Doctor Who_ Lungbarrow - Marc Platt [4]
The House is dozing. But it is listening too.
Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.
'... and Rassilon, in great anger, banished the Other from Gallifrey that he might never return to the world. Then there was great rejoicing through the Citadel. But the Other, as he fled, stole away the Hand of Omega and departed the world forever.'
Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.
The pupil was needling his name into the varnish of the big desktop. Cousin Innocet's hairgrip was considerably more adept at this task than the clumsy Chapterhouse mess-blade that old Quences had given him on his last name day. The trick was to see how deep you could carve before the desk protested.
'Are you paying attention?' boomed his tutor.
'Yes, thank you,' he intoned, completing another tricky top stroke. 'And the Other departed the world forever.'
'Correct.'
7
There was a pause. He was aware of the huge bulk of his tutor approaching the desk, but he had to get the final letter finished. 'You see, I was listening,' he added, vainly hoping to ward off the inspection.
The sunlight from the tall window glistened on his looming mentor's fur. Serrated black stripes on its creamy pelt.
The pupil felt the intense scrutiny of the glass eyes as they peered down over fearsome tusks.
Flustered, he jabbed a quick accent stroke over the final letter. Too fast. The varnish flaked. The big desk shuddered. It gave what sounded like a woody cough of protest and snapped its lid indignantly, just missing his fingers.
'Why are you not paying attention?' The tutor's voice drummed out of its chest rather than its throat. The horns that curled from either flank of its head were big enough to hang a coat from.
The pupil swung his legs. 'Why can't we do something else?' He had formed the habit of answering the tutor's endless badgering with queries of his own. His feet didn't even touch the floor.
'What does the curriculum state?'
The pupil shrugged and looked out of the window. 'What about a field trip? We could go down to the orchards. It's so hot, the magentas must be ripe by now.'
He opened the desk and fumbled through the chaos inside in search of his catapult. 'I can shoot them off the branches,' he called from under the heavy lid.
'Repeat the Family legacy...'
He groaned. 'Then can we go out?'
'What was your birth?'
'It's boring.'
'Where were you born?'
He closed the desk lid with a sigh. 'I was born in this House.' His singsong approach, armoured with a growing contempt for the whole mechanical business of learning by rote, was wasted on the tutor. 'The House of Lungbarrow one of the many Houses founded in order to stabilize the population after the Great Schism when the Pythia's Curse rendered Gal ifrey barren I was born from the Family Loom of the House each Loom weaves a set quota of Cousins defined by the Honourable Central Population Directory at the Capitol.'
He paused to take an exaggerated breath. Beyond the whitewood-framed window, the noonday sun dazzled off the silver foliage of the trees.
The tutor tapped the desk with a yel ow claw. 'The quota…?
'The quota of Cousins allotted to the House of Lungbarrow is forty-five when a Cousin dies after her or his thirteen spans a new Cousin wil be woven and born as a Replacement.' He stopped again and regarded his tutor.
'Continue,' it said.
'I can remember waiting to be born.' He said it deliberately to see how much reaction he could get.
'Impossible. That is impossible.'
'You're just a machine. What would you know about it?'
The robotic tutor dithered. But the pre-programmed awkwardness wasn't convincing. It was too precise to be really lifelike. And yet the huge furry avatroid, with its prim and proper manners, was more absurd and endearing than any of the Family in the House.
8
The young pupil continued: 'It was like being al strung out. All unravelled inside the Loom. I was spread really thin.'
'Perhaps now you are teaching me,' said the tutor. His bulky