Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [56]
He knew she’d get it one day.
The dream was different that night.
Cousin Sanjira was an old man, not a boy. He was wearing his family robes, stained with the spilt biomass of a dozen ceremonies, the mask over his face making him cough and wheeze. He moved through a building full of beds, a sleeping child tucked into each and every one. Alarmingly, there was a knife in his hand. He recognised it as the ceremonial blade from the Mission, the one he and Justine had used to draw the blood for the dematerialisation rite.
A silhouette slipped out of a darkened corner, and blocked the doorway ahead of Sanjira, a living wall of dried blood and black muscle. The apparition had one arm, although the shadow it cast had two. Sanjira tried to draw another breath, but the air turned to smoke in his lungs. The Grandfather had one arm, the family legends claimed. He’d cut off the other one himself, to remove the tattoo the Time Lords had branded him with. Could it really be...?
‘I’m not the Grandfather,’ the silhouette said. ‘Only a messenger.’
Sanjira tried to speak. He felt like falling to his knees, like screaming, like running. He remembered what he’d said to Justine about the Spirits; heresy, even if it happened to be true. Please, he thought, please no. I meant no disrespect, but Justine is so young, she doesn’t realise...
‘That isn’t the problem,’ said the messenger. Its voice was smooth, but soft, no louder than a hiss. ‘It’s about the body.’
‘The body?’ Sanjira managed to rasp.
‘Oh, yes. What did you do, Cousin? What did you throw away? The Spirits are distressed. The Grandfather is displeased.’
‘I performed the proper rites,’ Sanjira protested, wheezing with every syllable. He tried to prize off the mask, but it wouldn’t budge. The silhouette laughed, and its shadow laughed with it.
‘Oh, idiot boy! Through biodata, we become strong. This is our way. The Relic was handed to you on a plate, and you gave it up to the vortex. Its will is too strong for the Spirits to steer its passage. The Relic is lost to us, now.’
‘It was a dead body!’ Sanjira coughed. ‘Dead! Its biodata was of no use!’
‘A legend never dies, Cousin. You should know that.’
‘A legend?’ Sanjira clawed at the mask, and felt one of his fingernails break against the bone. ‘Then the body... who...?’
The one-armed shape leaned forward, and whispered in Cousin Sanjira’s ear. It whispered the name of the dead Time Lord, told the Cousin the true nature of the body in the box. The whispers echoed inside the mask, until the whole world seemed to be made out of the words.
‘No!’ Sanjira howled.
The silhouette shrank back. ‘Yes, Cousin, yes. You see? The Grandfather’s pleasure was to possess the biodata, to grow from its strength. Yet you threw the body away, without looking beneath its skin. Is there any sin worse than this?’
‘Then... there’s to be a punishment?’
The Grandfather’s messenger didn’t speak. It moved aside, melding with the shadows around it, letting Sanjira pass.
The Cousin stepped forward, his legs moving of their own accord. The room ahead was his own room, in the orphanage. In front of him there was a bed, and in the bed lay an eight-year-old boy. Cousin Sanjira heard the humming of the shrine in his ears, and knew the Spirits had brought him here. For the briefest of moments, Sanjira saw himself as the boy saw him, a figure in a blood-tainted robe, his face the skull of a bat. The Cousin moved to the side of the bed, and raised the knife. A scar of silver, unfolding from his gown.
This was his punishment, then. Cousin Sanjira, aged fifty, stabbed the boy clean through the heart. Young Sanjira, aged eight, cried out once and died.
But if Young Sanjira died, then Cousin Sanjira had never existed. Which meant he Couldn’t have killed the boy.