Doctor Who_ Lungbarrow - Marc Platt [120]
He walked against the stream of people running from the building. The Doctor moved after him, followed by his own unwelcome entourage.
Gates and sealed doors opened as if they recognized the Other. He ignored the DANGER signs and marched unchal enged, straight through to the heart of the complex. An immense vault opened above and below, its oval shell veined with whispering instrumentation.
'Warning,' declared a synthetic voice. 'Protective attire must be worn in the progenitive chamber.'
The Doctor moved with the other, out along a walkway that spanned the chamber. Out through that calm air of expectancy peculiar and seminal to sacred places.
The watchers lingered at the entrance.
'What is this?' said Leela. 'I thought he was leaving Gallifrey.'
The Doctor and the Other had halted just before the centre of the bridge.
Romana glanced at Innocet. 'You know, don't you?'
The Doctor's Cousin lowered her eyes. 'I think we should leave,' she said.
'Why?' said Dorothée. 'Surely the Doctor needs us.'
Chris shook his head. 'Not now. Innocet was right. I don't think we're meant to see.'
A drone of rising power began to surge through the chamber. Klaxons began to bellow.
Dorothée looked back as they pul ed her away. The Doctor, tiny beside the massive cloaked shape of the other figure, had turned to watch them. For a moment, his eyes met hers across a widening gulf of time and lost hope.
His head suddenly moved up to stare at something.
'It's Glospin,' shouted Dorothée.
The dark ghost was watching from one of the upper walkways.
As the group turned in confusion, the energy surge peaked. A torrent of light fell in dazzling, twisting plumes from the upper pole of the chamber. It struck through an eye at the bridge's centre.
The other stepped into the light. The raw energy, a fierce, primal, living stuff, painful to look at, consumed the man's shape utterly.
There was the sound of a great, whispered sigh.
The Doctor stood alone, staring into the depths of the light.
Glospin turned and vanished.
192
'Sorry,' said Dorothée.
They drifted away in defeated silence.
Moving through the deserted building, Innocet said, 'The legends were wrong. The Other never left Gallifrey. He died in the energy of the open progenitive cascades, just as the Pythia threw herself into the Crevasse of Memories.'
'Irrefutable proof, Cousin,' sneered another figure, cutting across their path. 'Or is your brain still soft from post regenerative trauma?'
'Go away, Glospin,' answered Innocet. 'These memories are private.'
'But he's right,' said Romana. 'That chamber was the original Loom. The Prime Distributor that fed the subsidiary Looms in the Houses.'
Glospin nodded to her. 'Good, whoever you are. The Other went into the system. The monster threw himself into the random genetic helices to re-emerge who knows where!'
'It proves nothing,' said Innocet.
'Not to us. But something else understood. Don't forget the Hand of Omega.'
He glanced around the group.
'It left Gallifrey,' said Romana. 'Legends say that the Other stole it. Or that it pursued him across the stars and was never seen again.'
Dorothée thought of things she would not say. She saw Glospin watching her as he fingered his scarred arm.
'There.' Leela pointed up as the Doctor's shape sailed into the sky.
She snatched at Glospin's heels as he moved off in pursuit.
193
Chapter Thirty-one
New Times for Old
Dark followed light. Day and night flickered in quick procession around the travel ers. Time moved forward again.
Buildings rose and were finished. Fires winked like demons' eyes.
Can't we go back to the House? thought Dorothée. What else is there to see?
There was no sign of the Doctor.
The watchers followed Glospin high across the cityscape, until he swooped towards a high parapet decked with fluttering banners.
A white-haired man was watching a parade pass on one of the bridges below.
'Incredible. Quite incredible.'