Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon

an enemy cannon. It hit the earth and tumbled, enveloped in flames.

At the edge of the undergrowth, Burton noticed a bright poppy-a red beacon amid the foliage.

“This way!” he shouted, and pulled Wells toward it. They threw themselves past the little flower and into thick purplish vegetation. Careless of thorns, they heaved themselves through bushes, climbed over twisted roots, ducked under looped lianas, and forced their way uphill until the frightful noise of conflict began to fade behind them.

Vegetation snagged at and tore their uniforms. Wet leaves dripped on them, though they were already soaked to the skin. Still they kept going, passing over the brow of a jungly hill and down into a stinking swamp. They waded through it, thigh-deep, careless of crocodiles, and emerged onto firmer land where the terrain once again sloped upward. The vegetation was slightly less dense here, and they slowed to walking pace as they passed between tree boles, with a tightly packed canopy overhead.

Burton noticed another poppy off to his left. He steered his companion in that direction.

“There's a place I must go, Bertie.”

“Where?”

“I wish I knew.”

A prickly and malformed plant to Wells's right twitched spasmodically. Milky liquid spurted from it and hit the sleeve of the war correspondent's greatcoat. The material immediately started to smoulder.

Wells swore, ripped the garment open, and pulled it off, throwing it to the ground. He pushed Burton onward, leaving the plant and the coat behind.

“Bloody Eugenicist creations are starting to sprout up all over the place,” he growled. “And they're all acid- spitting, bloodsucking, needle-shooting, poison-scent-emitting atrocities! Look at those, for instance-” He nodded toward the base of a nearby tree. Burton looked and saw a clump of bulbous white fungi.

“Those are Destroying Angel mushrooms-the species they get the A-Spores from. Not native to Africa until the Eugenicists meddled with them. Now they're everywhere!”

They steered carefully past a nest of pismire ants. They were natural, but nevertheless dangerous. Burton knew from painful experience that their bite was like the jab of a red-hot needle.

For the next hour, the two men forced their way onward. Twice more, Burton saw poppies and altered his direction in order to pass by them. He did not mention this to Wells.

Finally, with gasps of relief, they emerged into a small glade. It was carpeted with the bright-red blossoms, and in its very centre, upon a mound, a profusion of multicoloured flowers were thriving. A single beam of sunlight angled through tree branches and brightly illuminated the vivid reds, yellows, blues, and purples. The air was filled with pollen, which shone like gold dust in the shaft of light. Butterflies danced over the flowers. Everything was glowing with an almost supernatural radiance.

“A patch of beauty, at last!” Wells cried. “My eyes can hardly bear it! And look-your favourite poppy is everywhere!”

The two men threw themselves down beside the mound. For thirty minutes or so, they sat in silence, each dealing in his own way with the atrocities they'd witnessed.

Eventually, Burton spoke: “What is it about you, Bertie, that attracts death from the sky? When I first met you it was the spores. Then it was bees. This time, sycamore seeds. What next? Boulder-sized hailstones? Acidic rain? Explosive bloody bird shit?”

“Whatever else I might have to say about them,” Wells responded, “I can't deny that the Germans are damned creative.”

“Unquestionably. What the hell were those Schutztruppen?”

“The Eugenicists are turning animals into soldiers,” Wells replied. “Because they're running out of Africans.”

Burton groaned. “So the loathsome treatment of this continent now extends even to its flora and fauna? I swear to you, I wish a plague would wipe mankind from the face of this world! How despicable we are!”

The smaller man shrugged. “I don't think a plague is required-we're doing a pretty good job of it ourselves. You know, there was a time in my life when I fancied that we could all work together as equals for the good of the species, when I thought that our true nationality was Mankind. Now I recognise that I vastly overestimated the human race. We disguise imperialism as the spread of higher civilisation, but it's blatantly animalistic in its nature. We are no better than carnivores or carrion eaters. Having beast-men fighting this dreadful war is wholly appropriate.”

He took a canteen from his belt and drank from it.

Burton said, “I remember you saying that Palmerston was responsible.”

“Yes.”

“And now you say the imperialistic drive is an animal impulse. Yet I can think of no one more divorced from nature than Palmerston!”

“Pah!” Wells snorted. He handed the canteen to Burton. “Did it never strike you that in his efforts to conquer the natural in himself, he was merely signposting the trait of his that he felt most vulnerable to? All those Eugenics treatments he paid for, Richard-they were the mark of the Beast!”

“Humph! I suppose.”

“And where was nature better symbolised in your age than in Africa? No wonder this continent fell victim to his paranoia!”

Burton shook his head despairingly. “I don't know how you can endure it.”

“Somehow, I still have hope,” Wells answered, “or I could not live.”

Burton took a gulp from the canteen. He coughed and spluttered as brandy burned its way down his throat.

“I was expecting water!” he croaked.

Wells watched two dragonflies flitting back and forth over the flowers. “It's ironic,” he said softly.

“What is?”

“That I'm fighting the Germans.”

“Really?”

“Yes, for in some respects, since he seized power, Nietzsche has expanded upon the beliefs I held as a younger man, and I feel strongly drawn to his philosophy.” Wells looked at Burton. “You were right, by the way: Nietzsche did seize power in 1914 and Rasputin did die. According to our Intelligence agents, he suffered a brain haemorrhage. It happened in St. Petersburg, so your claim that you were responsible doesn't hold up-unless, that is, you possess extraordinary mediumistic powers, in which case I should deliver you to Colonel Crowley at the soonest possible moment.”

Burton shook his head. “I have no such abilities, Bertie. So what is Nietzsche's philosophy?”

Wells sighed and was silent for a moment. Then he said: “He proposes an entirely new strain of human being. One that transcends the bestial urges.”

A memory squirmed uncomfortably at the back of Burton's mind. He reached out, picked a flower from the mound, and held it in front of his face, examining its petals. They did nothing to aid his powers of recollection.

“The Greek Hyperanthropos?” he asked.

“Similar. The term he uses is Ubermensch. A man free from the artificial limitations of moral codes.” Wells snorted contemptuously. “Moral codes! Ha! As much as we invoke God with our exclamations and curses, we all know that he's dead. Your Darwin killed him outright, and the concept of supernaturally defined morals should have died with the deity!”

Burton held up an objecting hand and blew out a breath. “Please!” he exclaimed. “He was never my Darwin!”

“He was a man of your time. Anyway, without a God to impose ideas of right and wrong, mankind is left with a moral vacuum to fill. Nietzsche's Ubermensch populates it according to an inner inclination that is entirely divorced from social, cultural, or religious influences. What blossoms within him is therefore utterly authentic. Such an individual will, according to Nietzsche, transcend his animal instincts. Furthermore, from amid all these singular standards of behaviour, certain common values will emerge, and they will be so completely in tune with the zeitgeist that human evolution will accelerate. God left a vacancy. We shall fill it.”

Burton considered this for a moment, then said, “If I understand you correctly, the implication is that the