Part 13 (1/2)

'Oh, I'm sorry,' she snaps, sarcastically. 'I've been stuck in here for a day now, without a word to anyone. Typical that when Neville finally sends me someone, he doesn't want to talk. Anyway, I thought that your Romana seemed very intelligent.'

The Doctor ponders. 'Hmm, she started well...'

'Doctor. The power?'

He realises Pelham, for all her seeming innocence, knows a thing or two about interview techniques. She isn't going to let go.

'It's perfectly simple. The power was never off.'

'I don't understand.'

'Let me put it this way. When a person is asleep, they're still alive, aren't they? Everything is still switched on; otherwise, they'd be dead. Sleep is simply a different form of consciousness. I was an alarm clock, telepathically speaking.'

'So you gave Neville exactly what he wanted. And ended up here.'

'Oh, I expected Neville to go back on his word,' the Doctor replies, indifferently. 'They always do.'

'Then why the h.e.l.l did you switch the palace on?'

The Doctor cannot answer. He doesn't know. Or maybe 'it seemed a good idea at the time'. 'Don't worry, there's nothing he can use here,' he says, avoiding the question. 'Oh, the quality of the catering will probably improve, but it won't help him with Valdemar. I must get back to the TARDIS. At any cost. No, I don't think he can do any particular harm.'

Pelham shakes her head. 'If you had known anything about Neville...'

'If I had... ! All right, tell me about Neville. That's obviously why he has put me in here with you.'

'OK,' she says. 'We've got nothing else to do. It all started...'

'No, no,' he replies, irritated, 'the short version. I need to be out of here, very quickly. He plans to reawaken Valdemar, doesn't he? Why?'

'Revenge, power; to regain those possessions and lands lost to him. It's a good story, I fell for it myself. And not just me.

It's ten years since Neville became the Magus of the cult of Valdemar. From my little book, and a club of a handful of nutters, the cult has become the most powerful magical organisation in the New Protectorate.'

The Doctor turns to look at Pelham. He wonders at her motives. She isn't stupid, she isn't easily swayed, so why is she here?

'I was afraid.' She supplies an answer for him. Her bright blue eyes darken for a moment. To the Doctor she seems, for the first time, old. 'He was fanatical, ruthless, charismatic. I fell for him, I guess. I lost everything in the revolution and hanging around with him seemed a good idea at the time. I was thirty-five years old. Old being the operative word. You know, back in the old days, a long way back, all you got was about thirty-five years. Now, all you get is about a hundred.'

The Doctor hears the tremor in her voice. Miranda Pelham is afraid of her own mortality.

'Valdemar was my life's work,' she continues. 'I may never have believed it but Neville is good, very good. If there was some chance, any at all... Somehow he managed to raise all this funding and I really didn't have anything better to do.

Like you, however, I'm starting to regret that decision.'

Pelham sneaks a glance at the Doctor and he realises there is something she's not telling him. 'And it was as simple as that?' he asks, probing. 'Really?'

'Really.' She keeps her face straight. 'What about you? I still don't know anything about you. You could be Valdemar himself for all I know.'

At last, the first restraint comes loose. The leather snaps apart and the Doctor raises his freed right arm. 'I might, at that,' he says mysteriously. When she flinches he gives her his disarming smile. 'Shall we go?'

'How did you do that?'

He unwraps himself from the remaining restraints.

Distracted, he replies, 'You know, if I spent less time answering questions and more time getting on with the job, I'd never get into half the trouble I do get into.' He moves to unravel her restraints.

'One thing, Doctor. You said Neville couldn't use the power of the palace. How can you be so sure?'

'Who said I was sure? I'm taking a chance and I don't like it. However, Valdemar is not what he thinks it is. Whatever is down there in that tomb, it's not some sleeping all-powerful G.o.d. For Neville to achieve anything, he would need a highly disciplined psychic controller. A telepath of unbelievable sensitivity. And that, Miss Pelham, only occurs naturally in the human race about, ooh, once every thousand years. The chances of Neville having one on board are negligible.

Obviously, if that were the case, the danger to the universe would be... ah, there we are.'

Most of the restraints are off but Pelham does not move. In fact, as she lies there her strong face drains of colour. She stares at him and he wonders whether she is going to be sick.

'What? Come on, come on, chop chop.'

Her mouth moves but the words don't emerge. He puts an ear to her lips and feels warm breath trickling into his head.

'Tell me,' he says.

'You...' The words are whispered. 'You haven't met Huvan, then?'

'Huvan? I've heard the name.' He goes cold just as the cell door is opened. He barely hears Kampp enter the room.

'Time enough, Doctor,' the butler purrs.

He feels light, gorgeous. The pain, the black dog that hounds him, biting at his confidence, ruining his life, has gone.

Huvan doesn't like to admit it, but he feels good. Life is not the empty black hole it has always been. He wouldn't do it in public, he wouldn't want anyone to know, but he can't help smiling.

It must be the Lady Romana. It has to be. She walked into his life like an angel, out from the tomb. He couldn't breathe when he saw her; that's how he knew. And now he cannot bear to be in the room with her, so certain is he that he will mess everything up. She brings meaning to him. Oh, that's good; that's a good line. Better write it down now before he forgets.

Huvan sits up. He scribbles on the yellowed paper, not realising that the pencil is six feet away, writing on its own, stabbing through the air over his table. He just wants to get the line committed; he is already sixty-three lines into his 'Ode to Romana', the work he will present to her when it is done. Isn't it amazing how a man can write the truth about his feelings, when speech is so ugly and stunted? Visions of her grat.i.tude overwhelm his imagination. She will fall to her knees, tears in her eyes.

Even the palace has changed since she arrived. Huvan knows there is a presence here, something he cannot explain, something not even the Magus can explain, he bets.

All his life he has known he is special. The Magus tells him often enough, has worked on him enough. Huvan remembers the endless operations, painful operations; so much a part of his growing up; they became normal, even attractive. Every time he resurfaced on the operating table, Neville's face was there, rea.s.suring him it was all for his own good, that he would have died without these messy procedures.

Huvan is afraid of nothing, he is certain of that. Nothing except Hopkins, the creature that would destroy them all.

And even he has paled, a childhood nightmare.

Inevitably, work on the poem is disrupted by more rewarding musings. This new lightness he feels has not served to help him forgive. He thinks about Hermia, that blonde witch, the one he would have given his life to. Until Romana. How mistaken he had been. Smiling contentedly, Huvan settles back on to his bed. The pencil drops to the floor with a wooden plunk. Time to go over the retribution, the punishments; those deceptive blue eyes, that flawless skin, those caustic snarls she gave him when all he wanted to do was be nice...

The door opens and breaks into his fantasies. The Magus himself.

Instantly, Huvan is up and on his feet.

'Relax, my boy,' says Neville, in that brown, warm voice of his. 'I trust you are well.'

How can Huvan explain his new self? How can speech describe what he is becoming? And it is all thanks to the Magus, of that there can be no doubt.