The Shadow Of Weng-Chiang Part 15

'Never met him. I don't suppose you two have discovered anything useful?'

'The members of one KMT brigade are packing to move, though they haven't had any official orders,' Romana said. 'It could be a coincidence '

'No. The Black Scorpion will be moving out tonight, now that their security has been compromised.'

'You got in?' Woo asked, intrigued.

'I had a nice chat with a young lady called HsienKo, who seems to run the Black Scorpion now.' He looked towards Romana. 'She seems to know who we are, but I'm sure we've never met. Not yet, anyway.'

Romana perked up. 'Then she must have been told.'

'Yes.'

'But by whom?' She frowned uncertainly. 'You don't think...'

'The White Guardian warned us to beware.' The Doctor paced around the table. 'These chronon discharges could be a deliberate trap to lure us off course.'

This had totally lost Woo. This pair might be friends of the Fallen Angel, but it didn't sound like they were working on quite the same problem as himself. The idea that they had been led off course in some way, however, implied that they weren't even meant to be here at all. 'Just a minute; I thought you two were friends of the Fallen Angel.'

'Who?' Romana asked.

The Doctor snapped his fingers. 'Lucas Seyton! I haven't seen him for three hundred years, which would make it about four years ago.'

'What?' Woo demanded. 'You've been taking opiates or '

'What brigade?' interrupted the Doctor.

Woo was taken aback, his mind trying to juggle the questions that were struggling up through it from his subconscious. 'I don't '

'What brigade are packing? If they are somehow connected with the Black Scorpion, we might be able to turn them in, or at least find out where they're going and why.'

'The Fourteenth Engineers.'

'Engineers? Why engineers? If they're going to be terrorists or rebels or even if they're just going to continue smuggling then why not infiltrate the infantry? What do they need a brigade of engineers for?'

'I've no idea.' Woo recovered quickly, ashamed at the way he had allowed himself to be sidetracked by mere small talk.

Business was business, and that had to be dealt with first. 'It might not even be connected.'

The Doctor made a face at that idea. 'I'll bet you a pound to a bucket of ferrets that it is. Right; first thing in the morning, we'll go and ask.'

'Ask? What are you going to do, walk up to the front door and ask them to let you in?'

'Why not? Right; we'll make a two-p.r.o.nged approach.

Romy Romana and I will ask to see the senior officer. If he really doesn't know what's going on, we might be able to shut them down. While we're keeping them busy, you can take a look around.'

'And if the senior officer is involved?'

'Oh, then you rescue Romana and I rescue you or vice versa. That's how it usually works.'

Thirteen.

s with the previous morning, a mist had drifted inland Aalong the Huangpu. Its insubstantial greyness clung to the surface of the river despite the summery climate. The sounds of boots on wood thudded from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e as the Doctor and Romana strolled across the many pontoons that linked the moored junks together with a larger vessel in the middle of the river.

It was a junk of sorts, thin wisps of smoke emerging from vents below decks. It was dominated by a huge sterncastle and three tall masts, while the gun mountings and radio antennae that sprouted from the afterdeck were clearly much more modern additions.

Woo glanced at the small motor boat which Rondo had left in the lee of a distant jetty during the night. From here it was safely cloaked by the mist, but Woo knew that K9 was hidden away in the back seat. He just hoped n.o.body stole the boat.

He had to take care to be quiet as he hauled himself up the ship's anchor-chain, since sounds were amplified by fog. The climb wasn't easy in his leather trenchcoat with double shoulder-holsters, but practice made it quick enough. Once crouching on the deck behind the capstan, Woo smoothed his mop of hair to keep it out of his eyes, and stuck another toothpick in the corner of his mouth.

A uniformed soldier with a rifle was just visible leaning on the rail opposite, but Woo was all too aware that shooting him or tossing him overboard would make too much noise and alert everyone on board. Not for the first time, he wished he could cloud men's minds as the Shadow did. As it was, he would have to hope that the mist would do his clouding for him.

The Doctor and Romana walked quickly, the latter having to hurry a bit to keep up. 'You know, this might be a little hasty,'

Romana warned. 'We've no reason to a.s.sume they won't just shoot us.'

'The Kuomintang is the government here, so they'll have to maintain at least some semblance of open government to look respectable. Besides, I don't think HsienKo's that keen on killing, which makes a nice change. I wish I could say the same about her man.'

'Typical male?' she asked archly.

'I don't know. Anyway, after Xanxia, then Vivien Fay...It must be something to do with political correctness.'

'Political correctness?'

'Hmm. It's a general feeling that discrimination is all right so long as it's done by groups who were discriminated against earlier.'

'I see; t.i.t for tat. Very childish.' Somehow she would have thought that civilization would need a more sophisticated set of inter-relationships. That was what the textbooks suggested, anyway.

'That's humans for you.'

'I really don't see why you like them so much. I mean, they're barely civilized.'

'Ideal of the n.o.ble savage?' They had reached the gangway up to the midships of the three-masted junk by now. A pair of guards stood by the base of the steps, fingering their guns. The Doctor went straight up to them with a friendly grin. 'h.e.l.lo there; I'm the Doctor, and this is Romana. We were just wondering if we could see your commanding officer?'

'About what?'

'A personnel matter.'

The nearest guard frowned suspiciously, then shrugged.

'Go and see if the colonel's available to see visitors,' he told his compatriot. The other guard hurried up the gangway and disappeared below decks.

'Told you so,' the Doctor said proudly to Romana.

She lifted an eyebrow coolly. 'That sort of brinkmanship doesn't become a Time Lord, you know.'

'Then why do you bother to respond to it? It's like all those people who write into the papers to complain about publicity being given to something they don't like it just adds to it.'

'That isn't a very logical argument.'

'The cosmos isn't a very logical place. That's probably why all those stuffed shirts in the Capitol are content to hide from it.'

As someone who much preferred the safety and security of home to all this wandering around hostile planets, Romana didn't think that hiding was much of a problem. 'They don't hide from it; they just have a more rational and reasonable way of going about things.'

'Rational and reasonable? There's no one so quick to go crazy as a perfectly sane man.'

'Well, I'm glad you're safe. Oh, he's coming back.'

The guard was indeed returning, with an adjutant in a junior officer's uniform. The adjutant looked over the new arrivals.

'Are they armed?'

'I never carry weapons,' the Doctor announced.

Romana suddenly felt very guilty, recalling the weight at the small of her back. She removed the Walther PP Woo had given her and handed it over with a sheepish smile. 'Just this, sorry.'

'We'll see.' The adjutant nodded to the guards, who patted the visitors down, searching for weapons. They both shook their heads. 'All right, the colonel will see you. Follow me.'

He led the way up the gangway, and the Doctor and Romana followed. A blushing Romana contrived to drive her heel into the arch of the guard who had searched her. Humans were such an animalistic species.

The adjutant led them on deck, then down into the upswept sterncastle, where a short corridor led to a panelled door. The adjutant knocked and pushed the door open. Inside, the walls were half panelled and half papered in blue. A gold lamp hung from the ceiling and a wide office desk was squatting in the middle of the stateroom. A small bunk was off to one side, while a couple of chairs were on the nearside of the desk. A larger, more padded chair was turned away from them, to face the wide window port set into the aft wall. 'Colonel,' the adjutant said respectfully, 'these civilians wish to speak with you on a matter of some importance.'

There was no response from the chair, so the Doctor settled his scarf more comfortably, like a Roman orator adjusting his toga before speaking, and cleared his throat loudly. 'Well, I just thought that you'd like to know that some of your people are a bit less patriotic than you might like.'

The chair swung round slowly, HsienKo's ruby lips smiling demurely. She now wore a KMT officer's uniform, but the eyes and simple ponytail were unmistakable. 'So I'd heard. Is this the girl Leela with you?' She gestured towards Romana.

The Doctor stepped backwards, but the adjutant was already closing the door, his gun drawn. The Doctor's eyes tilted ceilingwards in a sorrowful puppy expression. 'No, this is Romana. I was wondering when we'd met before; that narrows it down a bit.'

HsienKo motioned for them to sit, and steepled her fingers thoughtfully. 'You and Leela are acquaintances of my family.

As I said, my family owes you a debt.'

'Yes, I remember...What for, may I ask?'

'For your part in my father's death.'

'Who was this father of yours? I haven't been in China for centuries.'

She paused, watching him carefully. 'You knew him in London, where he was performing in 1889. I believe they called him the Master of Magic and Mesmerism.'

'Li H'sen Chang,' the Doctor breathed. 'But he died nearly fifty years ago; you can't be more than half that age.'

'I'm young for my age,' HsienKo said with a pleasant smile.

The Doctor frowned rather theatrically, before grinning slyly. 'Don't you mean you look young for your age? I mean, I don't want to seem too pedantic, but '

'I know what I mean. I am sixty-five, after all.'

Rea.s.suring himself that the soldier was looking out across the river, Woo scuttled across to the nearest doorway in the long deckhouse between the masts. A narrow companionway led down into a dark wooden corridor, and Woo started down the almost vertical stairway.

He had only gone down a couple of steps when he heard the thud of heavy footfalls from below. He leapt back up to the door and scrambled onto the deckhouse roof. As the footsteps continued, Woo began to wonder if a statue was coming up from below decks, so heavy were the treads. After a few moments, two figures wrapped entirely in thick one-piece suits emerged, their heads covered by hoods of the same material.

They Woo was unable to tell whether they were men or women under all that wore heavy boots like Boris Karloff's hand-me-downs, and heavily padded gloves.

Together, the suited figures carried a stout metal box out of the companionway and round the side of the deckhouse.

Keeping flat against the roof, Woo slithered along to keep watch as they carried their load along the side of the ship.

A few yards ahead of them, a gangway led down to the deck of a smaller motor launch. Woo recognized it immediately as the vessel that had brought and then removed HsienKo to and from Gongpinglu Wharf.

Woo wondered what was in the box. It must be valuable to them, of course, and it looked heavy enough to contain gold, but why did they wear those thick suits? He watched with interest as the pair lowered the casket into a larger metal sarcophagus set into the deck of the launch. Once they had sealed the casket inside this container, they straightened and removed their hoods. They were two ordinary coolies underneath, with sweat-plastered hair, who relievedly gulped in the cool damp air.

Fanning themselves with their unattached hoods, the two men returned to the ship. 'At least we won't have to wear these d.a.m.n things any more,' one of them grumbled.

The other nodded. 'Leave it to the Jade Emperor, and Weng-Chiang.'

'With pleasure. At least they'll have it cooler up there.'

'Not with Weng-Chiang around.'

'That's true. My grandfather met him once.'

'Weng-Chiang? What did he say about him?' The voice sounded interested, and eager.

'He said he was dangerous.'

There was a pause. 'That's it?' The voice was incredulous.

'What else do you need?'