Doctor Who NA27 - All Consuming Fire by Andy Lane

Author:Andy Lane [Lane, Andy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-07-13T01:07:16+00:00

Chapter 10

In which a train once again figures in the narrative and our heroes encounter a few familiar faces.

A continuation of the reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D.

Water trickled like perspiration down the ice block in the centre of the carriage. I watched the drops as they hesitantly felt their way across the shining surface to join the water sloshing in the tray beneath. They had eroded the base of the block to such an extent that the ice was balanced unsteadily upon a thin stem. I had been waiting for it to topple for three hours now, hypnotized by its slow disintegration, my head hanging heavily and rocking back and forth with the motion of the carriage.

Professor Summerfield shifted slightly on the leather sofa opposite and murmured something in her sleep. Her eyes flicked restlessly behind closed lids. Her face was flushed and glossy. Holmes, sitting in a cane chair in the corner, was also dozing. What else was there to do in this relentless heat?

Something moved past the window. I peered intently, if somewhat blearily, through the gauze and the glass at one of the many banyans that dotted the plains. Its branches swelled straight out into a root system without feeling in need of a trunk. The sight cheered me momentarily: anything that interrupted the landscape and provided a moment of interest was worth cherishing. I gazed around for some other distraction but, apart from the scarlet blaze of a mohar tree in the distance, nothing else broke the monotony of the dusty brown landscape. The distant horizon was so straight that it could have been drawn by a draughtsman, and the sky so impossibly blue that it had to have been painted.

We were travelling on the Imperial Indian Mail train through the mofussil -

the up-country area of India - and had been doing so for most of three days now. We had a first-class, four-berth compartment with bathroom attached.

The train had left Bombay just after sunrise, heading north-east towards the town of Gadawara through the states of Nagpur and Bhopal. From Gadawara we had continued onwards towards Benares, where the train would turn south-east for the final leg to Calcutta. We would not be on it.

Our goal was the small state of Jabalhabad, a few hundred miles west of Benares and a good day or so from our current position in the hinterland of purgatory.

The ice suddenly fell over with a loud splash! Professor Summerfield jerked awake and glared at me. Holmes merely raised an eyebrow.

I have refrained from describing Professor Summerfield, trusting rather to her own words to paint a self-portrait. Suffice it to say that I found her fascinating. Her refreshing bluntness, her vivacity and her cynicism were all at odds with the refined (dare I say prim?) ladies that I was used to dealing with back in London. To give an example: when Holmes and I burst into the Doctor's hotel room back in Bombay to find the Doctor missing and the room wrecked, I had expected to find her in a state of womanly distress.

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