Part 6 (2/2)

A staircase was set into an alcove there, a set of hard stone steps leading up to the next level of the ziggurat. There was someone standing a few steps up, staring at him. He would have jumped, if he hadn't had several centuries' experience of being crept up on.

The woman was tall. Tanned. Amazonian, even. Not attractive, but well-designed, the same way early twenty-first century automobiles were well-designed, all sleek lines and aerodynamic curves. She was South American, if her clothes and skin tone were anything to go by. She stood absolutely still, not even blinking. A less experienced observer might have a.s.sumed she'd been physically trained, maybe as one of those glamorous female a.s.sa.s.sins human beings seemed to get such a kick out of. The Doctor knew better, of course. The woman was giving off no biodata signals. Organically, a complete blank.

Almost automatically, he grinned, and extended his hand. 'Good afternoon. You must be in charge around here. I was wondering if you could help me. I think I'm a bit lost.'

The woman didn't respond. The Doctor tried to guess what was going through whatever she had for a mind. He tried not to think about Sam. If he even glanced back along the pa.s.sage, the woman would notice the eye-movement.

He withdrew his hand. 'Ah. Of course. Formal introductions. I was forgetting. How do you do, I'm '

He finished the sentence there, because he guessed that if the woman was a security unit, as he suspected this would be the point at which she'd get sick of his blathering and go for the throat. He expected her to lash out at him, or try to pin him to the ground, or at the very least demand to see his pa.s.sport.

He definitely didn't expect her to open up her face and unfold it into a gaping black chasm larger than her entire body. However, this is exactly what she did.

'What the h.e.l.l are they they doing here?' the alien called Homunculette was screaming. doing here?' the alien called Homunculette was screaming.

Bregman tried to figure out the best way of retreating into a corner without anyone noticing her. A couple of minutes ago, the lounge had been quiet, and she'd been close to opening up a meaningful dialogue with Homunculette, albeit a meaningful dialogue in which he kept slagging her off for being a primitive ape-descendant (which begged the question, what was he descended from, exactly?). Even though the letters on the beermats had kept s.h.i.+fting around, trying to get her attention, Bregman had been on the verge of thinking this ”first contact” business wasn't going to be as hard as she'd expected.

But everything had gone very wrong very quickly. The two bat-faced people had arrived, and Homunculette had suddenly started shouting and swearing at them. At his table, Colonel Kortez had tensed up, his sweaty arms flexing under his s.h.i.+rt, ready for combat. Even the beermats had tried to retreat.

Finally, Mr Qixotl had hurried into the room. So far, Bregman hadn't seen him walk anywhere.

Qixotl thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his suit. He looked like he'd been expecting something like this, sooner or later. 'Not sure what your problem is, Mr H. If you've got, y'know, some kind of personal problem '

'Faction Paradox! Faction Paradox, for... I mean, look at them! Look!' Homunculette waved his hand at the skull-people, who hadn't moved an inch since he'd begun his rant. ”Cousin Justine”, her mask held between delicate black-gloved fingers, seemed alert. Even interested. But not insulted.

'We received an invitation,' Cousin Justine told Homunculette, softly. 'Please. There's really no need to be afraid.'

Homunculette spluttered at her, but didn't get as far as forming any words. Bregman realised he was holding an empty bottle in his hand, and for one nasty moment she thought he was going to chuck it.

'We should be introduced,' said Colonel Kortez.

All eyes turned on him. The Colonel was standing, facing the two Faction Paradox people. Bregman wondered if he was about to have another funny turn.

'Colonel Joseph Kortez,' he went on, snapping to attention. 'UNISYC. On behalf of the people of Earth, welcome to our small and beautiful planet.'

Bregman winced. It wasn't a full rendition of the ”Greetings, BEM” speech from the UNISYC handbook, but it was bad enough. Nonetheless, Cousin Justine nodded graciously.

Homunculette snorted. 'You're wasting your breath. She's as human as you are. No, I take that back. She's less less human than you are.' human than you are.'

Cousin Justine looked unshaken. 'We've come on behalf of the Faction. On behalf of the Spirits, and on behalf of the Grandfather himself. I renounce my humanity for the sake of the family.'

'Spirits?' repeated Colonel Kortez. He sounded genuinely interested. Bregman remembered what she'd heard about him back in Geneva. After Saskatoon, he'd spent a year in India, on one of those spiritual discovery missions the military psychiatrists were always talking about. UNISYC had very nearly put him in the Zen Patrol, after that, which was second-best to a spell in a padded room with soft furniture. Bregman had the horrible feeling this conversation was about to get mystical, big style.

Homunculette started s...o...b..ring again before Cousin Justine could answer. 'The Faction's a voodoo cult. Just like your voodoo cults on this rear-end of a planet.'

'We have similar customs,' Justine agreed. 'But, with respect, the family aspires to greater things. We have no dealings with the Spirits of Earth. Only the Spirits of Paradox.'

'”Aspires”?' Homunculette squawked, practically spitting on his opponent, even though they were metres apart. 'You're a bunch of thugs, that's all. Criminals who got lucky. You only wear that... that...' Homunculette gestured towards Justine's mask, presumably not being able to find a suitable word for it. 'You only wear that that because you want to scare people. Spirits, my backside.' because you want to scare people. Spirits, my backside.'

For the first time, Cousin Justine looked genuinely offended. 'Then we have a conflict of beliefs,' she announced, somehow managing to keep her voice level.

Kortez was nodding his head off. Mr Qixotl was slowly edging his way back out of the room. Homunculette was still snarling. 'You stole everything you know from us. Your whole... grubby little gang... only exists because of our technology. Go on, try and deny it.'

'That's not '

'Look. See that? You see it?' Homunculette was looking around the room for support, his finger shaking as he pointed at the bone mask. 'Tell them what it is,' he demanded. 'Go on. Tell them.'

Cousin Justine looked away, only for a moment. 'It's a skull,' she admitted.

'What of? Tell them. What's it the skull of?'

Justine looked uneasy. 'The skull of a Time Lord.'

'Hah!' Homunculette whirled around, like a lawyer who'd just made a devastating attack on the accused. 'See? That's my people she's talking about. My people.'

Bregman gawped. The mask was wider than Homunculette's whole head. She imagined a skull just like it, writhing under the man's skin, bursting out at the edges. Time Lords had dimensional engineering, according to the UNISYC files. Did they have heads that were bigger on the inside than on the outside, or what?

'The Time Lords fought a great war, many years ago,' Cousin Justine explained, addressing the other representatives en ma.s.se en ma.s.se. 'They won. If they'd lost, by the grace of Time, then this is how they would have looked.' She raised the mask a little.

Homunculette snorted again. 'That mask shouldn't exist in this timeline. You see how dangerous they are? Even their headgear breaks the Laws of Time. Even their headgear.' He started laughing, for no immediately obvious reason. Bregman wondered if he was getting hysterical.

Cousin Justine merely nodded. 'Of course. There's great power in these totems. The Time Lords would have us destroy things that shouldn't exist. Only the family understands their value.'

'Oop,' said Mr Qixotl.

Immediately the focus of the situation changed. Mr Qixotl had backed out of the doorway, trying to get as far away from the argument as possible. Unfortunately, he'd backed into someone coming up the pa.s.sage.

Suddenly, all of Bregman's anxieties, about the ziggurat, about the auction, about the aliens, completely dissipated, only to be replaced with one simple and terrible new sensation. Full-blown body anxiety.

Kathleen Bregman was pale-skinned, 163 centimetres tall, and had hair that stuck together in ugly clumps whenever it was exposed to daylight. She wasn't technically unfit, but whenever UNISYC ran a standard physical QRT her test scores hovered ominously around the 0.6 mark, and she'd never told anyone about the pains in her guts or the needles in her legs when she did the ten-kilometre survival run. Whereas, by contrast, the woman who'd walked into the room was tall, bronzed, and in a very real sense perfect. She wasn't even attractive, as such. The way she moved told the world she didn't need to be attractive. If supermodels were as cool as they thought they were, Bregman decided, then this was how they'd look.

The woman manoeuvred past Mr Qixotl without breaking her stride, brushed past the Faction Paradox representatives without a second glance, and stopped in front of Homunculette.

'There may be a problem,' she told him.

Homunculette dropped the bottle. It bounced. 'Problem? What kind of a problem?'

'An intruder.'

<script>