Doctor Who_ Slow Empire Part 5

'I have heard such things,' Jamon began. 'The Oscillating Monks of Rabmaka, for but one example, hold that '

'So what makes you think that being sliced up and vaporised with energy beams is any different? Something's transmitted, sure, but at best it would be a more complex equivalent of radio voices from something long dead, yes?'

Jamon was beginning to bl.u.s.ter now. 'The bodies built from atomies are perfect and complete, divine attractors for the ineffable quality that '

'I'm sure that you've encountered twins, too,' said Anji. 'Physically, they're completely Identical. Are they one and the same person? Here's a thought: suppose you're Transferring somewhere quick and local five minutes away, say and there's a c.o.c.k-up somewhere down the line. The next thing you know, you get the message that you've arrived, but you're going to have to wait and be destroyed when they get around to fixing the energy beams? How would you feel about that?'

'That would never...' Jamon said. 'That would...'

'So, yes, OK, maybe something really does travel. I can't say for sure that it doesn't. I'm just saying that the odds are stacked against it. You really should consider the possibility that what you've really been doing in your so-called travels is committing a particularly gruesome form of suicide, while somewhere else, something else is cobbled together and loaded up with a collection of false, dead memories '

The slap was more shocking than painful. Thinking about it later, Anji judged it to be the inept and somewhat conflicted slap of someone who had never, really, done something similar in his life. In the anger of the moment, though, she automatically went into a cla.s.sic self-defencecla.s.s stance.

'Touch me again and I'll kill you,' she said. 'I'll kill you if you touch me again.'

Jamon de la Rocas was looking at his hand with a sense of horrified puzzlement, as though wondering how he could have possibly done such a thing. Abruptly, he dropped it and became utterly cold and formal.

'Madam,' he said stiffly, 'words cannot express my shame at such a despicable act. I can only hope that with time you might find it in your heart to forgive me. I shall take my leave of you now.'

With that, he turned on his heels and strode off, leaving Anji, fists clenched, trying to work out what she was thinking from a confusing mess of hot and angry emotion.

'Are we having fun yet?' said a voice.

Still hyped up from adrenaline, Anji gave a startled little yip of fear. She turned to see the Doctor wandering out from a clump of quasi-floral golden wiring. Anji hadn't seen him come into the arboretum; there was probably another door into it, off to one side.

'I do try not to be judgemental about such things,' he said blandly, 'but I have to say that was a particularly vicious and cruel thing to do.'

Anji rubbed at her cheek. 'It didn't hurt, really. It just stung a bit.'

'If you say so,' the Doctor said. 'I've mentioned how certain aspects of local s.p.a.ce-time might be affecting us adversely, but ultimately that's really no excuse.' He shrugged to himself, dismissing the matter, for the moment, from consideration. 'I simply came to warn you that we'll be materialising soon and, the way things are at the moment, we could be materialising into anything. Of course, that's not necessarily a bad thing, or anything much out of the ordinary at all that being rather the definition definition of "anything" in the end.' of "anything" in the end.'

2.

No Shakrath

Burning with fever and babbling incoherently, Anok Dha slithered through the th.o.r.n.y undergrowth. His body was slick with sweat, blood and infection, the rags that barely covered it filthy and in shreds. His left hand broken as it was was buried in what remained of his furpelt tunic, clutching something the nature of which was not immediately apparent to his heaving, raffling chest. Though there was no light, here in the woods, some nonexistent watcher might have seen his eyes, wide and burning.

By now, of course, he was almost completely mad.

Behind him shafts of hard, bright light scythed through the woods; the night was alive with things tearing through the underbrush, the shouting of what may or may not have been men, the excited yelping of dogs.

A root twisted under Anok Dha's foot and he pitched forward, flinging out his hands to take the impact the object he had clutched so desperately to him flying from them. A shard of some mirror-bright matter that was not stone, or wood, or bone a substance that resided in some place relative to any other substance known to man as a diamond might he to cheese made from the milk of a ring-tailed lemur.

Anok Dha tore several of the remaining nails from his fingers as he scrabbled through the roots and undergrowth, looking for the object. The men from the Citadel and their dogs were very close when he at last found it. He tucked it back inside his furpelt and set off running again, running headlong.

As the last member of his settlement left alive, the last guardian of the shard for which that settlement had been razed, the burden of its keeping had fallen upon him. His life was of no matter, now, but the shard must be made safe at all costs.

There were sounds, here in the forest. Fitz had once heard the word 'whippoorwill' and vaguely understood that it was a bird or a kind of tree frog or something like that, and what with one thing and another had never bothered to look it up. The word word, though, conjured up uneasy overtones of something else, something that might whip its scaly tail out of the darkness of the trees, noose it around your neck and jerk you up into that darkness.

The things calling to each other in the forest sounded exactly like that.

The trees were wrong, too, their trunks and branches of some hard and fibrous variety of fungus rather than wood, growing on some principle other than fractal divergence. He had forgotten how the subtle bits of wrongness wrongness on an alien world bit deep into the mind so deep that it took quite some length of time for that mind to even to wonder about it in the first place. The slightly fungoid wood gave off a pale phosph.o.r.escence, like the ghosts of silver birches, so that you could see enough to walk through them while knowing nothing of what might lie beyond. on an alien world bit deep into the mind so deep that it took quite some length of time for that mind to even to wonder about it in the first place. The slightly fungoid wood gave off a pale phosph.o.r.escence, like the ghosts of silver birches, so that you could see enough to walk through them while knowing nothing of what might lie beyond.

Something in the nearby, fernlike undergrowth rattled like a seven-armed snake playing the maracas. Fitz s.h.i.+vered with something other than the cold, bitter enough though it was, and thrust his hands into the pockets of his big coat. He was dressing in seventies styles at the moment, still having the attachment of an outsider to that era, not having lived through it the first time.

'So you have no idea where we are?' he asked the Doctor.

'Not exactly.' The Doctor himself seemed happy enough. With his lank curls and current, slightly battered and shabbified bottle-green dandification he might have been a less consumptive Byron strolling by Lake Geneva and thinking of giving Mrs Sh.e.l.ly some rather startling ideas. 'Ordinarily, I think, the TARDIS manages to read read a planet, if you get what I mean. Picks up radio broadcasts, scans any computer or satellite communications systems it might find, even a.n.a.lyses the layouts of cities and settlements, and pulls out meaningful bits of useful information. I think there's a big database or something like that in her memory. Whatever other damage those creatures did with their incursion, though, I think they've damaged that. Or this is simply a place where even settlements don't exist. It's not working, I think, in any event. All I can tell you is that we've travelled... several light years in a planet, if you get what I mean. Picks up radio broadcasts, scans any computer or satellite communications systems it might find, even a.n.a.lyses the layouts of cities and settlements, and pulls out meaningful bits of useful information. I think there's a big database or something like that in her memory. Whatever other damage those creatures did with their incursion, though, I think they've damaged that. Or this is simply a place where even settlements don't exist. It's not working, I think, in any event. All I can tell you is that we've travelled... several light years in s.p.a.ce s.p.a.ce from Shakrath, but not in time.' from Shakrath, but not in time.'

Fitz dispiritedly noted the number of 'thinks' creeping into the Doctor's speech. There had been a time, once, when the Doctor had known known things, any number of things, with such a flat if oblique certainty that you trusted him on them instinctively, even if what he told you sounded like pure gibberish. Then he had lost his memory almost completely so completely that he had been genuinely astonished, over a long period of years, that something so basic as his own body hadn't aged and died over those years. Quite how he had managed to go for so long, without it so much as occurring to him to wonder about the physical fact of having two or more of certain things, where other people had only one, was probably best left unpondered. things, any number of things, with such a flat if oblique certainty that you trusted him on them instinctively, even if what he told you sounded like pure gibberish. Then he had lost his memory almost completely so completely that he had been genuinely astonished, over a long period of years, that something so basic as his own body hadn't aged and died over those years. Quite how he had managed to go for so long, without it so much as occurring to him to wonder about the physical fact of having two or more of certain things, where other people had only one, was probably best left unpondered.

In a way, thought Fitz gloomily, it would almost be a relief if the Doctor lapsed completely back into that amnesia. In his current state things were coming back to him constantly, but in a garbled fas.h.i.+on so that even the Doctor himself could not divine the ultimate truth of them. This led to a degree of erratic behaviour, to say the least.

The sensible thing, having materialised in this unknown place, would have been to sit tight and wait for the TARDIS to complete whatever obscure healing processes it was going through. The Doctor, on the other hand, had become all but terminally restless in a matter of minutes. There was a whole new world out there to explore, he had said, no doubt full of delights and exciting perils and whatnot, so what were they all doing sitting here?

'Let's just see if we can't find any locals around to ask, yes? I'm almost positive the locals will be friendly.' The Doctor tramped on ahead, whistling cheerfully.

Fitz hung back a little and glanced to where Anji and the stranger they had met on Shakrath, Jamon de la Rocas, were contriving to ignore each other pointedly de la Rocas with an operatic kind of nose-high silent umbrage about him, though Anji was holding her end up very well in the enthusiastic-amateur league. It seemed that both of them were walking together, almost side by side, for the express purpose of making it quite clear that each was not talking to the other.

Fitz was aware that Anji had taken against de la Rocas from the start for some reason, but he had no idea of what had caused this active hostility and was a little frightened to ask. The guy had probably not read some recent article in Cosmopolitan or something like that.11 'You've travelled in this Empire of yours, haven't you?' Fitz asked Jamon de la Rocas, falling into step with him and ignoring a little Anji-related sniff nearby. 'Can you tell where we are by the stars or something?'

'But of course, my dear sir!' Jamon de la Rocas paused and gazed theatrically skywards. 'You will note, of course,' he continued chattily, 'that I am bringing into play all the optological faculty at my command, learned at the hand of none other than the High Court Astrologer of Drustiri a man so impressed by my ac.u.men in this area, mark you, that on completion of our discourse he presented me with a small astrolabe from his own private collection! Long since lost, of course, in circ.u.mstances that are neither here nor there. And do you know what such skills and not to mention natural ac.u.men tell me?'

'What do they tell you?' Fitz asked.

'That it is dark and the heavens are obscured by a vegetative canopy. I thus infer that we are in a forest at night.'

'Thanks a lot,' said Fitz.

'You're quite, quite welcome, my good sir,' said Jamon de la Rocas.

A thought occurred to Fitz.

'Your people get around by way of this Transference thing, right?' he asked Jamon. 'With all these Chambers and Stations and stuff. So couldn't there be any number of other worlds, worlds like this, in the same area of s.p.a.ce? Worlds you wouldn't know about because they don't show up in the map, or whatever it is you use?'

'Indeed there could,' said Jamon thoughtfully. 'Although how would men get to them across the vast and breathless night? Some kind of tin capsule fired from a ma.s.sive ordnance?' He chuckled. 'Such a thing, I have to tell you, is frankly unbelievable though I do in fact recall a time...'

They walked on through the woods. Ahead of them, the dark form of the Doctor meandered about in a way that reminded Fitz uneasily of an inquisitive terrier.

'Am I the only one who gets worried about stuff like this?' he asked quietly, slowing to fall in step with Anji.

Anji shrugged. 'It's when he starts going after rabbits you should start to worry,' she said.

As if on cue, the Doctor came bounding back through the woods. 'There's a clearing of sorts up ahead,' he said enthusiastically. 'A fire and what appear to be caravans. Do you think it's worth a look?'

In a sulphur-reeking bedchamber in the higher promontories of the Citadel of Souls, the old High Amba.s.sador Elect lay dying. He had been dying for quite some time, now, although perhaps a more correct term would be being killed being killed.

'Come along, now,' said his aide, Gamak, soothingly, forcing the wooden spoon full of nouris.h.i.+ng gruel into the Amba.s.sador's mouth despite all feeble, blatting attempts to push it away. 'You have to keep your strength up. Who knows what might happen if you don't keep your strength up, yes?'

'Muh, muth-muh,' said the High Amba.s.sador. He had long since lost the power of coherent speech. 'Mugh muh-muh muh muh muhmuh!'

'That's easy for you to say,' said his aide with mock severity, such as a nurse might use to buck up the spirits of a declining patient. 'Personally, I can't wait wait until you're up and around again. Do you realise how onerous it has been, having to perform your Amba.s.sadorial duties while you remain until you're up and around again. Do you realise how onerous it has been, having to perform your Amba.s.sadorial duties while you remain in absentia in absentia12 like this?' like this?'

'Muh muh!' said the High Amba.s.sador, defiantly. 'Muh-mughmuh muh muh muh!' muh muh muh!'

The aide grew tired of his nasty little game. The old man clearly had but hours now, if not minutes. He dropped the bowl and spoon of nouris.h.i.+ng gruel (so nouris.h.i.+ng, in fact, that it was a host to entire seething colonies of lethal bacterial organisms) and carefully wiped his hands. He wandered across the chamber to where a looking gla.s.s was affixed to the wall, regarded his reflection. Crude lines and whorls had been tattooed upon his face some years before, matching, so far as the human hand was capable, those similar markings on the face of the old Amba.s.sador. In a certain sense, as he looked at the bedchamber, it appeared to contain two versions of the same man, one wasted away to nothing, the other in hale if somewhat stringy middle age. His head, as was custom, was shaved bald, though the first new shoots of stubble were evident. His black and elegant robes had a slightly rudimentary look about them, as though they were not quite as black or elegant as they hoped.

'For centuries, now,' the aide said, ostensibly for the old High Amba.s.sador's hearing but in fact for his own, musing aloud, 'we have kept the flame alive, pa.s.sing down the rituals, pa.s.sing down the faces and names...' He put a hand to his marked face, gently tugged it as if it were some pliant mask. 'And now, at last, the Engine of Transubstantiation is almost whole again. The final piece has been located, and soon it shall be returned to us and joined. The Engine shall be repaired. As good as new.'

'Muh muh-muh. Muh muh muh...'

The aide paused in his musings for a moment, considering. Then, with a shrug, he walked back to the bed and took up one of the pillows that were scattered across the counterpane.

'I take your name, now,' he said, pressing it to the feebly jerking face of the old High Amba.s.sador. 'I take all your t.i.tle.'

The clearing was much as the Doctor had described which made it all the more puzzling that, having seen it, he had taken them in the wrong direction for a while, slapped his head, taken them in a completely different different wrong direction, backtracked, and finally hit the spot more or less by accident. wrong direction, backtracked, and finally hit the spot more or less by accident.

'Are you all right?' Fitz had asked him. 'I mean, it's not just that you're going mad on us, it's like you're going mad on us in different ways ways, like different people are doing it...'

'I...' The Doctor had paused, and frowned in a genuine puzzlement of his own. 'Things seem to be surfacing, but from the wrong directions directions, if you get me. Have you been following my speech patterns? I know for a fact that I've been using different constructions more or less at random. That definitely seems the sign of an unbalanced mind. I wonder what's causing it. Oh, well...'

Fitz wasn't quite sure what worried him most: the fact that the Doctor had pinpointed what was happening to him with the sort of sudden and transient lucidity of the seriously schizophrenic, or the fact that, having realised it, he didn't seem to care. Then again, Fitz thought to himself, who am I to judge comparative mental states? What with one thing and another, I have the memories of someone anywhere between a year and several hundred years old.

The clearing was occupied by a number of covered wagons that, for all their construction, were reminiscent of conveyances of the old West. With tarpaulins stretched over a simple frame, they held something of the Romany caravan about them. Intricate st.i.tchwork on the canopies showed what from a distance, in the flickering light from the fire in the centre of the clearing, looked worryingly like an a.s.semblage of grotesque figures at some ritual sacrifice. When one got closer, of course, one saw that they were merely pictures of a happy audience enjoying a variety of circus performance. Emphatic lettering, in some indecipherable local language, no doubt told all and sundry the particulars of what marvels to expect.

A number of the beasts that no doubt drew the wagons in breed a kind of cross between a lemur and a camel were corralled off to one side. A number of other beasts were roasting on makes.h.i.+ft spits over the big campfire. They had an odd and somewhat repulsive look to human eyes, but that may have been due to the fact that they had been skinned whole, and most human eyes these days don't come much into contact with whole skinned animals. The smell of roasting, notwithstanding any squeamish modern sensibility, was mouthwatering.

A number of people, mostly humaniform, were warming themselves against the night chill by the campfire. Others were warming themselves by practising several of the acts pictured on the wagons. A bearlike man lifted barbells so precisely like those one might find in a cartoon a pair of globes connected by a pole that it was almost possible to ignore the fact that he was lifting them with two sets of arms. A trio of conjoined tumblers, connected at the shoulders, practised a pinwheeling routine that gave them the aspect of an ambulatory and slightly less inbred sigil for the Isle of Man.

A lady snake dancer did something quite extraordinary with her serpent13 and you'd have to be watching her for a while and closely, Fitz noticed, to realise that the snake was in fact attached to her. It was a tail. and you'd have to be watching her for a while and closely, Fitz noticed, to realise that the snake was in fact attached to her. It was a tail.

Children in ragged but relatively clean attire ran squealing and laughing among the adults, who apart from the occasional friendly cuff contrived to ignore them in that casual way that spoke of at least half an eye on them all the time. Used in various travels to sizing up newly encountered communities when he got the chance and they weren't communities of alien killing machines, or warrior tribes who immediately went on the attack Fitz formed the impression that these people were almost certainly friendly and harmless.

'Well, these people seem friendly and harmless enough,' the Doctor said cheerfully, echoing the thoughts of his companion almost word for word. He turned back to where Anji and Jamon de la Rocas were still quite obviously not talking to each other. 'I think if we all '

'Greetings, sir!' The voice was not so much loud as resonant; you could imagine such a voice reaching right past the back of the stalls and into the G.o.ds.

'Oh my various G.o.ds,' said Anji bad-temperedly. 'There's another one.'

Standing before them was a man of remarkably similar form and rotund girth to de la Rocas. He did not have the facial markings, but the similarity was such that they might have been brothers. He was dressed in worn and ancient but obviously originally expensive finery, including but not limited to a splendid waistcoat on which a number of phoenix-like firebirds swirled.

'My name, sir, is Professor Axon and it my fortune to be leader of sorts to this sorry band of vagabonds.' The man gestured to take in the encampment with the air of one showing off the most stately court in the known universe. 'The Miribilis Itinerancy of Marvel, Miracle, Terpsich.o.r.ean Splendour, Prestidigitation, Palmistry, Tumbling, Drollery Costum'd j.a.pery and, I confess, anything else that comes to mind on the spur of the moment.'

The Doctor grinned. 'It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I'm the Doctor, and these are my friends and travelling companions, Anji and Fitz.'

'And I,' proclaimed Jamon de la Rocas, puffing himself up majestically, 'am known as '

'A clown, eh?' Miribilis exclaimed. 'Come to join us, eh, for a life on the open cart track? Well, we can always use more clowns. Your make-up is very impressive, I must say.'

Jamon glared at him with murderous spite, took a deep breath and opened his mouth.

'I'm afraid we've lost our bearings a little,' the Doctor cut in hurriedly. 'I'm afraid that, what with one thing and another, we've become a little lost. I wonder, Professor, if we might presume upon your good nature and make some small use of your fire?'

'But of course! One shouldn't be without warmth and sustenance on a night like this.' Miribilis became confidential, a.s.suming what he probably thought of as sotto voce sotto voce. 'Just between ourselves I wouldn't want to worry my worthy little troupe unduly, you understand but these are somewhat dangerous parts. They do tell of a Citadel hereabouts, where an old Order still practises the dark and loathsome arts of the Old Ways.'

The way he said it left not a one unaware of the import of this.

'The Old Ways?' asked the Doctor.

'From the time when Thakrash was a part of the Empire,' said Miribilis. 'And bad old days they were, to be sure. Still, we should be safe enough in numbers. Come, share our humble provender, eat, drink and be merry though though I must warn you, our hospitality comes at a terrible and horrifying price.'

'Fair enough,' said the Doctor, cheerfully.

The High Amba.s.sador Elect the man who had so recently taken upon himself that t.i.tle entered the chamber at the very heart of the Citadel of Souls. Even after centuries it still bore the mark of the cataclysm that had partially destroyed it the repairs, over the years, could never hope to match its original and marvellous construction. Large patches of clean, flat wall were plugged with rough clay brick; the timber roof, when it rained, constantly leaked.

In the centre of the chamber, held together by a conglomeration of supports and clamps, stood the Engine of Transubstantiation a spire of mirror-bright, alien material, shattered and painstakingly pieced back together. From it there came what can only be called a soundless soundless sound. There was nothing audible to the ears of men, but something in the mind could tell that the Engine was emitting a constant whine on some very low, or possibly some very high, level and that the cracked harmonics of it were in some abstruse manner grating on the Soul itself. sound. There was nothing audible to the ears of men, but something in the mind could tell that the Engine was emitting a constant whine on some very low, or possibly some very high, level and that the cracked harmonics of it were in some abstruse manner grating on the Soul itself.

The reconstruction of the Engine was all but complete. A single shard was still missing and, rather in the way that a single scuff can spoil a brand-new pair of shoes, or a single chip can spoil an otherwise pristine porcelain vase, this incompleteness drew the eye and bothered it. It was as if the Engine were something that could exist, in a sense, only if it were whole. A single imperfection, no matter how minute, and it was barely even noteworthy as trash.

The man who now called himself the High Amba.s.sador Elect regarded the defunct Engine thoughtfully. Soon, now. Soon the missing piece would be here and, suitably prepared, it would be fitted into place. And the Engine would bestir itself and awaken. The Transubstantiation would occur. And nothing, quite, the High Amba.s.sador thought, would be the same again.

It was later. Slices of roast beast and fungus bread had been accompanied by the volubility of Professor Axon Miribilis, who had explained some of the history of the world Thakrash. The Doctor had not brought up the fact that his companions and he had come from other planets, but had merely suggested that they came from some long way off and were interested in the particular versions versions of well-known stories that might be told in these parts. of well-known stories that might be told in these parts.

Substantively, the tale was simple. Thakrash had once indeed been a part of the Empire, a colony world comprising slaves sent from various other worlds to work on what was effectively a global lumber yard. The Amba.s.sadorial Corps, here, had served in the capacity of drivers travelling the world in giant stalking machines, entire palaces on telescopic legs, from which they oversaw and administered punishment to the general population. In their resplendent isolation, it seemed, any number of Amba.s.sadors lost all restraint and had abused their power horribly. (A lengthy digression by Miribilis on the fate of such slaves as one particular Amba.s.sador of legend had taken a carnal fancy to quite put Anji off her fungus bread.) Such a state of affairs might have lasted indefinitely, had not the Thakrash Station of Transference been suddenly destroyed by what Miribilis had termed 'a star that fell still burning from the sky'. Its destruction had sparked a slave revolt, driving the now all but entirely isolated Amba.s.sadorial masters into hiding those that survived having their stalking machines pulled down by sheer and angry weight of numbers, in any event.

Since then, for more than five hundred local years, the society of Thakrash had been left alone without Imperial aid or imposition. A forest-track network of settlements had developed, the inhabitants of each living on more or less the same level as that of a medieval hamlet. Sustained travel was rare, though Miribilis recounted several of the small adventures of his travelling band among bandits, brigands and such reprehensible villains who might lure the unwary into their village with promise of wanton Thakrashly pleasures merely to burn them alive in some obscene fertility rite before you could say 'sacrificial athame'.

'And now the time has come,' said. Miribilis, his tone one of slightly disquieting solemnity, 'for you to pay for your supper.' Anji got the distinct impression that the other members of the troupe, who had casually shared said supper with them, were now paying close attention. It was not a sense of some impending threat, more of expectancy. All the same, the feeling of being beholden in some as yet unknown way was not exactly comfortable.

'Delighted to,' said the Doctor. 'And what kind of payment would that actually be?'