Doctor Who_ Lungbarrow - Marc Platt [67]
'Where is this?' whispered Leela, and Dorothée shook her head.
'Unreal,' she said. 'Like a painting.' The air was soft and soothing here. She caught the heady perfume of jasmine and buddleia. Her senses, so often closed against cruelty and harshness, opened to the stream of sensation.
From the Agency building, they and the K9s had been directly transmatted into an airy room high enough to overlook the Gothic towers and turrets of the Gallifreyan Capitol. An officiously formal secretary had asked them to wait there for the President. Only moments after her departure, the solid fact of the room dissolved in a welter of light.
There was no sky above them. The surface of the lake rose up into the haze. On it were strewn green-white-pink ideas like rafts of waterlilies. Between them on the deeper surface were the dark reflected shapes of towering trees. Somewhere there were pan pipes playing.
They walked forward across the grassy bank, pushing aside a green curtain of rustling leaves like brush strokes that hung from not even the idea of a tree.
Ahead of them, rising out of the willow curtains, was a grey-white bridge that overarched the green-blue-white water.
A young woman in a flowery dress and wide-brimmed straw hat with red ribbons stood on the bridge.
'It's Romana,' said Leela.
Romana waved. 'It's lovely, isn't it?' She started down the bridge and came through the drifting impressions of willows to meet them. 'Hello again, Ace. Or is it Dorothée now?'
'Dorothée. I've had enough of Ace.'
Romana raised an eyebrow. 'I really must apologize again to both of you for the way you've been treated,' she said. 'It was an appalling security error. You see, your transduction beam from Paris was hijacked. Certain elements in the Celestial Intervention Agency are to blame. That's something else I'm going to have to deal severely with. You know that I'm President now.'
'I remember,' said Dorothée. 'Where's my bike?'
98
'Safe, thank goodness. It eventual y materialized in the Presidential Suite, only you weren't on it. But I gather all your shopping is still intact.'
President Romana turned to Leela. Dorothée thought she seemed almost too concerned. 'And Leela, you are unharmed, aren't you?'
Leela smiled with surprise. 'Of course, I am al right. But your enemies have black hearts, Romana. You should crush them. They are not worthy of you.'
'Yes, well ...' Romana looked flustered. 'Well, that's a relief. Um, I first met Dorothée when we were in E-Space fighting the Great Vampire. Just before I came back to Gal ifrey.' She stooped and looked from one to the other.
'You two have been introduced properly, haven't you?'
'Not exactly,' said Leela. She turned to Dorothée. 'I am Leela. You are a brave fighter.'
Dorothée smiled. 'I'm a good fighter. I don't know about brave. I'm Dorothée.'
'You realize that both of you have travelled with the Doctor,' said Romana.
'You're joking,' said Dorothée. Immediately she looked at the Lady Leela in a new light. 'Not my one? Which one?
God, the old bugger's a dark horse, isn't he?'
'I only know one Doctor,' said Leela. 'But I knew there must be more if he was a Time Lord. Al I get from him these days are notes apologizing for not having visited me.'
'From what I hear that could be any of them,' admitted Dorothée.
'I have a treat,' said Romana, who looked extremely satisfied with the encounter over which she was presiding.
'This way.'
They started to stroll along the edge of the lake, warmed by the reflection of the sunlight in the water. Time was lazy here. Dorothée closed her eyes and breathed in the stillness of the honeyed air.
Romana pushed her hat back on to her shoulders and said, 'What do you think of my garden?'
'Impressive,' said Dorothée. 'Anything's better than the Tuileries or on La Grande