Part 16 (1/2)

'Can you hear it?' Kathleen asked.

Sam suddenly remembered what the Doctor had said, when they'd been exploring the ziggurat together. 'Are you psychic, at all?'

The corridor opened out a few metres ahead of them. The room at the end seemed darker than the other parts of the ziggurat Sam had seen. Kathleen had already slithered past her, and now she was getting close to the entrance, slowly pulling herself to her feet. Sam hurried after her.

The room ahead was, in short, a vault. It wasn't as bad as the Faction's shrine, but it was getting there. The walls were the colour of soot, made out of what looked like slime-encrusted brick. Huge rusting nails had been hammered into the blocks, and hung with iron chains for no particular reason. It was supposed to look like a dungeon, Sam realised. The torches only seemed to illuminate the edges of the room, leaving a great puddle of darkness at the dead centre of the chamber.

And in the middle of the darkness was a casket. It glowed, but the glow only lit the box itself; the light somehow failed to reach the s.p.a.ce around it. The casket was silver, roughly the same size and shape as a coffin. Its sides were perfectly smooth, its lid engraved with two carefully carved symbols. Sam recognised them as Greek letters, but wasn't sure which Greek letters they were, exactly. The second one was probably ”sigma”, though.

It was the Relic. You could tell. You could tell, because everything in the ziggurat seemed to lead here, to this precise position in s.p.a.ce-time. Every centimetre of architecture, every word spoken by every one of Qixotl's guests, pointed to this vault like a neon sign. It all came down to this. The casket was the centre of the universe, and nothing else mattered.

Sam saw Kathleen step forward. She was walking normally now, except maybe for the slightest of limps. Sam got the feeling the casket was waiting for her, calling her over. Whispering. Even breathing.

The Lieutenant stopped in front of the box. Sam was sure she saw the casket flare up when Kathleen got within touching distance of it. Silver light washed over her hands as she raised them over the lid of the casket. The Relic was sucking in air, taking a deep breath. Antic.i.p.ating.

Kathleen put her palms on the surface of the lid. Ready to open up the box and release the Relic.

'Where's Qixotl?' hollered Mr Homunculette. 'Get me Qixotl!'

At the moment, n.o.body seemed to know where Qixotl was. Speaking for himself, Kortez wasn't particularly concerned. All things were one thing, he reminded himself, and all souls were one soul. The world of matter would move as it would move, regardless of the vain attempts of mortal flesh to disrupt its ebb and flow.

Although, to be honest, he was going to have to throttle Homunculette if the man didn't shut up soon.

Homunculette lay on the floor of the anteroom, his hands bound behind his back. One of the death-cultists stood guarding him, prodding him in the stomach whenever he tried to get up, but still failing to keep him quiet. The other cultist, the woman, looked on without feeling.

'Mr Homunculette attempted to a.s.sault me,' she explained, turning to face Kortez.

The Colonel nodded. 'Violence is a transient state of unilluminated physicality,' he recited.

'Quite,' said the woman.

Kortez had awoken from his meditation a few minutes earlier, to find himself alone in the guest room. Lieutenant Bregman had gone missing, presumably having been carried away by the aforementioned ebb and flow of material existence. The sound of caterwauling had led him here, to an anteroom close to the centre of the ziggurat.

'Animals! Heretics! s.a.d.i.s.ts!' yelled Homunculette. The cultist guarding him duly planted a foot in his groin.

Cousin Justine kept her eyes fixed on Kortez. 'I've been wondering about your place at this auction, Colonel. I mean no offence, but I think most of us were surprised to see humans in attendance here.' A faint smile appeared on her face. 'That is to say, representatives of the human race. Many of us still regard Earth as a low-interest world.'

'We've got a special interest in the property, Ms Justine,' Kortez told her. 'UNISYC has a long-standing appointment with the man in the box.'

'Cousin Justine,' the woman corrected him. 'But it's the nature of your bid that interests me, Colonel. I'm curious to know what Mr Qixotl is hoping to gain from Earth. Not technology, certainly. And not information, either. Earth has no temporal defences. If our host wanted to know anything about your culture, he'd find it out for himself.' Justine,' the woman corrected him. 'But it's the nature of your bid that interests me, Colonel. I'm curious to know what Mr Qixotl is hoping to gain from Earth. Not technology, certainly. And not information, either. Earth has no temporal defences. If our host wanted to know anything about your culture, he'd find it out for himself.'

'There's more to our existence than material concerns, Cousin Justine.'

Justine looked blank, although Kortez knew she understood him really. 'Then your bid...?'

'There are some powers in the universe that cannot be resisted,' Kortez intoned. 'The forces of karmic virtue and inner balance will be satisfied.'

Cousin Justine and her Little Brother exchanged glances. They looked confused, but Kortez knew it was only a front. Like him, they appreciated the fact that there were higher levels of existence, mysteries only the spiritually illuminated could fathom. If he'd for one moment believed he was alone in his understanding of the universe, he'd probably have gone mad.

The male cultist jerked a thumb in the Colonel's direction, then put a finger to his temple and twirled it around. Kortez guessed it was some kind of secret sign. No doubt the man had recognised him as a spiritual equal.

Without warning, the air was filled with a high-pitched screaming sound, which seemed to ring out from every corner of the room at once. The toucans, Kortez realised. Out in the forest, the birds were screeching in agony, and the architecture here had obviously been designed to let the noise reverberate through the walls. It wasn't the first time he'd heard the alarm since he'd been in the ziggurat, but now the toucans were practically squawking their lungs out.

Something brushed across the Colonel's spinal column. He looked down at his s.h.i.+rt, and caught sight of the letters moving around across the face of the UNISYC insignia.

THE CORE DEFENCES HAVE BEEN TRIGGERED, the s.h.i.+ft reported.

Cousin Justine had apparently seen the same message, though not necessarily in the same place. 'Meaning?'

THE DEFENCES PROTECTING THE RELIC. TWO LEVELS DOWN.

The other cultist hissed. 'Someone's after the stiff.'

THEN THEY'RE NOT VERY INTELLIGENT. THE DEFENCES ARE PROGRAMMED TO TAKE INTRUDERS TO PIECES. WHOEVER'S IN THE VAULT, THEY'RE NOT GOING TO GET OUT ALIVE. WAIT. I'M GOING TO TRY SKIMMING THE CITY'S SYSTEMS. I'LL SEE IF I CAN IDENTIFY THEM.

There was a pause, during which everybody started squinting around the room, to see if there were any messages in the stonework they'd missed. Finally, the s.h.i.+ft returned.

COLONEL KORTEZ, it said. I'M AFRAID I'VE GOT SOME BAD NEWS.

'You mean, this s.h.i.+p's been attacked?'

The Doctor kept moving his hand across the interior wall of what he a.s.sumed was the black s.h.i.+p's control area. 'I don't mean anything,' he muttered.

'But that thing... the dead thing, yeah?... it was a part of this s.h.i.+p's crew?'

'I should think so.'

'And something's killed it?'

'Mmm. Tell me, how many Daleks did you invite to this auction?'

There was a moment's shuffling. Outside the s.h.i.+p, the toucans had started shrieking again, but you could hear Qixotl's nervous twitches even over that racket. 'Just the two. The invites specify no more than two reps from any one, er, agency.'

The Doctor finally found what he'd been fumbling for. A square projection, set into the wall at waist height. He started fingering the mechanism. Sadly, it wasn't designed for anything with fingers. 'So. If we a.s.sume this was was a Dalek vessel, there should be another body somewhere on board.' He paused. 'Qixotl?' a Dalek vessel, there should be another body somewhere on board.' He paused. 'Qixotl?'

'Uh, yeah?'

'There's something I've been meaning to ask you. And stop shuffling.'