Doctor Who_ All-Consuming Fire - Andy Lane [122]
'California,' said Ace quietly. 'Nineteen-oh-six. The great San Francisco earthquake.'
'Perfect!' the Doctor shouted. 'We missed that one. What made you think of that?'
'Personal interest,' she replied. 'It was an old school History project.'
History?, I thought, then let it slip away.
The Doctor delved in his pockets and pulled out a large, leather-bound book.
'My five-hundred-year diary,' he said, catching my inquiring glance. 'All sorts of information that's completely pointless unless you are trying to avert an alien invasion.'
He flicked through the pages.
'Now let me see . . . We'll need a location which is known to have been completely wiped out. We can't risk them escaping. That rules out quite a bit of the town...'
His scowl deepened as his fingers riffled through page after page.
'Town Hall . . . no. Agnews State Insane Asylum . . . no. Palace Hotel...'
A smile broke across his face.
'Yes! Razed to the ground.'
His face fell again.
'But what's the address?'
'Market Street,' I said. To Bernice's inquiring glance, I added, 'I lived in San Francisco for nearly a year.'
'What are the galactic co-ordinates for Market Street?' the Doctor asked.
'Never mind. I'll estimate.'
Wiping across Ace's carapace with his sleeve, he began to scribble down staves and sets of crotchets and quavers.
'No time to lose,' he urged. 'Ace, get your armour off!'
Under his direction, and all clustered around Ace's armour, we began to sing. Ace was shivering in an immodest singlet, and so I gave her my jacket to wear. I thought that she might throw it back in my face, but in fact she accepted it gratefully. The song was a collection of words similar to the chant that the fakirs were singing, but the notes spanned theirs, weaving around and between their weird harmonies, forming a straightjacket for their chant and forcing it in a different direction. The Doctor was forever darting in and scribbling an additional sharp or a flat, or altering the length of a note, until we got it right.
We knew that it was working when the deep, underlying beat of the fakirs'
chant began to alter into a double beat, and their descant picked up some of our notes. It was working. We were changing their song, but were we changing it enough?
The first indication we had that something was happening was when light -
yellow gaslight, not the diseased red glow that illuminated Ry'leh - shone across us. We looked up, still singing, to see a vast tear in the fabric of reality through which a stretch of carpet and a marble wall could be seen.
Silhouetted against it, I could see the winged figures of rakshassi and Sherringford Holmes's still-robed form. He seemed agitated. It must have been obvious to him that this was not India but, unwilling to stop now and disappoint his god, he went onward, leading Azathoth's followers in. Most of the rakshassi went first, in case of trouble, then Azathoth's personal honour guard pulled its temple through the rent, straining to move the metal runners across the rock. The fakirs followed, still chanting. I could smell smoke and, oddly, freshly made coffee.
The chant was swelling towards some final crescendo now, and I watched, wide-eyed, not wishing to miss a moment of Azathoth's downfall.
Bernice tugged at my sleeve. I tried to shrug her off. Insistently, she tugged again. I tore my gaze away from the rent and glanced at her. She was looking back, over the terrain of Ry'leh.
I followed her gaze, and drew a sudden breath as I glimpsed a number of metallic shapes trailing fire as they arrowed through the air towards us.
A deep rumble shook the ground. The Doctor turned. His eyes widened in shock as he saw the craft. He chalked a quick message on Ace's back.
Shlangii mercenaries! it read.
A blue-green line of fire