Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [140]
That was Mictlan. That was exactly how it looked, that was exactly how it felt. Everywhere, there was the smell of urine and fried food. The dead were the ultimate underclass, Bregman realised. The universe had the same contempt for them that the Swiss had for the Dutch.
She walked for hours, or for what felt like hours, but the sub-suburbs never ended. When she finally sat down, on a patch of dead grass by the side of an empty road, it was out of boredom, not because she was tired. She didn’t seem to need rest here, and she guessed she wouldn’t be able to sleep, either. It was true, then. She was dead, and this was eternity. The idea should have appalled her, but to be honest, she didn’t have the strength to be appalled.
Across the street, the shadow of an apartment block stretched, yawned, and spat out another one of the dead. That was how people arrived here, Bregman had noticed; the shadows gave birth to them. The man was more active than the other zombies Bregman had seen, but she guessed that wouldn’t last long. The new arrival looked around, with some distaste, before his eyes finally settled on Bregman.
He hopped across the road. As he came closer, Bregman recognised him as the man from the ziggurat, the one Sam had called the Doctor. His clothes were colourful, eccentric, although you could tell Mictlan was tugging at the fibres, trying to tear the character out of the material.
‘Lieutenant Bregman, isn’t it?’ he said, stopping in front of her. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you here.’
Bregman stood. The Doctor’s voice was full of life, even here in the land of the dead. The way he spoke, you could have sworn he was introducing himself at a cocktail party. ‘Everyone ends up here, don’t they?’ she said.
The Doctor tutted. ‘I shouldn’t think so. Not unless you’re an agent of the Celestis. Even I had to force my way in.’ A thought seemed to strike him, and he peered at Bregman’s face a little more closely. ‘But you’re not working for the Celestis. I’m sure I’d be able to tell if you were. So why are you here?’
‘Because I’m dead,’ Bregman said. Stupid question, surely?
‘No. You’re as alive as I am. You’re suffering the side-effects of a Paradox control rite, that’s all. You need time to recover.’ Suddenly, he slapped a hand against his forehead. ‘The Faction. Their rituals must use the same techniques as the Celestis... of course! Grandfather Paradox!’
‘Come again?’
‘Grandfather Paradox. The stories say he was a Time Lord, but there’s no record of his existence on Gallifrey. He must have done the same thing the Celestis did. He must have erased himself from the timeline and put himself into conceptual space. I wonder if the Celestis realise? They must have some idea, there’ll be Faction victims all over the place...’
Bregman was starting to get irritated. But then, she reasoned, maybe that was a good sign. At least she had enough feeling left in her to get irritated by something. ‘So let me get this straight. This is Mictlan, right?’
‘It’s the realm of the Celestis. They call it Mictlan. Personally, I’d rather not give them the satisfaction.’
‘Then why are you here?’
‘Oh, I’ve got an appointment with the Celestis,’ the Doctor told her. ‘I don’t think they know it yet, though.’ Then he turned, a full 180 degrees, and shaded his eyes.
Bregman followed his lead. On the skyline, looming over the houses of the dead, was the silhouette of something that reached up as far as the eye could see. Bregman felt part of her stomach try to crawl up into her mouth. The structure towered over the rest of Mictlan, but until now she hadn’t even noticed it. Maybe the building was too obvious to notice, she thought. It was the heart of Mictlan, the point everything revolved around. It looked so natural, it hadn’t seemed worth thinking about until the Doctor had pointed it out.