Falls the Shadow (33 page)

The Doctor crouched still, wondering how much of what he saw was genuine.

Gabriel’s palms pressed against the door of the TARDIS, stroking the paintwork with care and reverence.

‘Box of delights,’ he exclaimed. ‘Chariot of the gods.’

‘D’you think he’s in there?’ Tanith asked. Her knuckles tapped lightly against the police box shell. The noise made was loud and hollow and unnatural. ‘Yoo‐
hoo, Doctor! Are you in there? Are you hiding from us?’

‘No need to be frightened,’ Gabriel joined in. ‘It’s only us.’

Tanith kicked the TARDIS door. It creaked under the impact and the Doctor winced, but it held fast.

‘We can’t touch you,’ Tanith called. ‘Not there, in your hole, outside the real universe. Now you can stay the boring old sod that you’ve practised long and hard to be, or you can be a pal and let us in for the party.’

There was a moment of silence. The Doctor squinted, disturbed to see them wearing manic, inane grins.

‘Then there’s something else,’ Gabriel hissed, low voice bouncing across the square, tumbling against the distant walls. ‘
This
is useless. From your time rotor to your fault locater – plastic, metal and dead machines! Time and space don’t exist any more! We abolished them. Or are abolishing, or will. Throw your preconceptions in the air and guess where they’ll come down!’

‘So, there’s us,’ Tanith added sweetly. ‘Only us. There is here, and now, and us. Pretty damn soon us will
own
here and now. We’ll make a toy of the universe, we’ll make it spin and dance and giggle and break apart. We’ll make a kaleidoscope of the world. Everything will mean anything and nothing will mean anything. You and your pretensions will be meaningless. Get out of your bloody shell and go with the flow!’

‘Otherwise we might turn you into a deck‐
chair, or a wing and a prayer. And you wouldn’t like that at all!’

‘And Ace will make a gorgeous snack. We’ll swallow her down, bones ’n’ all. Or we’ll flay her and turn her pelt into a colourful umbrella. And there’s Benny too! Lovely in body and soul. We haven’t thought about what we’ll do with her.’

‘We can do
anything
. We go
anywhere
. We can be
anyone
!’

The Doctor watched unfeeling as the couple locked hands and began to prance around the TARDIS, chanting. Their voices became a deranged howl, escalating towards a misshapen crescendo.

‘Anything! Anything! Anything goes! Anything! Anything! Anything goes! Anything! Anything!
Anything goes
!’

They stopped, suddenly, sharply, staring at each other’s faces. The silence between them was thick and obvious. The Doctor tensed involuntarily.

‘He’s not in there is he?’ Gabriel murmured. The Doctor caught the words on dead air.

‘He’s over there,’ Tanith waved an arm towards the Doctor’s hiding place. ‘He’s behind the mound, by the pool, listening to us. He thinks he’s learned something. Silly man.’

The Doctor decided that now was as good a time as any to break cover. He rose, so that Gabriel and Tanith could see him. They stared at him as though he were something small but incomprehensible, alien to their experience. He hoped that was genuine; it gave him something to hope for.

‘Come and talk,’ Tanith said. She seemed lucid and sober. The Doctor shook his head, edging slowly towards the edge of the square. His arm was still pinned inside his jacket, clutching tight at the bulk hidden there. He moved jerkily across the square, followed by Gabriel and Tanith’s eyes. Their stares were full of ill‐
natured humour, as if he had stopped being strange and had become an obscure joke. His face stung red, with something like humiliation.

It was there on Gabriel and Tanith’s faces. A message for him.

You’ve been defeated, at last.

A gap opened up between buildings beside him. He dived into it, into narrow cobbled streets that wound close and tight into the city. Here it was silent and less deadly. Gabriel and Tanith were not following him but their voices were, howling and shrieking their triumph at him, bombarding him with shame. So he ran.

He
had
learned something, he was certain. He had learned that – unless he had been witness to an elaborate act – Gabriel and Tanith
could
make mistakes, that they didn’t know everything. He hadn’t been defeated.

Not yet.

He clutched the shape under his jacket and ran on.

Bernice Summerfield woke in the heart of a dead square under a dead sky. She recognized it slowly. This was Cathedral, her afterlife. She was surprised that it was still here. Then she stared around at the buildings which rose like tombstones, and smelled the air that tasted of embalming fluid, and felt a surface like hardening flesh beneath her back. This was an ex‐
city. It had popped its clogs, gone to meet its maker.

He was dead too.

She wasn’t though, and that delighted her.

She tried to move her legs to lift herself upright. Her legs didn’t respond. She stared along her body and saw why. Both hung limply from the half‐
closed mouth of a stone Mandelbrot head. She closed her eyes, hoping that when she opened them again the scene might have changed. It hadn’t.

It might have been worse. Chewed though they were, her legs were still attached to her body. She took comfort from this small mercy.

‘My God…’ she moaned softly, stroking her temples. ‘That must have been some party. What was I drinking?’

She pulled her legs from the Mandelbrot’s dormant mouth and waggled them in the air thoughtfully. Her left leg stung with pins and needles but otherwise they seemed undamaged. The last of the Mandelbrot must have tried to swallow her. It had probably choked on her.

‘I’ll never be cruel to a jellybaby again,’ she vowed solemnly. She kicked at a stone cheek with a flailing foot before setting herself upright. ‘So, you’re one of the type who goes for the legs first. That’s a sign of psychosis. It’s what the Doctor does.’

The head remained dark and dormant. Its mouth and eyes were dark hollows in the stone, not quite vacant. Benny peered closer and saw shapes seething in the darkness, in the cavities. Wedderburn’s orchids. She recalled them without much fondness or hatred. They seemed like something from the distant past.

‘
Les fleurs du mal,
’ she whispered to the orchids, ‘but you’re not bad at all. You’re just misunderstood.’ The nearest of the orchid heads rose and spat at her.

‘Ah,’ she said, losing interest. She patted a stone temple.

‘I’ll tell you this,’ she told the head in conspiratorial tones, ‘you were a dreadful bureaucrat but you could make a career out of being a rock garden.’

The head said nothing. Benny pulled a face at it and turned away.

She almost wished she hadn’t. A dead Mandelbrot was amusingly grotesque at least. A dead Cathedral was bleak. The streets had cracked. The façades of the buildings had cracked. The towers had toppled and some still burned like a funeral pyre in the distance. Benny no longer sensed rot in the city – save the clean corruption of death. She had killed everything. Or maybe the grey man had, by sacrificing himself. Or Gabriel and Tanith, by setting the whole thing up. Or…

This was stupid. Who was going to argue about the responsibility for the murder of a pile of stones constructed in a vaguely logical pattern? She couldn’t imagine the case getting to court.

The grey man suddenly seemed to be at her side.
There is more to a city,
he seemed to whisper,
than its stones.

Benny spun round in shock. There was no one there. Her heart began to beat again.

Winterdawn’s bed was jammed into a crack in the street. A wardrobe Benny vaguely recognized lay broken open on its side nearby, spilling its contents. There was a lampshade, and a painting and an unopened bottle of wine. Benny recognized all from Winterdawn’s house.

She didn’t think about it. She went for the bottle, holding it out for the Mandelbrot head’s inspection.

‘You wouldn’t have a corkscrew on your person, would you?’ she asked.

It gave no answer, but Benny had expected disappointment.

She looked down at herself and a thought flitted across her mind.

These are my clothes. My real clothes, from the TARDIS, not the grey man’s idea of fashion. This is genuine, one hundred per cent Benny‐
clobber.

The second thought came slower, more tentatively. This was okay, it meant a lot more to her.

This is my body. I’m not dead. This is my real body, the one with the aches and the pains, the one I’ve hung on to since birth. My soul and body have been smashed into each other. I’m back. I’m back and arms and legs and head and everything!

‘I’m alive,’ she told the head jubilantly. The plants within trembled ominously. ‘I’m real. I am some body. And you’re just a head. You ain’t got no body, my friend. I shouldn’t joke I know, but do you get anything other than hats for your birthday? I could quite fancy you in a straw boater.’

‘Summerfield,’ the head slurred. Benny slipped back in alarm, the bottle falling from her loosened grip and shattering on the paving stones. She stared at it wistfully.

‘Now that’s not fair,’ she pronounced. She stared at the broken glass and the pool of wine slaking the pavement. She felt suddenly sour. ‘Like life,’ she added.

‘We cannot move,’ the head rumbled on, voice churning uneasily. ‘Exhausted is Cathedral, moribund and immobile. As it dies, so die we.’

Benny said nothing.

‘Carry us, Summerfield,’ the head pleaded. ‘To the Cruakh, to the seat of our power. If we might be restored then the city might grow phoenix‐
like. Become great again. Return to the programme. World saving and doubt spreading.’

‘
Carry
you?’ Benny spat the suggestion. ‘
Please
, I’m a delicate organism not a wheelbarrow! Besides, you don’t deserve it.’

The head rumbled, apparently frustrated. The plants in its eyes and mouth gibbered and thrashed.

‘Not for
us
, Summerfield. For the programme, for the grey‐
builder. Antipathy there may be between us, but also agreement on the programme.’

‘Listen,’ Benny said coldly, her voice and body tightening. ‘If you wanted me to respect you or your programme then there are some ground rules you should’ve stuck to from the start. For example, you should not have gone round chanting, “Death to Summerfield!” It’s bad for my soul.’

The head howled. Benny turned away in disgust.

A short, familiar figure tumbled round a distant corner. His clothes were stained with dust and water‐
dirt. Despite his dishevelment, his body was bristling with energy or exhaustion. One hand was pushed into the folds of his jacket, clinging compulsively to a bulky shape concealed there. He froze as he saw Benny, staring dolefully and shaking.

‘Benny,’ he called, slightly suspicious. ‘Is that you?’

‘Oh yes,’ Benny replied sweetly. ‘This is a genuine Summerfield, quite rare and worth a bit on the open market.’

The Doctor nodded abruptly, seeming relieved. He said nothing more but seemed to have accepted her as genuine. For her part Benny hadn’t the slightest doubt that this could be anyone other than the Doctor. Gabriel and Tanith were capable of many things, but she doubted they could fake
him
. She smiled wistfully, studying his face from across the Cathedral street. She saw much on the Doctor’s face – a cocktail of nuances. It was difficult, as always, to tell what he was thinking. His eyes seemed wide and tired. She fixed on them intently, trying to seem calm.

They stepped into each other, hugging briefly. It was a weary reunion, untouched by speech or humour. Cathedral wasn’t designed for gentle camaraderie. Benny was comforted by the embrace. She was alive, the Doctor was alive, they were together and just maybe things were going to be okay. And just maybe, the Doctor felt the same.

They swapped experiences slowly, stumbling over every word because every word might mean something important. As the Doctor spoke Benny found herself studying his face, finding new lines and worn patches. His eyes lacked their usual sparkle, grace and humour. There was a relentless quality in their place. Benny felt herself reflected in those eyes.

The Doctor came to his conclusion.

‘Winterdawn’s home was being eaten, great chunks being cut out of reality. The tetrahedron was at the heart of it… maybe it was hungry? I ran to the TARDIS where the hunger couldn’t reach, so I was safe.’

‘The tetrahedron and Cathedral are the same,’ Benny interrupted cautiously, as the Doctor paused. ‘Bit of a knotty concept to get your head round but… um, I can see odd bits of the house here and there, particularly here. It looks to me like the city has swallowed the house and everything in it. That’s what I call an appetite.’

The Doctor was nodding.

‘That’s what I thought,’ he agreed. ‘Have you tried asking your friend?’

He indicated the last of the Mandelbrot Set whom Benny had introduced with good grace at an appropriate point in her story. The Doctor had greeted it with a ferocious smile. The head had matched with stone silence. Only now did it speak. It recognized that it had their attention – its hard arrogance was returning. It still grated in Benny’s ears.

‘True,’ it said. ‘To survive collapse, Cathedral chews into the world, tasting and taking what it finds. This house was close. From this Cathedral takes new structure until the old is restored. This TARDIS – being outside of space and time – was inedible. Now to the Cruakh carry us, so that…’

‘Belt up, there’s a good head,’ Benny suggested. She turned back to the Doctor and found him grinning.

‘Have I said something funny?’

‘Yes,’ the Doctor responded innocently. ‘You said the city and the tetrahedron are one and the same. But I took the tetrahedron with me. I took it into the TARDIS where it couldn’t be eaten.’ He made a baffling smile.

Benny blinked. There was something meaningful here but it eluded her.

‘Do you know what I’ve done?’ the Doctor asked. Benny plumped for honesty and shook her head.

‘I’ve created a paradox.’

He pulled his arm out of his jacket. Sat on his palm, sizzling with a new, yellow light, was the tetrahedron.