by Andy Lane
I was not the only one to stop and look back, but we kept on going none the less.
We took refuge finally in a small clump of bushes. They snapped at us tentatively, but the size and mood of our party obviously frightened them and they returned to sleep with their buds safely tucked beneath their leaves.
'Look,' said Bernice, gazing upwards in wonder. Her face seemed to shine.
At first I thought that it was her inner beauty, but then I followed her gaze.
For the first time in a thousand years the sun was shining upon the surface of Ry'leh. Its rays were pouring through the hole in the sky, surrounded by concentric rings of cloud, and shone down like a stage spotlight upon the plain where the caravans were landing. Rakshassi hovered high above, looking for us, the shadows of their wings skimming across the ground like lithe black animals.
'There is a crack in everything,' the Doctor whispered. 'That's how the light gets in.'
'Pardon?' I said.
'A line of poetry from my home planet. I think it loses something in translation.'
In the distance, illuminated by the finger of light, the fakirs were emerging from the landed caravans. They immediately formed up into lines and began to chant.
'I-ay, I-ay!' The words echoed across the plain. 'Naghaa, naghaighai!
Shoggog fathaghn! I-ay, I-ay tsa toggua tholoya! Tholoya fathaghn! I-ay Azathoth!'
The words repeated, growing louder as more voices joined the chorus, throbbing like a heartbeat in the distance. I felt, as I did the last time that I heard those words, that a pressure was building up behind my eyes.
'They don't waste much time, do they?' Bernice said.
'It's their big moment,' Ace replied. 'And besides, the Shlangii will soon be here.'
'How soon?' the Doctor asked.
'The nearest garrison is a small one, so let's assume that it's been wiped out during the battle with Maupertuis's men. The next one is half-way around the planet, but they've got skimmers. Giving them an hour to work out that something has happened, and another fifteen minutes to mobilize .
. . I guess half an hour until they arrive.'
'Too long. Azathoth will be through to India by then.'
'So what are our options?' Holmes asked.
'I don't know,' the Doctor said.
Bernice gazed sceptically at him.
'No cards up the sleeve?'
'None.'
'No long-range plans?'
'Not one.'
'Scout's honour?'
'May my woggle fall off if I lie.'
'That chant,' Ace said thoughtfully. 'You said it weakens the fabric of reality, whatever that is, enabling a gateway to be opened, and you also said that this fabric thing is already weakest between India and this plain.'
'Indeed.'
'Well, how easy would it be to move the gateway? What I mean is, could we change the chant and alter the aim point?'
The Doctor thought for a moment.'
'Hmm. A canny notion, and one well worth bearing in mind. What made you think of it?'
Ace smiled. 'Something I overheard while I was hanging around waiting for you to arrive,' she said.
Delving around in his pockets, the Doctor finally pulled out a piece of green chalk. 'No paper,' he complained. He looked around for something to write on, and his eyes lit up as their penetrating gaze crossed Ace's battle-armour.
'Ace, turn around.'
'You what?'
'Just do it!'
He began to scribble on the matt-black surface, quickly covering it with symbols and small diagrams, some of which I recognized from the inscriptions on Azathoth's caravan. Sometimes he would go back and rub a line out with his sleeve: once or twice he retrieved chalks of other colours and added notes in and around his original ones. Holmes was following the Doctor's calculations so closely that he ended up with chalk-dust on the tip of his nose. The Doctor kept up a running barrage of commentary, muttering phrases such as: 'Of course, the rhomeson flux must be taken into account. . : , 'it's important to remember that E equals MC cubed in the exo-space time continuum. . : and 'for heaven's sake, keep still Ace!'
The chant was building up, with individual voices soaring above the main theme, and a strong beat pushing it along. My head was beginning to throb in sympathy.
Finally the Doctor leaned back and sighed.
'This would have been so much easier with the books from the Library, but Sherringford still has them. Fortunately I had a quick flick through some of them, and I also managed to chat with one or two of the fakirs when we were on our way to the surface. I think we can do it.'
'How?' said Ace, stretching after sitting in a cramped position for so long.
'The whole thing is frequency-specific. It's the subtle shifting of discords that weakens the structure of spacetime, enabling the connection to be made with the nearest world - Earth. If we introduce a specific set of new discords, we can move the point of connection.'
'But why didn't Azathoth or Sherringford think of that?' I asked.
'Because they were thinking in purely spatial terms,' the Doctor replied.
'And the frequencies required are just too high to achieve. It never occurred to them to move the aim-point in time. The calculations are harder, but the frequencies can be sung, and the further forward or back in time we move the aim point, the wider our spatial error can be.'
'In time,' Holmes breathed. 'You mean . . .?'
'I mean I'm looking for suggestions as to the best place to dump an evil god and its worshippers. Somewhere that they can't do any major harm. A geological disaster would do perfectly. Eighteen eighty seven, plus or minus fifty years, and on the Earth's surface. That's our window of opportunity. Once we dump them, we can sing our own way back to Tir Ram's cavern, and from there we can make our way home.'
Bernice thought for a moment, then said, 'What about Siberia, nineteen-oh-eight? The TARDIS explosion?'
'No,' the Doctor snapped. 'If I start mixing dimensional rips they could end up anywhere.'
'Krakatoa!' I exclaimed. 'Four years ago. If it's an explosion you're looking for, that's the biggest one I can remember.'
'Is that east or west of Java?' the Doctor said, then thought for a moment.
'A distinct possibility,' he added, 'but a trifle dangerous if we get caught up in it. Ditto the Titanic in nineteen twelve, which I was also considering, with the added problem that we would be interfering in our own pasts. Has it occurred to you that we seem to have toured most of the major disasters of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries in the past few months?'
'California,' said Ace quietly. 'Nineteen-oh-six. The great San Francisco earthquake.'
'Perfect!' the Doctor shouted. 'We missed that one. What made you think of that?'
'Personal interest,' she replied. 'It was an old school History project.'
History?, I thought, then let it slip away.
The Doctor delved in his pockets and pulled out a large, leather-bound book.
'My five-hundred-year diary,' he said, catching my inquiring glance. 'All sorts of information that's completely pointless unless you are trying to avert an alien invasion.'
He flicked through the pages.
'Now let me see . . . We'll need a location which is known to have been completely wiped out. We can't risk them escaping. That rules out quite a bit of the town...'
His scowl deepened as his fingers riffled through page after page.
'Town Hall . . . no. Agnews State Insane Asylum . . . no. Palace Hotel...'
A smile broke across his face.
'Yes! Razed to the ground.'
His face fell again.
'But what's the address?'
'Market Street,' I said. To Bernice's inquiring glance, I added, 'I lived in San Francisco for nearly a year.'
'What are the galactic co-ordinates for Market Street?' the Doctor asked.
'Never mind. I'll estimate.'
Wiping across Ace's carapace with his sleeve,
he began to scribble down staves and sets of crotchets and quavers.
'No time to lose,' he urged. 'Ace, get your armour off!'
Under his direction, and all clustered around Ace's armour, we began to sing. Ace was shivering in an immodest singlet, and so I gave her my jacket to wear. I thought that she might throw it back in my face, but in fact she accepted it gratefully. The song was a collection of words similar to the chant that the fakirs were singing, but the notes spanned theirs, weaving around and between their weird harmonies, forming a straightjacket for their chant and forcing it in a different direction. The Doctor was forever darting in and scribbling an additional sharp or a flat, or altering the length of a note, until we got it right.
We knew that it was working when the deep, underlying beat of the fakirs'
chant began to alter into a double beat, and their descant picked up some of our notes. It was working. We were changing their song, but were we changing it enough?
The first indication we had that something was happening was when light -
yellow gaslight, not the diseased red glow that illuminated Ry'leh - shone across us. We looked up, still singing, to see a vast tear in the fabric of reality through which a stretch of carpet and a marble wall could be seen.
Silhouetted against it, I could see the winged figures of rakshassi and Sherringford Holmes's still-robed form. He seemed agitated. It must have been obvious to him that this was not India but, unwilling to stop now and disappoint his god, he went onward, leading Azathoth's followers in. Most of the rakshassi went first, in case of trouble, then Azathoth's personal honour guard pulled its temple through the rent, straining to move the metal runners across the rock. The fakirs followed, still chanting. I could smell smoke and, oddly, freshly made coffee.
The chant was swelling towards some final crescendo now, and I watched, wide-eyed, not wishing to miss a moment of Azathoth's downfall.
Bernice tugged at my sleeve. I tried to shrug her off. Insistently, she tugged again. I tore my gaze away from the rent and glanced at her. She was looking back, over the terrain of Ry'leh.
I followed her gaze, and drew a sudden breath as I glimpsed a number of metallic shapes trailing fire as they arrowed through the air towards us.
A deep rumble shook the ground. The Doctor turned. His eyes widened in shock as he saw the craft. He chalked a quick message on Ace's back.
Shlangii mercenaries! it read.
A blue-green line of fire lanced from the leading craft and melted rock not ten feet to our right. The Doctor shook his head and, before I could stop him, ran towards the rent in the air.
We followed him. We had no choice.
The fakirs stopped singing just as we passed through behind them and felt the carpet beneath our feet. We were in a huge, high-ceilinged ballroom whose walls were cracked and whose carpet was thickly smeared with dust. Nobody else was present. A feeling of peace washed over me. I was home. I didn't care that it was, if Ace could be believed, almost twenty years since I had left. At least it was the same planet.
I turned and looked behind. The surface of Ry'leh hung like a painting on a wall of the ballroom. Tiny fivelegged shapes were rushing across the ground towards us, clutching weapons, as the metal shapes flew overhead like a flock of birds.
The gateway closed behind me, close enough for me to feel the sudden whoosh as it collapsed.
The Doctor led us into a deep recess in the wall. From there we watched the rakshassi milling around the temple, whose runners had cut deep gouges in the carpet. I could not see Sherringford.
'I thought you said half an hour,' he said to Ace.
'Anyone can make a mistake,' she said.
'Looks like a frying pan and fire situation to me,' Bernice added, looking around. 'How do we get back to the TARDIS from here?'
'We can worry about that later,' the Doctor said. 'Are we in the right place?'
'Search me,' Ace replied. 'I did all my research from an old copy of the Reader's Digest.'
'It's the Palace Hotel,' I said.
Holmes looked at me sceptically.
'It is,' I insisted. 'I practised medicine in San Francisco for nearly a year. I took rooms here when I first arrived. You sent telegrams to me.'
'It looks like we're too late,' the Doctor muttered. 'The earthquake has already happened. The hotel is still standing. I don't understand!'
'So they can still invade?' Bernice asked.
'More fool me, yes they can. And in the middle of a national disaster, it will be even more difficult to fight them. Still, at least we're here to try.'
In the centre of the ballroom, Sherringford emerged from Azathoth's temple.
'My brothers...' he began.
He got no further. A deep shudder ran through the fabric of the hotel.
Sherringford looked around wildly.
With a tremendous explosion, the doors to the ballroom burst open to reveal a wall of flame. Gluts of red-tongued fire leaped up the walls, scorching the plaster and cracking the marble. A wave of heat rolled towards us.
'Fire?' Holmes mouthed.
Ace grinned.
'Started after the earthquake when some stupid woman tried to cook breakfast after the gas main cracked. Caused more damage than the earthquake itself. The army tried to stop it by dynamiting the buildings, but they spread it even further. I remember the dynamite, it's why I enjoyed the project so much.'
An ominous cracking made me look upwards. What I saw made me shout:
'Run, run for it!'
We got to the door just as the ceiling gave way and huge chunks of masonry fell into the centre of the room. Rakshassi staggered around, blinded and deafened, their wings alight. A cloud of dust and smoke rolled towards us, hiding the hellish scene. Holmes led the Doctor, Ace and Bernice along the corridor. I stopped to look back. I thought that I had heard a voice, a sweet voice screaming, 'No, I cannot die, I cannot die!
Help meee!'
I took a step into the room, but the heat drove me back towards the door. A gust of superheated air drove the dust and the smoke away from me for a moment, and I saw that the temple had been smashed open by a falling concrete beam. Azathoth flailed helplessly in the wreckage, pinned by the beam. Its skin was burning.
'Watson!' it screamed, 'help meee!'
I took a step into the room. I wanted to help. I had to help.
From the smoke, a figure emerged. Its white robes were in tatters and its wings were ragged and torn. Its chitinous armour had been seared by the fire. It swayed uncertainly as it looked me over.
'Forgiveness only goes so far,' Sherringford hissed in a pained voice. 'You have killed my God. No punishment can atone for that.'
He took a step towards me, his spiked tail swinging in readiness. In the midst of the spikes that constituted his face I could just make out two human eyes that gazed at me in bloodshot hatred.
Holmes walked past me. He was holding a length of iron pipe that had fallen from the ceiling.
'No,' he said simply. 'Watson is my friend.'
He lashed out with the pipe, catching Sherringford across his chestplate.
Pale pink fluid splashed out of a crack in the living armour. Sherringford staggered backwards and flailed at Holmes with his tail, but Holmes stepped out of the way and snapped Sherringford's wing with a short jab.
Sherringford fell sideways as the wing crumpled. He lowered his head for a long moment, then looked back up at his brother. There were tears in his eyes.
'The horror. . .' he said quietly. 'The horror!'
Holmes brought the pipe crashing down on the back of his brother's head, splitting it open and bending the pipe. A shower of sparks drifted down from the ceiling and lodged in the folds of his wings. Tiny flames began to flicker.
His other wing buckled beneath his weight, sending him sprawling.
I turned to Holmes. His gaze met mine.
'I had to,' he said.
I nodded.
'I know.'
Something expl
oded on one of the upper floors. Flames and drips of molten metal issued through the cracks in the ballroom ceiling. We left in a hurry, running through rubble-strewn corridors until we found ourselves in the deserted foyer of the hotel. Its fine antique trappings were wrecked.
We emerged, coughing and choking, into bright sunlight and ran across the road to a barricade where the Doctor, Ace and Bernice were waiting anxiously for us. Behind them, uniformed men watched the destruction.
They were pale and haggard, as if they had walked through the valley of the shadow. I glanced back at the hotel. Every window was a glimpse of hell. Nothing could survive that conflagration. Nothing.
