Part 13 (1/2)

There was a crowd of people at the hotel. Village men, some women.

There seemed to be a tremendous fuss going on. Of course. The hotel was run by Dilaver's family. They knew he was still out there - with Bernice. How would we tell them he might be dead?

The women all moved around very efficiently preparing food and clean clothing and making beds, while the men sat around outside in deckchairs, shouting and waving their arms aggressively. I didn't need a universal translator to know what they were thinking. They were angry. Angry at the soldiers who had invaded their mountain. Well, G.o.d's mountain. They wanted to go off and do something about it.

The Doctor was at the hotel. He'd been there for ages - at least that's what it seemed like. He seemed to be best friends with half the villagers there - and on speaking terms at least with the rest. He seemed to find no difficulty whatsoever in being in several places at once. Helping the women out with the food, distracting the children, calming the men. I even saw him making a bed.

I'd once been stranded with Bernice in South Africa when a number of villages had been struck by an outbreak of Ebola. Filoviruses are nasty things. They'll kill you in a week: melt your insides until your connective tissue dissolves and you turn into a big sack of virally active organic slush.

It scared the h.e.l.l out of me. The hospital at Mulobizi was a mess of infected villagers and doctors in blood spattered white coats and masks trying to make hopelessly inadequate medical supplies stretch to more than a hundred people we all knew were going to die anyway.

That's what the Doctor reminded me of: all those whitecoated figures running around from one job to the next, frantic but orderly, calm yet desperate, all at the same time. There was a sense of impending doom about his actions. As if it was all ultimately futile. As if whatever was coming was unstoppable and whatever we all did was going to make no difference at all in the long run.

As Chris and I arrived the Doctor had just interrupted arbitrating a game of hopscotch in order to placate Dilaver's uncle, who was waving a Russian semiautomatic rifle over his head like a club and trying to stir up the other villagers to storm the mountainside. The Doctor disarmed him with such speed and charm that the others could only blink stupidly; then he was back playing hopscotch with the kids again, chalking lines on the ground and hopping about with ludicrous gusto?

I stopped beside the children. The Doctor looked up. I was about to give him a piece of my mind when Chris took me by the arm and practically yanked it out of its socket pulling me away.

'Later,' he hissed. 'The Doctor's busy now.'

'Oh really? Playing Jake-the-Peg with a Russian semiautomatic and a bunch of kids?'

Chris said nothing.

The Doctor glanced at me for a second before returning his attention to the kids. 'You're not the only one who's scared,' he said quietly.

I wanted to yell, to stamp my feet, to bash him with that b.l.o.o.d.y Russian gun. He and Benny had been friends for ages - how could he abandon her like this?

I said nothing. This of course made me feel more like a coward than ever. I tried to put aside my guilt as we followed the others through the hotel to where the women were laying out buckets of water and soap, rough towelling and clean clothes. I heard them talking about the Doctor - and using the word dervish to describe him.

Dervish.

The whirlwind.

For some reason that made me s.h.i.+ver.

Maybe I'd ask the Doctor about Benny later. I told myself that if he wasn't worried then maybe it would all work out all right after all. And anyway, I always think better after a bath.

I had to wait for the bath; that was OK. I hit the bar, grabbed a warm Pepsi and a deckchair and stretched out. I didn't quite go to sleep. I seem to remember Chris sitting beside me at one point. I seem to remember him asking me to tell him what happened out there on the mountain. I don't remember being angry at him, the way I had been. What the h.e.l.l - you can't stay mad at someone forever, right?

I told him everything I could remember and was on the point of going back to my room for a kip when Sam Denton came in looking deliciously scrubbed and told me the bathroom was free?

The bathroom was on the ground floor - makes sense when you're humping buckets of water I suppose. The water was lukewarm, but nonetheless refres.h.i.+ng. I yelped as I got in. My muscles were beginning to unknot themselves from the last three days' activity and stress.

I found some of Benny's shower gel on a shelf by the bath and tipped a handful into the water. I suppose using her gel should have made me feel even more guilty about leaving her behind. For some reason it didn't. It was as if I'd gone numb, right in my heart. As if there were no feelings there any more. I wondered about this for a while. In the end the scent of bath gel and the sensation of lukewarm water drove everything from my mind.

I sank down into the tub, as far as I could manage, and closed my eyes. I let the wash of sound - of women muttering about food or arguing, the shouts of the men, the gleeful yelps of the children and the constant jabber of radios - melt into a soothing backdrop of white noise.

Eyes closed, I hunted for the soap.

Voices muttered, pots clanged, dogs barked.

I found the soap.

One voice seemed to be a little louder than the others. It ' seemed very clear although the words were somehow indistinct. It seemed to be asking me questions.

Ah well. That wouldn't hurt. Would it? I took the (pen) soap in one hand and the (paper) flannel the Doctor gave me in the other and began to (write) scrub.

I washed quickly but thoroughly? After a few minutes I opened my eyes. I was aware someone was in the room with me. Someone with s.h.i.+ny rings piercing her eyebrows.

'h.e.l.lo, Sam,' I said.

'Hi.'

A little silence. She played with a damp strand of hair. 'You've been in here ages. I thought you might have drowned.'

I s.h.i.+vered suddenly. She was right. The bathwater was cold. Had I fallen asleep?

'What are you smiling at?'

She was right. I was smiling. 'Your hair looks daft when it's all wet.'

'All bedraggled, right?'

'Um. It should be spiky.'

She laughed. It was a small sound, lost even in this small room. I didn't say anything. She didn't either.

A minute or two went by.

Then she said, 'I've come to ... er ... well, look, right, the thing is, the Doctor sent me in here to get your notes.'

I sat up in astonishment. 'Notes? What notes? What do you mean?'

Denton pointed at the foot of the bath. A pile of handwritten papers was neatly stacked there. 'Your notes. The Doctor wants them. If that's OK.'

I grabbed the notes and flipped through them. They seemed familiar somehow ... I thought a moment. That was it. They were the notes Allen had given me just before he had died. Then I looked' closer. Something was different about them. They weren't the same notes at all. They were copies.

In my handwriting.

'Um,' I said. 'Er. Sure. Notes. Yeah. Right. Help yourself.' Denton nodded her thanks, grabbed the papers and left the room.

I s.h.i.+vered again, remembered flipping casually through the notes as Allen lay bleeding to death on the ground before me. How had I managed to - No. That was the wrong question. Who had made me - Someone else came into the bathroom then, doffed a hat, said with a smile, 'Hullo there, young man. Just come for my - ah! There it is.' A hand reached out to pluck a marker pen from the soap dish. 'Thanks. Bye!'

He was gone.

'Doctor? What do you think you're -'

A riffling of papers, an interested clucking of tongue, then he was back, fingers slipping into one jacket pocket after another until he emerged with Jim Allen's piece of lucky moonrock. 'Ah. Yes. Um. Thought I might borrow this for a while. Thanks. Have a nice bath.'

I thought very seriously about getting up and going after him? I thought about yelling at him for leaving her there; making him go back and help her, at gunpoint if necessary. But I didn't do any of these things. Instead I scrunched further down into my cold bath and looked for the soap.