Doctor Who_ The Death of Art Part 10

'Major Henri. H e ' d read the Dorothee file. It had been in Dreyfus's papers. He wanted your secrets. He said if the Brotherhood could gain them it would be able to prevent the wars. I ' m sorry.'

'What for?'

'Why, betraying you of course.' The new voice was sardonic. Turning, the Doctor saw a tall figure in a faded yellow coat move out of the shadows at the end of the room. 'He works for the Grandmaster now.' It was Joseph Henri, the man from the Ministry of War. He pointed a revolver at the Doctor. 'And so do you, Doctor.'

'I can't believe it,' Pierre said, setting down his tea which had gone cold while the woman had outlined the events that had led her into the sewers. 'I know Brother Tomas and I know the sewers.' He whistled between his teeth. 'Tomas was good to me when I lost my sight; and I've worked underground all my life. The sewers have been bread and dripping to me, and wine and vinegar besides. There's nothing down here to harm a person.'

115.

'What breed is your dog?'

The change in subject took Pierre by surprise. 'I don't rightly know, Madame. He was given to me by Tomas after I lost my sight, to be my eyes and company for me, so I've never seen him.'

'He has very intelligent eyes. He reminds me of the hunting dogs on my family's estate.'

' W h a t . . . what colour is he?'

'Sandy brown. Like a neo-labrador.'

'Yes, that would suit him. I've often wondered what colour he was. I called him Lucifer when I thought he might be as black as the old gentleman, if you'll pardon my frankness, Madame. 1 suppose I'll have to change his name now.

I ' m sorry, I ' m rambling. So few people come to see me nowadays. I ' m forgetting your predicament. Where would you like us to guide you to? We know all the sewers, do Lucifer and me.'

'Could you guide me back to Tomas's garden? He has something of mine that I want back.'

Tomas was trying to remember the beat.i.tudes when he heard the noise. It was a nasty thick self-deprecating sound, like a jackal clearing its throat. Tomas wondered if he had ever heard a jackal. He tried to rise.

'No, don't get up. I'd like to remember you just the way you are. On your knees like this, without even a flowerbed for justification.'

Tomas stood up. The name 'Montague' floated through his mind. An empty name without any mental images attached to it. Despite the lack of a prompt from his defective memory, he felt a frisson a frisson of fear. of fear.

Turning, he saw that the buzzing voice came from a tall figure swaddled in grey robes, wound tight as bandages. It broke off into another cough, a real one this time, painful and wracking. The two figures with it sidled forward to support it; one on either side. The first of the figures was human. The second was not.

116.

Roz let Pierre lead her through the tunnels. He seemed kind enough, if eccentric, but there was a watchfulness in his blind eyes that she did not like. Perhaps it was just that he was blind but his eyes were perfectly formed. Loss of sight where the organ was intact was unknown in her century, at least among the citizens able to pay for an hour in an autodoc.

The sooner she was out of his sight, so to speak, the better she would like it.

Tomas moaned in pain as the demon closed its birdlike claw around his hand and squeezed. The bones in his fingers broke under the skin.

Despite the agony he was determined not to give Montague the satisfaction of complying with even the simplest of his wishes. There was no point. He could see death in the old man's eyes. Montague was going to kill him anyway. Without his volition a sentence formed itself on his tongue.

Mocking. Courteous. Against reason his lips formed the words: 'I didn't expect you to come yourself.'

A buzz of laughter spasmed from Montague's throat. 'I could hardly let an old friend shuffle off this mortal coil without pausing to show my respects. Could I, Jean?'

He motioned for the demon to release Tomas.

Tomas cradled his shattered hand, holding it close to his body like an injured baby. The impulse that had made him speak had abated, but Montague's words demanded some response. He settled for honesty.

'Why do you call me that?'

'You deny it?'

'I have no memory of ever having gone by that name.'

Montague sniffed. "This is very tiresome. You are quite the likeliest candidate, you know.' He glanced at a pocket watch, large as a silver turnip in his wizened fist. 'The likeliest alive by now, anyway.'

'Why would I lie? You're going to kill me a n y w a y '

Montague craned his head to one side and picked nervously at the skin of his lower lip. 'Oh, my dear, how incisive. You even sound like Mayeur. Well, I will not 117 prevaricate. A decent conversation is quite impossible if both parties are lying. I am going to kill you. Irrevocably, beyond even my power to repair. You've faked your own death too often, and this time I am not prepared to kill you only to find your authority still runs among my Brotherhood. Once that is established, though, there is no reason why your death should be unpleasant. Philmore, the vial if you please.'

Montague's human supporter, a cadaverous man dressed in a shabby ulster, reached into the inner recesses of his coat.

His hand came out a ma.s.s of white insects, crawling and biting. He screamed, a thin bitter cry of anguish. Tomas saw that he had only two teeth, one upper, one lower, like broad serrated horseshoes, and the inside of his mouth was mottled like a toad's skin.

The creatures burrowed into his palm, sending a spray of scarlet into the air. He collapsed into a foetal curl of pain, writhing under his coat. Montague chortled. 'Philmore always was absent-minded.' He kicked the ulster viciously, and it burst with a rotten tearing sound. The coat was empty of flesh. Bones covered with a sickly yellow residue stained the black earth. 'And ambitious. I can smell ambition, you know. It smells of orange blossom and black roses.' Montague bent down and fished something from the coat. It was a gla.s.s vial closed with a rubber stopper. "This contains a rare essential oil. A botanical scholar of your eminence will recognize it when I mention the medieval legend of the Upas tree, or the Black Lotus of Stygia. It is tasteless, painless and quite fatal.' He gave the ulster a final little kick, almost a dance-step, of disdain. 'Its one disadvantage is it does attract insects but, taken internally, I guarantee that it will not bother you in that respect.'

The demon gave a rasping gasp of horror. One of the insects that had devoured Philmore clung to the back of Montague's hand. Tomas realized Montague had picked it up with the vial. A m o m e n t of wild hope burst through him. Then Montague raised his hand to his lips and dismissively crunched the insect between his teeth.

'Simply, tell me that you are truly Jean Mayeur, and I will 118 let you drink the vial. Otherwise things will not go so easily with you.'

Tomas nodded. 'Throw me the vial, then.'

Coming out of the sewers in the street by Brother Tomas's house, Roz had taken her leave from Pierre. He had stood and watched her climb back into the garden before departing with his dog, and his direct gaze had raised the hairs on the back of Roz's neck. In the garden she had hesitated between investigating the chapel or the house. The screams from the chapel decided her.

'I almost wish I were this Mayeur. It sounds as if he has led you a merry chase.' Tomas opened the vial and poured it on the ground. It steamed theatrically for a second. 'I barely know you, Montague, but already this seems typical. If you must murder me I think a bullet in the back of the head would serve well enough. I will not drink poison for your amus.e.m.e.nt. If you wish to murder me that will be your crime; I will not threaten my immortal soul with the sin of suicide to please you.'

'Cease your prattling!' Montague flung off the supporting arms of his follower and hobbled forward. 'Your doddering Freemasonry was a joke when I met you, a group of local landowners playing at defunct black magic and rigging deals in the Council of Deputies to keep their noses in the trough. I brought you power and you let it be stolen from me. I brought you energies that would have let you rebuild the Empire and you used them to grow novelty roses.'

Tomas bowed. 'A certain amount of what you say may be justified, but I am afraid I remember it only vaguely, as if it happened to another. I have made the only peace I can with G.o.d, and if I have kept any power from your hands then I may hope to have done his work.'

Montague's demon follower stepped forward, sliding nails like hypodermic syringes out from the swollen tips of its fingers. 'Let me cut out his tongue, master.' The words, formed by a hard tongueless mouth, spat out like curses.

119.

With a shock, Tomas realized he recognized him as if through a haze. It was the man he remembered tormenting in his garden. He had hoped that memory was a lie or a fantasy.

Montague chortled at the meaning in Tomas's glance.

'Oh no,' Montague laughed. 'You 'You would never dirty your hands with transmogrifications, would you? Not unless it was would never dirty your hands with transmogrifications, would you? Not unless it was necessary.' necessary.' He made the word sound a curse. 'My followers remake themselves; they do not have to be tortured into other shapes. They are not my victims. They embrace my powers.' He rested his hand for a moment on David's head, and stroked his fur paternally. 'Oh, your little infiltrators made their children's attacks on my life. David even got close enough to touch me. But he understands the truth now. I have freed them from their orders, and they have chosen me.' He smiled. 'Perhaps you're right. Our methods do differ. I, at least, have never been a hypocrite.' His voice wheezed with good humour. 'As a Brother of the Church, Tomas, you will be familiar with the need for Christians to emulate Christ.' He gestured at the ma.s.sive tenantless crucifix above the altar. 'We are going to help you.' He made the word sound a curse. 'My followers remake themselves; they do not have to be tortured into other shapes. They are not my victims. They embrace my powers.' He rested his hand for a moment on David's head, and stroked his fur paternally. 'Oh, your little infiltrators made their children's attacks on my life. David even got close enough to touch me. But he understands the truth now. I have freed them from their orders, and they have chosen me.' He smiled. 'Perhaps you're right. Our methods do differ. I, at least, have never been a hypocrite.' His voice wheezed with good humour. 'As a Brother of the Church, Tomas, you will be familiar with the need for Christians to emulate Christ.' He gestured at the ma.s.sive tenantless crucifix above the altar. 'We are going to help you.'

In a dark carriage galloping through the city, the man who had been called Brother Tomas screamed. Mirakle ripped the silk sleeve of his dress coat and bound it round the stigmata in Tomas's wrists. It had begun. They were killing the doppelganger. doppelganger.

'How is it?' he whispered.

'How do you think?' Tomas yelled. 'Make the coachman drive faster, I must get out of range. I am not protected. The decoy is still linked to me psychically. I feel its pain now.

When it dies I will liv e its death.' He bit into his cheek with agony, and his face turned old and drained. 'd.a.m.n him, why didn't he drink the poison? It would have been so quick. Too quick to have been induced across the link. It cost my agent his life to suggest that mercy to Montague.'

Mirakle hammered on the roof of the carriage with his cane.

'Lash the horses. Run them to death if you must. A man's life is at stake.'

120.

Tomas squirmed, and gasped. An oval of ruptured flesh burst redly through the side of his travelling cloak.

'The spear of Longinus,' Mirakle muttered. Tomas screamed, and his voice broke down into a mad babble: 'I would have drunk it, but he is me, is me, is me.'

Mirakle cradled Tomas in his arms. This was worse than it had been with Mayeur.

The Doctor raised his hands into the air. 'One question?'

Henri nodded indulgently.

'This room. It's a kind of null envelope, isn't it? A psychic dead-zone?'

'Yes, the product of some of the alien knowledge gathered over the years by the Shadow Directory. They used it purely for its healing properties. We will find it far more useful, I suspect.'

'Like you do now?'

'What?'

'It's protecting you now, isn't it? I can feel it.' The Doctor crinkled his brows in concentration. He could feel a power beating on the outside of the Pink Room. 'Something thinks you ought to be dead.'

'Shut up.'

The Doctor beamed slyly. That had got close to home.

Major Henri must be as aware of the force as he was. A wave of pain and death dissipating in the pyschosphere of the city, groping for weak-spots. Looking perhaps for more than that, for minds of a particular stamp, for particular individuals, or a particular individual. "This room is a good block, but it's not perfect is it? I imagine you're in some pain now. It would be a shame if the block failed.'

'b.a.s.t.a.r.d.' Henri drew his pistol. 'You are not so useful to me that I could not decide to kill you now if you become too annoying.'

The Doctor glanced at Francesque. 'If you trust me, take my hand.' He stretched out his arm across the bedclothes.

Roz watched the figures in the chapel through the stained 121 gla.s.s from her perch in the orange tree as she stripped down the rifle, rea.s.sembling the clumsy mechanism quickly. This time she must not miss.

She checked the sight. Cross-hairs and a squint, what a way to aim a weapon. Twenty years' instinct expected it to self-correct in her hands. Her target's skull was full in the sights. Whatever he had done to her, she could not let anyone die like that. She pulled the trigger. The stained gla.s.s window of the chapel shattered.

Francesque Duquesne grabbed the Doctor's hand. His power, freely given, leapt through the Doctor's brain. Precognition; thoughts out of sync with time. A way around the barrier of the Pink Room. A spark of ozone and fire grounded itself through the Doctor and Francesque. Across the room, Henri fell like a dead man, his head a b.l.o.o.d.y ma.s.s, his wrists torn and bleeding, his side a spear wound. A psychosomatic Christ.

Staggering to his feet, the Doctor put his ear to Francesque's chest. The Directory agent's heartbeat was faint and shallow, but steady. He would live but he was in no condition to travel. 'Doctor.' Francesque's voice was a whisper. 'I saw it. I saw ahead. Closer this time. The toyshop in the Street of the Four Winds, that's where it is. The Doll's House, the centre of the storm.'

Crucified and dying, Tomas did not feel the mercy of pure velocity as it blotted out his pain.

Montague roared with anger.

'David, kill me that impudent musketeer.'

Roz dropped out of the lower branches of the tree and began to run as David burst from the door of the chapel. His back-to-front legs looked clumsy, but he ran like a bird on fast-forward. The rifle was j a m m e d so she threw it over her shoulder, hoping to break his stride.

No luck. Her chest hurt with exertion, the muscles in her legs were spasming. The ground mugged her when she was not looking.

122.

Inspector Jarre banged on the door of the tatty lodging house.

Surely Armand could afford to stay at a better cla.s.s of residence than this. He lit a match and consulted the address he had written on a sc.r.a.p of paper; yes it was correct, just as the Surete records indicated.

An old man wearing a flannelette nights.h.i.+rt and a long cap with a ta.s.sle stuck his head out of a cas.e.m.e.nt window and swore at Anton. The argument was still raging at fever-pitch when Armand, spick and span in his uniform as if he had never been asleep, came out of the cheap hotel and stood at Jarre's side.

Jarre hurled a last insult at the dotard in the nightcap before turning to Armand. 'I want the truth. W h o are you, and what do you want with me?'

Emil crouched in the dripping doorway and thought about going home. A thin drizzle of rain cascaded off the gutters above him and ran down the refuse-infested alley-way. The current residence of the Family was a short walk from here, down the narrow street, but he did not have the courage to go further. The Family was difficult enough at the best of times, without the requirement of explaining that you were returning in a different body than the one you stormed out in.

While logic told him he had nowhere else to go, the stored pain of a thousand angry confrontations made those last few steps almost physically beyond his power. His new body's house had been no sanctuary. The nosy old man had woken him with his frantic knocking. When the gendarmes arrived, Emil had been barely a street away, running. It had taken him all his strength not to kill the old man. a.s.sa.s.sin's instincts?

He hoped so. The alternative was that they were his own.

He could no more return to the house in the rue Morgue than he could, in this powerless state, grow wings. The past was too strong there. Even stronger perhaps than it would be in the Family's current house.

He doubted he would be welcome on the quai St-Bernard.

Madelaine had loved the aristocratic pallor he had brought to their nightly a.s.signations. Now he was normal, he suspected 123 he would lack the gothic charm that had enchanted her. This clumsy, brutish body was good for fighting and striking down an enemy, but as a lover he felt it would disgust her.

She had less experience of such things than the Family.

Uncle Johann would understand, but there was precious little chance of finding him, away from the rest of the family, with this body's pitiful senses. In his own body he could have concentrated his perceptions, making the night a flash of searing blood-red or, by expending greater will-power, have overlaid the true colours of daylight onto the black and white world of the dark. Now he could barely make out the frontage of his father's shop at the corner of the Street of the Four Winds. There was no sign yet that he was regaining his powers or his old form. Despite his disgust at this lumpy, almost unfinished body, he had not yet succ.u.mbed to the desire to wish himself back as he had been.

He was still deciding how to approach his father, for he knew that when the misery of his predicament outweighed his anger he would crawl home like a wounded animal, when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

'I think you ought to know, Mr Veber,' a voice said, 'that you are being watched.'

Emil started. He had heard no one approach. This handicap was killing him. It was like living with his head in a flour sack. The speaker was a man dressed in a crumpled white linen suit. He held a battered metal flask in his other hand.

'Would you like some tea?'

Emil considered. Common sense demanded that if anyone was watching the toyshop it was the Brotherhood. This man claimed to be watching the watchers but he could as easily be one of that unholy fraternity. It was too hard a problem to solve in the freezing night, under a dripping awning. He took the offered flask. The tea might be drugged, but at least it would be liquid, and might retain some of its heat. He must get warm again. He honestly did not care beyond that.

The man unscrewed the top of the flask and inverted it to form a cup which he pa.s.sed to Emil. Then he unscrewed another top which the removal of the first had revealed, and 124 poured a hot aromatic stream of tea into Emil's cup. Emil held the steaming drink close between his hands and let the hot fumes warm his face.

"Thank you, whoever you are,' he said with as much polite-ness as he could muster. He still felt damp, put upon and generally at odds with the world; and common sense, only briefly abandoned, demanded that he retain some semblance of suspicion. 'Who are you?'