Doctor Who_ The Eleventh Tiger Part 35

'This man Qin, or whatever he's calling himself, isn't just relying on those two generals and help from the h.e.l.ls. No, he has a large number of living troops and we'll have to deal with them.'

'Won't they be at Chang'an?' Ian asked.

Almost everyone at the table shook their heads as one. The major answered. 'What's the point in taking towns and villages if all his troops are already in one place? He must have left them scattered along the line from Chang'an to here.'

'But the town we found was abandoned.'

'Because it will have been taken by his own personal staff.

They go where he goes. They'll be in Chang'an with him, but most of the Black Flag members and whatever other thugs he's persuaded - no offence to our guests - will be scattered around.'

'If we can stop him exploiting the conjunction,' the Doctor said, 'nothing will happen in those towns, and Qin's followers will simply drift away.'

'And if we can't, a civil war,' Kei-Ying said gloomily.

'I'm afraid so.'

'Then we must be prepared for both eventualities,'

Chesterton said. 'We need forces to be ready at those places where we know there are Qin loyalists, and another group to go after Qin himself.'

'The men who follow him were formerly Black Flag members,' Kei-Ying said. 'I find it a vile idea to face Black Flag against Black Flag, but it is an internal Chinese matter and an internal Black Flag matter.' He looked around the table, a faint smile playing across his features. 'I suggest that the Tigers take militia troops on manoeuvres near the places where Qin has forces.'

'Agreed,' the Doctor said. 'In fact, the very suggestion I myself was about to make. Meanwhile, I shall go to find a way to prevent Qin's plans from succeeding, and to rescue my friend Barbara.'

'Me too,' Ian said.

'And me,' Vicki piped up.

Fei-Hung looked to his father, who nodded. 'We will go with you, Doctor.'

'So will I,' Major Chesterton said finally. 'Logan, I'll want a platoon of volunteers.'

3.

Vicki, Ian and the Doctor remained in the officers' mess when the others dispersed.

'Doctor,' Ian asked, 'how exactly are we supposed to get to Chang'an? It's hundreds of miles away '- and we must be there tonight, yes.' The Doctor's face was troubled, his tone tired.

Vicki was about to suggest that they fly, but held her tongue. She wasn't sure whether powered flight had been invented yet, and had already embarra.s.sed herself enough by getting things wrong.

She caught Ian's eyes, and mimed an aeroplane movement with her hand, behind the Doctor's back. Ian smiled and shook his head, then mouthed '1903'.

'We can't exactly use the TARDIS,' Ian said aloud.

'No. I rather think we must use our enemy's own energies against it, just as I did with that ruffian Jiang.'

'But what energy?'

'Some kind of plasma-based helix. I suspect, you know, that the supernatural occurrences people have reported are signs of leakage or corruption from the energy that has already been sent to control Qin and his Generals.'

'Perhaps we can find a way to hijack it?' Vicki suggested.

'Sort of, hack into it or pirate it.'

Ian snapped his fingers. 'What about the monk? The one who was Zhao? Surely he had the same ability as the other one?'

'Yes, yes, of course, but he hasn't now, has he?'

'No, but could he have, if you accessed those - what did you call them - secondary memories?'

The Doctor brightened immediately. 'I really have no idea,'

he admitted, 'but it must be worth trying!'

Outside the hill where Barbara and Qin had arrived earlier, exhausted civilians were preparing ramps up out of the earth, and carrying stacks of new swords and rifles to racks that filled long wooden cabins.

Gao, his eyeless sockets glowing, walked among the workers, his head swinging from side to side. The workers had done well, producing new weapons for the army that would soon be reborn.

A few minutes after Gao had pa.s.sed, a ring of electricity pulled back from a point a few feet above the ground. Major Chesterton came through first, quickly followed by Logan, Ian, the Wongs, the Doctor, Vicki, and a platoon of armed men led by Anderson.

The fiery gateway closed behind them.

As soon as he saw the hill, the Doctor sucked air in through his teeth. 'That will be the receiving point for the energy. We must get inside. The main entrance seems to have been excavated, but it will be guarded.'

'We could use Cheng's cave,' Kei-Ying suggested. 'It must be in this hill, if this is where it all started.'

'That will be for you to do,' the Doctor said. 'I rather think it's time I met this Qin s.h.i.+ Huangdi.'

'You can't be serious,' Ian protested. 'He'll kill you, or at least take you prisoner.'

'Yes, Chesterfield, he might. But sometimes we must face up to such dangers, mustn't we? Besides which I have a feeling that if he has kept Barbara alive to make her an offer, as Vicki told us, he might make me the same one.'

'He tried to have Jiang kill you.'

'Then I imagine it means these great celestial intelligences are not so infallible, hmm? You see there's always a bright side.' The cheerful smile froze on his face. 'Vicki, Chesterton, I've been such a foolish old goat!'

'No,' Vicki protested, 'that's impossible, and you know it.'

'I've been thinking - we all have - that this Qin of yours must have a military reason for coming south.'

'Well, he is a warlord, and he must be a successful one if he really was the emperor.'

'A military man would be looking for resources,' the Doctor explained, 'seeking to get things for himself and deny them to the enemy. He would be looking for targets he could take and hold.'

'So?' Vicki asked.

'So Qin hasn't done that.'

'But he's taken dozens of places. Just look at the map.'

'That's just what I have done, child. Looked, really looked, at the map. And the places he has been taking are all old places. Places with ancient temples and geological faults.

Places where energy could be distributed or stored in the rock, and in the buildings.'

'Stone tapes?' Vicki thought she could see where the Doctor's mind was going. 'Stone tapes, and energy being transmitted here via the conjunction...'

'Exactly. He hasn't been trying to take over China, he has been -'

'Formatting a disk!'

'Yes!'

'But he seemed pretty certain of what he wanted to do - reclaim the empire he used to have.'

'I believe you, child,' the Doctor said, patting her hair in a kindly way. 'And I think my mind is open on the matter of whether he believes it too. Or if he even knows why he is really doing what he's doing.'

'How could he not know?'

'Didn't you say that he harped on about gaps in his memory, and that he wasn't all there, if you'll pardon the expression?'

'Yes,' Vicki's hand darted to her mouth as she suddenly felt sick at the thought that had crossed her mind. 'You mean there's something else in those gaps?'

'Nature abhors a vacuum, young lady. Yes, I think perhaps there is.'

Vicki tried to imagine what it must be like, sharing a brain with an alien something that was there in place of part of your memories - in place of part of what made you you. Then she wished she hadn't.

'And that's what was in charge when that light was s.h.i.+ning out of his eyes,' she said.

The Doctor nodded solemnly. 'In Qin, and in his generals.'

Ian had been thinking about this business of energy distribution as the time travellers and their companions made their way around the workings on the brooding hill.

'Doctor, you say they're trying to distribute energy around China, like a giant circuit.'

'In a way, yes, but to distribute such energies,' the Doctor said, 'the circuitry must be exactly right.'

'Can't we break the circuit somehow? Make it incapable of carrying this power?'

'We must try! The engineering of this structure is very precise - it would have to be, to do what it's doing. Perhaps if we could introduce some kind of imbalance...?'

'Doctor, you said that the materials of the place itself carry a charge - piezoelectricity. Could we break that? Introduce a new fault line, maybe?'

'With explosives? Yes, my boy, we could. We need only introduce a few cracks -'

'Can't be done,' Major Chesterton said. 'We don't have enough dynamite for that.'

'Just a minute,' Ian interrupted. 'We know from what Fei-Hung told us about the monk that this power is electrical in some way.'

'Yes, yes, don't waste our time stating the obvious.'

'I was just thinking, Doctor, that if it's electrical perhaps we can short it out to earth. There must be water around here somewhere.'

'Water?' The Doctor's face took on a calculating expression that would have done justice to Machiavelli or Sun Tzu.

Kei-Ying shook his head. 'Cheng said the whole complex is bone dry, Ian. There's not the slightest trace of dampness.'

'What's more,' the Doctor added, 'this place was built for the transposition of this energy. Whoever designed it was not a fool. They will have ensured that it's protected against anything that could short-circuit it.'

Ian nodded placatingly. 'I understand that, and I suppose it will be pretty well protected if the builders did their job right.

The fact of there having been builders also guarantees that there must have been accessible water somewhere.'

'How so?'

Ian almost laughed. Despite all that threatened them, he found he could enjoy the sensation of seeing something the Doctor didn't. 'Well, they were men, weren't they? Ordinary human beings. Even if they were enslaved they would still have to have been fed and watered, wouldn't they? To say nothing of the complex itself needing a local water supply. So there must be wells in the vicinity.'

The Doctor looked at him, a smile spreading across his face. 'You're absolutely right, young man. There must have been.' He tapped Ian on the chest. 'You know, I think this must be why I enjoy the company of you young fellows.