Doctor Who_ The Paradise of Death - Barry Letts [68]
‘They have been suitably disciplined’
‘I should hope so.’
A more vigorous suck having proved fruitless, a plump finger was poked into Freeth’s mouth and the tiny nail successfully extracted the recalcitrant bit of food. Having inspected it closely, he reinserted it into the maw and, with plain enjoyment, refinished his breakfast.
‘Here we are,’ said Tragan, the back of his neck fading from royal purple to lilac. ‘Onya Farjen: bondservant to the President. Previous employer, Katyan Glessey, deceased. Highly recommended. Previous records unavailable.’
‘Unavailable!’ said Freeth, peering at the screen.
‘Destroyed in the Temple Dissolution riots. You remember the fire at Parakon House?’
‘How could I forget it? I lost two cases of pre-rapine vintage wine.’
‘So that’s that,’ said Tragan, switching off.
‘Our only lead is this Katyan Glessey. Correct?’
‘So it would seem.’
‘And she’s dead.’
Tragan’s face was quivering dangerously. ‘We shall have to wait for them to show their hand.’
‘You are proposing to abandon the search?’
‘Of course not. I shall put my best men on to it.’
‘Now, there’s a comfort,’ said Freeth.
‘Who am I?’ Onya recalled the timeless days she had spent with that question stuck in her mind like a lump of hastily swallowed, undigested, unwanted food in a rebellious stomach. True there was a fierce hunger; but not so much for an answer (answers came tumbling in, each more unsatisfactory than the last), more to be rid of the question.
The Doctor and the Brigadier would be happy with a simpler answer than those with which she had tried to satisfy Darshee; and yet, after all, what could be simpler than the answer he had accepted at last, with his familiar giggle joining her own uncontainable laughter at its absurdity!
The name Katyan Glessey was no more real than the name Onya Farjen, which had been plucked out of the air (and Onya smiled at the expression) by her teacher on that very same day; or maybe it was just as real. She had been Katyan Glessey for all of her life, after all, and that stretched infinitely backwards into the darkness of the pre-memory void.
One day she had awoken with the shocking realization that it would be intolerable to be Katyan any more.
Katyan’s life as a research biologist dedicated to the manipulation of the molecular structures in the heart of the rapine cell, with the object of making it ever more productive, ever more versatile; this life had for many years been as absorbing to her as a vivid, exultant dream.
Perhaps it was inevitable that she would wake up.
‘Ordinary life seemed to be nothing but an irritating interruption,’ she told them. ‘But then, I fell in love.
Caldon used to make me laugh; I used to tell him that that was the only reason I put up with him. He didn’t work. He didn’t do anything much. He loved talking – and thinking.
Dangerous things to do on Parakon.’
She stopped talking. She put up her hand and touched her cheek. She was surprised to find that there was no tear to wipe away.
‘What happened?’ asked Sarah gently.
‘He disappeared – and so did a number of his friends.
Three of them. I suppose they thought it would be too dangerous to put them on show. They might have said the wrong thing.
‘I was frightened for my own life. At the very least they might have taken my job away from me and I couldn’t bear the thought of that. I kept very quiet and hid myself behind the work.
‘But all the time, I could hear his voice; I could hear his laughter; and I came to realize what it had been hiding.
Little by little I too came to understand the horror of what we were doing, of what I was doing; and the time came when I couldn’t face it any longer. But I didn’t know where to turn. I felt polluted, defiled. I was slowly going mad.’
‘What did you do?’ asked the Doctor.
‘I ran away.’
Literally running; first standing in her lab as still as a carved figure, as if the slightest movement would awaken the demons of thought; then finding herself running