Doctor Who_ Castrovalva Part 9

Tegan suddenly stopped and leaned over the bal.u.s.trade.

'It's impossible!' Nyssa saw it too, and tugged at the Doctor's sleeve. Below them, exactly as they had left it, was the village square.

The women were still getting on with their washing.

The Doctor and his two companions arrived at the fountain to find Mergrave and Ruther waiting for them.

The physician was looking less than his usual cheerful self.

'Leaving us, Doctor, we hear?' Mergrave said.

Ruther was positively agitated. 'I beg you, Doctor.

Reconsider this too hasty departure.'

'For reasons of health if not of courtesy,' added Mergrave.

But the Doctor would not allow himself to be detained.

'Sorry, it's too important. Mush dash now... come back later. Where do those steps take us?'

'Out, sir, if you insist,' replied Ruther. The Doctor thanked the two Castrovalvans and set off at an even faster pace.

At the bottom of the steps was a covered colonnade dripping with honeysuckle which Nyssa recognised as the place where she had spotted the Zero Cabinet on her early morning walk, although she seemed to remember it as overlooking the square. They ran to the portico at the end and found yet another flight of steps. These led less steeply downwards under a vault of trees, and took them eventually to a small gazebo overlooking the spot they had started from.

'That wretched square again,' exclaimed Tegan. 'What's happening, Doctor?'

The Doctor halted to survey the array of roofs and parapets. 'Ssh, concentrate. This could be very serious.'

The perspective of receding terraces certainly gave an illusion of distance to the lower slopes that terminated in the white perimeter walls. But the picture was deceptive- the Doctor knew that now. If you looked carefully you became aware that there was a second perspective at work that brought the distant outskirts closer and set them above the town.

From this angle Castrovalva seemed normal enough to Tegan, if a bit larger than she remembered it. But Nyssa saw what was happening. 'It's as if s.p.a.ce had been folded in on itself.'

'Very likely!' said the Doctor tersely, and immediately set off again, this time leading them back the way they had come. 'Quick!' he called out, 'there may still be time to reverse the sense.'

Tegan and Nyssa scrambled after the nimble white figure of the Doctor. He seemed fit enough to bound up the steps four at a time, but there was evidence of his returning confusion in the moments when he stopped at vantage points to take stock of the surroundings.

Nyssa's first thought had been that climbing too fast to the lofty hamlet of Castrovalva without taking time for proper acclimatisation had produced in the Doctor the cla.s.sic symptoms of high-alt.i.tude oedema, a sort of water on the brain. But the evidence of the landscape was irrefutable: the confusion was outside, part of Castrovalva itself. Soon, Nyssa guessed, it would even start to affect their own judgement.

The worst moment came when the steps they were ascending turned a corner, and they found the way blocked by a tall, thin figure standing in an archway. The Doctor seemed to weaken suddenly, and the two girls rushed to stop him falling.

'What is the occasion of this haste?' asked Shardovan in his quiet, hollow voice. The two girls instinctively backed away, half-carrying the Doctor down the steps again until they came to an alternative route that led them out of range of the dark gaze of the Librarian. The path continued downwards, and they knew it would carry them back to the inevitable square.

They paused for breath in a small arbour. The Doctor leaned against one of the pillars, visibly weaker now. He seemed to be gasping to tell them something.

'It's affecting him,' Nyssa explained to Tegan. 'Some very complex spatial disturbance. We've got to get him back to the Zero Cabinet immediately.' She went to the edge of the balcony to decide their next step.

Tegan leaned close against the pillar to hear what the Doctor was saying. 'Castrovalva...' The voice came faintly.

'Folding in... deliberately.' And then Nyssa was signalling to them, and they were moving again. More steps, another terrace, and then they were at a door that Tegan recognised.

'Quick, get him inside,' said Nyssa.

It was the Doctor's room! The girls helped the Doctor in and looked around for the Zero Cabinet. There was no sign of it anywhere.

They tried to lead him towards the bed, but he shook them off and stumbled to the window. A strange noise escaped his lips and they ran to his side. Painfully he found his voice. 'Recursive Occlusion! Someone's manipulating Castrovalva. We're caught in a s.p.a.ce/time trap!'

Tegan and Nyssa looked out of the window, gazing in wonder and fear at what they saw. Below them and above them the whole of Castrovalva, square, walks, archways, colonnades, steps, porticos, gazebos and bal.u.s.trades, appeared as a jigsaw puzzle of pieces jammed together by a blind man with no regard for sense or shape.

But it was the Castrovalvan population that unintentionally brought the final touch of horror to the scene. The washing women by the fountain, the collection of gossipping old men outside the library, and Ruther and Mergrave crossing the square together deep in conversation-each seemed heedless of the illogical geography, and moved in their separate and various dimensions, up, down, sideways and upside-down like dolls in a doll's house seen through a kaleidoscope.

10.

The Clue of the Chronicle Chronicle The mind-numbing scene outside the window made Tegan close her eyes and clutch the window-sill. Nyssa had to look away too, and she saw the Doctor stagger back, about to fall. Her cry made Tegan forget her own sick feeling, and the two girls rushed to catch hold of him. But he brusquely disengaged himself from their support.

'No time for that. We've got to find out what's causing this Occlusion before the real damage starts. Follow me.'

He moved towards the door confidently enough, but before he was halfway across the room his legs buckled under him and Tegan had to run forward and catch him. 'Please...' he said in a voice that was suddenly small, 'find the Zero Cabinet.'

Nyssa didn't hesitate. 'The Portreeve! He'll help us.

Wait here, Doctor.'

The Doctor caught her arm. 'The Occlusion... it won't be dangerous to you at this stage. But be careful. It's going to get harder and harder to find your way about.' Tegan was still holding onto him determinedly, and showed every sign of being about to fuss over him, so he added: 'Better take the air-hostess person with you.'

They weren't at all happy about leaving him alone, but he became agitated in his insistence. The two girls rushed out, realising that there wasn't time to argue. The sooner they found the Zero Cabinet the sooner they could get the Doctor back into it.

The largest piece of furniture in the room was the looking-gla.s.s; full length and double width, its mahogany frame swivelled in a U-shaped cradle of the same deep dark wood, making it altogether a very handsome addition to the room. At this moment the Doctor was oblivious to its finer points, but did rely heavily on its old-fashioned virtue of solidity, for as soon as the two girls had gone another wave of vertigo overcame him, and he had to grab at its k.n.o.bs for support. Nausea flooded over him, shaking loose old memories of other Occlusions, and he grappled among this flotsam, trying to remember something useful, some How or Why that would give him a small say in his own fate.

Waves. Propagation Theory. Speed of light. He concentrated on light, and could only think of light-coloured, lightweight cricketing outfits, millions of them, reflected and re-reflected down an eternal corridor of mirrors.

Mirrors! Yet, that was it. The Doctor forced his gaze in the direction of the big looking-gla.s.s, an idea forming in his head. Then, with a ma.s.sive effort of will, he began to drag it towards the window.

Nyssa and Tegan quickly discovered that the Doctor was right: it had become even harder to find your way around.

Once outside, the really misleading thing was that the fragmentation of the geography they had seen from the Doctor's window was no longer obvious, in fact there was nothing you could point to and say 'That looks wrong'. At last they accidentally stumbled upon the town square, and there they came across Ruther, who seemed completely unaware of the terrible tangle his Castrovalva had become.

The only difficulty he could see was in their plan to talk to the Portreeve. 'I think we should prepare ourselves for disappointment,' he said as he preceded them down the steps. 'It is unusual for the Portreeve to grant two audiences on the same day.'

'Just take us to him,' Tegan insisted. 'We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.'

They crossed a great many bridges, but they did not come to it. In the most amiable possible way their guide led them round in circles. 'Look at that!' Tegan exclaimed, when after a long walk the winding path took them out onto a small balcony, and the ubiquitous town square lay insolently below them again. Evidently the Castrovalvans were proud of the view from here, because someone had mounted a swivelling bra.s.s telescope on the bal.u.s.trade.

Ruther obligingly hooked a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles over his ears. 'Yes, that is the square,' he agreed.

'But we keep coming back to it,' Nyssa said.

'Naturally,' said Ruther.

Tegan became quite heated. 'But you must see there's something going wrong here.'

With the air of one arguing a case that is really quite simple, although it may sound complicated, Ruther explained carefully: 'There are, as you have observed, steps that rise from the square, and others that lead downwards from it, while other walks debouch laterally. An equitable arrangement, surely, allowing for much variety of movement.'

'You're not going to tell me you don't realise...' Tegan began, but was stopped by a warning shake of the head from Nyssa.

'I do not imply,' Ruther went on, oblivious of all this, 'that improvements might not be made. I have myself suggested that an ornamental lake should complete the view.' He pushed his spectacles onto his forehead and stooped to put his eye to the telescope. 'Nevertheless, you will find the vista exemplary from here.'

While he made delicate adjustments to the bra.s.s k.n.o.bs, Tegan took the opportunity to whisper to Nyssa: 'But they must know. They're all in this together.'

'I think they are all in it together,' said Nyssa. 'And that's exactly why they don't know. Don't you see? If they're part of the recursion themselves, they'll be the last to know...' She broke off, looking over the bal.u.s.trade in the direction that Ruther was pointing the telescope. He lifted his eye from the eye-piece and noticing her interest handed over the instrument.

Tegan thought her friend was training the telescope on the tall, thin figure of Shardovan, who happened to be crossing the square at that moment. But she was wrong: the object that had caught Nyssa's eye, and which was now captured in the magnified circle of light at the end of the bra.s.s tube, was, as she saw for herself when Nyssa urgently beckoned her over... the washing trough.

In the foreshortened perspective the trough at first looked unfamiliar. But then, as the women walked away from it, carrying the last of their wet bundles, it was easy to see what had attracted Nyssa's attention. Tegan chided herself for not noticing it before. The receptacle the women had been using for their laundry was nothing more nor less than the Zero Cabinet.

It had taken all the Doctor's strength to drag the mirror in front of the window, and now he leant weakly against it while he caught his breath. With an atomic weight of around 108 the thin film of silver on the back of the gla.s.s was not the heaviest of elements, but it had a usefully high conductivity. He was hoping it would go some way towards deflecting whatever it was out there that was sapping his strength, and give him a little breathing s.p.a.ce to think out his next move.

There is an official Time-Lord strategy you are taught even as a small child: in circ.u.mstances of near-defeat you take stock of the forces that are working on your behalf, your a.s.sets, and then separately a.s.sess the forces working against you, your liabilities. This leads directly to the next stage: devising a logical plan that will increase the former and diminish the latter. The dictum had always struck the Doctor as typically Gallifreyan-that is to say arid, abstract and artificial. The only really stimulating thing about defeat, death and disaster is that all the rule-books go out of the window, and you are permitted to improvise under the purest inspiration of all-blind panic.

But for the present his numbed brain allowed neither panic nor inspiration, and he was grateful to have the tired old Gallifreyan formula to fall back on. He enumerated his liabilities. One: something, amorphous and insidiously destructive, had invaded Castrovalva. Two: he himself was especially vulnerable to whatever it was because of the unfortunate timing of the process of regeneration. And three (and by no means least): at this very time when he had too little strength even to save himself, his young friend Adric was in desperate need of his help.

So much for the liabilities. His a.s.sets were... well, what, precisely? Two intelligent young helpers (but his responsibility for them make them equally liabilities)... and a still serviceable cricketing outfit.

This was really a feebly short list to put on the positive side of the equation. He cast his eye around the room to see what else he could commandeer as an ally, and it lighted on the volumes of the Condensed Chronicle of Castrovalva Condensed Chronicle of Castrovalva the girls had left behind them. the girls had left behind them.

The mirror did seem to be offering some protection, and for the moment the Doctor was able to let go of it and take a few tentative steps across to the table. In the nearly eight hundred years of his being, much of that time spent in travel, the Doctor had arrived at the working hypothesis that experience is no subst.i.tute for books. He had a healthy respect for anything his fellow creatures felt was worth committing to print, although the profuseness of their publications often made him wish that reading could be got through more quickly and writing made less easy, perhaps with a universal rule that all books be hand-carved in granite with a pin.

But reading was never the first thing the Doctor did with a new book. He picked one up and flicked idly through it, then held the flyleaf up to the light to inspect it for a watermark. Then he opened two of the other books, sniffed one of them carefully and glanced at its table of contents.

'Must be about five hundred years old...' he said aloud.

He was about to put it down (it being volume one, and you never start to read a multi-volumed work at volume one) when a piece of paper slipped from between its leaves. He smoothed it out on the table and saw that it was closely covered with fine handwriting. 'h.e.l.lo...' he muttered, 'that's very odd indeed.'

The Doctor heard a second voice in the room, something between a tuneless humming and a discreet cough, and glanced up to find a chubby balding head peeking round the door.

'Mergrave!' exclaimed the Doctor. 'Just the chap.'

The amiable physician had come to see if there was any more call for his herbal remedy. The Doctor said he was feeling much better now-which was an exaggeration- and attributed it all to his friend's medical skills, making no mention of the mirror. There was a motive behind this praise: the Doctor wanted Mergrave to run an errand for him.

While he was away, the Doctor poured over the books, referring constantly to the piece of paper he had found.

Eventually Mergrave returned with a trio of muscular Castrovalvan girls, each of whom carried a pile of dusty leather-bound volumes. It was the rest of the Condensed Condensed Chronicle Chronicle.

The Doctor looked up from his studies. 'Well done, Mergrave.' The physician put down the small flask he was carrying and shooed the girls away. 'And many thanks,' the Doctor went on, inspecting the new additions to his collection. 'I'm very fond of History, and now I seem to have time on my hands.' He had a way of gently easing the covers back and peering down into the hollow spine of the bindings, as if the History he sought resided there rather than the pages.

Mergrave had noticed the mirror blocking the window, and perhaps with the idea of giving the Doctor more light for his labours was on the point of moving it back to its original place. 'No please!' said the Doctor quickly. 'Small remedy of my own-more of a whim really. Helps to keep it out.'

Mergrave appeared amused. 'It? And what, sir, is it?'

The Doctor gestured towards the books, which were now lying higgledy-piggledy all over the table. 'That's precisely what I'm trying to find out. Tell me, Mergrave...

What do you see out of the window?'

Mergrave humoured him good-naturedly by peering round the mirror.

'The town square, the library, the Portreeve's house.

And my own Pharmacy. In fine, sir, the Dwellings of Castrovalva.'

The next question was crucial, but the Doctor asked it casually. 'And it all... makes sense to you?'

Mergrave laughed warmly at this. 'A strange question. I see, sir, you are another Shardovan.' He poured some drops of liquid from the flask into a gla.s.s.

'Shardovan?' interposed the Doctor.

'A metaphysician like yourself, sir.'

'Has he ever asked you the same question?'

'On several occasions, during his more melancholy moods.' Mergrave handed the gla.s.s to the Doctor. 'He too can be a little fevered in his imaginings.'

The Doctor paused with the gla.s.s at his lips. 'How do I know you're telling the truth?'

The physician's face froze into an expression of great dignity. 'Because, sir, I maintain I am. And I am a man of my word.'

The Time Lord fixed him with a level gaze. 'That's a perfect example of recursion,' the Doctor said eventually.

'And recursion, Mergrave, is what we're up against.' He fumbled in his pocket and produced a stick of chalk.

Indicating the back of the mirror, where the expanse of dark wood was unfinished and rough enough to serve as a blackboard, he said: 'Draw me a map. The town plan of Castrovalva.'

The amiable chemist went to work. The Doctor stood beside him, the gla.s.s of herbal preparation neglected in his hand.

Mergrave dusted the chalk from his fingers and stepped back to survey his handiwork. 'The library... the Square...

the Portreeve's house... Mmmm...' said the Doctor.

'Where's your pharmacy?' Mergrave indicated a modest rectangle towards the right-hand corner, and the Doctor nodded. But then the physician went on: '... and here, and here, and here also.' His stubby finger tapped three other locations on the map.