Part 3 (1/2)

'All my ministers,' the Black Man said, although he hadn't opened his eyes, and he hadn't stopped smiling. 'Not so much to say, these days.'

Homunculette stopped a couple of metres in front of the throne. 'You sell weapons?' he asked. 'People come here to buy guns from you? Is that it?'

The Black Man opened his eyes, at last. His irises, Homunculette saw, were as dark as his skin. 'They've always sold weapons in this place,' the Black Man said. 'Weapons to their friends, weapons to their enemies. Got the works. Plasma rifles. You want plasma rifles? Real ex-military. Got pistols, got mortars. Even got alien bigshot guns. Expensive, those alien bigshot guns.' His smile widened ever so slightly, and his face wrinkled up, making him look several decades older than he had before.

Having said that, Homunculette wasn't sure how old he'd looked before. 'Relics. I'm interested in relics. That's all.'

The Black Man laughed at that. The laugh was almost subsonic. 'What kind of relics you thinking of? Relics that go ”boom”?'

Homunculette shook his head, then leaned forward, so he could hiss the next three words without the mannequins hearing.

'The Toy Store,' he said.

The Black Man didn't reply straight away. Homunculette watched his irises widening, blotting out the whites of his eyes. Homunculette wondered if the man was using some kind of narcotic. It'd explain the smile, anyway.

'Expensive,' the Black Man said, eventually.

'Not important,' Homunculette snapped.

The Black Man nodded. 'Whatever you say. Got most of the stuff they kept in the Toy Store. Got things the Cybermen left behind, back in the 2030s. Got real Ice Warrior relics, from before they dropped the rock. Your kind of line?'

'No. I'm looking for something specific. A box. A casket. Two metres long, made of metal. It's got '

'Sorry,' the Black Man cut in. 'Can't help you.'

Homunculette flinched. What was that supposed to mean? 'It's important,' he insisted.

'Can't help you.' The Black Man shrugged, and stretched, but he didn't stop grinning. 'Try next door. Try the zombie-men in the House of Lords. Hah-hah.'

Homunculette bared his teeth. 'Listen to me. You don't know who I represent. We want the Relic, and we know it's here. We scanned this planet's entire timeline. We worked out that this was the most opportune moment to remove it.' He emphasised the bit about scanning the timeline. If this man dealt in alien technology, he'd probably heard of the Time Lords, even if it was just as a rumour.

The Black Man didn't look impressed, though. 'Don't got it,' he said. 'Had it.'

Homunculette felt himself blanche. 'You... had it?'

'Had it. Went.'

No. No, no, no. The High Council had been sure this timeframe was the best era to seize the Relic. If the Black Man had already sold it, it meant...

...that someone else had intervened.

Someone time-active.

The enemy?

'We need it,' Homunculette gibbered. 'You don't understand. We need it. The war... if we're going to stand a chance...' He stumbled towards the throne, fists clenched, adrenaline glands working overtime. He guessed there were probably self-targeting defence systems around the chamber, homing in on him even now, but at this stage he didn't much care. The Black Man threw up his arms, presumably in a gesture of peace.

'Careful,' he said. 'Careful.' Calmly, he reached into the pocket of his topcoat. 'Matter of fact, my buyer... the man in question... said there'd be someone else turning up after the property. Left a message. See?'

He held something out for Homunculette to inspect. Homunculette blinked. It was a card, like a business card, but thinner than paper and a brilliant silver in colour. Cautiously, he took it from the Black Man's hand, then turned it over in his palm. The card was covered in scratches and swirls, which seemed to reorganise themselves as he watched, forming words in High Gallifreyan. He noticed a set of co-ordinates, apparently for a TARDIS navigational system.

'An invitation?' Homunculette queried.

'See? You want the property, you go talk to the new owner.' The Black Man leaned back on his throne. 'You want any bigshot guns, you come back, hah?'

Homunculette looked up at him, but the man had already closed his eyes. He waved at the walls, and the female voice started shaking the floor again.

'...every time we say goodbye.'

Oh look. Here comes Homunculette. He's snarling, I see. I suppose that means we'll be reporting another mission failure.

It took Homunculette almost an hour to get back to Marie. He decided it was something to do with the anarchitect moving the landmarks around, but when he told Marie this, she insisted he'd just got himself lost. 'I didn't detect any anarchitect,' she said, pointedly.

They stood in the spot where they'd arrived on Earth, next to a great grey slab of roadway on the other side of the river. In her current body, Marie was a good head taller than Homunculette, her skin the same colour as chocolate, her hair plaited behind her back. Her clothes would probably have been fas.h.i.+onable in the earlier half of the twenty-second century, although 2169 was a notorious fas.h.i.+on blackspot, apparently.

'I told you, the bridge vanished from under me,' Homunculette grumbled.

'Are you sure you didn't just fall off it?'

Homunculette gave her his best scowl. 'Open up,' he said.

Marie sighed, then drew a line across her face with her finger, from the centre of her forehead to the tip of her chin. Her head opened up obligingly, the crack unfolding into a doorway big enough to accommodate a decent-sized humanoid.

Homunculette vanished into her interior, and her face folded itself back into the usual configuration behind him. Seconds later, she dematerialised with a wheezing, groaning sound.

'Any ideas who left the invitation?' Marie asked.

Homunculette looked up. High above him, the dome of the console room resolved itself into a map of the local time contours. Marie stretched fluorescent lines between the b.u.mps and eddies, using the co-ordinates on the invite card to calculate the shortest possible route from twenty-second century England to their new destination.

'You're the one with the databanks,' Homunculette said. 'You tell me.'

Like all type 103 TARDIS units, on the outside Marie resembled an inhabitant of whatever environment she happened to land in. And like all type 103 TARDIS units, on the inside she tended to make her presence felt as a disembodied voice. Every now and then, Homunculette got the nasty feeling she was starting to develop delusions of G.o.dhood. 'I see we're heading for more Earth co-ordinates,' Marie mused, neatly changing the subject. 'I wish we could go somewhere exotic for a change. Hic! Hic! I feel like flexing my gravity compensators. If I spend one more day in a G-type environment, I'll get rickets.' I feel like flexing my gravity compensators. If I spend one more day in a G-type environment, I'll get rickets.'

'Stop complaining or I'll take you back to Dronid.'

's.a.d.i.s.t. Now, let's see. We're heading for an East Indian location, about a century in the relative past. Hmm. Actually, I don't think I've got anything suitable to wear. I have an Amazonian supermodel on file, but that's about as near to the mark as I can get. I'm going to have to pick up some decent fas.h.i.+on accessories once we get there.'