Doctor Who: All-Consuming Fire Read online

  'And what about the cowled man who was with him?' Holmes barked.

  Mycroft shook his head sorrowfully, jowls a-quiver.

  'No sign of him.'

  'A great shame,' Sherringford sighed. 'But at least I have father's journals back. I can complete the history of the Holmeses now.'

  'I have accepted a commission,' Holmes said stiffly. 'I shall execute it, even if it means travelling to India to apprehend the villain.'

  'Sherlock, be reasonable. The arm of the British Law is long, but not impossibly so. You have no powers...'

  'Perhaps you are not aware of the fact, but two people have died in mysterious circumstances. I shall hold Maupertuis to account for that.'

  'I concur,' Mycroft said, clapping Holmes on the shoulders. Holmes winced.

  'The key to Maupertuis's actions,' he continued, 'would appear to be the information that Father's journals contained. Perhaps you could enlighten us, Sherringford.'

  Sherringford shook his head.

  'It is beyond your understanding. Let us leave it at that'

  'It is important'

  'I must agree with Sherlock,' Mycroft interjected. 'Reluctant as I am to do so. Knowledge of why Maupertuis requires those documents could lead us to him.'

  Sherringford looked from one to the other.

  'No,' he said. 'Leave it be.'

  The Doctor stepped forward.

  'Perhaps I can help,' he said. 'Your father claimed that there were places where the veil between this world and another could be broken, and that a determined man could cross over.'

  We stared at him as if he was mad.

  'The veil...' Sherlock said.

  'This world and another?' Mycroft murmured.

  'Ah...' Sherringford sighed. 'The Doctor . . . I should have realized. The journals...'

  'I was young,' the Doctor said quietly, looking at the floor.

  'You were old, according to our father.'

  'Old, young, it's all a matter of perception. My granddaughter and I were touring India by elephant. We met your father, Siger Holmes, in the Officers' Mess at the British Army cantonment in Jabalhabad. He had been out in India for many years, working for the East India Company, despoiling the land and enslaving the natives. I was much more tolerant of injustice in those days. Your father had spent many hours in the company of the fakirs and wise men of the area. They told him of a place, up in the hills, where a man could step into another world, if he knew the right words. I was fascinated, but my granddaughter wished to travel on and I, foolishly, let her have her head. A lot of good it's done her now.' He shook his head. 'No matter. Where was I? Oh yes. I noticed that your father kept a journal, and I've been meaning to take a look at it for some years. There was a priest out in Cawnpore at the time: I suggested to him that your father was on the trail of something godless, and that the journals should be taken into safe keeping when your father died. I was a member of the Library, even then. I knew that the next time I was in the temporal vicinity, I could pop along and satisfy my curiosity. As I did. And here I am. Any questions?'

  'Yes,' I said. 'Everything.'

  'Who are you?' Mycroft asked. 'Your signature in the visitor's book at the entrance matches in every respect that of a member of the Diogenes, and let you look completely different. You talk calmly of things such as other worlds. You claim to have met our father in India, which would have been some forty-five years ago, and yet you stand before us aged no more than fifty. I repeat: who are you?'

  'Have you ever read Poe?' the Doctor asked.

  'I have no time for literature,' Mycroft replied.

  'I have,' said Holmes.

  I remembered listing Holmes's knowledge of literature as 'nil' shortly after we met. Either I had been wrong, or he had done a lot of catching up since then.

  'In which case,' the Doctor continued, 'you may have come across his story A Tale of the Ragged Mountains. Of, if you prefer someone other than Poe, perhaps The Clock That Went Backwards and An Uncommon Sort of Spectre by Edward Page Mitchell.'

  Holmes blinked: the only sign he gave of what I now know to have been a considerable shock.

  'You claim to be some form of traveller . . . a traveller in time?'

  'Yes,' the Doctor said simply. 'I do.'

  'And further, do I understand that you claim other worlds, other planets such as Mars and Venus, can be reached with a step, and not a laborious and dangerous journey such as that described by Mr Verne in his book From the Earth to the Moon?'

  Knowledge of astronomy - nil I had written six years ago. That list was looking increasingly suspect.

  'If I fold a map of London such that Baker Street lies parallel to Wellington Street, could you not step straight from your lodgings into the Lyceum Theatre?' the Doctor asked ingenuously. I was about to comment on the difference between a map and reality, but the Doctor continued, 'Siger claimed to have witnessed Indian fakirs pass through what he described as a "doorway", through which he could see a landscape that was unfamiliar to him. The landscape of another planet.'

  'Balderdash,' Mycroft expostulated.

  'Baron Maupertuis does not think so,' the Doctor said.

  'What do you mean?'

  The Doctor seemed to grow within his strange costume. A flicker of sparks from the fire caught his eyes and made them glow with a fierce, blue light.

  'Baron Maupertuis is raising an army to invade that world in the name of colonial imperialism. He intends claiming it by force. It's a barbaric act, and it must be stopped. I shall stop it. Humanity's crimes will be appalling enough when it eventually develops space travel, but to have Victorian armies spreading unchecked through dimensional gateways is almost too much to bear. And if the planet in question is inhabited... even with your antiquated weapons, the slaughter of innocent indigents could be immense.'

  There was a silence after the Doctor spoke in which the import of his words seemed to echo gently, like a struck bell.

  'How did Maupertuis hear about it?' I asked, then cursed myself for getting sucked into the Doctor's deranged story.

  'I don't know,' he mused. 'Somebody must have tipped him off. Perhaps this Madame Sosostris. She appears to know more about piercing the veil than I would have liked'

  'Or perhaps the cowled figure,' Holmes growled. 'I knew I should have stayed behind to unmask him!'

  'I'm sorry,' Mycroft said, echoing my own thoughts, 'but this is all. too preposterous for words. I'm not surprised that you've got sucked into it, Sherlock, you always were an excitable child, but you, Sherringford, you disappoint me. I always looked up to you as the hard-working member of the family, devoid of fancy. Now I find you accepting this lunatic's unsubstantiated word for a story more riddled with holes than a Gruyere.

  Talking of which, I do believe that I can hear a substantial dinner and a bottle of port calling to me, so if you'll excuse me...'

  Mycroft began to manoeuvre his massive bulk towards the door, like a battleship attempting to come alongside a narrow dock.

  'Unsubstantiated?' the Doctor said quietly, but with such force that Mycroft halted in his tracks. 'I think not. Perhaps you could introduce us to your other guest, Mr Holmes.'

  Sherringford said nothing. The Doctor crossed the room and, grasping an edge of the tapestry, pulled it sharply to one side. The tapestry moved like a curtain, revealing an alcove in which stood . . .

  . . . in which stood . . .

  . . . I cannot bring myself to write the words, even now, without a great mental effort and a stiff tumbler of brandy. It has been said that if you shake a man's world hard enough, it is the man that crumbles, not the world.

  When the creature in the alcove walked forward, its five spindly legs jointed in odd directions and supporting a wrinkled and sagging body, the whole thing looking like something that a man with a handful of pipe-cleaners and a walnut might have modelled in an odd moment, I felt my mind teeter on the verge of collapse. A red mist rose before my eyes and the floor rocked beneath my feet. I could not belie
ve what I was seeing, and yet I knew with a terrible certainty that it was no illusion or puppet. I knew, because I had seen it before. It had been hidden in the shadows outside Mrs Prendersly's house, it had moved across a fire on the other side of the Serpentine, it had been standing in the garden of the brothel in Drummond Crescent and we had followed it to the Library.

  It had been following me.

  'Gentlemen,' it said in a soft, sibilant voice as it halted in the centre of the room, 'we of Ry'leh need your help.'

  Interlude

  AF135/5/3/14

  V-ON, BRD-ABLE, WPU - 546.7

  VERBAL INPUT, COMPRESS AND SAVE

  MILITARY LOG FILE EPSILON

  CODE GREEN FIVE

  ENABLE

  I'm crouched on a catwalk about a hundred and fifty metres above the ground. Well, I say catwalk. Actually it's just three strips of wood running from side to side of one building to another, and they don't have cats here, just chocolate-favoured animals with skates, and three-legged rats.

  I tracked the things back to where they came from. Bit of a trek - couple of hundred klicks, I guess. It's a town, heavily fortified. The things live here and worship in this big temple thing. There's other creatures out on the plain -vicious things, killers. They seem to act like guards. Don't quite understand the set-up.

  I'm hugging the wall beneath a slit-like window, trying to make out a conversation inside the temple-thing. I'm dictating this live, just in case something happens to me, like I fall, or I'm found out. I can hear voices inside the room. I'm holding the log-implant up to the window now.

  'My children, you have done well. I am pleased.'

  That's one's actually in the room. Odd-sounding voice, like it's not real at all. Like that old Pink Floyd song: there's someone in my head, but it's not me.

  'When shall we bask again in your presence?'

  Bloke's voice. Sounds like it's a long way away.

  'Soon, very soon.'

  'The armies are gathered.'

  'You must see to them yourself. The brethren will be committed to moving me soon.'

  'I would crave a request, oh luminous one.'

  Crawler.

  'Name it. You are my favoured son.'

  God, they're all at it. It's like a convention of teachers' pets.

  'There is interference here. I would ask that a few of the brethren are spared to protect this side of the gateway.'

  'Interference? You displease me. The guards are mobilizing. Soon they may realize our plans. I am loath to spare any of the brethren.'

  'A detective and a stranger called the Doctor are investigating our affairs.

  They are nothing, but I would not take chances with your safety at stake.'

  Yay, Professor! Nice to know that it's all coming together.

  'Nothing can threaten my safety, but this Doctor may pose problems. You may have four of the brethren. They will be waiting this side of the gateway...'

  There's a sort of scuffle, then the background noise an the room changes in some strange way I can't quite put my finger on. I think contact has been broken.

  Just as I'm about to scramble down, the thing in the room murmurs something to itself.

  'If only the gateway wasn't so dangerous,' it says, like it's talking to itself.

  Self-pity just ladled on with a trowel. 'If they sing one note wrong then I shall never escape this hellish place.'

  Then it trails off into silence, and heavy breathing. Time to leave. I think I'll make my way back to the plain. To where the Doctor said things would be happening. Beats being bored, dunnit?'

  DISABLE.

  3531/748/AD PIP.

  Chapter 8

  In which a journey is continued and a conversation is recalled.

  Bright morning sunshine hit the Mediterranean and shattered into a thousand silvery fragments. I raised a hand to shield my eyes and squinted into the glare. Across the glittering sea I could just make out the line of sand that marked the Egyptian coast. It seemed to float upon the water like a dirty brown scum.

  We had engaged passage upon the Peninsula and Oriental Steam Navigation Company's ship SS Matilda Briggs. Two weeks out of Tilbury, bound for Bombay, we had just come within sight of Port Said - gateway to the Suez Canal. The town was just a jumble of sand-coloured buildings with the occasional dyed awning or flag fluttering in the breeze. Those passengers who had not made the trip before would no doubt flock to shore. The rest of us would be in the bar.

  The stretch of water between the ship and the town was already littered with a flotsam of small boats, rafts and dinghies, all heading our way. I knew what to expect. Within the hour we would be invaded by all manner of Arab salesmen hawking insanitary food, unfashionable tropical clothing and insalubrious 'French photographs', along with an entourage of conjurors and beggars, gawkers and hangers-on. The crew would stand by to repel boarders, of course, but it would be of no avail. These peaceful but insistent pirates could not be stopped.

  I turned, luxuriating in the slight movement of air across my skin. I was clad only in my nightshirt, as were all of the gentlemen on this side of the deck.

  Most of us had rolled up our bedding by now, and soon we would dress to allow the lascars to swab the decks. Any ladies brave enough to sleep above deck would, I presumed, be doing so on the other side of the ship.

  We all had cabins, of course. Those of us who had made the trip before were travelling POSH - port out, starboard home - to escape direct sunlight.

  The weather had been comfortable for the first week, but as we passed Italy and Greece the calm, temperate climate of Europe had given way to the oppressive sultriness of the tropics and the captain had given permission for anybody who so wished to sleep on deck. Old hands like me knew the value of staking an immediate claim, and had bagged deckchairs in the lee of the superstructure of funnels and masts. The johnny-come-latelies would have to make do with the bare deck nearer the rails.

  I dressed leisurely and wandered forward. The lascars were folding away the canvas partitions and beginning to hose down the decks. As I passed the lifeboats I caught a glimpse of the Doctor's diminutive form at the prow of the ship, standing in the same position that I had left him in the previous night.

  'Did you sleep well?' I ventured, walking over to join him. Warm salt water sprayed my face as the Matilda Briggs cleaved the waves.

  'I don't sleep,' he rejoined without taking his gaze from the glittering sea.

  I took his measure. His eyes were bright, and his countenance ruddy, although his dark scowl suggested some inner turmoil. His hair was slicked back by the spume.

  'I can provide you with a sleeping draught.'

  'You misunderstand,' he said. 'I mean I don't sleep. Ever.'

  'The human constitution is not designed to operate without rest.'

  'Indeed,' he said dismissively, 'a crippling flaw which I would have advised against if the designer had consulted me first'

  I let that one pass, and gazed out across the water. I could make out small figures on the quayside now, swarming like ants. The heat was like an oppressive weight. A sudden gust of wind swept spray into my face, and I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.

  'What have you been doing all night, if not sleeping?' I said eventually, more to break the silence than for any other reason.

  'Thinking.'

  'Deep thoughts, then, to have taken so long.'

  He turned his head and gazed at me. His eyes were violet in colour, shot through with tiny threads of orange. I had never seen their like before. I could see no expression that I recognized in them, nothing human at all.

  'The deepest,' he said quietly. 'This journey worries me. We're too exposed.

  If Baron Maupertuis or his mysterious hooded colleague wish to stop us, we're sitting here like horda in a pit.'

  'Like what?'

  He smiled suddenly, and his face was transformed from sulky glower to almost imbecilic happiness.

  °I mean, like china ducks in a shoo
ting gallery.' He sighed. 'I won't feel safe until we get to Bombay.'

  I gazed out across the water, but in my mind it was a different sea and I was just a boy.

  'I remember, many years ago,' I murmured, more to myself than to the Doctor, 'travelling to Australia with my father and brother in a decrepit barque with a leaky hull and a cracked main spar. We rounded the Cape of Good Hope in the middle of a storm. I hope to God never to sail seas that rough again. I was as sick as a dog for weeks on end. I thought I was condemned to live on the ship forever, the journey took so long.'