The Ghosts of N-Space - Barry Letts [21]
It was only as he floated away towards the clifftop (and she found herself following with no conscious volition) that she realized-that he had answered her thought as if she had spoken it aloud.
Now they were out in the open, by the ruined wall. The Doctor, seemingly as solid as ever, was standing on the grass, pointing the probe at the pile of stones. As he pulled the trigger, and the flaw in the barrier started to glow with the flickering light she had seen before, Sarah landed beside him. How could she feel the fluttering in her stomach when 73
her stomach was fast asleep, along with the rest of her body?
‘It’s all a matter of belief,’ the Doctor said. He was thought reading again.
Before she could follow up his remark, however, he moved forward (was he walking or floating? It didn’t seem to matter) towards the light and into it, as calmly as if he were walking through the front door of his own home. Sarah took a deep breath and came after him.
The light swallowed her into itself-and yet, when she found that she could still see through its blinding effulgence it was only to realize that compared with the light at the end of the tunnel (what tunnel?) it was more like darkness. (‘I could show you hills in comparison with which you’d call that hill a valley!’ Wasn’t that what the Red Queen had said?)
But as she sailed exultantly towards the bliss of the radiance ahead, she heard the Doctor’s voice loud in her ear:
‘No!’ he commanded. ‘Stop!’
She became aware that he was in front of her, barring her way; and the light was fading, fading. The walls of the tunnel melted – no, that wasn’t right – it was as if they cracked – no, opened up – or perhaps ‘decayed’ would be a better word; but how could that be?
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She was standing in the bleak unwelcome of an empty landscape stretching to a far horizon on every side. A lowering sky, almost purple in colour, was cut by sharp stabs of lightning; the ominous rumble of thunder by distant shrieks and wails, and shouts of incoherent rage. Yet there was no one in sight but the Doctor.
‘I nearly lost you then,’ he said; and she could feel the depths of his concern.
‘This is a dreadful place,’ she said, looking around apprehensively. Yet what she feared most, the strange fiends which had been haunting the castello, were nowhere to be seen.
‘Don’t worry,’ said the Doctor. ‘They’ll turn up.’
Thanks a bunch, she thought.
The Doctor looked down at the probe in his hand, apparently checking the readings on the dials. Sarah felt obscurely cheated. This was nothing like her expectations.
‘There’s nobody here but us. I thought you told us that –’
‘Look again,’ he said.
She followed the direction of his eyes, turning to look back the way they must have come. Flickering into view, like a glimpse of moonlight through wind-scattered clouds, she saw the broken castello wall at the top of the cliff; and beyond, a figure in white, calling for her lost lover; calling, calling. For a single moment, the sight was as real as her 75
memory of the castle she had left behind (but how real IS a memory?) and then it was gone and there was nothing but the desolation.
‘Yes,’ said the Doctor. ‘It’s all in the mind. And yet that’s upside down. What is the mind, after all? A smear of possibilities; when you try to nail it down it’s gone, like your poor lady.’
‘She disappeared like a dream,’ said Sarah.
‘Very like a dream,’ said the Doctor. ‘But is it your dream or hers?’
‘You mean that none of this is real?’
‘Nothing could be more real. Matter and mind are fundamentally the same. And yet… and yet…’ He stopped speaking, and shook his head. Was it merely that he didn’t know how to explain to her, or was he as puzzled as she was? He spoke again.
‘What is mind? No matter –’
‘– and what is matter? Never mind!’ She finished the schoolgirl joke for him; and they both laughed.
He looked again at the psycho-probe, and carefully turned a small knurled knob, watching the dial above it.
‘Good, good,