Doctor Who_ Lungbarrow - Marc Platt [26]
'Oh, that Doctor,' said Hofwinter. 'President Fly-by-night. Well, I'm afraid I can't help on that count. Have you tried the President's office? That's what they deal with there, you know. Presidents. It's all quite logical.'
'The President is not on Gallifrey,' protested the Lady.
'Really?' Yeux started to access Leela's personal Agency records on a secondary plasma port.
In the Bureau, Hofwinter was shaking his head. 'Very sorry, madam. I'm sure her office wil assist you, unless they've al disappeared too. Or perhaps the Castel an could be of help.'
'Castellan Andred is busy,' she said firmly.
'Drilling the Chancellery Guard to escort more alien dignitaries?' said Hofwinter. 'So sorry. Pressing work. Good day.' He immersed himself in a pile of accession invoices.
Yeux watched Lady Leelandredloomsagwinaechegesima turn on her heel and vanish from his screen. The fact that this very excitable woman was consort to the Citadel's Castellan, a member of both the High and Inner Councils, was surely a grave threat to security. And she was unGallifreyan too. He couldn't understand how that had been overlooked in the process of Andred's promotion. He studied the readout on the other display. The woman's status was briefly given, but with no reference to her involvement with the Doctor. Further in-depth data was blocked by a caveat: all reports to be referred to the Agency's Al egiance Command Cell.
Yeux filed an immediate memo concerning Lady Leela's attempts to contact a known subversive and her knowledge of the President's activities. The response was almost immediate, as he had come to expect from his masters in the Al egiance Command Cell of the Celestial Intervention Agency.
Let her continue, it instructed. Already under observation. And it added: Nicely done, old boy. Dinner tomorrow?
Quartinian Faculty? It was signed F.
Satisfied, Yeux poured himself another glass of tea and added a tot of magenta rum. 'Give Lady Leela enough clear water and she'l liquidate herself.'
The cavernous hall was empty. Chris watched the last rays of dappled sunlight playing through the high windows across the wooden floor. The hal was galleried on several levels right up to its rafters, and the balconies were festooned with green and silver garlands. At one end of the area, beneath an intricate astronomical clock, stood a carved plinth, box-shaped like a sarcophagus. Even at a distance, he could sense the energy emanating from the object. It was more than alive: it was dense with a concentrated life force. He reckoned it was the source of the holo-environs.
Then the furniture began to move. The massive tables, chairs and candelabra slid and scuttled across the floor, like a herd on the move. Eventual y they arranged themselves, with much shuffling, into ordained positions along the length of the hal . Like rookie cadets getting on parade, thought Chris. As the sun finally vanished behind the mountain, the lamps lit themselves al along the galleries that overlooked the hal .
He waited in the silence for the event that must surely be the climax of the program.
Suddenly he was standing in a crowd of extravagantly robed guests. They filled the hall. Chris had only seen this sort of social event when he was drafted in on security surveillance at the Overcity Adjudicator Intendant's annual dinner dance. Fancy dress bepple optional.
He was still invisible and could move easily among the guests. He'd rather do that than walk straight through them.
Everywhere, the furniture and fittings of the building were too big for the people who lived there. They had thrown the Giant out of his castle and moved themselves in. The great tables were laid with all the sumptuous festive food that Chris had seen in the kitchen.
'I see Cousin Rynde has done us proud again,' declared one of the guests and he raised his goblet to the throng.
'An auspicious Otherstide to us all!'
'And a thoroughly ill-judged time to choose for a Deathday,' complained another. 'I'm supposed to be at the Tercentennial Observation Archivists' Otherstide Stocktake Dinner. You