Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book Two - Lawrence Miles [96]
‘Meaning?’
The showman smiled very slightly.
‘I’m a priest,’ he said.
Sarah laughed. She couldn’t help it. She imagined a whole monastery full of people like him, bumbling around in their horrible waistcoats and bleeding on to the carpets. The Doctor didn’t look amused, though. Amazed, maybe.
I.M. Foreman sighed, apparently gearing up to go into one of his theatrical routines. He leaned forward, and started to rummage through the effects on one of the little tables in front of him, pushing aside the wind-up toys and bubble gum cards until he found what he was looking for.
It was a bottle, about the right size and shape to have had a Coca-Cola label stuck to it, and it looked as though it had been dug up out of the dust somewhere in the neighbourhood. I.M. Foreman began to twist off the cap, despite the fact that the bottle seemed to be empty.
‘The If breathed into this bottle,’ he announced. ‘The If does that a lot. It likes to collect stories, I think. It must have thought ours would make a good one. I was saving it for a special occasion, but I suppose this’ll have to do.’
There was a tiny hissing noise as the bottle popped open. Air poured out of the neck, hormone-scented air, and Sarah remembered being in the grey tent with the If, being taken twenty years into her own future when it had breathed on her. And if its breath really had been stored in the bottle…
She saw the Doctor lunge forward, trying to grab the bottle before I.M. Foreman could finish taking the cap off, not understanding exactly what was happening but trying to stop it anyway. It didn’t work. Sarah gasped for breath, and
found herself sucking in the air of a completely different planet, in a time zone that had been deliberately set apart from the rest of history. Gallifrey; it had to be Gallifrey. She’d actually made it to the Time Lord homeworld, except that…
She was standing on the side of a mountain, watching the fires spread along the valley down below. The monasteries were burning. The agents of the High Council swept through the cloisters, with flames bursting from their robes, bringing fire to anything they touched. The priests and the monks ran howling from their chapels, skins and sackcloths smouldering in the heat, rolling in the dirt and begging the Time Lords for mercy. Huge silver butterfly things were whirling in the sky overhead, attracted by the smoke, sucking the burned flesh out of the clouds and feeding on the carrion of –
‘Stop it,’ said the Doctor.
Sarah blinked.
‘Is there a problem?’ asked I.M. Foreman, putting the empty bottle down on the floor by the side of his armchair.
‘That’s a lie,’ snapped the Doctor. ‘The Time Lords never burned down the monasteries. Or the churches.’
‘It was a story,’ said I.M. Foreman, defensively. ‘The Ifs like that. He exaggerates a bit.’
I hope so, thought Sarah. After what I saw in that tent, I certainly hope so. ‘But there were monks…’ she began.
‘Until the High Council dissolved the monasteries,’ agreed I.M. Foreman. ‘Monks, and priests, and wardens of the church. The religious classes used to have the same rights as the Time Lords. The same access to time travel. The same genetic privileges. A right to observe Council procedure.’
The Doctor wanted to argue, Sarah could tell, but he obviously wasn’t sure how to. ‘Look, old chap, I really do sympathise,’ he tried. ‘I’ve had some training in the old ways myself, you know. There was this old hermit… well, never mind that now. The High Council shouldn’t have got rid of the old orders, I know. But they never used violence. There weren’t any burnings.’
‘There might as well have been,’ I.M. Foreman mumbled.
The Doctor opened his mouth to take up the challenge, but then something more important seemed to strike him. Six squillion wrinkles suddenly appeared in his forehead.
‘You say you’re a priest?’ he queried. ‘From before the dissolution?’
‘That’s the general idea,’ said I.M. Foreman, drily.
‘But your age,’ the Doctor said. ‘You must be…’
‘Let me put it this way,’ the showman/priest cut in. ‘We’ve been travelling from Gallifrey