Part 8 (2/2)

'Then it's been here for hundreds of years.'

'Long before the Civil War started,' the Doctor agreed.

He set off again.

Frustrated, Jane ran after him. She had only just begun.

'Then why has it been dormant for so long?'

The Doctor paused at the foot of the staircase and explained it carefully to her. 'Because it requires a ma.s.sive force of psychic energy to activate it. When the Civil War came to Little Hodcombe it created precisely that.'

Ah, Jane thought. Another key piece of information brought another lightning flash. She felt the picture filling in, and as they crept quietly up the staircase together she whispered, with more confidence than she had felt at any time, 'And Sir George is trying to recreate the same event?'

'Yes. In every detail. Tegan's grandfather must have told him everything he discovered. It's the only way he knows the Malus will be fully activated.'

The Doctor's attention was beginning to stray, as he wondered what they might find at the top of the stairs, but Jane, tugging urgently at his sleeve, brought him back to the reality of the moment and he looked down at her worried face. 'Doctor,' she said, 'I've just had a terrible thought the last battle in the war games has to be for real!'

The Doctor grimaced. 'Precisely. The slaughter will be dreadful.'

Jane tugged at his sleeve again. 'You must stop him!'

'Yes, I know,' the Doctor agreed.

But how was that to be done? They reached the top of the stairs. Ahead, a short pa.s.sage led to a door, through which they could hear a murmur of voices. Prominent among them was the hectoring tone of Sir George Hutchinson. The Doctor put a finger to his lips, waited for Jane to catch him up again, and they approached the door together.

In the parlour, watched by a worried Wolsey, Tegan was arguing heatedly with Sir George across the oak table. She felt she had nothing to lose now, and had thrown caution to the winds.

'History is littered with loons like you,' she shouted, 'but fortunately most of them end up safely locked away!'

Sir George merely laughed, and said in the patronising, half-mocking voice which so infuriated her, 'Insight is often mistaken for madness, my dear.'

Wolsey's agitation suddenly got the better of him, too.

He rose to his feet and faced Sir George. 'I didn't realise the power of the Malus was so evil,' he said.

Sir George glared. He pointed a finger at Wolsey's eyes.

The finger shook with emotion and his voice was an uncontrolled shout tinged with hysteria. 'Don't worry, Wolsey!' he shouted. 'It will serve us!'

'It will use you,' Tegan countered.

'Tegan is right.'

And so saying, the Doctor pushed aside the heavy curtain drapes and entered the parlour through the secret door, with Jane following close behind him.

For a moment the occupants of the room were struck speechless with surprise. The Doctor marched straight to Tegan's side. His eyes dilated a little at the sight of the dress she was wearing, although his surprise was no greater than Tegan's at seeing him materialise out of a curtain. She knew she should be used to the Doctor's habits by now, but she still found them disconcerting.

The Doctor wasted neither time nor words. He turned at once to Sir George Hutchinson. 'You're energising a force so irresistibly destructive that nothing on Earth can control it,' he told him. 'You must stop the war games.'

Sir George went wild. The signs of obsession and hysreria, and his barely concealed joy at the war games'

cruelty had been indications of the road he was taking.

Now it seemed that the sudden appearance of the Doctor through the curtain had committed him to that path: something seemed to break loose inside his brain, and those eyes, which before had been unnaturally bright, now burned with an uncontrollable fury.

He aimed his pistol between the Doctor's eyes. 'Stop it?

Are you mad?' His voice pitched queerly. 'You speak treason!'

'Fluently,' the Doctor snapped. 'Stop the games!'

Sir George could take no more of this. With a jerky movement he almost threw the pistol at Ben Wolsey.

'Eliminate him, Wolsey,' he screamed. 'Now!' Grabbing his Cavalier hat, and forcing his wayward limbs to obey his wishes, he stormed out of the room.

For a moment after he had gone there was an awkward silence among the remaining occupants. The echoes of Hutchinson's anger hung in the air. Wolsey pointed the pistol uncertainly and without much enthusiasm at the Doctor.

'Put that down, Ben,' Jane said, in the gentlest voice.

Ben Wolsey shook his head, as if trying to clear it of all his illusions about Sir George. 'I don't understand him any more,' he admitted. He looked tired, and his voice was sad; the increasing bewilderment and confusion which he had been feeling for some time had drained him. Now it seemed that everything was beyond him; events had veered out of his control. He was speaking nothing less than the truth: he truly did not understand.

The Doctor felt a lot of sympathy for this kindly, confused man. 'Don't try,' he told him. 'Sir George is under the influence of the Malus.' Then he paused. 'Are you with us, Colonel?'

Weary beyond words, Wolsey sat down heavily. He was no longer pointing the gun at anybody. 'Can you tell me what's going on?' he asked. 'Because I don't know any longer.'

'Doctor!' Tegan interrupted him. She pointed a trembling finger towards a corner of the room, where something only too familiar to her although new to the others was happening.

Lights were forming against the wall. This time they developed quickly, much faster than those in the barn, and in no time the first point of brilliance had become a ma.s.s of moving stars which danced like fireworks in the corner.

The others gaped, half shocked, half entranced, but shock took over completely when the lights suddenly grouped together in a complex pattern out of-which there formed, with a phosph.o.r.escent glow, a rapidly stabilising image.

It hung on the wall like an obscenely bloated grey spider. Lights still flickered around it and it was not yet fully formed, but it contained in recognisable form all the features of the Malus the flaring, sneering nostrils, the sardonic mouth, hair like writhing snakes turned to stone, and the unmistakable aura of evil. While the others stood rooted to the floor, hypnotised by the manifestation, the Doctor moved slowly towards it.

'Be careful.' Tegan shuddered at the memory of her previous encounter; she was not at all pleased that it was happening again.

'That's the thing in the church!' Jane's voice had shrunk to an awed whisper.

'Not quite,' the Doctor decided. He was close to the wall, and was examining the image carefully. 'This is a projection of the parent image. It must be one of several energy gathering points.'

Projection or not, the Doctor was much too close to it for Tegan's comfort. 'Keep away from it,' she pleaded.

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