Part 22 (1/2)

When he was confident that the figures were close enough to be sure of a direct hit, he brought his hand down.

The sound was deafening an explosive roar. Wilson's attention was fixed on the wall of fire that rolled towards them. It was as if the creatures had blended together and it was almost impossible to tell where one ended and the next began. But nothing happened.

He turned to the gunners, to see what had gone wrong. The crews were looking at each other, mystified and bemused. There had been an explosion in each of the chambers, but nothing had emerged. It was as if the energy was bottled up inside the new guns.

A moment before the explosions, Wilson's blood ran cold. New guns. Fas.h.i.+oned from the material that Nepath and Lord Urton had demonstrated. Then the field guns exploded.

They went off in series, one after another. The closest to Wilson erupted in a blistering fireball, sending flame shooting across the street. Smoke drifted and mingled with the misty ash that again filled the air. Through it he saw the brilliant flashes of the other explosions. Wilson staggered back, driven by the intense heat.

When the smoke cleared enough for Wilson to see what was happening, he realised how lucky he had been. Several of the crews had been killed outright. A couple of men were staggering across the street, their clothes on fire. Colleagues ran to throw their jackets over them, roll them on the floor, try to smother the flames. Perhaps half a dozen men seemed uninjured.

But it was the remains of the field guns that held Wilson's attention. They lay abandoned and burning. The barrels had been ripped open by the explosions, the whole of each gun lying in a disintegrated heap bent and broken. They reminded Wilson of the gun that had been blown apart on the moor.

As he watched, the shattered field guns seemed to melt. The heavy, dark material became glutinous, like melting jelly. The barrel of one of them sagged into a puddle of viscous liquid, the muzzle sticking out for a moment like the prow of a sinking s.h.i.+p. Then slowly the liquid flowed together, formed bigger pools, and became solid again.

Shapes rose out of the pools, pus.h.i.+ng their ponderous way through the viscous, glowing substance. But they were not reconst.i.tuted gun components.

They were amorphous, malformed figures. Their surfaces were glowing a dull red beneath the blackened crust that had formed over them, that seemed to hold them together. As they stretched and grew and took their first faltering steps, they exploded into flames The wall of fire that was advancing down the street met the newly formed figures, and they seemed to merge. A single, reinforced line of blazing creatures continued down the street.

'Fall back!' Wilson shouted, desperate to make himself heard above the horrendous noise of the fire. He had no idea how many men he had left here, or how the evacuation was proceeding. But he had to save whoever he could.

One of the figures was almost on him, the ground at its feet smoking and exploding as it lurched forwards. Wilson lunged at it with his bayonet, gritting his teeth against the heat as his hand approached. He could feel the leather of his glove blistering. A short sharp stab. No effect.

He pulled back his hand, to find that the blade of the bayonet was gone. A stump of white hot metal sagged and broke from the smouldering hilt. Wilson dropped the useless weapon, turned, and ran.

'With me!' he screamed, barely aware of the soldiers running to join him. He drew his revolver and fired uselessly into the fire. Then he led them away at a run. He had no idea where he was going.

They ran for what seemed like an age, until the glow of the creatures was lost in the distance, swallowed up by the misty air. Brookes had joined them at some point, and he gestured for Wilson to stop.

It took Wilson a minute to catch his breath. He looked round. There were perhaps a dozen of them now, no more.

'We should abandon the town, sir,' Brookes said. 'We got out everyone we could.'

'And the reinforcements?'

Brookes shook his head. 'No sign of them.'

'Not that they would help much,' Wilson admitted. 'All right. We'll regroup outside the town. On the moor.'

'Away from the fissure, sir?' Brookes suggested.

Wilson nodded. 'And the mine. We need to find high ground. A vantage point. Near the reservoir perhaps.'

'Agreed, sir.' Brookes nodded. 'I'll get the men formed up.'

A river of molten rock flowed from the mouth of the tunnel that led into the mine. The huts cl.u.s.tered round the mine exploded into flame as the magma reached them. The burning sh.e.l.ls of the buildings were crushed beneath the rolling torrent of lava.

The surface was a seething, bubbling ma.s.s of angry red. The air cooled the edges so that a thin dark crust formed, almost immediately to be melted away by the persistent heat of the body of gelatinous liquid that heaved itself forward.

A similar, but far larger, torrent was bubbling and streaming out of the fissure. It scorched its way across the moorland, a fiery sea. The air around it sizzled and s.h.i.+mmered with the heat.

s...o...b..ld had thought his study a mess when Professor Dobbs was conducting his research. Now he realised that it had been a comparatively ordered and tidy procedure. The Doctor stood in the middle of an ankle*deep ocean of literature. He scooped books from off shelves and desk and chairs, flicking through each in turn before dropping it with an ever*more irritated grunt to the growing pile at his feet.

At first, s...o...b..ld had retrieved the books and papers and made an attempt to return them to their proper place. But the Doctor read faster than s...o...b..ld could file. He soon gave up, and instead watched the Doctor's increasingly exasperated progress.

'If you knew what we were looking for, I could help,' s...o...b..ld said. Again.

The Doctor's reply was another grunt of annoyance, and a heavy book fell to the floor. It landed on its spine, the pages spilling over like a waterfall until its redistributed weight caused it to topple down the heap of discarded books and come to rest under the desk.

'No, wait!' The Doctor was suddenly on his hands and knees scrabbling through the pile. 'Where did it go?' he demanded 'Where, where, where?'

s...o...b..ld retrieved the book, smoothed out the bent pages and held it out to the Doctor who was still on his knees.

'Ah. Thank you.' He shuffled through the mess of paper on his knees, rifling through the book.

s...o...b..ld knew the book, of course. He knew them all. It was a collection of creation myths from various cultures and geographies. The book was a limited edition published by a company based in Berlin.

'You understand German, Doctor?'

'Do I?' The Doctor glanced up, finger marking his place on the page. He seemed puzzled. 'Yes,' he said as he returned his attention to the print. 'Yes, I suppose I do.'

'What have you found? Anything useful?' Outside the study window, s...o...b..ld could see that the whole sky was glowing a brilliant orange.

'Yes, yes I think so. Listen.' The Doctor raised his hand as he spoke, tapping the air to punctuate each sentence. 'This seems to be an Inca origin myth. From South America,' he explained, peering for a moment at s...o...b..ld over the top of the page.

'Thank you, I know.'

'Excellent. Well this was recorded in the fifteen fifties by...' He flicked back a couple of pages and quickly scanned for the names. 'Cieza de Leon and Juan de Betanzos, whoever they might have been. Spanish presumably, so it's been through a few translations.' He turned back to where he had been. 'Now, they say that Viracocha, the Creator, banished the fire from the sky by giving it three strokes with his staff.' He sniffed. 'I imagine the fire in the sky was part of the creation process, I didn't actually bother with that bit too much.'

'This is fascinating, Doctor.' s...o...b..ld was watching the sky darken from orange to blood red. 'But I can't say I am convinced it helps.'

The Doctor said. 'No magic staff available, you think?' He nodded as if this was indeed a consideration. 'But,' he went on, eyes wide with enthusiasm, 'there is a related myth in which there is a fight between Pariacaca and Huallallo. That seems to replace the staff banging stuff. Now we learn somewhere here...' He balanced the book on his forearm and started frantically flicking pages at lightning speed. '...That Huallallo is the personification of fire. Or G.o.d of fire. Or something.' He gave up searching and put the book down carefully on a free edge of the desk. It balanced for a moment before toppling sideways and falling to the floor. He continued undeterred. 'He represents fire, anyhow.'

'And Pariah*whoever?' s...o...b..ld asked.

'Pariacaca. Yes. He represents water.'

'And they fought?'

The Doctor nodded, a huge grin spreading over his face. 'We're back to the essential elements. Fire and water don't mix.'

'We know that, Doctor,' s...o...b..ld pointed out. 'Everyone knows that. But the rain, the snow they've made no difference here.'

'That's because so far we've had the quant.i.ties wrong, the proportions.' The Doctor tapped a fingernail against his teeth as he considered. 'Remember Urton in the river,' he said. 'The rain, the snow they're just not enough. Lots of hissing and spitting, but nowhere near enough to combat such a vast body of flame. Like using a hose pipe to try to calm Vesuvius.'