Doctor Who: Lungbarrow (31 page)

'I can't find.. . No wait, there's something here.'

Glospin let go.

The board's dimensions snapped shut on the Doctor's arm. He yel ed with pain, struggling to escape.

'Where are your powers now?' said Glospin. 'Get yourself out of this!' He hit the Doctor across the face.

And again.

Innocet burst into the room. She saw the trap and immediately set her mind to it.

The board cracked open and the Doctor fell clear clutching his arm. His nose and lip were bleeding. In his hand was a black data core, sealed with a crest.

'I think this is what we've been looking for,' he choked.

'Quences's will?' said Innocet, incredulous. 'Is that it?'

'It's a trick,' Glospin said. 'He had it al the time.'

He lunged for the core, but Innocet pushed him back.

'I don't care where it was,' she said. 'Now that we have it, we can confront Satthralope.'

'Confront her al you like. What happens when she tries to wake Quences? Or perhaps Wormhole has some
legendary
solution.'

The Doctor lay back, watching his Cousins squabble over him.

There was a commotion outside. The Drudges loomed in, carrying Chris Cwej and two new strangers with them.

Two struggling women.

The Doctor sat up and stuffed the data core inside his jacket. 'What's this?' he said sourly. 'Prison Visitors Association?'

149

Sightseeing

Miracle? What miracle?

News travels fast in Lungbarrow.

It whispers along passages, gathering resonance the way a House gathers dust.

The fish in the chimney.

A moment becomes an event, which becomes a deed, which becomes a legend.

He has brought back the wil .

Expectations, so long dampened by despair, are unearthed and dusted down, like the tarnished garlands being hung for Otherstide by the Drudges in the Great Hal .

Soon the darkness will be over.

They are herding tables and chairs into place for suppertime.

And Satthralope wil wake Quences at last.

The whispering stops.

The end? Not a happy end. Not a ghost of a chance.

Dorothée thought she had never seen the Doctor so withdrawn. His lip was cut and there was blood under his nose. And Chris Cwej, normally the lovable innocent (he'd hate that), looked utterly wasted.

The Doctor's arm was blue-black up to the shoulder. While Leela rubbed his bruises with some sort of herbal liniment she carried in a pouch, he listened quietly to what each of them had to say.

He looked distinctly uncomfortable when Chris mentioned the fish. 'Miracle? What miracle?' he complained. 'I don't believe in miracles. These things are natural phenomena.'

'Try tel ing them that.'

'It's a coincidence. A downfall of fish, frogs or water lilies can be precipitated by any simple tornado. Have they forgotten about ocean cones, when the Gallifreyan sea gets sucked miles high by an eclipse of the sun and the dark moon?'

'They think it's you.'

'What about Arkhew?'

'Gruesome,' said Chris, holding his head. 'But I've a few more enquiries to make.'

The Doctor grunted. Temper, thought Dorothée.

She told him about life in Paris, past and future. She left out her liaison with Georges Seurat. He'd only want to be introduced and then worry that the painter was going to die in a couple of years.

Leela talked about her life with Andred at the Capitol, where she plainly did not belong. She seemed fascinated with the Doctor's appearance. She had never seen him as anything other than the Doctor she had travelled with.

The tall, pop-eyed version that Dorothée had seen occasional y, either in her head or photos or somewhere.

150

They both told him about the events leading up to their arrival at Lungbarrow. He shifted uneasily when he heard that Romana had sent them. He hardly seemed interested in the trouble at the Capitol or the dispatch that Dorothée delivered.

'Fred sent it,' she said.

The black globe dissolved in his hands as soon as he took it. Inside was an angular grey device. 'A data extractor with Loom attachment,' he said glumly and put it in a pocket.

'What's it for?' asked Dorothée.

'I'm not sure what Romana's implying. Now that she's President, she'll have agendas of her own. It just feels as if the Emperor has sent me a sword to fall on.'

There was an awkward silence. Dorothée wanted to hug him, but something warned her not to dare. Leela was busy, tending the cut on Chris's ear, so she tried a different tack. 'There's something I meant to ask you,' she said.

'What do you know about ballet?'

The Doctor suddenly showed signs of interest. 'I can just about tel a
fouetté
from a Fonteyn.'

'Only I've got this friend in London, 2000. She knows about the bike. And she's a dancer, right.'

'Ah.'

'And she keeps on about this ballet she's always wanted to see. But it's on in 1913.'

He cracked a smile. '
Le Sacre du Printemps
at the Ballets Russes. Twenty-ninth of May. It's a
grande scandale
.

You'll love it. Get a stage box. You'l see the riot in the auditorium better from there.'

'Will you be there too?'

'It has been known. I could be in the wings with Nijinsky, beating time for the dancers. The poor things couldn't hear the music for the rumpus in the audience.'

They both laughed and hugged each other in relief.

'Oh, Doctor, you're such a control freak.'

'I know,' he said in her ear. 'But if
I
don't do it...'

She still clung on tight.

'What else?' he asked.

It took a moment before she was able to say anything, but he waited patiently. 'It's the other Ace I met. The mirror image.'

'Yes?'

'Wel ...' She fished for the words. 'She was a vicious bitch.'

'Go on.'

'And I'm scared that I'm really like that. I mean, I know I'm hard and selfish.'

'You can be,' he said. 'That's what Time did to you. But you're still Dorothy too.'

'Schizo, you mean. Psycho Dalek-killing biker in a crinoline.' She let go with a forced grin.

He dabbed her nose in a way she had missed desperately. 'Look what Time did to
me
.'

151

'Look what you did to Time.'

He pul ed a face. 'I had plans for you, you know.'

'Tell me.'

'Oh, yes. In my great scheme, I was going to have you enrolled at the Academy here on Gallifrey. You'd have soon given the Time Lords something to think about.'

Suddenly she understood. 'That's what it was al about. Al those trips sorting out my past. You sly old bugger.'

'It didn't work, of course. Events overtook us and you had ideas of your own.'

'Sorry,' she said. 'Now the boot's on the other foot. It's your past that's getting turned over.'

He squeezed her hand. Then he glanced towards Leela and Chris and smiled fondly. 'I'm glad you're all here,' he said and went to sit with her.

'He's asleep,' she said, nodding at Chris.

The Doctor took off his jacket and laid it over Chris's shoulders. 'This can't go on,' he said. 'I have to stop it. I must reach the TARDIS.'

Dorothée saw him catch Leela's mystified stare. 'It's all right. I may have changed a bit, but it is me,' he said, looking her directly in the eye.

'Do not do that,' she said as if she was scolding a child. 'I know it is you.'

'Good.'

'Romana warned me.'

Strange, thought Dorothée. Leela has a sort of wise innocence. Bit of a wild Earth Mother, real y.

'How do you think Chris is?' he asked.

Leela gave him a steady look. 'He said he thought he was turning into the Doctor.'

'That's silly, isn't it?'

'Yes,' she said.

The door admitted Innocet.

'But if you can do it,' Leela continued, 'why can't somebody else?'

The Doctor cleared his throat uncomfortably.

Innocet wore an ancient and overlarge, ful -skirted dress the colour of a rusty sunset. 'I brought you these,' she said coldly, and laid some robes out on a table. 'Please put them on before supper.'

Dorothée was struck by how pale and haggard the woman was. Spindly against the extraordinary burden of hair on her back.

'Innocet, it wasn't me,' the Doctor called, but she had gone.

Somewhere a gong sounded.

152

The Doctor fetched his umbrella out of a corner. He unfurled it using all the conjuror's gestures that Dorothée had seen at the Follies. With a flick, he turned the brol y the wrong way up and its inside had become a large mirrored bowl. He angled it under the big mirror on the wall. 'Before supper, I should show you round my House,' he said.

He levelled and angled the umbrella, mirror catching mirror catching mirror, until its reflections showed other views: the House's interior, room after room displayed complete inside an impossible camera obscura.

***

The Cousins were assembling in the garlanded cavern of the Hall. Innocet and Glospin and Jobiska and Rynde and Owis.

No one spoke. No one dared.

They wandered around the huge tables, anxiously eyeing the Family silver (fish knives were laid) and a most unfortunate centrepiece, unsure where to sit.

They knew Satthralope's position at head of the table only too well; but for themselves, there were only five of them left and forty-four set places to choose from.

***

'Rassilon was a great delegator,' added the Doctor. 'Most of the innovations attributed to him were commissioned from others.'

Dorothée thought he sounded touchy on the subject.

He told them about his differences with his Family over their plans for his desk-bound political career.

He's being cagey, she thought. A 'bit of a disagreement' doesn't warrant burying the House alive.

'The House of Lungbarrow used to stand on the slopes of Mount Lung in the Southern Ranges about two days from Rassilon's Rampart, which was built to keep out the marauding Shobogans in the third century after Rassilon's death. The House overlooked the river Cadonflood which flows...'

It was too much to take in. The mirrors were displaying the dilapidated sights of the House. The whole North annexe was under flood, but Dorothée thought she saw something swirl through the black water.

In a hall, the Doctor's Cousins sat silently around a dinner table with something she could not make out at its centre.

'It's a forest beast!' declared Leela as they viewed the next sight.

'It's Badger,' said the Doctor.

A massive bearlike creature was apparently working on the controls of the transmat booth with its ghostly figure.

For a moment, a malevolent face blotted out the scene. 'Satthralope,' said the Doctor and shut the umbrella up quickly.

The door admitted Innocet again. 'You must come down,' she said.

The Doctor turned away and sulked.

153

'What is Otherstide?' asked Dorothée.

'Just some silly pagan festival,' he mumbled. 'Like Yule or August Bank Holiday.'

Innocet viewed them severely. 'The Other was one of the Triumvirate who ruled the old world with Rassilon and Omega.'

'Oh, yeah,' said Dorothée. 'As in the Hand of -,'

'Ace!'

'But the Other turned against Rassilon and was banished,' ventured Leela. 'He stole away the Hand of Omega.'

Dorothée grinned. 'Real y?'

'Depending on which version you read,' said the Doctor.

Innocet stared directly at him. 'Otherstide celebrates his casting out. Now please come down to supper.'

The Doctor poked at the robes she had brought. 'Satthralope's only resurrecting it to give the House something to concentrate on.'

The gong sounded for the third time.

He peered straight into the depths of the mirror. 'No. I think I'll sit this one out.'

The library started to tremble.

Innocet stepped back as two chairs moved in on the Doctor. He immediately backed into the passages between the shelves. The door flew open to admit a Drudge. It pulled Leela and Dorothée clear with hard fingers as the room went berserk.

The sense of rage hit them like a breaking wave.

Data cores were hurled out of their racking like missiles. Planks half tore themselves up from the floor and lunged at the Doctor. As he vanished from view among the swaying shelves, they saw the white branches that tangled across the ceiling break free and reach down like gnarled fingers.

They heard his shout and then al the shelving caved in over him.

'Doctor!' yel ed both Dorothée and Leela. There was no answer. And through all of it, Chris had stayed fast asleep.