Part 7 (2/2)

'Sounds like it could be a tight*beam projector of some sort.' Fortalexa was still on at her for details. She had not realized how into the technology of it all he was. Not just a wisecracker but a techie as well. He wanted to know everything about the machine, whereas Lannic seemed strangely disinterested. Probably keeping her ideas and views to herself until she actually saw it.

They rounded the last corner of the panelled section of the tunnel.

'Stay here,' Bannahilk said quietly but urgently to them. Then he pointed at Fortalexa and jabbed his finger back up the tunnel. Fortalexa nodded and turned. His disruptor was already drawn as he darted back to the nearest corner, braced himself, then leapt out to cover the pa.s.sageway behind them. Bannahilk was moving ahead in similar fas.h.i.+on, covering the shadows and crevices. Benny and the others were left alone. With Cambri's decapitated body.

Gilmanuk had sunk down at the sight of it. He was sitting propped against the mud wall of the tunnel, his head in his hands. Lannic was still standing, the colour drained from her face and her hand over her mouth. Benny gagged. It was not the sight of death so much the smell of the fresh blood as it trickled from the neck and ran down the sloping floor towards the tunnel mouth. She could imagine it dripping into the theatre forming a small congealing puddle on the topmost of Tashman an Krayn's steps before running over on to the next on and repeating the process.

A hand touched her shoulder from behind and Benny flinched even though she instinctively knew it was Fortalexa.

'Nothing behind us, at least so far as I can tell.' He looked down at Cambri. Her eyes were grey, and stared unseening into s.p.a.ce. 'And I thought she'd lost her head when she started seeing ghosts.'

Bannahilk was back before Bernice could respond. 'We need to get back to the theatre and check on the others. If all's clear I want to see this machine. If not, we get back to the operations room and prepare to leave immediately.'

Benny looked round. Gilmanuk pulled himself slowly up. Lannic, surprisingly, was nodding agreement. She must be even more shaken than she looked.

'I'll take front of house,' Bannahilk continued. 'Fortalexa you take the back.'

Benny hung back so that she was immediately in front of Fortalexa, 'I just hope you can shoot straight,' she told him.

'I don't believe it.'

The Doctor turned to see what Ace was talking about now, and froze. Across the room, almost where they had just been standing, in front of the execution tapestry, stood an old, white*bearded man. Like the woman he was perfectly still and his eyes stared blindly across at them. Ace was about to go over to him, when she heard the distant thud of footsteps boots on stone from what seemed like miles away down the hallway.

'Someone's coming!' Ace tugged at the Doctor's sleeve. For a moment she thought he was going to go on tapping the arm of the woman, who was showing no reaction at all to all the attention. But the Doctor seemed to hear her a few seconds after she had finished speaking, and suddenly he was skidding across the tiled floor towards the nearest tapestry. He pulled it back so that it almost swamped him, and held it out with his umbrella until Ace had dived behind. Then he joined her.

'An android?'

The Doctor shook his head. 'No, stranger than that.'

'Oh?'

He turned to face her, the light from the room filtered in behind the tapestry and lit one side of his face, throwing the other into sharp relief. 'They're real real people.'

Ace grabbed for the tapestry and pulled it back to look at the statue*like figures again. But the Doctor s.n.a.t.c.hed it away from her and smoothed it into stillness, his finger to his lips. They both peered out from behind the edge.

The footsteps that Ace had heard down the corridor were still a long way off, the sounds echoing louder as they approached. Suddenly they seemed to galvanize the old man into action. His eyes blinked once, and then he hurried over to the woman, his steps taking him almost sideways across the room as he glanced nervously between her and the door.

The woman blinked too, her gaze focusing on the man as he approached. She seemed almost as nervous as he, the serenity of her stance broken in a split second.

Ace strained to hear the old man. He was speaking hurriedly, obviously wanting to finish what he had to say before they were interrupted. But while his voice was in a hurry, his vocabulary was working against him: 'He will come straight. Look you lay home to him: Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with.

And that your Grace hath screen'd and stood between Much heat and him.' He was standing by her now, almost tugging at her dress in nervous excitement, except that he seemed worried to touch her.

'I'll silence me even here,' he went on with another glance at the door. About time too, thought Ace. Whoever was coming would be in the room in a second, 'Pray you be round with him,' the old man finished.

The Doctor leaned towards Ace in the gloom. 'I think I know where we are,' he whispered.

'Where?'

But before he could answer a voice called out from the corridor: 'Mother?' The footsteps stopped, and after a moment it called again 'Mother?' The footsteps started again almost into the room now. 'Mother!'

The Doctor nodded as if this confirmed his theory.

'Well?'

But the Doctor shook his head. 'If I'm right, we'll know in a moment.'

The woman was speaking now, nervous almost shrill: 'I'll warrant you. Fear me not. Withdraw I hear him coming.'

Ace would have commented on the woman's poor sense of hearing, except that at that moment the tapestry in front of her was pulled back and the old man dived in at them. Ace gasped, and even the Doctor seemed taken aback. Oh well, she thought, on with the bracelets. But the man ignored them both and turned back to face the room, peering out through the gap that Ace and Doctor had been using. Ace and the Doctor exchanged glances. When they looked back towards the man, he was gone.

'Doctor I don't like this.'

But the Doctor just nodded at the back of the tapestry. Ace could hear the man who had been approaching for so long walk across the room towards the woman. His voice was quieter and more reasonable now, but it still had an edge. 'Now, mother, what's the matter?' Ace could imagine him taking her hands in his.

'Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.'

She stared at the Doctor. He nodded.

'Mother,' came the voice from behind the curtain, rising in volume, getting angry, 'you have my my father much offended.' father much offended.'

'Yes, Ace. We're in Elsinore. And I don't like it either.'

The room seemed much smaller with them all crammed into it. The machine was the centre of attention of course. The whole party stood round and examined Bernice's find.

Fortalexa was the only one who had actually dared to touch it, running his fingers over the control panel and tapping the barrel*like extension. Klasvik was talking about using thermoluminescence to establish the machine's age. Gilmanuk was advocating fission*track dating while Lannic was more concerned with its purpose. Behind them, Tashman and Krayn were talking in low voices about Cambri's death.

Fortalexa was ignoring them all. He was now lying down under the wheeled trolley, poking at the machine from underneath. 'He gets like this with machinery can't stop tinkering,' Bannahilk said quietly to Benny.

'Do you think he can work it?'

'Oh, he can work it. I think he's more concerned with finding out what it's for.'

He was right. In a moment Fortalexa was back on his feet, dusting the palms of his hands against each other. 'Well,' he announced, 'I've no idea how old it is. But I know what it does.'

The other conversations stopped.

'But, Hamlet Hamlet's just a play it isn't real. I know we did for English in the fifth year.'

'Really?' Now he knew what was happening, the Doctor seemed amused by the whole notion. 'But it's happening.'

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