So Vile a Sin (33 page)

‘I don’t have any,’ said the Doctor.

‘You’ll find some.’ Roz sighed.

‘Mmm. This peace is too quick. I don’t trust it.’

‘The Council doesn’t reconvene for a week. That’s when the real work of restabilizing the government and the Empire will begin.’

‘So history is still in disequilibrium.’ He waved a hand at the screens. ‘One push, in the right place…’

‘I’m not worried about little pushes,’ said Roz. ‘It’s hulking great battleships zooming about and blowing planets up that I’m 250

worried about.’ She ground out the cigarette on the console.

‘Why’d you kill the Empress?’

‘Is that an official question?’ said the Doctor.

Roz smiled a little. ‘I’m not going to be invested for a month.’

‘She asked me to,’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘but you were expecting that, right? You went in there with the intention of giving history one almighty shove.’

The Doctor shook his head. Roz lifted an eyebrow, but she believed him. He didn’t lie to her very often.

‘She would have found some way of dying,’ said the Doctor.

‘But she might have spent another ten years looking for it. Or she might have really been assassinated, and the Empire would be at war right now…’

‘All the possibilities,’ said Roz. ‘As usual, we drop in, and history coalesces around us.’

‘I don’t think you should take that position.’

‘You don’t agree?’

‘I mean the Pontifex Saecularis position.’

‘Doctor,’ said Roz. ‘I’m flattered. But I can’t stay aboard the TARDIS for ever.’

He was shaking his head. ‘You ought to stay well clear of history. Especially now.’

‘A while back, you said my life had more possibilities than Chris’s life. What did you mean by that?’

‘I mean, when you see history coming,’ he said, ‘duck.’

‘Leabie was looking for you,’ said Roz. ‘Didn’t your beeper go off?’

The Doctor pulled the map out of his pocket. ‘I wondered what that was. I switched it off.’

‘She’s up in the observatory. It sounded important, you’d better go and see her right away.’

The Doctor got up. ‘Movement at last,’ he said.

‘Quack,’ said Roz.

Leabie was watching the stars, sitting in a reclined, padded seat, one hand on the controls of the observatory. The whole room spun slowly at her touch.

251

The Doctor stood on the curved floor of the great observatory.

It was a translucent ball, ten metres across, able to tilt up to forty-five degrees in any direction.

Leabie moved the controls until Callisto was directly overhead.

Tiny points of light were visible, ships to-ing and fro-ing from the Empire’s new seat of power.

‘Isn’t it marvellous about Roz?’ she said.

‘Indeed,’ said the Doctor. ‘It’s quite a comeback, from renegade to top of the totem pole.’

‘I wanted to thank you for looking after her,’ said Leabie. ‘For rescuing her from the Adjudicators in the first place. For bringing her back intact.’

‘My pleasure,’ he said. ‘Though Roz does most of the looking after herself. Your sister is a remarkable woman, Lady Forrester.’

‘That she is,’ said Leabie. ‘Doctor, there’s another reason I asked you to see me – the Emperor has requested your presence,’

she said.

‘Ah,’ said the Doctor.

‘He says he needs to clear up some matters relating to the killing of Helen the First. He’s been crowned, so the circumstances of her death don’t affect his claim to the throne.’

Leabie sat up and looked at him. ‘I’m sure he wants to have a proper talk with you about it. After all, he doesn’t want to end up the way she did. It sounds ghastly.’

‘Did he ask me to go alone?’

‘He didn’t make any specific instructions. But I’m sure you could bring servants, secretaries. I’ll provide whoever you want.

And a shuttle, of course. He’s expecting you at eleven hundred IST. That’s in about two hours.’

‘Thank you, Lady Leabie,’ said the Doctor. ‘I’ll leave within the hour.’

‘Give His Majesty my best wishes. I’ll be seeing him in two days for the planning conference, of course.’

‘Don’t go,’ said Roz.

They were sitting around in Chris’s room. The Doctor looked over to Chris, who was surrounded by a tailor, taking 252

measurements. ‘You don’t have to come with me,’ he told the young man for the third time.

‘Neither of you should go,’ said Roz. ‘I don’t like this at all.’

‘It’s the
Emperor
, Roz,’ said Chris. The tailor tutted, trying to measure his chest. ‘We can’t
not
go.’

Roz put her hands on her hips. ‘I can’t let you boys out of my sight for a moment without you getting into trouble.’

‘Relax, Roz,’ said the Doctor. ‘If there is something afoot, Walid’s hardly going to draw attention to his connection by letting it happen in his palace.’

Roz said, ‘You mean, if he’d insisted on seeing you alone on some godforsaken asteroid, you wouldn’t go? But when he invites you to his palace, the centre of his power, where there are ninety-five billion guards, you don’t feel worried?’

‘Of course I’m worried,’ said the Doctor. ‘Appallingly worried.

I just don’t think Walid’s ready to act yet. He’s only just been crowned; he has yet to consolidate his power.’

‘Do you really think Walid is up to something?’ said Chris. ‘I thought Armand was the guy behind the conspiracy. Maybe we’re just being paranoid.’

‘That’s what I’m hoping to find out,’ said the Doctor.

The Doctor and his servant arrived at Callisto late in the moon’s morning, in one of Leabie’s personal yachts, the
Model
Citizen
. Genevieve was waiting for them at the edge of the landing site. She was wearing mock chainmail and her ceremonial sword, and some probably very unauthentic but very gorgeous knightly clothes. Her yellow hair was tied up in a pair of elaborate pigtails, held by a lattice.

They walked from the yacht to where the grass began, half a kilometre from the palace itself. The Doctor’s shirt had actually been ironed, and he wore a matching Paisley waistcoat and tie.

He raised his hat. ‘My Lady.’

Poor Mr Cwej looked terrified, a smile fixed to his face. He was dressed in the uniform of one of Leabie’s staff, a tasteful black suit with the red stone of the House Forrester emblazoned over his left shoulder.

253

She took Mr Cwej’s hands. ‘Welcome, both of you,’ she said.

‘The Duke has asked me to look after you until he can break free of the latest of these interminable meetings.’

The Doctor smiled and set off across the grass. Mr Cwej was staring up at the palace. It was a massive, inverted cone, more cones shooting up from its black, glassy surface, like a vast, sparkling artificial mountain. ‘Intimidating, isn’t it?’ she murmured, as she led him towards the entrance.

‘Yeah, I mean yes,’ he said. ‘A bit.’

‘I was petrified the first time I came here,’ she said. ‘I just about got back into my Hopper and went home. I felt like if I put a foot wrong, the whole building would fall down on me and squash me flat.’

Chris’s smile relaxed into a real one. ‘The Doctor’s so good at just talking to kings and dukes and people. I’m much better at alien monsters.’

‘Don’t you worry,’ said Genevieve. ‘Everyone’s nervous around the Emperor, even the dukes and duchesses. Part of my job is making sure every guest feels comfortable. Even the servants, and by the way, that uniform looks marvellous on you.’

‘I decided not to go back to the Adjudicators,’ said Chris.

‘After all these adventures, I need a rest. Leabie offered me a job as her personal pilot.’

‘That’s marvellous,’ she said. ‘Oh, the Doctor’s got away…'

‘We’d better catch him up,’ said Chris.

‘He’ll find his way,’ said Genevieve. ‘The reception staff will point him in the right direction.’ She put a hand on his sleeve.

‘While they’re talking business, would you like to see the gardens?’

The Emperor Abu ibn Walid looked as excited and tired as a child who’d been up all night waiting for Santa. His advisers and staff were still packing up after the meeting, standing around the long table and waving bits of printout at one another. They looked stressed, rings under eyes, the look of people who’d not only seen some disturbing news footage but had to do something about it.

254

The Emperor shook the Doctor’s hand warmly. Two security guards watched, both in the dark-blue and white uniforms of the household. Each had one enhanced eye. The Doctor could see the irises moving as they scanned him for hidden weapons. He wondered what technology was hidden by the Emperor’s own mismatched eyes.

‘Please,’ said the Emperor, ‘I’ve been in this office all morning. Let’s talk in my private garden.’

The ‘garden’ was a rainforest, a vast dome. Callisto’s terraformed climate couldn’t sustain these damp plants, delicate ferns and exotic flowers. The Doctor expected that every guest was brought here. Fancy clothes, elaborate feasts, expensive gifts

– even mammoth starships wouldn’t impress another noble. A living garden, millions of miles from Earth – now, there was a status symbol.

They walked along an AG path, half a foot off the ground, translucent enough to let the artificial sunshine through to the tiny plants beneath it. The guards walked a discreet distance behind them. The Doctor could feel their artificial eyes on his back.

The former Duke said, ‘In the last twenty-four hours, the new peace has been broken by a dozen riots on Earth. They started as peaceful, mass demonstrations. A variety of demands. The largest is in Australia – twelve thousand Earth Reptiles walked out of the ocean and sat down on a tourist beach. After a few hours, the locals started attacking them with surfboards.’ The Doctor shook his head. ‘The Landsknechte have gone in, but I think you can also help me calm things down.’

‘How can I do that?’ asked the Doctor.

‘I need the full story of the Empress’s death. I think uncertainty about how I came to power is the motive behind these demonstrations. I think it’s safe to tell your story, especially now a replacement for Helen the First has been found – my legal advisers tell me it would have been treason to ignore her direct request.’

‘I’ll give you my full cooperation,’ said the Doctor. ‘But first, there’s something I need to warn you about. There’s a moon in the Agamemnon system. It’s called Iphigenia.’

255

‘Agamemnon. I’ve heard of it,’ said Walid. ‘One of the planets exploded, didn’t it? The Navy are still trying to decide exactly what happened.’

‘Cassandra is no longer a danger. It’s Iphigenia you have to worry about. You’ve got to keep ships away from that moon. The people in the original fact-finding mission murdered one another, and the survivors are… insane.’

Walid took a DataStream from his pocket and tapped his finger on the screen. The Doctor admired an orchid while the palmtop, a square chunk of intelligent plastic, organized the information the Emperor wanted.

‘I see what you mean,’ said Walid. ‘And the recent expedition is believed to have been killed in the Cassandra explosion. It certainly seems as though there’s a curse on the moon.’

‘It’s worse than that,’ said the Doctor. ‘No one must ever go there again. If you want to keep this new Empire of yours safe, you’ve got to keep that world completely isolated. It might even be worth ending mining operations on Fury, evacuating the population. At least the telepaths.’

‘You’ve been there, haven’t you, Doctor?’ said Walid. ‘You were part of one of the expeditions.’ The Doctor nodded. ‘And what did you see?’

The Doctor considered for a moment. ‘Everything,’ he said.

‘Everything?’

‘You’ll love these,’ said Genevieve. ‘They’re astonishing.

Watch.’

They had been walking through one of the Duke’s gardens, planted with flowers and floweroids from all over the Empire.

Jupiter hung overhead in the thin blue of the sky, an impossibly large ball of colour. It was almost noon.

Chris had been telling Genevieve about some of his adventures as they worked their way through a maze, but she seemed even more interested in life in the lower levels. It wasn’t just polite interest, either: it was the same curiosity as had driven Chris’s mother to watch endless docudramas about life at Court.

Now she had stopped at a tall hedge, covered with soft red flowers. The leaves were hexagonal, waxy and dark. The flowers 256

were the colour of wine, the petals geometric, complex, bunched into angular fists.

‘Stay there,’ she said. He stood on the path, obediently, as she stepped up to the hedge. She cupped one of the flowers in her hand, held it there for a moment.

‘Now you try,’ she said.

Chris peered at the bush, hesitant. ‘What does it do?’ he said.

‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Hold one of the flowers.’

He reached out and cupped one of the roses in his hand.

It uncurled, slowly, a silky movement across his skin. He watched, half expecting the thing to bite him, but it just opened and opened until it filled his palm.

‘See,’ said Genevieve. ‘It only does that with people who’ve got some latent psi ability.’

Chris looked up at her. ‘What?’

‘Not full-blown psis, it just ignores them. But it can tell if you’ve got a little bit of ability, or just the genes.’ She stroked the open flower in his palm. ‘No one knows why.’

‘It’s beautiful,’ he said.

‘Lady Genevieve,’ said a voice behind them. ‘It would be a good idea if you went into the palace now.’

They both looked up. A woman in white was watching them from the path. A moment later, a dozen security guards stepped out from another pathway in the maze.

‘Iaomnet,’ said Chris, staring at the woman.

‘What’s going on?’ said Genevieve.

‘Won’t you come with us, Mr Cwej?’ said Iaomnet. Her voice was like an angel choir, dozens of voices coming out of her mouth. ‘It’s almost time for the conjunction.’

‘Everything,’ said the Doctor.

Walid was giving him a polite but sceptical look. ‘I’m not sure I understand, Doctor.’

‘Have you heard of a covert organization calling itself the Brotherhood?’ said the Doctor.