Doctor Who_ All-Consuming Fire Part 1

ALL-CONSUMING FIRE.

by Andy Lane.

Prologue.

March 1843 - Jabalhabad, India.

'Boy! I say, boy! Two more burra pegs, chelo!'

The man in the British Army uniform waved an imperious hand as the turbaned servant glided silently from the veranda.

The old man in the cane chair beside him cackled gently. 'Most kind of you, hmm?' he said, and glanced over to where his granddaughter was attempting to capture the distant mountains in watercolour. The setting sun was behind the bungalow, casting a deep shadow over the patchy doob gra.s.s but catching the snowy peaks in a net of scarlet and purple.

She glanced up and caught his gaze.

'Grandfather?'

'Nothing, child.'

The soldier batted at a cloud of insects with his pith helmet. The motion caused a fresh rash of sweat to break out across his forehead. He mopped half-heartedly at it.

'Deuced if I know how you cope in this heat,' he muttered.

'Oh, I've been in hotter places than this, my boy,' said the old man.

'There's nowhere on Earth hotter than India during the dry season. If there was, I'd have been posted to it.'

'Perhaps you're right,' the old man agreed. He looked over towards a group of three people - a man and two women - who were sitting and taking tea upon the lawn in the shade of a large parasol. There was something familiar about the man, but he couldn't quite place him.

The servant appeared from the shadows of the bungalow with two double whiskies on a tray. The ice had already melted. A mosquito was struggling weakly in the old man's gla.s.s.

'Now, where was I?' the soldier asked, frowning slightly.

'You were telling me about a rather strange temple up in the hills.'

'So I was,' the soldier replied, faintly surprised. 'A rum tale, and no mistake.

Let's see what you make of it, what?'

The old man said nothing, but glanced again at the trio happily chatting near his granddaughter. The women were young, but the man . . .

He managed to catch the man's eye. A look pa.s.sed between them, and the old man shivered.

'Are you all right?' the soldier asked.

'Hmm? I think somebody just walked over my graves.'

'If you're feeling a bit under the weather, you'd better see the medic.

Corporal Forbes is rife around here.'

'Corporal Forbes?' the old man asked.

'Cholera Morbus. Cholera, you know.'

'I wouldn't worry about that,' the old man said. 'Please, go on.'

'Right-ho. As I said earlier, the palace was a sight to be seen...'

'So this is where it all started?' Bernice said politely.

'Indeed,' the Doctor replied, and took a sip of tea. 'And we've seen where it ends. If I hadn't listened to Siger's tale on that veranda.. .'

'Yeah, we know,' Ace said dismissively. She fiddled with her frilly dress.

Bernice could tell that she felt uncomfortable in something that wasn't bullet-proof and laser-resistant. 'Ultimate evil, and all that guff, It's a bit hard to swallow, Professor. If you hadn't stopped it, somebody else would have done. I've seen the future, remember? The future of all this. I was born in it.'

'Time's a funny thing,' the Doctor mused, gazing with a strange expression at the girl who was painting the watercolour landscape. 'Didn't the business with the Monk and his pet chronovore ill.u.s.trate precisely that point? The lives of every planet, every person and every proton are like trickles of water running down a window. Their courses may look fixed, but if you disturb them early on then they can trickle into another path entirely'

Ace summed up her viewpoint in one succinct word.

Before the Doctor's temper boiled over, Bernice said, 'So, do I take it that the old man sitting over there is you?'

'In a sense.'

'In what sort of sense, precisely?'

'In a rather imprecise sense.'

'He doesn't look very much like you.'

'I was five hundred years younger then,' the Doctor said gloomily. 'You may not believe it, but age has mellowed me.'

Ace snorted.

'You should write your autobiography,' she said. 'Confessions of a Roving Time Lord. You'd sell a billion.'

'Ah,' said the Doctor, 'that reminds me...'

He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small, leather-bound book.

'A present for you both,' he said.

Bernice took the book from his outstretched hand.

'All-Consuming Fire,' she read, grinning. 'Being a Reprint From the Reminiscences of Doctor John Watson As Edited by Arthur Conan Doyle.'

She rifled through the pages.

'This is weird, seeing them called Holmes and Watson.'

'That's how history remembers them. That's how Arthur protected their ident.i.ties.'

'Arthur?' Ace looked interested. 'Mate of yours, this Doyle character?'

The Doctor looked away.

'Oh, our paths crossed, longer ago that I care to remember. Arthur Conan Doyle and Rudyard Kipling. Do you like Kipling?'

'I don't know,' Ace replied with a cheeky grin, 'I've never kippled.'

Bernice, who had been flicking through the book looking for her first appearance, laughed suddenly.

'What is it?' the Doctor asked.

'You, after that creature fell on you,' she giggled. 'I still remember the look on your face.'

The Doctor frowned, and gazed at the faded pink stains on his linen jacket.

'I'll never get these blood-stains out,' he murmured.

Bernice hardly heard him. She had flipped back to the start of the book and was already reading the first few words.

Chapter 1.

In which Holmes and Watson return from holiday and an ill.u.s.trious client commissions their services commissions their services A reprint from the reminiscences of John H. Watson M.D.

As I flick through the thirty-five volumes of my diary I find records of the many bizarre cases that my friend Sherlock Holmes and I were engaged in over the years. In the volume for eighteen eighty four, to take an example, I see the repulsive story of the red leech and the tale of the terrible death of Crosby the banker. Again, in the tome devoted to eighteen eighty six my eye is caught by the singular affair of the aluminium crutch and its connection with an attempt upon the life of our dear sovereign: a story for which the world is singularly unprepared. It is, however, the year eighteen eighty seven which occupies no less that three volumes of my diary.

Following the tragic curtailment of my marriage to Constance Adams of California I was again living under the same roof as Holmes. I still maintained a small practice in Paddington, but my work was undemanding - so much so that I had turned my hand to writing an account of my meeting with Holmes for private publication - and I always managed to make myself available on those occasions when Holmes requested my presence (I cannot, in all honesty, say help) on a case.

All through the spring and summer of that year the bra.s.s knocker on the door of 221b Baker Street seemed never to be still, and our carpet was almost worn away by the constant stream of visitors. Twice Mrs Hudson threatened to withdraw from her role as provider of light refreshments to Holmes's clients. The unceasing round of s.n.a.t.c.hed sleep and s.n.a.t.c.hed meals caused Holmes's naturally gaunt features to become so emaciated that I became worried for his health. Eventually I managed to persuade him that he deserved a holiday. Typically of Holmes, he chose to spend it in Vienna researching his theory that many of Mozart's symphonies were plagiarized from obscure works by Orlando La.s.sus. To mollify me, for he had no interest in bodily comfort himself, he arranged for us to travel in some considerable style. The cost, he claimed, was of no concern, for he had recently been generously remunerated by Lord Rotherfield for proving to the satisfaction of the various Court circulars and scandal sheets that Lady Rotherfield was not a female impersonator. Whilst he delved into archives and, much to the dismay of the maids, buried his hotel suite in mounds of dusty paper, I admired the architecture, the ladies and the horseflesh at the famous Riding Academy. Finally, completely restored to health and happiness, we returned to England on the Orient Express. I should have known that our luck could not last for ever. The shadow of the Library of Saint John the Beheaded lay over us, even as we pulled out of Vienna.

Holmes and I were in the habit of taking dinner with Colonel Warburton and his charming wife Gloria. Returning from an extended holiday, they were heading for Ma.r.s.eilles to pick up the ship to India, where the Colonel was the Resident in the native state of Jabalhabad. Warburton had been with my old regiment, the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers. Our paths had never crossed before, as he had arrived after my transfer to the Berkshires during the Second Afghan War. My subsequent wounding and invalidity precluded any chance meeting. He was a beefy, florid man with a greying moustache and piercing blue eyes. His wife was a dainty creature, as fragile as a porcelain miniature, but they were obviously devoted to one another despite their differences.

We first became aware of something amiss in the dining carriage. Holmes was in an unusually expansive mood, that night, entertaining us with anecdotes of his long and varied life as we dined on an excellent fillet of beef washed down with a surprisingly mediocre Medoc. Having heard Holmes's stories before, I spent some time admiring the carriage we sat in.

The ornate ceiling, mahogany panelling and embossed leather seats put me in mind of the finest London clubs, although the paintings (by Schwind and Delacroix, Holmes had a.s.sured me) were not to my taste. Give me Landseer's Monarch of the Glen any day.

Eventually my gaze shifted to the window, and to the snow-bound Austrian landscape which flashed past too quickly to identify any features. There was a full moon in the sky, and occasionally clouds scudded across its face like dirty rags carried by the wind. Moonlight glinted on the metal of a set of rail tracks which ran parallel to ours. I was about to turn my attention back to the table when a movement caught my eye. I craned my neck, and saw that a second train was racing along behind us, moving at such a pace that it would overtake us within moments. I watched, fascinated, as it pulled alongside. Against the fiery glow from the engine I could see the silhouette of the stoker shovelling like a clockwork figure in the cabin. As the train overtook us I was amazed to discover that it consisted of only one carriage.

If anything it was even more ornate than ours from the outside; a gleaming white shape with scarlet velvet drapes drawn across the windows and a golden crest on its flank. Who owned it? What was it doing there? I turned to ask Holmes, but he was engaged in deep conversation and I could not find it in my heart to interrupt. By the time I turned my face back to the window the mystery train had almost pa.s.sed us.

Holmes was now waxing lyrical about violins, explaining to the Colonel and his wife the difference between an Amati and a Stradivarius. I thanked G.o.d that Holmes's own violin lay back in Baker Street. When the mood took him Holmes could play like an angel, but more often than not his raucous meanderings put the cats to shame. Whilst we waited for our third course I glanced over Holmes's shoulder. Apart from the four of us around the dinner table there were two other travellers travelling first cla.s.s, but only the Reverend Hawkins was present in the dining car. Baden-Powell, a self-proclaimed expert on b.u.t.terflies whose tan and manner indicated military service, was absent. I looked again at the Reverend Hawkins. Something about him bothered me, but I could not say what.

'You see, but you do not understand,' said Holmes, interrupting my train of thought.

'I beg your pardon?'

'Our clerical fellow traveller is an agent for the British Government.'

'Good Lord, Holmes. Are you sure?'

Colonel and Mrs Warburton were listening intently. I suddenly became aware that the train was slowing but I found myself, as always, fascinated by Holmes's display of his talents.

'The Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits have provided spies of all nations with a golden ribbon across Europe. It would be unusual were they not to take advantage of it. When I see an English clergyman travelling first cla.s.s my suspicions are raised; when I notice that the knees of his trousers do not shine, my suspicions positively levitate.'

'Knees?' asked Warburton.

'Shine?' murmured his wife.

'You do not see the connection?' Holmes asked. 'Forgive me, I thought it was obvious. The Reverend Hawkins may pray, but not I suspect for his immortal soul, and certainly not in the conventional position. You may also note the callous on the index finger of his right hand, indicating a familiarity with firearms of which the Archbishop of Canterbury would strongly disapprove.'

The train was just crawling along now, but Holmes continued.

'The man is obviously an undercover agent of some sort. The a.s.sertion that he works for our dear Queen rather than one of her foreign relatives is, I will admit, a shot in the dark. However, given his calm manner I would suggest that he is returning from an a.s.signment rather than travelling to one.'

'But how did you know . . .?'

'That you were watching him? If I catch you staring fixedly over my shoulder it doesn't take much to know that you aren't keeping an eye on an empty table. You were watching one of our fellow travellers.'

The train had been brought to a stop now. Glancing out of the window I saw what I had expected; the white train with the gold crest was stationary on the other track.

'But,' I protested, gathering my wits, 'Hawkins entered after us, and your back has been to him all the time. How did you know it wasn't Mr Baden-Powell who had entered?'

'Simplicity itself; When the serveur brought in the soup, he was carrying five dishes. Someone had obviously entered behind me. It must have been either Baden-Powell or Hawkins, since they are the only other first cla.s.s travellers.' He leaned back and steepled his fingers upon the tablecloth.

The candle on the table cast a hawk-like shadow behind him. 'When we received the soup, we began immediately. There was a gap of almost forty-five seconds before I heard the clink of a spoon on a dish behind us.

Conclusion: the Reverend Hawkins had been saying grace.' Holmes smiled. 'Either that or Mr Baden-Powell had been straining the soup for botanical specimens. I chose the most probable alternative.'

'Bravo!' said the Colonel. His wife applauded daintily.

'As usual, Holmes,' I said, a touch acerbically, 'you make it appear so simple.'

Before Holmes could reply the imposing figure of the chef de train appeared at our table. Bending low, he murmured something into my friend's ear. Holmes stood, and turned to the Colonel and his wife.