Doctor Who: Lungbarrow (5 page)

Andred's port bleeped again. He activated the screen and watched as the angry face of President Romana appeared. He noted that she was attired in her full white and gold-collared ceremonial regalia.

'Castellan Andred? Where in blue blazers is that transduction order I gave you?'

Taken aback, he picked the crystal cube out of its courier case and held it up for her to see.

'It's here, Madam. I've just had it returned from Accessions.'

'Then why hasn't the transduction been completed?'

He had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. 'But it has. I was waiting for confirmation from Chancellor Theora.'

'
Our Guest
hasn't arrived.' There was an uncustomary hint of panic in her voice. 'You know I can't deal directly with the situation myself. Not now. If the Agency find out what's going on...'

'I'll follow it through immediately, Madam,' he said calmly. It was no surprise that Romana was up to her neck in clandestine intrigues, mostly of her own making. And she styled herself as chief advocate of the new open-government policy. Sooner or later the truth would out. Andred had arranged the security for these secret off-Gallifrey talks himself, but he was not attending them and had no idea whom they involved. He simply followed instructions from the Chancel or. The trust they invested in him was appreciated. But even so...

'It would help if you could tell me exactly who or what
Our Guest
is,' he ventured.

She shook her head. 'I can't tell you, Andred. Security, you know.'

'I am security, Madam President.'

'Yes, but you won't like it.'

21

'As you wish.'

She sighed audibly. 'Andred, in my term as President, there wil be nothing more important than these negotiations. Actually, there's been nothing so important for thousands of years. Thousands and thousands.

Everything depends on them. We can't afford mistakes. So please, just find out what's happened to that transduction beam.'

'Very good, Madam.'

'Thank you.' Her grave demeanour lifted a little and a studied smile broke the gloom. 'How's Leela?' she said in a careless sort of way.

'Very well, thank you,' he responded slowly.

'Oh, good.' She sounded greatly relieved.

Andred paused for a moment. 'Why?' he asked, puzzled.

She laughed nervously. 'Oh, no matter. Just asking.'

'Your tunic is covered in fruit stains,' observed Almoner Crest Yeux over his glass of tea. 'Castellan Spandrel would have had your eyeballs for epaulettes over that.'

Captain Jomdek smiled.

'The Castel an is not my commanding officer, sir.'

'No, of course not. Whichever way Andred regards his elevation, he's been reduced to the level of a functionary among Madam President's army of lackeys. The Council are just pawns in her wretched open diplomacy schemes.'

'Yes, sir.'

'It was al right when we merely observed the aliens, or made the occasional necessary adjustment to their development. But having to actual y talk to them over supper... wel , that's an entirely different tray of condiments.

Omega knows where it'll all end.'

'Will that be all, sir?'

Yeux waved a weary hand. 'Yes, yes, Captain. I'll pass your report up immediately. No doubt our superiors wil be suitably grateful.'

'And the subject of the transduction order?'

Yeux scrutinized the ambitious young man with renewed admiration. 'She had to be kil ed,' he said flatly.

'To extract the information we needed? Will that be enough?'

The Almoner Crest refilled his tea glass from the pot on his samovar. 'Enough about what, Captain?'

'Information on the ex-president, sir. The Doctor.'

'We'll see,' said the old man and sipped his tea.

Leela sat back in a chair on the balcony of Andred's quarters and sulked. She longed to get out. She had filled the rooms with plants and flowers until Andred sneezed, but they were only a gesture against the grey view of turrets and towers that the balcony overlooked. It was too cold at the 119th level of the Citadel for the balcony to be open.

Looking down through the glass partition, you could see the clouds below in the valley between the buildings.

22

Since K9 was absorbed in some calculation of his own, she flicked idly through a catalogue of ancient weapons that Andred had brought her from the Capitol armoury museum. The Time Lords regarded the weapons as barbaric creations, but she was intrigued by their designs. She had visited the museum once and upset an old man called the Curator by removing a spin-bladed dagger from a display and testing its throwing power. After that, Andred had banned her from handling weapons in the Capitol.

With no Rodan or Romana to visit, she wondered about visiting the House of RedLooms again. For Andred's sake, she would endure his Cousins for a day and then go off on her own, out into the forest beyond the Family Estate.

She had done it several times before, even sleeping out several nights and bringing back bunches of plants or animal skins for Andred to see and learn from. He even joined her on one occasion, and they had lain together under the stars that burnt in the ochre sky.

The Gallifreyan forest was very different from that on the world where she had grown and learnt to hunt. Some trees had leaves like clear water, others like silver. There were flowers that glimmered in the dark like tiny candles.

Once when she was hunting alone, a forest beast like a striped pig-bear had attacked her and tried to drag her up into a tree. It had torn her arm badly, but she had slain it with her knife and struggled back to the House of RedLooms with its ears as a trophy.

None of Andred's Cousins knew how to treat the wound, because it refused to heal natural y in a day, the way Gallifreyan injuries do. A Hospitaller-surgeon was summoned from the Capitol, but Leela refused to see him. She said he was not a Doctor at all. Instead, she treated herself with a diffusion of berries and leaves, boiled over an open fire - something which alarmed his Family and the House too.

'Mistress?' said K9.

'What is it?'

'The information that we did not give to Master Andred.'

'Yes?'

'The files at the Bureau of Loomographic Records.'

'Yes?'

'They have been withdrawn.'

'You mean someone else is looking at them.'

'Negative. Withdrawn meaning wiped, erased, destroyed.'

Leela beat a fist against the side of the chair. 'Then someone else has also made our discovery.'

'So it would appear.' K9 paused. 'One moment, Mistress.' His ears waggled. Leela could hear a high-speed stream of data warbling inside his computer body.

'Who are you talking to?' she said.

The data abruptly stopped. 'Apologies, Mistress.'

'Who were you talking to, K9?'

'Myself,' he quipped brightly.

'We should have told Andred,' she complained. 'We should have told him everything about the House of Lungbarrow. Then he might have listened.'

'The House of Lungbarrow is missing,' said K9. 'Wiped, erased, destroyed.'

23

'Yes,' she said sadly.

'And it was the home of the Doctor.'

24

C

hapter Three

Talking to Yourself

The harpy shrieked and spread her tattered black wings above her. She ran at Chris, taking to the air, beating the
stench of carrion over him in fetid gusts. He flung his arms up in defence as her claws snatched at him. Her filthy
hair jangled with jewels and amulets. She had an eyepatch.

Chris stumbled backward, but she caught him in her talons, dragging him under her dead weight. She perched on his chest and tore out his heart with her beak.

***

Even in the super-buoyant water of the TARDIS's bathroom, he knew he was sweating. Bad dreams again. 'It's OK,' he kept repeating to himself in between deep calming breaths.

The Doctor had said, 'It's fine if you drop off in the bath. Just don't do it face down.' Hence the lilo.

Normally Chris didn't let that sort of thing worry him, but he'd had more than a headful of stress lately. Still working through it. Could be years before it all came out. He'd better not let on to Roz, though. He realized he had clutched the wrong side of his chest for his heart and felt a lot better.

Something bobbed against him. The Doctor's plastic duck with a goofy grin on its beak. For a moment, he thought it had been laughing.

He rolled over on the water and stuck his head under the surface. How did the loofah always sink to the bottom when everything else floated? He couldn't even dive for it. The density of the water just bounced him back up to the surface again. Giving up, he struck out for the tap end and hauled himself out of the bath.

They must have reached Extans Superior by now. An idyl ic backwater world off the main space lanes (said the brochure) with breathtaking beaches and exotic nightlife. The Doctor muttered something about mosquitoes, but promised to get them there fifty years earlier, before the place got ruined by tourist development. Which wasn't exactly what Chris had in mind.

Chris reached for a towel and shook out his yel ow hair. Then he remembered what had happened to Roz. He was using her towel. It stil smelt of her. It was stil here after all this time. Still fresh - that was the TARDIS for you. He stood for minutes on end, his face buried in the towel, grateful she hadn't been total y cleared away, listening to the slap of the water reverberate in the huge tiled bathroom.

Damnation. How could he forget that? Lose the rest, but don't forget that. That was unforgivable.

He had a dull ache in the smal of his back. Even the familiar thrum of the TARDIS was niggling him. He was so tired, but if he was still getting dreams like he'd just had, he didn't want to go back to sleep ever again.

You've been through al this already, he reminded himself. It's just working through. First of all you have to forgive yourself.

OK. He was forgiven. Easy. Too damn easy. He stil wanted to go out and get smashed.

Failing that, he could go and take it out on the Doctor.

Dorothée McShane opened her eyes and looked at the white ceiling overhead. She had a pain in her chest where someone... someone who had climbed out of her mirror when she'd dropped her guard, had shot her.

The weapon had been a high-impulse carbine - the sort of heavy-duty gun carried by anti-Dalek squads in the Flova trenches during her time with the Irregulars. One raser lozenge could slice the legs off a Marsh-Dalek at sixty metres.

25

It wasn't something she'd had to think about much lately.

A face slid into view. It was the girl cal ed Ace again.

She sat on the side of the bed like a hospital visitor. She'd pulled her hair back into a ponytail and was wearing black leather trousers, a Stone Roses T-shirt and a black bomber jacket covered in badges. Young with no sense of style.

'You were clinical y dead for about twenty minutes,' she said.

Dorothee peered down her blouse. There was a dry burn scar dead centre of her chest. A fierce little hole was scorched through the Chantil y lace. No blood. 'At that range you could hardly miss. I didn't think you could adjust the level on those things.'

Ace studied the gun. 'You can't,' she said.

'So how come I'm still here?' Dorothée sat up and reached for the weapon. 'Show me.'

'No chance.' Ace jerked it away. She produced a small flask from her bomber jacket. 'Here. Drink this.'

Seeing the look of distrust on Dorothée's face, she grunted, 'Yeah. I'd feel the same.' She unscrewed the cap, took a hefty swig and blenched a little. 'Half way across the universe and it still has a hell of a kick.'

Dorothée took the flask. 'I left this at home. In my room in Paris. How did you get hold of it?'

One corner of the girl's mouth edged into a smirk. 'It was a present from a starship trooper. It's a keepsake. For services rendered.'

'Not like that,' snapped Dorothee and resisted the impulse to hit the little bitch.

'Yeah?'

'Six days we were together. On Crocarou Station, before I flew out on a mission. We didn't think I'd come back.'

'Tell me about,' interrupted Ace. 'And when I did, the base had been blown apart by Dalek shock troops. I threw up in someone else's kit bag. I still cry when I remember him.'

Dorothée gulped back her anger. 'That was me! I did that. No one knows about it. I never told anyone!'

But Ace had tears in her eyes.

Dorothée swigged hard from the flask. This Ace knew exactly which raw nerve to hit. Stil , the brandy had the desired effect. She could kid herself she wasn't half famished or frightened for a while. The flask was fuller than she had ever kept it. Enough to drink her tormentor under the table. She passed it back and studied the girl.

Ace's face was wrong. It wasn't quite a mirror image. It was the wrong way round. Dorothée got a bad feeling that the girl was real. 'Tell you what,' she said. 'There's no afterlife. There wasn't a tunnel with a bright light at the end of it.'

'Tough,' said Ace and swigged at the brandy. She shifted further up the bed. 'How long have you been following me?'

Dorothée hunched herself up at the pillow end. 'And I thought you were following me.'

'First sign of madness. Talking to yourself.'

'But I'm not, am I?' said Dorothée. 'I'm Dorothée McShane. And I
never
wore those trousers with that jacket.'

Ace leant forward. Her eyes were like ice. 'Can't both be real, can we?'

26

Dorothée held her ground. 'Truth or dare,' she said.

'OK,' nodded Ace, unfazed. 'Be my guest.'

'Tell me your name first.'

'Easy,' she said. 'I'm the cat-girl. I'm the Dalek-killer and the lion-hunter. I'm Time's Vigilante. My name's Ace. So what's yours?'