Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [141]
‘The castle of the Celestis,’ the Doctor explained. But it didn’t look like a castle, not to Bregman. Back on the estate in Lausanne, there’d been a multi-storey car park, and the car park had been the focal point of everything sick and ugly and miserable. No one had ever used the top three floors, because the lights had all been smashed, and it had been two-o’clock-in-the-morning dark there even in the middle of the day. Teenagers had used the basements levels as crack-houses, while tramps had used the stairwells as public toilets.
The building on the skyline looked like a car park, too, but it had an infinite number of levels, stretching up through the clouds of factory pollutant that formed Mictlan’s sky. In fact, the structure looked like several dozen car parks piled on top of each other, some levels overhanging the levels underneath them, the access ramps jutting out at awkward, random angles. The supporting columns – and there were thousands of them – were cracked and crumbling, covered in layer upon layer of grit and dirt, built up over centuries, maybe millennia.
In short, it was the worst place in the universe.
‘You want to go there?’ said Bregman. ‘Why, for God’s sake?’
The Doctor leaned towards her, conspiratorially.
‘I’m half-stupid,’ he said. ‘On my mother’s side. If you feel up to the walk, it’d be nice to have some company.’
Up close, the castle/car park looked even worse than Bregman had expected. She guessed it’d take a good few hours to walk all the way around the base of it, so God knew how long it’d take to get to the top level. Through the opening at the front of the building, she could see the layout of the ground floor, a concrete hangar the size of a football field, marked with lines of white paint and splashes of dried blood. Bare yellow bulbs hung from the ceiling in their thousands, filling the building with a sick electric light, while the dead loitered in the shadows of the supporting columns, doing nothing in particular, the way only the dead really know how to do nothing in particular. The columns were stained with black graffiti, Bregman noticed, although you couldn’t make out the letters. Presumably, there were no names in Mictlan.
The Doctor took it all in, but didn’t seem fazed. Bregman wondered whether he was seeing a car park, too, or something worse. She felt it was fair to assume this was her version of purgatory. She doubted it’d look the same to anyone else.
A couple of minutes later, they found the way up to the next level, a fifteen-metre-wide stairwell set halfway along the ground-floor wall. The steps were huge, big enough to make Bregman think of a set from an old Hollywood musical. You could imagine the leading lady high-kicking her way down the stairs, belting out the theme song and trying not to break her stilettos on the solid concrete. The bulbs at the top of the stairway had blown, so everything faded into darkness after the first few dozen steps.
The Doctor started bounding up the stairs, two or three at a time. Bregman tried to keep up with him, but failed miserably. In the end, she had to shout at him to stop.
‘I’m not well, all right?’ she said, when she saw him glance back at her over his shoulder.
The Doctor looked agitated, but at least he’d stopped bouncing. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any need to hurry. I was hoping to catch Trask before he handed the Relic over to the Celestis, but I think we’re already too late for that. We’re going to have to deal with the Celestis face-to-face.’
‘“We”?’
The Doctor seemed taken aback. ‘I’m sorry?’
Bregman stopped a couple of steps below him, and caught her breath. ‘You wanted me to follow you here, OK? And so far, all I’m doing is slowing you down. Whatever you’re doing, it’s got nothing to do with me. I don’t even know why you’re here. So why drag me along? I mean, don’t think I’m not enjoying the experience or anything.’
But the Doctor turned out to be entirely sarcasm-proof. ‘It’s got something to do with a tree falling in a forest,’ he said, as if that explained everything. ‘Oh, look. We’ve got company.’