Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [137]
Maybe it had something to do with those rules they kept making for themselves. Or maybe there are rules older than the Celestis, ones even they can’t break.
So, they were waiting for the bloodshed to start, as usual. The ones in the higher galleries were arguing about whether they could trust their human agents. That was why they were asking me questions, as a kind of psychological test. I didn’t have much of a psychology left by this time, but I gave them the answers I thought they wanted to hear.
And in the middle of the argument, one of the Celestis on the floor of the Hall stepped forward, towards the aperture. For a second, I thought I was going to see his face, but the candlelight kept missing him somehow. I saw him lift up the Speaker’s staff in his hand, and I saw him bang it against the floor, three times, to get the others’ attention.
‘The timeline is settling,’ the Speaker said, once the rest had quietened down, and I can’t describe his voice any more than I can describe his face. ‘The Time Lords’ forces are committed to an assault on Dronid. The enemy, as we’ve seen, is taking appropriate counter-measures.’
There were whistles and catcalls from the galleries, which was pretty much business as usual. ‘Good luck to them,’ someone shouted, and there were laughs from the floor. I think.
The Speaker sounded agitated, I remember thinking that at the time. ‘This is a moment for firm decision,’ he said. ‘Are we to stay neutral, or are we to lend our support to the Time Lords?’ (I might be paraphrasing a bit here.)
‘Neutral! Neutral!’ someone called.
‘The Time Lords!’ someone else suggested.
‘The enemy!’ yelled someone at the back, and that sparked off a few arguments. I’d picked up a thing or two about Celestine politics while I’d been working in the castle. Some of them had gone against official policy, I think, and given help to the Time Lords’ enemies. I got the feeling more and more of the Celestis wanted to take that kind of action. They probably thought it’d make their lives more interesting.
And that was when I saw the aperture getting wider. I remember being surprised, because the hole never usually opened up without the Speaker’s say-so. You could see the Celestis were excited, anyway. They mumbled and gibbered and chattered, and watched the aperture turn into a doorway, from Mictlan to the universe outside. The Speaker banged the staff against the floor, but I think he must have known no one was going to pay him any attention.
Finally, something appeared, something solid, right in the middle of the Grand Hall. Filling the aperture, like a cork stopping up a bottle.
It was a box. A big blue box. The corners were battered, so it looked as old as the hills, and the white letters on the sides were so worn down you could hardly read them.
The Doctor had turned up in Mictlan.
I can’t let myself forget that.
All right, I’ll admit it. I can’t remember what the Doctor looked like. The kind of face he had, the kind of clothes... things like that weren’t important. He was life, and he was right there in the land of the dead, that was all that mattered. I’d heard the Celestis talking about him, so I knew who he was the second I saw the box. And yes, I know there are lots of Doctors. I couldn’t say which one it was that walked out into the Hall. I’d guess it was the last one. The oldest one. I know he acted old.
There was silence when he stepped onto the floor. I mean, real silence. I’d never heard that before, not in the Grand Hall. The Doctor looked around, squinting at the shadows, with a look of real contempt on his face. Whatever face it was.
‘Tedious,’ he tutted.
He turned a full circle, then gave a sarcastic salute to the galleries. ‘Just like the old Council Chamber on