Part 8 (1/2)

'You've never been put on trial, exiled, summoned to carry out ridiculous tasks, dragged back to your ancestral home to atone for sins that weren't even yours...' He let his words dry up. Then, 'I think I rather envy you, his. You've had, in many ways, the life I wanted for myself.'

So that night, I dreamed of the swamps - our small town huddled between the monstrous boles of trees, the tops of which none of us ever saw. we barely saw daylight.We grew up pallid and phlegmatic. My family and the families we knew never moved from their source. And everything we had smelled of the rank waters of the swamp. It seeped into everything. We coughed, our chests rattled, we sank back in torpor and the phlegmy stupefaction of our place in the world.

A dangerous land: infants were routinely carried off in the dark by the slinking, jaw-clas.h.i.+ng quadrupeds whose scales my own flesh had grown to imitate. It was a miracle any of us lived to maturity. And when we did there were festivities. Such poor, doleful festivities. The best we could manage saw us feasting on a lumpen broth of turnips and frogs, drinking whisky of fermented bark, smoking tobacco rolled from the leaves that dwindled to the forest floor and we dried over our fires. This tobacco we stunned ourselves with, in order to blot out our fetid, unchanging circ.u.mstances.

In my dream I was leaving home again. I was following the stranger who had come to town to tell us that Hyspero was a world with a thousand and one different circ.u.mstances, environments, places and ways to live.

Our dark squalor wasn't all. Everyone I knew looked sceptical at this. He was charismatic, this stranger, so they listened. Gathered to hear him describe the great capital city of Hyspero, which teemed with wealth and intrigue. They listened to the hooded, robed stranger, as if he was telling them fairy tales. And yet I, just grown to maturity, a figure of curiosity and suspicion because of the mutant growth of my skin and my peculiar, burgeoning powers, was drawn in by his tale of the rest of the world.

I went with him and found, when we left the swamplands behind, that every word he had told us was true. But he was a slaver. And what difficulties I had after that, sold into bondage, eluding and escaping him.

But at least I was on my way.

I slept this night at the edge of the desert, sweltering under the canopy of words the four of us had talked up that night, that hung over us, webbing us in complicity. We were all runaways, it seemed to me -well matched, really. I could smell the rotting hulks of the trees again, the stagnant sickness of the waters. I was home again, waiting for the lure of the evil stranger who would, in his own way, free me.

It was a relief to wake up, to find myself me now, and on this current quest.

The others still slept. The fire was almost out. Lilac embers crackled in the makes.h.i.+ft grate.

I heard a shrill creaking noise: the working of an ancient, unoiled joint. It seemed to be coming through the air and coming closer. I grasped the sword Iris had lent me from her secret armoury aboard the bus and stood, wondering if I should alert the others.

Then, out of the dark, flew a silver bird.

Quite gently it came, winging softly and disturbing the air like the slightest of breaths. It came out of the dark and hovered directly above the fire. I squinted, fell back, rubbed my eyes. The bird flapped its wings before me and it seemed to consider me.

It squeaked like an old machine and I saw that it was a created thing, of thin, beaten metal, all knocked together with pins and rivets. Its wings were like splayed fingers and its head like two thumbs entwined. I saw that it wasn't a bird at all, but two disembodied hands, joined together like those of someone making a shadow-play of a bird.

It creaked and hovered and beat its fake wings at me.

They were the hands of a cyborg, the nails painted plainly black, disguising sensors and intricate circuitry. They were, I realised, the hands of the cyborg we were pledged to seek out. The d.u.c.h.ess's hands.

Somehow the cyborg d.u.c.h.ess was aware of our coming and had sent out these hands, this cool, metal envoy, to... what? Check up on us?

Warn us of something?

I was about to ask aloud, when the hands turned in mid-air, flapped three times for momentum, and shot off into the night.

I stood staring silently after them, unsure even which direction they had taken.

In the morning I didn't tell the others what I had seen.

I don't know why.

Chapter Nine.

All About Equilibrium

Sam half expected the Doctor to crow with triumph when it turned out that Iris's map wasn't as marvellous as she'd pretended. He was, though, remarkably restrained as they pulled down the blinds once more to consult the archaic charts. Gila looked frankly sceptical as she worried at the tangled, multicoloured and dotted lines that covered and confused the mountain ranges.

They were in the sandy foothills still, looking for the best route across.

What Iris had enthusiastically described as the easiest, widest and most secure road for the bus to take had completely vanished.

”There's meant to be a road here,' she cursed, as they crested yet another steep hill, the broad vista of green crags stretching impressively before them. Iris's gaze was fixed on the ground, however, glaring at the place where she had predicted a forking in the road. They were supposed to bear left. But the road they were on had chosen to peter out. They had hit an utterly desolate land.

So Iris stared deeply into the luminous map and still nothing came clear.

'It's obvious,' said Gila at last.'The desert has simply brushed the road away. The sands have risen up to obscure all previous tracks and traces.' To him - who prided himself on his lack of superst.i.tion - it even seemed to be a sign that no adventure could be the same twice. A new route must be uncovered.

'It certainly looks that way,' said the Doctor.'Tabula rasa .'

'Isn't that a drink?' Sam laughed.

'You're thinking of Tia Maria.'

Iris cursed again. 'Why is it you can never trust anything to stay the same?' She looked accusingly at the Doctor, as if it was all his fault.'I had it all sorted out. The neatest route. Everything!'

The Doctor shrugged.'We'll just have to rely on our wits.'

'Oh, whoopee,' said Sam.

'He's right,' said Gila.'Travelling blind into the mountains.'

'That's exactly what I didn't want to do,' said Iris. 'I hate flying straight into the unknown. Anything can happen. You can wind up anywhere and any old how.'

This made the Doctor cheer up immediately. This was much more like his way of doing things. He chose to mollify Iris.'Look,! know you don't like barging in and taking unnecessary risks...'

She gave him a warning glare, as if he was being sarcastic.

He went on, '...But why don't we just materialise ourselves on the other side of the mountain? Hmm? It would save so much bother - just a short jaunt.' He stared at her appraisingly.'Even my rackety old TARDIS can manage little jaunts.'

'So can mine; snapped Iris.'She's just temperamental sometimes.'

'Go on,' urged Sam.'Give it a go.'

They couldn't understand her reluctance to simply take them straight to their objective. So far they had played along with her, even pretending that this was just an old bus. But the days had come and gone and they had started to feel a new sense of urgency. It had crept up on them gradually and, the moment the road beneath them vanished - swallowed up, as Gila so decorously put it, by the voracious desert -they pressed their advantage and ganged up on Iris. She twisted and sighed and grew cross.

'All right; she said, caving in at last. She stomped back off to the cab.

'Don't blame me if it goes hideously wrong and we end up scrambled into a million shrieking particles...'

'We'll trust you,' the Doctor beamed.