Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Times Crucible - Marc Platt [27]
The street was empty again. She stepped forward and knelt on the road. A feeling of sickness which had started in the pit of her empty stomach was welling up into her throat. Along the dusty ground, just as she had feared, ran a line of single oval footprints, layered in glistening slime. She had seen the same tracks before, leading from the back of the Doctor's splintered chest of books into the crack in the TARDIS walls.
It was the same creature, somehow transported here just as she had been. Only here, in this desolate City, it was leaving tracks a hundred times bigger.
8: The Hollow Hand
miehrrvre (me-air-rr-vra) a. (vulgar) No true Earth equivalent. Implies: no weather; no change; no development; held in stasis; in limbo. (Low Orculqui, from mevrilakis nullity, iehrr highly objectionable)
New Oxbridge Dictionary of Offworld Colloquialisms
The Phazels waited by the Wall of Clouds. Captain Pekkary stared into the dark arcade which led to the haunted section of the City. The translucent glass that had once made up the canopy was long since shattered, leaving only a harsh iron grid through which the stars shone.
Beyond its rows of crumbling columns, the arcade opened on a wide, domed atrium. From the broken canopy of iron hung a huge stone hand. The cold, grey hand of a giant or a titan, with no body to belong to, slung in a net of rusting cable attached to the grid by a single-line cord. "Out of arm's way," Shonnzi had once said with his childish giggle, but the others had just looked at him, confused. The hand's massive grey palm faced down, its three fingers extended in a gesture of protection or blessing. The nails had turned bruised black with age. Through the centre of the palm, the sculptor had smoothed a wide, round hole. The benediction became a gaping gesture of emptiness. The Phazels called it the Hand of Osuda, the hollow hand of Fate.
Pekkary waited with the others for the cracked chimes that signified the start of the bellday. He was used to being hungry, but today he was famished. Shonnzi brought them what food he could find and there was a store that Pekkary had hidden away for emergencies. He did not want that touched yet, but it might have to be soon. They had eaten nothing for two belldays and their defiance of the Process couldn't last for long.
They were already weak. The monster, who could probably last out for ever, had only to wait. But their stand must be made, it was a matter of principle, so they might not eat again for a long time.
While they waited, they cracked open the white twigs of an overroot that had grown into a wall, sending cracks like hairline branches across the surface. The twigs were empty. If the thing they searched for had once been there, it had long since passed on.
There was no way they could avoid the work; the mirror-eyed God of Fate had decreed that when he consigned them to this place. But if they must suffer, Pekkary would ensure that their persecutors suffered with them.
Amnoni Distuyssor kicked up the dust at the arcade entrance. There was no breeze, but the air from beyond the passage was dank and threatening. Or was it their imagination? "It's like a trigger," she said. "Cross the line and it's like disturbing sacred ground."
"Those cries again," said Chesperl. She turned away distressed and looked for Reogus. He had not returned from his lookout post, watching for guards on the artery that led from the tower. "They can't force us down there," she said. "I don't want to go down there."
Amnoni shook her head coldly. "We may have no choice."
"We'll see," said Pekkary.
The distant bell clanked its three broken notes out across the rooftops. Another bellday. Another skirmish with the interminable. The bell seemed to echo twice, each an echo of different notes. Once from high among the towers. Once from through the stars.
They waited long moments in silence until Reogus appeared from a turning along the street and lumbered towards them. "I owe you two treazants,