Doctor Who: Lungbarrow (4 page)

***

Where are you going?

'Home. I'm going home,' she thought.

Dorothée was drifting without sense of touch or inner feeling. Just her thoughts cut loose. She had to hang on to them or they'd unravel off into the darkness. The same way her body and her bike had gone.

Where's home?
came the other voice.

'Earth. England. No, now it's France. Paris.'

Better make up your mind, hadn't you?

'Paris,' she insisted.

You reckon you'll see that again?

The interrogator's voice was hard and mocking. Another woman's voice locked inside her own thoughts. It was turning her thoughts over and trashing them. They were al she had. 'What do you want?' she thought.

You tel me.

'I want to go home!'

And that's Paris, is it?

'Yes!'

15

Liar!

'No one calls me that.'

No one calls you anything.

'You just called me liar.'

Must be your name then.

There's no chance to think when someone's already in your thoughts. 'Fine. Cal me Liar,' protested Dorothée .

'What about you? What do you call yourself?'

Don't you know?

Dorothée could feel the grin in the voice. A childish laugh, cruel the way only kids can be. It both frightened her and was comfortingly familiar.

I'm your worst enemy. I'm just behind you,
it sneered.

'Where? Who are you?'

Tell me who you want me to be.

'What I want is to go home!'

Tough!

'Jesus crukking Christ!'

Dorothée sat on the low bed. The white room was empty and cold. Six blank wal s. No windows or doors.

A noise behind her. She turned round.

The girl was in black, a plain black bodysuit and boots. So black, the light found no surface on it. In the shadowless room, the girl's face was lost in dark obscurity. It appeared formless, unfinished or undecided.

Then the shadow lifted and a face slid out from under it. The young woman had long, tangled brown hair and large brown eyes that returned Dorothée's stare. She'd seen them earlier. Cold and accusing.

She'd always reckoned, in the vast photofit lottery of the Universe, that anyone could look like anything. But not that. Not just like that.

'Crawl back in the mirror,' she said flatly.

'Mirrors don't answer back,' answered the girl.

She stepped up nearer the bed. 'I'm... Ace.'

'Like hell,' said Dorothee.

'It's true.'

'Prove it.'

Ace raised the sleek black carbine that was slung over her shoulder and shot Dorothée at point-blank range.

16

C

hapter Two

A Long Shadow

The Castel an's office, from which al security matters in the Capitol were controlled, was sparsely furnished; an impartial place with no views or windows of its own. It sat at the heart of the great Citadel, wedged like an afterthought into the ancient masonry of that august and sprawling edifice.

Castellan Andred sat at his desk, irritably tapping one finger on a stack of pending reports. The confirmation of a top-security visitor to the Capitol was overdue and at present there was nothing he could do about any of it.

Andred had been elevated to his post over a year ago, but still he felt like a novice. The shadow of his predecessor had a long reach.

There seemed to be an army of elderly Time Lords, largely indolent high-benchers, who gravitated in to see him with such regularity that he was growing suspicious that they had worked out a rota. Could he attend to a faulty service lift in Tower 3? How long before the Panopticon antechambers were refurbished? Standards in Chancel ery Guard full-dress uniforms had become very lax - webbing scruffy, honours arrayed in the wrong precedence. None of this would have happened in Spandrel 's day.

Most of these
friendly
observations were nothing to do with security at al . Andred was sure that the Brotherhood of Kithriarchs was keeping a more than wary eye on the new boy.

At the moment, he was deeply uneasy as to why the latest in this parade, the venerable Almoner Crest Yeux, had chosen such a particularly awkward time to pay him a cordial visit.

'I tried only this morning to see the President,' droned Yeux, 'and I was told she was unavailable until further notice. They tried to fob me off with that dreadful Chancel or Theorasdavoramilonithene woman, but I wasn't having any of that. I mean, it's all women on the Inner Council now. They seem to be taking over.'

'I'm on the Inner Council,' said Andred curtly.

'Yes, but forgive me for saying this, but you're the token ordinal, aren't you?'

Andred bit back any discourteous retort. He had been trying to remember what the Almoner Crest's function actually was. The title was probably too steeped in heraldic tradition for anyone to recal . 'The President does have an immensely busy schedule,' he said.

'Oh, that's as maybe.' Yeux shifted bulkily in his seat. 'But I ran into Cardinal Perundeen immediately afterwards in the Causal Archive Record Office and he had exactly the same experience three days ago. And he stil hasn't seen the President. She wasn't even at the reception for the Chelonian envoy. I mean, nobody knows what she's up to.'

To his relief, Andred saw a small light flicker on his desk. He rose from his seat. 'I'm sorry, Almoner, but I do have some pressing business of my own.'

Yeux eyed him with no apparent intention of moving. 'I mean, you of all people must know her whereabouts, Castellan. Otherwise there'd be no point in you running security at all.'

The door slid open, affording a view of the outer office where a young guard was waiting with a tall lady in a dark green robe.

Andred's hearts sank. The one person he most wanted to see was the last person he could entertain at the moment.

'Come in, Captain,' cal ed Andred. He turned back to Yeux to find that he was already up. The Almoner Crest was staring at the lady who had followed Jomdek into the room. The captain was carrying a glass cube in front of him as if it was one of the ceremonial relics from the Panopticon museum.

'The transduction order, sir, as you instructed,' he announced with a sideways glance at the onlooker.

17

'Thank you, Jomdek!' Andred snatched the cube out of his gloved hand.

Yeux, a smug grin on his face, nodded to Andred. 'Thank you for your time, Castellan. I'll leave you to your pressing business.' He gave the lady a cold stare and departed.

Captain Jomdek stayed standing to attention, his face a pool of deep embarrassment.

Andred snapped, 'I assume everything was in order at the Accessions Bureau.'

'I delivered the item. Yes, sir.'

The Castel an dabbled a finger on the communicator link and then thought better of it. 'Thank you, Jomdek.

Dismissed.'

Jomdek tried to come to attention, found that he was already there, nodded his head awkwardly and left.

The Lady Leela watched the door slide shut. She was tall and proud; her red-brown hair was braided and woven up around-her head. Today she had threaded two sorts of coloured beading into the plaits that Andred had never seen before - red and dark blue.

'The captain had magenta juice all down his tunic,' she said. As always, she managed to invest the most banal events with an inherent wonder all of her own. It always floored him.

'Shoddy discipline,' Andred grumbled weakly. He allowed himself a tiny smile. 'It isn't funny. And I told you not to come here when I'm working.'

She sat on the edge of his desk and flicked at a stack of reports. 'You do nothing else but work when you are here.'

He reached for her hand. She leant across the desk and kissed the frown on his forehead. 'You are troubled,' she observed.

'You know I can't tell you about it.'

'I know. The headman carries the secrets of his tribe on his shoulders.'

He grinned and squeezed her hand. 'If you say so.'

'Don't laugh.'

'Laughing's good for me.'

'If you are too busy, I shal speak to Romana.'

'Good,' he said. 'Then she can put you in charge.'

She slid down to his level and met his eyes. 'I
am
in charge.'

'Yes, please.'

They jumped quickly apart as the door slid open.

'Mistress?'

A knee-high metallic shape was trundling into the office.

'He always does that,' groaned Leela.

Andred sat back in his chair. 'He's your dog.'

18

'Our dog.' She turned to look at the robotic retriever and it wagged its metal tail. Its angular bodywork had got a bit battered during its time on Gallifrey.

'K9, don't you ever knock?' said Leela.

The machine's synthetic voice had a singsong prissiness that was by turns endearing or irritating. 'Apologies, Mistress and Master. Please resume your canoodling.'

'Never mind,' Leela intoned.

Andred sat back in his chair. 'Did you bring him or did he just follow you?'

'News, Mistress,' K9 interjected.

'Wait, K9.'

'Our discovery.'

'I was working up to it,' she protested.

'Working up to what?' enquired Andred.

'I think it'll have to wait until...'

'It is about your Family,' she said quickly.

He tutted and looked awkward. 'Now what have they done? I know they annoy you, but...'

'Nothing, Master. They have done nothing,' interrupted K9.

'Well, that's a relief.'

Leela shook her head. 'No. That is the problem.'

He sighed. He had so much work to do. 'You'd better tell me,' he said.

She sat crossed-legged in the seat of the chair that Yeux had occupied. 'We were bored,' she began. 'There is no one to talk to. Rodan has been sent on a cross-cultural liaison course. Romana is away.'

'The President is not available,' he corrected.

'She is away.'

'Yes, but you're not supposed to know that.'

'She told me.'

No wonder Spandrel retired, thought Andred. Romana is a security nightmare.

'She did not tel me where,' added Leela.

'Good,' he said, much relieved.

'I forbade her to do so.'

'You
are
in charge, aren't you?' Andred declared. 'So what have you been doing?'

'I decided that I must learn more about your Family.'

19

'That's a bit sudden?'

She gave K9 a sidelong glance and said quickly, 'It is your heritage. Each of us should know our ancestors.'

He nodded. He understood that her roots were far away on some benighted, primitive world that she did not even have a sensible catalogued name or number for.

'My ancestry is not very exciting,' he said. 'Just a long line of military ordinals. Several squads full. Must be something in the Loom.'

'But we have discovered a mystery.' She looked very grave.

'Affirmative,' K9 chimed in. 'An anomaly with considerable repercussions.'

'Six hundred and seventy-three years ago, one of your Cousins was a captain in the Prydon Chapterhouse Guard.'

'His name was Redred,' added K9. Castellan Andred stayed silent.

'And this Redred was sent on a mission to the House of Lungbarrow in the mountains of the South.'

'Never heard of it. Or him.'

'Because he never returned,' Leela said. 'He vanished.'

'That's not possible,' Andred insisted. 'There must be records.' He began to turn the cubes on his desk port.

'I have checked al available data,' announced K9. 'All records of this mission have been expunged by order of the Prydon Chapterhouse.'

'How can you know then?' Andred scanned his plasma screen for relevant information. There was no mention of any House of Lungbarrow.

'K9 is very wise,' said Leela proudly.

'I think we'd better have a long talk about security and what you are and are not al owed to access.'

'There is more,' said K9.

'Later,' he snapped and immediately felt a need to apologize. 'Look, why don't you go down to the House at RedLooms and visit my Cousins? Get out of the Capitol for a while. You won't be bored down there. You like them really.'

'They do not like me.'

'Of course they do.'

'The House does not like me either.'

'What rot.'

'It is true.'

'Just because one table...'

I wil stay here at the Capitol, where the furniture does not argue if I want to sit on it.'

He looked at her with deep affection. 'I like the beading in your hair. Does it have some meaning?'

She stared at the floor. 'The blue is for the memory of your Cousin.'

20

'That's kind, and you are wonderful,' he said, genuinely touched. 'And what about the red?'

'Master Andred, there is more,' interrupted K9 again.

Plainly there was no escape. K9 only ever real y kept quiet for Leela, and she was fielding that look of earnestness that always forewarned of sleepless nights until he gave in. 'Go on then.'

K9 pul ed closer to the desk as if he intended to whisper, which he did not. 'According to the records of the Matrician Bench of Ordnance Surveyists, the House of Lungbarrow itself no longer stands on the side of Mount Lung in the Southern Mountains. It has vanished without trace.'

Andred started to laugh. 'What? A House can't just vanish! That's ridiculous.'

'Then where are your records?' demanded Leela.

Sometimes she was so exasperating. 'I'll sort it out later,' he protested.

'You have no sense of your Family's honour,' she said coldly.

'Not at al . I'm just too busy with security to deal with ancient history now. As soon as I have time, then we'll find out what happened. We'll do it together. Just don't go interfering on your own.'

'There is still more,' she said.

There was a bleep from his screen port. He had an incoming communication at last. Gold-coded from off-Gallifrey.

'Tell me later,' he said gently to Leela.

She nodded indignantly. Then she turned and swept out of the office with K9 trundling faithfully behind.