The Shadow Of Weng-Chiang Part 17

Stoves fed by gas canisters glowed blue under extra large woks which bubbled and steamed with some boiling slime inside. Wide ports were opened in the walls to allow the fumes to escape. Coolies tended the woks, occasionally putting in further dollops of a dark glue-like resin. 'Refining raw opium,'

the Doctor murmured.

Woo nodded. 'Du would have a seizure if he knew the Black Scorpion had copied his strategy.'

'Joining the authorities, you mean? I a.s.sume you're talking about Du Yue Sheng.'

'Yes. You know him?'

'Only by reputation. Have his Great Circle gang made some sort of deal with Black Scorpion?'

'Hardly. Du was fit to bust when he heard about the Black Scorpion being in town.'

'You have watched too many American films.' The Doctor abruptly turned to the guard beside him. The thug stepped back, holding Woo's gun before him, as the Doctor proffered a small bag. 'Try this; it's much more wholesome. Still sort of addictive, but the only side-effect is potential toothache.' The guard slapped the bag from the Doctor's hand, scattering jelly babies across the grimy deck.

To Woo's surprise, the Doctor bent to scoop them up. 'A simple no thanks would have done. Why does a person's vocabulary decrease when they pick up guns?'

The guard lifted a foot to kick the Doctor into obedience, but the Doctor suddenly twisted, throwing a loop of his scarf around the man's other leg. A sharp tug sent him sprawling backwards into a pile of burlap sacks. The other guard reached past Woo to aim his Colt at the Doctor, but Woo had already realized what the Doctor's plan was. He instinctively grabbed the guard's arm and pulled him forward into a sharp double-blow from one elbow.

The first guard had recovered and charged at the Doctor.

The Doctor neatly sidestepped, sticking out a leg to trip the guard, who hurtled through one of the wide rectangular ports.

There was a brief yell and a splash from outside.

The coolies who were tending the opium pans picked up knives and clubs that were handy, and started to wind their way through the rows of woks. The Doctor, quickly pulling the rubber hose from one of the burners, opened the valve on the canister. A tongue of flame streamed across the hold, igniting the tables and sacks, to provide a wall of flame to separate the coolies from themselves. Woo was impressed by the Doctor's quick thinking.

The coolies leapt back as the flames swept across the deck.

Woo was able to recover his guns from the deck before the fleeing men could get more than a few steps towards the bulkhead door on the far side; these sc.u.m wouldn't get away to start up somewhere else. His fingers squeezed down on the triggers, but instead of the familiar kick of recoil, there was a wrench and the guns were gone.

The Doctor had somehow grabbed them both out of his hands without getting shot in the process. Woo was too astounded even to be outraged. He found it difficult to be angered by something that he couldn't face as having happened. 'These people are ruthless killers. The only two ways to deal with them are either put them down before they get you, or live with looking over your shoulder all the time.'

'Yes, yes...The weed of crime, and all that. You have a very interesting moral sense, you know, real film-censor quality.

I'm sure Romana could write a thesis.' He tossed the guns back to Woo.

'They will start somewhere else.' Woo thought the Doctor, of all people, would understand.

'Who knows Don't say it! If we're going to work together, you're going to have to stop acting like Chow Yun Fat on a bad hair day. No killing.' Woo was astounded again.

What made the Doctor think he could tell him what to do? The Doctor fixed him with a grim look, and Woo suddenly remembered that almost everyone in the Black Scorpion seemed to be afraid of the Doctor, or at least view him as a threat. There was something in the Doctor's expression and tone of voice that made that att.i.tude quite reasonable, even though Woo was the one who was armed. The Doctor's quick thinking with the gas canister had shown Woo that this was someone you wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of, even though he wasn't likely to resort to violence. 'I won't tolerate killing, d'you understand?'

Woo nodded carefully, putting on the safety catches of both guns. 'All right.'

'Good.' The Doctor's mood lightened slightly and he ran a hand through his hair. 'If nothing else, all this shooting is terribly unimaginative Have you ever read Sun Tzu?'

' The Art of War? The Art of War? Of course, I have one of his original handwritten ma.n.u.scripts.' Of course, I have one of his original handwritten ma.n.u.scripts.'

'Then remember his first rule it's a greater honour to defeat the enemy without resorting to battle.'

'Is that what you do?' He certainly wouldn't call the Doctor's methods battling.

'Well, one tries, you know. I did try to warn him to make that bit a rather longer paragraph or people would ignore it, but he insisted he knew what he was doing. Call it the art of fighting without fighting.'

'I don't remember that bit of The Art of War The Art of War.'

'Of course you don't; that was Bruce Lee.'

'Who?' Woo's mind was already replaying the conversation so far, sure there was something he had to clarify.

'Never mind, he hasn't been born yet.'

'Just a moment; Sun Tzu lived two and a half thousand years ago. You couldn't have met him.'

The Doctor grimaced, as if he were an actor in a bedroom farce who'd just been caught in a compromising position.

'You don't want to go listening to me; I never do, at least not unless I need intelligent conversation.'

Woo understood perfectly. 'We've been down among these opium burners too long. Come on; HsienKo's stateroom was back this way.'

HsienKo stood at the prow of her motor launch as it pulled away from the s.h.i.+p. She knew that the Doctor was a good man, he could be made to understand; all that her father had written about him suggested it. Nevertheless, it was clearly wise to hold him in safekeeping until she was ready to show him how he could help. She certainly didn't want him to distract her with more misguided interference.

She was well aware that her scientific knowledge, though among the best in the world, couldn't hold a candle to that possessed by the future genii who had developed the principles she was following. Those scientists would have been aware of discoveries which were yet to be made. That was where the Doctor came in; he would be able to fill in the gaps once she was free to retire into private research. If he refused, then at least she wouldn't have lost anything.

She didn't dare risk his interference in this operation, however. He would have to wait until it was finished and Weng-Chiang had been s.n.a.t.c.hed out of the past. She hoped Romana's presence would ensure his cooperation; she could be released after the operation was complete. Who knows, she might even have useful knowledge herself.

HsienKo thought about this. It was a reasonable a.s.sumption, if Romana was an a.s.sociate of the Doctor's.

Furthermore, if she was unaware of the details of the Doctor's previous encounter with Weng-Chiang, then she might be more amenable to rendering immediate a.s.sistance.

First, however, there was a matter of insubordination. She turned to where Kwok was watching her from the wheelhouse, beckoning him over. 'What is it?' he asked.

'Why did you send men to kill the Doctor after I ordered that he be exiled?'

Kwok rubbed gently at the bandage over his eye. 'He and that policeman are dangerous. I don't want them to hurt you.'

She had expected that; it was his answer to almost everything. Though flattering, it could become tiresome when it led him to do things she hadn't sanctioned. 'So you try to save me by causing me to lose face? Is the Tong to follow me, or you?' It was his deference to her on duty that provided the rest of the organization with a precedent for following a woman; they could always convince themselves that he was the real power behind the throne. If, on the other hand, Kwok should ever try to take on that position, the only way she would have a chance of proving to the Tong that she was genuinely strong enough to lead would be to kill him.

She wondered if she would be strong enough to kill someone she had loved for many years now. Somehow she doubted it. She knew that he would know all this too, and trusted that he felt the same way about her. 'Speak frankly,'

she told him.

He sighed. 'Many of the men constantly watch you for signs of feminine weakness. The Tong way is to kill our enemies. Merely sending them away could be taken as that sign of weakness.'

'Killing the Doctor would show I fear him. Isn't fear a weakness?' She clenched her fist, then tried to force herself to relax. 'The Doctor is not an enemy, but a friend who needs...convincing. He has much knowledge that will benefit us. If any man has a quarrel with my leaders.h.i.+p, let him come and tell me. Those who attend his funeral can judge for themselves how weak I am.'

'Does that apply to me?'

'Do you have a quarrel?'

He took her hand, using one finger of his free hand to brush a stray lock of hair away from her face. 'No. I'm afraid for you.'

She tried not to feel better for that, but couldn't help releasing a little smile. 'Then show it by trusting that I know what I'm doing, not by undermining my authority.'

Kwok stood silently for a moment. 'Sorry. It won't happen again.'

'I know. Go and set the geomantic compa.s.s for Dong Lake.'

'At once.' He released her hand and returned to the wheelhouse. HsienKo looked along to where Sin stood on guard outside the storeroom which held Romana, and concentrated on moving his arm to put his knife away. She wouldn't need him after all, she was delighted to see.

The pa.s.sageways from the hold back to HsienKo's stateroom were devoid of life, though there were sounds of activity from above decks. Woo was about to check the room with drawn guns but the Doctor strolled in without bothering to wait. Woo followed, wondering where they could have gone where they could have taken Romy.

Not that it made too much difference, he told himself.

Romy was obviously not available. Still, that didn't mean he couldn't care about what happened to her. If they harmed her, they would regret it. That dwarf in particular looked like a nasty piece of work, and most likely mechanical. His friend Lucas Seyton had a tiny automated duck which could walk and spread its metal feathers by means of an ingenious and intricate mechanism, but that dwarf was even more astonis.h.i.+ng. 'Doctor?'

'Hmm?'

'What was that dwarf thing?'

'The Peking Homunculus.'

'It is mechanical, isn't it?'

'In a very sophisticated way. It has an automaton's body controlled by a sophisticated motherboard. It has a sense of self, though, because the motherboard is cross-patched into the cerebral cortex of a pig.'

Woo shuddered involuntarily. 'That sounds obscene. Who would make such a thing?'

'Weng-Chiang. That's the sort of little toy that appealed to his twisted little mind.'

'Then it has no practical purpose? HsienKo said it was a tool.'

'Oh, it has a purpose. It's an a.s.sa.s.sination weapon; the computer circuit makes it very efficient, but the pig part gives it a l.u.s.t for blood and death, so that its attacks are more vicious than a pure machine's would be. Weng-Chiang infiltrated it into his rival's home as a toy for the woman's children. It ma.s.sacred the family supposedly due to some malfunction and very nearly started World War Six. After the turmoil of the following years, Weng-Chiang brought it back from the fifty-first century to the nineteenth, where I thought I'd destroyed it.'

The Doctor wasted no time in searching through the desk drawers. They contained only a few pens and pieces of stationery. He looked at the stationery edge-on, presumably looking to see if any impressions had been left behind on it, then dropped it back disdainfully. 'Probably for taking the lunch orders.' He leant against the wall, tapping around it experimentally. 'Aha.' He peered closely behind the desk.

'That's odd.' He started to chip away at the panelling with a penknife. There was a milky sheen of grey metal behind it.

'Interesting.'

'Armour plating?'

'Lead sheets. She must be afraid of Superman spying on her.'

'Why would she be afraid of X-rays?'

'She doesn't seem to smoke, so I doubt she's worried about getting bad news from a radiologist. Just a minute...' The Doctor pulled a little black box with a dial on it from his pocket. 'I thought I still had it lying around...' The box crackled slightly as the Doctor moved out of the stateroom.

Woo followed the Doctor out into the pa.s.sageway. The black box was crackling more fiercely now and Woo could see the dial on it quiver violently. 'Is that a Geiger counter?' That was worrying; no one really knew what effect radiation exposure would have on people. It didn't seem to have done HsienKo any harm of course, though Woo had the uncomfortable feeling that either there was some less desirable side-effect to her condition, or it was far rarer than any other kind of energy. Probably both.

'There's been a highly radioactive substance here, and quite recently too,' said the Doctor.

'This chronon radiation of yours?'

'No. Good old-fas.h.i.+oned alpha and gamma radiation.

Uranium 238, probably.'

Woo's profession demanded a good memory for current affairs, and headlines from the previous decade came to mind.

Hadn't some girls in watch factories died from leukaemia after using their mouths to wet the brushes with which they painted radium onto luminous watches? 'Isn't that very dangerous?'

'Yes,' the Doctor said in a low and dark voice. 'Dangerous at best, but, depending on what you want to do with it...'

Somehow Woo wasn't expecting the Tong of the Black Scorpion to use it for watchmaking. Besides, privileged access to the Sakura Kai's intelligence reports had their uses.

'Rumour has it that it could provide the theoretical basis for a huge bomb.'

'The Tong of the Black Scorpion with nuclear capability...

But to do what?'

Woo shook his head. 'I wish I knew.' He gave the desk a rather petulant kick. It moved to the side. The Doctor was with him instantly, shoving at a corner. It rolled aside, leaving exposed a small trapdoor set into the floor.

'We should have brought K9; he's always wanted to be a truffle hound.' The Doctor pulled the trapdoor open. Inside were a number of folders and a scroll. The Doctor lifted them out, handing Woo the scroll, while he opened the topmost folder. He grimaced. 'Personnel files.'

Woo untied the silk ribbon from around the scroll and glanced it. 'Doctor, look at this.'