Doctor Who_ Lungbarrow - Marc Platt [97]
'Glospin,' said the Doctor, 'you've had nearly seven hundred years to dream up this nonsense.'
'Am I the first to find out? Is that why you're so frightened?'
The Doctor was calm and quiet. No tantrum or fierce denial. How telling that was.
The board boomed and cracked open under the Doctor's counters. He glared at the little discs, forbidding them to drop. As they hovered above the opening, he said, 'Glospin, take over.'
'What?'
'Keep it open for me.'
148
Glospin took over the mental reins, willing the chasm open as the Doctor leant in over the board. He slid his hand down into the depths of the pedastal and started to rummage around.
'I can't find.. . No wait, there's something here.'
Glospin let go.
The board's dimensions snapped shut on the Doctor's arm. He yel ed with pain, struggling to escape.
'Where are your powers now?' said Glospin. 'Get yourself out of this!' He hit the Doctor across the face.
And again.
Innocet burst into the room. She saw the trap and immediately set her mind to it.
The board cracked open and the Doctor fell clear clutching his arm. His nose and lip were bleeding. In his hand was a black data core, sealed with a crest.
'I think this is what we've been looking for,' he choked.
'Quences's will?' said Innocet, incredulous. 'Is that it?'
'It's a trick,' Glospin said. 'He had it al the time.'
He lunged for the core, but Innocet pushed him back.
'I don't care where it was,' she said. 'Now that we have it, we can confront Satthralope.'
'Confront her al you like. What happens when she tries to wake Quences? Or perhaps Wormhole has some legendary solution.'
The Doctor lay back, watching his Cousins squabble over him.
There was a commotion outside. The Drudges loomed in, carrying Chris Cwej and two new strangers with them.
Two struggling women.
The Doctor sat up and stuffed the data core inside his jacket. 'What's this?' he said sourly. 'Prison Visitors Association?'
149
Chapter Twenty-five
Sightseeing
Miracle? What miracle?
News travels fast in Lungbarrow.
It whispers along passages, gathering resonance the way a House gathers dust.
The fish in the chimney.
A moment becomes an event, which becomes a deed, which becomes a legend.
He has brought back the wil .
Expectations, so long dampened by despair, are unearthed and dusted down, like the tarnished garlands being hung for Otherstide by the Drudges in the Great Hal .
Soon the darkness will be over.
They are herding tables and chairs into place for suppertime.
And Satthralope wil wake Quences at last.
The whispering stops.
The end? Not a happy end. Not a ghost of a chance.
Dorothée thought she had never seen the Doctor so withdrawn. His lip was cut and there was blood under his nose. And Chris Cwej, normally the lovable innocent (he'd hate that), looked utterly wasted.
The Doctor's arm was blue-black up to the shoulder. While Leela rubbed his bruises with some sort of herbal liniment she carried in a pouch, he listened quietly to what each of them had to say.
He looked distinctly uncomfortable when Chris mentioned the fish. 'Miracle? What miracle?' he complained. 'I don't believe in miracles. These things are natural phenomena.'
'Try tel ing them that.'
'It's a coincidence. A downfall of fish, frogs or water lilies can be precipitated by any simple tornado. Have they forgotten about ocean cones, when the Gallifreyan sea gets sucked miles high by an eclipse of the sun and the dark moon?'
'They think it's you.'
'What about Arkhew?'
'Gruesome,' said Chris, holding his head. 'But I've a few more enquiries to make.'
The Doctor grunted. Temper, thought Dorothée.
She told him about life in Paris, past and future. She left out her liaison with Georges Seurat. He'd only want to be introduced and then worry that the painter was going to die in a couple of years.
Leela talked about her life with Andred at the Capitol, where she plainly did not belong. She seemed fascinated with the Doctor's appearance. She had never seen him as anything other than the Doctor she had travelled with.