Part 6 (2/2)

'What is it, my dear?' She seemed not to respond to his voice. He was aware of the Doctor emerging behind him from the drawing room, watching them. He turned his daughter towards him, feeling her slight resistance. Her eyes were open, but unfocussed, unseeing as he looked into them. Her dark hair was down over her shoulders, contrasting with the white linen of her night dress. As he turned her back towards the light from the drawing room, he caught sight of the chain around her neck. Her hand was at her throat, holding the figure of Agni. Like a talisman.

'Is she given to sleepwalking?' the Doctor asked. His voice was low, so as not to startle her.

'Not so far as I have been aware.' s...o...b..ld led her gently back towards the stairs. 'I'll take her back to her room. Best not to wake her.'

'Yes.' The Doctor's voice seemed distant. 'I suppose so.'

She allowed herself to be helped up the stairs, s...o...b..ld's arm around her shoulders. He guided her to her room, and she climbed into bed, pulling the covers back over herself. Her eyes closed, and in a moment she seemed fast asleep. An oil lamp was burning low in the corner of the room. She liked to have light as she slept. The glow permeated the room, ageing the white of the sheets, of her night dress to a pale yellow.

He sat beside the bed for a while, listening to her regular breathing, watching the covers move gently in response. She was so like her mother. So very like her. As he sat there, time was suspended, the world stopped. There was nothing but the two of them. Until the grandfather clock in the hallway jolted him back to the present, and s...o...b..ld quietly, softly left the room.

Downstairs, in the drawing room, he found the decanter returned to its proper place in the Tantalus. The sherry gla.s.ses had been washed, dried and replaced in the cabinet. The fire was dying in the grate, embers glowing faintly amidst the dusty residue of the coal. s...o...b..ld lifted the curtain and peered out into the night. Snowflakes were falling gently past the windows, twisting, turning, colliding apparently at random. Of the Doctor, there was no sign.

Chapter Seven.

The Fires of h.e.l.l By morning, the world was completely white. Professor Dobbs was aware of the covering of snow even before he opened the curtains. There was a brilliance, a brightness to the light that shone through the material. He had lived through enough winters to know instinctively what that meant.

It was eerie, seeing the morning mist hanging low over the white*shrouded moorland beyond the Rectory. Eerie, yet beautiful. Somewhere out there in that white wilderness was the fissure. A mystery. Since he was a child he had felt compelled to investigate the mysterious, to explain the odd. He had read Wilkie Collins when he was barely in his teens, moved on to Poe before he was twenty. A study of science had seemed an obvious progression, an outlet for his inquiring mind.

He saw something of the same enthusiasm for the unexplained in Alistair Gaddis. Had his own enthusiasm, Dobbs wondered, been as uncontrolled, as unfocused? And if it had, was he now a victim of the constrained and straitjacketed thinking which he had so resented in his elders when he first started on his career, which he had so disparaged in his peers when he first joined the Royal Society?

Staring out now across the strange, pale horizon*less landscape where land and sky met in a misty blur, he found it hard to believe he had ever lost his wonder at the intrinsic beauty with which the world fitted together, the way that everything had its appointed place and could be explained by its context. He could feel the enthusiasm welling up within him, the excitement at being so close to taking another enigma, another oddity and slotting it into its proper place in the order of things. Of explaining the inexplicable.

Betty s...o...b..ld had prepared breakfast, and Dobbs was surprised to find he was the last to rise. He ate quickly, kept company by s...o...b..ld. The Doctor and Gaddis had already breakfasted and had retired to the drawing room.

'I shall be interested to hear your views on the fissure this evening,' s...o...b..ld said over the toast. 'Today is my day for visiting, otherwise I might be tempted to join you on your little expedition.'

'You would of course be most welcome,' Dobbs told him. 'As would your friend the Doctor, of course. Your hospitality is much appreciated.'

'My friend...' s...o...b..ld replied. 'Yes.' He finished his toast. 'You are welcome to stay as long as you wish.'

Normally Dobbs preferred to work alone, or in the company only of Gaddis who was by now used to his ways and methods. But he found himself genuinely delighted that the Doctor was able to join them on their first visit to the fissure.

The mist had lifted by the time they were ready to set off. Gaddis was carrying a satchel of equipment, and Dobbs wielded his favourite walking stick. The Doctor appeared unchanged from the previous night.

'So which way is this fissure?' Gaddis asked the Doctor as they reached the end of the Rectory drive.

'Which way?' He seemed surprised at the question. 'I have no idea. I thought you were the interested parties.'

'You mean you haven't seen it? Haven't been to look?' Dobbs was astounded.

The Doctor shook his head. 'I only arrived yesterday evening, like yourselves.'

'Oh.' Dobbs and Gaddis exchanged glances. 'I apologise, Doctor,' Dobbs said. 'I a.s.sumed, we both did, that you had been staying with your friend the Reverend s...o...b..ld for a while.'

The Doctor's eyes glinted in the sunlight reflected off the snow. 'As a scientist, you should always question your a.s.sumptions,' he said. 'Don't you think?'

Dobbs frowned. 'Are you a scientist? Is that what you're saying?'

But before the Doctor could answer, Gaddis cut in. 'Shall we go back?' He suggested. 'Ask Miss s...o...b..ld?'

'About our a.s.sumptions?' the Doctor asked in apparent surprise.

'About the location of this fissure.'

'Oh, I'm sure there's no need,' the Doctor said. He set off down the lane, heading away from the town. 's...o...b..ld said it was on the moorland, running across the old river bed.'

'And that is this way?' Dobbs asked as he caught up.

'Yes.' The Doctor hesitated. His breath hung in the air a moment as he seemed to consider, then his face cracked into a grin. 'That is my a.s.sumption.'

The Rectory was on the edge of the community. Only the church seemed to be further out of the town. They speculated at the way Middletown had grown, pulled towards the mine workings and the factories. A movement away from the church and towards modern industry, towards mechanisation. Before long they were crunching through the unbroken snow across the empty moorland.

'What's that?' Gaddis asked, s.h.i.+elding his eyes against the low sun.

Dobbs struggled to see what he was pointing towards. His eyes were old, and he was losing the sharpness of his distant vision. There was something, though. A smudge on the horizon.

's...o...b..ld mentioned that the fissure cuts across the old river bed,' the Doctor said thoughtfully. 'I would say that was a dam.' He turned a full circle as he looked about him, snow churning at his feet. 'This whole area is slightly lower than the surrounding land,' he observed. 'Another reason they could not expand this way, I would think.'

'The river?' Dobbs asked.

The Doctor nodded. 'I wonder why they built the dam.'

'Something to do?' Gaddis suggested with a smile.

'Not completely without merit,' the Doctor observed seriously. 'Providing employment would be a concern, I imagine. Good for morale to have such a large project ongoing.'

'But surely there would have to be some practical application,' Dobbs pointed out.

'One would a.s.sume so.' The Doctor clapped his hands together, though whether this was to ward off the cold or to signal an end to the conversation was unclear. 'This way,' he said brusquely and set off towards the distant dam.

'Well,' Gaddis observed after several minutes of silent progress, 'let's hope that when we do find this fissure we don't fall into it.'

'We won't,' the Doctor told him. He was a few steps ahead.

'Might be hidden in the snow you mean?' Dobbs said to Gaddis.

The Doctor did not break his stride. 'It isn't.'

'How do you know?' Gaddis asked.

'Because I can see it,' the Doctor told them.

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