Dr. Who - BBC New Series 25 (2 page)

‘Course it does. Think of your history.’

‘Believe it or not, I wasn’t born in 1947.’

‘Not your
personal
history,’ said the Doctor. ‘
Earth history. Didn’t they teach you
anything
at school?’

Donna gave him a blank look. ‘I only liked home economics.’

The Doctor made an exasperated sound. ‘Remind me to buy you a set of encyclopaedias for your next birthday.’

‘Only if you remind
me
to punch you in the face,’

Donna said.

The Doctor carried on as if she hadn’t spoken, talking rapidly, almost in bullet points. ‘Last year there was a famine in India. The people got desperate and angry.

When the British Raj did nothing to help, the population rioted. Now the Brits are about to give India home rule, but instead of solving the problem it’s only making things worse. Different religions are fighting amongst themselves about how to divide up the pie, and Calcutta is at the centre of it. At this moment it’s one of the most volatile places on Earth. Thousands have been killed, many more made homeless. It’s a massive human tragedy, and I’ve landed us slap-bang in the middle.’

He looked so anguished that Donna felt compelled to say, ‘Well, nobody’s perfect.’

He smiled sheepishly. ‘The Taj Mahal on Chiswick High Road, you say?’

She nodded. ‘There’s a pay and display across the road, if you need somewhere to park.’

They said goodbye to the clearly puzzled old man and headed off down the street. It was still hot, and flies were still buzzing around their heads, but the cloudless sky had deepened, and the shadows were lengthening.

As the sun crept towards the horizon, more and more men were gathering in the streets. Almost all of them silently watched the Doctor and Donna pass by, their expressions ranging from bemusement to hostility.

‘Just look confident,’ muttered the Doctor. ‘Usually works for me.’

‘Don’t worry, Doctor,’ Donna said. ‘Once you’ve been

to a few West Ham/Millwall games, there’s nothing much that can frighten you.’

They were walking down a quiet street, past a pile of straw and steaming dung, when they heard gunshots from somewhere ahead of them.

‘Although in my time,’ Donna said, ‘people don’t usually shoot each other at the football. What shall we do?’

The Doctor halted and half-raised a hand. ‘We could always stand here for a minute and hope it’ll go away.’

The gunshots grew louder – and were now accompanied by the din of an approaching crowd.

‘Any more bright ideas, Einstein?’

The Doctor pointed at the pile of straw and dung.

‘Well, we could always hide in there.’

Donna gave him an incredulous look. ‘I think I’d rather get a bullet through the head than cover myself in—’

‘Shift!’ yelled the Doctor, grabbing her hand.

The panicked cries of the crowd had suddenly become much louder. Donna turned to see that soldiers on horseback had appeared at the end of the street, and were driving a rampaging mob before them.

A mob that was heading straight for her and the Doctor!

‘Where is that dratted Gopal?’

Dr Edward Morgan consulted his fob watch with a frown, then dropped it back into the pocket of his waistcoat. He looked tired, Adelaide thought, and with good reason. He worked such long hours at the camp that

he barely allowed himself time to sleep. He could easily have settled for a cushy practice in the ‘White Town’, treating overfed English diplomats with the gout, or old ladies with the vapours. Instead, despite many of his fellow countrymen scoffing at him for wasting his medical skills on ‘coolies’, he had decided to ply his trade on the front line.

Adelaide had been so inspired by his commitment that she had openly defied her father, Sir Edgar Campbell, to help him. Sir Edgar continued to assert that tending to the ailments of Indians was ‘a most unsuitable position for an Englishwoman’, but at least he was fair-minded enough to allow his daughter to make her own decisions. The work was arduous and the rewards minimal, but Adelaide had the satisfaction of knowing that she was trying to make a difference.

‘He’ll be here, Edward,’ she said. ‘Gopal is reliable and dedicated.’

Edward used a crumpled handkerchief to wipe a sheen of sweat from his forehead. He was unshaven and his white doctor’s coat was stained and dusty. He was in his late twenties, only five years older than Adelaide herself, but just now he looked closer to forty.

‘I know he is,’ he said, his irritation fading. ‘I do hope nothing has happened to him.’

‘Well… my tonga-wallah did tell me that there has been trouble in the north of the city again today,’ Adelaide said. ‘I believe Major Daker and his men are attempting to restore order. It could be that the streets are simply difficult to negotiate.’

‘Yes, I’m sure that’s what it is,’ Edward said wearily, and swayed a little on his feet. Adelaide, who had just arrived at the camp for the night shift, reached out to steady him. Her touch made him blink in surprise, and the look he gave her caused her to blush. To cover her embarrassment, she looked around the medical tent with its two cramped rows of beds and asked, ‘Has it been a difficult day?’

Edward smiled without humour. ‘No more than usual.

We’ve had another fifty people in today, most suffering from malnutrition.’ He wafted his hand in a gesture that somehow carried an air of defeat about it. ‘The fact is, Adelaide, we simply don’t have the resources to cope. I feel so helpless, having to stand by and watch children starve in front of my eyes… but what can you do?’

Again, Adelaide felt an urge to put a hand on her colleague’s shoulder, but this time she resisted.

‘You’re doing your best, Edward,’ she said. ‘It’s all anyone can reasonably expect.’

He shrugged and looked around the tent once again.

Despite the best efforts of the overburdened medical staff, it was a squalid place. The patients slept beneath unwashed sheets, with swarms of flies hovering above them and cockroaches scuttling across the floor. The interior of the tent smelled of sickness and sweat and, even with the flaps pinned back, it was as hot as an oven during the day and barely cooler at night.

The tent was one of three, situated side by side on a slight rise at the north end of the camp. The tents housed the most seriously afflicted of the refugees, who, over the

past six months, had been arriving here in their hundreds, on this flat, dusty area of scrubland two miles outside Calcutta.

‘How many deaths today?’ Adelaide asked bluntly.

Edward sighed. ‘Fifteen.’

She nodded stoically. ‘Anything else to report?’

‘We had another one brought in.’

She knew immediately what he meant and her fists tightened. ‘The same as the others?’

Edward nodded wearily. ‘She was a young girl, perhaps eighteen or nineteen. Two men brought her, bound like an animal. They didn’t know who she was, and she was in no fit state to tell them. She has the same protrusions on her face and body as the others. The men say she was like a rabid dog, attacking people in the street. They told Narhari they believed the girl was possessed by demons.

‘She had bitten one of the men on the hand. I treated the wound and tried to place him in quarantine, but he refused to stay. I only hope she hasn’t passed the infection on to him.’

‘We still don’t know that it
is
an infection,’ Adelaide said.

‘And we don’t know that it isn’t either,’ replied Edward, ‘apart from the fact that none of us has yet been taken ill.’

She was silent for a moment, then she asked, ‘Can I see the girl?’

‘She isn’t a pretty sight, I’m afraid.’

‘All the same…’

Edward led her out of the tent and towards the one at

the far end of the row. The sun had slipped below the horizon now and the sky was a riot of reds and purples, which would soon deepen to black. Out on the plain, the hundreds of people who had fled the fierce infighting between different factions of their countrymen were huddled in shelters made of wood and blankets and corrugated iron. The area was dotted with the flickering lights of fires, around which the recently homeless huddled for comfort and to cook what little food they had.

Here and there scrawny goats, bleating piteously, were tethered to posts. Conversation among the people was soft and sombre. There was very little laughter, even from the children.

Edward held the flap of the third tent aside for Adelaide and she walked in. The interior of the tent had been divided in half, the front half partitioned from the back by several lengths of grubby muslin. They each donned a surgical mask, and then Edward led Adelaide through the flimsy partition. She braced herself. She was frightened of these particular patients, but she wouldn’t avoid them. If she wanted to do her job properly, she couldn’t afford to be selective.

There were twelve beds here, ten of which were occupied. It was unusual for even a single bed to be standing empty, but this area had been designated an isolation zone. All ten patients had arrived in the past week, all suffering from the same mysterious symptoms.

The newest arrival, the girl, was in the fifth bed along on the left. Adelaide approached, dry-mouthed, even though she knew that the patient would be tethered and

sedated.

Sure enough, the girl’s hands and feet were bound by strips of strong cloth to the rough wooden bed-frame. She was sleeping but restive, her eyes rolling beneath their lids, her lips drawing back from white teeth as she snarled and muttered. She was small and slim, and Adelaide could tell that she had been pretty once. Her finely boned face was the colour of caramel, her hair like black silk. She wore a simple white sari, which was torn and stained with dirt, and her bare feet were lacerated with wounds that had been washed and disinfected.

As ever, it was the sight of the strange protrusions which horrified Adelaide. This girl had one on her forehead and one on her neck. They were black-purple lumps, which had pulled the flesh around them out of shape. From experience, Adelaide knew that the lumps would grow and multiply until the patient died. It had happened to three patients already, and two more were currently close to death. When the first sufferers had arrived a week ago, Edward and his colleagues had thought they were witnessing the start of a new strain of bubonic plague. But the limited tests they had been able to carry out seemed to belie that theory. So far they had failed to pinpoint any infection – which didn’t necessarily mean there wasn’t one.

‘Does she have the pale eyes?’ Adelaide asked, leaning over the girl. In all the cases so far, the victim’s eyes had become paler as the illness progressed, as if the pigment was draining out of them. It was eerie, watching a person’s eyes change from brown to the insipid yellow of

weak tea.

‘Not yet,’ said Edward – and at that moment, as if to prove the fact, the girl’s eyes opened wide.

They may not have been yellow, but they were bloodshot and utterly crazed. The girl glared at Adelaide, and then lunged for her so violently that the restraints around her right wrist simply snapped. As Adelaide jumped back, the girl’s teeth clacked together, closing on empty air. Edward rushed forward to grab the patient’s flailing arm, but her momentary surge of energy was over, and already she was slumping back, her eyes drifting closed.

‘That shouldn’t have happened,’ Edward said, retying her wrist. ‘I gave her enough sedative to knock out an elephant.’ He looked up at Adelaide. ‘Are you all right?’

Adelaide was already composing herself. ‘I’m fine.’

She hesitated a moment, then stepped back towards the bed. ‘Poor thing. I wish we could find out what’s causing this.’

Edward said firmly, ‘I still maintain that it’s a chemical poison of some kind, perhaps similar to the effects of atom bomb radiation.’

A shiver passed through Adelaide. The American atom bomb attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had occurred just two years previously, and had sent shock waves across the world.

‘But if a bomb had gone off nearby, we would have heard of it surely?’

‘It needn’t have been a bomb,’ said Edward. ‘It could be something in the water.’

‘Something introduced deliberately, you mean?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s possible.’

‘Some of the staff here believe that the illness is something to do with the strange lights seen in the sky a week ago,’ she said.

Edward snorted. ‘Superstitious nonsense.’

She looked at him. Her eyes above the mask gave nothing away. ‘I’m sure you’re right, Edward,’ she said evenly.

The Doctor yanked on Donna’s hand. ‘Come on!’ he yelled. ‘What are you doing? Pacing yourself?’

Donna stopped just long enough to raise a sandalled foot. ‘It’s not easy running in these things, y’know.’

‘Well, why did you wear ’em then?’ he shouted.

‘Because we were
supposed
to be going for a quiet meal. You didn’t tell me I’d need combat gear.’

The mob was gaining on them. From the quick glimpse she’d taken after the Doctor had grabbed her hand, Donna had been reminded of stampeding cattle, all wild eyes and mindless, headlong flight. But these ‘cattle’ were being driven not by cowboys but by British soldiers on horseback, wearing sand-coloured uniforms. At their head, barking orders and occasionally firing his revolver into the air, was a red-faced major with a bristling moustache and a peaked cap.