Doctor Who_ Lungbarrow - Marc Platt [45]
'Very good, Madam,' said Theora with a smile.
'Madam President, this is preposterous!' exclaimed Yeux.
'Tit for tat.' The President smiled. 'I'm sure a little cooperation isn't too much to ask. But if I don't get it, I shall enforce it!'
***
'Are you unhappy on Gallifrey?' asked the Time Lord.
Leela sat back in her chair. 'Why am I being held prisoner?'
Her interrogator ignored her. 'If you do not cooperate, I can have you deported as an unwelcome guest on our world.'
Leela watched him without a word.
'Now, I gather that this K9 machine of yours original y belonged to the former President, hereafter known as the Doctor.'
'No,' she said. 'It originally belonged to Professor Marius.'
'Another un-Gal ifreyan?' When she made no response, he added, 'I take that as a "yes". At some time the aforementioned machine must have passed to the Doctor. And thence on to you.'
'It is not your business,' Leela insisted. 'I demand to see the Castellan!'
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He tutted irritably. 'I have told you that Castellan Andred has no jurisdiction in this matter.'
'Andred and I are bonded! If I have endangered his position, then I must see him.'
The Time Lord frowned. 'Difficult. His interest in this case would be purely personal.'
'Of course, it would. Andred loves me.'
His mouth twitched and his face coloured noticeably. 'That is not a consideration.'
'What do you mean?' she said. 'How can it not be a consideration?'
'Are you implicating him in this also?'
That shocked her. 'Of course not! He did not know. I care for him and chose to be with him. Don't you have feelings?'
He stared fixedly at her as he fingered the edge of his carved desk. 'The Castellan's pedestrian duties extend only to the security within the Capitol. The crime you have committed is not within his aegis. It affects the whole security of Gallifrey in its relation to the causal nexus of the Cosmos. And that is our concern.'
'Then you are answerable to President Romana.'
'Another friend of yours, of course.' He smiled his serpent smile again. 'Yes, she makes an admirable figurehead.
But she does not command the overwhelming support that she likes to imagine.'
'Take away this barrier. Or are you afraid to be in the same space as an unGallifreyan savage?'
He rose from his chair and came to the edge of where she guessed the barrier to be. 'Why were you trying to contact the Doctor today?'
'He is my friend, too.'
'Yes?'
'Yes. But I do not use him as you do.'
'Explain that accusation.'
'You use the Doctor whenever you have something you don't want to blunt your own knives on.'
'Does it occur to you that he might be our friend also?'
'No,' she said. 'I learned that the Time Lords were all-powerful, but you have no honour in your dead rituals.'
His smooth indifference seemed to crack a little. 'Madam, as an other-worlder with scarcely a history of your own, you know nothing of our provenance. The planet Gallifrey was powerful when the flower of the Universe was barely unfolding. Our society is steeped in the traditions of a thousand millennia. It is our greatest duty to revere and maintain our past.'
'In my world, the old are revered for their counsel. But if the old vines cling too tightly, we cut them back to let the young growth through.'
'Barbaric,' he said. 'You know nothing.'
'I know that if I ever do see Andred again, I wil have forgotten this meeting. But I will fight you for my memories.'
He laughed. 'You are unhappy,' he said. 'Just answer one more question, madam. You say that the Doctor is your friend. You certainly have travelled with him, so I would guess that you know him better than most. Perhaps almost as well as the President knows him. But can you say who he is?'
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'What?' she said.
'The Doctor's identity?'
She was mystified. 'He is the Doctor. He is a Time Lord. And he has... he had a