The Shadow Of Weng-Chiang Part 18

The Doctor tossed the folders aside and helped Woo spread the sheet across the table. It was a hand-inked map with many sinuous Chinese dragons here and there, and a compa.s.s rose marked with symbols from the I Ching. 'Aha, this looks a little more useful.'

'It's a feng shui feng shui map of eastern China.' map of eastern China.'

The Doctor studied it closely. 'Yes, that's what I thought.

These lines show the lung mei lung mei, the Paths of the Dragon.'

'Dragon Paths!' It could hardly be coincidence. 'That was the phrase HsienKo used.' The Doctor's story about instantaneous travel was obviously mistaken somehow; but if they could find out which path HsienKo was following, they could follow. There were so many paths, though. How could they tell where she was going? 'I don't see the connection.

These are what you westerners call ley lines, yes? There was a man called Lethbridge a couple of years ago who thought he'd discovered them, though they've been known here for centuries.'

'Not quite. What Lethbridge discovered were the alignments set up as part of a confused memory of the Euterpians' song-lines a means of harnessing the energy inherent in the Earth's magnetosphere to act as signal beacons.

The Dragon Paths are a rather more accurate depiction of the Earth's own lines of telluric current.'

'Lines of what?'

'Yes...If you put a magnet at the heart of a field of iron filings, they polarize and form a sort of distorted concentric pattern. The core of the Earth is made of semi-liquid allotropic iron. Convection in the outer core produces lines of magnetic force the magnetosphere. Near the Earth's surface, these lines are distorted by some deposits in the mantle and crust, and those are your Dragon Paths. Movement inside a magnetic field produces electricity, and since the core, mantle and lithosphere of the Earth are all moving relative to each other, they generate telluric current in the magnetosphere. Magnus Greel's zygma beam intersects all this like a falling stone intersects with the surface of a river.'

'It creates a splash? Ripples?'

'Exactly. Ripples of chronon energy flowing along the lines of telluric current.'

'Then the Dragon Paths are like wires carrying a telephone signal?'

'With physical beings or equipment being the signal. Now look here.' The Doctor pointed to a mountain symbol at the heart of a web of lines and symbols. 'This seems to be a central nexus of these Dragon Paths.'

'That's T'ai Shan, the sacred mountain.'

'The sacred mountain...I wonder what the geology of that place is like. It must have some similarity to the rock in that quarry near HsienKo's house.'

'Geology?'

'Certain types of mineral deposits occur where several lines meet, and those are the interstices where vehicles can go through. Ah! Of course! Ripples of chronon energy...If enough energy from these telluric currents could be combined into a strong enough chronon feedback, there could be a temporal shift big enough to reach back along the zygma beam.'

'You've lost me.'

'What?' the Doctor looked momentarily fl.u.s.tered. He pulled a small table-tennis bat with the ball attached to it by a length of elastic from his pocket. 'Look. This bat is the fifty-first century, the ball is Magnus Greel's Time Cabinet at the moment of its arrival in 1873, and the elastic is the zygma beam that propelled the cabinet back to the nineteenth century.

Now imagine grabbing the elastic halfway down, at the level of this year' he did so 'and twitching it like this.' The ball leapt up into the hand with which he had twitched the elastic.

'And voila voila; fifty years' worth of chronon energy spread throughout the Dragon Paths. Right now the energy of any given current moment is enough to transmit any number of people across the globe. Fifty years' worth would be more than enough to pierce the interstices of the s.p.a.ce-time vortex, and enable the Black Scorpion to literally step into any time period in Earth's history. It seems Greel was right in a way; the zygma experiment did work, just not in a way even he could envisage.'

'What would be the point? Of stepping into other eras, I mean.'

'I'd have thought that was obvious. Imagine a world where the Black Scorpion have weapons from hundreds of years in the future, or where they can plunder the everyday items of the past to sell as antiques and deposit the profits in the past, thus making a fortune in compound interest. And that's just small-time stuff for someone as intelligent as HsienKo. What if she were to go back and prevent the Manchus from usurping the Mings? Or take those guns she got from that German and take over the Chinese Empire in Qin's time? It hardly bears thinking about.'

'Then where does Weng-Chiang come into this? The Tong members seem to be awaiting his second coming.'

'So I heard. Weng-Chiang was a convenient ident.i.ty adopted by Magnus Greel sixty-four years ago. A supernatural figure was an obvious pseudonym for someone who arrived as if by magic, by unknown technology.' The Doctor flourished the little rubber ball. He looked back at the bat suddenly, with an indrawn breath. 'Is that what she's trying to do? It can't possibly work...'

'What?'

'I'm just wondering if she means to s.n.a.t.c.h Weng-Chiang out of the zygma beam at a point before he arrived in London.

If they short out the zygma beam, the Time Cabinet will be drawn back here with it. As a side-effect, they'll get Magnus Greel alive and well in 1937.'

'I take it this Magnus Greel isn't the sort of person we'd like to have around?'

'Definitely not. He's a war criminal with the blood of millions on his hands thousands of them cannibalized at the cellular level in his own obsessive search for immortality. He even has the long fingernails of a Chinese vampire.

Unfortunately, we can't just call up Lam Ching Ying and let him get to work with the old wooden sword and dog's blood.

The point is that HsienKo would be creating an alternate timeline; one in which Weng-Chiang could cannibalize all of humanity. Not only that, but she herself would never have been irradiated with chronons, and might even have died before now. In that case we'd have a temporal paradox on our hands.'

'What can we do, then?'

'Get to T'ai Shan before they can trigger the energy release, then try to stop it.'

'How do we do that?'

'I haven't the faintest idea; most civilizations consider this line of technology to be worthless, so n.o.body has ever really explored it very well.'

'Perhaps we could ask them, if we can get to T'ai Shan.'

'If we had one of their geomantic compa.s.ses we could follow them through the Dragon Path. As it is, we'll have to take more mundane transport.'

Woo nodded mutely. All this talk of lung mei lung mei and instantaneous transportation was fascinating, but surely a fantasy. HsienKo, after all, had left by a perfectly ordinary boat. Nevertheless, they had to do what they could. and instantaneous transportation was fascinating, but surely a fantasy. HsienKo, after all, had left by a perfectly ordinary boat. Nevertheless, they had to do what they could.

The Doctor went over to the window that looked out from the stern of the ship and opened it to give a blast on his dog whistle. Somewhere out in the mist, an engine spluttered into life.

K9 had cut a hole in the boat's dashboard and extended the probe from between his eyes directly into the wiring: Once he had started the boat, he lowered his head between the spokes of the steering wheel in order to guide it towards the source of the Doctor's summons.

Several humans were looking over the edge of the high sterncastle even before K9's infravision identified the twin hearts of the Doctor in a window below. The humans on deck were shouting and pointing, but K9 ignored them to concentrate on getting the boat into position under the window.

The humans started shooting; fortunately their bullets were incapable of penetrating K9's casing or the hull of the boat.

They could harm the Doctor and Woo, but K9 couldn't move his head into a firing position without losing control of the boat.

Calculating the right moment from which the boat would coast the rest of the way, K9 cut off the flow of electricity and the engine died. He tilted his head back, extending his blaster muzzle. K9 knew that the Doctor wouldn't appreciate his killing these men, so he restrained himself to a stun level as usual, and started firing.

The speedboat drifted in to b.u.mp gently against the stern of the ship. Woo was about to try leaning out the window to shoot at the men on deck, when a red flash split the air. He jumped back. 'What the '

'It's all right, it's only K9.' The Doctor looped his scarf and tossed it out to catch on the pennon at the prow of the speedboat. 'I'll explain later. Get into the boat.'

Still wondering what sort of Wellsian death ray could spit red light like that, Woo slipped out of the window and dropped into the speedboat. He immediately started the engine, but held the steering wheel firmly in place so that the boat would remain still for the Doctor to follow him down. The Doctor dropped into the seat beside him, then leant forward to unravel his scarf from the bow pennon as Woo gunned the engine.

Another body dropped into the back of the boat: a Tong soldier with a knife. The Doctor turned in his seat to grab the man's knife-hand. Woo noticed what was happening, but saw that the Tong man was precariously balanced. He twisted the wheel and the speedboat tilted sideways, tipping the Tong soldier into the river.

K9 and the soldiers still on the junk exchanged a last couple of shots as the speedboat surged away from the ship. Woo had escaped from gunmen before, but felt much more exhilarated this time. Perhaps it was the refreshing cool mist in his face after the acrid heat of the opium burners.

He laughed delightedly.

Fifteen.

he motor-launch had travelled eastwards along the Hu T angpu for a mile or two, leaving the mora.s.s of junks and sampans behind. Ahead, Romana could see that they were approaching the mouth of the river.

She was more interested in watching the boat's pilot at the simple controls. She stood up from the small folding seat on which she had been placed and went over to the pilot, half expecting someone to stop her. Neither of the guards did, and nor did the pilot, though the Peking Homunculus watched her without changing its carnal expression.

The controls were simple wheel, throttle, speed indicator and so on but in place of a normal compa.s.s was a larger version of the geomantic compa.s.s she had seen the Tong's a.s.sa.s.sins wear in their lockets. Kwok and HsienKo came into the wheelhouse from outside. Kwok started towards her. 'Sit down.'

'It's all right,' HsienKo interrupted. 'Let her watch. She'll need to understand anyway. Set course for Dong Lake.'

Kwok nodded and reached out to start rotating the concentric rings of the geomantic compa.s.s. When he had rearranged the rings to his satisfaction, Romana could see pale flashes of blue lighting flicker across it. Abruptly, the water around the boat appeared to rear up and spin overhead. For an instant, Romana thought the water was going to swamp the launch as it had loomed high above the windows. Then she realized that it was only the distorting effect of pa.s.sing through the Dragon Path. Unfortunately, she had no way of telling how far they had gone.

The Doctor might be familiar enough with this planet to make a fair guess, but she wasn't. From the view out of the windows, she could see that they were now on a wider body of water. The sh.o.r.e was visible on every side, which meant they were now on a lake rather than the river.

There were other boats on the water mainly little sampans with individual fishermen but Romana ignored them, feeling HsienKo's eyes on her. 'Impressive, is it not?' the Chinese woman asked.

It certainly was, for a human. Perhaps this ingenuity was why the Doctor seemed to like them so much. 'I suppose so, though it's a little basic.' Actually, it was more sophisticated than a civilization of this level should have attained, according to all the textbook models. So far none of the places she had visited with the Doctor matched the textbook models, though, and she was beginning to wonder if anywhere did.

'Oh, you can speak frankly here. It's very basic. My body has been charged with Dragon energy since before birth and can walk the Dragon Paths. Others can too, if they have a sample of my cells and a guidance mechanism.'

'The guidance mechanism being the geomantic compa.s.ses.'

'The Dragon Paths are electrically based, so iron deposits or water and so on affect the paths. The settings on the compa.s.s form a tiny a.n.a.logue of the world's magnetic field, tuned to the path of the destination you wish to reach, and the principle of the transformer does the rest by expanding that a.n.a.logue to effect the Earth's magnetic field.'

'Did you build them?'

'No, I merely donated some blood samples to give them the required sensitivity to the dragon energy. Professor Ying made them, after I had explained how I myself could walk the Dragon Paths. I'm sure the Doctor would be able to find many problems with the system, but it works well enough for our purposes.'

'And what purposes are those?'

'Now that would be telling, but instantaneous transportation to any place on Earth does have some obvious applications, no?'

'No, I mean, yes, obviously. I presume your next step is to try to extend the Dragon Paths through time.'

HsienKo nodded. 'I know that time travel is possible.

Weng-Chiang achieved it, which means we can too.'

'To bring him back? Are you sure that's such a good idea?

According to the Doctor, he was quite an unlikable person.'

'The Doctor speaks from a biased point of view.' HsienKo looked sideways at the pilot. 'Weng-Chiang's return is something I hunger for, desperately. I have much business to conduct with him. I think the Doctor would approve.'

'I very much doubt it.'

'I know you do.' She fixed Romana with a firm look.

'Everything that my father and the Tong have done in Weng-Chiang's name are good reasons to expect more bloodshed. I can only give my word that this will not happen, and that what I am doing is for the good of all.' She did look truthful, Romana noted. At least, she looked as if she believed she was being truthful. 'You are not a prisoner here. When we dock, you are free to go where you like, though heading back to Shanghai will mean you will probably miss the Doctor on his way here. No one will stop you, wherever you decide to go.'

'That doesn't sound very good strategy.'

'No? If you leave, you learn nothing, will be out of our way, and without a Dragon compa.s.s you won't reach Shanghai until our work here is complete anyway. Therefore you are no danger. If you stay here, you will learn that I mean to benefit this country, and indeed the world. Again, you are therefore no danger, and may prove helpful.' Romana was surprised. This was definitely not the sort of behaviour she had come to recognize in the people she had met in her short time travelling with the Doctor.

On the other hand, perhaps HsienKo was being clever, knowing that someone who had gone to such lengths to discover things about her would not want to leave when the chance to find out more information presented itself.

'Personally, most of us will go and get something to eat in town. I'd suggest you do the same.' With a knowing smile, HsienKo turned back and left the wheelhouse.

Kwok followed HsienKo as a coolie laid out a gangplank to the jetty. The brick-red roofs of the low buildings of Tai'an were spread out to the west, while the green edge of a small park was visible on the far side of the lake. With anyone other than HsienKo, Kwok would have thought the offer to Romana was a sign of weakness or erratic behaviour. So far, however, HsienKo had been proved right, and he trusted that she would be again. Above all else, she knew what she was doing.

'You disapprove?' HsienKo asked, before he spoke.

'If it were anyone else...'

'Romana clearly has knowledge of the same sophistication as the Doctor; I would rather have them help us. If we were to treat her as a prisoner, not only would her mind be turned against us, but she would probably escape and observe us from some hiding-place. This way, we can keep an eye on her and control what she observes. I hope, therefore, to make best use of her intelligence.'

'Unless she decides to leave.'

'In her position, would you?'

'No.' He was right; she knew what she was doing. 'We should impose some restrictions on her movements until full power has been achieved in the transmitter and the correct resonance frequency for the Dragon Paths has been attained.'

HsienKo nodded sharply. 'Entry to the generator control rooms and the core cavern should be by ID card and pa.s.sword identification only. Afterwards, once we're finished with it, it won't matter whether she gets in or not.'

Li peered out of the tiny barred window that was the only light source in the empty storeroom. His pointed chin and wide jaw were bruised from his capture. Being locked up was a new experience for him, and he wasn't enjoying it at all. From the window, he could see the jagged peaks of T'ai Shan; he had so far been unable to work out how he had travelled so far so quickly. True, he recalled what the Doctor had told him, but that nonsense could hardly be true, could it?

Yet he couldn't think of a better explanation; he was a police inspector, not some superst.i.tious peasant. If sound and messages could be sent by wireless, then why not people? No, he told himself, that way lies madness. He must concentrate not on the how, but the why, of this weird journey he had made.