Doctor Who_ Lungbarrow - Marc Platt [58]
'Leela, I should arrest you,' said Andred as he caught her round the waist. 'Have they hurt you? Are you safe?'
She put her head against his. 'I missed the uniform,' she whispered. 'What happened?'
'We nearly didn't get here in time,' he said.
'Security shutdown was automatical y reimplemented as soon as the Chancellery force entered the constraint block,' interrupted the K9s.
Andred stepped back awkwardly in front of his guards and put on his helmet. 'The Agency constraint block is restricted under Chancellery law pending an inquiry,' he announced. 'I saw your predicament on the surveil ance screens.'
Leela nodded towards Dorothée, who was smirking as she waited.
'Madam, erm. . . McShane, Dorothy?'
'Dorothée McShane,' said Dorothée.
He bowed. 'President Romanadvoratrelundar presents her profound apologies for your treatment at the hands of her Agency. She invites you to join her in the Presidential quarters.'
'Is she back?' said Leela, delighted.
The glance that Andred shot her was enough to frighten babies and silence the Evil One himself.
83
Chapter Fifteen
Old Bones
No more time to lose. Too much lost already.
Glospin scrambled up the big stairs on al fours. His legs, cramped in the stove for so long, protested at every stride. Ideas flared in his mind. So much that he had pondered for so long. Hatred, like a wine laid down in the dark, six hundred and seventy-three years in the maturing. A blood-red flagon ready to be tapped.
One thought overarched the torrent of ideas. He must be first to tell Satthralope.
He reached the landing and saw the Drudge. It loomed over him, a patina of white dust across its polished wooden surface.
'Satthralope,' gasped Glospin. 'I have to see her. He's here. He's come back.'
The Drudge emitted a guttural creak of rage and lunged for him.
Glospin dodged and ran. A table reached out a leg and tripped him. An occasional cupboard swung its door into his path, catching him across the forehead. He tumbled to the floor, shaking his stunned head.
The Drudge's wooden hand lifted him like a dol and tucked him under one arm.
It knew already. It knew about the return of that dysgenic runagate.
'Why don't you catch him?' he shouted. 'He's here in the House. Why aren't you doing anything?'
The Drudge began to move.
'No!' Glospin yel ed and started to kick. 'Not again. I'm not going back in the stove again!'
But instead of descending the stairs, the Drudge veered into a side passage. Glospin fell silent, realizing with a satisfied certainty that the servant was taking him, like a fawn-cat with captured shrew, to lay at the feet of its mistress.
***
'Must have been here all the time.'
Chris crouched by the corpse in the mushroom pen; crushing fungi underfoot; picking the sliding sluggish things off Arkhew's body; feeling sick.
'Can you lift the light higher please?' he said to Innocet, who was standing on the outside of the fence.
She raised her lamp, keeping a firm grip on the Doctor with her other hand. She had not uttered a word since Glospin had run from the Hal . She led the way and the Doctor had followed. Chris thought he had never seen the Doctor so meekly submissive.
In the flickering lamplight, Chris could make out the face of the little man who was so terrified of the dream they had shared. His thin features were half buried in mushroom compost and covered in a silvery tracery of slime trails.
'Yes, this is Arkhew,' he said, freezing his anger. 'All the time we were standing talking, he was lying in here.'
He caught the Doctor's sharp accusing glare and realized what he had given away.
'Is he ultimately dead?' said Innocet.
84
'Ultimately? Dead is dead, isn't it?'
'Not round here, it isn't,' said the Doctor.
'I don't think he's going to regenerate, if that's what you mean.'
The Doctor started to climb over the fence, but Innocet hauled him back by the scruff of his linen