And all the while I concentrated. I was calling on help. The sea rose alarmingly on either side.

Sam was suddenly on her feet and in the fray. Gila tossed her a knife and she caught it automatically, staring at it. The elderly lady grabbed it from her and turned to stab, but the heron-like creature in the eyepatch was back, squawking and lashing out with a deadly beak. There was barely room to stand or for us all to stand safely.

And still I concentrated.

Pirates were coming down from the Kristeva . They yelled out angrily - reinforcements. Julia was sending them down, armed to the teeth, climbing hand over hand to help out.What a noise we made! We small, resilient band!

And then, inevitably, we capsized.

The two boats rode up in a sudden swell. And suddenly all fights were broken up as we were flung into the water. The reinforcements jumped off their ladders to haul us aboard.

But by then I had succeeded.

I had called up a reinforcement of our own. And nothing could send him back now.

I dived deep into the water and saw him. He was coming for us.

How wonderful the water felt.

I swam back to the surface, where the others struggled and flailed.

'He's coming!' I shouted, waving my hooves so they would all notice and realise my success.

'Who?' I heard the Doctor shout.

They turned to look. All of them turned to look.

Behind us, dwarfing the bulk of the Kristeva herself: the humped purple back and sheaf of fins cutting a swathe through the sea. How they all stared! How their jaws dropped! They all ceased to struggle after that.

He opened his gigantic maw as he bore down on us all. There was barely time to shout.

The oldest, biggest fish in the world, had come at my bidding. I had pulled a few strings to get him there. Oh, what a success.

We saw his mouth open and it was like the gateway to heaven. It was huge.

I was pulled in. I plunged gladly into his overarching maw. I turned head over heels, flippers over sh.e.l.l over hooves. I caught a glimpse of the Doctor, spinning through the water, and the old woman, sans wheelchair and then...

Then the maw of the sea beast clamped tight shut and it was dark and smelly and hot and the water he had swallowed slewed us around, in the tight compression of his ma.s.sive guts. We were compelled through the force of his monstrous peristalsis to pa.s.s through the miles of his tubing and pipes and, at last, we were swallowed. Fetched up neatly in the dark of his stomach. I couldn't tell how many we were, but we few lucky swallowees were safe, at least, from the pirates. I had done my job.

Then, there was a grand, cresting, violent lurch, and the behemoth plunged and surged ever deeper, towards the bottom of the sea.

Chapter Twenty-Six.

In the Belly of the Beast

What a motley crew they made. It was the only word for it. Julia of the Kristeva had a.s.sembled the roughest bunch of scavengers and rogues in all of Hyspero to tend to her and go about her work. They were cheap and desperate and they took every opportunity to bait the poor, bedraggled prisoners who lay, dripping, exhausted, hopelessly outnumbered on the none-too-clean deck of the ship. Captain Julia stood among them, arms akimbo, laughing along with her rabble.

Around her were cl.u.s.tered the most trusted members of her crew. The beaky, crazed-looking heron creature, a Sahmbekart, reptilian and coloured a glittering jade, a bipedal tiger and, looming closest over the captives, a shaved bear. Luckily Major Angela could not see this particular specimen. Sam thought she would feel terribly betrayed if she knew that one of the crew was part of her own little family.

But Sam was still reeling in shock from what she had seen, and what had just occurred.

'He's really dead; she said to Gila. 'This time, he's really dead. That Jaws thing... it...'

Gila nodded and said gruffly, matter-of-factly,'I think you're right.'

To Sam, their whole quest suddenly seemed pointless. With the Doctor, Iris and the Mock Turtle abruptly, intractably dead. She had seen each of them swallowed. And then the beast had surged away, quickly as it had come, leaving them sh.e.l.l-shocked and numb, watching in its wake.

Sam had had just a glimpse of the monstrous fish's vast, purple, shining scales, and then that terrible maw. Teeth standing high as dustbins and water crashing through the gaps between. The jaws had clamped shut against them, once the Doctor, Iris and the Turtle were swallowed, and the fish was gone, splintering the two small boats to wreckage as it went.

The survivors were lucky not to have been sucked under in the pull of its departure. Sam must have swallowed gallons of water. Right now she wanted to throw up.

Julia snarled at them, and tossed her head. 'My mother's going to be disappointed. She wanted me to bring you all in alive.'

This was too much for Sam. Without even thinking, she hauled herself up and flung herself bodily at the Captain of the Kristeva .

Julia was caught unawares and staggered under the impact. Her trusted heron-like lieutenant wrenched at Sam and the girl felt herself pinned to the deck, by the weight of wet musty wings. She rolled and groaned and lashed out with arms and legs and saw, briefly, dazedly, that Julia was drawing out her blade. Sam yelled and saw Major Angela throw herself blindly into battle, producing a short, deadly sword from somewhere or other and screaming about not being taken without a fight.

They were terribly outnumbered. Sam thought very clearly, We're all going to die.

And then she thought.Where's Gila?

And there he was. Right behind the Bearded Lady, pitching and cannoning into the melee. He took down three of the henchmen in a series of deadly blows and then they were all upon him. He flashed his strong, coruscating tail (He has a tail now? Sam wondered, as the heron let his grip slip and she rolled away, to join in the battle) and he brought down the tiger with a crash. In the rumpus there was a bewildering, kaleidoscopic mora.s.s of hides and feathers and skins and blades. Sam struck out, fighting her way closer and closer to Julia, determined suddenly to somehow force the gloating captain to call off her dogs.

Gila fought happily. He parried and thrust, feinted and dived. Gouts and spurts of variously coloured blood arced out across the air. There were screams but he let nothing confuse him. This must be like the old days for him, Sam thought: a proper punch-up.

And then, at the pitched battle's height, they all saw Julia take her blade with a curious, graceful calm, push her way through the crowd to Major Angela, who was lashing out sightlessly and making a good job of it.

Julia took her rapier, sliced it through the air, and stabbed the Bearded Lady neatly through the chest. Nothing to quite finish her off, but enough to make her stop and think.

Angela squawked once and dropped to the wooden floor. Before she even hit the deck her blood had soaked the white of her uniform jacket.

The fighting stopped.

'Take them below,' the ship's Captain sneered. 'And you three just think yourselves lucky I'm under instructions to take you in alive. I'd like to keelhaul you all for this.'

They were gripped then, and held, and forced to watch as Julia swept away. Then they were led off, below, into the dank of the Kristeva's hold.

When they woke up, they found they were lying on ground that was moist and fleshy, naturally. But they were surprised to find that they weren't drowned, or swimming in some horrid imbroglio of intestinal acids and juices. The Mock Turtle was first awake, and had dragged the Doctor and Iris to a pink-floored, low-ceilinged cell where they could wake in comfort and find themselves wringing wet and battered, but oddly alive and out of danger.

So they woke, almost together, and looked around. And they were shocked to find the s.p.a.ce lit by an odd, pinkish iridescence. The light pulsed gently as if to a distant, regular heartbeat.

'Swallowed; said Iris gloomily.'Swallowed and sunk. Oh, Doctor.WeVe really gone and done it this time.'

'Um,yes,' he said. He was trying to catch up with events.'I don't think this has ever happened to me before.'

'It has to me; said the Mock Turtle, rather lightly. He was sitting on an upturned urn, a little apart from them. For a second he regarded them balefully. I take it that you're not very impressed with my means of escape.'

'It's dreadful!' spluttered Iris.

The Mock Turtle chuckled. "That's what I said, the first time I washed up here. But it isn't so bad.'

The floor gave a lurch then, shifting underfoot, and shivering with a peculiar kind of spasm, as if just to remind them that this whole, damp edifice was alive.

'I think you should rest, Iris,' the Doctor told her solemnly. 'Catch up with yourself while this Turtle person and I have a chat about what exactly we can do next.'

She was gloomy.'We can't do anything next,'she moaned, lying down.

'We've had it this time. And the next thing will be our getting digested and then where will we be...?'Promptly she fell asleep.

'Right,' said the Doctor.'Tell me about it.'

TheKristeva was filthy enough to strike Sam as authentic, as the way a real pirate ship might be. Not every roving adventurer travelled in the kind of slightly distressed but homely gentility that the Doctor enjoyed.

She supposed that pirates liked things rougher, plainer, and this place was certainly that. But she didn't want to think about the Doctor now.

The cramped rooms below deck had wooden walls encrusted with black grease from the oil lamps that lit the place only fitfully. As the ship rolled, the lamps would swing with them, throwing ghastly shadows about the pa.s.sageways they were forced to walk. Oddly shaped objects lay about everywhere, tripping them up, and Sam could only guess at their purpose. It seemed a very slackly run vessel.

There was a sense, she thought, in which this crew of theKristeva were onlyplaying at being pirates, in the way that some of her friends had, on the streets years ago, much to Sam's youthful indignation. They wore striped sailors' tops and kerchiefs and carried clumsy weapons, as if for show rather than use. All to complete the image. Some of them even wore eyepatches. All this Sam took in distractedly as she was led with the others to their cell. What she was really focusing on was the idea that this time the Doctor was gone for good.

Usually, at least once a week, it seemed that he had bitten the dust or cooked his goose or gone off to the great big s.p.a.ce opera in the sky.

And for those times she had a particular state of mind she had developed, and she would let it take over her. A sort of numbness which would allow her to deal with her current predicament (and there was always one of those) and hang around and deal with stuff, and be ready, prepared, for the moment when, Lazarus-like, the Doctor would, all of a sudden, pop up again, alive-o. She hoped. She had become a fierce hoper.

Now she was stuck with a savage and fierce Gila, who simply wouldn't be pacified as they stomped desultorily into the gloom of theKristeva , and the wounded Major Angela, who was white-faced with shock and bleeding still, if a little less profusely. She had been issued with dirty rags to try to stem the flow.

The Sahmbekart member of the crew, a towering, witless figure, led them to where they would be held until the ship reached Hyspero.

'I need help,' the Bearded Lady said. "This wound is -'

'It's a flesh wound,' the huge figured grunted.

'But you're meant to be keeping me safe and alive, ready for my audience with the Empress.'

The creature wasn't having this. 'We cannot be held responsible for the frailty of your species. You ought to protect yourself better.'

Major Angela shot back with,'And what, grow an exoskeleton?'

The Sahmbekart looked at Gila. "This one has. Why can't you?'

The Bearded Lady was stymied.

Iris woke and had no idea how much time had pa.s.sed.

'Think of yourself as outside of time,' the Mock Turtle was telling the Doctor, in that doleful voice of his.'Can you imagine such an idea?'

The Doctor gave a rueful smile.'I can give it a go.'

'While we are inside the Great Fish,' said the Turtle grandly.'the world outside need hardly exist. It does not impinge here, where we are perfectly preserved and safe.' The Turtle was making it sound like an almost religious experience, Ms thought. Perhaps, to him, that was precisely what it was.

'If you stay inside here long enough,' the Mock Turtle went on, 'you could even meet yourself. Imagine that!'

"This is all very interesting,' said the Doctor, spurred on by Iris's wakening and the rather anxious look she was giving him, 'but do you think you can help us find a way out? We're concerned about the others.'

'Life will go on outside the fish,' intoned the Turtle. 'But for a while, we are exempt from it.We have time to reflect.'

'I hate time to reflect,' coughed Iris, struggling to her feet.

'Sometimes the fish will talk to you,' said the Turtle. 'He will address you, aware that you are inside his stomach, and he will ask you about yourself. Do not fear him. But be aware that his memory is atrocious. It renews itself every five or six minutes and he needs to be reminded of things. This is the direct result of the pollutants that the Scarlet Empress has emptied into our seas. They say these pollutants are the by-products of her experiments in her quest for ever more rarefied life-preserving unguents. But she is slowly poisoning the denizens of the Hysperon oceans.'

'Well, that's a shame,' said the Doctor sincerely, 'but if we can't get out of the fish, then there's nothing we can do to stop the Empress, is there?'

'So if the fish asks you who you are, he will ask you again and again. Yet this in itself is useful. It forces you to keep yourself in line. In an epistemological sense, at least.You can't get complacent, even if you are outside of time and the known world.You are made to wonder,Who am I now? Am I the same person as this morning? And have I changed somewhere in between? Am I still essentially me? Useful questions, you see. I've always thought rather a lot of this sort of continuity, haven't you?'

'Well -' began the Doctor.

Iris interrupted. 'No. Because if you don't mess up your own continuity, there's always some other b.u.g.g.e.r who'll do it for you.' She took off her felt hat, wrung it out and shook it back into shape. 'I don't even pretend to be consistent.'

'I'd noticed,' said the Doctor.

'What if?' said the Turtle suddenly. They looked at him. 'I mean,' he said, 'what if we pa.s.s some of the time playing a small game of "what if?" It's my favourite game.We don't know how long we will be here. So why don't we play the "what if?" game?'

'He's bananas,' said Iris. 'It's because of all that time in the ice.'

The Doctor wasn't very keen on playing either. But he knew that the Turtle knew more about their situation than either of them, so he decided to play along.

'I wish I had hair,' said the Turtle. 'What if I had hair? You both have lots of hair. Ape primitives, I suppose, are your ancestors.'

'Not really,' said the Doctor sniffily.

'Hair is such an index,' said the Turtle,'of the way you people live. Cut it off, it grows again. Hair is continuity.You can see where you've been.'

'You have a sh.e.l.l,'Iris perked up.'Isn't that the same thing? Don't you get an extra ring, another marking for every year?'

'Oh yes,' smiled the turtle.