Part 24 (1/2)

'I am the Empress,' she said.'You could say I was the first of the type.'

'Of course.' The Doctor executed a swift bow.

Iris had shuffled forward a little. 'Then it's all true? Everything the Scarlet Empress told me?'

The woman shrugged. She was a little devil-may-care, the Doctor thought, frowning. 'You mean the current Empress? I don't know what she's been telling you, dear.'

”That all the Empresses of old exist and live still, deep beneath the throne room of the palace, all in jars in the catacombs.'

The original Empress tossed her head.'All quite true. We're all down there, having our well-deserved rest. All my many daughters and I.

Except me, of course. Kidnapped as I am. And forced to work, in my extreme old age.'

She looked pleased with herself, though, for someone who had been roped into slavery. She looked glad to be out and about like this. Her face was powdered white, her cheeks caked in rouge. Her eyes were so thick with mascara that they looked like they'd been poked in by a sooty finger. Her headdress had now been set back on her head at a rather jaunty angle.

Iris muttered to the Doctor, 'This really is the planet of the fabulous old queens, isn't it?'

He gave her a sickly smile. Then he challenged Major Angela. 'What are you doing, keeping this poor old thing hostage?'

Angela's eyes flashed. The bears, overcoming their fear of the deity in their midst, bridled and made as if to take hold of him.

'Watch your mouth, Doctor,' the Bearded Lady warned.

'Ask her advice,' Gila put in. 'If that's why you called her up from the dead.' His clammy hands were itching. Never had he seen a genie of any kind before. Not in any of his escapades. The kabikaj didn't really count. He just knew that this Empress had the kind of power that could answer wishes and commands. He could tell this by her quite careless and insouciant manner.

To Iris, meanwhile, the woman from the jar seemed rather common.

Now that the image had steadied and resolved itself, the Empress that Iris could make out had bubbled blonde hair - the very shade of vanilla ice cream. Her flesh was ample and very much on show. Even given the apparition's immense age (and Iris put the figure at ten thousand at a conservative estimate) there was still something extremely... suggestive about the woman. All the while, as she outstared her breathless audience, she was slowly wiggling her hips. Both hands were resting on those hips and there were jewels on her fingers that glittered like artillery. In her very person the earliest Empress distilled a certain provocative charm and a distinctly risque wit. She wore ropes of tiny pearls, they saw, each pearl no larger than a grain of rice.

'Well,' she said, in a purring, unctuous tone. 'How nice of you to call me up at last. I've been waiting for just the right chance to meet my public.

And here you are.' She treated the Doctor to a raking, saucy leer, looking him up and down slowly as she batted her three-inch-long eyelashes.'Was that you who opened my jar?' He coughed. 'Ahm, actually... it was all of us.'

'It's so wonderful to be wanted,' she smiled, still concentrating on the Doctor. 'She isn't what I expected,' Iris whispered.

'Things never are, dear,' said the earliest Empress. She asked the Doctor, 'Do you always bring your mother along when you meet royalty?'

'Enough of this,' Major Angela barked gruffly. 'I've called you up, Majesty, for a very particular reason.'

The Empress rolled her eyes. 'People only ever call me up when they're in a fix.'

”These... brigands are here to steal you.'

The earliest Empress looked at the Doctor again, and then at Gila, who puffed out his glistening, lizardy chest and stared fiercely back.

'And you're trying to stop them? Honey, let me go. I'll submit to captors like these.'

'You,' said the Bearded Lady,'are my property.'

'You can't stand in the way of kidnappers like these.'

'She sounds like my gran,' said Sam.'After she's had a few.' Sam's raffish grandmother was an embarra.s.sment to her family, who liked to think of themselves as quite right-on and enlightened. Sam got on rather well with her gran.

”They want,' said the furious Angela.'to take you back to Hyspero and back into the clutches of the current Scarlet Empress.'

”That silly girl,' sighed the old woman.'She's getting above herself. I'm not going back there. She's a monster. Why's she sent you to fetch me, sweetie?' she asked the Doctor. 'Why hasn't she sent out the usual tattooed muscle boys?'

Iris interposed herself. She was still a little wobbly on her pins, Sam noticed. 'I'm the leader of this expedition.'

'Good for you, honey.'

”The Scarlet Guard are pursuing us. Major Angela wanted to ask you if she should stay and fight or come with us.'

The earliest Empress thought briefly. 'If I was you, I'd go with them. And if there's any trouble... I'll be here to help.'

Then she s.h.i.+mmered once, expanded once more into a column of yellow fumes, and issued back into the jar, which sealed itself. The bears gave a collective sigh.

Major Angela had reached her own decision. Her bushy jaw was set with resolve.'If we return to Hyspero, we go my way.And we go by sea.'

”Then we have to travel down to the next level,' said Gila. 'It might give the Scarlet Guard the slip that way.'

'Why by sea?' asked Sam.

'There's someone we have to fetch; said Angela. Something dawned on Gila.'Oh, not him'

Angela nodded. ”The fourth member of our company of old. We need him too, Gila.'

The alligator man groaned.

'We need transport, horses and furs. It's freezing on the next level down.'

Before the Doctor could ask what they were talking about, he heard Iris give a mournful grunt and he caught her as she sank backwards into his arms.

Chapter Twenty-Two.

I've Had My Moments

When the bears decided that what they wanted most of all, more than anything, was to be human, there was the problem of what to do with all the fur. Major Angela was their example, their s.h.i.+ning reason for wanting to be human beings, but she begged them not to do away with their golden hair. It was so l.u.s.trous and rich. She would have given anything for a beard of the same fine substance. This puzzled the bears, who wanted only to be her, in the way that medieval saints wanted to become Christlike. They wanted to be able to use knives and forks like she did. It was Giselle, the most trusted, Giselle who had recently died on the hillside, who suggested that they give all their golden clippings and curls to the Bearded Lady herself, in a kind of tribute.

She kept a room at the top of her mansion especially for the purpose. It was a golden room. Under the door crept a b.u.t.tery golden light. Here the bales of golden fur were stacked and stored and, when it was decided that Major Angela was leading the party of fugitives to the sea, it was the door to this golden room that she flung open. She set the bears to weaving and creating cloaks and hoods from their own gleaming fur.

She warned her bears that none of them would be coming with her on this next adventure. They were to stay and watch the beloved homestead against the Scarlet Guard. It was not a decision that she took very lightly. Major Angela had not been separated from her bears in a decade. The bears kicked up a dreadful fuss, but she was not to be deterred.

'We will not let you go,' warned her footman, looming over the Bearded Lady. This was in the doorway of the spectacular golden room. Once more she was forced to the conclusion that she was as much the bears'