Doctor Who_ Foreign Devils - Andrew Cartmel [6]
whiteness.
'Mist?' asked Zoe.
'Maybe,' said the Doctor, and punched a button. The door began to buzz open slowly. 'Shall we step out and see?'
Outside the air was cool and heavy with a smell that pinched the throat. 'It's not mist,' said Jamie sniffing. 'It's smoke. Gunpowder.' Wraiths of smoke floated around them, curling around their legs like a friendly, welcoming cat. The rope rattled against the flagpole with a steady, eerie sound. Zoe looked back at the TARDIS, savouring the Magritte-like incongruity of the English police box in this Chinese garden. 'What do we do now?'
The Doctor was already crunching across the gravel to the cloistered walkway of the low stone building. 'Go in and say hello.'
But before he reached the walkway, a man appeared on it, stepping out the shadowed interior of the building. 'Who the devil are you lot?' he demanded, brandishing a rifle.
He was a tall man with long auburn hair that continued down the sides of his face in an unbroken flow to transform itself into a long drooping moustache. He was wearing breeches and a white shirt that recently seen some hard wear; it was virtually slashed to ribbons. The man's tobacco-brown eyes shone with intelligence and anger. Through the slashes in his shirt Zoe caught glimpses of what looked like a tattoo. The man raised his rifle to point at them.
'We're visitors.' said the Doctor in a friendly, explanatory fashion. The rifle didn't seem to bother him.
The man squinted at him. The Doctor had a knack for disarming people; sometimes quite literally. Now this man's rifle faltered. He lowered muzzle until it no longer pointed directly at them. 'Well you'd better come inside,' he said. He glanced uneasily around the smoke-wreathed garden. The tang of gunpowder still burned the of Zoe's throat. His gaze settled on her.
'No one's safe with those malevolent yellow fiends on the war path.' He stood aside to let them enter the house, through the tall door that stood open beside him.
Zoe wondered what the man had made of the TARDIS. But as she glanced back she realised it was completely obscured by a billowing cloud of smoke. Then, for the first time, she noticed something else. There was an odd structure at the foot of the garden. Wider than the TARDIS and somewhat taller. She caught a glimpse of what looked like a stone gateway, leading nowhere . . .
Then it was lost from sight and she turned and followed the Doctor and Jamie into the cool dim interior of the building. They entered a long, opulently decorated room. It smelled of dust and sandalwood. Between shuttered windows, the walls were hung with polychromatic rugs and tapestries. The floor was covered with elaborate tasselled carpets but the only actual furniture consisted of a few sofas interspersed with handsome oblong chests made of polished wood. Decorated silk cloths were placed on some of the chests, making them look like elegant tables.
As they entered the room in single file, their host studied them carefully, perhaps struck by the incongruity of their clothing. The Doctor's soup stained jacket and baggy checked trousers were perhaps only anachronistic by a few decades and Jamie's kilt and rough woven sweater might have passed muster in this era, but Zoe was wearing her favourite silver lamé catsuit and it obviously startled the man, revealing as it did the contours of her body in uncensored detail. Indeed, it seemed he had trouble taking his eyes off her. Finally he looked away and went to the opposite wall, where tall windows were shuttered against the daylight. He opened one shutter a few inches and peered out the small opening. The pearly light of day came through, gleaming on his eyes. 'Quiet out there now,' he declared. 'But I don't trust those little savages for a minute.' He turned back to the room.
The Doctor smiled at him. 'I am the Doctor,' he said. 'And this is Zoe and Jamie.'
The man studied the trio, his eyes lingering on Zoe again for a
moment. 'My name is Roderick Upcott. Normally I'd interrogate