Doctor Who_ Lungbarrow - Marc Platt [116]
The Doctor was hovering close to the tall monument. On its crest sat a solitary figure wrapped in a dark cloak. His thin legs dangled over the side as he contemplated a black box floating in the air just below him.
'I know what that is,' said Dorothée. 'That's the Hand of Omega.'
'So who is he?' said Romana.
'He's not the Doctor,' said Innocet emphatical y.
They caught angry thoughts from the figure, but whether these were relayed through the Doctor or directly from the man himself, they could not tell.
'I warned him. I warned Rassilon that if force was used against the dissenters, if their sanctuary in the Pythia's temple was violated, then I would leave his accursed planet to its own devices!'
He pul ed off his shoe and threw it, but the missile shot straight through the box as if it did not exist.
'But if I go, there will be no way back. Rassilon wil be left with absolute control. No checks, no balances. Gods, how I long to be free. Free of schemes, ambitions, and free of my dark, brooding self.'
For a second, Dorothée thought he was going to throw himself down from the monument. He nearly stepped out, but instead he pulled back and slid down the curve of the edifice. He dropped the last twenty feet and landed like a cat.
Figures moved out of the shadows around him. A knife flashed, but the box was suddenly among them, flinging bolts of energy at the helpless assassins.
'So Rassilon seals his own fate.' The figure's thoughts were weary and saddened. 'But there will be much to prepare for my departure and one impossible farewel to make.'
He laid a silky grey rose at the foot of the monument. Then, throwing away his other shoe, he loped off into the city.
The Doctor followed.
'Are these really his memories?' complained Dorothée. 'What's this got to do with the Doctor?'
Romana and Innocet exchanged glances, but said nothing. They were moving deep into the slums of the lower city, down il -lit streets and alleys peopled with ragged shadows.
185
A group of guards were standing at one corner, drinking. The figure paused for a moment against a doorway. He wrapped his cloak tightly round himself and the gloom swallowed him.
The Doctor moved on without pausing.
'Where did he go?' said Chris as they hovered past the empty doorway.
Dorothée turned to Innocet. 'If these are the Doctor's memories, surely we'd only see things through his eyes?'
Innocet nodded. 'But these are more than memories.'
The guards burst into drunken laughter.
The Doctor was already passing above them.
'There he is,' said Leela. The cloaked figure had slipped out of the shadows ahead of the Doctor, and was hurrying away.
The first shades of grey were leaking into the night sky when he finally reached a shuttered house, wedged between a seedy tavern and the dingy shop of a memory broker. He let himself in and padded up the wooden stairs.
The old alien woman, sewing in the little room stacked with books, hardly acknowledged him when he entered. Her Punchinello face huddled near her chin, overshadowed by her wispy domed head.
'Where's my granddaughter?' he said.
She put away her needle. 'Sleeping, Meyopapa. Half the night she spent on the roof watching the fire.'
'I told you not to let her up there,' he growled. 'Not where she can be seen.'
The old woman scratched her teeth. 'No use arguing with that one.'
He fished a jingling purse out of his cloak. 'You have to leave, Mamlaurea. It's no longer safe here.'
'Go home?' she said. 'Back to Tersurus?'
He nodded grimly. 'And take Susan with you. Take the first Astrafoil you can get places on. Carry as little as possible. You mustn't look as if you're fleeing.'
The old woman was staring at him. 'Meyopapa, you not coming too?'
'Some time, perhaps.' He bent to look out of the little window. The window in through which Dorothée and the others were staring.
He looked directly through them. His black hair was swept back, but even in the early light, his face was deep in shadow.
The Doctor was inside the room, but Dorothée could not see his face at all. She only saw his head give a twitch