Part 16 (1/2)

'I hope to live a great deal more substantially than that,' the Doctor muttered.

From there the discussion moved on. Sherringford tried once again to dissuade us from the journey, whilst K'tcar'ch remained strangely silent.

Mycroft revealed that the Government had been aware that a larger than usual number of people had left the country bound for India, but in their infinite wisdom had decided not to pursue the matter. The Doctor and I debated how Maupertuis had got to hear about the books, but without success. After that I remember little of our packing and making arrangements. Now, as I sat with the Doctor and Holmes in the dining room of the Matilda Briggs, the time in between the revelations in the Library and that moment seemed like a dream, glimpsed but dimly through a gla.s.s.

'We should start planning our itinerary for when we reach Bombay,' Holmes said, breaking into my reverie. 'Maupertuis is on the .S S Soudan, and will have three days' head start on us. Watson, you're something of an expert on matters Indian. How do you suppose we can find the Baron?'

'Well, we'll need to make contact with a local man, preferably one with some influence, to make arrangements over travel and suggest likely places to check hotels and suchlike. Then it's a question of whether Maupertuis is covering his trail or not. If he's not expecting to be followed we should be able to determine his location fairly quickly.' I shook my head.

'If only we had been able to send a message ahead to prepare the way for us.'

'We did,' said the Doctor.

'What do you mean?'

'Didn't I tell you? How remiss of me. I have already been in contact with a friend of mine, who is waiting for us in Bombay. With any luck, she will be able to tell us everything we want to know.'

'And how did you know that you would need someone in Bombay?' Holmes snapped. 'Or was it sheer coincidence?'

The Doctor gazed up at him with an ageless expression on his face, and it was Holmes who looked away first.

'Oh,' said the Doctor finally, 'I have a girl in every port.'

That was the first we heard of Professor Bernice Summerfield, a woman who was to become very dear to my heart in a very short s.p.a.ce of time. As she is to play such an important part in the continuation of this narrative, it is only fair that I should let her introduce herself in her own words, from the diary to which she has so very kindly allowed me access.

Chapter 9.

In which a new voice takes up the story, and the Doctor is picked up in a hotel. hotel.

Extract from the diary of Bernice Summerfield Bombay smells.

Yes, I know I've written the same words every morning for the past two months, but they come from the heart. Bombay smells. It smells like no other place I've ever visited. I mean, I've lived everywhere from the slums of Avernus, where dead bodies are left to rot where they drop, to a squat above a thoat-gelding shop in the mires of Zellen VIII, but I've never come across such an all-pervading, gut-wrenching stench of decay and unwashed flesh. That's what coming home means, if Earth is really home any more. Unwashed aliens just smell exotic, and more often than not rotting alien food tastes better than it does fresh. What I'm trying to say is that even a nasty alien stink has something extraordinary about it, but sheer human squalor just turns the stomach.

Especially when I'm in a city whose people think that the function of a river is to act as a latrine upstream and a launderette downstream. I'd complain, but I'm too polite. I have to be polite. In 1887, on Earth, everybody is polite.

Well, everybody that matters.

But that's the general gripe over with. Onto the specific.

The P&O representative told me yesterday that the Matilda Briggs was due in after lunch. Today, after all the usual guff - sleeping in, being woken up by the mamlet who wanted to clean my room, dressing, having lunch - I wandered through town towards the dock. The route was lined with shops, hotels and offices designed to be impressive, in a gothic sort of way. I had to push my way through crowds of workers, soldiers, beggars, lepers, amputees, bullocks and pariah dogs before I could pa.s.s across the vast open square to where the ocean rolled greasily against the pylons of the dock. A battalion of British Army soldiers was waiting to embark on one of the s.h.i.+ps. Their pennants fluttered limply in the breeze, their brightly coloured uniforms were already soaked in sweat, and one in three was yellow and wasted by malaria. Behind them the Deccan mountains pierced the pure blue membrane of the sky. I could almost believe that the sharp silhouette of their peaks against the sky was actually the coastline poking out into the waters of the Arabian Sea, and I was standing on the mountain tops, looking downwards, far away from where the Doctor would arrive.

Eventually I wandered across to the Ballard Pier, surrounded by eager s.h.i.+pping agents and hara.s.sed representatives from P&O, Bibby's and British India. I was clutching the Doctor's telegram in my hand. Every few minutes I unfolded it and checked again that I hadn't got the name of the s.h.i.+p wrong. Odd thoughts kept chasing their tails around my mind. What if there'd been a problem and the Doctor hadn't boarded in the end? What if I'd misinterpreted his instructions and I was supposed to be somewhere else? What if he was angry at me for wasting my time when I could have presented him with a solution to his problems, all wrapped up with a little pink bow? What if...?

I knew the real problem, of course. I was scared of seeing him again. No reason: just scared.

A beggar approached, imploring me for alms. His head was covered in running sores. His thick hair rippled gently in the breeze. I looked closer, and recoiled as some of it took flight, buzzing briefly around his head before settling again to feed. Flies - the ever-present curse of India. I waved him away, feeling a sudden knife-stab of guilt. There were tens of thousands of people in Bombay. I couldn't help all of them. That was the true evil. Not Daleks, not Hoothi.

Poverty and powerlessness.

From the dock I gazed out across the Arabian Sea, out to where the heat haze and the waves merged to form an ambiguous boundary, neither sea nor sky, half in this universe and half somewhere else. I was hypnotized by it. My mind blurred like the landscape. The Matilda Briggs had grown into a cloud the size of a man's hand before I woke up. Within an hour it was a metal leviathan, belching steam as it wallowed up to the dock.

And there he was, on deck, waving his umbrella to attract my attention. He was exactly as I had remembered. I felt my breath catch in my throat. He was small and he was trouble, but I'd missed him.

Ropes were flung back and forth, and there was a lot of jostling and bustling, most of it unproductive. Eventually a gangplank was in place.

After he disembarked he scurried up as if to give me a great big hug, but skidded to a halt inches from me and raised his hat instead.

'Doctor Livingstone, I presume?' he said.

'Doctor Doctor, I presume?' I replied.

He gazed at me for a while, checking me out from head to toe and from side to side. Around us, disembarking families wandered like ducklings.

'There's something different about you. He frowned, and looked me over again. 'Don't tell me. Let me guess.'

'Doctor, I . .'

'It's the hair, isn't it? You've had your hair done.'

'No, I...'

'I know! You've lost weight'

I sighed.

'No Doctor, I'm disguised as a man.'

He checked again.

'Are you? How very Shakespearian. Well, I'm sure you've got a good reason.'

'I have,' I said. 'Have you got any idea how they treat women in this era?

You asked me to pretend to be one of the girls who comes out looking for a husband. It was so demeaning. Do you know what the men call those girls?

'The fis.h.i.+ng fleet'. The ones who can't find husbands are called 'returned empties'. It's disgusting. I was going mad!'

He scowled.

'You were supposed to remain inconspicuous.'

'I knocked a man out in the hotel bar one night. After that, I decided I was more inconspicuous disguised as a man than as a woman.'

The Doctor winced.

'I'm sure I don't want to know,' he said, 'but I know you're going to tell me anyway'