Part 16 (2/2)

'I'd just popped in for a drink when a cigar-chomping moron tried to feel me up. I politely told him to go away, but he persisted. So I told him not so politely. I think he's out of the hospital now.'

The s.h.i.+p's horn suddenly blasted out a sound like a dras.h.i.+g's mating call.

The Doctor winced.

'I did tell you-that women are decorative, rather than productive, in this society,' he said, scrunching his hat up in his hands. 'They do not drink alone in bars, and they most emphatically do not get involved in unseemly brawls.'

'They don't do anything! I checked out of the hotel that night, and checked into another one the next day dressed like this.'

'Where did you get the clothes?'

'From my erstwhile admirer's room. I figured he wouldn't be needing them for a while, not with his ribs in that state. So I liberated them.'

The Doctor grinned slightly, and so did I. His eyes twinkled. I couldn't match that, so I waggled my ears instead. And that's how Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson found us, grinning like loons and performing tricks with bits of our anatomy.

I knew there was something familiar about them when they approached, gazing around at the spectacle that was Bombay, sweat glossing their faces and a bevy of Indian porters hauling their trunks after them. Watson could have been anyone - he was handsome, in a reserved sort of way, but he wouldn't stand out in a crowd - but Holmes's aquiline profile and incisive, penetrating gaze hit some deep vein of memory in me.

They were both wearing lightweight tropical suits and those topees that make people look like mushrooms. The Doctor (who once took me to a planet where mushrooms look like people, but that's another story) was dressed in his usual linen suit and white hat, and somehow looked less out of place here than usual. I could tell from the way that Holmes and Watson were standing that they were wearing those bizarre spinal pads that were supposed to protect your spine from the sun and facilitate the circulation of air, but ended up making you feel even more uncomfortable and just as hot.

'Professor Bernice Summerfield, Mr Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John Watson,' the Doctor announced.

Holmes nodded coolly at me. Watson was fl.u.s.tered. I wondered why for a second, then remembered that I was dressed as a man. He didn't know whether to shake my hand or kiss it.

'Professor Summerfield,' he said finally, clasping his hands behind his back. 'I'm enchanted.'

By his expression he had me figured for a lesbian. Normally it wouldn't bother me - bis.e.xuality is the norm in my era - but I knew from my researches that the eighteen eighties weren't quite as enlightened. Ask Oscar Wilde.

'I'm working undercover,' I confided, 'and call me Bennie.' He smiled, relieved.

'Where do we go from here?' he asked.

'I've booked rooms for you in my hotel,' I replied. 'I suggest that you wash and brush up, then we'll meet for dinner.'

He nodded.

'I've been looking forward to tasting Indian food again for the entire voyage,'

he confided as I gestured to the nearest group of tikka-gharis - four wheeled horse-drawn carriages similar to hansom cabs. After a brief argument, one of them headed towards us. Watson made to take my arm, but caught himself just in time.

'You've been here before?' I asked.

'Indeed. I pa.s.sed through here on my way to Afghanistan. I fought in the Second Afghan Campaign, you know?'

'How brave.' I was being mildly sarcastic, but he didn't seem to notice.

'I was wounded in the shoulder with a jezail bullet. Still gives me gyp. Nasty things.'

'Jezail?'

'It's a sort of long-barrelled musket, fired from a rest.'

The carriage pulled up beside us and the driver busied himself fighting with Holmes and Watson's bearers for possession of the bags. Like all lower-caste Indians, they wore turbans and dhotis - long lengths of cloth wound around their midriffs - and little else. It had taken me a month to stop regarding them as unfortunate accident victims. Still it could be worse. The Ook of the Crallis Sector wear clothes made out of small mammals, still alive but st.i.tched together.

Eventually, after I was satisfied that our luggage was all present and correct, I gave the driver the name of my hotel and made him repeat it.

Then we set off. Watson, after fussing about trying to order the men around and failing, had bagged the seat beside me.

'You speak Hindi?' he asked, miffed, as I settled into the seat and we moved off.

'Hindustani, Punjabi, Urdu, Bengali, Tamil, Telegu, Sontaran,' I said. 'I speak them all. It's a gift.'

'Oh.'

He turned to gaze out at the sun-baked streets. I refrained from telling him that I hadn't had to learn a word: somehow my a.s.sociation with the Doctor had enabled me to understand any language I came across. If only he could bottle it and sell it.

I met the three of them in the hotel bar after they had unpacked. I had a couple of minutes alone amid the bamboo furniture and bra.s.s fittings before they turned up. A large sheet of woven bamboo strips swung back and forth from a hinge on the ceiling, twitched by a rope which pa.s.sed through a hole in the wall to where some hapless punkah-wallah sat outside. There was a piano in one corner, its legs sitting in saucers of water to stop white ants from climbing up and eating their way through the instrument. A couple of florid ex-Army types with huge walrus moustaches were sitting over by it, balancing their G&Ts on the lid, to the obvious displeasure of the splendidly turbaned and uniformed khitmagar behind the bar. They nodded at me in a companionable way. If only they knew, I thought.

The Doctor arrived first. I suspect that he didn't even go inside his room. I'd never seen him sleep, or carry a spare set of clothes, or brush his teeth, or do any of those things that we all take for granted. I also suspect that when the rest of humanity go to bed the Doctor is either out wandering the streets or standing in a corner of his room until sunrise.

'So, what do you think of India, then?' he asked, settling himself cross-legged into a cane chair.

'I've been all over the universe with you, Doctor, and Earth in the nineteenth century is the most alien place I've ever seen.'

He smiled.

'I've always had a soft spot for it,' he confided. 'There's such a sense of infinite possibility. You feel that almost anything could evolve from this mora.s.s of science and superst.i.tion. It showcases humanity at its best, and at its worst. What about India? What have you found out?'

'I thought from the histories that it was all fairly simple. The Mughal dynasty ruled the continent for some three centuries until 1756, when their last emperor was dethroned by the British. After that, the British East India Company was allowed to run the country on behalf of the British Government for the lucrative jute, indigo and spice trade. Just like IMC and Lucifer, I guess. There was a native revolt in 1857. You know why?'

He nodded, but I continued anyway. 'It was so stupid: the sepoy troops believed that a new type of cartridge case was coated with either beef fat or pork fat. Of course, the Hindus couldn't touch pork and the Muslims couldn't touch beef. So they revolted -literally. After the mutiny the British Army was sent in to oversee the place, the British East India Company was abolished and the Indian Civil Service was set up. Lots of young British lads were sent out to keep the place running for the next century, and then India achieved dominion status in 1947.'

He nodded.

'You seem to have grasped the basics.'

'But that's too simplistic!' I protested. 'This place is a jigsaw. At the moment there are fourteen British-run provinces like Baluchistan, Sind, Madras, Bombay and Bengal, each with its own distinct character and geography, divided into a total of two hundred and fifty-six districts. Alongside that, there are five hundred and sixty-two native states like Rajputana, Mysore and Hyderabad, lorded over by an a.s.sortment of Nizams, Walis, Jams, Rajahs, Maharajahs, Ackonds, Ranas, Raos and Mehtars. Across both the British-run and the native areas, there are over two thousand three hundred castes, sects, and creeds, each with its own distinctive customs and religious injunctions. This isn't a country, it's a universe in its own right,'

He grinned.

'I've always thought of India as a microcosm,' he said.

'Of what?'

'If I ever find out, I'll be a wiser man than I am now.'

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