Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Times Crucible - Marc Platt [6]
The waves of excitement from the crowd were rising like heat, almost tangibly circling above the city like great wings. The snow-laden sky shuddered under their beats. Carried on the heady air and antagonized by it, Vael moved with the surging crowd. Underfoot, the slushy streets were littered with trampled pamphlets supporting Rassilon's opposition faction.
Vael found that he was twisting his kerchief into a tight cord that burned his hands. His head began to swim as he was pushed on towards the parade route. The streets here were heated, making him sweat all the more. A fresh spark of anger was beginning to smoulder in him and his soul was dry as tinder.
Cutting through the unified chanting of the mob, he heard his name called. Beside him, moving with the crowd, was Loie.
"Vael Voryunsti, you should have answered the door."
Vael might have thought "Fall off!" loud enough for her to hear through the chanting, but he couldn't ignore the imploring brown eyes. "Why should I?" he snapped.
She took hold of his arm. "You'll freeze out here without a coat. Look, I heard the tutor this morning. You got the highest exam quota ever in temporal manifold physics."
"So?" He snatched his arm away, but as he turned to leave her, the crowd erupted and the first dancers in the victory procession rounded the top of the street. Their voluminous skirts billowed out round them like scarlet sails as they whirled their way along the route.
"You think that they'll drop you. Is that it?"
"Why shouldn't they? I failed every other assessment!"
"But they can't afford to waste you, Vael."
"How wasteful," he heard the Pythia say again.
The spinning dancers were passing and behind them trundled a great decorated bier drawn by a plumed leviathan. The lumbering creature, its three tusks encrusted with silver, swung its massive head in time with the chanting of the crowd. On the bier, the returned crew of the Apollaten flung showers of gold coins to the crowd. Standing amid the piled tributes of fealty to the Gallifreyan Empire, they waved their ceremonial swords in triumphant acknowledgement.
Loie took Vael's arm tightly. "You're too valuable to them. They need temporal physicists for the Time Scaphe experiments."
The chanting of the crowd was cutting into his feverish thoughts. He wrung the kerchief through his hands. "What do you care? Leave me alone! I'm nobody! I don't want to be anyone!" He turned away from her and stared up at the bier.
High above the crowd, Prydonius lifted a glass case in a victory salute. Inside, the gnarled feline, feminine head of the Sphinx stared out over the throng.
Its amber eye glittered and met Vael's stare. "Who are you?" was its riddle.
"You're an idiot!" shouted Loie in disgust at him. "Be nothing then! And you'll stay that way!"
He cried out in hatred, his anger kindled, and rounded on her.
Amid the riotous joy of the crowd, Loie screamed and fell back, her hair smoking and face blistering under the force of another's spite.
Vael turned and forced a way through the mob. He ran, angry and afraid of the power he had unleashed from inside himself. Now he was nothing. He had no future, but that was what he wanted. The future could do without him. He could hide forever in his own mind. No one would know, because no one had seen.
The uncontrolled euphoria of the crowd was changing the colour of the sky overhead. Patterns of light shifted among the heavy clouds like an aurora. It started to snow. The city seemed to spin. Council Police were moving on to the streets to deal with a number of fights that had broken out and one reported case of spontaneous combustion.
Vael reached his room and flung himself on to the pallet, burying his feverish head under the pillow. Shut it all out. As long as no one had seen.
Again the stars spun and the dark blue oblong tumbled towards him, its beacon flashing, its engines grating. But he denied it. It was not his future. He was safe