Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Times Crucible - Marc Platt [64]
The Doctor's memories were feeding into her mind.
A moment. A single flute was playing somewhere. A gentle, slow, dreaming sound, recalling fields of tall, still grass on Lungbarrow mountain before haytime; the baking wash of Elysian sunshine that warmed him through to the bones; a golden-winged beatitude fly that hovered lazily from one nodding pool of nectar to the next. The scent of hot, dried Gallifreyan earth.
His cousins, full-grown babies born from the family Loom. Yet even they laughed occasionally, lured from the dust-webbed halls of the brooding House on lushberrying trips in the summer woodlands.
And no dinner for those that old Housekeeper Satthralope found out. The arch tyrant of his youth with her clay pipe, wispy beard and twenty-way mirrors.
"Only a doctor! Wretched child. Such a disappointment to the family and to the House!"
A memory frozen in music played on the instrument of imagination. Without changing its tone or metre, it could set myriad moods, a commentary on whatever scene it accompanies. A gesture of the hand makes it a courtly dance. A glance of the eye makes it a union of love. A single tear makes it the messenger of death.
The timeless music of Time. A line of cool melody from the flute, like the wind singing, so calming, so persuasive, so frightening. Both objective and deeply subjective. The fretwork on which perception is hung. Make of it what you will, the flute plays on.
A tall woman slowly made her way across the grey plain. A grey shawl covered her head in the ancient manner. On her arm she carried a jar, a two-handled amphora decorated with figures frozen for eternity in a scampering dance. She reached the long black crack that split the plain across. Gently she inclined the jar. From its lip fell a trickle of dust.
As the endless, timeless flute melody played, she stood pouring the glinting dust into the bottomless crevasse. Just as the Mother Goddess of the Old Time legends had poured Time itself into the void of the empty Universe.
The same tune stirring different memories. The dust of Time glittering like falling mirrors, trickling like sand in an hourglass. To stop it you might more easily stand a Pythia on her head.
Hurry up, Ace. You're supposed to know when it's time. The Doctor is waiting, and the door is sliding shut. It is 11:58.
Someone was shaking her.
"Come on, Ace. Wake up. It's time!"
She resisted. The air had a chill. Her mind clung sluggishly to the safety of her dream rather than face the virtual nightmare of reality. Alice, in the book she'd been reading, was told she was just part of the sleeping Red King's dream and when the King woke up, she would go out — bang! — like a candle.
Someone was tugging her up by her arm. She stumbled blearily after him along a dark street. "Leave off. What are you doing? How did I get down?"
"With extreme difficulty," said Shonnzi. He flourished a selection of foil-wrapped biscuits at her as they ran.
Idiot, she thought and told him so.
"Please yourself." He turned and dragged her on faster. "You fell, I jumped," he said. "Some sort of energy field carried you down. I latched on to its tail." He dragged her round a sharp corner into another street. "Seen the Doctor yet?" he asked as he went.
She had spent months trapped in Iceworld, picking up pidgin Galaxpeke and pigbin Orculqui. She could say with some pride that she could swear fluently in eleven alien languages. But Shonnzi wasn't worth the effort. Not in this mood.
Her back and legs ached and her hand stung with friction blisters — like burn-up experienced on re-entering reality. The other hand was clamped into a fist shape. With a will of its own, its fingers resisted her attempts to open it. Something glinted in its clamped palm.
"Just stop a minute, will you!"
"Nearly there.
"I said, stop!" She ground her feet into the dust and refused to move.
"We don't have time, Ace."
She gave up on her