Doctor Who_ The Banquo Legacy - Andy Lane [107]
The gun wavered as Catherine punctuated her statements with gestures from her left hand. ‘No one person can look at things objectively, but with Richard’s eyes I saw two sides of everything. And it was as if until then things had just been made of card. Nothing had any depth until Richard and I shared our minds. Then it all sprang into sharp relief. Oh, you can’t understand – I knew. I knew the truth about everything!’
The Doctor glanced over at me. ‘Always grateful for a rough analogy,’ he muttered, then turned to Catherine.
‘Was it worth it?’ he asked. ‘Look around you. Your brother is scattered all about the room, and five other people are dead due to this obsessive quest for reality. You and Richard systematically blackmailed and murdered your way through your friends to finance his experiments and to protect his name. Was it really worth it?’
Catherine bowed her head and then looked up at Hopkinson. ‘Have you ever wondered if human beings have some sort of self-destructive urge?’ she asked, apparently at a tangent to the conversation. ‘Why do people go on drinking too much, or taking drugs, or hurting themselves emotionally? Even falling in love is hurtful, but everybody does it. According to Richard there’s something in everybody that needs pleasing for a short time, the shorter the time and the more intense the pleasure, the better. And this thing in people doesn’t care about what happens eventually. Richard used to say it had no sense of time, only of the now.’
‘Everything in moderation,’ the Doctor said.
Catherine surprised us all by turning what we assumed was some insane rambling back to the conversation again. ‘That’s what Richard had, do you see? The shortest, the most intense gratification he could possibly have. And it didn’t matter what happened to him after that. He didn’t care. So the answer is yes, Doctor. It was worth it. We would do it again, if we could go back and choose.’
That is when I think we all realised there was no hope. Catherine Harries, like her brother before her, was completely and utterly mad. They could both discard the feelings and the lives of the people who had perished in their lunatic quest for an untouchable, indescribable concept they couldn’t even define. Quite, quite mad.
Slowly, under cover of pretending to adjust my sling, I glanced at Susan on the chaise longue. A look from her frightened eyes told me all I needed to know; she was awake and had heard most of the conversation. She knew that her only hope was to keep quiet.
Catherine had not noticed my glance: she was too busy trying to screw up the courage to shoot us in cold blood. Baker had been easy: he had attacked her brother. Hopkinson and I were just waiting. That was what all Catherine’s talking was for. To get herself into a state where she could gun us down.
Fitz straightened up from behind the chair, steeling himself for a sudden leap at Catherine. I tensed as well, ready to support him, but a warning glance from the Doctor caused him to subside. I did not know what the Doctor was planning, but I had to assume it was better than Kreiner’s suicidal attack.
‘We were perfect,’ Catherine was saying to the Doctor, ‘Richard and I, perfect. Then his head was turned.’ Bitterness wormed its way into her voice. ‘He met her and she took him away from me.’
The gun gestured towards Susan, and Catherine suddenly realised that she was awake. I could see Hopkinson tense, ready to protect Susan if necessary.
‘You took him away from me,’ Catherine repeated, her voice harder and glittering now. She had found the key, the emotion that would allow her to kill us – all of us. That key was jealousy. ‘He said he loved you, but he didn’t – he couldn’t. He only loved me.’
‘No,’ said Susan, standing up from the chaise longue. Her voice was strong and calm, and I felt very proud of