by Andy Lane
He nodded, but I continued anyway. 'It was so stupid: the sepoy troops believed that a new type of cartridge case was coated with either beef fat or pork fat. Of course, the Hindus couldn't touch pork and the Muslims couldn't touch beef. So they revolted -literally. After the mutiny the British Army was sent in to oversee the place, the British East India Company was abolished and the Indian Civil Service was set up. Lots of young British lads were sent out to keep the place running for the next century, and then India achieved dominion status in 1947.'
He nodded.
'You seem to have grasped the basics.'
'But that's too simplistic!' I protested. 'This place is a jigsaw. At the moment there are fourteen British-run provinces like Baluchistan, Sind, Madras, Bombay and Bengal, each with its own distinct character and geography, divided into a total of two hundred and fifty-six districts. Alongside that, there are five hundred and sixty-two native states like Rajputana, Mysore and Hyderabad, lorded over by an assortment of Nizams, Walis, Jams, Rajahs, Maharajahs, Ackonds, Ranas, Raos and Mehtars. Across both the British-run and the native areas, there are over two thousand three hundred castes, sects, and creeds, each with its own distinctive customs and religious injunctions. This isn't a country, it's a universe in its own right,'
He grinned.
'I've always thought of India as a microcosm,' he said.
'Of what?'
'If I ever find out, I'll be a wiser man than I am now.'
I grimaced.
'Yes, very deep,' said a voice behind me. I looked up to find Holmes and Watson standing over me.
'Please,' the Doctor waved to two free seats, 'join us.'
I bought the drinks. The Doctor's careful with his money. Well, to be fair, I remember a time in a bar on Barrabas Gamma when I shamed him into paying for his round. He rummaged around in his pockets, cursing all the time, and threw a handful of change onto the counter.
Unfortunately it was Cimliss money, and most of it jumped off and ran into the shadows before we could recapture it. I hear they were still finding loose change reproducing in dark corners for weeks.
Where was I? Oh yes, Holmes and Watson. They sat down, and we drank for a few minutes, swapping pleasantries. Eventually Holmes turned to me.
'As you probably know,' he said, 'we have pursued a certain gentleman here from Tilbury.'
'Baron Maupertuis,' I prompted.
'Indeed: He cast a sour glance at me. I decided to interrupt him as much as possible.
'You are aware of the circumstances?' he continued.
'The Library, the thefts, the aliens, blah, blab, blah . .'
He controlled himself with some difficulty.
'Has Baron Maupertuis passed through Bombay, to your knowledge?'
I took a small notebook out of my pocket and began to read from it.
'I was proceeding in an easterly direction along Rivett-Karnac Road when -
'
'Benny...' the Doctor murmured. Holmes's snort punctuated the Doctor's warning.
'Oh very well: I put the notebook away. 'Volume five of the Doctor's telegraph message told me that the guy with the title was on board the SS
Soudan, which docked two days ago. I had the Baron paged, and spotted him when he disembarked. He was accompanied by a great hulking deaf mute named Surd. They headed here, which is one of the reasons why I did too. They stayed for one night, ate nothing and met nobody. They rose early the next morning, took a rickshaw to the station and bought tickets for Calcutta. They caught the next train out of Bombay. That's all I know.'
'An admirable summary,' Holmes said, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes. 'Calcutta is not their destination, of course.'
'Why not?' Watson asked.
'It is a coastal city at the other end of the line from Bombay. Had Baron Maupertuis wished to travel to Calcutta, he could have travelled there directly by ship, a quicker and more comfortable journey. No, the tickets are a blind. I have no doubt that they caught the train -' he glanced sharply over at me, and I nodded. ' - but I would suggest that they disembarked somewhere along the line.'
I handed him a list of stations.
'Difficult to tell from this what their destination might have been,' he continued. 'The train passes through the major British provinces on both sides of the continent, and also the belt of native states in between. What about luggage?'
'Two trunks. Heavy by the looks of them. Surd carried them as though they were nothing.'
'Contents?'
'I . . . I don't know.'
Holmes half-opened his eyes and gazed at me.
'All right,' I admitted, 'nothing but clothing and medical supplies. I sneaked a look.'
He frowned.
'No books?'
'No books.'
'No maps?'
'No maps.'
'No weapons?'
'No weapons.'
'Hmmm.'
Watson and the Doctor exchanged puzzled glances.
'I would have expected more equipment for a planned invasion,' Holmes explained. 'Their lack does not rule out our theory, of course - the material may have been sent on ahead - but evidence would have been reassuring.'
'What about the twenty large boxes addressed to the stationmaster at Jabalhabad that were loaded in the guard's van?'
I was the focus of all eyes.
'What makes you think that they were associated with Baron Maupertuis?'
Holmes snapped.
'The address labels were in his handwriting. I checked them against the hotel register.'
He smiled.
'An excellent piece of work. I could not have wished for a better agent in place.'
The Doctor raised his eyebrows at me. I smiled back. We went to dinner happy.
We discussed all sorts of things while eating. Over lobster curry with various spicy vegetable dishes Holmes and the Doctor had a running argument - good-natured on the Doctor's side but I'm not sure about Holmes - about the Basque language and its relationship to the ancient Cornish tongue while John Watson asked me what I thought about women playing sphairixtike for the first time. When I admitted my ignorance of the game he told me that it had recently been renamed lawn tennis. I was still none the wiser. Over a pudding made from boiled rice and coconut flavoured with rose essence we all discussed the recent testing of a machine-gun by Hiram Maxim. Watson ventured to suggest that it would put an end to war. I pointed out that the same was said of the bow and arrow. The Doctor muttered something about Z-bombs. We finished off with coffee and liqueurs, and debated our next move. The general consensus was that we should follow the Baron and his tame gorilla to Hyderabad in the morning.
When Holmes and Watson lit up foul-smelling cheroots, I decided to retire for the night. The Doctor and I walked through the decaying splendour of the hotel to the door of his room.
'You seem to be fitting in to the era very well,' he said.
'No thanks to you. Your Time-Lord gift of the gab is fine for alien languages but lousy on slang. I've got a feeling I'm a few decades out'
'I'm sure nobody will notice.'
'And what's all this boat travel rubbish? Why not travel straight here in the TARDIS?'
He smiled.
'It was a ship, not a boat. And I prefer the scenic route.'
By that time we had reached his room. I didn't want to say goodnight, so I told him what I had been thinking earlier, about him probably not sleeping, or even using his room. He smiled bashfully.
'I'll be doing some reading tonight,' he said, patting his pocket. 'I've brought Siger Holmes's journals with me. Siger was definitely on to something. I've been trying to make out the underlying meaning of the chants he reproduces. I'm close, but there's still something I'm missing..'
'Do you intend getting any sleep at all?'
'I tell people that I don't sleep,' he admitted, 'but that's just for effect. I do sleep. Once every hundred years I have a kip for a decade or so.'
He yawned suddenly.
He vanished into his room like a rabbit down a burrow.
I stood for a moment, staring at the door in bewilderment, then turned and headed off to my room.
I was four steps down the corridor when a sudden series of crashes and thuds made me whirl and run back to the Doctor's room. I put my ear to the door. It sounded as if there was a fight going on, and it sounded as though it was a big one.
'Doctor?' I yelled. No answer.
Glass crashed inside. I kicked the door down.
The window was broken and the furniture was smashed to matchwood apart from a wardrobe which had unaccountably escaped intact. The carpet was ripped into tatters. The Doctor was standing in the centre of the room with his umbrella held in front of him like a sabre. Before him, crouched but still brushing the ceiling, was a creature from a nightmare. It was a venomous crimson colour, armoured like a crustacean, and it walked on the taloned points of its billowing leathery wings. A coiled tail with a wicked spiked club of flesh on the end brushed the floor beneath its glossy body.
Its head was low-slung and vicious. It had no eyes, no mouth, just a set of thorny growths which jutted forward and seemed to swing from the Doctor to me and back, weighing up the threat.
It shuffled round to face me, the claws on the ends of its wings churning the carpet.
'Get out, Benny,' the Doctor hissed, 'it's me the rakshassa wants.'
'Rakshassa?'
'Yes, rakshassa. Plural, rakshassi. A type of Hindu demon.'
'Well, whatever it is, it'll have to get through me to get to you.'
I shuffled forward. It shuffled back. Emboldened, I shuffled forward a bit more.
It leaped for my throat, using its tail as a spring.
I dived for the floor, and felt the acrid wind of its passage as the rakshassa passed over my head and hit the doorframe. Plaster showered me. I rolled to one side. The rakshassa whirled and smashed the floor where I had been lying with its spiked tail. I scrambled to my feet. The thorny protrusions that were its face were all pointed at me and trembling. I backed slowly towards the cool breeze from the window, planning to dive out. It anticipated me, and manoeuvred me sideways, towards a corner.
I quickly scanned the room. The Doctor had vanished, sensible man. There was nothing large enough to use as a weapon save the wardrobe, and try as I might, I couldn't think of a realistic attack strategy with it. The rakshassa raised itself up on the tips of its wings and lashed its tail, preparing to strike.
I took a deep breath.
The wardrobe door slammed open and the Doctor leaped out, yelling at the top of his voice and whirling his umbrella around his head. He fetched the rakshassa an almighty crack across one of the spikes of its snout. It snapped off in a spray of pink, watery fluid. The rakshassa screamed - an undulating, unearthly noise like a nail in the eardrum - and shuffled backwards to the window.
'Thanks,' I breathed.
'I got you into this,' he admitted with a rare display of honesty, 'so I feel duty-bound to get you out.'
The rakshassa sprang across the room toward us. I tried to push the Doctor out of the way, but he took hold of my arm and shoved me into the wardrobe. The last thing I saw before the door clicked shut was the Doctor lunging towards one of the creature's wings with his umbrella, trying to puncture the membrane, then I was engulfed by darkness.
It took me less than a minute to smash the door down from the inside, and for most of that time I could hear nothing apart from my own laboured breathing. When I finally emerged, wreathed in splinters, the room was empty. I staggered to the window. The cool breeze and the scent of flowers were like something from a fairy-tale. All outside was darkness, apart from the occasional flicker of a fire. The stars glowed like the sun on waves.
And a shadow passed across the face of the moon, like a bird with a broken wing. It was carrying something limp.
Chapter 10
In which a train once again figures in the narrative and our heroes encounter a few familiar faces.
A continuation of the reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D.
Water trickled like perspiration down the ice block in the centre of the carriage. I watched the drops as they hesitantly felt their way across the shining surface to join the water sloshing in the tray beneath. They had eroded the base of the block to such an extent that the ice was balanced unsteadily upon a thin stem. I had been waiting for it to topple for three hours now, hypnotized by its slow disintegration, my head hanging heavily and rocking back and forth with the motion of the carriage.
Professor Summerfield shifted slightly on the leather sofa opposite and murmured something in her sleep. Her eyes flicked restlessly behind closed lids. Her face was flushed and glossy. Holmes, sitting in a cane chair in the corner, was also dozing. What else was there to do in this relentless heat?
Something moved past the window. I peered intently, if somewhat blearily, through the gauze and the glass at one of the many banyans that dotted the plains. Its branches swelled straight out into a root system without feeling in need of a trunk. The sight cheered me momentarily: anything that interrupted the landscape and provided a moment of interest was worth cherishing. I gazed around for some other distraction but, apart from the scarlet blaze of a mohar tree in the distance, nothing else broke the monotony of the dusty brown landscape. The distant horizon was so straight that it could have been drawn by a draughtsman, and the sky so impossibly blue that it had to have been painted.
We were travelling on the Imperial Indian Mail train through the mofussil -
the up-country area of India - and had been doing so for most of three days now. We had a first-class, four-berth compartment with bathroom attached.
The train had left Bombay just after sunrise, heading north-east towards the town of Gadawara through the states of Nagpur and Bhopal. From Gadawara we had continued onwards towards Benares, where the train would turn south-east for the final leg to Calcutta. We would not be on it.
Our goal was the small state of Jabalhabad, a few hundred miles west of Benares and a good day or so from our current position in the hinterland of purgatory.
The ice suddenly fell over with a loud splash! Professor Summerfield jerked awake and glared at me. Holmes merely raised an eyebrow.
I have refrained from describing Professor Summerfield, trusting rather to her own words to paint a self-portrait. Suffice it to say that I found her fascinating. Her refreshing bluntness, her vivacity and her cynicism were all at odds with the refined (dare I say prim?) ladies that I was used to dealing with back in London. To give an example: when Holmes and I burst into the Doctor's hotel room back in Bombay to find the Doctor missing and the room wrecked, I had expected to find her in a state of womanly distress. In fact she was systematically reducing the remains of the wardrobe to splinters whilst cursing fit to strike a midshipman deaf. I did not recognize many of the epithets she employed, but their meaning was clear. During the subsequent discussion, in which it was decided that the Doctor had probably been kidnapped by some creature allied to Baron Maupertuis and that our best course of action was to follow the Baron and hope to find the Doctor, it was Professor Summerfield who took the lead. Holmes and I merely stood and marvelled at her single-minded determination and her profanity.
Lest I give the impression that Professor Summerfield - or Bernice, as she encouraged me to call her - was in some way unwomanly, let me add that she was also exceedingly attractive, despite her male attire. If she was, as the Doctor had led us to believe, a denizen of the future, then all I can do is echo Shakespeare's cry: 'O brave new world, that has such people in't.'
'We would appear to be slowing,' Holmes said.
'I don't believe so,' I replied. Glancing out of the window, however, I could see the track far ahead curving towards a clutter of buildings on the horizon. 'Good Lord, we do appear to be heading for a station. How did you know?'
'You may have noticed that a proportion of
the steam from the furnace has been making its way into the carriage. You had not? No matter. For the past few minutes I have detected a reduction in the amount of steam, leading me to believe that we are slowing down enough that the cloud has risen out of the way before our carriage passes through it. A trifling deduction: He sniffed slightly. 'I am considering writing a monograph on the tell-tale odour of various types of coal. Our fuel derives, I believe, from the seams at Rewa.'
