Falls the Shadow (32 page)

Cautiously he touched the tetrahedron. His hands blistered under an intense, but not intolerable heat. The light began to flicker and spit.

‘Ha.’

He squatted on the floor by the crackling pyramid, easing himself into a familiar cross‐
legged position, as if in meditation. His hands pressed against separate flats of the pyramid, the light and heat tanning his palms.

For a minute, he sat in silence, trying to empty his mind. The pyramid offered no response, its blue light seeming like a lighter shade of black. The Doctor’s cheeks bristled red to match his hands.

‘Aummm,’ he intoned, trying to shake off his embarrassment.

And the tetrahedron replied:

doctorwheretheHELLHAVEYOUBEEN?!

None of this is real.

Benny lay still in the rubble of Cathedral, her arms and gun pinned under her, her face smothered in concrete dust, imitating the corpse she had expected she would become.

She looked up and saw a city in ruins. She had landed, intact and without pain, in the heart of a quad that resembled Golgotha in architecture if not in scale. The quad was strewn with damage, both structural and human.

Shattered buildings rose from its edges like rotten teeth from dead gums. Cathedral had been corrupt but solid. Now the corruption had eaten into the solidity, into the core. Benny looked up and saw a fragile corpse of a city.

Jagged cracks opened in the floor of the quad. Black plants sprouted from the stone, like tongues, pushing into the corpse for one final meal.

Benny pulled herself clear of the rubble which had so improbably cushioned her fall, and began to strut around the square like the last barbarian in a ruined Rome. She had killed the city, driven the knife into its stone heart, and now she was lost. Aimless.

A meteorite fell out of the sky, onto the place where Benny had fallen. It didn’t survive the fall. It smashed apart on impact. Benny stared at the curious stone shape that now topped the pile of rubble. Even crushed into itself, it was familiar.

Another meteorite smashed into tiny stone pieces. It was better preserved than the first, and Benny recognized it with a wry smile.

It was raining Mandelbrot heads. Gabriel and Tanith must be throwing them off the airship. Benny shot a glance upwards and threw herself aside in time to avoid being crushed by the third of the briefly airborne heads. It splintered anonymously beside her.

Benny smiled serenely. She was enjoying herself, mutedly. She was alone at the end of the world, she would die happy and fulfilled. Mystified, she considered, but happy and fulfilled nonetheless.

Then a voice intruded on her peace.

Aummm.

Benny threw her head back and screamed into the cracked sky:

‘Doctor!
Where the hell have you been?!
’

Benny?

‘I’m here!’ Benny howled, waving her arms around to little effect.

You’re not dead.

‘Oh, I’m dead, I just haven’t stopped talking yet. You know me, I don’t let these little details get in my way. Where are you?’

Winterdawn’s room.
The Doctor’s voice was smooth and wooden. Benny never noticed the emotion in his voice until it had gone.
With your body.

‘Good, you can get me back into it. You’ve got the tetrahedron?’

Yes…

‘Listen,’ Benny called, flattening her voice to match the Doctor’s. ‘I’m in a city called Cathedral. The tetrahedron is the extension of the city into real space. The city can manipulate reality, but I killed it. This was careless of me, I admit, but it’s done now. It’s dying. So, for pity’s sake,
get me out of here
!’

A pause. Benny ground her teeth in frustration.

How do I know that you’re not an illusion, a hallucination, a trick of Gabriel and Tanith’s?

‘Heavens, I’ll be dead in a minute and the man’s still concerned with proof. Have you ever considered tax inspection as a career choice…? Oh, bloody hell Doctor!’ Benny snapped. ‘Can’t you just…?’

‘Summerfield!’

The growl cut her short. The growl of a Mandelbrot voice, laced with aggression. She hadn’t heard that streak of violence before.

‘Summerfield!’ growled the last of the stone heads. It was moving under its own steam, lurching across the quad, ploughing through stone. Its face was stone‐
set, of course.

‘Summerfield!’ A voice boomed from the unmoving mouth. ‘I am the last, sole ruler of this place, King of Kings. The cosmos is mine. Bow!’

Benny swore at him.

‘Purged,’ the King rambled. ‘Purged them all. You too.’

The head surged forward and Benny caught sight of its malevolence. She was going to die here, murdered in the ruins of the dead city by its deranged ruler. That was not the way she wanted to go, indeedy no. She raised her gun and fired, blowing chips of stone from the implacable face. The damage was slight. The head kept coming while Benny emptied her gun. Disgusted, she hurled the gun at the Mandelbrot face. The stone jaws of the King closed around it.

Crunch.

Benny had left it too late to run. The Mandelbrot mouth was a black hole bounded by stone. It closed around her.

‘Doctorrrr!’

Crunch.

Crunch.

None of this is real.

The tetrahedron screamed with light and fire. Trapped within, Benny screamed. The Doctor’s flesh burned and he screamed. The scream became a storm of noise. The walls blistered into static. The bed opened up and swallowed Benny’s corpse. Howling, the Doctor grasped the tetrahedron as if to throttle it. And it spoke to him.

It was not Benny’s voice. It was a calm, plain voice – a grey voice.

This is only a foretaste of what is to come.

The Doctor screamed. The grey voice spoke, whispering its instruction.

Run Doctor, run, run, run! You can escape. You can be free.

I don’t want to run. I must stay and fight.

Run.

Irrationally, he ran. The storm followed. It swirled round the tetrahedron and the tetrahedron remained clutched in his hands. The voice urged him on, faster, deeper, into the house. He fought it. This was cowardice, this was retreat, this was abandoning friends and allies, this was defeat…

No. This is your last chance.

Somehow he clung to that thought. He hoped it might mean something. Mostly he ran. He ran and he ran and he ran and he didn’t stop running until the tall block rose before him, sturdy and unmoving in the reality storm.

POLICE. PUBLIC CALL. BOX.

Ace bounced from wall to wall, clutching each new surface, drawing strength from their solidity. She no longer had any goal in mind, no aims, no motives. She kept moving, she kept surviving, she kept her mind off reality. Her constructive, logical thinking had given way to desperate defeatism. She knew when she was beaten. She knew when the enemy was bigger, better, faster, cleverer, wittier and even sodding sexier than her. She knew a lost cause when she saw it and she saw one all round her.

‘We’ve lost!’ she yelled at each new wall. ‘We are the dead!’

Yeah. She didn’t care. It couldn’t last. They’d get her eventually.

She giggled, realizing she was getting paranoid, had always been paranoid to a small degree. She stroked the nearest wall, finding its wooden strength reassuring.

Then she saw the wall was dissolving. A shapeless rust was eating its fabric, a rust of reality. She looked down and saw a similar rust chewing at the carpet. The rust hummed and hissed like static.

Not fair! How could she fight an enemy who could steal the boards from under her feet? She couldn’t. She considered panicking.

The floor became sparse. She kicked herself across the growing void and through the nearest door.

It was Winterdawn’s room. Reality‐
rust ate the walls, but slowly.

Her eyes fell on the bed. There was a rust‐
shape where Benny’s body should have been.

Winterdawn was standing in the middle of the room, staring at her coolly. In one hand he hefted a poker – the very same item, she guessed, that she had almost used to smash the bodies of Gabriel and Tanith, his allies, his friends. She stared back at him, determined to wear down his gaze.

He lost interest in her, his eyes flicking at random across the room. He prowled, pacing to the window. It hadn’t been opened in five years. Winterdawn opened it now. He opened it with the poker, driving it clean through each pane. A shower of light glass shards glowed in the night, catching the light before the rust caught them.

Winterdawn seemed satisfied with the destruction, though not satiated. Silently, without fuss, he wrenched at the curtains, tearing the material and breaking the runner. He tore and tore at the fabric until it was a bundle of rags. The destruction spread. Winterdawn smashed ornaments and knocked down furniture‐
kicking and beating until the weaker items were reduced to firewood. He wrenched paintings and photographs from the walls and dashed their glass façades to pieces on the floor before driving his feet onto each, obliterating art with stamped shoe‐
prints. He tore pages from books, hurling them across the room until the carpet was obscured beneath a layer of paper snow, the words of Nabokov, Spinrad, Heller, Peake and a hundred others.

Ace watched silently, enthralled by the competent violence.

The final act of destruction was the simplest. Winterdawn tore the sheets from the bed, hurling them into the corners before setting to work on the mattress. The surface battered and broke, stuffing and springs bursting spontaneously from the tears. Pleased with the effect, the destroyer flung the poker away and turned, arms held wide apart like an actor declaiming.

No. Actors fake their feelings. The pain on Winterdawn’s face was real.

‘Now!’ he announced in grand, declamatory tones. ‘They’ve taken everything!’

His booming voice died away, consumed by silence. Winterdawn scanned Ace’s face, looking for a reply. After a moment, he seemed to understand that none was forthcoming. He spoke quietly this time, muting his voice as if to hide the truth it contained.

‘My daughter is dead,’ he began. ‘I wanted her to see. They promised.’

Ace stepped forward, taking Winterdawn’s hands.

‘They lie,’ Ace whispered.

‘I know,’ Winterdawn replied. His voice and eyes were obscured by pain.

‘You were stupid.’

‘I was.’

‘We’ll destroy them.’

Winterdawn laughed creepily. Made Ace feel stupid. He sank to his knees and Ace became aware that there was little holding him up. She glanced around her. The rust was spreading, as if fascinated by the destruction. Soon the floor on which she and Winterdawn stood would be an island.

She sank to her knees beside the Professor, clasping her hands against his. It was strange that they should be together, at the end.

‘Professor Winterdawn.’ she said. ‘Jeremy. I’m sorry.’

He stared at her, confusion in his eyes.

‘What for?’

Ace almost cried.

They huddled together. And the rust ate them, as it ate the world.

You’re too late,
they said.

We’ve won, they said.

Here comes the night.

Awareness. Seeping. Gradual.
Thump
(Sound)
thump
(Regular)
thump
(Familiar)
thump
(Close)
thump
(Heart. Beat)
thump thump
.

Thump
.

There was air in her lungs, strength in her muscles and spirit in her flesh.

And then she woke up.

Ace sat upright, eyes snatching at her surroundings. The bedroom had survived. There was no sign of the reality‐
rust, no damage save that inflicted by Winterdawn. Mundane light filtered through the window, making the room ordinary. Ace was suspicious. She had seen this place eaten. The hiss of hungry static chewing the walls lingered with her. So too did the buzz that had crept along her flesh when she too had been consumed. Her instincts whispered of the
wrongness
of the room around her.

Winterdawn lay beside her, unconscious. He was alive, and peaceful enough. Ace decided it would be best to let him sleep. She rose, stumbling to the door and pushing through. Then she locked still, her instincts chattering dangerously as she stared at the new world unfolded around her.

She stood on a concrete expanse beneath a cloud‐
choked sky. Ranks of chimneys thrust around her, coughing thin streams of black smoke into the alien air. The air shivered around her as if her presence offended it. There was the smell of dust and burning in her nostrils and an unhealthy watery taste in her mouth.

‘Shit,’ she said, concise and appropriate.

The plane was finite. It had an edge, distantly. Spurred by her curiosity and irritated by her ignorance, Ace made for the edge. As she moved she felt she recognized fragments of the world around her. Nothing tangible, just a sense of familiarity. She glanced down and found her feet planted on a carpet of vaguely familiar pattern – it had lined the passageway beyond the bedroom. Neutrally she registered it before running on. She began to pick up on more details. She recognized decorations, ornaments, scraps of wallpaper from Winterdawn’s house. Some seemed to have been abandoned haphazardly across the concrete plane. A pot‐
plant decorated a niche in a wall. Regency wallpaper was plastered on a brick chimney‐
stack. Another passage was glimpsed through a small, grime‐
covered window. Ace noted them all and ran.

She clattered up a corrugated iron slope and was suddenly at the edge.

She was on a roof, the roof of a factory. It was at the heart of a neatly regimented industrial complex of functional block buildings. Ace squinted, gazing into the distance, seeing towers and spires and shafts rising on the edge of the complex. They pushed awkwardly into the sky, helped or hindered by architecture which was impractical, unorthodox and grotesque. Ace’s eyes were met by a shock of urban styles, none conducive to sanity. She tried to follow the outline across the horizon but her head began to ache with the effort.

Some of the distant towers burned. Others seemed shattered, abandoned. Ace itched, feeling the laziness of the city, the absence of activity or motion. That was bad. Cities were supposed to breathe. Cities were supposed to bustle. A city without movement was a city without life.

A distant tower creaked unsteadily on its foundations, toppled and collapsed. The factory rumbled sympathetically as the tower struck the ground. Ace teetered on the edge of the roof, grabbing at a nearby gargoyle to steady herself. The gargoyle fixed her with a scowl.

The clouds above her seemed to shake, and a gap opened in them. Fire flickered in the gap. The sky was alive with light and motion and frantic, colourful frenzy, hidden behind the smoke. Colours weaved together, clashing and struggling incessantly. Ace grinned, enjoying what she saw, realizing she was in no danger. She was moved by the sight. She treasured that feeling. It was rare.

‘It’s beautiful,’ a voice came from behind her. She turned languidly. The voice did not threaten or invite danger. If anything it was wistful.

It belonged to a ghost. It was man‐
shaped but transient. It crackled and spat and faded between existence, sometimes solid, sometimes transparent, sometimes absent entirely. It was colourless. It was grey.

The shape wore a hat, a coat, a shirt, trousers. All grey. All swam in and out of reality with it.

‘They are a sign,’ the shape pronounced. ‘There are powers so old they have forgotten what impotence is like. They are afraid.’

‘Yeah?’ Ace said, feeling too relaxed to add more.

‘The old certainties are suspended,’ the shape said. ‘The cosmos rests on them. Good and evil, light and darkness, time and space. White and black are dead. Now there is only grey!’

‘You sound happy,’ Ace told it. She found its earnest tone curiously convincing. ‘So what’s going down? I mean, I went to sleep, and when I woke up…’ She left her history unfinished.

The grey shape flickered. Its voice grew melancholy.

‘There is no longer a house. Now it is part of Cathedral, this city. The city dies, its structure burned away, its soul living only as a shadow. It must feed on the material world for strength and unity. So it overwrites the cosmos, absorbing the world slowly.’

Ace felt a flicker of irritation.

‘And what if the world doesn’t want to be absorbed?’ she murmured, as aggressively polite as she could manage.

‘There will be a succession before any true damage occurs. The city is dormant. Maybe it will die. Maybe it will rise anew. Who can say? It will be interesting finding out.’

‘You’re keen on the sound of your voice, aren’t you?’ Ace tried a little open hostility. ‘Who the hell are you?’

The shape flared, became almost solid. Its eyelids fell open. Ace clenched her teeth and turned away, too late to disguise the horror she felt.

‘
I?
I am a shadow,’ it crowed, though its voice lost none of its calm. ‘And if I lived I might be a friend. Remember that. And this: the people you travel with both live, somewhere in this city. I wish you well…’

The shape crackled one final time and vanished.

Ace shook, trying to absorb the implications of what the shape had said, hoping it was true. That was almost beyond doubt. The shadow told no lies, she was certain. He’d been long‐
winded, but she didn’t doubt his integrity.

She smiled and turned and stared out across the cityscape, searching its buildings and its streets with keen eyes.

She saw a wide road and, on a whim, she let her sight trail along it until it opened into a vast, rubble‐
covered square. In the centre of the square was a wooden stage that had been smashed apart by falling masonry. That wasn’t interesting. Her attention focused on the police box that sat on a pile of rubble beside it.

She grinned again, a happy child. The square was close. If she could just get off this roof she could be there in no time. She skirted along the edge of the roof, searching for a way down. As she ran she called out with enthusiasm and energy.

‘Doctor! Hey, Doctor! She’s alive! Benny’s alive!’

Her voice bounced off the factory walls, echoing in the canyons between buildings. If the Doctor could hear her he made no reply. She didn’t care. She shouted at the stones, at the city. She didn’t care who could hear. Just for once she was really, really happy to be alive.

Winterdawn woke, remembering everything. The haze was gone from his mind, light touched his eyes, the tiredness was lifted from him. Only in his legs did he feel pain. Only in his legs and in his heart.

Sandra was still dead. He had walked again, briefly, and now that sensation was gone forever. He’d sold his soul, his daughter’s life, everything, for false hope. Wedderburn was dead. He understood now, for the first time he realized what it meant. It upset him gradually. There had been too much death and suffering packed into the past few days. Tragedy had lost its potency, becoming only sad and spiteful.

This couldn’t get much worse.

He opened his eyes and found a monster standing across him.

He closed his eyes and whimpered.

‘Please, Professor,’ the monster spoke softly. He knew its voice.

He opened his eyes and looked again, closer. It wasn’t human. It might have looked human once. It even had a vaguely human shape and was wearing the remains of human clothes. It was a human body that had begun to decay. Flesh, bones, nerves, muscles, organs – all had lost their rigid structure and were flowing. The once‐
human creature had become semi‐
fluid – rolling and rippling outside of its original form. It left a trail of wet, sticky flesh in its path. It was falling apart. It was Justin Cranleigh.

‘They’ve taken him apart,’ the thing spoke rapidly in tongues. ‘There’s nothing left to hold him together. There’s only us.’

Winterdawn’s stomach lurched. He coughed blood.

Cranleigh was like a cancer. His whole body was a loathsome cancer cell. Articulate and in pain. Horrible.

‘Justin,’ Winterdawn said quietly. The creature nodded, setting his flesh writhing in a manner Winterdawn would never forget.

‘We are Cranleigh and Truman and many others. Gabriel and Tanith brought us to life, and now they kill us.

‘Fearful symmetry,’ Winterdawn considered, beginning to lose his horror of the Cranleigh‐
creature and finding pity.

‘More fearful maybe, than you imagine.’

Winterdawn frowned, trying to understand.

He tried to stand, an automatic action. He managed to lift himself partly with his elbows, but this was too great an effort and he collapsed wearily onto his back.

‘What have they done?’ he whispered, half‐
rhetorically.

‘They have destroyed your house.’

The answer was unexpected. He almost leapt to his feet in surprise.

‘What did you say?’

‘We’ll show you.’ The creature leant forward and enveloped him with its ample flesh. Thin, tight limbs grew out of the bulk of Cranleigh’s flesh, clinging to his back and shoulders, raising him slowly and painfully upright. Cranleigh held him in a curious parody embrace. Parts of Winterdawn felt repulsed by the sensation, others oddly comforted. Whatever Cranleigh had become there was a part of him that he could like and admire.

How often had Cranleigh held Sandra like this, he wondered? He had seen them walk hand in hand to Sandra’s bedroom on more than one occasion, and had been touched by the close love between them. He had overheard them making love once, and had felt only a long, unsettled ambivalence.

Only after Cranleigh’s madness had set in had Winterdawn learned how cruel he could be, how vicious, how possessive. He stared into the eyes of the monster and wondered whether he was looking at an improvement.

The creature who had been Justin Cranleigh carried the professor gently to the shattered window. Winterdawn stared out and saw a world changed beyond recognition. He stared, too numb to cry, too dull to feel anything.

‘I’ve seen enough,’ he said eventually. ‘Thank you.’

Cranleigh lowered him into an armchair. He sank into it, grateful for its familiarity and its soft surface. Cranleigh hovered over him, perhaps waiting for a lead.

‘Who am I talking to?’ he asked.

‘At present, our name is Qxeleq. One of us. I was a student once.’

‘Ah.’ The professor’s eyes shone. ‘So was I. Would you like to talk?’

The Doctor sat on a mound of rubble and hummed softly to himself. He regarded the new world around him with a curious eye, wondering what he could make of it. The TARDIS, its surface mottled and bleached with white dust, sat on a distant mound. It was the last link with the world the Doctor remembered. Dormant though it was, the TARDIS had sheltered the Doctor from the effects of the storm. It remained a rock – steady in an ocean of change where all else would be washed away.

The Doctor had clung to it desperately, fearing – perhaps knowing – that sooner or later the storm would smash him away from the security of the rock. But not yet. Winterdawn’s house had gone. The Doctor had emerged from the TARDIS once the storm had abated and found himself here, in this city.

The city disturbed him. The TARDIS had been put down among desolation, on a vast black‐
scarred stone square, amid collapsed and gutted buildings and collapsed and gutted corpses. He had paced around the square slowly, the dry dust crunching beneath his feet. The city smelt of a summer day, of dead flowers. Its air tasted of dryness and lemon. Its sky was hidden by a blanket of smoke. Its buildings were hollow towers, soaring upwards, trapped in earthbound stones. There was no noise but the sound of his footfalls, no breeze, no life. Even the bodies only appeared to be dead. On close inspection he found that they had never been alive. They were bodies of flaking dust. That the city was dead disturbed him. That the city was desolate disturbed him. That there was nothing in the city but despair disturbed him.

He had climbed to the top of the nearest mound and sat down to think. Behind him was the TARDIS, before him a pond of stagnant water that had seeped up through a crack in the ground. His reflection was dark and melancholy on the water, obscured by a reef of scum. There was something regular and bulky pressed inside his jacket.

Benny had spoken about a city – a city that was inside the tetrahedron, or maybe
was
the tetrahedron. This city, he guessed. Benny had been alive there, might still be alive now, somewhere. He hoped so, though his surroundings did not encourage hope.

‘Happy, happy!’ came the voices of Gabriel and Tanith, striking the walls of the surrounding buildings, making them shake slightly. ‘Joy, joy!’

The Doctor reacted sharply, tumbling down the mound and pressing close against its surface.

Gabriel and Tanith had wandered into the far end of the square. The Doctor kept low, peering at them with keen eyes. He watched them leaping across the square, arms and eyes and mouths constantly meeting and parting. They were evidently in a good mood. The Doctor’s hearts sank.

‘Look,’ Tanith cried, pointing. ‘There’s the TARDIS!’ There was innocence in her voice – but not enough to hide the malice. The Doctor crouched down further, watching carefully as brother and sister bounded across the square to the police box. He saw their movements become less open, more cautious. They prowled round the TARDIS, taking short and cramped paces, pressing hands to the door and faces against the windows, circling it again and again as if it had become the centre of their universe.