But would he be in time? The thought came bubbling up once more. Perhaps it was foolish to have started on a such a climb - a climb that would have merited an entry in the record books. But how else could he have got to her unseen?
‘Stop your nattering,’ he said aloud to his unruly mind. ‘I’ll either do it, or I won’t, and that’s all there is to it.’
He’d often said something of the sort to others. But somehow it seemed far less comforting now.
As Sarah neared the end of her arduous journey through the now doubly uncomfortable jungle back to the shore, she stopped and let herself drop down onto the ground. For a moment, she lay prone, letting the exhaustion seep out of her muscles, trying to ignore the smarting of the myriad scratches on her legs and arms.
It was bad enough the first time, but the second trip was just too much, especially towards the end when she was near the avenue of huts by the beach, where she had to be extra careful because of the Skangite followers she could see milling about.
She raised her head. Now that she was almost at the little inlet where they’d left the boat, there was the danger that she might be heard - or even worse, seen - by one of the watching guards. It was time to revert to the Doctor’s snaking movements. It was slow, yes, but much safer.
It was a good thing she did. She spotted the boat through a gap in the bushes, and as far as she could see the mini-beach was empty, but as she moved cautiously forward she heard the murmur of a voice. She could just make out the words.
‘Try Brother Will again.’
‘What’s the point? He must have the bloody thing turned off.’
She inched her way to a position where she could see the cove more plainly. Yes, there they were. A glimpse of white was showing through the dirty shrubs where they were hiding.
The boat was out of the question. How was she going to warn the Brig?
* * *
Brother Bunnag from Thailand smiled. His twinkling eyes were smiling too. ‘I think it would be the compassionate thing to do, yes. And skilful too, as you have indicated.’
With a word of thanks, Dafydd moved on, glancing round to make sure that his lobbying was as discreet as Alex had insisted it should be. If he could convince an ex-Buddhist monk, the rest should be easy.
Luckily, Dafydd found this first task given to him by Alex more than congenial. He was able to put himself heart and soul behind it. From the start, he’d thought that Hilda’s softly-softly approach was not only unnecessary, but ultimately harmful to the cause. Yes, of course they should use the Skang bio-chemical method of gaining recruits to the cult and enfolding their minds until the moment of assimilation, but in purely human terms the organisation was so lax that, projected to a planetary level, it was guaranteed to collapse.
This planet was ripe, like a Victoria plum tree at the end of a hot summer, with its fruits so dripping with sweetness that the birds and the wasps vied with each other for the juice.
The Skang could search for aeons and not find its like. It must not be lost.
Brother Alex was right. What had to be done, had to be done.
Curiously enough, it was only due to the influence of the late Brother Will that the whole thing hadn’t fallen apart already. If only they’d been able to persuade him to join them! But his almost canine devotion to Mother Hilda had ruled that out.
But these others, whom he was working on one by one, had been unerringly picked out by the political acumen of Alex Whitbread. They were a far softer target. If Alex had had the time to do the same in Bombay he’d never have been excised.
Brother Alex had really understood how he felt about the death of Will; and he trusted him. Dafydd took a deep breath to still the sudden flutter of fear inside him as he thought of the other commission that had been assigned to him.
One thing at a time.
Who was that? Oh, yes... He glanced down at his list. Good.
Another. He was doing well.
‘Ah, Brother Gyogy, may I have a word?’
She’d have to swim.
But as she’d told the Doctor, she could hardly keep afloat.
When Sammy had taught her to sail, she’d never stepped into the dinghy without a life jacket. How could she hope that her feeble breaststroke (that always degenerated into a frantic doggy-paddle) would take her all the way to the ship? She’d never managed more than a spluttering length, and the
Hallaton
must be at least a couple of hundred yards away.
It was no good trying to attract their attention. Even if she managed it, she had no way of signalling a message. Why hadn’t they taught semaphore at St Margaret’s Grammar?
There was no way to warn them.
Oh yes there was! It was only a slim chance, but it was worth ago.
But first she had to get away from the two guards. She snaked her way down the coast until she was round the next headland, safely out of sight.
Yes, it really looked as if it might be possible. If she kept her nerve, she might be able to swim out to the reef that rimmed the lagoon - which at that point was much nearer than the ship - climb out onto it, and then make her way along its length until she was near enough to the
Hallaton
to have a chance of making it in the water.
But there was another thing... One of the snags of swimming - apart from the possibility that she mightn’t be strong enough to make it, or might end up as a shark’s lunch
- would be how to keep the shots of the island dry. She had no idea what prolonged immersion in salt water might do to the Polaroid prints. And without them there wasn’t a hope that they’d believe her.
She was still trying to think of a better idea than swimming when she pulled the strap of the camera case over her head, to hide it under a bush.
Aha! One problem solved, anyway. She unclipped the strap and experimented with changing its length. Yup! She could slip it under her chin, and fix the snaps onto the top of her head.
Shoes off. Keep the rest on, in the hope that it might afford a mite of protection from the coral. She waded into the sea, wincing as the salt bit into her scratched legs.
At least the water was warm.
He stood on the clifftop, taking deep breaths and letting his arms and legs recover from that last extra effort needed to get himself past the grassy overhang onto the clifftop. There seemed to be a slight ache and a trembling in his biceps -
yes, and in his deltoids too.
Good grief! Was he feeling his age? Maybe the time for his next regeneration was just around the corner.
He dragged his thoughts back to the immediate problem.
Now he was at the top, he had to get into the temple and find Dame Hilda. He could hardly walk in through the front door... but of course, there was no front door. Those spectacular gates of polished timber would have been a hallucination along with the rest. But the entrance would still be guarded.
If his perception of the temple had been still conditioned by the effects of the mist, there would have been no way that he could have climbed over the top of the sheer perimeter wall at the top of the cliff. But now it was a heap of boulders...
As he forced his limbs into action again, his mind wandered off under its own devices. Even to have built this makeshift barrier would have taken considerable effort. Did the Skang have super strength? The body of the dead one showed little sign of it.
Or had they employed contractors from Mauritius or somewhere? It seemed somehow banal even to consider it. If so, what had happened to them? The Skang could never have let them go home.
He had a mental image of a scruffy tramp steamer leaving the island, with a load of brown-skinned workers asleep on the deck, and the captain in his cabin gloating over a box full of gold coins, like a pirates’ treasure chest. Ridiculous. But maybe it came somewhere near the truth. Maybe their ship was sent to the bottom too; with all hands still on board.
He came out of his reverie to find that he was at the top of the fifteen-foot wall, and he could hear the murmur of voices on the other side.
He crawled forward until he could see down into the barren crater, half expecting to see an assembly of figures like the dead Skang.
But no. There was a small crowd of white-robed humans, settling in to the front rows of the seats, which now appeared as stool-sized rocks. A few of the teachers were coming into the natural arena from the caves in the sides of the crater. In the front row, he spotted Alex Whitbread, a pitiable figure, looking if anything even more haggard and ill than he had on the ship. The jigsaw was becoming clearer. This was why the man had been so desperate. As a Skang, he would have been hell-bent to rejoin the others.
The grand image of the Great Skang, which had dominated the temple, had disappeared entirely. Where it had been was nothing but the bare wall of the crater itself. In front of it, Hilda was already on the raised area, an expanse of roughly flattened pumice, talking to somebody the Doctor didn’t recognise.
His mind went into high gear. This must be the beginning of the reward ceremony. The devotees must be getting ready to be brought in at this very moment. He was only just in time.
But how was he going to get to Hilda?
A change of plan. He would have to wait until the Skang had shown themselves in their true guise, and then intervene. After that... what?
Hilda held up her hand for silence. The subdued talking died down as the latecomers took their seats. The teacher who had been speaking to Hilda had left her to find his seat with the others, joining Alex Whitbread in the front row.
‘Before we proceed to the proper business of the meeting, we have a sorrowful duty to perform,’ said Mother Hilda.
Again she lifted her hand, nodding, but this time it was directed towards the gap in the wall of rock that was the entrance to the temple.
All heads turned to look.
Through the gap in the boulders, down the roughly hewn steps, came four guards, bearing on their shoulders, like a dead prince, the body of a Skang.
Must be the same one we found, thought the Doctor.
As they progressed down the central aisle, there were murmurs of horror and shock.
The body was laid at the side of the platform, and at a nod from Hilda the four guards left the arena, back through the front entrance. The alarmed assembly grew silent as Hilda moved forwards to stand by the body, and started to speak, telling them that Brother Will seemed to have slipped at the top and fallen to his death.
‘...and this is confirmed by one of our brothers. Dafydd?
Would you be so good as to tell us what you know?’
The teacher who had been speaking to her earlier stood up.
‘I was coming up from the village. It was less than an hour after sunrise - I’d been making sure that my people were ready for the ceremony - and I met Brother Will coming out of the temple. I walked with him along the clifftop for a short way He told me that he’d had a report of intruders at the base of the rock wall. He said it was nonsense, but that he was going to have a look...’ Dafydd, seemingly shaking with emotion, struggled to continue. ‘If only I’d stayed with him!
But I’d promised to be with my friend Brother Alex at this troubled time; and so I turned back to go to his room to try to comfort him.’
‘There was nobody else on the clifftop path?’
‘I could see the whole length of it quite clearly. There was no one.’
Hilda thanked him and he sat down. ‘This is the first of our number on Earth to experience bodily termination,’ Hilda went on. ‘In the present exceptional circumstances, I think it would be inappropriate to continue at once. If Brother Alex is to be returned to the fold... and I do say,
if...
then it would be manifestly unfair to exclude him. I therefore suggest that we should briefly postpone the final Incandescence.’
Incandescence? Some sort of cremation?
It was very quiet. The cries of the gannet lookalikes seemed very thin and far away. The narrow strips of foam - like the lace at the hem of an old-world petticoat - which lapped at the edge of the multicoloured coral, made less noise than Sarah did herself as she splashed more and more inefficiently through the ripples.
She had found, to her relief, that the water near the reef was only about as deep as the shallow end of the pool where she’d been sent to learn to swim, going on the bus on Saturday mornings, clutching her shilling for the lesson (until her father lost his job and even a bob was too much).
So she was spared the ordeal of scrambling over the harsh coral of the reef, and she was able to stop and rest with her toes in the sand whenever it felt as though her muscles were about to give out.
She kept a weather eye on the
Hallaton
, so that the moment she felt it was near enough, she could change course, and make straight for it. It was when she was on her fourth break, as she was seriously beginning to think that she’d taken on more than she could manage, that she became aware of an extra sound on top of the natural ones. It was coming from the ship: voices calling out - and the distant throb of the engine starting up.