Part 12 (2/2)

There was a slight cough beside them. Piper turned, and found the Doctor standing at her shoulder. She hadn't heard him approach. From the expression on Bannen's face, neither had he.

The Doctor began to speak, in a voice so quiet Piper wondered how she could hear his words above the storm. 'A great many years from now, in another universe, a man in a mirror told me to do nothing. ”It is done,” he said.'

Piper suddenly had the crazy idea that all the Doctor's masks had been stripped away, leaving him with no more armour than the truth. She s.h.i.+vered.

'It's very hard for me to do nothing,' he added softly. 'I rebel against it. But there are times when nothing is simply the best thing to do.'

'What does he mean, Dad?'

Bannen didn't seem to hear the voice of his 'son'.

The Doctor glanced at the simularity. He crouched down so that his head was level with the boy's face, and smiled rea.s.suringly. He seemed to have no trouble in accepting the presence of the child.

'My friend Bernice and I have been trying to work out how to stabilize the moons,' he said. 'This room is obviously the key element in an important system of controls. The controls were disturbed, and now we have to put them right.'

'Or your other friends will die.'

The Doctor nodded solemnly.

The boy turned to his 'father'. 'Dad. Dad!'

Bannen did not respond.

Piper scowled. 'It's useless. If Christine had used her eyes and spotted Bannen's instability she could've prevented all this. He's good for nothing but trouble now.' She looked at the Doctor, but he appeared not to be listening.

'Perhaps nothing is all we need from him, or from anyone,' he said at last, and smiled triumphantly.

'Do what?' Piper said.

'Feedback! The ability of a system to monitor its output and correct for mistakes. That's what I'm waiting for.'

'You think,' said a hesitant voice, 'that everything might be all right?'

The Doctor turned to where Alex Bannen was crouching and looking over at them.

'No,' he said sternly. 'Entropy demands that everything will not not be all right, but sometimes we can rage against the dying of the light.' be all right, but sometimes we can rage against the dying of the light.'

A sudden, eerie flash illuminated the cavern. The pillar that marked where the Pit pa.s.sed through the Farm had begun to glow. Bands of yellow light rose and fell across its surface; diaphanous spokes rotating about rose*hued hubs intermeshed with each other, beautiful reflections of a deeper order within.

A deep chime filled the chamber with rolling echoes.

'”It is done,”' the Doctor whispered.

Piper drew in a relieved breath as the wind fell.

The deep rumbling beneath their feet abruptly stopped, and the electrical discharges faded away. The blanket of fog above their heads began to disperse, sparkling the mushroom*shaped domes with soft diamonds of moisture.

In the upper part of the chamber, a rainbow glimmered.

From Bishop's s.h.i.+p, moored close to the Bridge, the scale of the disaster was apparent.

The Adjudicator had discarded his heavy black robes and ridiculous collar, and was slumped in his padded control seat wearing just boxer shorts, socks and electrostatic sock*suspenders. His feet were resting comfortably on the s.h.i.+p's control panel. As he watched the events occurring between the two moons, he blew on a plastic beaker of fragrant Arcturan tea.

Ripples were travelling up and down the Bridge, but the anchors remained firm. The amplitude of the vibration even seemed to be reducing slightly, although the movement was still sickeningly ma.s.sive. Staring for too long at the simularity made him feel dizzy.

He tried a sip of tea and winced as the hot liquid scalded his tongue.

Somewhere up there the Lift was disintegrating. Bishop was glad it was too small to see: it made suppressing the imagined screams of the people inside that much easier.

The s.h.i.+p's neural net interrupted his second sip of tea.

'You have a call, Trau Bishop.'

Muttering darkly beneath his breath, Bishop set down the beaker and dived for his robes. He wondered who was calling Miles, perhaps, or that little clown the Doctor. They had already tried to get him to mount a rescue mission using his s.h.i.+p. He had explained that the amount of paperwork involved made it impracticable, but he was sure they hadn't believed him.

When the picture of the Bridge disintegrated to reveal the stern visage of Bronwen ap Bryn, Adjudicator in Extremis, he was shocked. The last he had heard she had returned to Ponten VI the planet which had been ceded to the Guild of Adjudicators in perpetuity by a wary but appreciative Earth Central but that was too far away for anything but the so*called pigeon post; recorded messages dumped into a hyperdrone and aimed at the recipient's projected location. If Bryn was calling live, she had to be nearby. Even so, the tachyon signal was so faint that the neural net was having problems extrapolating a recognizable picture. The face of the Adjudicator in Extremis seemed to be composed of flat green slabs. Fuzzy highlights delineated her features and her mouth lagged behind her words. Superimposed upon her face, flickering digits recorded the cost of the call. Typically, that part of the transmission seemed unaffected by the disruption.

Bryn's mouth worked silently. More than a second out of synch, a blast of static shot through the protesting audio system. Bishop winced.

'Your pardon, Extremis. I was not expecting a personal visit.'

'I'll not... sagree w... at. I was in... vicinity on... cial business and... Your repor... o far is... nconclusive.'

'There have been some some additional problems.'

A flexing of the green planes making up Bryn's face could have been interpreted as a smile. Or a frown. With her, the two were practically interchangeable.

'Problems are your job, Adjudicator.'

Funny how the software let that one through unaffected.

'Flattered as I am by your confidence, Extremis, I'm afraid the situation is getting complicated.'

The green slab representing Bryn's left eyebrow slipped upwards questioningly. Or perhaps it was a system glitch. Bishop hesitated before going on. 'There has been another death an apparent suicide and indications of sabotage on a grand scale. Additionally, there are discrepancies in the Base personnel records, involving three extra people.'

'...tra peop peop...'

Bishop took a deep breath. 'I feel that the proceedings here may escalate seriously if a careful check is not kept on the situation. For this reason, I would like to request the presence of another Adjudicator.'

Bryn's mouth worked silently for a few seconds.

'...te out of... e questio... m afraid.'

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