Doctor Who_ Christmas on a Rational Planet - Lawrence Miles [68]
CONTROL? Yes, yes, I am in control, of course I am. The nausea grew worse as he crossed the room, stepping over the bumps and the pools that were spreading across the floor, DON’T TREAD ON THE CRACKS OR THE BEARS WILL
GET YOU HA HA, but wherever he looked the place was CONTAIN IT coming apart, there was nothing but raw chaos flowering I HATE FLOWERS and it was just like the jungle THE GARDEN the garden all over again.
He might have been there for hours, and he might have been screaming, or crying, or just forgetting to blink on time.
He might have done any number of things before he noticed that the sphere was missing. He might have, but it was impossible to say; his memory was no longer the shape he thought it should be. The gift, the Watchmakers’ gift, OUR
GIFT, was gone, removed from the crystal column at the heart of the dais, and the screen was on fire, and pictures were running down it like melted wax. An image, taken from the basement’s memory. A woman – the diabolist woman –
standing here, in his very own home, IN OUR TEMPLE, stealing the sphere...
She had come. For him. That was why she was here in Woodwicke, obviously. To destroy his work, OUR WORK, and take away his Reason.
And the next thing he knew he was running through his labyrinth, along passages that turned in circles and ate their own tails, until, finally, he was in a room that hiccuped and giggled. A store-room, Catcher was sure, although he no longer recognized its shape. Reaching into a melted trunk that seemed to swallow his arms up to the elbows.
He felt something solid in the trunk. Cold, stable, metallic.
The weapon was still there, where he’d found it on the day the labyrinth had been created, when he’d tried mapping out every inch of the cellar and the sheer size of it had done strange BUT ENTIRELY REASONABLE things to the insides of his head.
He pulled his hands out of the trunk with an almighty squidge, grasping the object of his affections in both hands and pressing it against his ticking heart. Now he was ready. At last, the final battle against Cacophony could begin.
There was a large pile of wood on the corner of Eastern Walk.
Isaac Penley didn’t stop to see where the wood had come from, but he suspected the worst. He remembered the stories he’d heard from France when they’d had their Revolution, about the barricades they’d built across their roads; scraps of furniture, old carriages, even parts of houses, tipped out onto the streets. He imagined the same thing happening here in Woodwicke. Or worse. The homes of the diabolists looted, the contents carried out onto the roads and burned.
Did ‘contents’ include the occupants? And how many diabolists were there in the town, anyway? If what Mr Catcher said was true, there had to be dozens. Isaac tried to guess which of the people he knew might be the guilty ones, but no names sprang to mind.
Two of the Renewalists – Isaac didn’t recognize them, not in their hoods – were climbing the woodpile. Right up on top of the heap, something was burning, blue flames hissing in the rain. Isaac looked away, and tried to slide into the shadows on the other side of the road, so as not to be noticed by the masked men. He wasn’t sure why he did that. Wasn’t he a member of the Society? Wasn’t he supposed to be on their side?
When he finally arrived at Catcher’s house, the basement door was ajar, and Isaac concluded that the house had been left in a hurry. He shivered (though that was as much to do with the rain as anything), finally deciding not to enter. Mr Catcher was obviously not at home. But where else might he be?
‘Hold on.’
‘Where are you? What happened to the room?’
‘It went. The TARDIS is finished. Hold on. My hand.
There!’
‘I can’t feel you. Christopher?’
‘I’m holding on –’
‘Christopher, that isn’t me!’
‘What? Oh, Sheol, I can’t believe I just touched that. Uck.
Marielle, look. Look up. Can you see the chest of drawers?
Can you see me?’
‘No. The clockwork things... oh, Christopher,