The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi (51 page)

“Incredible!” Burton exclaimed. “Such specific communication with a supernatural being is far beyond what I've experienced. They've come to me in dreams and imaginings but—phewee!—never in the flesh, so to speak.”

“Tonight, sir, we intend to remedy that. Tonight, Perdurabo will address you directly, if you are willing.”

Burton picked up his wine glass and drained it. “For sure!” he cried out. “For sure! But, say, did it happen? Did the marquess kick the bucket the next day?”

“He did. He fell from his horse and broke his neck.”

The door opened and Damien Burke stepped in. He said, “It's all prepared.”

Kenealy stood. “I hope you'll forgive my deception, Mr. Harris. I feel positive your presentation would have fascinated us all, but I trust the experience we offer you instead will prove more edifying even than the applause of an admiring audience.”

“Tactfully put, Mr. Kenealy,” Burton said as he got to his feet. “You have in me an eager subject.”

“Then let us go at once to the temple chamber.”

Kenealy and “Dee” conducted Burton out of the room and along a hallway. It was hung with paintings, all depicting the manifestation of angels.

They came to double doors, which Dee pushed open to reveal a large square room hung with purple drapes into which sigils had been embroidered with silver thread. A circular table stood at its centre, with twenty-four chairs arranged around it, twenty-one of them occupied by men dressed in white robes. Burton noted that Sobieski held a position of prominence, his chair being throne-like and raised higher than the rest. Kenealy instructed Burton to take an empty seat directly opposite the medium. He and Burke then sat to either side of the count.

As he settled, Burton examined the tabletop, which was inset with a silver pentagram with a border of engraved Enochian letters. Seven candles were arranged in a circle in the middle of the pentagram. Inside them, an extremely complex symbol had been painted—using what appeared to be beeswax—around the base of a large crystal ball.

Kenealy clicked his fingers. A man stood and moved around the chamber extinguishing the lamps until the only illumination was that provided by the candles. He returned to his seat.

Gesturing toward the crystal ball, in which the beeswax symbol was peculiarly reflected, Kenealy said, “Please devote your attention to the
Sigillum dei Aemeth
, Mr. Harris. You must fixate on the speculum, for through it Perdurabo will show you visions of the future; of what must be if we fail in our great cause.”

Burton gazed at the glass ball. The twisting and distorted lines of the symbol—the
Sigillum dei Aemeth
, as Kenealy had called it—confused his eyes, and the more he looked, the more aware he became that they were somehow pushing him into a trance-like state. He allowed it to happen, but at the same time devoted part of his mind to a Sufi exercise, establishing a “fenced-off” segment of consciousness, which, he hoped, would be resistant to external influence.

Count Sobieski said, “It begins. It is fast tonight. Perdurabo is eager to speak.
Geh londoh mica olz busd gohed.
”

The assembly chanted, “
Exarpe, bit to em, he co ma, na en ta.
”

The hairs at the back of Burton's neck stood on end. The temperature suddenly dropped and the atmosphere of the room prickled his skin.

The men to either side of Burton took hold of his hands. All around the table, the Enochians formed a chain in this manner.

Damien Burke said, “
Ra asa i Raphael.
”

Kenealy said, “
Sobo el i Gabriel.
”

The man to Burton's left leaned close to him and whispered, “Pronounce aloud:
Baba ge i Michael.
”

Burton did as he was told. “
Baba ge i Michael.
”

Sobieski jerked in his seat and his head lolled forward. He murmured, “
Od luca el i Perdurabo.
”

The gathering intoned, “
Mi cama, un al, i alpo re, o i veae, dasa ta, bia he, asa peta, ta!
”

Burton felt the reassuring presence of the pistol in his waistband.

The count loosed a long groan. He slowly raised his head. His eyes glinted in the candlelight. They were black from edge to edge.

“Faithful,” he said, “I give you my thanks. Much has already been achieved.”

The voice was as Burton had heard twice before, glutinous and comprised of innumerable but perfectly concerted parts.

“The great work has commenced,” Perdurabo said. “The flow of events is being adjusted and corrected in preparation for my incarnation in corporeal form and your ascendance to a new mode of existence.”

Sobieski's dreadful eyes settled on Burton. “You are the American, Thomas Lake Harris?”

“Yes, I am.”

“I'm most gratified by your presence. I have a special place reserved for you in the new world that is to come, Mr. Harris. You will occupy a position of honour and influence. You shall be as a king among your brethren. Look into the shew-stone, please, that I might unveil to you that which we work to avoid.”

Burton turned his attention back to the crystal ball. The lines and shapes within it moved as the candles flickered. He felt himself drawn in and didn't resist, though he was careful to strengthen the part of his mind he'd separated. Gradually, the confusion of angles and surfaces coalesced around him, until he felt himself embedded in the midst of a vision.

“Africa,” Perdurabo said. “Mr. Harris, a war of indescribable ferocity is coming, and this is where it will end.”

Incongruously, amid the rolling savannahs that were unveiled in Burton's mind, a city sprawled; a metropolis of British character, spread out in the shadow of a tall green-topped column of rock. Burton recognised the geological structure immediately. It marked the position of Kazeh, the Arabian outpost where the
Orpheus
had taken on supplies before flying east to Zanzibar. But the city? That most certainly hadn't been there.

“Tabora,” Perdurabo said. “The last bastion of the British Empire. You are looking at the future, Mr. Harris, the year 1918. The final days of a war that will grow out of unbridled German ambition.”

Burton observed a vast ring of cannons—many of them poking out of heavily armoured vehicles—surrounding the city and bombarding it relentlessly. Refugees were fleeing in droves, thousands being brutally cut down by relentless gunfire. Burton saw men, women, and children falling.

“Death,” Perdurabo said. “Nothing but death. Here comes the final blow.”

The vision swung dizzyingly around Burton until he was looking into the sky. There was something there—a machine or creature? He couldn't tell. It bore some similarity to a dirigible but also to a gigantic pea pod, with a tulip-like flower pulsating at one end, driving it along.

“A weapon of such terrible potency that it will obliterate the last vestiges of the British—a demise which has been, in this future, long overdue. It is the consequence of mistakes made in the present.”

The perspective changed. Burton watched as a gigantic steam sphere powered out of Tabora. He saw on its side the name SS
Britannia
. Behind it, a blinding white flash suddenly burst from the city. When the glare receded, it revealed an ugly yellow cloud boiling into the atmosphere.

“There are many possible futures,” Perdurabo said, “but the war comes in all of them. Generations are annihilated, and we have only ourselves to blame.”

The cloud, billowing into the shape of a vast mushroom, fell away into the distance and was lost from view as the vision followed the escaping steam sphere.

“Your own country will suffer, too, of that you can be sure. The German Empire will become greedy for America's many resources. I have shown you the end of the British Empire. America will be next.”

The scene blurred and reshaped itself. Now the SS
Britannia
was lying motionless and damaged on the floor of a wide shallow crater.

The Pico Santa Isabel. Fernando Po.

The steam sphere wavered, became a transparent globe of shifting colours, and was suddenly a crystal ball, on a table, with a complex symbol reflected in it.

Burton looked up at Count Sobieski. Perdurabo addressed him through the Russian's toothless mouth.

“The future you have just witnessed is disastrous not only for our countries, but for the human race. It will set back our natural development and long delay the emergence of individuals like myself—a new species that has dominion over nature and even time itself. It is of utmost importance, therefore, that we alter the present in order to avoid its catastrophic consequences. Do you agree?”

“Yes,” Burton said.

“Very good. As I am sure you are aware, the British government is about to enter into an alliance with a newly formed Central German Confederation. This will give the Germanic states a new cohesion and the means to create a powerful manufacturing base. The seed of German expansionism is being planted right now. We can't allow it. The Germans must be weakened, not strengthened.”

Burton was aware of an acute mesmeric influence needling into his consciousness. He didn't resist, but retreated into the protected area of his mind, and from there said, “I can't doubt what you say. Hell, when a man sees something like that with his own eyes, he ain't gonna sit back an' do nothin'.”

“Then you'll join our crusade against this abomination? You'll undertake a task for us, one that will save your country from the horror you've just witnessed?”

“For sure.”

“Good, Mr. Harris! Very good! Your task is a simple one. Are you aware of a man named Abraham Lincoln?”

“Yup! Who isn't?”

“A year from now he will be elected as president of your country. His opposition to slavery will cause the Southern states to rebel and plunge America into a bloody civil war. The British Empire can ill-afford a potential ally to be so distracted. Thus we have to reshape history. The conflict must be avoided so America is free to join us in an incisive attack on Germany. There is only one way to achieve this, Mr. Harris, and you are the key.”

Perdurabo paused. His black eyes glittered.

Burton said, “Tell me what to do.”

“You must return to America at once and shoot Abraham Lincoln dead.”

“I had during the fever-fit, and often for hours afterwards, a queer conviction of divided identity, never ceasing to be two persons that generally thwarted and opposed each other.”

—R
ICHARD
F. B
URTON
,
T
HE
L
AKE
R
EGIONS OF
C
ENTRAL
A
FRICA

Burton was led out of the League of Enochians Gentlemen's Club by the same route through which he'd entered, guided by a man named Doyle, who ducked back into Brundleweed's without having uttered a single word.

The explorer could feel the aftermath of Perdurabo's mesmeric influence and was strongly inclined to book passage to America, there to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.

He liberated the enclosed portion of his mind. It flooded into the rest and drowned the insistent suggestion. Lincoln would be safe from him, and from Thomas Lake Harris, too.

It was half-past midnight by the time the explorer met Swinburne outside the Queen's Arms. The pub had just closed and the poet was leaning against a lamppost, careless of the rain that was pattering on and around him, quietly reciting poetry to himself. The velocipedes were standing at the side of the road.

He looked up as the explorer approached. “Hallo! Hallo! You're still in one piece, then? Was it worth it?”

“Most definitely. Are you sober?”

“Horribly. It's a thoroughly objectionable state. What next?”

“How awake are you? We haven't had much sleep recently.”

“Wide.”

“To Battersea Power Station, then. I have the measure of our enemy. Let us now meet our mysterious ally, if that he be.”

“Rather!” Swinburne enthused.

They mounted their vehicles, started the engines, and went rattling down St. Martin's Lane. The streets were mostly empty and quiet but for the hiss of rain, so they rode side by side while Burton described what had occurred in the club.

“You have to warn Disraeli,” Swinburne said. “The signing ceremony is not even two days hence, and is surely Perdurabo's target. The entirety of the British and German governments will be gathered in Green Park. The royal families, too. He could kill them all in one fell swoop.”

“How, though?” Burton pondered. “The event will be wrapped in the tightest security possible. Even if he has an army of assassins at his disposal, they'd never get past the guards, and the
Orpheus
will be hovering over the park, too, bristling with her new guns.”

Crossing Trafalgar Square, they steered into Whitehall and parked their penny-farthings. While Swinburne guarded them, Burton entered Scotland Yard. Pepperwick was off duty and had been replaced by the night clerk. The man examined the explorer's authorization then said, “Can I help you, sir?”