The Empire of Glass - Andy Lane [60]
"A turn on."
"Indeed." He looked away. "Not that I'm trying to denigrate your own unique physical attributes, of course. Don't take Albrellian seriously - apart from the way he mangles grammar, he's harmless."
"Thanks for reassuring me," Vicki said. "Can I ask where the Doctor fits into all this?"
"The Doctor was the only person that the major races could agree on as the chairman of the conference."
"You mean they all respect him as a fair and wise person?"
"No, they all hate him equally." Braxiatel smiled. "Actually, that's not quite fair. The Doctor has a growing reputation, but it was what he did with the miniscopes that impressed everyone."
"What did he do to the miniscopes?"
"He persuaded our people to ban their use across the nine galaxies. Miniscopes were a barbaric invention - zoos of intelligent creatures, miniaturized and kept in time loops for the pleasure of other, more "developed" races. The Doctor petitioned for their abolition and our people - for once in their long lives - acted."
Braxiatel shrugged. "The Doctor always was one for causing trouble. I, for my part, preferred to keep a lower profile."
"Great." Vicki cocked her head to one side and gazed at Braxiatel.
"So you're one of the Doctor's people, then?"
He nodded. "You don't seem surprised."
"There seem to be a lot of you about," she said. "We met another one recently. He was pretending to be a monk in the time of the Vikings. He was planning to give atomic bazookas to some king named Harold. The Doctor stopped him."
Braxiatel nodded. "Mortimus. I heard he headed this way when he left... when he left our planet. What happened to him?"
"The Doctor sabotaged his TARDIS. Do you all meddle this much?"
"Far from it." Braxiatel laughed. "We're the exceptions that prove the rule."
Something suddenly occurred to Vicki. "But if the Doctor's back in Venice and this Cardinal Bellarmine is chairing the Armageddon Convention, shouldn't you be doing something? I mean, like finding the Doctor, or stopping the Cardinal?"
"What's the point? I can't suddenly push another Doctor in there and pretend nothing's changed. Even if I give the real Doctor a hologuise and make him look like the Cardinal, the envoys will realize that something about him has changed - his body language, or the way he phrases things. And besides, when I popped into the conference hall earlier on the Cardinal was handling himself very well. The envoys seem to be listening to him.
I don't know what he thinks has happened but the envoys'
automatic translators seem to be ironing out anything strange he says, and interpreting his religious pronouncements as best they can. I think..." and he paused cautiously, "that it's working as well as can be expected. The last thing I want to do is to start changing things now" He shrugged. "Of course, this is all their fault. If they had told me that I was talking to a Doctor from a different time stream and that they were going to wipe his mind of everything that had happened during the Omega crisis then I would have chosen a later incarnation."
"A later what?"
"Don't worry about it. The convention is progressing nicely, everyone is happy, and I'm not going to rock the boat. My job finished when the convention started. So, perhaps I can buy you lunch in the refectory, and then I'll take you on a quick tour."
Vicki laughed. " Buy me lunch? I thought you built and ran this entire place?"
He shrugged. "No privileges for the boss. The Jamarians would never forgive me."
"I meant to ask," Vicki said, "who are the Jamarians?"
"I couldn't organize all this without help," Braxiatel said, nodding toward the buildings and jungle of Laputa on the viewscreen. "I needed assistance,