Doctor Who_ Companion Piece - Mike Tucker [29]
Philippo had not left the chapel since the ship had taken off, although he had been allotted quarters larger and more comfortable than his whole family's hut in Braak. He had touched none of the food provided for him. He was fasting.
W ho would mind the stall? His wife had to look after the babies. W ho would feed and groom the kreekg? W ho would fetch the supplies?
W orry had given way to fear, and then to despair.
A servant of the Inquisition had talked to him on the first day. Terrified, he had lashed out, demanded to be taken home, threatened the man's life, may God forgive him! After that they had left him to his mortifications.
He had never been further than the Prax Hills, where the pa-arteks grazed. Now he was travelling through space. He thought he was going mad.
He asked God over and over again why he had been torn from his life so suddenly. He continually begged the Blessed Virgin to intervene on his behalf, to take him home.
He heard footsteps behind him.
`My Lord Bishop!' he exclaimed, rising to his feet.
`Get out said Agatho. 'I wish to pray.'
`Hear my confession, Your Grace! How have I sinned? I don't want to die out here!'
`Find someone else to hear your confession!' Agatho snapped.
`Then send me a priest!'
Agatho seemed to hesitate.
`I will hear your confession,' he said. 'But who will hear mine?'
Philippo fell again to his knees and grasped the Bishop's robes.
`Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been three days since my last confession. Father . . . where are we?'
`W e are in hell, Philipp,' the Bishop replied.
`So why did you become a priest?' Cat asked her new friend, with more than a hint of regret in her voice.
Father Paddy thought for a moment, and shrugged his shoulders. 'I think the Holy Spirit must have called me very hastily, he said. 'I have no recollection of being particularly devout as a child. My mother, yes, but not the rest of us. I used to duck off church to go swimming in the summer.'
`Me too!' Cat cried. 'Blundell Sands!'
`Yes!'
`W e probably met there as children!' Cat clapped her hands in sudden, childlike delight, then corrected herself. 'No, silly. W e can't have.'
There was the little matter of a few centuries in between his time and hers. It was strange — she felt she knew him. Perhaps he reminded her a bit of her brother. Not in his face, but his mannerisms. In his body language.
`My brother's a priest: she suddenly blurted out.
Her brother was a priest. W hy hadn't she remembered that before?
`Father . . . uh . . . '
`Paddy, please.'
`Paddy . . . I think I'm going crazy. I keep forgetting things. Or remembering things I'd forgotten. Really big things.' She shuddered. `There was this old boy — my great, great uncle or something — who couldn't hold the last five minutes in his head . . . but at least he was old.' She swallowed hard. 'I swore I'd top myself if I ever started to lose my marbles. At least in heaven you'd get them back.'
`Heaven is not for suicides: said Paddy sadly. 'Life is God's most precious gift to us, and to lay it down needlessly is an abomination... though of course to lay it down selflessly — for one's fellow men . . . '
`And what about those not in his image?'
Paddy looked at her blankly. 'I'm not sure that I . . . '
`W hat about creatures other than man?' Cat leaned forward, her brow furrowing. 'I've seen creatures so different, so alien that they were barely recognisable as life; creatures composed of drifting gas, of crystal and rock, of light and sound; creatures that were so small that their entire race could fit in the palm of my hand. So many different types . . . '
She looked up at Paddy, despair in her eyes
`Before we came here, I saved the Doctor's life. Used dozens of tiny robots to help us escape. And I left them behind, sacrificed them so that we could leave. I killed them! W hat kind of person does that make me?'
Tut a robot is just a tool.'
`But these were more than that!' Cat's voice was