Doctor Who: Lungbarrow (41 page)

Satthralope was crawling on the floor. Cracks spread around her. 'Gone away,' the old woman cried. 'The House no longer listens. It's no longer in me.' She shrieked as the wooden ring on her finger burst into flame.

The Doctor ran at her, but she pushed him away.

'I am the Keeper of the House!' She was climbing up into the palm of her chair. Fire had caught in her skirts. 'My House!' The wooden fingers of the chair closed and crushed her in its fist. Her keys clattered to the floor.

The Doctor stood unmoving as dust and plaster started to rain down through the smoke.

Chris started to pull at his shoulders. 'We have to get out!'

The Doctor shook himself free. 'Into the TARDIS. Take Innocet and Romana with you.'

'But there's nothing in there, Doctor!'

He started towards his ship, but Chris pulled him back. An avalanche of masonry crashed down around the TARDIS, blocking their escape.

'That was deliberate!' he shouted at the roof.

'Follow the others out,' said Chris. 'Come on.'

'You go. I'll follow.' The Doctor started pulling at the masonry round the TARDIS. 'Badger! I'm in charge now, so come and help!'

Chris faltered.

'Just go, Chris!'

The young man shook his head, but Innocet took his arm. 'Quickly, Chris.'

He allowed himself to be led away backwards still watching the Doctor with a look of exasperation.

Badger had lumbered across and started heaving the rubble.

Romana lingered. 'Doctor, what did you do with the dispatch I sent you?'

'Nothing.'

209

'You must rescue the Loom core. Download its genius loci.'

He looked doubtful.

'Do it, Doctor. That's a Presidential order.'

Ferain stepped up behind them. 'If you'd done that before, you'd have saved a lot of time and trouble.' He levelled a staser. 'You're both stil under arrest!'

The Doctor sneered. 'The CIA jump in and out of legitimacy like a pogo stick.'

'Right back to their origins as Rassilon's guards,' added Romana.

'Don't trust her, Doctor,' said Ferain through the roar of the House. 'Has she still not told you why she really summoned you home?'

The Doctor glanced at Romana. 'She will, when she's ready.'

Badger started to move in.

'Call that brute off,' warned Ferain.

There was a scuffle of footsteps.

A dusty figure rammed into the Doctor, tumbling him to the floor. Glospin, with the strength of a madman, pressed a long, ornate weapon to the Doctor's chest. It was one of Satthralope's huge keys.

'You stole everything that was mine by right!' he yelled. 'You've destroyed this Family! I don't even know if I can kill you, whatever you are! Monster!'

He raised the weapon to strike.

'No!' shouted the Doctor.

Badger snatched Glospin up like a doll. It flung him the length of the Hall, where he lay broken and unmoving.

Seizing her moment, Romana grabbed Ferain's arm and prized away the staser.

The Doctor struggled up. 'Romana, get out of this place. I'll deal with the Loom.'

'But. . .' she said.

'And that is an ex-Presidential order.'

He watched her push Ferain away.

As he turned towards the Loom, the whole building gave a violent lurch. He touched the floor. The structure was starting to shift.

***

'Who is the Doctor?'

'What does it matter to you?' she said. 'The Agency's used him often enough.'

'As you intend to use him, Madam,' said Ferain. 'Rumours have been rife about him for years. The more absurd they become, the more likely and alarming I find them.'

210

'As a former President, the Doctor is under my protection.' She level ed the gun. 'Now move, Ferain.'

He pushed the weapon aside. 'Madam President, the High Council are calling for your impeachment.'

She shrugged. 'The Doctor is more important. You hate him because he breaks your precious laws. But Gallifrey owes him an almighty debt of gratitude.'

The building lurched. Dust fell in clouds.

Ferain was calm and cold. 'Send him on the mission you planned for him and I swear the Agency will leave him alone.'

Romana paused. She took a deep breath and nodded. They crooked fingers.

***

Owis lingered in the gap torn out of the mountain, avoiding the cold wind, the huge sky and his Cousins. 'What about the fledershrews?' he said, staring back into the gloom.

Leela eventual y dragged him squealing into the open. The ground was scattered with dead fish. The other Cousins and agents huddled miserably in a group near the blast hole. The grey clouds threatened rain and the top of Mount Lung was lost from sight. The untended orchards had run wild, tangling across the lower slopes.

'My bike,' said Dorothée.

Leela grabbed her. 'You can't go back.'

Chris and Innocet emerged from the hole. 'The whole place is falling apart,' he said.

Dorothée ran a little way in. 'Where's the Doctor?'

'He said he'd fol ow.'

'Like hell, Chris!'

A tremor rocked the mountain. Soil cascaded from the roof of the hole. The ground cracked under them.

Chris tugged at Dorothee. 'We have to get clear.'

Two more figures appeared, both covered in dust.

'The House is moving,' said Ferain.

Romana yelled, 'Get everyone down the mountain. Run!'

There was a chorus of squeaking and chirruping as a bat-cloud of fledershrews corkscrewed out of the rent into the sky. Across the ground ran a river of tiny rodents.

Owis stood laughing, until Leela dragged him away.

As the panicking refugees began to slip and slide down through the wild orchard, Chris ran back into the hole.

The mountainside split open with a terrible roar.

Out of the ground, earth and rocks cascading like water off its turrets, chimneys and curving roofs, emerged the long-buried House of Lungbarrow.

211

The fresh convulsions knocked the Doctor off his feet. He crouched by the side of the Loom plinth, watching the power feed into the little data extractor Romana had given him.

Something shattered the glass coffin above him and a skeletal arm clattered down.

He looked up. Quences's Ghost was standing over him. 'Lord President, eh?' said the old man. 'Did you like the taste of power?'

More masonry crashed down close by.

'"Like" is a subjective word,' said the Doctor, shaking dust off his hat. 'I like the tick of a clock and the sound of a flute. The song of a rinchin in the fields at harvest. Working things out for myself. I like other people's ideas.

Peace, tranquil ity. And a nice cup of tea.'

The House shook and daylight appeared at the top of the unboarded window.

***

The whole estate, as far as he could see through the swaying, silver trees, was slowly undulating as waves rippled out from the House.

The great building moved forward. Soil dashed against its wings and annexes as it ploughed slowly across the escarpment.

Ahead, the ground fell away sharply.

The gigantic edifice was heading towards a cliff.

***

With his head inside the Loom plinth, he was only vaguely aware of Badger's roar and the fight that raged across the Hal .

'Who are you?' demanded Quences's Ghost. 'Who do you think you are, turning down the power I gave you?'

The Doctor ignored the old phantom. He felt the genetic weft of the Loom matrix closing round him. Back to the womb, before the womb. Loom and House - all the same really.

'You know me, don't you?' he told it and climbed further into its maternal warmth. 'Think back. Back to your beginning.'

The House's shudders were mixed with Badger's roar and the grating shriek of the Drudge as they plunged into a crack in the floor.

'Yes. You remember me. When you were a seedling. So long ago. When you were a seed. When you were just an insubstantial idea.'

'
LUNGBARROW!
' roared the House.

'Remember your creator.'

The slightest moment of hesitation or recognition. Then the House screamed.

212

'Now you are Lungbarrow too,' said the Ghost. 'The Family is the House. You are the House.'

'Ghosts can't hurt me.'

'I can take your soul.'

The apparition reached into the Doctor's chest and tore at his life.

The genetic weft tangled into the very cells of his Loomed body and started to strangle him.

What did it matter now? He'd been expecting the end. He should stay. A Family - that's what he'd wanted. A Family and a home. Somewhere to settle at last.

No future.

Eighth Man Bound.

'WHO ARE YOU?'
demanded the House/demanded the Ghost.
'WHAT ARE YOU?'

The Doctor screamed.

Hands pulled at his shaking shoulders, dragging him out of his new womb.

In a fright of rebirth, he snatched out and clung to his rescuer. 'I don't want to know. I don't want to know!'

'It's al right,' said Chris.

'The extractor,' croaked the Doctor, pointing to the Loom. 'That'll stop it.'

Chris yanked the device out of the open Loom.

The pulse died within the web.

The Doctor tried to stand, and fell against Chris. A tear of blood ran from his eye.

But the House kept shuddering.

From the window, they watched the earth still churning past. The cliff was less than fifty metres away.

'Headless chicken syndrome,' muttered the Doctor and turned unsteadily towards the TARDIS.

213

The undulating floor ruptured and split under the ship.

'Sepulchasm!' gasped the Doctor, and tensed as the police box keeled into the abyss.

It froze, half into the crack.

The Doctor stared ahead, veins etched out on his forehead, grasping Chris's arm like a vice.

Swaying sickeningly, the TARDIS slowly rose in the air. It hovered, gradually moving away from the crack and settled back on the rubble-strewn floor.

The Doctor, wreathed in sweat, al but collapsed into Chris's arms. The young adjudicator carried him to the ship's door.

'Get ready for a shock,' said the Time Lord as they stumbled inside.

The House was giving out a determined shriek of death.

***

The whitewood building slowed momentarily in its progress, and then, with a final splintering scream of despair, the entire vast, many-tiered edifice careered with horrible purpose over the edge of the cliff and plunged deep into the valley below.

214

One Fine Day

The final ember of the sun of Extans Superior sank below the sea. Stars were already sprinkling the lavender-dark sky. The air was scented like passion-fruit.

Chris angled an arm out of his hover-hammock and reached for his glass. He drained the last of his Indigo Moonrise cocktail and made gurgling noises through the straw.

The Doctor hadn't touched his drink. The slice of magenta fruit garnishing the glass was starting to dry and curl.

He sat in a deckchair, staring at the sea, absently turning a set of heavy keys round and round on their thick metal ring.

Chris laid back and tried to relax, to do al the summery holiday things that the lapping waves and rustling palms and beat of distant music told him he should be doing. Along the beach, the locals had started a bonfire. Their laughter and singing echoed along the sand. Chris clunked his glass back on the antigrav tray hanging in the air beside him and sighed in resignation. 'It doesn't work, does it? I thought it might have helped.'

Little birds ran back and forth at the water's edge. And the Doctor's keys turned over and over.
Click... click... click
.

'Doctor?'

'It's supposed to be a release.' The Time Lord's voice sounded miles away, fathoms deep.

Oh Goddess, thought Chris, here we go. 'What's that?' he asked aloud.

The Doctor sighed. 'An old lullaby crooned by a skull-faced nurse. Death and the eternal peace of oblivion. That's how it usually ends...'

'Um... I suppose that's one way of putting it.'

'Except for Time Lords, when it just goes on and on.'
Click... click... click
.

Two of the locals, a girl and a boy, both with scarlet trumpet flowers in their hair, ran past waving. 'Come to the feast. The feast is starting.'

Chris waved back. 'We'll be along later.' He let his arm drop.

'You go if you want to,' said the Doctor. He stood up, folded his deckchair and headed back to the TARDIS. A little figure, still in his hat, silhouetted against the glow seeping from the police box door.

The palm leaves clacked overhead like applause in the warm breeze. A crab scuttled away across the sand, one claw waving its farewel . Chris took one last look at the sea and the rose-coral beach as they slid into the dusk. Then he hurried after the Doctor.