“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!”
Burton glanced uneasily at the nearby officers, who were peering at the sea through binoculars.
“Keep your voice down, please, Bertie,” he said. “And what was after my time?”
“The discovery of radio waves. The technique by which we transmit spoken words and other sounds through the atmosphere to literally anywhere in the world.”
“A mediumistic procedure?”
“Not at all. It's similar to the telegraph but without the wires. It involves the modulation of oscillating electromagnetic fields.”
“That's all mumbo jumbo to me. What are they looking at?”
Wells turned to observe the officers, then raised his binoculars and followed the men's gaze.
“Ah ha!” he said. “The rotorships! Have a squint.”
He passed the binoculars to Burton, who put them to his eyes and scanned the eastern sky, near the horizon, until two dark dots came into view. As they approached, he saw they were big rotorships, each with twelve flight pylons, wings spinning at the top of the tall shafts. The black flat-bottomed vessels were rather more domed in shape than those from his own time, and he could see guns poking out of portholes along their sides.
“Astraeaand Pegasus,”Wells said. “Cruiser class. The Pegasusis the one on the right.”
“They're fast. What are those little things flying around them?”
“Hornets. One-man fighters. They'll swoop in to shoot at the ground defences.”
“Actual insects?”
“Yes. The usual routine. Breed 'em big, kill 'em, scrape 'em out, shove steam engines into the carapaces. The method hasn't changed since your day. Look out! The Konigsbergis bringing her cannon to bear!”
Burton directed the glasses to the city's harbour and saw that the decks of the seagoing vessel were swarming with men. A gun turret, positioned in front of its three funnels, was turning to face the oncoming rotorships. A few moments later, orange light blazed from the muzzle. Repetitive booms, lagging a few seconds behind the discharges, rippled out over the landscape, becoming thin and echoey as they faded away.
He looked back at the rotorships, both almost upon the city now. Puffs of black smoke were exploding around them.
Hornets dived down at the light cruiser and raked her decks with their machine guns.
“Come on, lads!” Wells cheered.
Burton watched men ripped into tatters and knocked overboard as bullets tore into them. A loud report sounded. He lowered the binoculars and saw that metal and smoke had erupted from the side of the Pegasus.
“She's hit!” Wells cried.
The rotorship listed to her left. As her shadow passed over the Konigsberg, small objects spilled from beneath her. They were bombs. With an ear-splitting roar, the German vessel disappeared into a ball of fire and smoke. Fragments of hull plating went spinning skyward. Another huge detonation sounded as the ship's munitions went up.
The Pegasus, rocked by the shock wave, keeled completely over onto her side and arced toward the ground. She hit the southern neighbourhoods of Dar es Salaam and ploughed through them, disintegrating, until, when she finally came to rest, she was nothing but an unrecognisable knot of twisted and tattered metal slumped at the end of a long burning furrow. Hundreds of buildings had been destroyed, maybe thousands of lives lost.