Doctor Who: Lungbarrow (6 page)

***

The Doctor was in the TARDIS console room, where Chris somehow knew he would be. He sat hunched in a chair, staring at the scanner screen, which was switched off. Under his jacket, he was wearing his old pullover -

the one with question marks that Chris thought they'd seen the last of. He wondered if the Doctor had somehow changed into it without taking his hat off. He hoped it signalled a return to the Doctor's old indomitable self. No more worries about sudden death and regeneration.

'The teabags have run out,' the Doctor complained without looking up.

Chris was not in the mood to find out that someone else was worse off than he was. 'Are you having trouble sleeping?' he asked.

'Oh sleep, that some have called the cousin to death,' the Doctor quoted unhelpfully. He shrugged without looking round. 'I wouldn't cal it trouble. Why? Are you still having trouble?'

'Yes.'

'Not sleeping at all?'

'Yes. I mean, I sleep. It's the dreams.'

The Doctor sighed and stared at the blank screen. 'I don't seem to remember my dreams any more. But when you get to my age there's so much to forget.'

Chris watched him stand up and walk across to the console. His fingers hovered over the wide array of controls.

Then he seemed to change his mind. He walked backward to his chair and sat down again. He stil hadn't looked at Chris. The all-purpose solution that the young man needed was not going to materialize. He turned to go.

'Christopher, have you touched the coordinate selector?'

Chris stopped where he stood. 'No.'

'What about the time vector generation unit?' The Doctor's tone was as prickly as an Academy tutor looking for a fight with an errant rookie.

'The time vector what? Why? What's happened to Extans Superior? I thought we were...'

'Never mind.' The Doctor shifted his gaze to the floor. 'What sort of dreams, Chris? Different or the same?'

Chris stood in the doorway. His hand gripped Roz's towel tightly. He couldn't say anything. It didn't matter.

'That bad,' said the Doctor. 'You'd better put some clothes on and tell me.'

***

Ace was clapping. A slow, steady, jeering clap as Dorothée downed the contents of the flask. The brandy was burning her throat, but she tilted the flask higher and higher. She almost choked and sat down on the floor with a thud. 'Dare complete,' she announced and wiped her mouth.

27

 

They'd both been drinking while they compared identical experiences. Dorothée remembered plenty, but Ace recalled events with photographic precision, even recent things that she looked too young to remember. They'd been rambling for an hour now over subjects ranging from explosives and places they'd visited to the best way to handle uppity servants and men (not much difference). They'd compared scars, conquests and deaths. Dorothée had lost her Harley and won it back. Ace had won the bed and a holiday in Paris in the year of her choice. She was flopped on her back across the bed, leaning her head over the side, watching Dorothée upside down. Al the time, she kept a tight hold on her gun.

'I thought...' slurred Dorothée, rolling her head. 'I thought that the two of us couldn't meet. . . couldn't ever meet. It's the Brontosaurus Effect. . . or something.'

Ace grinned. 'The Blini-vichyssoise Effect.'

'No, no, the Doctor told me... no listen, listen, he said that he warned Rassilon and that they'd had a lot of trouble with the prototype of the Hand...'

'That's right. The Hand of Omega. And you remember what Lady Peinforte said? About knowing who he real y was?'

'Yeah, and the Cyber-Leader didn't even want to know. You should have seen his face.' Dorothée grimaced a metallic scowl and Ace grimaced back.

'Her face too,' she sniggered.

But, Dorothée noted, her eyes weren't laughing. They were still like ice.

'You don't believe all that, do you?' Ace went on.

Dorothée was on all fours, shaking her head as she crawled towards the bed. 'Who cares? I'm crukking paralytic.'

'But what d'you think. . . what did he mean?'

'Dunno. Never know half of what he means. He just makes it happen.' She put her head on the floor and closed her eyes.

Ace's voice came nearer her ear. 'He keeps bloody strange company, doesn't he? What about the Master and the Daleks? And Rassilon.'

'And Adolf Hitler,' murmured Dorothée woozily. 'And Leonardo.'

'And President Romanadvoratrelundar. What the freak is he up to, eh? Social climbing?'

'And Lethbridge-Stewart,' Dorothée whispered. 'And good old Skoda Birianivitch.'

'What?' Ace said in sudden earnest. She leant closer. 'Skoda who? Never heard of him. Who's he?'

Dorothée lurched up with a sudden cut from her fist that sent Ace spinning across the grey room. Before Ace could recover, she was looking along the barrel of her own gun.

'Don't know me that wel , do you?' snapped Dorothée. 'You thought I was wel past it.'

Ace said nothing, so Dorothée pointed at a badge on the front of her interrogator's bomber jacket. 'See that one.

That's a continuity error. It shouldn't be there.'

Ace nodded. '
Blue Peter
badge. Lost it on the Watch Tower in the city of the inside out TARDIS.'

'You know too much,' said Dorothée, getting into her stride. 'Don't know how you did it, but you've been inside my head. You've got al the lurid facts, but you don't have a clue what I feel. And this isn't about
me
anyway, is it?'

Ace stared coldly. 'You reckon?'

28

 

'Call yourself an interrogator? You couldn't interrogate the time out of a policeman. You're not Ace.
I'm Ace
and Dorothy and Dorothée.' She managed a smile. 'The Doctor's secrets are his, not mine. So who sent you? What's the game?'

The room went black. Dorothée was alone with her thoughts.

***

'I dreamed I was standing in front of a huge wall. Huge stones, really ancient. No, older than ancient. As if it had been there forever. The stones were rust-coloured. The wall went right up into the clouds and there were birds high on it, wheeling birds. Vultures maybe? I couldn't tell. There was a pair of big doors in the wall. They must have been bronze, but they were all tarnished.'

'This is very vivid,' said the Doctor.

Chris shook his head. 'Yeah. I never remember dreams like this. I wake up and the details go really fast.'

'Tell me about the wall. Was there anybody with you?'

'Not at first. There was a stone pavement in front of the doors. I was standing on it, but when I looked at the ground beyond it, that was moving. It was sliding under the pavement. Under the wall. The whole wal was moving slowly forward over the landscape.'

He waited for a reaction, but the Doctor sat silently, waiting for him to continue.

'So ahead of me, ahead of the wall, I could see the sun rising out of the mist. There were shapes in the mist too, but I couldn't make them out against the sun. I had this urge to go back through the doors. I suppose that means I'd already come through them, but when I tried them they were shut tight.

'And then there was a woman there, all in brown - in a sort of mass of brown gauze veils. Her face was brown too, sunburnt and stretched tight. She was matronly - is that the right word? I don't know where she came from. She was just there.

'She said the doors were the Door to the Past. So I looked through a spyhole and on the other side, the landscape was al lit red in the sunset. If it real y was the Past, then it was all dripping with blood like some sort of schlock-vid battlefield and the clouds were made of bone. And the brown woman told me, "On the other side, the doors are the Gate of the Future." It was weird, but she smelt of roses. I never smelt things in a dream before, but she smelt of honey and roses. Like summer's supposed to smel in books.'

'Very poetic,' observed the Doctor. 'Is that al ?'

'No. That's just the start of it. I could hear voices singing. They were children's voices. They were singing something about Eighth Man Bound.'

The Doctor cleared something uncomfortable from his throat:

'Eighth man bound

Make no sound

The shroud covers all

The Long and the Short...'

His voice trailed off.

'That's it,' said Chris. 'How did you... how did I know something you knew, but I'd never heard?'

'You must have heard it somewhere,' said the Doctor smoothly. 'A nursery rhyme at your mother's knee?'

'She always sat us in front of the holovid.'

The Doctor frowned. 'Schlock-vids?'

29

 

'Maybe. It's what most families do.'

A pained expression slid across the Doctor's face. 'Well, a race memory then,' he foundered. 'I take it there's more.'

'The woman in brown said the voices belonged to the unborn children. The ones waiting to be born. Waiting to live.

And then she lifted her veils.' He faltered in sudden realization. 'That was what it was like. It was like a shroud. Like in the song. And under it, there was an old hag crouching on the ground. She was in filthy black rags, more like a vulture than a woman. Her face was al skinny wrinkles and her nose was al beaky and she had an eyepatch.'

'And what did she say?' asked the Doctor.

'Something about, "He's gone away, the gatekeeper." Her voice was like a croak. And then she said' (he paced it out carefully), '"The Door to the Past is locked. Nothing gets through. It's forbidden." And then something about,

"The past is for the dead."

'That made me really angry, you know? Don't know why, but I started hammering against the bronze doors. But they wouldn't give. The woman in brown had cleared off, but the crazy old hag was stil there. She kept cackling at me. "You know me," she kept saying. "I haven't forgotten you." A couple of the vulture birds had landed on the pavement behind her. They kept craning their necks out like they were sizing up dinner. Then she opened her wings above her - they were all tattered feathers - and she ran at me, beating them, and the stench of rotting carrion was coming at me in gusts. I tried to beat her off, but she grabbed me with her talons. Her claws had rings all over them with masses of jewels - and she perched on me. Her claws cut right in. Then she dug her filthy beak into my chest and tore out my heart.'

He realized he had grabbed his right side of his chest again and dropped his hand down awkwardly.

The Doctor glanced quickly at the console and then back to Chris again. 'Then what happened?'

'I yel ed myself awake and fell into the bath,' said Chris sheepishly. 'What more do you want?'

'I'd like you not to worry. Perhaps it was something you ate. Cheese or something.'

'You ate al the cheese,' said Chris.

'Ah.' The Doctor looked thoughtful. 'How do you feel now?'

'I need some fresh air. I thought we were going to Extans Superior.'

'We were. But the coordinates got changed.'

'Don't look at me. I was in the bath.'

'Yes.'

'So when do we get there?'

'It depends what you mean by there.'

'Goddess,' complained Chris with mounting frustration. 'Have we arrived anywhere yet?'

'Oh, yes,' said the Doctor. He seemed to be expecting a reaction of some sort. 'We've been here for nearly two hours. I'd have told you, but you were in the bath.'

Chris reached for the scanner control. 'Then let's see.'

'No!' snapped the Doctor.

Chris pul ed back as if the control was rigged.

30

 

'Leave it. I forbid you to touch it!' The Doctor's face was a tight knot of anger.

Chris moved back slowly. No sudden moves. He crouched by the Doctor's chair and said gently, 'OK. So what would you like me to do?'

The Doctor's eyes darted at him. 'We stay put. I'm thinking.'

'OK,' said Chris. 'You have a think. I'll get us something to drink.' He stood and walked quietly from the console room.

31

 

Chapter Four

All Fall Down

Cousin Arkhew bit his lip and clambered over the edge of the parapet. Digit by digit, damp fingers grey with dust, he slid along the outside of the cloistered gal ery towards the dead clock.

The ancient woodwork creaked its protest. Somewhere below him, the floor of the Great Hall was lost in the gloom. At this hour, the only light came from two tallow lamps that glimmered perpetually by the Loom plinth at the Hall's far end.

A sudden noise startled the little man - a scraping of metal on stone. He froze where he clung, watching another dim light moving along the gallery on the opposite side of the cavernous room. But it was only a lone candelabrum slowly wandering the corridors.

The light disappeared. Over many, many long years, Arkhew's eyes had accustomed themselves to the gloom. He had to reach the clock. He had to know if the latest rumours were true. If he found the missing will, then he would be a saviour. He would finish the long dark disgrace once and for all. No one would ever laugh at him again. There weren't many Cousins left to laugh anyway, but he had to make the point. He flexed his fingers, which were starting to go numb, and began to edge forward again.

The clock was just out of reach - an elaborate array of painted discs and wire circles, both astronomical and astrological, that had once turned and spun in and out of each other's sphere. Long dead, it stared from the balustrade like a many-layered eyeball.

A sudden draught of air lifted tendrils of dust web from the edge of the balustrade. Arkhew dodged and fumbled as they waved hungrily towards him. Dead man's fingers reaching to snatch you back into the past. Cousin Maljamin had walked straight into a web once and lain unconscious for eight candledays. When he finally woke up, he thought he had been taking tea with old Cousin Farg, who had been dead for over two hundred years.

The tendrils gradual y settled again. Arkhew clung to the edge with his fingertips.

There was another light. It was down below, moving along the edge of the Hall. A lantern carried by a stiff figure whose angular, varnished features threw back its baleful glow.