work strengthens your soul
Do not allow machines to do your work!
Pushing himself away, he walked along the alley and turned yet another corner—he wasn’t sure where he was but knew he was proceeding in the right general direction—and found himself at the end of a long, straight lane, its worn cobbles shining beneath the haggard light of a single lamp. It was bordered by high and featureless redbrick walls, the sides of warehouses. The far end opened onto what looked to be a main thoroughfare. He could vaguely see the front of a shop, possibly a butcher’s, but when he tried to read the sign over the window, a velocipede clattered past it, leaving a swirling wreath of smoke that further obscured the lettering.
Burton moved on, trying to avoid pools of stinking urine, his shoes squelching in patches of mud and worse, kicking against refuse.
A litter-crab came clanking into view by the shop, its eight thick mechanical legs thudding against the road surface, the twenty-four thin arms on its belly darting this way and that, skittering back and forth over the cobbles, snatching up rubbish and throwing it through the machine’s maw into the furnace within.
The crab creaked and rattled past the end of the alley and, as it did so, its siren wailed a warning. A few seconds later, it let out a deafening hiss as it ejected hot cleansing steam from the two downward-pointing funnels at its rear.
The automated cleaner vanished from sight as a tumultuous wall of white vapour boiled into the passage. Burton stopped and took a few steps backward, waiting for it to disperse. It billowed toward him, extending hot coils that slowed and became still, hanging in the air as they cooled.
Someone entered the street, their weirdly elongated shadow angling through the white cloud; a figure writ dark, skeletal, and horrific by the distortion. Sudden flashes of light illuminated the roiling mist, as if it were a miniature storm. Burton waited for the shadow to shrink, to be sucked into the person to whom it belonged when he—for surely it must be a man emerged from the vapour.
It didn’t shrink.
It wasn’t a shadow.
Possibly, it wasn’t even a man.
The steam parted and from it sprang a bizarre apparition: a massively long-legged shape—like a carnival stilt-walker—a long, dark cloak flapping from its hunched shoulders, bolts of lightning crackling around its body and head.
Burton retreated hastily until his back brought up against the wall. He blinked rapidly and licked his lips.
Was it human, this thing? Its head was large, black, and shiny, with an aura of blue flame crawling around it. Red eyes peered at him maliciously. White teeth shone in a lipless grin.
The creature stalked forward, bent, its talonlike hands flexing, and Burton saw that his first impression was accurate: the thing walked on two-foot-high stilts.
Its lanky body was clad in a skintight white scaly suit that glittered in the dim light of the single guttering gas lamp. Something circular glowed on its chest and emitted bursts of sparks and ribbons of lightning that snaked over the thing’s long limbs.
“Burton!” the apparition croaked. “Richard Francis bloody Burton!”
It suddenly pounced on him and a hand slashed sideways, slapping hard against his right ear, sending him reeling. His top hat went spinning into a puddle. He dropped his cane.
“I told you once to stay out of it!” snapped the thing. “You didn’t listen!”
All of a sudden, Burton felt icily sober.
Fingers dug into his hair and yanked his head up. He felt an agonisingly powerful static charge coursing through his body. His arms and legs twitched spasmodically.
Red eyes glared into his.
“I’ll not tell you again. Leave me alone!”
“W-what?” gasped Burton.
“Just stay out of it! The affair is none of your damned business!”
“What affair?”
“Don’t play the innocent! I don’t want to kill you, but I swear to you, if you don’t keep your nose out of it, I’ll break your fucking neck!”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about!” protested Burton.
His head was shaken violently, causing his teeth to clack together.
“I’m talking about you organising forces against me! It’s not what you’re meant to be doing! Your destiny lies elsewhere. Do you understand?”
The creature rammed its forearm into Burton’s face.
“I said, do you understand?”
“No! “
“Then I’ll spell it out for you,” growled the stilt-man. Dragging Burton around, it slammed him against the wall, drew back its arm, and sent a fist crashing into the explorer’s mouth.
“Do what—”
Again. Crack!
“—you’re supposed—”
Crack!
“—to do!”
Burton sagged back against the bricks. He mumbled through split lips, “How can I possibly know what I’m supposed to do?”
The fingers in his hair jerked him up until he was looking directly into the thing’s eyes, which stared down, inches from his own. They burned redly, and Burton realised that his attacker was completely insane.
Blue flame leaped from the thing’s head and licked at the explorer’s brow, scorching his skin.
“You are supposed to marry Isabel and be sent from one fucking miserable consulship to another. Your career is supposed to peak in three years when you debate the Nile question with Speke and the silly sod shoots himself dead. You are supposed to write books and die.”
Burton braced his legs against the wall.
“What the hell are you babbling about?” he demanded, in a stronger voice. “The debate was cancelled. Speke shot himself yesterday—but he’s not dead!”
The creature’s eyes widened.
“No!” it whispered. “No!” It gritted its teeth and snarled, “I’m a historian! I know what happened. It was 1864 not 1861. I know—”
A look of bemusement passed over its gaunt, horrible features.
“God damn it! Why does it have to be so complicated?” it whispered to itself. “Maybe if I kill you? But if the death of just one person has already done all this—?”
Burton, feeling the fingers loosening, took his chance. He jerked his head free, shoved his shoulder into his attacker’s stomach, then threw himself sideways.
The apparition teetered back to the opposite wall. It clutched at it for balance and glared at Burton as he regained his footing. They stood facing each other.
“Listen to me, you bastard!” snapped the creature. “For your own good, next time you see me, don’t come near!”
“I don’t know you!” objected Burton. “And, believe me, if I never see you again, I’ll not regret it one iota!”
Lightning exploded from the apparition’s chest and danced across the ground. The stilt-man cried out in agony, almost falling.
Suddenly, its wild eyes dimmed and Burton saw a brief glimmer of reason in them. It looked down at itself, then at him, and in low tones said, “The irony is that I’m running out of time. You’re in my way, and you’re making the situation much worse.”
“What situation? Explain!” snapped the explorer.
The uncanny, spindly figure stepped forward and the irises of its eyes narrowed to pinpricks.
“Marry the bitch, Burton. Settle down. Become consul in Fernando Po, Brazil, Damascus, and wherever the fuck else they send you. Write your damned books. But, above all, leave me alone! Do you understand? Leave me the fuck alone!”
It crouched low, glared at him, and suddenly straightened its legs, shooting vertically into the air.
Burton twisted his head to look up. His assailant soared high above the top of the warehouses, and, in midair, vanished.
&
nbsp; THE COMMISSION
Die, my dear doctor! That’ s the last thing I shall do!
—LORD PALMERSTON
reat Scott, man!” exclaimed Lord Palmerston. “What have you been up to now?”
Burton lowered himself gingerly into the chair before the prime minister’s desk. His body was bruised; his right eye blackened; his lips cut and puffy.
“Just an accident, sir. Nothing to worry about.”
“You look perfectly hideous!”
You’re a fine one to talk! thought Burton.
For the past two years, Palmerston had been receiving Eugenicist life extension 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 astonishing and 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.”
“Are you capable?”
Burton sat back in his chair, surprised. This theme of murder arising again, so soon after the conversation at the Cannibal Club! It was an extraordinary coincidence and it agitated the superstitious part of his character.
“Am I capable of cold-blooded murder? I think not. Might I kill in the heat of battle or in self-defence? Of course. I may have done so in Berbera; in such circumstances it’s impossible to know the outcome of your shots or the cuts of your sword.”
“And what if you were in a position of authority and were required to send a man to his almost certain death?”
“I would fulfill my responsibilities.”
Lord Palmerston nodded as if satisfied. He reached into his waistcoat pocket, withdrew a snuff tin, and sprinkled a small heap of the fine powder onto the side of his right hand at the base of his thumb. This he raised to his nose and snorted.
He sniffed and turned another page. Burton noticed that the prime minister’s fingernails were carefully manicured and coated with clear varnish.
“It was in ‘55,” continued Palmerston, “the Berbera incident. Lieutenant John Hanning Speke was one of the men who accompanied you?”
“Yes.”
“Incidentally, I enquired after him last night. He’s in the Penfold Private Sanatorium. He shot half his face off; they don’t expect him to live.”
Burton nodded, his countenance iron hard. “I know.”
Palmerston regarded him. “Another enemy?”