The Ghosts of N-Space - Barry Letts [45]
There was a clank as the cable-locker door swung open.
He blinked in the sudden harsh glare.
‘Out!’
It was clear that if he didn’t obey, he would be dragged out, as he had been dragged from the broom cupboard. He crawled out as best he could and scrambled to his feet.
‘Name, rank and number,’ he said to himself as he was hustled across the deck. ‘Name, rank and number.’
‘We’ll drop in on Lethbridge-Stewart on the way,’ said the Doctor. ‘He needs to know what he’s up against.’
How could the twentieth century be on the way from the nineteenth to the sixteenth? thought Sarah. Then again, why not?
‘It’s quite clear that the poltergeist incident was deliberate too,’ went on the Doctor, who had been busy ever 158
since they got into the TARDIS, taking the guts out of a sort of gun thing which seemed vaguely familiar to Sarah.
‘Do you mean that the monk chap was responsible for all those stones?’
‘No, no. Ordinary ghosts don’t have any preternatural powers, beyond their ability to be permeable or solid at will.
Why should they have? No, he used the poltergeist shower of apports to disguise the fact that he pushed that stone from the gallery.’
Sarah watched as he dug in his toolbox for an odd-shaped piece of whatever with wires sticking out of it.
‘The poltergeist is quite a different thing,’ he said. ‘It’s really a low grade N-Form. As I told you, the N-Forms desperately crave personality, so if one can manage to get through into our world, which thank heavens isn’t very common, it looks for somebody with similar tendencies to its particular complex of negative emotion and tries to set up a merger, so to speak.’
‘Possession,’ breathed Sarah.
‘A misnomer. I said a merger, not a takeover. Anybody can resist the influence – and a strong negative personality is made all the stronger, in control of the powers of the N-Form, which can be quite considerable. After all, when you think what a simple poltergeist can do when merged with a naughty child on the verge of adulthood…’ His voice 159
drifted away as he compressed a tiny spring and inserted it into the gun – if it was a gun.
Sarah’s jaw had dropped. ‘You mean, Louisa was possessed by a fiend?’
‘Why will you use such emotive words?’ said the Doctor.
‘I’ll tell you anything, only please don’t hit me again!’
said Jeremy, doing his best not to cry.
Maggie was very near to tears herself. It wasn’t the first time by any means that she’d seen someone put to the question. Face it, it usually gave her a buzz. Bruised, cut cheeks and split lips could be quite a turn-on. But Jeez! this was only a kid!
She had made herself stay in the saloon and watch as Jeremy, tied to one of the Art-Deco chairs (which the interior decorator had costed at two thousand dollars apiece), was put under interrogation. Max, for some reason, had been clearly seething with barely controlled rage ever since he’d spoken to Nico; it would have been safer to keep well away, but somehow she couldn’t.
‘I’ll ask you once more, you little bastard,’ said Max, quietly, hardly moving his mouth. ‘Who is this Doctor and where does he come from?’
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He’d been very brave to start with, refusing to say anything at all after he’d told them what his name was. But after some ten minutes of the treatment…
‘I tell you I’ve no idea,’ said Jeremy with difficulty.
‘He’s just a sort of scientist chap, that’s all.’
‘I know that’s not all he is, and so do you,’ said Max.
‘He knows about the twenty-first, and the flight of the dragon, doesn’t he?’
Dragon? thought Maggie. What now? More Mafia stuff? Some sort of password?
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ moaned Jeremy.
Max slowly lifted his left hand, his good hand. Then, with the slashing speed of a jungle cat he delivered a backhander that lifted Jeremy several inches into the air and sent him crashing to the floor. He would answer no more questions for quite a while.
‘We sail back in the morning,’ said Max to the burly seaman by the door. ‘Enough’s enough. I have to take the castle by tomorrow midnight.’
‘Si, signore,