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Eventually, after I was satisfied that our luggage was all present and correct, I gave the driver the name of my hotel and made him repeat it.

Then we set off. Watson, after fussing about trying to order the men around and failing, had bagged the seat beside me.

'You speak Hindi?' he asked, miffed, as I settled into the seat and we moved off.

'Hindustani, Punjabi, Urdu, Bengali, Tamil, Telegu, Sontaran,' I said. 'I speak them all. It's a gift.'

'Oh.'

He turned to gaze out at the sun-baked streets. I refrained from telling him that I hadn't had to learn a word: somehow my association with the Doctor had enabled me to understand any language I came across. If only he could bottle it and sell it.

I met the three of them in the hotel bar after they had unpacked. I had a couple of minutes alone amid the bamboo furniture and brass fittings before they turned up. A large sheet of woven bamboo strips swung back and forth from a hinge on the ceiling, twitched by a rope which passed through a hole in the wall to where some hapless punkah-wallah sat outside. There was a piano in one corner, its legs sitting in saucers of water to stop white ants from climbing up and eating their way through the instrument. A couple of florid ex-Army types with huge walrus moustaches were sitting over by it, balancing their G&Ts on the lid, to the obvious displeasure of the splendidly turbaned and uniformed khitmagar behind the bar. They nodded at me in a companionable way. If only they knew, I thought.

The Doctor arrived first. I suspect that he didn't even go inside his room. I'd never seen him sleep, or carry a spare set of clothes, or brush his teeth, or do any of those things that we all take for granted. I also suspect that when the rest of humanity go to bed the Doctor is either out wandering the streets or standing in a corner of his room until sunrise.

'So, what do you think of India, then?' he asked, settling himself cross-legged into a cane chair.

'I've been all over the universe with you, Doctor, and Earth in the nineteenth century is the most alien place I've ever seen.'

He smiled.

'I've always had a soft spot for it,' he confided. 'There's such a sense of infinite possibility. You feel that almost anything could evolve from this morass of science and superstition. It showcases humanity at its best, and at its worst. What about India? What have you found out?'

'I thought from the histories that it was all fairly simple. The Mughal dynasty ruled the continent for some three centuries until 1756, when their last emperor was dethroned by the British. After that, the British East India Company was allowed to run the country on behalf of the British Government for the lucrative jute, indigo and spice trade. Just like IMC and Lucifer, I guess. There was a native revolt in 1857. You know why?'

He nodded, but I continued anyway. 'It was so stupid: the sepoy troops believed that a new type of cartridge case was coated with either beef fat or pork fat. Of course, the Hindus couldn't touch pork and the Muslims couldn't touch beef. So they revolted -literally. After the mutiny the British Army was sent in to oversee the place, the British East India Company was abolished and the Indian Civil Service was set up. Lots of young British lads were sent out to keep the place running for the next century, and then India achieved dominion status in 1947.'

He nodded.

'You seem to have grasped the basics.'

'But that's too simplistic!' I protested. 'This place is a jigsaw. At the moment there are fourteen British-run provinces like Baluchistan, Sind, Madras, Bombay and Bengal, each with its own distinct character and geography, divided into a total of two hundred and fifty-six districts. Alongside that, there are five hundred and sixty-two native states like Rajputana, Mysore and Hyderabad, lorded over by an assortment of Nizams, Walis, Jams, Rajahs, Maharajahs, Ackonds, Ranas, Raos and Mehtars. Across both the