by Adam Roberts
‘Witty?’ I asked, nervously.
And so began my adventures with the Dr.
Chapter Four
THE DOOM OF THE ICETANIC
The TARDY rematerialised inside a large white space: bare and spare and perfectly white. ‘We’re here,’ declared the Dr.
‘And where’s here, exactly?’ Linn asked him.
‘Earth. But the real question is when. Let’s pop outside, have a peep.’
He opened the door and we all stepped outside.
The TARDY had taken the form of a large rectangular blue box with the word POLICE written at the top of all four of its faces. ‘Well,’ said the Dr, rubbing his chin in an Antiques Roadshow sort of way. ‘I’d say, looking at the design, we’re talking somewhere around nineteen-ten. Which is pretty good, considering I was aiming at London in the eighteen-eighties. Not too far from the target, now, is it.’
‘We’re thirty years too late!’ I objected.
‘No such thing as late,’ said the Dr, blithely. ‘You know what they say. Wherever you find yourself, there you are. I daresay there’s a kink or temporal solecism for us to work out hereabouts. Put our time-grammatical knowledge to good use.’
‘Caves,’ said Linn, looking around her. ‘It’s extremely cold.’
‘Far as I can tell, these walls,’ I offered, running my ungloved finger along one of them, ‘are ice.’
‘Ice, you say?’ said the Dr coming over to check for himself. ‘You could be right Prosy. Ice, ice, maybe.’
‘So we’re inside an ice-cave somewhere on Earth in nineteen-ten,’ said Linn, matter of factly. ‘Could it be the north pole?’
‘Or the south?’ I suggested.
‘Or the west,’ agreed the Dr. ‘One of those, definitely.’
‘West pole?’ I said. ‘There’s no west pole.’
‘Indeed there is,’ said the Dr. ‘Very cold it is too.’
‘And where is it, then?’
‘Oh, not to worry. I mean, it’s in Wales. But not to worry. I was hoping to show you London in the eighteen-eighties. I need to get hold of this chap from the East End . . . somebody from your time period, Tailor.’
‘From Earth’s twenty-third century?’ I asked. ‘Really?’
‘Indeed. Fellow called Jack. A much misunderstood individual; he was suspected of a number of rather nasty crimes—’
‘You’re not talking about Jack the Ripper?’ asked Linn, in horror.
‘Jack the Rapper,’ corrected the Dr. ‘As I say, he was a Rhyme-tailor from the twenty-third century - from Prosy’s time period in fact.’
‘Please don’t call me Prosy,’ I said in a small voice.
‘The twenty-third century,’ the Dr continued. ‘The time period when Earth was governed by the world state of You-Say! and everybody was encouraged to express themselves through the medium of tuneless shouting. A low point in Earth’s history, I’d say. Anyway my friend Jack got dislodged in time and after a series of bizarre adventures, into which I really don’t have time, right now, to go, he migrated to the East End of London in the eighteen-eighties. He’s there now. He likes it there, although his habit of shouting rhyming couplets at people in street has been misconstrued. He’s out of his place; as naked a temporal solecism as you can imagine.’
‘He gets naked?’
‘No he’s not naked. The solecism is naked. By which I mean, egregious. Obvious. And my job is to sort that out - recover him and return him to his own time. Set the time-line straight again.’
‘Are you going to do this before or after he murders all those prostitutes?’ Linn demanded.
‘Before, obviously. That way I prevent all the suffering he creates. Everybody wins. He’s not a bad sort, either, by all accounts. It’s just that his brain is a bit scrambled by the temporal dislocation. It almost always results in disaster, does temporary dislocation. I should imagine Mr Prose here would welcome the chance of a bit of chinwag with a contemporary, eh?’
‘Frankly,’ I said. ‘I have enough trouble with Rhyme-tailors patronizing me as a poor humble tailor of prose at home, without wanting to meet another one on my travels. Beside. We’re obviously not in east London.’
‘It’s so cold,’ said Linn. ‘Can we just get back inside the TARDY before I freeze to death?’
‘No no,’ the Dr expostulated. ‘Let’s have a little look around, shall we?’ And with that he marched off.
We left the ice cave through an opening at the back and passed into a long ice-corridor. This split into two, one sloping downwards to the left and one rising to the right. ‘This seems,’ the Dr was saying, ‘to be a natural cave formation. We should go right, here, I think.’
We all trudged up the slope.
‘So is this the north or the south pole?’ Linn asked.
‘I’ve come to a conclusion. This ice is dry - it’s very cold. I believe we’re in an Antarctic cave-system, formed by natural forces. Now, in nineteen-ten the Antarctic continent was completely unexplored. Right now we’re perhaps three thousand miles from the nearest human being.’
‘I say!’ cried a human being, perhaps three metres away from us. ‘Are you chaps English? Or do my ears deceive me?’
He was a young man dressed in a smart, Edwardian-era military uniform: olive-green heavy fabric and military greatcoat. The outfit was topped-off with a hat. Not a top hat, I should add, in case my use of the phrase topped-off with a hat gives that impression. That would be silly, under the circumstances. It was a fur hat, with ear flaps like two great furry tongues hanging down on each side of his face. Fur, you see, is a better head-insulator than is, er, top. Than whatever top-hats are made of. Anyway this fellow also wore Eskimo-mittens, and snowboots: he was evidently a military officer clearly prepared for the cold.
‘Good afternoon,’ said the Dr, brightly.
‘Afternoon? But it’s the middle of the night!’
‘Really? It’s awfully bright.’
‘Of course it’s bright in here,’ said the man. ‘The corridors are illuminated. With electricity, you know.’ A certain pride was audible in his voice as he said this last thing. ‘There’s a mirror system beaming light down all the . . . but, wait a mo, you haven’t answered my question.’
‘Question?’
‘Are you English?’
‘I am,’ I said. ‘My name is Prose Tailor. And this is Linn.’
‘How do you do?’ asked Linn.
‘And this,’ I concluded, ‘is the Doctor.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ drawled the fellow. ‘My name is Captain Antenealle.’
‘Antenealle?’ repeated Linn, with the very slightest of disbelieving intonations.
‘It’s a perfectly common Wiltshire surname I assure you,’ said Antenealle, blushing slightly. Or perhaps it was the cold.
‘If I might say so,’ said the Dr, ‘you don’t seem all that surprised to see us all here, in Antarctica.’
‘Were we in Antarctica,’ said Antenealle, ‘I might be. Surprised, I mean.’
‘So we’re not in Antarctica?’ said Linn.
‘We are not.’
‘In which case,’ she pressed, ‘where are we?’
‘Where else but aboard a secret Habakkuk-style British Navy Warship in the middle of the North Atlantic in the winter of nineteen-twelve?’
‘I knew it!’ cried the Dr, eurekaishly.
Both Linn and I looked at him. ‘You knew what?’
‘The North Atlantic. I knew that’s where we were!’
‘Well, no you didn’t,’ pointed out Linn. ‘You said we were in Antarctica.’
The Dr looked pained. ‘Atlantic—a,’ he said, after a short pause. ‘Is what I said - Atlantica, which is as everybody knows, or at least everybody should know, is the official Latin name of the, um.’ He paused for a moment, then added ‘of, Atlantica is, um.’
He seemed to dry up. He dropped his gaze to the floor for a while. Nobody said anything for long seconds.
‘Anyway,’ said Linn, turning
back to Captain Antenealle. ‘Whether we’re in Antarctica, or aboard a secret HMS warship in the North Atlantic, either way I think I would expect to be just a little surprised to see us.’
‘Well the truth is,’ said the Captain, with a little chivalrous bow, ‘that after all this strange business with the chanting knights in silver armour nothing surprises me any more.’
‘Chanting knights?’ repeated the Dr.
‘In silver armour, yes.’
‘Is that with a k?’
‘Is the armour with a k? Wouldn’t that be karmour?’
‘The knights - are they ker-nights, or just nights?’
‘The former. It’s most peculiar. They seem to be overrunning us. We try our best to fight them off, but bullets don’t seem to stop them - they’re ghosts from the crusades, some of the men say. The men are simple Tommies, of course, not officer class. So whilst they’re brave as lions in the face of physical danger, supernatural danger unnerves them. They say we should all abandon ship.’
‘Ghosts from the crusades, you say?’
‘That’s what the men think.’
‘And you don’t agree?’
‘Not in the least,’ said the Captain, matter-of-factly. ‘I ask myself: why should ghosts from the crusades come dressed up in shiny silver armour to visit a secret Navy ship sculpted from a solid block of ice sailing in the North Atlantic in nineteen-twelve, whilst war with the Germans seems imminent?’
‘You’re awfully free with your secret information,’ I observed.
‘But you’re English,’ said Antenealle, in a there you go! sort of voice.
‘Nineteen-twelve,’ said the Dr. ‘Seems to me that date should be familiar to me. Nineteen-twelve, nineteen-twelve, can’t think why.’
‘You lot had better come with me,’ said the Captain Antenealle. ‘See if we can’t scrounge a cup of tea. If there’s one problem with these Habakkuk craft it’s keeping the tea nice and hot.’
We fell into step behind this young military man, and marched up the corridor.
‘Project Habakkuk,’ said the Dr. ‘I always thought it was just a rumour. But here we are, actually aboard one of their craft! Very exciting. Officially, of course, it never got off the drawing board.’
‘You’ve heard of this Habakkuk Project?’ Linn asked.
‘Of course! It’s famous. It was a British Naval plan to sculpt huge ships out of ice. The advantage of ice as a raw-material for shipbuilding is that it is quite unsinkable. Unlike the iron out of which, say, dreadnoughts are built. Iron - and I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this - but iron sinks. Sinks pretty comprehensively, really. Down it goes! But ice . . . well, let me put it this way. If you’ve ever dunked a battleship-shaped chunk of ice-cream into a milkshake, you’ll know that—’
‘Are you sure?’ I said. ‘It sounds daft to me.’
‘Nonsense. It was a brilliant idea; one of the few brilliant ideas the Royal Navy ever had. A very large ice battleship would be a superb weapon of naval warfare. The main drawback would be a certain amount of difficulty in manoeuvre; but on the plus side it would be near-enough impossible for enemy ships to sink the craft ... even if they knocked big chunks off it with artillery shells the remainder would still float along. I just hadn’t realised that the Navy got as far as actually building a prototype ship.’
‘Well we did,’ said Antenealle over his shoulder. ‘We built it, crewed it, and assigned it a complement of marines . . . my men, in fact. We’re on secret manoeuvres here right now. Things were going swimmingly until—’
‘The ghosts from the crusades?’
‘Well I’m a sceptic,’ said Antenealle cheerily. ‘For instance, one thing that makes me doubt the whole ghost theory is the way they bump into things. Slip over, crash into walls, that sort of thing.’
‘Maybe they’re slapstick ghosts?’
‘Never heard of that sort. And the other thing worth mentioning is that they’re pretty heavily armed. I never heard of ghosts going about carrying artillery. Some chains to rattle, maybe. But not, you know, rifles and hand-cannons. And woo-oo-oo! Wooooooo! That’s what you’d expect, isn’t it? An owl-like woo-ooing. Woooooooooooooooo! But that’s not the noise these chaps make at all.’
‘What noise do they make?’ asked Linn.
‘It’s a sort of oo-aah noise. Oo-aah. Very strange.’
We finally came through into the carved-out ice-chamber that functioned as the ship’s bridge. A man dressed as an able-seaman was at the big spokey wheel thing (I’ve temporarily forgotten the technical term for this piece of equipment; but you know the thing I mean; the wagon-wheel shaped thing that does the ship’s steery-steery). Next to him was a man in a blue officer’s uniform. Panels and consoles of teak inlaid with brightly polished brass were ranged around the space. An electrical light dangled from the low roof. Straight ahead there was a very narrow window, a slit no more than a couple of inches high, through which the sailor was looking. Outside the night was pitchy black.
‘Ah, Captain!’ declared the officer as we came onto the bridge. ‘Good to see you again. And who are these?’
‘A Doctor and his friends, Commodore Sthree-Tymsa-Lady, ’ said Antenealle. ‘They’re English, don’t worry.’
‘Splendid,’ said Tymsa-Lady. ‘Welcome to the HMS Icetanic! I say, would you three mind awfully pitching in, ma’am, gentlemen? We’re having a touch of bother with these silver fellows. All hands would be much appreciated at the pumps, don’t you know.’
‘Glad to help,’ said the Dr. ‘That’s an interesting surname, by the way. Are you related to the Hampshire Tymsa-Ladies?’
‘Different branch of the family,’ said the Commodore brightly. ‘My grandmother married Henry Sthree, one of the Middlesex Sthrees. They moved to Surrey. I didn’t catch your name, I’m afraid?’
‘I’m called Whom,’ said the Dr.
‘Now that is an interesting surname!’ said the Commodore, clearly impressed. ‘Very distinctive! And your friends?’
‘This is Miss Trout. And this young man is Prose Tailor.’
The Commodore turned to face me. ‘Any relation of Pinny Tailor?’ he asked.
‘Um,’ I said.
The Commodore seemed to take this as a yes. ‘Pinny Tailor! The old donkey! How is he? Still Secretary of State for Imperial Affairs?’
‘I wonder, Commodore,’ the Dr put in, ‘if you could tell me a little about these ghosts supposedly haunting your secret ice-built Habakkuk-project ship. You see, I’m here on a . . . um, government mission to undertake certain . . . secret activities, for the secret services of . . . you know. Government stuff.’
‘Government mission?’ repeated the Commodore.
‘We were dropped onto the ship by, er, hot-air balloon,’ said the Dr. ‘That’s how we’ve suddenly appeared, as if by the magic of matter-transference and rematerialisation, on your ship in the middle of the ocean, without any advance warning. I mean, obviously we haven’t appeared by matter-transference. That would be silly. It’s most definitely, you know. Balloons.’
‘I assumed it would be something like that,’ said the Commodore.
‘Anyway, I was wondering about these apparitions. I’ve a suspicion that they might have a part to play in the ... mission of which I was speaking. Did you say they were silver men?’
‘They’ve practically over-run the ship,’ said the Commodore. ‘The Captain has been down on the lower decks fighting them off. Haven’t you, Antenealle? Down there with all your men?’
‘They’re all dead,’ said the Captain. ‘I’m sorry to say. Every last man-jack marine of them. Is there any tea? I’m parching for a cup.’
‘Oh dear,’ said the Commodore. ‘All of them?’
‘Young Witherspoon was twitching a little when I left,’ said Antenealle, filling a tin mug from a large brass urn. ‘But I daresay he’s a goner now. What with the size of the wound in his head. And also the three missing . . ..’ The Captain paused to slurp his tea and go ‘ahhh!,’ before c
oncluding, ‘limbs.’
‘Oh dear,’ said the Commodore again. ‘So, with all the able seamen gone too, that leaves . . .?’
‘Just us three,’ said Antenealle. ‘And, of course, our new friends.’
‘Ah well,’ said the Commodore. ‘I suppose we’ll just have to do our best.’
‘They’re all dead ?’ cried Linn in a horrified tone.
‘Hmm’ said the Captain.
‘How can you be so extraordinarily blasé,’ Linn demanded, ‘in the face of such terrible loss of life?’
‘Stiff upper lip,’ said the Commodore. ‘Or do I mean swift upper lip? I always get those confused.’
‘Swift upper cut, I think it is, Commodore,’ said Antenealle, taking another slurp of tea.
There was a distant explosion: muffled but unmistakeable. The ship shuddered. I could not contain a little yelp of terror.
‘Don’t worry ma’am,’ said Antenealle, without looking at me. ‘Those explosions might be worrying on a regular ship, but, you see, a Habakkuk-line vessel is literally unsinkable.’
‘Oh the Icetanic is quite unsinkable,’ agreed the Commodore. ‘It’s a miracle of modern design.’
‘Perfectly unsinkable,’ agreed the Captain. ‘Can’t be sunk.’
‘No sinkee-sinkee,’ declared the Commodore.
‘Everything can happen except the kitchen sinking. By kitchen I mean the galley. And all the other parts of the ship too. None of them can sink.’
‘So we’ve nothing to worry about then!’ exclaimed the Dr, cheerfully.
‘Well, there is one tiny little worry,’ admitted the Commodore. ‘My slight worry has to do with these silver men, the ones who’ve now slaughtered the entire crew and whom are now marching about shooting and blowing up everything in sight . . . the worry is that they might be German agents, dressed up in some odd silver armour. They may be trying to seize the ship, to get hold of our military technology for the good of the Kaiser you see. We really can’t allow that to happen. Our problem,’ he went on, a little sorrowfully, ‘is that I can’t scuttle this ship. Normally of course I’d scuttle my ship to prevent her falling into enemy hands. But this ship is unscuttleabubble. I mean, of course, unscutable. Un,’ he said, moving slowly through the syllables, ‘Scut. Tle. A. Ble.’