The Eleventh Tiger

by David A. McIntee

  Kei-Ying drew the Doctor aside. ‘You’re worried about her too.’

  The Doctor nodded. ‘She is a friend, yes, as is Ian. I fear that to lose one of them would be to lose the other.’

  ‘If you’ll pardon my saying, Doctor-sifu, you look like one who has lost someone close already.’

  ‘I was thinking about my granddaughter. She left me recently, you see.’

  Kei-Ying nodded understandingly. ‘She’s back in England?

  In London?’

  ‘Yes, yes, in a manner of speaking. She chose to stay behind.’

  The Doctor’s eyes became unfocused, as if he was looking at something - or someone - impossibly far away. He fell silent for a moment and Kei-Ying fancied he could feel something of what the Doctor must be feeling. Fei-Hung would set up his own school and surgery some day, gods willing, and Kei-Ying could see himself wearing that expression when he did.

  ‘She just didn’t realise,’ the Doctor continued, ‘or perhaps I should say understand, that she had made that decision.’

  ‘Your granddaughter... Do you have sons, Doctor? Or daughters? Or both?’

  The Doctor seemed surprised by the question. ‘Yes, hmm, I suppose you could put it that way. Sons or daughters, or both, yes.’

  ‘Then we must make sure this threat doesn’t last to threaten our sons or daughters.’

  ‘I quite agree. The conjunction I spoke of before will begin at the moment of totality as seen from Xi’an.’

  ‘And when will that be?’

  ‘At exactly eight minutes past midnight. And, whatever happens, we must be there to stop Qin - or whatever is behind him - from exploiting it.’

  ‘How?’

  The Doctor didn’t answer. Kei-Ying searched his face, knowing in his gut the only answer the Doctor could have in mind. The Doctor’s eyes remained level and determined, indomitable.

  ‘What exactly is it that you’re expecting, Doctor? Men from Mars to land?’

  ‘Whatever our opponent is, it comes from much further away than Mars. The other end of the line of focus formed by the conjunction is millions of times further away.’

  Iron Bridge Three sniffed slightly. ‘Yes, well obviously we have to worry about the troops as well as this conjunction thing.’

  ‘Troops?’

  ‘This man Qin, or whatever he’s calling himself, isn’t just relying on those two generals and help from the hells. No, he has a large number of living troops and we’ll have to deal with them.’

  ‘Won’t they be at Chang’an?’ Ian asked.

  Almost everyone at the table shook their heads as one. The major answered. ‘What’s the point in taking towns and villages if all his troops are already in one place? He must have left them scattered along the line from Chang’an to here.’

  ‘But the town we found was abandoned.’

  ‘Because it will have been taken by his own personal staff.

  They go where he goes. They’ll be in Chang’an with him, but most of the Black Flag members and whatever other thugs he’s persuaded - no offence to our guests - will be scattered around.’

  ‘If we can stop him exploiting the conjunction,’ the Doctor said, ‘nothing will happen in those towns, and Qin’s followers will simply drift away.’

  ‘And if we can’t, a civil war,’ Kei-Ying said gloomily.

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Then we must be prepared for both eventualities,’

  Chesterton said. ‘We need forces to be ready at those places where we know there are Qin loyalists, and another group to go after Qin himself.’

  ‘The men who follow him were formerly Black Flag members,’ Kei-Ying said. ‘I find it a vile idea to face Black Flag against Black Flag, but it is an internal Chinese matter and an internal Black Flag matter.’ He looked around the table, a faint smile playing across his features. ‘I suggest that the Tigers take militia troops on manoeuvres near the places where Qin has forces.’

  ‘Agreed,’ the Doctor said. ‘In fact, the very suggestion I myself was about to make. Meanwhile, I shall go to find a way to prevent Qin’s plans from succeeding, and to rescue my friend Barbara.’

  ‘Me too,’ Ian said.

  ‘And me,’ Vicki piped up.

  Fei-Hung looked to his father, who nodded. ‘We will go with you, Doctor.’

  ‘So will I,’ Major Chesterton said finally. ‘Logan, I’ll want a platoon of volunteers.’

  3

  Vicki, Ian and the Doctor remained in the officers’ mess when the others dispersed.

  ‘Doctor,’ Ian asked, ‘how exactly are we supposed to get to Chang’an? It’s hundreds of miles away

  ‘- and we must be there tonight, yes.’ The Doctor’s face was troubled, his tone tired.

  Vicki was about to suggest that they fly, but held her tongue. She wasn’t sure whether powered flight had been invented yet, and had already embarrassed herself enough by getting things wrong.

  She caught Ian’s eyes, and mimed an aeroplane movement with her hand, behind the Doctor’s back. Ian smiled and shook his head, then mouthed ‘1903’.

  ‘We can’t exactly use the TARDIS,’ Ian said aloud.

  ‘No. I rather think we must use our enemy’s own energies against it, just as I did with that ruffian Jiang.’

  ‘But what energy?’

  ‘Some kind of plasma-based helix. I suspect, you know, that the supernatural occurrences people have reported are signs of leakage or corruption from the energy that has already been sent to control Qin and his Generals.’

  ‘Perhaps we can find a way to hijack it?’ Vicki suggested.

  ‘Sort of, hack into it or pirate it.’

  Ian snapped his fingers. ‘What about the monk? The one who was Zhao? Surely he had the same ability as the other one?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course, but he hasn’t now, has he?’

  ‘No, but could he have, if you accessed those - what did you call them - secondary memories?’

  The Doctor brightened immediately. ‘I really have no idea,’

  he admitted, ‘but it must be worth trying!’

  Outside the hill where Barbara and Qin had arrived earlier, exhausted civilians were preparing ramps up out of the earth, and carrying stacks of new swords and rifles to racks that filled long wooden cabins.

  Gao, his eyeless sockets glowing, walked among the workers, his head swinging from side to side. The workers had done well, producing new weapons for the army that would soon be reborn.

  A few minutes after Gao had passed, a ring of electricity pulled back from a point a few feet above the ground. Major Chesterton came through first, quickly followed by Logan, Ian, the Wongs, the Doctor, Vicki, and a platoon of armed men led by Anderson.

  The fiery gateway closed behind them.

  As soon as he saw the hill, the Doctor sucked air in through his teeth. ‘That will be the receiving point for the energy. We must get inside. The main entrance seems to have been excavated, but it will be guarded.’

  ‘We could use Cheng’s cave,’ Kei-Ying suggested. ‘It must be in this hill, if this is where it all started.’

  ‘That will be for you to do,’ the Doctor said. ‘I rather think it’s time I met this Qin Shi Huangdi.’

  ‘You can’t be serious,’ Ian protested. ‘He’ll kill you, or at least take you prisoner.’

  ‘Yes, Chesterfield, he might. But sometimes we must face up to such dangers, mustn’t we? Besides which I have a feeling that if he has kept Barbara alive to make her an offer, as Vicki told us, he might make me the same one.’

  ‘He tried to have Jiang kill you.’

  ‘Then I imagine it means these great celestial intelligences are not so infallible, hmm? You see there’s always a bright side.’ The cheerful smile froze on his face. ‘Vicki, Chesterton, I’ve been such a foolish old goat!’

  ‘No,’ Vicki protested, ‘that’s impossible, and you know it.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking - we all have - that this Qin of yours must have a military reas
on for coming south.’

  ‘Well, he is a warlord, and he must be a successful one if he really was the emperor.’

  ‘A military man would be looking for resources,’ the Doctor explained, ‘seeking to get things for himself and deny them to the enemy. He would be looking for targets he could take and hold.’

  ‘So?’ Vicki asked.

  ‘So Qin hasn’t done that.’

  ‘But he’s taken dozens of places. Just look at the map.’

  ‘That’s just what I have done, child. Looked, really looked, at the map. And the places he has been taking are all old places. Places with ancient temples and geological faults.

  Places where energy could be distributed or stored in the rock, and in the buildings.’

  ‘Stone tapes?’ Vicki thought she could see where the Doctor’s mind was going. ‘Stone tapes, and energy being transmitted here via the conjunction…’

  ‘Exactly. He hasn’t been trying to take over China, he has been -’

  ‘Formatting a disk!’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘But he seemed pretty certain of what he wanted to do -

  reclaim the empire he used to have.’

  ‘I believe you, child,’ the Doctor said, patting her hair in a kindly way. ‘And I think my mind is open on the matter of whether he believes it too. Or if he even knows why he is really doing what he’s doing.’

  ‘How could he not know?’

  ‘Didn’t you say that he harped on about gaps in his memory, and that he wasn’t all there, if you’ll pardon the expression?’

  ‘Yes,’ Vicki’s hand darted to her mouth as she suddenly felt sick at the thought that had crossed her mind. ‘You mean there’s something else in those gaps?’

  ‘Nature abhors a vacuum, young lady. Yes, I think perhaps there is.’

  Vicki tried to imagine what it must be like, sharing a brain with an alien something that was there in place of part of your memories - in place of part of what made you you. Then she wished she hadn’t.

  ‘And that’s what was in charge when that light was shining out of his eyes,’ she said.

  The Doctor nodded solemnly. ‘In Qin, and in his generals.’

  Ian had been thinking about this business of energy distribution as the time travellers and their companions made their way around the workings on the brooding hill.

  ‘Doctor, you say they’re trying to distribute energy around China, like a giant circuit.’

  ‘In a way, yes, but to distribute such energies,’ the Doctor said, ‘the circuitry must be exactly right.’

  ‘Can’t we break the circuit somehow? Make it incapable of carrying this power?’

  ‘We must try! The engineering of this structure is very precise - it would have to be, to do what it’s doing. Perhaps if we could introduce some kind of imbalance...?’

  ‘Doctor, you said that the materials of the place itself carry a charge - piezoelectricity. Could we break that? Introduce a new fault line, maybe?’

  ‘With explosives? Yes, my boy, we could. We need only introduce a few cracks -’

  ‘Can’t be done,’ Major Chesterton said. ‘We don’t have enough dynamite for that.’

  ‘Just a minute,’ Ian interrupted. ‘We know from what Fei-Hung told us about the monk that this power is electrical in some way.’

  ‘Yes, yes, don’t waste our time stating the obvious.’

  ‘I was just thinking, Doctor, that if it’s electrical perhaps we can short it out to earth. There must be water around here somewhere.’

  ‘Water?’ The Doctor’s face took on a calculating expression that would have done justice to Machiavelli or Sun Tzu.

  Kei-Ying shook his head. ‘Cheng said the whole complex is bone dry, Ian. There’s not the slightest trace of dampness.’

  ‘What’s more,’ the Doctor added, ‘this place was built for the transposition of this energy. Whoever designed it was not a fool. They will have ensured that it’s protected against anything that could short-circuit it.’

  Ian nodded placatingly. ‘I understand that, and I suppose it will be pretty well protected if the builders did their job right.

  The fact of there having been builders also guarantees that there must have been accessible water somewhere.’

  ‘How so?’

  Ian almost laughed. Despite all that threatened them, he found he could enjoy the sensation of seeing something the Doctor didn’t. ‘Well, they were men, weren’t they? Ordinary human beings. Even if they were enslaved they would still have to have been fed and watered, wouldn’t they? To say nothing of the complex itself needing a local water supply. So there must be wells in the vicinity.’

  The Doctor looked at him, a smile spreading across his face. ‘You’re absolutely right, young man. There must have been.’ He tapped Ian on the chest. ‘You know, I think this must be why I enjoy the company of you young fellows.

  You’re just the right people to see the simple solutions.’

  ‘Thanks, I think.’

  Kei-Ying still looked and sounded doubtful. ‘Surely any sources of water will have been sealed off by now if there’s a danger?’

  ‘Whatever has been sealed can always be unsealed, especially with dynamite,’ Ian pointed out. ‘Besides, maybe our friend the emperor, or his muse from outer space, is at least as sophisticated as the Doctor here and has overlooked the simple solution.’ He flexed his fists. ‘I get the feeling that we might well be able to turn things around.’

  The Doctor gazed at the group like a teacher surveying his class before they graduated. ‘We will split up when we reach the hill. Major, you and Kei-Ying will take everyone through the cave Cheng used before. Try to find a way to get at the water table, and breach it. We should try to flood the tomb if we can. I will go to the main entrance and confront this despicable abbot.’ He held up a hand to silence any potential protestations. ‘Now, I will not have my mind changed.’

  Under cover of the gathering darkness, the group darted between huts and past piles of excavated earth until they reached a deep crater that had been dug into the side of the hill.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ Major Chesterton said nervously. ‘It’s been too easy.’

  ‘Shush,’ the Doctor hissed. ‘Never look a gift horse in the mouth.’

  ‘Doctor,’ Ian said slowly. ‘Look up there.’

  Everyone looked up at the sky. The heavens were parting, spinning back from a central point above the hill top like an iris expanding. Then, through the widened eye of the storm, a blinding shaft of light stabbed down at the hill.

  The sky split and the air screamed.

  Logan winced at the screech. ‘What the hell is that?’

  ‘Hell is right,’ Fei-Hung said, stunned and slack-jawed. ‘The gates of hell are opening! The hungry ghosts are coming to feed!’

  ‘Nonsense!’ the Doctor snapped. ‘What you’re hearing is the sound of electrons being stripped from molecules of air.’

  ‘Like plasma, you mean?’ Ian asked. ‘Lightning?’

  The Doctor spoke in a deep voice, almost as if he was enjoying being a doom-sayer. ‘No, Chesterton. Chestertons,’

  he corrected himself. ‘The energies being transmitted across the conjunction are far beyond that.’

  ‘You mean this has come from some other world?’

  ‘Not necessarily. From another part of the universe, yes, but there’s no need to assume that the beings who sent it are corporeal or that they live on a solid planet. We just don’t know.’

  ‘But you said this wouldn’t happen until after midnight!’

  The Doctor paled. ‘I forgot to take the changeover from the Julian to Gregorian calendar into account!’

  Below, Barbara looked at Qin in horror as the whole mausoleum shook. She had a sudden premonition that she would be buried alive in here and never get out.

  Qin was having a different reaction. He was laughing.

  Around him, the friezes brightened into life. The colours were deep and vibrant, painted textur
es almost tangible. Barbara could all but hear the splashing of the painted rivers, the sounds of the beasts in the undergrowth and the incessant crunching of marching feet in the processions depicted on the walls.

  Soft lightning washed across the images, the tendrils of energy spiralling around each other in helixes of fire. Ghostly images of fallen walls filled in the gaps as if they were Kirlian photographs, then solidified as the walls renewed themselves.

  ‘At last,’ Qin shouted to the ceiling, ‘I am truly immortal!’

  4

  The Doctor walked calmly towards the main entrance that had been excavated from the side of the hill. There was a ramp leading down to the main doors, and a tiger was embla-zoned on one door and a five-clawed imperial dragon on the other.

  The Doctor rapped sharply on the dragon’s nose with his cane. The door opened slowly to reveal a handful of guards and the mangled, half-melted face of General Gao. His eye-sockets glowed.

  ‘Traveller,’ Gao said. ‘You should not have interfered.’

  ‘Traveller?’

  ‘Do you not travel the stars, and journey through future and past?’

  The Doctor was instantly defensive and suspicious. ‘How could you possibly have known that?’

  ‘You are known to us,’ said Gao’s sonorous voice.

  ‘Yes, so I gathered from my young friend Vicki.’

  ‘Why did you come to us?’

  ‘I wanted to talk to you, and tell you that you can never win.’

  ‘Come with Gao, Doctor, come and see who wins.’

  The cave was just as Cheng had described it. The group had little difficulty finding it, and although there were people nearby they were too busy running around like headless chickens, panicking at the column of energy stabbing down from the heavens, to bother about a few extra faces. Even those in British army uniforms.

  The Wongs, being most familiar with Cheng’s story, led them down the narrow stairway at the back of the cave, which bored down through the living rock.