Doctor Who_ All-Consuming Fire - Andy Lane [70]
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. In fact she was systematically reducing the remains of the wardrobe to splinters whilst cursing fit to strike a midshipman deaf. I did not recognize many of the epithets she employed, but their meaning was clear. During the subsequent discussion, in which it was decided that the Doctor had probably been kidnapped by some creature allied to Baron Maupertuis and that our best course of action was to follow the Baron and hope to find the Doctor, it was Professor Summerfield who took the lead. Holmes and I merely stood and marvelled at her single-minded determination and her profanity.
Lest I give the impression that Professor Summerfield - or Bernice, as she encouraged me to call her - was in some way unwomanly, let me add that she was also exceedingly attractive, despite her male attire. If she was, as the Doctor had led us to believe, a denizen of the future, then all I can do is echo Shakespeare's cry: 'O brave new world, that has such people in't.'
'We would appear to be slowing,' Holmes said.
'I don't believe so,' I replied. Glancing out of the window, however, I could see the track far ahead curving towards a clutter of buildings on the horizon. 'Good Lord, we do appear to be heading for a station. How did you know?'
'You may have noticed that a proportion of the steam from the furnace has been making its way into the carriage. You had not? No matter. For the past few minutes I have detected a reduction in the amount of steam, leading me to believe that we are slowing down enough that the cloud has risen out of the way before our carriage passes through it. A trifling deduction: He sniffed slightly. 'I am considering writing a monograph on the tell-tale odour of various types of coal. Our fuel derives, I believe, from the seams at Rewa.'
Bernice snorted. I could tell that she wasn't taking Holmes seriously.
'Who wants to move up to the restaurant car?' she asked. 'I could do with some food and a decent drink.'
'And a new block of ice,' I added.
Holmes checked his watch.
'According to our schedule, the next station after this one should be some three hours away. That should give us enough time for a leisurely lunch.'
I freshened myself up in the bathroom and emerged just as we were pulling into the outskirts of whatever cantonment or village this was. The train jerked as the engineer applied the brakes. The place looked deserted. Huts and hovels were empty, and the only signs of life were the pi-dogs pacing us as we approached the station. Far in the distance, half-hidden by the dust