Doctor Who_ Lungbarrow - Marc Platt [5]
'I couldn't think. Not put thoughts together.'
'Grammar,' complained the tutor.
'But I knew where I was and what was happening. I couldn't wait to get out. And then I was born. My lungs nearly burst. The first rush of air was so cold. And they were all there, of course. All forty-four of them. All laughing, because of. . . because...'
There was a hurt that he could never ease. They say your first sight after birth, the first thing that looms into view, is the one that governs your life - but when it's forty-four Cousins staring down at you from al sides, laughing and sniggering and prodding, then what do you expect?
He avoided the subject, as had become the custom. 'And Satthralope smacked me so hard I could barely walk.'
'When were you told this? How can you real y remember?'
'I do remember too. And don't badger me. You always badger me. I'm not newly woven, you know. I'm nearly five and three-quarters.'
'And you are very precocious.' The tutor indicated a coloured glass core that was sitting on the desktop. 'Turn your book to the Triumphs of Rassilon.'
'What happened before the Great Schism? How were people woven then?' He smirked, half hoping the answer would be rude. 'What were... mothers?'
'Mothers were women who gave birth to children.'
'What, like the Loom does?' He gave free rein to his smirk. 'I bet Satthralope couldn't do that. Did the children grow inside their mothers? That's what the tafelshrews do. There was a nest of them at the back of the pantry, but the Drudges found it before I could get them outside. Or did mothers spawn in the river like the songfish?'
'It is my job to ask the questions.'
'What's the point when you know all the answers? How did the children start growing? And why don't all the animals have Looms? Why is it only the people?'
'We are studying -'
'Did they have sword fights then with monsters and reptile pirates?'
The tutor lifted the data core in its heavy paws and began to screw it into the desk's console unit. 'We are studying the provenance of Gallifreyan culture.'
'It's that nursery verse, isn't it? ... And now al the children are born from the Loom. You whistle it and I'll sing it. Isn't it dark, Isn't it cold, Seek out the future...'
'Housekeeper Satthralope does not allow singing during lesson times.'
The young man grimaced. 'She smells like old cupboards. Quences wouldn't mind. And he gave you to me.'
'Ordinal-General Quences programmed me to encourage your brainbuffing. You wil repeat the Triumphs of Rassilon.'
'Not again. You promised.'
'The Triumphs.'
9
'They're really boring.'
'Commence.'
The pupil glanced down at a wooden screen that had slid eagerly up from the desk.
'Without looking,' instructed the Badger. 'By rote..' The desk retracted its screen with a little whine of disappointment.
The young man sighed too and began, 'Hear now of Rassilon and his mighty works. He, who single-handedly vanquished the darkness and...' He peered across the room beyond his tutor. 'Cousin Innocet, what are you doing?'
The tutor lumbered round with difficulty in the tight space. The big desk flinched.
The room was empty. A magenta kernel, fired from the catapult, pinged on one of the Badger's curling horns.
By the time the furry machine had turned back, its charge had hoisted himself up to the sil , slipped through the open window and was clinging to a vine that grew up the outside of the House.
'Tell Innocet that I'll be late for supper,' he grinned, sticking his head back round the frame. 'She always makes the best excuses when Satthralope's on the war-wagon.'
Leaving his shaggy tutor in a state of bumbling perplexity, he scrambled down the vine and ran out into the sunlight through the long, lush grass. 'Can't catch me!'
10
C
hapter One
Paris Cubed
'A gold-coded security dispatch, sir,' announced the young Chancellery Guard captain and formally handed over the courier pod.
Surveil ance Actuary Hofwinter, a veteran of some nine hundred and ninety-six years in the Space/Time Accession Bureau, generation and regeneration,