Doctor Who_ Lungbarrow Part 35

The fish in the chimney.

A moment becomes an event, which becomes a deed, which becomes a legend.

He has brought back the wil .

Expectations, so long dampened by despair, are unearthed and dusted down, like the tarnished garlands being hung for Otherstide by the Drudges in the Great Hal .

Soon the darkness will be over.

They are herding tables and chairs into place for suppertime.

And Satthralope wil wake Quences at last.

The whispering stops.

The end? Not a happy end. Not a ghost of a chance.

Dorothee thought she had never seen the Doctor so withdrawn. His lip was cut and there was blood under his nose. And Chris Cwej, normally the lovable innocent (he'd hate that), looked utterly wasted.

The Doctor's arm was blue-black up to the shoulder. While Leela rubbed his bruises with some sort of herbal liniment she carried in a pouch, he listened quietly to what each of them had to say.

He looked distinctly uncomfortable when Chris mentioned the fish. 'Miracle? What miracle?' he complained. 'I don't believe in miracles. These things are natural phenomena.'

'Try tel ing them that.'

'It's a coincidence. A downfall of fish, frogs or water lilies can be precipitated by any simple tornado. Have they forgotten about ocean cones, when the Gallifreyan sea gets sucked miles high by an eclipse of the sun and the dark moon?'

'They think it's you.'

'What about Arkhew?'

'Gruesome,' said Chris, holding his head. 'But I've a few more enquiries to make.'

The Doctor grunted. Temper, thought Dorothee.

She told him about life in Paris, past and future. She left out her liaison with Georges Seurat. He'd only want to be introduced and then worry that the painter was going to die in a couple of years.

Leela talked about her life with Andred at the Capitol, where she plainly did not belong. She seemed fascinated with the Doctor's appearance. She had never seen him as anything other than the Doctor she had travelled with.

The tall, pop-eyed version that Dorothee had seen occasional y, either in her head or photos or somewhere.

150.

They both told him about the events leading up to their arrival at Lungbarrow. He s.h.i.+fted uneasily when he heard that Romana had sent them. He hardly seemed interested in the trouble at the Capitol or the dispatch that Dorothee delivered.

'Fred sent it,' she said.

The black globe dissolved in his hands as soon as he took it. Inside was an angular grey device. 'A data extractor with Loom attachment,' he said glumly and put it in a pocket.

'What's it for?' asked Dorothee.

'I'm not sure what Romana's implying. Now that she's President, she'll have agendas of her own. It just feels as if the Emperor has sent me a sword to fall on.'

There was an awkward silence. Dorothee wanted to hug him, but something warned her not to dare. Leela was busy, tending the cut on Chris's ear, so she tried a different tack. 'There's something I meant to ask you,' she said.

'What do you know about ballet?'

The Doctor suddenly showed signs of interest. 'I can just about tel a fouette fouette from a Fonteyn.' from a Fonteyn.'

'Only I've got this friend in London, 2000. She knows about the bike. And she's a dancer, right.'

'Ah.'

'And she keeps on about this ballet she's always wanted to see. But it's on in 1913.'

He cracked a smile. ' Le Sacre du Printemps Le Sacre du Printemps at the Ballets Russes. Twenty-ninth of May. It's a at the Ballets Russes. Twenty-ninth of May. It's a grande scandale grande scandale.

You'll love it. Get a stage box. You'l see the riot in the auditorium better from there.'

'Will you be there too?'

'It has been known. I could be in the wings with Nijinsky, beating time for the dancers. The poor things couldn't hear the music for the rumpus in the audience.'

They both laughed and hugged each other in relief.

'Oh, Doctor, you're such a control freak.'

'I know,' he said in her ear. 'But if I I don't do it...' don't do it...'

She still clung on tight.

'What else?' he asked.

It took a moment before she was able to say anything, but he waited patiently. 'It's the other Ace I met. The mirror image.'

'Yes?'

'Wel ...' She fished for the words. 'She was a vicious b.i.t.c.h.'

'Go on.'

'And I'm scared that I'm really like that. I mean, I know I'm hard and selfish.'

'You can be,' he said. 'That's what Time did to you. But you're still Dorothy too.'

'Schizo, you mean. Psycho Dalek-killing biker in a crinoline.' She let go with a forced grin.

He dabbed her nose in a way she had missed desperately. 'Look what Time did to me me.'

151.

'Look what you did to Time.'

He pul ed a face. 'I had plans for you, you know.'

'Tell me.'

'Oh, yes. In my great scheme, I was going to have you enrolled at the Academy here on Gallifrey. You'd have soon given the Time Lords something to think about.'

Suddenly she understood. 'That's what it was al about. Al those trips sorting out my past. You sly old b.u.g.g.e.r.'

'It didn't work, of course. Events overtook us and you had ideas of your own.'

'Sorry,' she said. 'Now the boot's on the other foot. It's your past that's getting turned over.'

He squeezed her hand. Then he glanced towards Leela and Chris and smiled fondly. 'I'm glad you're all here,' he said and went to sit with her.

'He's asleep,' she said, nodding at Chris.

The Doctor took off his jacket and laid it over Chris's shoulders. 'This can't go on,' he said. 'I have to stop it. I must reach the TARDIS.'

Dorothee saw him catch Leela's mystified stare. 'It's all right. I may have changed a bit, but it is me,' he said, looking her directly in the eye.

'Do not do that,' she said as if she was scolding a child. 'I know it is you.'

'Good.'

'Romana warned me.'

Strange, thought Dorothee. Leela has a sort of wise innocence. Bit of a wild Earth Mother, real y.

'How do you think Chris is?' he asked.

Leela gave him a steady look. 'He said he thought he was turning into the Doctor.'

'That's silly, isn't it?'

'Yes,' she said.

The door admitted Innocet.

'But if you can do it,' Leela continued, 'why can't somebody else?'

The Doctor cleared his throat uncomfortably.

Innocet wore an ancient and overlarge, ful -skirted dress the colour of a rusty sunset. 'I brought you these,' she said coldly, and laid some robes out on a table. 'Please put them on before supper.'

Dorothee was struck by how pale and haggard the woman was. Spindly against the extraordinary burden of hair on her back.

'Innocet, it wasn't me,' the Doctor called, but she had gone.

Somewhere a gong sounded.

152.

The Doctor fetched his umbrella out of a corner. He unfurled it using all the conjuror's gestures that Dorothee had seen at the Follies. With a flick, he turned the brol y the wrong way up and its inside had become a large mirrored bowl. He angled it under the big mirror on the wall. 'Before supper, I should show you round my House,' he said.

He levelled and angled the umbrella, mirror catching mirror catching mirror, until its reflections showed other views: the House's interior, room after room displayed complete inside an impossible camera obscura.

The gong sounded a second time.

The Cousins were a.s.sembling in the garlanded cavern of the Hall. Innocet and Glospin and Jobiska and Rynde and Owis.

No one spoke. No one dared.

They wandered around the huge tables, anxiously eyeing the Family silver (fish knives were laid) and a most unfortunate centrepiece, unsure where to sit.

They knew Satthralope's position at head of the table only too well; but for themselves, there were only five of them left and forty-four set places to choose from.

Dorothee tried to take it all in as Leela, at the Doctor's suggestion, related what she knew of the origins of Gallifreyan Families: the Great Schism and the Pythia's Curse which rendered the planet barren; Ra.s.silon's creation of the genetic Looms and living Houses to stabilize the threatened population.

'Ra.s.silon was a great delegator,' added the Doctor. 'Most of the innovations attributed to him were commissioned from others.'

Dorothee thought he sounded touchy on the subject.

He told them about his differences with his Family over their plans for his desk-bound political career.

He's being cagey, she thought. A 'bit of a disagreement' doesn't warrant burying the House alive.

'The House of Lungbarrow used to stand on the slopes of Mount Lung in the Southern Ranges about two days from Ra.s.silon's Rampart, which was built to keep out the marauding Shobogans in the third century after Ra.s.silon's death. The House overlooked the river Cadonflood which flows...'

It was too much to take in. The mirrors were displaying the dilapidated sights of the House. The whole North annexe was under flood, but Dorothee thought she saw something swirl through the black water.

In a hall, the Doctor's Cousins sat silently around a dinner table with something she could not make out at its centre.

'It's a forest beast!' declared Leela as they viewed the next sight.

'It's Badger,' said the Doctor.

A ma.s.sive bearlike creature was apparently working on the controls of the transmat booth with its ghostly figure.

For a moment, a malevolent face blotted out the scene. 'Satthralope,' said the Doctor and shut the umbrella up quickly.

The door admitted Innocet again. 'You must come down,' she said.