Doctor Who: All-Consuming Fire Read online

He gave me an exaggeratedly withering glance that had an underlying vein of humour in it. Ever since I surprised him naked in the bath, he seemed to believe that he and I were sharing something special. I hated to disillusion him.

  We set out in the direction that Watson had identified, on the basis that it was no worse than any other choice. Watson marched on ahead, and the Doctor and I followed behind. Holmes brought up the rear. He was uncharacteristically silent. Whenever I turned to make sure he was still there, I found him striding along with his hands in his pockets and a distinct glower on his face.

  'What's the matter with him?' I asked the Doctor, indicating Holmes with my thumb.

  'He's been thrown completely out of his element,' the Doctor explained as we walked. 'Mr Holmes's deductions rely upon a comprehensive knowledge of the way things work, or so Arthur Conan Doyle wrote. He knows London back to front, for instance. He can identify the typefaces used by all of the daily newspapers, he knows the secret signs employed by vagrants and down-and-outs to identify households prone to charity, he can identify the profession of any man based upon the small changes made to their hands, or their clothes, or the way they stand. In the provinces his knowledge is probably less comprehensive. I doubt, for instance, that he knows much about the regional variations in shoeing horses, but he probably does know where to research the subject, should the need arise. In Switzerland, to pick a country at random, he could well be at a disadvantage, as his base of knowledge would be largely useless and his opportunities to research would be limited, but here on Ry'leh he has nothing at all upon which to work. None of the signs that he looks for are valid. On the other hand, your friend Doctor Watson, being a man who works on the instinctive rather than the intellectual level, comes to terms with new sets of rules remarkably quickly. A very adaptable man, and one much after my own hearts.'

  'He's not my friend,' I murmured, not liking the way the Doctor had rolled the word around his mouth, getting every last nuance out of it.

  'Don't you like him?' the Doctor said innocently.

  'I like him, but...'

  'I thought you two were getting on rather well.'

  'We were. We are. But I'm not going to have an affair with him.'

  'Well, that makes a change,' he murmured. 'I'm worried enough about Ace's amorous predilections without every male you meet falling for you left, right and centre.'

  He glanced at me with a twinkle in his eye. I smiled back, but beneath his serious surface and his humorous interior I could see something else, a deeper, more fundamental worry.

  'What's the matter?' I asked.

  He shook his head.

  'A word, that's all.'

  'A word?'

  'Something I heard back in Tir Ram's cavern. Something in that chant.'

  I shook my head.

  'I couldn't make any of it out,' I said. 'It didn't sound like a real language at all. I'd have understood it otherwise, surely?'

  The Doctor pursed his lips for a moment. I took the opportunity to look around. Nothing had changed. The plain was still plain, the mountains still touched the sky. Watson still walked too fast. Holmes was still sulking.

  'It wasn't a language as such,' he mused finally, 'more a polyglot collection of words which I've heard before on half a hundred worlds across the universe, although with translations as varied as "window", "reddish-green"

  and "happily unicycling in an easterly direction". The actual chant was meaningless, but one of those words made me think.'

  'Don't leave me in suspense. Which one?'

  ' "Azathoth",' he said gloomily.

  Now it was my turn to frown.

  'I know that word. I've seen it somewhere. An article, or a journal, something. Maybe on Braxiatel...'

  'Azathoth is a god of anarchy and chaos: one of a pantheon whose worship sprung up on various planets across the universe at more or less the same time. The Silurians, for instance, venerated them before mankind was even a gleam in evolution's eye, as did the gargantuan entities that ruled Earth a hundred thousand years before them. Hundreds more races sacrificed in their names. There was even a cult amongst the Shobogans at one time.'

  'Shobogans?'

  'New Age Time-Lord drop-outs, but that's not important right now. Azathoth is a representation - an avatar, if you like - of one of the Great Old Ones.'

  'And they are . . .?'

  The Doctor sighed explosively. Watson looked round at the sudden noise, tripped over his feet and almost fell.

  'I was hoping not to have to go into this.'

  'Start at the very beginning.'

  'A very good place to start. Very well: the universe is cyclical, which means that it periodically goes through cycles of expansion and contraction, punctuated by a series of big bangs.'

  'I think we can skip the history of the universe, if it's all the same to you.'

  'No, no,' he complained, flapping his hand at me, 'the Great Old Ones predate even that. In the dying days of the universe before this current one, which is forever separated from us by a point where time and space do not exist, a group of beings discovered how to preserve themselves past that point where their universe ceased. They shuttled themselves sideways, into a parallel universe which, for various reasons that I will not even attempt to explain now, ceased a split-second after our one. With me so far?'

  'No.'

  'Good. Just before that universe ceased, they jumped back to our one, which had just started expanding afresh after a moment of nothingness.

  The trouble is, the universe before ours was set up differently.

  Fundamental physical laws such as the speed of light and the charge on the electron were different, which means that the Great Old Ones have powers undreamed of by anybody in this universe. Powers that make them look like gods, to naive races. And they're a pretty nasty bunch, too.'

  'Great. I thought I'd heard the name before. I went to a seminar on Felophitacitel Major, a few years back. There was a Draconian who had this theory about various cults springing up across the universe, all worshipping the same gods. We all laughed at him.'

  'He was on the right track. The Great Old Ones are those gods. There's Cthulhu, who we met in Haiti, if you recall, and the Gods of Ragnarok, who Ace will tell you about if you ask her nicely, and Nyarlathotep, who I sincerely hope never to encounter. And Dagon, who was worshipped by the Sea Devils, and the entity known as Hastur the Unspeakable who also goes around calling himself Fenric and who Ace will not tell you about no matter how nicely you ask. And Yog-Sothoth, who I met in Tibet and again in London, and Lloigor, who settled quite happily on Vortis . . . oh, there's a lot of them. All alien to this universe and its laws, both moral and physical.'

  'It's amazing, the stuff you can remember sometimes.'

  'I wish I could remember more,' he scowled. 'I failed practical theology, back in the Academy.'

  'Did you pass anything?'

  'I was highly commended for my landscape gardening.'

  'Very useful.'

  'You should have been with me when I fought the Vervoids.' He suddenly looked confused. 'You weren't, were you? No, of course you weren't. I have a bit of trouble with that period in my life: bits of it appear to be in the wrong order. Never mind, many a mickle makes a muckle, as somebody once said to someone else.'

  'What does that mean?' I asked, confused by the rapid changes in conversational tack, just as I suspect he intended me to be.

  'I don't know. I just like the sound of it. I wish I knew who said it - was it Robert Burns? My previous incarnation would have known: he was very good at obscure quotations.'

  '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 hell, 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 bypass 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 cluster 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 crass 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. Nobody 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 anyt
hing 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.