Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [49]
Homunculette realised he’d closed his eyes again. More salt-water under his lids. Stupid. Marie was his companion, officially assigned to him by the High Council. He was supposed to be an agent of war. Attachment was supposed to be unthinkable.
But Marie had been attacked. And whatever Qixotl said, it was obvious, painfully obvious, what had happened. Something had messed around with the structure of space-time, even the stranger in the velvet jacket had known that.
At any other time, Homunculette would have suspected the agents of the enemy. But not here. Not now. After all, everybody knew about the Faction. Everybody knew about their rituals, the blood-hungry voodoo rites they used as window-dressing to cover up the procedures they’d stolen from the Time Lords. They tore holes in the continuum, put it down to the work of the “Spirits”, even acted like they were proud of the damage they did. Bastards. Sadistic, bloodthirsty bastards.
Homunculette felt his fingers tighten, only now noticing the way he’d been holding the sonic monkey wrench. Weighing it up in his palm, gripping it like a club. Before he even knew what he was doing, his thumb had flicked the trigger, deactivating the sonic mechanism. Turning the wrench into nothing more than a lump of heavy metal.
The Doctor was concerned. For someone who had, on many occasions, fooled himself into thinking the universe was his responsibility and his responsibility alone, concern was nothing new. But this was a particularly heavy and ominous kind of concern. The kind you could cut up into slices and serve with chips.
He’d been pacing the corridors of the ziggurat for a good hour now, poking his nose into the side-passages, going everywhere he thought he could go without triggering the alarm systems. There was still no sign of Mr Qixotl. The man had wanted to talk, but after that business with the TARDIS-woman, he’d simply vanished. On his travels around the building, the Doctor had talked to the living dead, enjoyed a long “conversation” with the Shift, and even waved to a Paradox cultist (surely a first), but he was no wiser about what was going on here.
The Doctor turned the next corner, and practically walked into Mr Homunculette.
Homunculette looked much as he had done in the cocktail lounge, only worse. The Doctor beamed when he saw the man, and opened up his arms in what he hoped looked like a gesture of comradeship. In truth, he was spreading his arms to stop Homunculette getting past him in the corridor.
‘Mr Homunculette, I presume?’ the Doctor said. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t think we were properly introduced.’
Homunculette stopped dead. ‘I’ve been told you’re here on behalf of the Time Lords,’ the Doctor went on. ‘An ancient and noble race, so I’ve heard. I wondered if I could talk to you about them for a moment.’
‘Get out of my way,’ droned Homunculette.
The Doctor glanced down at the thing in Homunculette’s hand. A tool of some kind, evidently, covered in jury-rigged high-tech add-ons. Under any other circumstances, the Doctor would have approved of the workmanship. Exactly the kind of thing he might have put together himself, in fact.
But Homunculette was holding it in much the same way you’d hold a weapon. The Doctor wondered how much damage the Time Lord was capable of doing. He was wiry, not very muscular, but it wasn’t wise to underestimate someone on the brink of gibbering neurosis.
So the Doctor stepped aside, and let Homunculette stomp off around the corner.
‘Not very talkative,’ mused the Doctor. Still, perhaps that was for the best. What could he have asked the man, anyway? “How are things back at home, in my future?” Puerile, even if it hadn’t been against the Law.
A war, the Shift had told him. Gallifrey was involved in a war. He could have asked Homunculette who the old homeworld was supposed to be fighting, at