The Eleventh Tiger (9 page)

‘It will, my Lord,’ Cheng squeaked.

‘Oh, I know it will.’ The abbot relaxed, putting Lei-Fang’s mewling out of his mind and enjoying the respect that radiated towards him from Cheng and Jiang. ‘I know.’

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There was a small shrine at the back of the main hall at Po Chi Lam, and there Fei-Hung was burning what looked to Barbara like bank notes. Offerings of food were laid out as well, but these only reminded her of the table at which Ian had been attacked. The Doctor and Kei-Ying were waiting for her in the hall with Vicki, looks of concern on their faces.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

Did they know something she didn’t? She wasn’t a medical person, and knew she wouldn’t be able to recognise a skull fracture, or any number of other potentially fatal results of a beating.

‘Chesterton is very sick,’ Kei-Ying told her. ‘Internal bleeding, and perhaps infection of the blood.’

Barbara couldn’t believe her ears. She refused to believe it.

‘I am treating him as best I can,’ Kei-Ying said, ‘but the broken bones will not heal quickly.’

‘No,’ the Doctor murmured, ‘I don’t suppose they will without rather more advanced medical techniques than you have here. Oh, I don’t mean to belittle your talent, Master Wong, but the techniques I’m thinking of are far in advance of either yours, or western medicine in this century.’

‘This century?’ Kei-Ying looked as if he wanted to back away, and Barbara couldn’t help but sympathise.

‘Barbara,’ the Doctor said, ‘do you think you could find your way back to the Ship?’

‘I think so... why?’ A thought occurred to her and made her bristle. ‘If you think you can get me out of the way while Ian-’

‘There are no antibiotic drugs in this century,’ the Doctor reminded her pointedly, ‘but there are some medicines in the TARDIS, of both your century and beyond.’ His voice softened. ‘With them, I am sure that Chesterton will recover fully, I promise you.’

‘I see.’ Could it be true? It was a silly question - she knew for a fact that the TARDIS was filled to the gunwales with all manner of modern and futuristic gubbins - but fear about Ian’s condition bred doubts in even her most solid bastions of certainty.

‘TARDIS?’ Kei-Ying echoed.

‘Our... conveyance,’ the Doctor said. ‘It would appear as a large, blue wooden box with a lamp on top of it.’

‘With writing in white above the door, and on one panel of the door? With small glass windows?’

‘Yes.’ The Doctor looked as surprised as Barbara felt. ‘Have you seen it?’

‘My son said he saw it appear out of thin air. I examined it this morning and thought it might belong to the English at Xamian. Do you mean it is yours?’

‘Yes, indeed!’

The Doctor turned back to Barbara. ‘There is a first-aid cabinet in the wall beside the food machine,’ he said. ‘In it are some antibiotic drugs and a machine that looks rather like a solid, wide paintbrush with lights and buttons. This is a kind of bone-regenerator. It will knit broken bones together in a matter of minutes.’

‘And we can use these on Ian?’ Relief washed over her, even though the items were still back in the Ship. Just knowing about them was more reassuring than all Kei-Ying’s efforts, though Barbara would never be so insensitive as to say so aloud.

‘Yes, my dear, we can. But first I shall need someone to go and fetch them. I would rather not be away from Chesterton in his present condition.’

‘I’ll go, of course.’

‘I thought you would.’ The Doctor handed her the TARDIS

key.

The touch of it felt strange, and Barbara wasn’t sure whether this was because it was the key to something alien, or because she was starting to feel dizzy and sick. If Ian hadn’t needed help, she would have just lain down somewhere and cried herself to sleep. But then, if Ian hadn’t needed help she wouldn’t have been feeling this way in the first place. The key looked like a perfectly ordinary Yale one on the end of a black ribbon.

The Doctor’s hand closed over Barbara’s with surprising firmness and reassurance. ‘I’m worried about Ian too,’ he said softly. ‘And about you as well. You look as if you could just topple over and pass out at any moment, and that’s not good, now, is it?’

‘That sounds very much like how I feel,’ Barbara admitted.

‘There’s really nothing to worry about, you know.’ The Doctor smiled kindly and caught her eye. ‘When you bring me that first-aid kit from the TARDIS Ian will be as right as rain, so you can start feeling rather more like your old self, eh?’

Barbara nodded. Unexpectedly, she did feel better. Her head seemed to be clearer and the nausea in her stomach had gone.

Kei-Ying had remained calm and impassive throughout the conversation, but now he nodded to himself. ‘My son can guide you. He will also protect you if necessary.’

‘Thank you, Master Wong,’ the Doctor said. ‘I’m sure it won’t be necessary, but it is most appreciated.’

Vicki looked towards the little shrine. ‘Can I go too?’

The Doctor looked at her quizzically for a moment, then said, ‘Of course, child. Of course. Now let’s get you ready, hmm?’

‘I’ll speak to Fei-Hung,’ Kei-Ying told them, and went over to the shrine.

‘I’ll collect some fruit and water for the journey,’ Vicki said.

She too left, and the Doctor and Barbara were alone.

‘I’m surprised, Doctor, that you’re allowing Vicki to go. It’s nearly dark, for one thing.’

The Doctor brushed Barbara’s comment away. ‘It’s only natural that she should want to go. The child is a born explorer, in case you hadn’t noticed. She’ll be keen to see new times and new places.’

His features softened and, if Barbara wasn’t mistaken, became almost admiring.

‘You see something of yourself in that?’ she asked.

‘What? Oh, I -’ The Doctor stopped pretending to be surprised. ‘Yes, yes, in many ways I do. And something of Susan too,’ he added sadly.

Barbara understood what he meant. ‘It’s natural that you’d miss your granddaughter. Anyone would miss a child or grandchild when they leave home at last.’

It was a judicious turn of phrase, and the Doctor clearly knew this as well as Barbara did. Susan hadn’t exactly left home; rather her home, the TARDIS, had left her.

‘Perhaps I shouldn’t indulge her so... Do you want Vicki to stay here?’

Barbara thought for a moment, and almost said ‘Yes’. In the end she shook her head. ‘I’m sure she’ll be fine.’

‘Tonight?’ Fei-Hung said. He looked slightly pained, and Kei-Ying knew why. But Miss Law...’

‘If the girl loves you, she’ll understand.’

‘It’s not that,’ the young man protested. ‘It’s right in the middle of
yuelaan jit!
Who wants to travel, especially after dark? It’s bad luck -’

‘And it will be worse luck for this Chesterton if you do not.’

‘They arrived here overnight, travelling during
yuelaan jit.

Doesn’t that prove my point?’

Kei-Ying let out a long sigh. ‘Well, if you’re afraid, I cannot force you to go...’

‘I’m not afraid!’

‘No?’ Kei-Ying kept his face impassive. He knew his son wasn’t afraid. At least, no more afraid than any sensible person would be.

Fei-Hung knew it too. ‘This kind of manipulation is cheap and beneath you, Father. I am not so much of a hothead to be tricked with a simple challenge.’

Kei-Ying smiled. ‘Then be afraid, or not, as you will. But go with the women, because that is what a good man and a good healer would do. If you are who you are, it doesn’t matter whether you fear or not.’

Fei-Hung looked through to Barbara in the main hall and nodded. ‘I still think it’s a foolish thing to do.’

‘I know. And it may well be. But it is also the right thing to do, and that’s what is important.’

The sun was already sinking when Vicki followed Fei-Hung and Barbara out through the gates of Po Chi Lam, and into what she now knew to be the city of Guangzhou in the year 1865. She paused in the gateway and looked back at the surgery and school. The compound didn’t look like it had looked in the few holographic films she had seen, yet it definitely had the same air as the sets in those movies.

She couldn’t quite put her finger on what was different, or what was the same, but in her heart and her bones she felt there was something. For the first time in her life, Vicki had a feeling she could only describe as
roman vu,
a sense of being somewhere unreal. For a moment she didn’t know whether she was in the nineteenth century or a fiction.

She ran to catch up with the others, and accompanied them on to the still-busy lamplit streets. Paper lanterns cast a dark light through the streets, and it was like viewing the world through a bruised eye.

‘Don’t they have streetlights yet?’ she asked Barbara.

Barbara, like Ian, might be from an era that was nearly as primitive as the one they were in now, but she was almost as knowledgeable as the Doctor about still earlier times.

‘There are oil lamps, of course. And some cities in the world will have gas lighting now.’

‘You’d think they’d make things brighter than these lamps do.’

‘I think they normally do. I’ve seen this kind of lamp before, in films and on television. I think it’s to do with a particular festival, though I’m not sure which one.’

‘It is
yuelaan jit’,
Fei-Hung said. ‘The Festival of Hungry Ghosts.’

Vicki had heard of this, but had no idea what it meant or when it happened. ‘It doesn’t sound terribly cheerful. Is it something like Hallowe’en?’

‘I think so,’ Barbara answered.

She seemed to want to say more, but fell silent. Vicki supposed she wanted to get into a long lecture to take her mind off Ian’s condition, and wished she could help.

‘I don’t know,’ Fei-Hung admitted. ‘What is Hallowe’en?’

Then, to Vicki’s surprise, he winked at her.

‘Hallowe’en is the old Celtic new year,’ Barbara began. ‘And also when the spirits of the dead were thought to return for one night, to join in the celebratory feast - if they could.’

‘Then it is probably similar, except that the spirits that emerge from the hells during
yuelaan jit
are more likely to be vengeful, and people try to show respect so that the spirits won’t haunt them. So they offer food and money.’

‘Is that what you were doing earlier?’ Vicki asked. ‘Burning money, I mean.’

‘Not real money. Hell money.’

‘Hell money?’

‘Your country and mine have different moneys, different currencies?’

‘Yes.’

‘So do the lands of the living and those of the dead.’

By now Fei-Hung had led them northwards through the city, passing parks and workshops, mansions, pagodas and slums. The difference in sights was impressive enough, but each area had sounds and smells of its own as if the space around the different types of neighbourhood had different properties.

Finally they skirted the edge of a park, making for what Fei-Hung called the Baiyun road. Across the park Vicki could see a tall pagoda, brightly lit by oil and gas lamps quite unlike the paper lanterns that had turned the air in the streets to blood. Cannon pointed out from the walls around its grounds, and she could see patrolling men in uniform.

‘What’s that?’ she asked.

Barbara and Fei-Hung stopped to look. ‘Those look like British uniforms,’ Barbara said slowly.

‘They are,’ Fei-Hung confirmed, tight-lipped. Their main garrison is on Xamian Island back in the river, but they also use this as a watchtower.’

‘It doesn’t look like a watchtower.’

‘It was a temple five hundred years ago. The British and French took it over a few years ago.’

‘During the Opium Wars?’ Barbara suggested.

‘Yes.’ Fei-Hung let out a snort, and turned back on to the path to the Baiyun road. ‘Come on. The sooner we reach this box of yours, the sooner your friend will be healed.’

Vicki could have sworn she heard an unspoken ‘gone’

instead of ‘healed’ in Fei-Hung’s voice. It was a moment of harshness that she hadn’t expected from him.

She remained for a moment longer. The park was at the top of a hill and the city was spread out below, all the way to the Pearl River which curved around to the right, parallel to their path. There were lights on the river as well as on the streets, drifting gently along in the current. Some were on boats like the large junk she could make out silhouetted against the sunset far to the west, but others were clearly floating on the water under the warm sky.

Then there was a strange flickering in her eyes. At first Vicki thought it was something actually inside one of her eyes - a floating cell, perhaps - but she decided otherwise. It was a feint ripple of light, centred on the junk in the west. It spread out, looking like sunlight gently kissing the tops of waves, and continued across the land. It crept across buildings and lightly touched the sky. Then it was gone, as if it had never been.

From the deck of the junk Cheng watched the ferryman bring his boat closer. As far as he was concerned, the man couldn’t move the thing fest enough. Moment by moment he was finding it harder to keep control of his bowels. His gut felt as if it were cartwheeling around the Beijing Opera stage. He could hardly breathe, and was forcing his lungs to obey him, when Jiang joined him. Cheng thought his heart was going to burst and kill him on the spot.