The Eleventh Tiger (5 page)

‘Thank you.’ The major turned to Logan. ‘Get the men fallen in: fire-fighting parties. It’s going to be a long night.’ The moon crossed the sky at its usual stately pace, the stars shifting around it. As it sank lower, so did the flames in Qiang-Ling. The smoke cleared from the air and the major was able to find a sheltered spot in which to rest, in the hope that his head would stop feeling like a gong that had just been struck.

As he looked up at the rising glow in the east for one last time before closing his eyes, he felt a peculiar sensation. It was a shiver under the skin, and a tingle in the bones -

someone walking over his grave. He felt for a confused moment as if he had seen this dawn before, and was doomed to repeat it.

Then his thoughts broke up, and dissolved into the soft oblivion of sleep.

Ian Chesterton stood in the TARDIS doorway and looked out at the pre-dawn tint of the eastern sky. He had managed to rest well, before dressing in casual slacks, rollneck and jacket. Barbara had found herself sensible shoes to go with a plain trouser suit and Vicki wore baggy trousers and an oversized sweater.

The Doctor himself had exchanged his usual frock coat for a similar, but double-breasted variant that Ian supposed would be a little warmer in the cool morning air. He rubbed his hands together. ‘Now, let’s see where we are, eh?’

‘Don’t the Ship’s instruments tell us?’ Vicki asked. She circled the console. ‘I mean, surely there’s a navigational panel on here that can read where it is.’

‘Of course there is, child,’ the Doctor snapped. ‘But it is rather generic, concerning itself more with which planet the Ship is on than a specific geographical location.’

‘That’s a bit silly, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, child, precisely so.’

He ushered Vicki and Barbara out, past Ian, and turned to lock the door behind him.

‘But it makes things that bit more interesting, doesn’t it?’

he asked cheerfully. He pointed in an apparently random direction with his walking cane. ‘Yes, much more interesting than reading a dial.’

Vicki laughed and moved on ahead. Ian exchanged a look with Barbara. The old boy was incorrigible, it seemed. Her expression mirrored his, agreeing with his judgement.

‘Shall we promenade?’ he asked, offering her his arm with a grin.

‘Thank you, kind sir,’ she said, with the kind of seriousness that couldn’t be serious.

She linked her arm in his, and together they followed the Doctor and Vicki.

Behind them, only a contented, wary vibration like the purring of a sleeping cat remained.

The early-morning walk was pleasant, and felt both relaxing and invigorating at the same time. Thankfully it wasn’t tiring, and Barbara enjoyed it. It was just one of those times when everything was right: a peaceful place, fresh air that was neither too warm nor too cold and good company.

The company was important: the Doctor, always ready with an explanation or some surprisingly youthful enthusiasm; Vicki’s excitement at the new form of travel was infectious and appreciated; most of all, there was Ian at her side. It seemed so natural for him to be there that it felt as if he had always been with her.

The road wasn’t well travelled at this hour, and the four of them saw only two other people. Two men - a father and son, judging by their resemblance to each other - passed them, walking in the other direction. The pair looked curiously at the time travellers, but didn’t say anything.

They were Chinese, and wore loose trousers and long Chinese-style shirts, which at least provided a clue to where the TARDIS had landed. The two men had shaved foreheads, and their hair was tied back into long queues that fell down past the napes of their necks. Barbara recognised this as a style worn in the past, but over several centuries so there was no way she could narrow it down to a likely year.

The smell of salt water, oil and fish rose in the air along with the sun. Wherever they were Barbara knew it had to be coastal, or perhaps an estuary. The road ahead breasted a ridge and, as they climbed, the smell became stronger.

As light spread towards them she saw that she was right. A city sprawled across the long east-west curve of a wide river, which then flowed south, and widened still further, on the far side of the city. Most of the buildings were low and brick-built, with wooden or tiled roofs. Many were enclosed in their own little courtyards and compounds.

Barbara couldn’t help thinking it was an organic, growing city. It was solid at its heart, but new buildings spored out towards its edges like a moss thriving on the moist side of a rock.

Larger, more impressive buildings flowered here and there.

A rather Gothic-looking cathedral rose by the riverside, and behind it, a few streets further inland, there was what looked like a mosque. On a low hill to the left, overlooking the city, there was a dark pagoda at least five storeys high. A wall had been set up around it, patrolled by men in uniform, though none of them was manning the cannon dotted around the walls. There were more walled fortresses on the other islands that dotted the river here and there.

Off in the distance there was a shipyard. All the ships Barbara could see, either on the water or in the construction yards, had sails, though there were also some vessels with funnels belching steam. ‘Doctor,’ she said, ‘the design of those ships is too primitive for the 1960s.’

‘No, no, you’re quite right,’ the Doctor admitted. ‘The late nineteenth century, I should say.’

‘I think so too,’ Barbara agreed. ‘And that tower looks Chinese.’

She looked back at the dark pagoda, and tried to remember what China had been like when the TARDIS had brought them there before. Barbara Wright the Coal Hill schoolteacher would have had no trouble recalling a trip to the far side of the world, but Barbara the traveller in time and space had seen so many wonders that a lot of them had stopped being wonders. It saddened her for a moment.

‘I think you’re right, Barbara,’ Ian said behind her. ‘We passed two Chinamen earlier.’

‘Yes, wearing queues. I think they stopped that before the war, didn’t they? But they’d certainly still be wearing them in the nineteenth century.’ She kicked herself mentally. ‘I wish we’d asked them where we were.’

‘Well, my dear,’ the Doctor said, ‘I’m sure we can find someone to tell us both the place and the date down there, couldn’t we? And perhaps something for breakfast. I’m rather peckish, I must say.’

‘Me too,’ Ian admitted. ‘And it’s not like this city is likely to be full of Daleks or radiation. It’s only the Victorian era.’

‘It could be the Boxer rebellion,’ Barbara reminded her companions. But she doubted it. The city looked too peaceful for that, and some instinct told her that they had arrived there earlier than the time of the Boxers.

As they made their way into the city they began to pass more people and receive more glances. Nearer the waterfront the streets were crowded, and uncomfortably so. Barbara hated this as much as she hated rush hour in London - the flow of people bouncing her around like the ball in a roulette wheel. She held on to Ian’s hand, so that she wouldn’t be pulled away by the pedestrian current and then have to spend hours looking for him.

The time travellers attracted a few curious, suspicious or downright hostile glances, but most people ignored them.

Barbara suspected that the glances - the curious ones, at least - were more for their clothes than their race. There were other white people around, mostly dressed in suits or uniforms she recognised as being nineteenth century. There were priests - Jesuits, by the style of their clothes - and some French and American soldiers, though most of the soldiers were in Victorian-style British uniforms. Some of the Chinese also wore uniforms, and flattened hats like upturned baskets. She didn’t know whether they were the local army or the police. While the western soldiers were either armed with rifles or unarmed and presumably off duty, the uniformed Chinese were all bearing swords, with only the occasional pistol.

‘The 1860s, I think,’ Barbara said to Ian.

‘The uniforms look about that sort of era,’ he agreed.

‘Too early for the Boxers, but probably not too long after the Opium Wars.’

Barbara found herself smiling. Someone had once said that the past was another country, but she didn’t think they realised it was the sort of country that it would be rewarding to mount an expedition to. No doubt the idea of said country being suitable for a holiday was also not intended.

‘Your assessment of this place is quite right, I should say,’

the Doctor chipped in. He smiled and chuckled. ‘Vicki has spotted an inn, where we might find both some sustenance and confirmation of what the time and place are.’

He pointed with his walking cane to a relatively high building on a corner.

There Vicki, ever the enthusiastic explorer, was waiting for them. Barbara sometimes wondered whether she and Ian ever also seemed to the Doctor’s eyes like the excitable children of a holidaying family. She hoped not, but suspected this was a vain hope. She felt settled here, in the past again, and, after all, there were worse things than being enthusiastic or passionate about what one did with one’s time.

Guangzhou might be eighteen hundred years later than Rome, but it didn’t seem to be much more advanced.

Considering how different the Roman period was to her own time, Vicki had thought that with technology developing over the years the differences between the two cities would have been far more noticeable.

She had expected to see vehicles powered by internal com-bustion engines, but there were none around. She wasn’t quite sure whether this was because they hadn’t been invented yet, or whether there simply weren’t any in the city.

In any case she wasn’t complaining; there was plenty to see and do, by the looks of things.

Confident that the others would stay close behind her she had allowed herself to wander, admiring the banners and paper lanterns that hung above the streets, and the bolts of silk in shops hidden under bright awnings. Though there were no cars, the streets were far from empty and she found herself winding between people, obstacles and vehicles under more organic power. There were bicycles, and rickshaws, and horses, and chickens, and although there were men carrying rifles as well as swords, nothing else seemed to have advanced.

If anything, the smell was worse than it had been in Rome, as if man’s knowledge of sewerage had somehow regressed rather than advanced. It wasn’t all bad, though. There was a smell of food that was pulling at her like a black hole pulled at, well, anything and everything. True, there were other, less palatable smells as well - of animals, filth, incense, wood smoke and a lot of other things she couldn’t identify because they no longer existed in her time. None of them deflected her attention away from the scent of spices and frying oil.

It was coming from a three-storey brick and wood building on the next corner. Chinese characters hung from a sign, and were painted on lamps that hung both inside and out. The carved shutters over the windows were open and folded back, so Vicki could see almost all of the ground floor and first floor.

The place looked well populated, with trays of steaming bowls on many tables and laughing faces enjoying their contents. A couple of girls in tight, if well-worn, silks were ferrying bottles and mugs around. Somewhere at the back of the ground floor a man was chopping something. He was larger than anyone else Vicki could see in the building.

She turned, and for one gut-tightening moment thought she’d lost the others. Then she saw the Doctor’s white hair, and Ian and Barbara a few yards behind him. She ran back to the Doctor. ‘I’ve found breakfast. An inn or something. It looks well filled, and most of the customers seem clean, so it’s probably a good choice.’

The Doctor smiled, chuckling to himself. ‘We’re becoming quite the little travel expert aren’t we? Hmm? Yes, that’s very good. Very good indeed.’

He looked around for Ian and Barbara, and stepped over to them to pass on the news. Vicki turned again, and this time went through the doors of the building.

The ground floor of the inn was, barring the style of lamps and carvings, much like any other the time travellers had visited in different eras. It had a worn feel, but one that was homely and lived-in rather than tired out. The smell of beer and dark wine was overwhelmed by the smell of spices, frying vegetables and steaming meat.

It was completely irresistible.

The innkeeper was a hawk-faced man with a scarred cheek.

When he looked at the travellers one eye moved further than the other, and Vicki suspected the latter was glass. He looked surreptitiously around at his other customers with a troubled expression. Vicki couldn’t think why, though she did notice that the murmur of conversation had lessened when they came in.

The Doctor pointed to an empty table with four stools around it, two on either side. ‘I suggest we take a seat. I can order for all of us. Whichever province of China this is, I speak the local dialect, of course.’

‘Of course,’ Ian agreed.

At the sound of his voice, the rest of the inn fell silent. Vicki could feel eyes on her back, and began to wonder if she’d made such a good choice after all. She dismissed the worry; this was a civilised place, a city on Earth. Even if someone here was a criminal, they’d hardly start trouble in a public place.