So Vile a Sin (32 page)

The Doctor said, ‘Are you quite ready to go up against Walid’s army?’

‘I will be,’ said Armand. ‘I’ll build up the largest army this solar system has ever seen. I’ll tear the throne out of the House Walid.’

‘I don’t think you’ll have time,’ said the Doctor. ‘History’s moving too fast for you, Lord High Sheriff. The Brotherhood kept you quiet with promises of power, and now it’s too late for you to act. Besides, I’ve only just beaten Imperial Intelligence to your door.’

Armand slumped back into his chair. The Doctor got up, looking out at the Alps again. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘it’s too late for all of us.’

It took Zatopek two weeks to die.

The Doctor sent Chris and Roz home to Kibero. Double-eye cleaned out Armand’s palace, checking every computer and physical record, interrogating his harem and servants. They left Zatopek where he was, on the Doctor’s advice that moving him would probably kill him. Iaomnet spent a fruitless afternoon trying to get him to talk.

The Doctor stayed with him the whole time, dozing by his bed and bossing the nursing staff around. Zatopek was often delirious in the last few days.

240

Once or twice he fixed the Doctor with his nearly blind eyes.

The Time Lord had been reading the first time.

‘Kuleya will be dead by now,’ said Zatopek.

The Doctor looked up from
Vurt
. ‘I told Iaomnet to give her high-security protection,’ he said.

‘They’ll have installed
immolate
into her subconscious,’ said Zatopek. ‘It’ll activate the instant someone tries to interrogate her telepathically. They’d better be standing a little distance away.’

The Doctor silently thanked the shutterfly’s designers. ‘A cruel thing to do to a child.’

‘A tiny price to pay for liberation,’ said Zatopek. ‘The liberation of an entire species, Doctor. How many lives is that worth?’ He fell asleep again.

Sometimes the Doctor tried to guess what had gone differently in this alternative Doctor’s life. Had he decided against destroying Skaro, leaving billions to be killed or enslaved by the Daleks? Had he found a way to stop Kopyion destroying the Seven Planets? Or had he just had cornflakes instead of scrambled eggs for breakfast one morning?

The next time Zatopek woke, he said, ‘No more silence, Doctor. Imagine it. We are the real human beings. It’s our responsibility, you see. Our responsibility to bring them across.’

‘You thought Aulis Crater would contain the answer, didn’t you?’ said the Doctor. ‘You thought that whatever was there would make your dream come true.’

Zatopek nodded. ‘We detected its psychic leakage. I believed it to be some kind of massive psi generator. We didn’t realize it was something even more powerful, more precious.’

‘You said you gave them – the Brotherhood? – the key to ultimate power. What did you tell them?’ Zatopek just looked away.

The Doctor said, ‘Armand was just a cover, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes. Of course. They never had any intention of making him Emperor, any more than they intended to help me. The Duke was just something to keep the double-eyes occupied while we attended to the real work.’

‘And what is the real work, Emil?’

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He just smiled, a nasty, fading smile. ‘You will find out, Doctor,’ he said. ‘You will find them, I have complete confidence in you. Hopefully it will result in your mutual destruction.’

Five hours later, he died.

He never did tell the Doctor which alternative he was.

242

Interlude

1 September 2982

The Doctor opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was a clock.

Two hours since Roz’s funeral. It would all be over by now.

Someone in a white medic’s uniform was standing over him, holding a handscan. He pushed the man’s hand away. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘I just need to rest. Please.’

His eyes closed of their own accord. Dimly he heard Chris telling the medic, ‘Take his word for it.’ There was a muttered conversation, drowned out by the sudden
clenching
of his left heart like a fist around a broken glass, the red rushing noise in his ears.

He opened his eyes again. The clock had jumped forward a quarter of an hour. The wall of the medical shuttle curved up and over to his right; a plastic curtain hid the rest of the vehicle to his left. They’d left him alone, covered with a thin blanket, a scattering of cool electrodes across his chest.

His right shoulder ached, inexplicably. He closed his eyes again.

His left heart
clenched
. He felt the sweat start out of his forehead. His body was still trying to heal the damage done by the heart attack, nanites racing to tear up the dead tissue, build fresh muscle in its place. Struggling to hold back death.

243

Clench.
He felt the weight on his chest, pinning him down. He opened his eyes.

The cobra was five foot long and impossibly heavy. He had never seen one this close before. He found himself admiring the detail of its face, each of the scales lovingly hand-crafted into a sleek, black, close-fitting garment, the lidless eyes behind the protecting spectacle, never closing, always watching. Green eyes, watching.

For a moment he wondered if the shuttle door had been left open – one of the pets from Leabie’s garden had escaped into the cool interior of the ship. For a moment he thought that someone else would come in and lift the weight of the snake off his chest.

But only for a moment.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘the Eternal Verity.’

The snake shifted her position. His heart
clenched
in protest, making him struggle for breath.

‘All right,’ he gasped. ‘You win. I give up.’

‘This isn’t a game,’ said the snake.

‘The race, then. The hare loses to the turtle. Don’t you understand? You win.’

Her tongue lapped the air near his face. ‘It’s our bargain.’

‘Then I’m ending it,’ he said. ‘Enough. I won’t fight any more.

Do what you want. Death. Regeneration. I don’t care.’

‘Not this time.’

‘What do you mean? Not this time?’

‘You haven’t learnt your lesson.’ She slithered forward, her tongue flickering near his ear. ‘Without warning,’ she hissed.

‘Without purpose. Alone and afraid.’

‘I know all about that,’ he said. ‘This situation meets those criteria, wouldn’t you say?’ He shut his eyes. ‘Quickly. Before they come back in and that medic starts doing goodness knows what with his Feinbergers.’

The snake chuckled, sliding down along his right shoulder on to the bed. ‘You haven’t learnt anything,’ she said.

He tried to move, to bring her back to him before she could seek out another of his friends. But his heart stuttered and
clenched
again, and he found himself sliding, sliding down into the dark.

244

Later, when he was sitting up in the shuttle’s personnel section, trying to drink tea from a plastic cup while the medic fussed over him, Chris said, ‘I didn’t want to mention this earlier, but we left the shuttle door open and the biggest snake I’ve ever seen got inside. It was OK, though: we threw it out before it could do any harm.’

The Doctor just looked at him. ‘Spitting cobra,’ said the medic.

‘You said it,’ said the Doctor.

245

Part Three

Valhalla

246

1

Callistro

25 August 2982

The Doctor wandered Leabie’s palace. It was silent and dark.

That was partly because it was the middle of the night. But even in the artificial daytime, it had still seemed silent and dark.

Missing something essential.

There was a lot of wandering to be done here. It was as though the palace had been made for explorers. The Doctor had a map, but he didn’t bother to look at it, just producing it when one of the population of security officers asked for his ID.

He came across Chris, floating on an inflated raft in a vast swimming pool. In the darkened room, the ceiling was covered in white ripples reflected from the water. There was no tang of chlorine in the air – nanomachines gobbled up the algae like microscopic piranha.

The Doctor sat on a deckchair, waiting until Chris’s raft drifted up to the edge of the pool. The bump woke Chris up. He blinked up at the Doctor. ‘I think I dropped my magazine in the pool,’ he said.

‘Here you are, sir,’ said the life-saver bot. The spindly android crouched down by the side of the pool and handed Chris the magazine, which it had carefully dried and pressed before reading several of the more interesting articles.

247

The Doctor watched the android climb back into its high chair, looking over the pool.

‘Oooooh,’ groaned Chris. ‘I have never eaten so much in my entire life.’

‘I gather the coronation party is still going on,’ said the Doctor.

Chris looked at his chronometer. ‘But it’s been three days,’ he said.

‘The previous Empress’s coronation feast went on for two and a half weeks,’ said the Doctor.

‘Citizens will make merry on pain of death?’ said Chris.

‘Something like that.’

‘Roz has been watching the news,’ said Chris. ‘You won’t believe the job offer she’s got.’

‘Is she still in the newsroom?’

‘I think so.’ Chris put the magazine over his face. ‘I am not moving for at least twenty-four hours.’

The Doctor found his way to the newsroom. Roz was still there, watching a vast bank of screens. The Doctor counted thirty-eight of them, all set to news channels, from TopTenPercent to the Jovian Intranets.

‘Hey,’ said Roz. ‘Pull up a chair.’ She was sitting with her feet on a cleaning robot, which was humming to itself with annoyance, flakes of ash just out of its reach. She was smoking, the packet of Yemayan Strikes propped up on a keyboard.

The Doctor sat down. Half the screens were showing footage of the coronation ceremony. One or two were showing the previous coronation, almost a century and a half ago. Helen Kristiansen, grey-haired and dignified and relatively sane, making the only career move up from President of Earth.

‘How is Leabie taking it?’ the Doctor said.

Roz glanced at him. ‘She’s in a marvellous position. Close business ties and a real personal friendship with the Emperor. It’s a good time for the House Forrester.’

Walid’s ceremony had been on a considerably smaller scale than his predecessor’s. There hadn’t even been any executions.

Just endless processions through the gardens of Callisto, special G roadways laid down to prevent the participants from floating 248

away. The plants stretched high and delicate in the tiny gravity, trees like clouds and roses like needles.

Every noble had been there. The Doctor had lost count of the counts. There had been marquesses and viscounts. There had been barons who reigned over just ten storeys of an overcity block and dukes who owned planets. There had been alien dignitaries, invited as guests this time, not the beaten and frightened leaders and warriors dragged along behind Helen I.

Walid had even made a point of speaking to them personally.

Even the Lord High Sheriff of Earth had been there, managing to look simultaneously sorry for himself and relieved that his head hadn’t been lopped off. They could do Armand for conspiracy, supposed the Doctor, but the truth was he’d got nothing out of the Brotherhood but promises. It might be better for the Empire’s stability to pretend it hadn’t happened.

What were they up to? Why had they withdrawn their allegiance? They were patient. Appallingly patient, patient the way a tiny crack in a glacier is patient. They would let a plan brew for a century.

‘Where are they?’ he said aloud. ‘What are they doing now?’

‘The Brotherhood?’ said Roz. ‘They saw which way the wind was blowing, dropped Armand like a hot rock, and went back underground waiting for their next big chance.’

‘Or is that just what we’re supposed to think?’ wondered the Doctor.

Roz looked at him. ‘You never can tell with these devious bastards.’

The Doctor turned his attention back to the screens. One showed Leabie in a cheerful interview. There were rumours of concubinage, which she laughed off. ‘We’re just good friends.

I’m delighted to be in a position to support the House Walid. The coronation is the best possible news for the Empire.’

‘She’s right, you know,’ said Roz, turning the volume down again. ‘Peace has broken out everywhere. Everyone’s certain again.’

‘That, and a massive ISN redeployment to a dozen colony worlds. Walid making a show of strength. No more monsters?

N-forms or altered humans?’

249

‘Nope. The Empire’s calm. Even the resistance are quiet: they’re probably trying to decide what they think of the new boy.’

‘So the crisis is past. Everything’s settling into place.’

‘Looks like it.’

‘And what about you?’

Roz lit up another cigarette. The Doctor waved the smoke away. ‘The Emperor’s personal secretary has offered me the position of Pontifex Saecularis. Head of the Order of Adjudicators.’

The Doctor looked at her, one of his slow, considering looks.

‘Are you going to accept?’ he said at last.

‘I already have,’ she said.

He reached out and shook her hand, solemnly.

‘Congratulations. There’s a happy ending,’ he said.

‘The position ranks just below the Emperor in importance,’

said Roz. ‘I’d be in a position to shape history. Get some justice out there, clean up this corrupt dump of an Empire. Starting with the Order of Adjudicators, which is filthy to the core. I’d start by ferreting out the conspirators who murdered my nephew and niece. Purge the Brotherhood’s infiltrators. If Chris wants to stay, I could appoint him Lord High Sheriff, set his family up with a nice little moon of their own.’

She took a drag, puffed out a cloud of smoke. ‘It also gives the Emperor a way of keeping an eye on the House of Forrester. An additional tie with Leabie can’t hurt. Keep her on side.’ She sighed. ‘I’d really like to believe that it really is all over. I really don’t want to hear any more bad news.’