by Andy Lane
As we watched, a door in the largest caravan opened and a figure emerged wearing a hooded robe. Climbing down from the caravan to the ground, the figure walked calmly through the tube towards the smaller caravan. Two rakshassi followed it. It was hardly a shock to me, but a shiver still ran up my spine as I recognized Maupertuis's mysterious superior, the person at the seance in Euston.
Ace touched her balloon against mine.
'Well,' her voice said faintly, 'it looks like a party. Shall we gatecrash?'
Chapter 15
In which Holmes discovers that all things are relative and Watson sees the face of God.
Extract from the diary of Bernice Summerfield
Well, despite having two of the best brains this side of the planet Arcadia on the team, we've been captured. Comprehensively and unquestionably captured. Imprisoned. Shut up in a wooden caravan. The tinkle that I heard just after the door slammed was probably them throwing away the key.
I could write a traveller's guide to places not to be locked up in. This one gets three stars: it's clean, at least, and you can stand up without hitting your head but, as you can probably tell from the handwriting, it's dark. I'm writing by the light of the Doctor's everlasting matches, but they flicker too much to let me write in a straight line. In the shadows I can hear Holmes pacing up and down and muttering to himself. I can't say I blame him: he's had a hell of shock. All I can see of the Doctor is his eyes gleaming in the darkness. He doesn't move or make any noise for ages, then he murmurs something, like, 'Of course, the Anglo-Saxon name for a council of kings was a micklemote,' and subsides into silence again.
But I'm getting ahead of myself (so easy to do when you're a time traveller).
Where did I leave us at the end of the last entry? Oh yes, camping out on the plain, waiting for Watson to return. Well, I fell into a fitful sleep, punctuated by bright blue flowers that bloomed noisily across my mind's eye. It was only when the Doctor shook me awake that I found that there was some sort of attack going on in Maupertuis's camp. The Ry'lehans on the mountainside were firing at the humans down below. There was general confusion, and I can't say that I blame them. My heart flip-flopped a couple of times when I thought about Watson being caught up in it. I mean, he's such an innocent abroad, I'd hate it if anything happened to him.
'As von Clausewitz so nearly said,' Holmes muttered dryly, 'war is the continuation of philosophy by other means.'
A movement overhead caught my eye. I glanced up. A bat-winged silhouette was dropping rapidly towards me. Bloody hell, I thought, it's a rakshassa! I shouted at Holmes and the Doctor, and tried to dive out of the way. The creature's claws hit the ground where I had been sitting, striking sparks from the rock. I rolled sideways, but it was too fast for me. With an ungainly hop it straddled my body, blocking any escape with the shrouds of its wings. I recoiled in disgust as it lowered its spiky face toward mine. In the valleys between the spikes I could see small red orifices fluttering open and shut.
'So. . : it hissed, its breath rancid and steaming, 'we have the unbelievers who killed our brothers. We forgive you. We forgive you.'
The shock of hearing it speak, and realizing that it was intelligent, made my head whirl. I glanced to one side, looking for Holmes and the Doctor, hoping that one of them at least had managed to put up some resistance, but the creature's crimson wing blocked my view.
'Don't worry...' Its voice was warm in my ear. 'We have the other two heathens.'
'Let me go!' I shouted.
'Or what?' it asked, amused. Small droplets of its spittle rained down upon my face. I tried not to gag.
'Or I'll . . . Look, what do you want with us, anyway?'
It cocked its head slightly.
'You will see the light,' it said.
'Oh, great. And this will happen when?'
'Worry not, human. The ceremony of innocence will soon begin.'
Before I could move, it reared up on its wing tips and wrapped its tail tightly around my rib-cage. Springing into the air, it spread its wings wide and flapped, gaining height rapidly. I tried to take a breath but the damned thing was holding me too tight. The world stared to fuzz out, like static on an open comm-link. Air buffeted my face as the rakshassa's wings clutched at the air and pulled us aloft, but I couldn't seem to get any of it where it would do the most good. I tried to prise the segmented coils of its tail apart, but they were unmovable. I hit out at its cold, hard body but it didn't even seem to notice.
And then a gust of wind caught us and it shifted its grip on me slightly.
Enough to breathe. I sucked in great gulps of precious air, too concerned with staying alive to bother about the sudden and catastrophic turnabout in our fortunes. After a few minutes of that, after my heart settled down and stopped threatening to jump through my chest, I took a look around.
And wished I hadn't.
The camp was a small blot on the landscape. Below us, and slightly to one side, another rakshassa soared upwards with the Doctor held tightly beneath it. He waved reassuringly at me. Irrationally, I felt like punching him on the nose. Morose for no reason and cheerful in a crisis. I don't know how his other companions managed to stand him for so long. Or maybe they didn't. Maybe they're all in therapy now.
'The battle is still going on,' Holmes cried faintly from somewhere above me. 'Maupertuis's men appear to have successfully counter-attacked.'
As we rose higher, I could see that although most of the tents were on fire, Maupertuis's men in their bright shiny uniforms were putting up quite a fight out on the plain. They had a number of Gatling guns set up, and were raking the Ry'lehan lines. Although the Ry'lehans had superior firepower they appeared to be surprised at the resistance they were getting. A number of little fivelegged shapes were lying dead upon the ground.
Something odd was happening on the far side of the camp. I could see winged shapes - rakshassi - diving down and picking up the occasional figure. They were very selective, swooping low over the heads of the soldiery and choosing only the occasional victim. Gradually I realized what they were doing.
'It's the Indian fakirs!' I yelled. 'The rakshassi are only picking up the Indian fakirs! The rest of Maupertuis's men are being left to fight the Ry'lehans.'
'I cannot see Watson,' Holmes shouted. The Doctor remained silent, but I could see the scowl on his face.
We flew higher, and higher still. The fires of Maupertuis's camp dwindled until they were just a bright glow on the ground. As I saw more of the landscape of Ry'leh, I began to appreciate its raw, uncompromising beauty.
Valleys snaked away in every direction and the ice sky reflected the mountains so that it looked as if we were rising from the surface of one world, past twisted pillars, towards the surface of another. After a while I became disoriented, but as we got closer and closer to the ice I could see that it had its own topography and its own ecology. Looking around, I saw that we had been joined by a number of other rakshassi, each clutching a bewildered fakir in its tail. Some of the fakirs were chanting prayers, others appeared to have passed out. I thought I could see Tir Ram, the Nizam of Jabalhabad, dangling from the tail of a rakshassa in the distance, but it was difficult to be sure.
Eventually, the rakshassi settled onto the upper slopes of a mountain like a flock of birds congregating on a church steeple. I tried to take a breath, but the air was so thin that I found myself gasping. My eyes streamed but I could see a large crack in the ice where the mountain pierced it. A translucent tunnel poked out of it like some bloated worm. It looked like it had been made from circular patches of material or skin sewn together. It bulged, as if filled with air, and there was a zip-like arrangement at one end. It looked to me remarkably like a crude but workable pressurized corridor. The rakshassi were picking up their prisoners, one by one, flying them up to the mouth of the tunnel and throwing them in, then pulling up the zip after them. Dimly, through the skin of the tunnel, I could see another rakshassa inside the corridor operating another zip. Okay, it was a cru
de but workable pressurized corridor with an airlock. I had to admire their ingenuity, if not their good looks and personal hygiene.
Eventually it was my turn, and not a moment too soon. I was on the verge of passing out. After a short flight I was thrown into the tunnel, and after the zip was fastened behind me the rakshassa inside opened his zip and pulled me through into the main body of the corridor. A sudden rush of oxygen made me dizzy. Where was it coming from?
I reached out to touch the walls. They were smooth and leathery, and marred every few feet by a rough stitched seam. Beyond them, the smooth walls of an icy tunnel led upwards at a gentle angle.
My fingers ran over what felt like a distorted nose and a puffy cheek. I didn't want to know.
The rakshassa at the tunnel mouth grabbed my shoulder and pulled me past its hard body to join the end of a line of turbaned and breech-clothed fakirs. We all trudged along through the dark and the cold. The fakirs were singing some kind of gentle song, but I didn't know the words. I tried calling out for the Doctor or Holmes, or even Tir Ram, but there was no response.
For the first time I felt truly alone.
We emerged after what seemed like hours onto the surface of Ry'leh. The sight of the stars shining down on us cheered me up for a moment.
Through the translucent skin of the tunnel I could see that the peaks of the mountains erupted through the ice all around, giving the planet the air of a frightened hedgehog.
A group of large wooden caravans on skates were huddled together out on the ice. Gouges in the ice showed that this was the end of their journey, not the start. Mostly they were small, but one enormous one loomed over the rest, so big and so heavy that the ice seemed to bow slightly beneath it.
The pressurized tunnel, which I now realize was sewn together out of animal skins, led to another airlock, which was connected to a large wooden caravan on skates. This place was getting wilder and wilder. A rakshassa at the end of the tunnel was throwing prisoners willy-nilly into its dark interior. A queue had already formed. Every so often there would be a hold-up while the airlock was resealed and the caravan was towed away by teams of rakshassi pulling ropes, to be replaced with another one. The rakshassi outside the tunnel were all squeezed into impromptu spacesuits.
They had to fold their wings up to fit in. I hoped it hurt.
I shuffled forward, a few steps at a time, trying to come up with some witty comment but failing miserably. Miserably, yes, that was the word. When I got to the end, the rakshassa took a closer look at me, then pulled me roughly inside.
'You are special,' it assured me.
'Tell me something I don't know,' I snapped, but it was already busy throwing more fakirs into the caravan.
I slumped against the wall of the corridor for a while, glad of the chance to rest. One by one, the fakirs filed past me.
'Mr Summerfield!'
I jerked out of my reverie to find the youthful figure of Tir Ram standing in the line. His fine robes were ruined, but the Indians around him still knelt in his presence. My brain floundered for a moment, then I remembered that I had attended his feast disguised as a man. I was still wearing the same formal attire, but it was just as ripped and stained as his was by now.
Considering the rips, I was surprised that he still referred to me as 'Mr'. He was either being polite or he'd led a sheltered life.
'Happy?' I asked.
'I do beg your pardon?'
'Are you happy? Have your plans worked out the way you thought?'
Sarcasm was wasted on him.
'I think that I was misled by the good Baron,' he said without any trace of irony. 'He promised me a new empire. He said that Jabalhabad would be a new port, a landbound harbour through which the trade of two worlds would flow.'
He smiled, rather shamefacedly.
'I'm afraid I believed him,' he continued. 'I didn't want Jabalhabad to remain a backwater province too small even for you British to bother about. Was I wrong?'
There was desperation in his voice.
'Ask them,' I said, gesturing towards his subjects. He opened his mouth to reply, but the rakshassa picked him up and threw him into the airlock.
I saw the Doctor's hat bobbing in the distance, and called out to him. He was talking earnestly to one of the fakirs, but waved his hat in the air in reply. A few minutes later we were reunited as the rakshassa pulled him out to stand beside me. We hugged in greeting. Holmes joined us shortly afterwards, but I didn't hug him.
The next caravan to come along was for us and us alone.
'We're honoured,' I murmured as I climbed through a simple but effective wooden airlock arrangement into the dark interior.
'There are times,' the Doctor said, joining me, 'when it pays to be one of the crowd.'
'You suspect that we have been singled out for something special?' Holmes asked.
I could just make out the Doctor's sombre expression.
'It seems to be the story of my life.'
Holmes laughed briefly.
'And mine as well. We make a fine pair, Doctor.'
The heavy thud of the door cut off my retort. Darkness descended upon us.
And that's where we are now. The caravan moved off shortly after that, but stopped a few minutes later. It looked like we were parking until all of the prisoners had been transferred from the tunnel. The Doctor lit a couple of his wonder-matches and stuck them into his hatband, so we could just about see what we were doing.
Which wasn't much.
Holmes paced up and down, and the Doctor made gnomic little utterances from time to time. To keep myself amused I did my usual trick of going back over my diary entries for the past few days and sticking yellow labels over the pages, then writing an alternative, more dramatic version of events in which I played a much larger part. After a while, even that palled.
When we heard the outer airlock door chunk open, then shut, I was so glad to have my boredom relieved that I didn't even feel scared. It was only when the inner door opened and a figure in a hooded white robe and white gloves stepped into the room, flanked by a massive rakshassa, that I felt a shiver run through me like a seam of silver through rock.
The figure stood silently for a moment. I could feel its gaze pass across me, although I couldn't see any features within the hood. The light from the Doctor's matches gleamed on the hard, chitinous skin of the rakshassa.
Holmes gazed at the figure. He looked anguished.
'Why?' he whispered. 'Why did you do it?'
Raising his gloved hands the newcomer threw back his hood. The sharp face and close-cropped grey hair were familiar. Very familiar.
Holmes's lips tightened slightly. His body-language told me that he was not surprised.
'Professor Summerfield,' he said quietly, 'may I introduce my brother, Sherringford.'
'Two meetings in a month,' said Sherringford Holmes with a smile.
'Wouldn't Mother have been pleased to see how well we're getting along?'
A continuation of the reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D.
'Well?' Ace said, 'what's it to be?'
I looked across from our coign of vantage to the cluster of caravans.
'How much air have we got left?' I asked.
'Haven't got a clue.'
'What are the chances that Holmes, Bernice and the Doctor are held captive down there?'
'Don't know.'
'How do you see us proceeding, assuming that we can get to those caravans undetected?'
'You've got me there, squire.'
'It strikes me,' I said, with some asperity, 'that, as plans go, it leaves a lot to be desired.'
'Listen, spunk-brain, if .you've got a better one. . .'
'Any alternative plans I might have rather depend on different things having occurred over the past few hours,' I said placatingly. 'Given the current situation. . .'
'I'll let you into a secret,' Ace said. 'I've been in more sneaky situations than you've had hot dinners, and the best plan is usually not to ha
ve one. Any plan you can think up, the enemy can anticipate, and the more complicated it is, the further away they can see it coming. Take it on the fly, and it confuses them.'
'Do you always think in terms of enemies?'
A dark shadow passed behind her eyes.
'Who else is there?' she murmured. Without waiting for an answer, she moved off down the slope. Reluctantly, I followed.
We moved carefully over the icy terrain, the more so because of our globular suits. I kept worrying that they would tear on sharp shards of ice, but they were remarkably resilient. The rakshassi were fussing around with ropes at the front of the caravans, obviously preparing to move, and so we crept around to the back where it was safer. We managed to sneak through the line of caravans to the huge central one without being detected. Close up it was even larger than I had thought. Sheltering beneath it, in the lee of one of is vast metal runners, standing beside one of the parallel gouges in the ice that marked its journey, we debated out next move.