Doctor Who_ Atom Bomb Blues - Andrew Cartmel [81]
‘That’s what Lee said when he saw it. He said it was fate.’ She tapped ash off the end of her cigarette, a grey fragment drifting down onto the immaculate 141
white-tile floor. ‘Imperial Lee is very big on fate.’
As they came further into the room, with the Storrows at their backs, pointing the Tommy guns, Ace noticed something. In the centre of the large red circle there was another circle. An opening in the floor. As she moved closer she saw that it led into a cylindrical opening that descended into the floor to a depth of about eight feet, like a shallow well. But the well was lined with the same red tiles as the broad surrounding circle, which made it hard to see.
‘What’s the well for?’ said Ace.
‘Oh, you know,’ said Lady Silk, taking a puff on her cigarette. ‘You can’t have a proper California death-cult chapel without facilities for making sacrifices.’
‘Death cult?’ said Ace.
‘Sacrifices?’ said the Doctor.
Silk smiled at the Storrows. ‘Sure. Albert and Elina made a modest start in that direction. What was it, Albert? Gophers and chipmunks? The occasional sparrow?’
‘Cockerels,’ said Albert Storrow tightly, ‘roosters, rams, goats. . . ’
‘Oh, relax,’ said Silk, exhaling smoke. ‘I was just trying to get your goat.
Anyway, the Storrows had made some humble moves in that direction but then we came on the scene and moved the whole thing up a level or two.’ She smiled at Ace and the Doctor. ‘As you’re going to find out.’
Ray, who had been hanging back near the staircase, suddenly spoke. ‘Oh, come on Silk, you can’t be serious.’
‘Serious about what?’ said Ace. She was getting worried.
‘Human sacrifice,’ said the Doctor, making explicit the concept she’d been trying to avoid.
‘It’s crazy, man,’ said Ray, coming into the centre of the room. He stopped at the edge of the red circle, as if afraid to intrude on it. ‘It’s just superstition.
Hokum, baby.’
‘Hokum, is it?’ said Elina Storrow fiercely. ‘Just superstition? Was it just superstition that we were sacrificing a black ram at the exact moment you appeared in the Well of Transition? Just as we shed its blood.’
‘This is where you arrived when you crossed over?’ said the Doctor. Lady Silk just nodded and puffed contentedly on her cigarette, listening to the argument that was growing between Ray and Elina.
‘That was nothing to do with shedding blood or killing that poor ram, man.
It was all to do with physics. With my equations.’
‘And your desire,’ said Silk, blowing a lazy smoke-ring.
‘Physics and desire. No blood sacrifices, baby.’
‘Maybe not at your end,’ said Albert Storrow. ‘You opened the portal in your dimension in your own fashion, while we opened one here in our way. But 142
both had to be opened to allow you to cross through.’ Elina nodded as he spoke, her plump pink face serious in her hooded white robe.
‘Synchronicity, man. Coincidence. That’s all it was.’
‘Maybe the synchronicity is part of the recipe. Maybe it’s one more essential ingredient.’ Silk dropped the stub of her cigarette to the floor and ground it out under the heel of her slipper.
‘Please!’ said Elina in a harsh voice. ‘Don’t desecrate the floor of the temple.
Don’t leave that lying there.’
‘Okey doke,’ said Silk. She kicked the butt across the tile floor so it skidded across the red circle, reached the lip of the well and disappeared into it.
‘She’s profaned the Well of Transition!’ cried Elina.
‘Oh, just chill out,’ said Lady Silk.
‘Calm down, dear.’ Albert put a hand on his wife’s arm. He still held the gun steadily in his other hand.
‘There’s no need for bloodshed, man,’ said Ray. ‘That’s just primitive.’
‘But like the equations and the passion and the synchronicity, maybe it’s all part of the mix,’ said Lady Silk. ‘Maybe the blood is necessary. That’s what Lee would say. Wouldn’t you, Lee?’
Ace looked up to see a group of men coming into the room. They were all dressed similarly in shiny, garish baggy suits, with ludicrously long key chains dangling from the pockets, and wide-brimmed hats. Under the shadows of their hat brims, their faces