Doctor Who_ All-Consuming Fire Part 24

'And you don't know anything else useful about this Azathoth character? Or what his connection is to all of this?'

'I've got a book that might help, back in the TARDIS. Every Gallifreyan Child's Pop-Up Book of Nasty Creatures From Other Dimensions. You'll like it.'

'Don't you think I'm a bit old for a pop-up book?'

'Not compared to a Gallifreyan child. And besides, the pop-ups are four-dimensional. But I really think that we should discuss it later.'

'Why?'

'Because we've just found Maupertuis's army.'

At that moment I walked into Watson's back. He had stopped, and had been gesturing to us to do the same.

We had been walking for some time and had penetrated some distance along the floor of the valley. The mountains rose to either side of us.

Although it was beginning to get dark, I could make out the beginnings of a plain, far ahead. At its edge, a splash of colour and movement stood out.

'They're setting up camp,' Watson murmured. 'Smart move on Colonel Warburton's part: keep them moving after they go through the gateway so they don't have a chance to worry about where they are, then pitch tents when they're good and tired.'

'I suspect that there is a small native town across the plain,' Holmes said, surprising us all.

'How can you tell?' the Doctor asked. I got the impression that he wasn't so much questioning Holmes as giving him a chance to explain his thought processes to us.

'The sky appears to be reflective,' Holmes replied, more hesitantly than usual. 'Perhaps, like Dante's inner circle of h.e.l.l, we have ice above us. If you look closely, you will see a reflected glow from something over the horizon. The nearest Earthly equivalent would be the lights of a town or city' He coughed. 'I am merely speculating, of course. It could be an incandescent chicken the size of the North Riding for all I know.'

'Maupertuis is probably intending to attack it on the morrow,' Watson said.

'We must bypa.s.s the camp and warn the natives.'

'I think they already know,' said the Doctor, pointing up the slope of the left-hand mountain, just above Maupertuis's camp. For a moment I couldn't make anything out through the gloom, then, squinting, I began to make out what looked like bundles of sticks set upright on the slope behind some rocks. Bundles of sticks in armoured suits.

'K'tchar'ch's people,' Watson breathed, and shivered suddenly. He was right, of course. Once he had said it, I could see that they were living beings, but then he and the Doctor had seen them before, whereas I had made do with a second-hand description. 'I wonder what they're doing up there,' he continued. 'Observing, perhaps.'

Silently the Doctor indicated other areas of the mountain slope, and areas of the right-hand mountain as well.

'There are several thousand of the creatures,' Holmes snapped. 'This is an ambush in force.'

'But Maupertuis's army has only been on Ry'leh for a few hours,' I protested. 'How come the Ry'lehans had time to set up an ambush?'

'Perhaps more to the point,' the Doctor added, 'why are a race who claim to be peaceful philosophers armed and armoured?'

'As we suspected,' said Holmes, 'we have been misled.'

I think the phrase is, 'some discussion ensued'. It went around in circles, but the upshot was that everything K'tchar'ch had told Holmes, Watson and the Doctor was now in doubt, and we didn't know who was the friend and who was the foe. On the face of it, the points were still racked up against Maupertuis, but he had never actually lied to us. Just tried to kill us.

Eventually, as I feared he would, Watson said, 'There's only one thing to do. I'll have to sneak closer and find out what's going on.'

'It's too dangerous,' Holmes urged. 'I should go.'

'You cannot.' Watson placed a hand upon Holmes's upper arm. 'Your ratiocination got us here. Leave the rest up to me. This is what I do best.'

He took a deep breath, and looked directly at me. 'I'll be back soon,' he said, and vanished into the deepening shadows.

He wasn't, of course. It's been almost half an hour, and there's no sign of him. Holmes is sat by the fire that the Doctor lit with his eternal matches and some of the local vegetation. The fire squirms every so often, but Holmes is too wrapped up in his own thoughts to care. I hate to see him like this. He seems to have given up.

The Doctor found some sachets of instant coffee in his pocket, along with an unopened bottle of mineral water. We were three thousand years before the use-by date of either of them. The resulting brew tasted so bad that I added a slug of brandy from my hip-flask. It still tasted awful, but at least I could drink it.

The fire is burning low now, and the Doctor and Holmes are both staring into its depths for answers. As for me, the coffee is wearing off, and I'm gradually falling asleep.

A continuation of the reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D.

I made the mistake of using a bush for shelter as I approached the cl.u.s.ter of canvas tents. It made a lunge for me and I quickly backed off, hoping that its disappointed hiss wouldn't echo through the night air. Fortunately the wind was blowing toward me from the camp, carrying with it the smell of cheap tobacco and roasting meat but hiding any noises that I might make.

It had been hours since last I ate, and I had vomited most of that up in the corridors of the Nizam's palace, so the smell of food forced sharp little pangs through my stomach. I quelled them and moved closer.

The camp was set out sloppily: the guards were congregating around a camp-fire rather than patrolling the perimeter and the arrangement of the tents would make it easy for any attackers to duck and dive, and hard for any defenders to marshall their forces. I was surprised at Warburton, but perhaps he could be forgiven. After all, he was organizing the invasion of a planet. He had enough on his plate already. No doubt he had delegated to some old sweat who was more concerned with comfort than carrying out a commission.

Oddly enough, I could see no sign of the fakirs whose chanting had opened the gateway to this world. Perhaps they had set their camp elsewhere.

I glanced up to where the dark shape of the mountains loomed against the icy sky. Somewhere up there, the Ry'lehans were gathering. What did they want? Perhaps if I could discover whether Maupertuis was aware of their presence I would know the answer to that question.

As I crept closer, I saw that the guards were roasting an animal on a spit and telling vulgar jokes. The creature's flesh was greasy and green, and it had three legs. A pair of sightless red eyes gleamed as the juices from the roasting flesh ran over them. I recognized the thing from Holmes's description as being akin to the creature at the dog fight in the Hackney marches.

I waited, hoping for a particularly cra.s.s joke to be told, and whilst the sentries were convulsed with laughter I slipped past them and into the camp. I had to locate Baron Maupertuis, Colonel Warburton and Tir Ram, and to eavesdrop on their conversation. I knew it was a risky course of action, but I felt that it was worth it. The thought of impressing Bernice Summerfield with my courage and feats of dewing-do had nothing to do with it.

I slipped like a wraith between concentric circles of rough tents. The guy-ropes were as unmanageable as a cat's cradle, and I had to pick my way carefully through them, listening all the while for sounds of activity from within. Snoring and muted conversations were all I heard. n.o.body was about. I began to take more risks: rather than slipping beneath the ropes I would stand up and step across them.

A cough made me dive for the ground. I held my breath, positive that I must have been seen. After a minute or so during which no alarm was raised and no shots fired, I took the risk of looking up. For a moment I saw nothing, then a match flared in the darkness, illuminating the face of one of Maupertuis's private soldiers. After lighting his cigarette he threw the match towards me. I closed my eyes, and felt it lodge in my hair. For a few agonizing moments I could feel the increasing warmth from my scalp and smell the singeing hair, but dared not move. The feeling of relief that swept over me when he walked away was something that I will remember to my dying day. I swept my hands back and forth across my head until I found the match - dead and cold. Imagination is a powerful enemy. After a few deep breaths I crawled off again.

After ten minutes, I stopped to take stock of my situation. The brave venture was beginning to seem more and more like a misguided attempt at false valour. The camp was larger than I had thought: I could wander around for hours without locating anything of importance.

I turned back.

I had moved five yards when the ground behind me exploded in blue fire.

The concussion almost stunned me into insensibility. Tents were engulfed in flame: their occupants spilling out, cursing and screaming. Another explosion, some thirty yards to one side, flung bodies into the air. They fell again to the ground in broken, charred heaps: some of them whimpering, some lying ominously still. Amid the bodies I thought I could make out the crinoline dress worn by Warburton's wife.

I looked wildly around, trying to locate the source of the attack. Tents burned, soldiers ran around like ants whose nest had been disturbed, but of the attackers I could see nothing.

And then I looked upwards, towards the invisible mountain. A small turquoise flower bloomed upon the slope and faded again to black.

Moments later, another explosion knocked me off my feet.

Picking myself up, I began to run back towards the point where I had entered the camp. n.o.body bothered with me. They had enough to worry about. Two questions at least had been answered: the Ry'lehans on the slopes of the mountain were not allied to Maupertuis; and they weren't peaceful philosophers either.

A soldier rose up from the collapsed wreckage of his tent. He yelled something at me, but I elbowed him aside and ran on.

Another blast flung me into a collapsing tent. I became tangled in guy-ropes and thrashed about for some moments before I could extricate myself Standing, I noticed a figure to one side, silhouetted by an azure conflagration. I made to move off, but it raised a hand. A hand holding a gun.

'I should have had you killed back in England,' Baron Maupertuis screamed above the pandemonium. 'You will pay in coins of agony for the trouble you have caused me!'

I tensed, ready to dive, but a cold caress of metal at the nape of my neck made me pause.

'The Baron would prefer to keep you alive for the moment, old boy,' Colonel Warburton's voice drawled in my ear, 'but I think you'd look just as good dead.'

'Haven't you got other things to worry about?' I asked as another of the Ry'lehans' infernal devices exploded nearby.

Maupertuis looked wildly around, his ash-blond hair falling in lank strands around his gaunt face.

'What have you done? My army! You have destroyed my army!'

'Look elsewhere for your attackers, Baron. Much as I would wish to take credit, I cannot'

'Then who . . .?'

'Your intended victims.'

He sneered.

'The natives of this G.o.d-forsaken planet are lily-livered philosophers. They rejected arms millenniums ago.'

'Your hooded friend obviously misinformed you,' I continued, anxious to divert the Baron's attention for as long as possible from whatever plans they had for me. A hit, a very palpable hit. Something moved behind his eyes: a flicker of annoyance, and perhaps even distrust.

'You know nothing.'

I decided to make a stab in the dark.

'I know that you have been played for a fool by whoever it is that you work for.'

A series of explosions punctuated my words.

'Baron,' Warburton interrupted from behind me, 'perhaps we should...'

'Insects!' the Baron screamed at his troops as they milled around us. 'You were supposed to be an all-consuming fire, spreading out to conquer this planet in the name of the Empire! Now you run like insects!' His cold gaze turned to Warburton.

'You a.s.sured me that their training had turned them into an efficient fighting machine. You guaranteed that they were ready for anything!'

The pressure of Warburton's pistol vanished from my neck. Surrept.i.tiously I edged sideways.

'You gave me a month!' Warburton snapped. 'It takes years to build up an army, and you gave me a month!'

'It was not my decision,' Maupertuis said coldly. 'I agreed with your strategy. I was overruled.'

'Whoever our mysterious benefactor is, he knows as much about building a fighting force as I do about ballet dancing.'

Maupertuis looked around. The camp was almost deserted now. The landscape of burning tents was bereft of movement.

'As I have no army,' he said calmly, 'and no need of a ballet tutor, it would seem that I no longer require your services.'

He shot Colonel Warburton between the eyes. I watched with mixed feelings as Warburton stumbled backwards, staring at Maupertuis with a puzzled expression on his face. Blood streamed from the wound.

'Gloria?' he said in a quiet, almost conversational tone, then fell to his knees. 'Gloria . . .?'

He pitched forward onto his face. His fingers clutched at the cold, hard ground for a moment, and then a great shudder ran through his body.

'G.o.d forgive your sins,' I murmured to his departing spirit.

'There is no sin,' Maupertuis said, swinging his pistol so that I was staring down the rifled barrel. 'There is only disobedience in the face of a higher authority.'

'And who elected you to be a higher authority?' I said scathingly. 'You bring the whole human race into disrepute.'

As an epitaph, I wish I had been given time to polish it a bit, but it would do.

As Maupertius's finger tightened on the trigger, and I watched the tiny gleam at the end of the barrel that I knew was the tip of the bullet that would shortly be tearing through my brain, I tried to recall Holmes's face as an example to give me courage. I could not. All I could remember was an afternoon thirty years ago, when the bright Australian sun shone down upon a creek, and my father and brother and I sat and fished together. It was the happiest day of my life, but I had not realized it until now.

The world seemed to explode around me. My eyes were filled with a red mist. So this was death.

The mist settled on my face. It was sticky and tasted of salt and hot metal. I licked it from my lips. I had spent enough of my youth tying off spurting arteries that I recognized it as blood. Mine? Reflexively I wiped a hand across my eyes.

Maupertuis was still standing in front of me, gun raised, but there was a large hole in the middle of his chest. The rim was charred and I could see the edges of his rib-cage projecting into the void where his heart should have been.

His face was n.o.ble in death. n.o.ble and unreal, like a marble statue. He fell like a statue too: without bending.

A young woman stood behind him. She was holding a device the size of a Maxim gun, but a lot sleeker.

'Hi,' she said. 'My name's Ace. And you're grateful.'

Chapter 14.

In which Ace and Watson pit themselves against nature, and come out on top. top.

She was wearing a smooth armoured bodice like the carapace of some glossy black beetle. Her shirt and leggings seemed to be composed of some fine-mesh metal weave. She was wearing spectacles, but of such a deep hue that I could not make out her eyes. I could not help but wonder how she could see out of them in the dark. She was so shorn of the identifying badges of her gender that the only clues were her long hair, her voice and the curve of her bodice.

Her weapon was trained firmly upon my midriff.

'My name is Watson,' I said, and swallowed. All I could see in her spectacles was my own distorted reflection. I hoped that the panic evident in my expression was caused by the distortion rather than the circ.u.mstances. 'Doctor John Watson, at your service. I presume that you are another of the Doctor's companions, Miss . . . ah?'

'Ace, like I said. And what makes you think I'm with the Doc?'

'A wild guess. He seems to have a fondness for leaving young ladies in situations fraught with danger.'

She looked around.