Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Times Crucible - Marc Platt [77]
The sky boomed. Another bolt from the same source split the sky to the East. It lingered, angled against the first bolt like a jagged blood-red rainbow, a pair of God's compasses measuring out the world.
He heard the distant clank of the broken bells struggling to complete their chimes.
He wished he could remember half of what Ace, a very determined and volatile young lady who seemed to know him, had explained. She was also extremely uncouth, which he was embarrassed to admit that he rather liked.
The jagged rainbow was fading. Some information lingered in his memory. Information about other people and events. Anything about himself was less easy to grasp and retain. Ace complained that she had repeated things loads of times already. It worried him greatly. Loads of Times was a very disturbing anachronistic concept.
Chesperl and her baby worried him too. Children are the spirits of hope. But hope had nothing to do with the City.
He would eventually have to do something about the Process creatures he was expected to meet. But that could surely wait.
Thunder rumbled distantly. Or it could have been the ground. From his viewpoint, the Doctor studied the world in which they were trapped. A cacophony of grey buildings that pierced the layer of rising mist.
The City with no horizon rose around him in Stygian gloom on the inside of the sphere. Wherever he stood in this world, he would always appear to be at the bottom of a basin. Always standing at the pole, with the opposite pole some three miles away, curving like a roof directly above him. And at the centre of the globe was the sky, bright with flickering constellations; boundless space bound inside the tiny world. The universe, what he thought he remembered as the universe, had turned inside out.
He felt distinctly nauseous at the concept. Time was disrupted here too, running in a series of parallel strands that made up the structure of Space. It was tangling across its own boundaries. In his hearts, he could feel the inexorable approach of a disaster he could not define.
The silver liquid cat was suddenly beside him. It rolled on its back and looked up hopefully, so he crouched and dabbled at the curiously fluid and unreal texture of its tummy. The City had more riddles than a Sphinx had claws. He must know where he was. And who he would be. Too many other lives depended on it. Ace had told him so. And they all looked to him for the answers.
Why did they all imagine he knew what was going on?
Ace said the Phazels were Time Lords. They denied it. She said he was a Time Lord too. He didn't understand. Perhaps she was confused. Perhaps she had stolen his memory. Why else should she keep telling him what he was supposed to know?
Or perhaps it was Shonnzi. The young man watched him all the time, as if he expected some miracle or revelation. His nature was too brooding, shot through with sudden bursts of manic enthusiasm. His thoughts were constantly veiled. The Doctor would find it very difficult to get on with anyone like that.
And the others? Phazels and Processes? All monsters of one species or another. Why should he worry? He no longer cared what happened to any of them.
He left off playing with the cat and stood up, wondering where to start. The ground rumbled again. From the top of the crumbling tower, he watched the tiny figures on the ground below. The Phazels were grouped attentively around Ace. Shapes in the haze of thin mist. She seemed to be lecturing them.
He suddenly wanted this City, this penny-plain, penny-dreadful world, all to himself; to make of it what he could with no one else to interfere. It would be easy just to drop stones on all their heads and be on his own at last.
He gazed out across the world and saw a ripple running down through the curve of the City. This sort of thing was best viewed objectively. It was a fascinating sight. Buildings caught