You"re just the right people to see the simple solutions."
"Thanks, I think."
Kei-Ying still looked and sounded doubtful. "Surely any sources of water will have been sealed off by now if there"s a danger?"
"Whatever has been sealed can always be unsealed, especially with dynamite," Ian pointed out. "Besides, maybe our friend the emperor, or his muse from outer s.p.a.ce, is at least as sophisticated as the Doctor here and has overlooked the simple solution." He flexed his fists. "I get the feeling that we might well be able to turn things around."
The Doctor gazed at the group like a teacher surveying his cla.s.s before they graduated. "We will split up when we reach the hill. Major, you and Kei-Ying will take everyone through the cave Cheng used before. Try to find a way to get at the water table, and breach it. We should try to flood the tomb if we can. I will go to the main entrance and confront this despicable abbot." He held up a hand to silence any potential protestations. "Now, I will not have my mind changed."
Under cover of the gathering darkness, the group darted between huts and past piles of excavated earth until they reached a deep crater that had been dug into the side of the hill.
"I don"t like this," Major Chesterton said nervously. "It"s been too easy."
"Shush," the Doctor hissed. "Never look a gift horse in the mouth."
"Doctor," Ian said slowly. "Look up there."
Everyone looked up at the sky. The heavens were parting, spinning back from a central point above the hill top like an iris expanding. Then, through the widened eye of the storm, a blinding shaft of light stabbed down at the hill.
The sky split and the air screamed.
Logan winced at the screech. "What the h.e.l.l is that?"
"h.e.l.l is right," Fei-Hung said, stunned and slack-jawed. "The gates of h.e.l.l are opening! The hungry ghosts are coming to feed!"
"Nonsense!" the Doctor snapped. "What you"re hearing is the sound of electrons being stripped from molecules of air."
"Like plasma, you mean?" Ian asked. "Lightning?"
The Doctor spoke in a deep voice, almost as if he was enjoying being a doom-sayer. "No, Chesterton. Chestertons,"
he corrected himself. "The energies being transmitted across the conjunction are far beyond that."
"You mean this has come from some other world?"
"Not necessarily. From another part of the universe, yes, but there"s no need to a.s.sume that the beings who sent it are corporeal or that they live on a solid planet. We just don"t know."
"But you said this wouldn"t happen until after midnight!"
The Doctor paled. "I forgot to take the changeover from the Julian to Gregorian calendar into account!"
Below, Barbara looked at Qin in horror as the whole mausoleum shook. She had a sudden premonition that she would be buried alive in here and never get out.
Qin was having a different reaction. He was laughing.
Around him, the friezes brightened into life. The colours were deep and vibrant, painted textures almost tangible. Barbara could all but hear the splashing of the painted rivers, the sounds of the beasts in the undergrowth and the incessant crunching of marching feet in the processions depicted on the walls.
Soft lightning washed across the images, the tendrils of energy spiralling around each other in helixes of fire. Ghostly images of fallen walls filled in the gaps as if they were Kirlian photographs, then solidified as the walls renewed themselves.
"At last," Qin shouted to the ceiling, "I am truly immortal!"
4.
The Doctor walked calmly towards the main entrance that had been excavated from the side of the hill. There was a ramp leading down to the main doors, and a tiger was embla-zoned on one door and a five-clawed imperial dragon on the other.
The Doctor rapped sharply on the dragon"s nose with his cane. The door opened slowly to reveal a handful of guards and the mangled, half-melted face of General Gao. His eye-sockets glowed.
"Traveller," Gao said. "You should not have interfered."
"Traveller?"
"Do you not travel the stars, and journey through future and past?"
The Doctor was instantly defensive and suspicious. "How could you possibly have known that?"
"You are known to us," said Gao"s sonorous voice.
"Yes, so I gathered from my young friend Vicki."
"Why did you come to us?"
"I wanted to talk to you, and tell you that you can never win."
"Come with Gao, Doctor, come and see who wins."
The cave was just as Cheng had described it. The group had little difficulty finding it, and although there were people nearby they were too busy running around like headless chickens, panicking at the column of energy stabbing down from the heavens, to bother about a few extra faces. Even those in British army uniforms.
The Wongs, being most familiar with Cheng"s story, led them down the narrow stairway at the back of the cave, which bored down through the living rock.
Ian snorted. "If it wasn"t a hundred years too early, I"d say this Qin had been reading too much Ian Fleming."
"What do you mean?" Vicki asked.
Well, I mean, he even has the old underground base just like in the James Bond books."
"Weren"t you listening to the Doctor? This isn"t some sort of underground base."
"But this complex -"
"It"s a mausoleum, Ian. A tomb. One of the old places the Doctor was talking about. And it"s quite reasonable to expect burials to be under the ground, isn"t it?"
"Yes, I suppose it is."
By this time they had emerged into a huge cavern at the bottom of the stairs. Pillars the thickness of mighty oaks soared into the darkness above.
"Look!" Kei-Ying pointed up at the ceiling. The jewels that represented the stars were glowing and tiny serpents of light were slithering between them. "What is that?"
"Look at the pattern," Ian said. "It"s forming some kind of helix. This energy is being transmitted from somewhere else to here for distribution."
"This is beyond me."
"Well, you cut irrigation ditches to bring water to fields in a dry spell, don"t you? From a ca.n.a.l or a river?"
"Yes."
"But what if the ca.n.a.l or river dries up? Then no water gets to the irrigation ditches. Or what if the ca.n.a.l isn"t there yet?
You"d have to build one, wouldn"t you?"
"But then, what does this energy irrigate?"
"Something that needs an astronomical amount of power,"
Ian told him. "I mean, literally astronomical."
In the distance, like a lighthouse on the far side of a forest, Ian could see the flicker of a lamp. The soldiers fanned out between the mineral-encrusted stone trees, as did the Wongs.
Ian realised there was wisdom in their actions, and he too kept close to the columns just in case anyone - or anything - nasty was waiting for them on the other side of the indoor forest.
Their progress was painstakingly slow, and Ian tried to resist the urge to rush forward. He could already feel his fingernails digging into his palms with frustration, though he hadn"t been conscious of even making a fist.
Fei-Hung appeared at his side. "Don"t worry, Ian. Qin must have some plan for Barbara."
"That"s supposed to make me feel better?"
"Qin thinks he"s a fighter. If he simply wanted to kill Barbara he would have either done it immediately, or when you had shot the major and Qin had no more use for her."
"I suppose you"re right."
"It"s what I would have done."
Ian shivered. He shivered again when he looked towards the source of the light. A stone doorway had been broken down, making a hole through the wall. The faint smell of ozone drifted through it, carried on grey air that felt and tasted like the breath of the dead.
Two statues were near the door. They were life-sized figures, and not of small men. Any colour they had been decorated with was long gone, but their faces and the detail of their armour were as realistic as they must have been whenever the statues were made. Ian tried to remember how long ago that must have been. Two thousand years, if they were contemporaries of the First Emperor. They looked as if they had been pulled from a high-tech mould yesterday. Not just one mould, but two separate ones, he decided, as their faces were individual and different.
Ian approached cautiously, hoping not to make a sound that might alert any living men in the corridor beyond the door. He held up a torch to examine the nearest statue more closely. It wasn"t made of stone, but of some kind of pottery clay. Terracotta, he decided. He could even see flecks of ancient paint that hadn"t quite finished disintegrating into the mists of time and memory.
As the flames danced around his torch, shadows pa.s.sed across the faces of the warriors. Their gaze seemed to move with every flicker, their cheeks twitching, their lips curling.
Ian told himself to stop being so d.a.m.ned jumpy, that the figures were only statues, their apparent life only the product of shifting light and his overactive imagination. He could almost have laughed; this same imagination had got him reading Wells and Verne. From there it had encouraged him to find out about other things, and so led him to teach science. Now it was playing tricks on him. If only he could give it detention for its cheek.
He looked quickly into the corridor, verifying that it was empty, then beckoned to the others. Logan and Major Chesterton rushed forward, surprisingly quietly, their revolvers in their hands. The others followed and Ian brought up the rear. They paused at the other end of the corridor, which split off into a T-junction.
Ian thought he heard a sound behind him and turned. He knew he had been the last one through the tunnel. Those statues and that d.a.m.ned imagination again. He turned away.
A heavy footstep crunched behind him and he froze. "No, it couldn"t be..." He looked back over his shoulder.
A sword in a dusty terracotta hand was raised over his head. Ian ducked aside just in time as it slashed down. The major and Logan immediately opened fire with their revolvers, blasting little craters into the statue"s chest. It continued to move forward, and the second statue was following it into the tunnel.
Ian scrambled back and the whole party split at the junction. Logan, Fei-Hung and a few soldiers went to the left, and Ian and the others to the right.
Right was wrong. After a few feet the corridor opened into a long, narrow hall, and the hall was filled with warrior statues. Tendrils of energy were twisting around its walls, and the room was filled with the deafening sound of groaning and the grinding of stone and dust. All around, the sound accompanied movement. Baked clay arms hefted weapons.
Dust fell from sculpted faces as they formed their first new expressions in over two millennia.
"It"s the Eight Thousand!" Kei-Ying exclaimed.
Ian shook his head. "I don"t think so. If the Doctor"s right, these things must be templates, like the copies of Qin and his generals" personae that took over those unfortunate monks."
"Templates?" Vicki echoed. "You mean they"re like old-style computer disks? The minds of the Eight Thousand were the formatted media?"
"Yes, media for this other force to overwrite and replace.
Except that this time it"s got ready-made bodies, it doesn"t have to steal some."
Ian led his companions in a mad dash through a new opening in a corner. "It"s a ready-made army."
"Ready-made for what?" the major demanded.