Doctor Who: Lungbarrow (29 page)

In his glass-lidded casket set on the Loom of the House, Ordinal-General Quences can be seen sleeping, still as a corpse, until the time comes for his resurrection.

A tafelshrew, nosing about on the casket lid, is startled by the repeated echo of a growling engine. The creature darts for cover through a tiny black crack in the glass where, experience reminds it, it cannot be seen.

A grey figure in a long robe flickers along a passage on the third level. Old and angular. Shadows swirl in a cloak around him. Satthralope sees him in her mirror. The cold gruel spills from her shaking bowl.

137

The Doctor sat and watched the library door.

When the old man came through the wood, his dark cloak was bil owing slowly around him in the spectral wind.

The ornate hilt of a double-bladed dagger stuck out of his chest. Blood was stil running down his robe.

'Angels and ministers of grace defend us,' said the Doctor.

'Well?' replied the Ghost. 'Is that al ? No apologies?'

'For having murdered you?'

'For wrecking our plans.'

'
Your
plans, Quences, not mine.'

'Everything I have worked for. The work of thirteen lifetimes.'

'Which has probably turned to dust by now, thanks to Satthralope.' The Doctor directed the beam of a gun-shaped scanner at the Ghost. 'Better be careful, Quences. Your ectoplasmic levels are dangerously low. One might almost call them non-existent.'

The Ghost sat down in a chair without denting the dusty cushion. He studied the Doctor sadly. 'Over the centuries, this miserable House has produced nothing but servants and petty clerks. But you were different. You had a mind, and a cunning one at that. That's why I prepared your way.' The dagger hilt in his bloody chest had a fascinating way of bobbing up and down as he spoke.

The Doctor sniffed and glanced at Badger, who seemed oblivious of their conversation. How discreet he could be.

'You didn't do so badly, Quences. Ordinal-General of the Brotherhood of Kithriarchs is a fine achievement.'

'Oh, yes. A hard-won, hard-fought position. But you could supersede that by far.'

'And be the Family's first Cardinal? I don't think so. I failed my chapter certificates in officiating and legislating. I failed them rather miserably.'

'You failed them deliberately. Most of your results were calculated to barely win you a pass.'

'Well, what do you expect?' complained the Doctor. 'As soon as you arrive at Prydon Academy, they drum everything you know out of your head and replace it with years of lectures on the viability of panotropic racking systems.'

'No need to stop at Cardinal. You alone in this miserable House can achieve true greatness of power.'

'I know I could.' The Doctor strolled across to the darkened window. He looked at the Ghost's reflection in the glass. 'That was why it was such a relief when you disinherited me.'

The old man was trembling. 'I had such plans for you. Not for the House or that squirming lizard of Satthralope's, Glospin. But you. My successor.'

'You picked the wrong person, Quences. I had plans of my own.'

The Ghost rose angrily from his chair, his cloak slowly swirling. 'Still no apologies for keeping us waiting?'

'Why? What are you going to do? Change your will? If anyone can find it, that is.'

'By law, my wishes cannot be flouted.'

'Try tel ing your Family that. And tell me who real y murdered you.'

138

'You did, Doctor. I saw you.' Tears of ectoplasm welled in his ghostly eyes. 'I didn't expect that, I confess. But I was going to die anyway, so my arrangements were already made.'

'What arrangements?'

'Find out for yourself. You escaped once, but, now you're back, my plans can be realized at last.'

The Ghost turned and headed out through the closed door. 'That's right,' called the Doctor. 'Troop home to a churchyard or whatever wayward spirits do here on Gallifrey. See if I care.'

Quences's sepulchral voice echoed up from the cellarage. 'Find the wil , Doctor. Find my wil .'

'The others cal him "Wormhole" for the same reason that I cal him "Snail".' Innocet had walked Chris through the towering racks of tube books until they reached the far wall.

'You're not obliged to tell me,' he said.

'It's nothing for him to be embarrassed about. Just a slight. . .' She paused. 'Just a slight physical defect.'

'Yes?'

'A small convex protuberance on his abdomen. It's shaped like the curling shel of a snail.'

Chris was puzzled. 'But that's only his navel. His belly button. Left over from his umbilical. Everyone has one of those.'

He opened the front of his coloured shirt. Innocet looked away in embarrassment.

'No, they do not,' said the Doctor peering at them through some empty racks. 'Not around here.'

'Sorry,' said Chris and buttoned his shirt.

Innocet was staring through the racks at the Doctor. 'Who are you? Was it real y the Hand of Omega that came to collect you?'

'I'm your Cousin, Innocet.'

She put her hand to her face. 'I don't know what to believe. Your thoughts tel me that a legend reached out and snatched you back into the forbidden past. If it's true, what damage have you caused?'

The Doctor rounded the corner and faced her. 'If I was there, then I was part of it.'

Her eyes hardened. 'And you abandoned us to all this. How far back did you go? For all we know, you could have... you could have become the Other himself.'

'Don't be ridiculous. You know I always wanted to travel.'

'And perhaps you did come back to murder Quences.'

The Doctor growled. 'Why? Because he disinherited me? Perhaps I was glad to get away from the place! Perhaps I am a nasty alien, with nasty, progressive unGallifreyan ideas, infiltrating your terribly important Family!'

'Doctor,' said Chris gently. 'I'm the only alien here. But Arkhew recognized you as the murderer.'

The Doctor stalked away between the racks. 'I need to find the will!'

The others followed him back to the reading area where Badger was waiting. The Doctor ignored them. He seized the library door and pul ed it open.

Owis sprawled through it, landing at his feet.

139

The Doctor watched as Innocet helped her Cousin up. 'They told me,' Owis whispered to her, his eyes firmly on the Doctor. 'They told me who he is. Does that mean I'm going to die?'

'Don't be so foolish,' she snapped.

'Owis,' said the Doctor. 'Who killed Arkhew?'

The podgy Cousin gave a squeal and ran out through the door.

Badger lumbered away in pursuit.

Innocet rose to her full stature, dwarfing the Doctor. Her voice was tight with bitter anger. 'You must be glad that none of your other
important
friends are here to see this.'

The Doctor's hands folded and unfolded themselves. 'Some things are better kept in the Family,' he said.

Innocet walked out. The door slammed itself shut.

140

Chancing an Arm

The House was too quiet, as if it had a secret to keep. Innocet had hardly reached the end of the passage when Glospin caught up with her.

She almost smiled. 'I'm glad it's you.'

'Cousin?' He seemed genuinely taken aback by her warmth.

'Don't be surprised,' she continued. 'The Doctor, or whatever we are expected to cal him, is still the most insufferably arrogant, aggravating person I have ever encountered.'

Glospin's eyes glinted. 'We have to get out, Innocet.'

'Yes.'

'How old do you think he is, in terms of regeneration?'

She manoeuvred him into an alcove. 'Older than he looks. But, with no tally in the Loom, how can we tell?'

'Did he say what he's been doing, while we al were rotting down here?'

'He's been away. But I thought you knew that, Glospin.' She watched the old rancour creep back into his expression. 'Your arm, how is it?' she asked pointedly.

'He told you?' He fumbled his scarred hand into a pocket.

'Not verbally. He would never have been so truthful.'

Glospin's eyes narrowed. 'Surely he didn't let you into his thoughts?' He laughed. 'No, I don't believe you're that gullible. You know how he can twist things.'

'I know how deplorably you both behaved, Glospin. Al those years ago, when you visited his rooms in the Capitol.'

'Then you know what attacked me.'

'I saw. . . something. I'm not sure what it was.'

A smirk curled on his mouth. 'For days, there had been a major alert in the Capitol. Alarms were triggered everywhere. Antiquated alarms that no one even knew existed. There were unexplained sightings. And rumours started up that the Hand of Omega itself had returned. But no one could prove it.'

'Agency rumours, of course.'

'When I confronted Wormhole with my theories, he summoned that thing. It was the mythical Hand of Omega. It came to him like a faithful pet. Like that Badger thing of his.'

She turned to go. 'That was not the way that I saw it.'

'What else did you see?' He was walking behind her. 'Do you real y still believe he's just your Cousin?'

'No.'

'Did he tell you where he's been? Or why he's really come home?'

'No.' She reached her own door, went inside and slammed it in his face.

141

As she leant her back against the door, praying to keep it shut, Glospin's thoughts came spiking through into her head.

'He came home to claim his inheritance, Cousin. He assumed we'd al be dead by now. He called you an old
Pythia. And he said he'd make sure you never assumed your position as the next Housekeeper... I just thought
you should know.'

At last the backwash that has rippled through the House in angry gusts of engine noise, converges and explodes in a single golden thunderclap.

A machine roars its arrival and dies.

'Who's there?' cries Satthralope. Her fingers tangle in the laces of her boots. 'Who else has crossed the threshold uninvited?'

***

'St Rewth,' she stage-whispered. 'For a minute I thought something had gone haywire with our dimensions.'

'I thought that the first time I visited Andred's House.' said Leela. 'Wait here.'

She moved cautiously towards the tall doorway leading off the chamber.

Dorothée ignored the instruction and headed for the boarded-up window. She squinted though a crack in the wood, but it was black as night outside. Romana was wrong. They weren't underground at all.

The heavy air in the House smelt of oil. Somehow, the bizarre treetrunk architecture didn't surprise her. It was the Doctor's House after all. The dust-laden place could have been mistaken for derelict, but for the lamps that burnt along the wal s. She went to join Leela, who was peering into the depths of a shadowy passage.

'The Gallifreyans are sad people,' Leela said. 'There are no true children on their world.'

'Oh, the Loom business,' said Dorothée. 'I never understood that. I mean, if you're born, surely you're born as a kid.'

Leela shook her head. 'They are all born from the Family Loom as full-grown adults. They are like children at first and have to learn like children. Andred calls that time brainbuffing. He says the things they live with in the House are deliberately big, so that they feel as if they have been small.'

'Hang on,' said Dorothée. 'So you're not a Time Lady at all.'

Leela had begun to prowl around the room, studying the ancient weaponry, guns and swords, that hung from the walls. 'My tribe live on a world far from here in both space and time.' She hiked up her robe, climbed on to a chair and pulled an angular knife down from its harness.

'Tribe?' grinned Dorothée.

The chair squirmed, there was no other word for it. Leela jumped clear and landed, catlike, next to Dorothée.

'And be careful of the furniture,' she warned, hefting the knife in her hand. 'It can be as fierce or cunning as any beast in the forest.'

They both froze at the sound of scraping footsteps.

They simultaneously pulled each other behind a large cabinet as something very tall stalked into the room.

Chris watched the Doctor trying to leave the library. Every time the Time Lord got near the door, the tables and chairs jostled viciously into his path.

142

The Doctor said nothing. Chris couldn't exactly read him like a book. Instead, he was a captive audience as about a dozen intertwining texts were forcibly jacked into his head. Maybe he was getting used to it; he was beginning to separate the threads and focus on any one at a time.

'Suppose I did come back to murder Quences and then wiped my own memory. Would that account for all this
twitchiness? Do I or could I ever have had a doppelganger Cousin? No, no, no. The Loom always weaves at
random on the basic template. You can never choose what you look like. The chances of a double are infinitely
remote.'

This was against a background of thoughts that included the reciting of a historical text in what sounded like pigbin Orculqui, singing along with some sort of operatic heroine, pomming along with a honky-tonk jazz band, rehearsing a speech on the cultural dynamics of the planet Blue Profundis in the twin-sunned Sappho System and a list of ingredients for home-made trumpberry wine.

'Arkhew never said it was me. Perhaps Arkhew recognized the murderer as someone else. Perhaps he went and
confronted them and then got spiked.'

Chris said, 'How could Arkhew recognize someone else when the murderer looked like you? Who else was there?'

'
Is there no privacy?
' complained the Doctor's thoughts, but out loud, he said, 'Innocet saw someone leaving the room.'

'She said it
was
you,' said Chris. 'Unless you think she had a hand in killing Quences.'

'I can't read her mind.'

'But she can read yours through me.'

The Doctor gave up talking altogether.
'Why does she carry her guilt around in a long plait on her back? I don't
know what she would have done if she thought Quences threatened the House. It's an extreme situation. And then
there's Glospin.'