Part 14 (1/2)

23:05 I'm suspicious. I picked up a few of his notions, when he arrived. Did you know he's a Time Lord?

Cousin Justine didn't know, and the news surprised her. 'I understood Mr Homunculette was here on behalf of Gallifrey.'

23:50 He is. Which begs the question, where does this interloper come from? One of the newblood Houses?

'Don't trust him,' said a voice.

Justine looked up from the newspaper, to see an unfamiliar outline stumbling into the anteroom. It was a man. Or had been, once. He walked with slow, heavy strides, as if worried his legs might fall off if he moved too fast. Apart from her eyes, all Justine's senses told her there was no one in the room except her and the s.h.i.+ft. At least, no one living.

'The Time Lord. Don't trust him. He killed me. Killed. Me.'

'You're beautiful,' Justine whispered.

The man stared at her, without feeling. Justine knew what she'd said, and knew how undignified it must have sounded, but it was the simple truth. This man was pure, the way only the dead could be pure. In him, everything the family had taught Cousin Justine to respect was made flesh.

'Not important,' the man said. 'Listen to me. The Time Lord. He killed me. I know him. I'm sure. He's '

He didn't get the chance to finish the sentence. A cl.u.s.ter of gangling limbs rushed out of the corridor and into the anteroom, knocking the dead man to one side, and he keeled over, without any kind of complaint. Before Justine could even catch her breath, something was moving towards her face at high speed. She ducked. A blur of silver slapped the air above her head.

Homunculette. He'd bolted into the room, moving faster than someone as sickly-looking as him should have been able to move. Cousin Justine saw a snarl on his face, a wedge of metal in his hand. She felt the s.h.i.+ft stumbling around inside her head, looking for some way of communicating with her, but there was no way for it to manifest itself. All Justine could see was Homunculette, a ragbag of expletives and bony limbs, doing his best to smash his weapon into the side of her skull.

Sam shouted. Kathleen didn't respond. The Lieutenant looked alert, but she seemed to be listening to something else entirely.

Sam finally caught up with her in one of the ziggurat's deeper corridors, near a stairway that presumably led to the bas.e.m.e.nt level. Kathleen tried to hurl herself down the steps, but Sam managed to grab her shoulders before she could make it. She pulled Kathleen back into the corridor, where the woman slid to the floor, and finally stopped moving. Exhausted, at last.

Sam knelt down by her side. Finding Kathleen hadn't been easy. Sam had stayed hidden in the pa.s.sage of the Faction's shrine, while Little Brother Manjuele had performed his ”interrogation” in what had sounded like an Americanised South American accent. Finally, there'd been a noise Sam hadn't recognised. It hadn't sounded nice.

Kathleen and Manjuele had left the shrine together. Sam had waited a minute or two, then scarpered after them. Out in the corridors of the ziggurat, there'd been no sign of the Faction cultist, but after a while Sam had found Bregman again, hurtling down a torchlit pa.s.sage into the guts of the building.

Bregman's face was pressed against the floor now. Sam tried to get her attention. 'Kathleen?'

No reply.

'Kathleen? What happened?'

No reply.

'Can you hear me? What did he do to you?'

Instantly, Kathleen's arm shot out from underneath her. Sam blinked. The woman was wearing a short-sleeved s.h.i.+rt, so the limb was bare from the shoulder down, and the marks along her forearm were in plain view. Four small dots, the colour of burnt flesh. Like someone had attacked Kathleen with a hole-punch.

'I gave Manjuele what he wanted,' Kathleen said, flatly.

Hmm. That sounded ominous. 'And what did did he want?' he want?'

Kathleen finally looked up. Not at Sam, though. She was staring into the alcove, where the stairway was set.

'Can you hear him?' she said.

Startled, Sam looked around, half-expecting to see the Little Brother creeping up on them. There was n.o.body in sight. 'He says he can make it stop,' Kathleen went on. 'He says there's no need to be afraid. He says he's the one the monsters are afraid of. He can make them go away. There's evil in the universe. Some things must be fought.'

Oh, h.e.l.l, she was really losing it now. 'Listen to me, Kathleen. You're delirious. I don't know what's been done to you, but...' Sam stopped talking. She knew no one was listening.

Kathleen unfolded her limbs, and started pulling herself upright. 'He says I don't have to worry about anything. Not even Displacer Syndrome.'

Sam put her hands around the Lieutenant's shoulders, more as a gesture of support than to help her up. 'Displacer Syndrome?' she queried.

'Displacer Syndrome. Displacer Syndrome.' Kathleen practically sang the words. 'UNISYC personnel are fifteen times more likely to commit suicide than the average human being. Did you know that?'

She seemed to be addressing the stairway. Sam shook her head.

'I'm coming,' Kathleen concluded. Then she broke free of Sam's grip, and threw herself down the stairs.

The Doctor hadn't spoken in ages. He'd strolled along the corridor to the security centre without a second's hesitation, Qixotl in tow, and nothing had tried to stop him. The defensive systems should have identified him as foreign matter, Qixotl reminded himself, should have ripped him to pieces. Maybe one of the circuits had messed up again.

Or maybe the stories about the Doctor were true. They said he'd been able to wander through deathtraps without a scratch, while he'd been alive. Which kind of contradicted the stories about how he'd died, but there you go.

The Doctor didn't even stop in his tracks when he saw the full horror of the security centre. He headed straight for the master console, and the pixscreen obediently unfolded itself from the surface at his touch. Qixotl glanced at one of the tapestries on the far wall, the one depicting the sentient dinosaur sawing the heads off the vestal virgins. The dinosaur's eyes were leering in Qixotl's direction, as if to say, ”you've lost the plot, suns.h.i.+ne”.

The Doctor was busy prodding the controls by the time Qixotl reached the console, the pixscreen cycling through the schematics of the ziggurat. Eventually, the Doctor found a map of the lowest level, and the screen showed him the complex crissfcross of traps protecting the Relic. The body itself, in its sealed casket, was indicated by a point of solid silver light.

The Doctor stared at it. And stared. And stared.

'Erm...' Qixotl prompted.

'I don't understand,' the Doctor muttered.

Qixotl looked up at the taspestry again. Even the vestal virgins were laughing at him, now. 'Why?' the Doctor went on. 'Why would the Time Lords need my body so badly? Homunculette's an agent of the High Council, he's not here to make sure I get a decent burial.'

'It's like I said, Gallifrey needs your biodata codes. It's the war.'

The Doctor shook his head. 'What's so special about my biodata? All Time Lords have the same sort of thing in their biology. I know I've got more practical experience than most of the others, and there's still that little question of my ancestry to be cleared up, but even so...'

Mr Qixotl wondered how much he could say without the Doctor having a go at him for ”damaging the delicate web of s.p.a.ce-time”. 'All right, it's like this. At the start of the war, Gallifrey lost a lot of stuff, yeah? Most of its secrets got scrubbed by the...' The Doctor gave him a warning glance. '...by the enemy. I mean, I'll tell you this much, those sods can wipe out information as fast as they can wipe out matter. Most of the Time Lords' big guns got taken out. The Demat Gun, the Sash of Ra.s.silon, the works. You know how much the High Council's technology relies on biodata codes, right? Most of the biodata codes went, too.'

The Doctor frowned. 'I'm an ex-President of the High Council. I've got all the codes they need.'

'Yup. And not just that.' Qixotl paused. 'Listen, I'll try not to give too much away here, but... between now and the time when you, y'know, finally kick the bucket... other stuff happens to you. I mean, you might think you've got a lot of weird bits in your biodata now, but wait until the... the end.' Qixotl wiped his brow with the sleeve of his jacket. This had to be the hardest conversation of his life. 'Your body's got all kinds of secrets stuffed into its biodata. Things the Time Lords have lost. And when I say lost, I mean, totally.'