Part 27 (1/2)

We emerged after what seemed like hours onto the surface of Ry'leh. The sight of the stars s.h.i.+ning 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 raksha.s.sa at the end of the tunnel was throwing prisoners w.i.l.l.y-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 raksha.s.si pulling ropes, to be replaced with another one. The raksha.s.si outside the tunnel were all squeezed into impromptu s.p.a.cesuits.

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 raksha.s.sa took a closer look at me, then pulled me roughly inside.

'You are special,' it a.s.sured 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 raksha.s.sa 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 raksha.s.sa 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 ma.s.sive raksha.s.sa, that I felt a s.h.i.+ver run through me like a seam of silver through rock.

The figure stood silently for a moment. I could feel its gaze pa.s.s 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 raksha.s.sa.

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 cl.u.s.ter 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, a.s.suming that we can get to those caravans undetected?'