Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [78]
Beltempest took an involuntary step back. The Doctor wondered whether he should join him, but there was something about the tiles on the walls that made him pause.
Of course. There was a barrier a few feet into the room. It was invisible, but there was a dry line on the tiles that marked its edges. Physical or energy?
Almost certainly physical: probably transparicrete. The radiation from the 132
sun even this far underground would mess up a force field to the point of uselessness.
One of the tiles on their side projected slightly from the wall, and the Doctor guessed the controls for the barrier were beneath it.
The Doctor looked back at the man, and this time he did take a step back.
The man’s eyelids were open, revealing matt-black eyes with no distinguish-able pupil. An effect of the icaron radiation, or another example of genetic meddling? Whatever the reason, it was as if Pryce’s eyes were just pits in his face, windows into the heart of a black hole. There was no feeling, no emotion, no character at all.
‘Professor Zebulon Pryce?’ asked the Doctor.
‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ Pryce said. His voice was oddly warm and comforting, like a favourite uncle.
‘You knew we were coming?’ the Doctor said.
‘Of course. News filters through, even here. Even this far from grace. When I heard your ship land, I knew it was you.’
The Doctor raised his eyebrows sceptically. There was no way a human could have heard the ship, not that far beneath the surface.
‘Then you know why we’re here,’ he said.
The Professor slowly extended his hand towards the Doctor’s face. His nails were almost as long as the fingers themselves.
‘You want my help,’ he said simply. ‘You want my knowledge.’
‘Very clever,’ the Doctor said.
Pryce turned slowly towards Beltempest and took a step forwards.
‘I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,’ he said, and extended his hand. Beltempest automatically reached out, then snatched his hand back, shuddering.
Pryce smiled, and skittered his nails against the barrier, making a noise like a horde of cockroaches spilling down the walls. Beltempest flinched.
‘Provost-Major Beltempest,’ he said. ‘I was . . . I was one of the Landsknechte who arrested you on Dis.’
Pryce’s dark eyes examined Beltempest from the top of his head to his large, circular feet.
‘I remember Provost-Major Beltempest,’ he said, frowning. ‘You’re not him.’
‘Body-bepple,’ Beltempest said, his voice trailing off as he looked away.
‘No,’ Pryce said, ‘ You are not Provost-Major Beltempest. The you within the bepple.’ He shrugged: a slow, almost balletic motion. ‘Or perhaps you are. It doesn’t matter. Memories escape in the darkness. I can hear them sometimes, laughing at me from the corners of this cell, breeding in the cracks in the walls.’
‘They keep you in darkness?’ The Doctor was scandalized.
‘Only metaphorically. I don’t believe we’ve met.’
133
‘I am the Doctor.’
Pryce giggled. ‘I don’t need a doctor,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me.’
‘I need your knowledge of icaron physics.’
Pryce frowned suddenly, and looked away. He wasn’t completely hairless, the Doctor realized. A pure white pony-tail hung down his back like an elec-trical cable.
‘There are some things,’ Pryce whispered, ‘that man was not meant to know.
My mind has been opened to higher feelings, Doctor: the pure ethic of suffering, the clean absolution of death. The stunted subhumans that surrounded me didn’t understand, of course. Transcendence is always stifled; prophets are never honoured in their own land. They could not see that I had been blessed by a vision of higher things. I tried to cleanse their minds with exquisite suffering, but they stopped me.’
His barren gaze swept across the Doctor and Beltempest.
‘You want to know about icarons?’ he said softly. ‘But how much can you bear to understand?’
The figure in the darkened office was standing by the large blue box when the desk bleeped.