Falls the Shadow (27 page)

‘Fine. I’m sitting comfortably. I’ve all the time in the world.’

Benny spoke lightly, offhand. She regretted it. The grey man twisted away from her, losing his face in shadow. She had offended him, broken his precious darkness with something a little too light. Her face assumed sombre blandness, she listened and didn’t speak again.

The grey man walked away from her. The story was delivered with his back to her. Surprisingly, Benny enjoyed it. The grey man’s face was full of nuances, untranslatable, and his glasses were black disks covering his eyes and the meanings hidden there. Benny felt lost without decent body language to follow. His back was a different matter. She saw every twitch of his shoulder‐
blades, every contortion of his spine rippling across his coat and exaggerated by the odd lighting. There was much here that escaped her – but there was much she understood. She sensed the weight, the burden, the sorrow, the loneliness, the fragments of rage that underpinned his story. This was a friendless man unburdening his soul. Benny didn’t mind that, she was a sucker for a decent sob story. But she also picked up something more, something that frightened her, something too vast to be visualized completely.

The power.

The grey man had told her he’d dragged the TARDIS from the time streams. She believed him.

Then there was the story.

‘Fifteen thousand million years ago,’ the grey man began, his shoulders arching, his head shrinking into his body, ‘the cosmos formed during Event One. There was a hydrogen rush which defined the parameters of the material universe. The implications and resonances of Event One go beyond that simple explosion, but they don’t concern us… Suns formed. Systems formed. Life blossomed on a million planets. And when the first cells spawned in the first oceans on the first world, I was there, with my people, watching.

‘Not all life survived. Not all children grow to adulthood. We watched, we mourned. But on other worlds, civilizations blossomed.

‘The world in question is thirty thousand million light years from Earth. Should your race ever stray so far they will doubtless overlook it. But it was the first. It gave birth to humanoid life, and the culture they developed was similar to that on your world.

‘Civilization means different things to different people. To some, it is the noblest of goals, to others a transgression of community and culture. I hold neither view. But at the time, I was ecstatic. My colleagues shared my feelings. This was a new experience. We wanted to see these creatures ascend to the stars that were their birthright, the common heritage of the people of the cosmos. Ten thousand years, we watched their development, the ups and downs, the striving to keep aflame their ideals in the dark ages that afflicted them. We shared their dreams.’

The grey man turned back to Benny. His face was bitter.

‘They destroyed themselves.

‘I don’t suppose many see the effects of bacteriological war in close detail. I did. I spent years walking across the surface of the planet, through the cities and the countryside, past the doors with holy patterns stained upon their bark, past the black skeletons of neighbourhoods torched in vague efforts to keep back the death, past the bodies in the gutters, the bodies of the children. There were survivors, weeping in their shelters, but they didn’t last. The world had become a tableau to the folly of its inhabitants – there was no decay, and the death‐
throes of every living creature were preserved as if frozen, until natural disaster scoured its surface. I walked across that world and despaired.

‘The viral agents were genetically designed to destroy all life, even other bacteria. The virus sterilized the world. It became the dominant life form, ruling supreme. It consumed itself in the end, a form of race suicide echoing the suicide of the people who unleashed it. There was a madness manifest in the design of that virus.

‘Them and us. Black and white. Good and evil, Professor Summerfield. Polarization and duality. Undiluted absolutes. Fine for chess but chess is a game, and these concepts had been applied to the real world.

‘I call it madness. It was nothing of the kind. If it was madness I could have accepted it. It would have been a natural part of their mentality, its outcome unavoidable. But it was not. There were other agencies at work. Not alien forces, because no such things yet existed. I investigated and I found… I…

‘I found the influence of my people, of
my
race. They had developed the madness because it suited their own purpose, it suited the rivalries and the tensions that divided them and to which I had not been a party. Their influence stretched through the cosmos, down to the universal structure itself. There is a structure – perhaps, it is difficult to explain – but it is a loose and pliable one. They had taken it and were making it rigid, imposing their own philosophies, their absolutes. They had taken the people of the first world to war. They had destroyed the oldest civilization for their own fathomless motives.

‘I do not understand why. Perhaps they were jealous, perhaps they hate those who live the real life that has been denied to them. Perhaps they wish to be worshipped as if they were gods – they style themselves as such. I have never understood, perhaps I have not tried.

‘I saw what would happen. I saw armies marching between the stars, I saw conquest, I saw blood, I saw vengeance, I saw hatred, I saw death unbound, death without end. I saw the soldiers charging to war believing beyond doubt that their gods were on their side; that all of “them” were duplicitous but all of “us” were pure of motive; that there is such a thing as a “just” war so long as you fight on the right side. I saw children murdered, women raped, men tortured in the name of “right”. I saw dissidents oppressed, hounded and branded traitors. I saw the Daleks, Professor Summerfield, and more than the Daleks. I saw all the children of creation.

‘I saw all this, and I knew, beyond doubt, that these things were inevitable.’

The grey man’s shoulders sagged forward further than ever before. But then his back straightened, and he continued.

‘I couldn’t stop it. I had power, but in this new structure my colleagues had created I had no place. So I decided to create a place for myself. I constructed it in secret. It was a small village, beyond the physical plane. I named it Cathedral. It was the physical representation of an engine – a computer, if that helps you visualize it more easily – the machine code of a programme designed to alter the structure of reality. It would act on cultures, develop them, deepen them, awaken new trends, new thoughts, cut new paths away from the duality my colleagues had created. It would undermine, it would subvert, it would create challenges, place doubts in the minds of the faithful. It is free thought. A disease and a cure that I have spread through time and space. That is the purpose of Cathedral: Ambiguity and chaos! It makes the world a stranger place to live in.

‘Its tasks were simple but its power needed to be enormous. I stripped myself of my energies, let them flow through the village. It tapped into the mathematical core of the universe, the Small Numbers on the edge of the quantum event horizon where the macro and the micro worlds become interchangeable. I will spare you the exact details.

‘It was natural my plan should be discovered. The Cathedral metahedron was well hidden. It does not settle, it moves from world to world every eighty thousand years to elude discovery by those who would destroy it. I, on the other hand, was weakened without hope of recovery. I returned to our home well aware that I was courting destruction. I long to see it again, but I cannot approach it. To do so would not only guarantee my total destruction, but it would also reveal the location of Cathedral. I can never return.

‘I was immediately placed on trial by my colleagues for my “blasphemy”. They cast me out. I fell, and as I fell, I burned. I burned until I was dead.

‘My Cathedral lived. But there were complications. I designed it to affect all the cultures of the cosmos, but I completely overlooked the likelihood that the cultures of the cosmos would affect Cathedral. They have. The village grew into a city. The trappings of a million societies are stamped upon it. You yourself are creating part of it now, perhaps your imagination has a touch of Gothic to it? It’s difficult to move, some days, for the congestion of psycho‐
mythical avatars and emotional totems. In many ways, I enjoy it. I can fade into the crowd and experience the ambivalent pleasures that the city might offer. On other occasions, I feel like I have created a Pandemonium. The city creates its own rules and authority. There are times when I would like to be left alone away from them. More than any other citizen, that is a freedom available to me.’ He turned back to Benny, brooding apprehension on his face. ‘And there you have it.’

Benny had digested it all, but had not had time to mull it over. Parts of the story had appalled her, parts had intrigued her, parts had amused her and some parts had lost her completely. It was difficult to tell which part was which. She reckoned she had the gist.

‘One point,’ she said, feeling a surge of dry pedantry to her mouth. ‘You said you died?’

‘I said I died. I also said that I put my power into Cathedral. Both statements are true. I am my power. Where my power lives, I live. I told you that I was the soul of this place. I am its soul because my blood forms its foundations. I am its conscience because my blood remembers what I stood for and fights to keep those principles alive. I am the messenger of this place. That is my function. I am a machine code subroutine of Cathedral, incarnate in the image of a dead man, with a dead man’s thoughts. I created this, and it creates me. There’s a paradox for your Doctor.’

Benny felt something melancholy stab beneath her ribs. She looked down, finding her fingers locked round the black king’s rook from the chessboard, skin absorbing the prickling texture. She turned the chess piece over and over in her hands, as if trying to transfer her sadness into it.

But it was only a lump of ebony, and Benny felt sadder than ever.

‘Perhaps you would like to see the city.’

‘I would love to see the city,’ Benny droned, emptying her voice of all inflexions.

‘Some parts of it are quite pleasant once you get to know them.’

‘I really don’t want to get to know them,’ Benny said, looking up and finding his face close to hers. For a moment she lost herself, trying to find the eyes in that ambiguous visage. There was nothing, so she kept talking: ‘Look, this is a nice place to visit – no, scratch that, it isn’t a nice place to visit. I don’t want to be here.’

‘I don’t want to be here, but I’ve put up with it for quite some time.’

‘I have… I had… friends. In the real world. They’ll miss me.’

‘The war goes on,’ said the grey man.

Benny looked at him sharply.

‘Okey‐
doke, I’ll see your bloody Cathedral,’ she snapped more with humour than venom. ‘Like a school trip. Data sheets to be filled in afterwards and
please
don’t be sick over the tour guides. Yes?’

‘That is not something we have ever had complaints about.’ The grey man turned on the charm. Benny rose, then looked down at herself.

‘Could we change the clobber, perhaps?’ she suggested. ‘I’m sure I won’t seem out of place but I prefer clothes that are a touch less obscene.’

‘Of course,’ the grey man nodded.

Benny felt nothing. When she looked down an instant later, she found her body occupying something strange. It was a flowing gown. Though jet black, Benny felt she could see shapes swimming on its surface, screaming silently, twisting into impossible shapes. She tried not to look. Elbow‐
length black gloves swathed her forearms; her feet balanced on thin heels. Her shoulders were bare and cold.

‘I feel like the Bride of Frankenstein,’ she mumbled.

‘Forgive me. The Gothic imagination…’

‘I’ve seen worse. Most of the time they were being worn by the three‐
headed things that inhabit tunnels and live only to add Benny‐
fricassee to their menus, but I have seen worse.’ She patted the fabric of the dress reassuringly. It hummed as she stroked it, and she withdrew her hand hastily. ‘Well, let’s hit the town.’

Benny’s room was situated high on a rotting tower called the Crucible. That was fine by Benny, if they wanted to give her the penthouse suite they could go right ahead, but it meant that the view from her balcony had given a deceptively calm impression of Cathedral’s street life. On the ground she found the alleys of the city alive with crowds. It was reassuringly normal. Less comforting was the silence. There were no traders calling in the distance, no murmurings of the type traditionally employed for conversation in public areas, no bustle built from the echoes of the crowd. The people of Cathedral were silent.

‘Charming,’ Benny said weakly. ‘I’m going to love it here.’

Most of the citizens were wrapped in robes and hoods – layers of worn, dirt‐
grey fabric burying their true shapes, heavy enough to grind down their shoulders. Their thin arms hung loosely out of the folds of their rags, wrapped in thick leather bandages. Benny doubted it was for warmth. Under their hoods were masks, decorated in harsh black and white patterns. There were holes in the masks but Benny never saw any eyes. Some of the shuffling, shambling citizens wore white sashes or collars, as if some attempt to impose a uniform had been made by a higher authority. Despite this each citizen was unique in appearance. The differences were subtle but powerful. Often the robes left misshapen limbs undisguised. Benny saw numbers printed on the masks – zeroes, ones or twos, nothing higher – or symbols: broken arrows, black squares, staring eyes, the yin‐
yang circle. Benny stared at the blank masks, wondering what – if anything – was being thought beneath them.

As soon as they had emerged from the Crucible, the grey man had been approached by a woman with parrot features and flowing hair. She was a good seven feet tall, dressed in the uniform of an Edwardian clerk. And her eyes, Benny saw, were bloody red orbs. The clerk leant forward to whisper in the grey man’s ear. He nodded in response, his expression wiping itself clean. The clerk straightened up and hobbled away on cloven hooves. Benny stared, forgetting her manners. Her guide stood before her and focused her attention back on the here and now.