Doctor Who_ The Paradise of Death - Barry Letts [57]
‘Hey, hey, hey!’ he said when he caught sight of her.
‘This is far out, man!’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Jeremy,’ she said, ‘where did you learn that? From your grandpa?’
‘No, but I mean...! Just look at the walls, all sort of coming and going – and rainbows! Like the inside of a waterfall!’
‘That’s exactly what it is,’ said Waldo.
A party inside a waterfall? ‘Indoors?’ said Sarah.
‘If that’s what you want,’ he answered. ‘Hang on, I’ll show you.
‘Hey, Greckle!’ he called out as his hostess bumped into view.
‘What is it, my little old toy soldier, my soldier toy, my soldier boy?’ she called back.
‘Have you got an ambience pluralizer?’
‘Insult me, then,’ replied Greckle in mock dudgeon. ‘As if I didn’t sell the last share of my poor old widowed mother’s inheritance!’
Waldo grinned. ‘They’re not cheap to hire,’ he explained to Sarah.
‘Where is it?’ he went on to Greckle.
‘It lurks behind the drinks, doesn’t it? Like a virgin at a blip-do.’ Greckle and Rasco were swallowed up anew in the jerking throng of driggers.
Waldo laughed. ‘That’s something I can’t wait to see,’ he called after her, and went round behind the table, where a servant who had heard the exchange was removing a fringed silver shawl which was draped over a black box.
‘This thingy-juice is deeliciosus, Sarah. You ought to try some,’ said Jeremy, happily helping himself to a refill.
Waldo looked up from the control panel of the apparatus. ‘I’d go easy with that stuff if I were you, Jeremy.
That’s how it gets its name. It sneaks up from behind and blips you.’
He consulted a list attached to the top of the box. ‘Here we go,’ he said, and pushed a pair of buttons. There were a few ironic cheers from the party, but nobody stopped dancing.
‘Good gracious!’ said Sarah.
‘We’re in a sort of cathedral thingy,’ said Jeremy.
They were too. The falling water, the wispy clouds of vapour, the rainbows; all had melted away, to be replaced by majestic columns and a high vaulted roof. Tall, narrow windows of royal reds and yellows and blues let in shafts of heavenly – almost holy – sunlight, even though it was night outside.
‘Holding parties in old temples was quite the thing for a while, when they were first sold off,’ said Waldo. ‘But then nobody cared, so it fell a bit flat.’ He pressed another couple of buttons.
At once they were in a large clearing in a forest. There was a smell of wet leaves, and even over the heavy music the sound of jungle creatures could be heard.
Of course! It was the same as the view from the window in the apartment; and for that matter... ‘I get it,’ said Jeremy. ‘It’s like the desert at Space World. Sort of projected.’
‘That’s right,’ said Waldo. ‘Recorded, like Experienced Reality, and projected into our brains.’ He pressed two more buttons.
This time they found themselves, under a grey threatening sky, on the heaving deck of a ship at sea. Sarah could even feel the spray blown onto her face and savour its strange taste on her lips – yet when she put up her hand, her skin was dry.
There were shouts of protest all round, led by Greckle herself: ‘Enough, enough, she cried, all humptified and thrum! Drig-drigging on a boat deck? At boats I draw the line!’ She snapped her fingers and the music stopped.
leaving no sound but the howling of the wind and the expostulations of the guests.
‘You want us to be seasick, then?’ she said, coming over to Waldo, with her partner clumping along behind her.
Her teasing tones were belied by her expression.
‘Sorry,’ said Waldo and hastily pressed two more buttons.
At once Greekle’s little-girl face lit up. ‘Better,’ she said.
‘Oh, inordinately better. Oh, consummately better!’
Sarah looked around in astonishment. The lighting had dropped to a sensuous red. The new low