Part 2 (2/2)

'I'm a Time Lord,' he said. 'We don't trust anyone unless they're dead or stupid. We're like that.'

HOMUNCULETTE'S STORY

London, Earth, September 2169

The Square's a ruin, you can smell that much from here. Scorched concrete and sick air, streetlamps melted into puddles by fusion engines, skeletons of burned-out vehicles sprawled across the pavements. The city's too old and tired to even bother sinking into the dust.

This is where it all started, then. Where the first of the invaders dropped out of the sky, where the local politicians were herded together and incinerated. ”Exterminated”, I should say. Right there, across the river in Parliament Square. The sky's grey over London, full of pus, full of old pollution. By now, Homunculette will have taken that as his cue to be maudlin and depressive for the rest of the day, the moody old stoat.

All I know about the English weather is this: it plays h.e.l.l with my monitors. I lost track of Homunculette three minutes ago, and he's the only lifetrace around here. Of course, he could have taken me with him to the Square, but he says I'm not too good on my legs. He likes to think he's better than me at some things. It makes him feel good about being carbon-based.

The ground had vanished from under Homunculette's feet. He wasn't used to the ground doing things like that, so he was too surprised to panic properly as he tumbled towards the river. One moment he'd been standing on the bridge, the next he'd been treading air. Simple as that. No warning, no explanation.

His body twisted as he hit the water, his arms instinctively thras.h.i.+ng around in search of a handhold. He swallowed his first mouthful of sludge before he even knew he was sinking, and felt the chemical pollutants burning the membrane at the back of his throat. The next thing he knew, his feet were touching the thick mat of detritus at the bottom of the river. He felt something crunch under his shoe, though he wasn't sure whether it was plastic or bone. During the invasion, the humans had dumped a lot of their dead down here, leaving the corpses to have their fleshy bits bitten away by the parasite species that had learned to live in the blackwater areas.

So. The bridge had disappeared. From right underneath him. Without a sound.

Anarchitects?

Homunculette suddenly realised he wasn't breathing. He panicked, and thrashed his limbs around for a bit longer, until he remembered that he wasn't supposed supposed to be breathing. His respiratory system had gone into emergency shutdown, and he hadn't even noticed it. How long could he stay like this, though? How long did he have before his lungs popped? to be breathing. His respiratory system had gone into emergency shutdown, and he hadn't even noticed it. How long could he stay like this, though? How long did he have before his lungs popped?

One problem at a time, he decided. Anarchitects. Think anarchitects. Disembodied intelligences, created by the enemy during the early years of their a.s.sault on Gallifrey. According to the information the Celestis had slipped to the High Council, the average anarchitect was like a primitive computer virus, a cl.u.s.ter of pre-programmed instructions designed to corrupt and re-order data. But anarchitects could exist outside the confines of a computer system. They could infiltrate architecture, inhabit buildings, manipulate corners and angles. They could disrupt the information that held structures together, rebuild whole cities at will.

When the High Council had been told what the things were capable of, they'd thought it was absurd. Then they'd realised that the anarchitects were products of the same kind of technology the Time Lords had used to build the early TARDIS models. They'd had always had the knack, but only the enemy had thought of turning the technology into a weapon.

Homunculette tried not to scowl, but it went against his basic nature. Anarchitects. Obviously. The enemy had tracked him and Marie, just like the last time, and they'd taken the bridge away while he'd been crossing from the Albert Embankment to Parliament Square. Homunculette swore, sending bubbles full of expletives up towards the surface of the river. He should have asked Marie to land closer to the Square. He found himself remembering the horror stories he'd heard, about how the Lord Ruthventracolixabaxil had starved to death inside his own TARDIS when an anarchitect had hijacked the vessel and turned the central corridor into an endless Mobius loop...

No. No. He couldn't let his imagination get the better of him, not now. He had a mission to complete, he could complain about the working conditions once it was all over. He was safe under the water, at least, where there were no walls or floors for the anarchitect to possess. So, he could try moving across the bottom of the river, getting as close to Parliament as possible before making any attempt to break the surface. If he was lucky, he might even shake off the anarchitect that way.

If he was lucky. Right.

Everyone stays away from this part of London, apparently. It smells of politics and bad radiation.

This city was a major population centre, once. One of the twelve key political sites on the planet, according to the Matrix records. The invaders came here, in their little toy saucers, letting Earth know it was hopelessly outgunned, casually wiping out the odd city by way of demonstration. When the demand for surrender came, some of the politicians sealed themselves into the Parliament buildings, and let the aliens set the corridors alight with them still inside.

Not out of principle. Politicians don't have principles, not even on this side of Mutter's Spiral. They just had nowhere else to go.

Wait. The weather must be clearing up, I'm getting traces again. Lifetraces, two of them, from inside one of the buildings. Homunculette must be one, so who's the other?

Broadly speaking, the House of Commons hadn't changed much in the 300 years since its construction. There'd been a renovation every half-century or so, the odd terrorist bombing to blow out the windows or gut the offices, but for the most part it was still the same old monstrosity it had always been.

Homunculette regarded the corridors of power with a mixture of contempt and disinterest. This, according to the High Council's Information, was where he'd find the Relic. If the Matrix was right, it had belonged to the human military for the last century or so. When the invasion had come, and Earth society had collapsed overnight, all the trinkets the military had collected over the years had been dispersed, falling into the hands of the looters and the traders. One such individual, the Matrix data claimed, was holed up here.

Homunculette kept moving along the oak-panelled pa.s.sages of the House, idly wiping the black river-sludge from his hands onto the lapels of his suit. The High Council had infopacked enough data about local culture for him to be able to find his way around, at least. There were still scorch marks on the walls, plus patches of ash where secretaries and security guards had been gunned down by the invaders, but other than that the corridors were cleaner than Homunculette would have expected. Well lit, too, by neon striplights that seemed to have been fitted quite recently. Signs of habitation, Homunculette deduced. Someone was in residence here, despite the local taboos about the Haunted Ground of Westminster.

A few years ago, these pa.s.sages would have been crawling with invaders. Homunculette imagined them killing off the local politicians, issuing commands in their stupid tin voices. Invaders always took out the leaders first, it was a standard tactic. Like the enemy's first strike on Gallifrey, their botched attempt to kill off the High Council. ”Botched”: meaning, the Time Lords had been lucky.

Earth had been lucky, too. It had been invaded, yes, but only by a bunch of mindless biomechanoids with speech impediments. The Time Lords, meanwhile, were up against something really really dangerous. dangerous.

From somewhere up ahead, there was a hissing, crackling sound. Homunculette froze, and his breathing switched itself off again. Moments later, the crackling was drowned out by a voice, smooth and feminine, but gargling static.

'Every time we say goodbye, I cry a little...'

Definitely a human lifetrace, somewhere near the centre of the House. I can smell Homunculette moving in on it. Smell? Bad vocabulary. Some day, I'll have to devise a proper terminology for sub-organic sensory experiences.

No, maybe not. I'd be the only one who'd understand it.

Homunculette didn't know much about English architecture, but he knew a debating chamber when he saw one. The hall was ringed with balconies and camera nests, and, by the look of them, the seats on either side of the hall two great banks of them, all covered in sickly green leather had been in place for centuries. The patch of floor at the centre of the chamber was graced by a mosaic. The pattern was faded, but Homunculette knew enough local history to recognise the symbol of the World Zones Authority.

'I can hear a lark somewhere, waiting to sing about it...'

The mosaic wasn't the focal point of the debating chamber, though. Nor were the plastic mannequins, three or four hundred of them, each seated in one of the chairs, their faces painted with mad eyes and twisted smiles. Nor were the weapons, the thousands upon thousands of old firearms that had been pinned to the walls like b.u.t.terflies, hanging by their trigger-guards from rusted nails. Nor were the speakers, four huge black cuboids set into the corners, making the floor vibrate as they pumped out the song Homunculette had heard from the corridors.

'There's no love song finer...'

No. The focal point of the chamber was its other living occupant, who sat on a faded throne directly between the two seating blocks, his legs draped lazily over one of the arms of the chair.

The man's skin was black. Pure black. His skin tone wasn't purely genetic, by Homunculette's reckoning; decades of exposure to pollutants and alien radiation had done their bit, as well. The Black Man had dark braided hair, stuffed under a top hat that looked older than Parliament itself, while his clothes were expensive-but-frayed, probably looted from one of London's many nouveau riche nouveau riche corpses. His topcoat was black, his suit was black, his tie was black. In fact, the darkness of him was only broken up by two things. corpses. His topcoat was black, his suit was black, his tie was black. In fact, the darkness of him was only broken up by two things.

The first was a flower, a brilliant red bloom pinned to his lapel. Artificial, Homunculette guessed, maybe grown in a plastogene tube. The second was his smile. A white, beatific smile, the kind of white that needs chemical applications to maintain.

'...but how strange the change, from major to minor...'

The Black Man waved his hand. Some mechanism in the chamber must have noticed the movement, because the music stopped in an instant.

'Ella Fitzgerald,' he drawled, as if that explained everything.

The Black Man's eyes were shut, Homunculette realised. Cautiously, he moved down the aisle towards the throne, inspecting the mannequins on either side of him as he walked. Their faces were grotesque, all leers and snarls.

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