Part 21 (2/2)

'Very clever,' the Doctor said.

Pryce turned slowly towards Beltempest and took a step forwards.

'I don't believe we've been introduced,' he said, and extended his hand. Beltempest automatically reached out, then s.n.a.t.c.hed his hand back, shuddering.

Pryce smiled, and skittered his nails against the barrier, making a noise like a horde of c.o.c.kroaches spilling down the walls. Beltempest flinched.

'Provost-Major Beltempest,' he said. 'I was . . . I was one of the Landsknechte who arrested you on Dis.'

Pryce's dark eyes examined Beltempest from the top of his head to his large, circular feet.

'I remember Provost-Major Beltempest,' he said, frowning. 'You're not him.'

'Body-bepple,' Beltempest said, his voice trailing off as he looked away.

'No,' Pryce said, ' You You are not Provost-Major Beltempest. The you within the bepple.' He shrugged: a slow, almost balletic motion. 'Or perhaps you are. It doesn't matter. Memories escape in the darkness. I can hear them sometimes, laughing at me from the corners of this cell, breeding in the cracks in the walls.' are not Provost-Major Beltempest. The you within the bepple.' He shrugged: a slow, almost balletic motion. 'Or perhaps you are. It doesn't matter. Memories escape in the darkness. I can hear them sometimes, laughing at me from the corners of this cell, breeding in the cracks in the walls.'

'They keep you in darkness?' The Doctor was scandalized.

'Only metaphorically. I don't believe we've met.'

133.'I am the Doctor.'

Pryce giggled. 'I don't need a doctor,' he said. 'There's nothing wrong with me.'

'I need your knowledge of icaron physics.'

Pryce frowned suddenly, and looked away. He wasn't completely hairless, the Doctor realized. A pure white pony-tail hung down his back like an elec-trical cable.

'There are some things,' Pryce whispered, 'that man was not meant to know.

My mind has been opened to higher feelings, Doctor: the pure ethic of suffering, the clean absolution of death. The stunted subhumans that surrounded me didn't understand, of course. Transcendence is always stifled; prophets are never honoured in their own land. They could not see that I had been blessed by a vision of higher things. I tried to cleanse their minds with exquisite suffering, but they stopped me.'

His barren gaze swept across the Doctor and Beltempest.

'You want to know about icarons?' he said softly. 'But how much can you bear to understand?'

The figure in the darkened office was standing by the large blue box when the desk bleeped. It ran a hand lovingly over the box's surface: so rough to the eye, so smooth to the hand.

'Soon,' the figure said, 'soon I shall tease your secrets from you.'

It crossed to the desk and sat behind it, scanning the ceaseless flow of information. Ah! Yes, there! A fastline call placed from Earth to Purgatory, to Provost-Major Beltempest of the Imperial Landsknechte. Beltempest hadn't been present, so the message had been stored, awaiting his return. The figure pa.s.sed a gloved hand across the sensitive surface of the desk, calling up the text of the transmission.

'd.a.m.n!'

Its hand slammed down on the translucent surface, sending ripples of disturbance across the information net. Certain blocks of shares were inadvertently sold for well below their face value, causing a handful of minor companies to go bankrupt and the economies of several distant planets to fluctuate alarmingly.

'd.a.m.n and blast!'

The figure considered for a moment. Things were slipping out of control.

The fact that the Doctor's face had changed had been unexpected, but not completely beyond the realms of possibility. After all, had he not changed his own appearance? The voice, now . . . that was unforgivable. He really should have antic.i.p.ated that the Doctor's voice had also altered.

134.A deep breath, and a reconsideration. Was it such an avoidable mistake?

After all, when the Doctor's marvellous travelling device had appeared on the walkway, the valet bot had been too far away to pick up his voice. The woman Bernice had spoken to the pursuer bot on the Arachnae Arachnae when the figure was controlling it, so it had a record of her voice, but the Doctor . . . when the figure was controlling it, so it had a record of her voice, but the Doctor . . .

Hmm.

Time to bring this chapter to a close. Beltempest was unavailable Landsknecht business, presumably and so other methods would have to be employed. The figure's hands moved across the desk, placing a simcord call to the other end of the fastline transmission. An apartment somewhere in the local Overcity. Where the rats had gone to ground, so to speak.

Time to flush them out.

The null-grav lift deposited them in a cavernous flitterpark which took up the bottom five levels of a block some fifteen minutes by walkway from the apartment where Cwej's parents lived.

Looking around, Bernice was amazed how little multistorey car parks had changed over the centuries. Call them what you liked, park whatever sort of vehicle you wanted in them, they were always drab, grey, urine-smelling affairs supported by stained pillars, flickering lights fitfully illuminating their depths, the sound of dripping water echoing through them. As an archaeolog-ical side visit on Earth back in the 1970s, while the Doctor had been trying to prevent the Vardan invasion, Bernice had visited one of the first of the species.

Apart from the fact that the vehicles in this one floated a few feet above the ground, and the dates on the tax discs were different, she could have been back there again.

Near Ace.

Unwelcome memories tightened the back of her throat. Ace was gone. Like her or loathe her, and Bernice had done both in her time, she had left an Ace-shaped hole that would take a long time to fill. She supposed that the Doctor felt that way too, although typically he never showed it.

'So,' she said, her voice rebounding from the distant walls, 'what's the plan?'

'Whoever it was that simcorded told us to meet them here,' Forrester said.

She had moved to one side, and her blaster was in her hand.

'And they didn't say who they were?' Cwej asked.

Forrester snapped, 'All they said was, if we wanted to know more about the murder of Waiting For Justice, we should meet them here. That's it. Nothing else. Zip. Zilch. Nada Nada. Echt Echt.'

'Okay, okay,' he protested, 'just checking.'

'I don't like the feel of this,' Bernice murmured. 'I've seen too many old films in the TARDIS cinema where the intrepid heroes are attacked in a car park.'

135.'What's a TARDIS?' Forrester asked.

'What's a car?' said Cwej.

Metal crunched on concrete.

The three froze, waiting for the noise to be repeated.

'Where did that come from?' Forrester hissed.

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