Doctor Who_ Lungbarrow - Marc Platt [83]
He held Chris's eyes for a moment and then studied the floor hard. 'And I am so sorry. This was never meant to happen. I never meant to come back here. I admit it.' He surveyed his surroundings with undisguised contempt.
The floor, the racking, the dusty books, the veneered walls and ceiling through which grew the grasping, twining fingers of white wood. 'Once upon a time I was eager to flex the sinews of the Universe. After all, who wants to be a spectator, or even a player, when you can be a piece on the board in the thick of it?' He sighed deeply. 'But chains from the past drag you back into the dark. Lungbarrow is the worst place in the Universe. I vowed never to retum - but here I am, back. My mistake.'
'OK,' said Chris. 'I'll just sit here at the bottom of your Family's mental garbage chute...'
'Nothing gets out,' said Innocet coldly. 'None of the hate. None of the despair. Al the cold, tortuous helplessness that binds us together as a Family. That's what you condemned us to.'
The Doctor pulled a small gauge from an inside pocket and held it towards the ceiling. He pumped a button on the top and studied the reading.
'The Family that stays together decays together,' he muttered. 'So where exactly are all my Cousins?'
'Gone away,' Innocet said. She had folded up the banana skin as if it was a treasure.
'No. That's not true,' said Chris. 'I think they're still here.'
The Doctor looked startled. 'Chris?'
'I heard them. When Maljamin went, I heard voices calling him. They were in my head, and I'm sure Innocet heard them too.'
Innocet hiccupped and looked away.
'Why didn't I hear them?' complained the Doctor.
Chris shrugged. 'The TARDIS again? Maybe I'm picking that up too. And it's so oppressive here. Suppose your missing Cousins are real y in hiding.'
'Or waiting.' He narrowed his eyes at Innocet.
'How should I know?' she said. 'None of us asked for this.'
The Doctor held up the gauge for her to see the reading. 'The House isn't buried that deep. So why has nobody done anything? Or are you just happy to sit and wait for the archaeologists to arrive?'
A layer of earth pressed down on him. Darkness. He couldn't breathe. He was going to scream.
125
Then the earth opened. A trowel nearly went up his nose. The sky was blue-white above him.
A head slid into view. It was Bernice, a smug grin on her face. She started to dust him with an archaeologist's airbrush and shook her head. 'Look at the state of this. What a mess.'
She poked him about a bit. 'Stil , it's amazing how they can reconstruct things, even from the most dilapidated old fossil remains. He'll probably look quite good mounted in a museum.'
'Sorry,' said the Doctor. 'I think that was one of mine.'
Chris groaned.
'We have something important to ask you,' said Innocet.
'Assuming that you feel strong enough.'
'You know me,' said Chris wearily. 'I'm notorious. I'll try anything once.'
Glospin smeared the sample of Chris's blood on to a glass plate and slid it under the rickety lenses of an antique magniscope. It was underlit by scrapings from a deposit of luminescent sodium he had found in the Family vaults, among the bodies of Lungbarrow's hardly ever illustrious forebears.
In the plasma, there were reddish platelets and crudely developed pale white phagocytes.
As he suspected, not even remotely Gallifreyan. The Doctor had brought worse than an intruder into the House.
The wall opened a panel and Glospin extracted a small casket. Inside, neatly folded, were copies of his own notes and theories about the Doctor. They were yellowed with age. He wondered if Innocet still had the originals.
From somewhere below, he heard the angry, percussive snarl of a machine. The House gave a shudder.
Instinctively, he recognized the herald of yet another new threat to his inheritance and his birthright.
***
The Doctor flexed his fingers nervously over Chris. 'The only way to clear this murder business up is