The Empire of Glass - Andy Lane [53]
"Now wait a second -" Vicki began, but Braxiatel was still talking.
"The minute she does realize, she'll go mad. This has to stop now.
We'll give her an amnesia pill and return her to Venice before anybody realizes she's gone. In the meantime, you have a convention to attend. The Doctor has arrived."
"The Doctor?" Vicki and Albrellian chorused.
Braxiatel looked from one to the other. "You know of the Doctor?"
he said to Vicki eventually.
"I travel with him," she said. "And you know him?"
"We are... acquainted," Braxiatel said, frowning slightly. "I invited him to come here to Laputa, in fact. He was here last night."
"No he wasn't. The Doctor was with me last night."
Braxiatel shook his head. "Impossible. I was told that he was brought here. My people said that he was so tired he fell asleep when they picked him up, and slept all the way through to this morning."
Albrellian clicked a claw to attract their attention. "Story can confirm Vicki's I," he said. "In Venice in the early hours of this morning indeed was the Doctor. Saw him I. Talked to him I."
"Oh no." Braxiatel rubbed a hand across his forehead. "The stupid... They've only gone and picked up the real Cardinal Bellarmine. It goes to show you should never employ Jamarians."
Something occurred to Vicki. "You said you invited the Doctor here," she said. "Was it a real invitation - a piece of card, about this big?" She held her fingers a few inches apart.
"Yes. Yes, it was."
"But it didn't say anything apart from "Invitation". We only got here because the TARDIS brought us."
"The card itself contained full flight details, compatible with the navigational equipment of any vessel up to and including a TARDIS," Braxiatel explained, "but it was really only a formality.
When I gave the Doctor the card, I did explain what it was for."
"But he forgot!" Vicki exclaimed. "He suddenly appeared in the TARDIS holding the card, and he couldn't remember where he got it from."
"They wiped his memory." Braxiatel shook his head in exasperation."They didn't bother telling me, of course. No, that would have been too simple. They just let me witter on about how important it was that he come here, and then they wiped his memory of everything that had happened since they took him out of time."
"Since who took him out of time?" Vicki asked.
"Our own people," Braxiatel said simply.
There was an ugly feeling in Heaven. Cardinal Bellarmine could feel the tension in the chamber of angels. It must have felt like that before Lucifer and his minions rose up against the Lord and were exiled from His sight.
An angel leaped to its feet and waved a gloved fist at Bellarmine. It looked like a man wearing green armour, and its head was almost completely encased in a metal helmet, but what little could be seen of its lower mouth looked rough and scaly. One of the other angels had referred to it earlier as Ssarl during a heated exchange of threats. It and its larger, rougher, companion were aggressive and forceful angels, and were apparently reviled by most of the other angels present. The same applied to the gargoyle-faced angels in shiny black costumes, but there was particularly bad blood between them and the blobs of jelly that always referred to themselves in the plural. Bellarmine had also identified various other factions and alliances around the steeply rising walls of the chamber. Truly he was present at the time that St John the Divine had written of. The words rose up unbidden in his mind: "And there was war in Heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels."
"You have a question, Ssarl?" Bellarmine said mildly.
"If this Convention is to have any validity at all," the armoured angel hissed, "then it must address the issue of chemical and biological warfare. We all know," and it gazed meaningfully around the assembled ranks of its brethren, "that the Rutans have used plague bombs during their endless war with the Sontarans. The Daleks too have used disease to massacre entire populations.