Doctor Who: Lungbarrow (36 page)

'I think the Doctor's found his Family,' said Romana.

'They will never get across in those boats,' Leela said.

The House shuddered. A rain of plaster and wood began to fall from the atrium's dome, splashing into the lagoon.

The white branches that held up the roof were twisting and tearing themselves loose. The three companions watched as two treetrunk pillars, one on either side of the water, wrenched themselves free of the walls and tilted inward. Branches crackled and snapped as the massive growths wound and matted themselves together into a single span over the lagoon.

Immediately, the crowd began to shuffle over the new bridge.

'Where's the Doctor?' demanded Romana as the first Cousins reached the near side.

None of them answered. Their eyes were empty. Load of zombies, thought Dorothée, watching the procession until the last skeletal stragglers had passed.

'Come on,' she said, leading the others across.

***

'Not more companions,' he said when he saw them. His voice had a Scottish burr. 'Sometimes you're more trouble than you're worth. Al right, just stay together, do as you're told and try not to al need rescuing at once.'

He deposited the shape at their feet. 'Beaten up by my own Cousins,' he continued.

The shape had a hat on. It was the Doctor, more bruised than ever. 'Only my dignity,' he whispered unconvincingly.

Chris seemed to lose interest. He wandered away and sat in a corner.

The Doctor flinched when they touched him. 'I only wanted to be part of the Family,' he said. 'I went through al the correct procedures. Gene weaving, birth trauma, education, acne. . . obviously it wasn't enough.'

'We could leave in the TARDIS,' said Dorothée.

'No! No one goes near my ship.'

He was very apprehensive when he recognized Romana. 'What's she doing here?' he said in Leela's ear. 'Doesn't she have a planet to run?'

'I've come to help,' said Romana.

179

'It is true,' said Leela.

'Any more of you outside?' he called. 'It's getting like the Last Rites or a wake.'

'Doctor,' Romana said sternly.

He sighed. 'You've done very well, Madam President. The future is so important.'

'And the past?' she said.

'Oh, the past. The past is dead and buried. I'll never know now.' A look of despair thundered across his face. 'And the future? I couldn't see beyond my seventh regeneration. The original Eighth Man Bound. Perhaps I have no future to see...'

His eyes closed.

'He's working himself into a premorphic trauma,' said Romana across him. 'Unless we do something drastic, he may deny himself regeneration.'

Dorothée leant forward. 'Doctor, if you're not part of the Family - '

'No,' interrupted Leela. 'You cannot ask him that.'

'I'm
me
now,' he whispered. 'What good is that...?'

'But who were you?' said Dorothée.

The Doctor's words were drifting away. 'Too many thoughts. Can't think any more... Sorry.'

'He's hardly breathing,' said Leela.

There was a movement at the door. A woman with short brown hair was leaning weakly against the frame. She wore a plain white shift and was dragging a rust-coloured dress behind her. 'If he's to live, we must unlock his mind.'

She walked unsteadily into the room.

Dorothée stared at her. 'Who are you?'

The woman held up the dress. 'His Cousin,' she said.

Leela scrambled up. 'Innocet? What happened? Have you regenerated? You must rest.'

The woman nodded wearily. She was shorter and her face ful er than the old Innocet. 'Don't be concerned for me.

We must help him.'

'Romanadvoratrelundar,' said Romana, awkwardly offering a hand. 'Please come and sit down. Are you sure you're up to this?'

Innocet closed her eyes. 'The more support, the better. Now, please sit in a circle.'

They sat and linked hands, circling the Doctor.

Innocet took a deep breath and began muttering to herself.

Behind them, Chris clutched his head. '
I am
the Doctor.
I am. I am. I am
!' He pulled off his boot and threw it across the room.

The companions glanced warily from one to another.

180

Innocet's head went back. Her eyes were white, the colour of looking inward.

'Why did you leave us?' Her voice resonated through her fingers, into their heads, making the circle one. 'Where have you been? Who are you?'

'Vultures!' shouted the Doctor. His body arched as if something was being torn out of him. He slumped back and lay stil .

'Can't catch me,' whispered Chris.

Innocet shuddered and sat back. The circle was broken.

'He's gone,' she said, her voice trembling. 'There's nothing. His mind is dark. I was too late.'

181

The Abysm

Three two one, three two one,

A wreath of roses lay.

Rassilon's dead and Omega's lost,

The other one's gone away.

Three to wonder and bide their time,

They'l al come back one day.

Transcribed from hieroglyphics in the Domdaniel Caverns on Strava.

***

'Still no sign of regeneration,' she said as if she was being deliberately insulted.

The House was rumbling a commentary of its own.

The new woman called Innocet repeatedly waved a green bottle under his nose. He gave not so much as a twitch.

She shook her head. 'It's as if he's cut himself free.'

Leela picked at an amulet on her necklace.

Dorothée half smiled. 'When I asked him about the ballet in Paris, he said he might be there. I knew he'd do that.'

She shivered. 'Stupid. I don't think I'll go now.'

The lamps flickered and dimmed. There was a groan from the corner.

Innocet turned. 'Chris? Is that you?'

Another groan.

She touched her palm against the Doctor's head. 'His consciousness is closed. But what about his subconscious?'

They al turned to look at Chris.

'Bring him into the circle,' said Innocet quickly.

Chris put up no resistance as they lifted him across and laid him beside the Doctor.

They linked hands again. As Innocet concentrated, Dorothée felt a dizzying energy pulsing round them. She couldn't have pulled her hands away if she'd tried.

A pale glow like a candle flame appeared hovering over the centre of the circle. There were shadows moving in the flame. It expanded slowly, absorbed them all into the heart of its aura. Around them, the shadows coalesced into solid thoughts or memories.

Back. Back...

'Doctor?' 'Doctor?' 'Doctor?' cal ed by so many different voices.

He is lying in the TARDIS, outraged that he could do such a thing to himself.

He is lying in the TARDIS. Nausea overcomes him. The Queen bat was ancient and almost dry...

182

He is lying under a tower of steel. It feels as if his neck is broken, but such moments are prepared for.

He is lying on a laboratory floor. The TARDIS brought him home. Home? Do you call this home?

He is spinning in the darkness. But it's not a death sentence, oh no. The Time Lords are just confiscating one of his lives.

He is lying in the TARDIS. Al that work has left him a bit worn out. Never mind, we'll see where this leads, hmm?

Come along, come along.

'Seven lives,' whispered Innocet. 'This is his seventh life.'

***

The sun was setting, slashing the sky with blood. A towering wall of ancient stones was caught in the gory light.

Seen from above, the fortification stretched as far as you could imagine. Birds wheeled in the air below them.

'Wait for me,' called Chris, and grabbed Dorothée's hand, breaking into the circle.

'Are you OK?' she shouted through the rushing air.

'Suppose. There just wasn't enough room for both of us in my head.'

They flew downward. The wall was so massively fixed in space and time that the world was sliding out from under it.

'It's him,' shouted Leela.

A tiny figure was standing before a great doorway, dwarfed by the blackened gates.

As they came closer, they saw that the Doctor was wearing only his hat and a vest, which he kept tugging down for decency's sake.

He was pushing at the gates, but they would not give. An old vulture with an eyepatch flapped lazily down and landed beside him. There were jewels among her ragged feathers.

'Is that you, Sybil?' he said.

'The Gate of the Future is shut,' she croaked.

'Permanently? Or is it just early-closing day?'

She stood on one leg, scratching her head with her other jewelled claw. 'I used to be able to see the Future,' she said. 'But it was denied to me. Now I only see the Past.

Dorothée had seen her sort before. The type who comes up to you at a bus stop and tells you their entire life story.

'Once I ruled a whole empire,' said the old harpy. 'I foresaw and controlled events and was unassailable. Now al I see is the aftermath and feed on its carrion.'

'No more than you deserve,' said the Doctor.

She craned her scraggy neck towards him. 'I know you. Daily I feed on the death you cause. Once you denied me entry through the Gate.You tried to escape your past, but now you cannot reach the future either. One day I shall feed on you too.'

'Is that another of your predictions, most sagacious Pythia? As I recall, they were never very reliable.'

183

The vulture spread her feather-bare wings. 'I was the world!' she shrieked.

'Oh, go away,' he said. 'Go back to the charnel house. I'm not stale enough to be on your menu yet.' He turned his back on the blood-red sun and pushed at the gates again, slowly forcing them open on the future.

Behind him it was always setting. Beyond the gates, the sun was white and rising through peach-coloured mist.

The watchers drifted through after the Doctor. There was a scent of roses in the air. A homely woman dressed in brown was waiting, carrying a long robe.

'It's the rose woman,' said Innocet. 'I saw her in the orchard, the day that he was Loomed.'

'You Eternals get everywhere,' said the Doctor.

'Indeed,' the woman said, fastening the many-coloured robe around his neck. 'Most of us regard being worshipped as a responsibility. We try to live up to expectations. But there are some Gods I could mention who are not nearly so considerate.'

She stood back from him. 'There. What do you think? The robe is woven from al your deeds and experiences.

The patterns drove three of the web-weavers insane.'

'I don't have a mirror,' he said, fidgeting inside the garment.

She smiled. 'Not as clever as you think, are you? If you were really everywhere at once, you'd see for yourself.'

'I'll rely on your better judgement,' he said.

'It could be magnificent,' she said with a shrug. 'Or it could be ghastly.'

'That's life.'

'Exactly. Now off you go. The future awaits.'

He walked to the edge of the pavement. The world was sliding in to meet him. Sliding under the wall into the past.

As he stepped off, the rose pink mist began to clear, laying out the future for him. He moved forward eagerly.

But something pulled him back. The heavy robe was snagged. He tugged at it. Patterns and memories moved on its surface. Blood seeped from its weave.

The garment was caught under the pavement. The future's inexorable passage into the past was dragging him along with it.

He struggled in vain to tear free. He pulled at the fastenings, but could not undo them. The robe was choking him.

From the gate came the mocking laughter of the old vulture.

The Doctor toppled to the ground. He gave a strangled cry of despair and was dragged head first under the wal into the inescapable past.

The watching ghosts clung together in the sudden darkness. The past was an empty void. Then a wind blew up and they were travel ing, drawn down after the Doctor. They could see the wind. It tore against them in silver streamers.

Innocet faced into it. 'Air,' she choked through her tears. 'Clean air. I'd forgotten how to breathe!'

Ahead, they could see the figure of the Doctor rising and dipping on his course into the dark.

A fiery glow appeared in the distance. It grew steadily until half a city was lit beneath them in the hellish glare.

184

A huge edifice was burning like a torch against the night. A great hal or temple. Stone was cracking in the heat and the air was filled with a grey blizzard of ash.

Adjacent buildings had caught alight and a swarm of air cars were tackling the blazes with vacuum hoses. They ignored the main conflagration. Around it ran a ring of guards, not deployed to keep the crowds away, but to cordon in the people fleeing the building. Fights were breaking out. There was the fizz of gunfire. No one was escaping.

A constant whispered commentary underpinned the air. A distant muttering of thousands of voices. But Dorothée could not work out if it was inside or outside her head.

The Doctor swooped away over other districts of the city and, drawn by him, the watchers followed.

On a square, high among the domes, stood a monument in the form of an Ω.

'It's the Omega Memorial at the Capitol,' said Leela.

'It's true,' said Innocet. 'But this is the old city over which the Citadel of the Time Lords was built. He must have fled here when he stole the TARDIS, back thousands of years into the past where he knew he couldn't be followed.

Almost to the Old Time itself.'

The Doctor was hovering close to the tall monument. On its crest sat a solitary figure wrapped in a dark cloak. His thin legs dangled over the side as he contemplated a black box floating in the air just below him.