Part 8 (1/2)
”Barbara did.” Vicki suddenly felt as if she had been thrown on the defensive. ”She said that Susan was your granddaughter, and she left the TARDIS to get married.”
The Doctor stood. ”Yes, Susan was my granddaughter, if such terms can be applied to beings like us. I loved Susan. I loved her very much. And now that she has gone, I miss her more than you will ever know. I feel that I am...”
”Alone?” Vicki suggested gently.
The Doctor nodded. ”Alone,” he confirmed. ”When I left, she came with me. She could have stayed, but she felt that I needed looking after.” The Doctor's face was suddenly haggard. ”Although she was sweet, and guileless, and innocent, she was the closest thing to a conversational partner of my own level. There were things that we could talk about that would be meaningless babble to...” He shot Vicki a guilty glance.”...to anybody else. She was the only person who understood.”
”Understood what?” Vicki whispered.
”Who I am,” the Doctor said, not meeting her gaze. ”Why I left.
Where I was going. And now...”
Vicki was about to say something trivial and comforting when there was a flurry of wings outside the window. For a moment she thought that a flock of pigeons were landing on the ledge outside, but when the shadow of a huge pair of wings blotted out the firelight from the square below she gestured to the Doctor to back away, out of the line of sight of the window. He did so, quickly and silently. The windowsill creaked as something heavy settled upon it. The bright light of the moon cast a squat shadow across the carpet.
”Vicki?” The voice was as musical and calming as she remembered.
”Yes?” she said, her throat suddenly dry.
”Alarmed do not be. Albrellian it is. Souls briefly last night touched did ours.”
”I thought you were a dream.”
Albrellian laughed: a high-pitched trilling. ”Happy a nightmare not considered am I. Afraid that forgotten might have you me.”
”How could I forget,” she said, ”a charming alien perched outside my window.”
There was a pause. ”That not of this Earth am I know you. So, one of the Doctor's companions are you. That means...” Albrellian trailed off, as if it was thinking things through.
”Yes,” the Doctor said, stepping forward into the light. ”And I am the Doctor. The definitive article, so to speak. Might I ask you to step into the room, sir, and show yourself to us, rather than skulk outside the window like a common Lothario.” Albrellian drew his breath in sharply. For a moment, nothing happened, then the bulky shadow on the windowsill moved forward into the light of the torches. The first thing to emerge from the shadows was a strangely formed limb like a length of bamboo terminating in something like the claw of a crab but with four opposable sections of different sizes. A second claw followed, and then the creature's body. Albrellian was an arthropod the size of a human, but much broader and shorter. He had three pairs of powerful walking legs and two pairs of the more delicate crab-like manipulatory appendages that Vicki had first seen. His hard sh.e.l.l was dark red in colour, covered in irregular maroon blotches, with a ruff of maroon hair sprouting from the top. Four stalked eyes emerged from the hair - two of which were fixed upon the Doctor and two upon Vicki. As Vicki watched, entranced, a pair of leathery wings folded themselves up and slid beneath a section of sh.e.l.l that hinged back to cover them.
”Thank you,” the Doctor said. He slipped his thumbs beneath the lapels of his coat. ”It seems that introductions are in order. As I have said, I am the Doctor. My companion, with whom I believe you have already-talked, is Vicki. And you are...?”
”Albrellian, of the Greld, am I.”
”The Greld?” The Doctor frowned. ”Forgive me: I am unfamiliar with your race.”
”Dealers in ... technology are we. Home around the star that humans call Canopus make we.”
”Then you are a long way from that home.” There was a querulous, aggressive tone to the Doctor's voice. ”I hope that you do not intend extending the Greld commonwealth in this direction.”
”Home is indeed far away my,” Albrellian said, maintaining eye-contact with the Doctor, ”but further away still from your home, lord of time, are you.”
The Doctor raised his eyebrows. ”You know of me?”
Albrellian bowed its great sh.e.l.l until the rim was touching the carpet. ”Deeds the stuff of legend are your.”
The Doctor glanced over at Vicki and raised his eyebrows. She shrugged helplessly. There was a definite subtext to the conversation, but she was at a loss to know what it was.
”What did you mean,” the Doctor asked, ”when you recognized Vicki as one of my companions and started to draw a conclusion from that fact?”
”Thoughts were bewildered my,” Albrellian admitted, straightening itself up. ”Arrival with awe and trepidation awaiting have been your we. Only this evening informed that on the mainland and taken to Laputa you and your travelling companions were met was I.
Surprised was I, for when last night to Vicki talked I, convinced that with you she was was I, and both in Venice here were you.
Somewhere along the line, a message has been garbled.”
”I don't understand what you are talking about,” the Doctor snapped. ”Your grammar could do with some practice. What or where is Laputa?”
”The island.” Albrellian turned to Vicki. ”Surely understand you?”
Vicki shook her head. ”All I know is that we were invited here for some reason, but we don't know why.”
”Laputa,” the Doctor murmured to Vicki, ”was a fictional island in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, but that book won't be written for another hundred years. Is something happening here that Swift will write about, or does someone else here have knowledge before its time?”
”Show Albrellian the invitation, Doctor,” Vicki urged. ”Perhaps he might be able to tell us who sent it.”
The Doctor slipped his hand into his coat and pulled out the impossibly white slip of material. ”This was given to me under mysterious circ.u.mstances,” he said. ”Perhaps you can shed some light on its meaning.”
Albrellian reached a claw into a crevice in its sh.e.l.l and drew out a similar white slip. ”All have them do we,” it said simply. ”That is why here are we.”
The Doctor reached out and took the invitation from Albrellian's claw. He turned it over and looked at it, then wordlessly held it out to Vicki. The words were the same as the ones she remembered from the invitation that the Doctor had bought back with him from...
from wherever it was that he had been taken.
INVITATION.
Formal dress required.
R.S.V.P.
”An invitation to what?” she asked helplessly.
”Games do not play Doctor,” Albrellian whooped. ”The invitation a formality is. By the messenger who delivered it to you fully briefed must have been you.”
The Doctor handed the slip of paper back to the Greld. ”If I was briefed,” he said, ”then I have forgotten the briefing. There is a small period of my life that I cannot recall. Perhaps, if I could, then all would be clear to me.”
”And the information within the invitation itself what about? How else did get here you?”
The Doctor shrugged. ”My travelling machine took care of that.
The invitation itself guided us.”
Albrellian s.h.i.+fted all four of its eyes to the Doctor. ”Difficult your a.s.surances to accept find it I,” it said. ”Some kind of artifice this is off balance to get us all. Concessions from us want you.”
”Don't be so foolish,” the Doctor snapped. ”How can I want concessions when I don't even know what's being conceded, or in what forum?”
”When the Convention only hope of peace is our, how games can play you?” Albrellian shouted.
”Convention?” The Doctor was frowning. ”What convention?