Doctor Who_ Fallen Gods Part 6

-Sorry.The hot breeze is blowing through her, leaving her thoughts tumbling in its wake.

-How could he? he mutters. -Oh, cruelty doesn't surprise me, but it still amazes me. he? he mutters. -Oh, cruelty doesn't surprise me, but it still amazes me.

-People must have known.

-It wasn't in their interest to think about it.

-So, like the court. Short-sighted. Fickle. No-one looking beyond their next advantage ...

-Don't blame the blind.

-They don't want to see. We've got to force them to look, we He turns to her, his thoughts suddenly exploding out. -If we topple the King, while the demons are still attacking, what do you think that will do to the empire, mm? Chaos? Violence? Retaliation? A search for scapegoats? And if the truth comes out, what do you think will happen to Deucalion? Do you really think they'd let him take the throne? Or will it end up, in the hands of someone like Nauplius now with even more reason to be harsh?

The questions come so fast she physically feels the need to duck. He can't see how tightly she's wound, he's got no idea why.

-There's always a good reason not to act, she mutters.

-We are acting. But carefully.

He rounds a hairpin bend, then they continue upwards. -We can put a word in when we reach the summit. If the G.o.ds refuse to play any longer, that'll put an end to it.

-And that's it? Leave the King, leave everyone unpunished? Is that your justice?

-One crisis at a time. The King will still be here, no matter what, but if we don't stop the demons ...-If we do stop the demons, will anyone care to challenge him? to challenge him?He hesitates at that, and she pushes harder. -We have to tell the truth. I have to know ... We all have to know, how far it's gone.-And if it costs Deucalion his life?

-It's not just Deucalion.-But he's the keystone. Who takes the fall for the King's hubris? Will you punish the boy for his father's crime?-It's not just his crime...He doesn't notice the weight she's putting on her words. If only he would notice, if only he would ask. He paces onward, losing himself in thought.A word erupts from her. -Please ...She stumbles in front of him, touches the ground, feels it unsteady beneath her feet. Her face contorts. He waits for her words to come.

-I'm forty-eight years old.

For a heart-stopping moment, she sees him look over her body, his eyes judging her.

Finally he speaks, quietly. -Not just Deucalion, then.

-The blessing ceremonies ... We pa.s.s the blessings taken from the Fallen on to all the people. Extra harvests in the year. Extra years in their youth.-With a little extra on top for the loyal priestesses as well ...There's a slight smile on his lips. She has no idea what he's thinking, what he's feeling. Whether his words were, meant as dispa.s.sionate, mocking, accusing, even playful. Normally that's part of the fascination, now it's rattling her.

-We always thought they were free. But they can't have been, can they? All the years ... all the people ... where are they coming from?

He shakes his head, at a loss. She tells herself the hardness in his eyes isn't directed at her, when he finally says -Something else to ask your G.o.ds.

He offers her his hand, to escort her further up, the path, and she nearly pulls away. She can feel every inch of her body right now, feel how tired and shrivelled it deserves to be, and even a touch of softness feels like a lie.

Then they round the last, bend before the sanctuary, and in a dizzying instant the G.o.ds gather her up. She brings her hands together and raises them to her face in a gesture of delight. The G.o.ds are a line of power running down her spine, a robe of peace wrapping around her heart. In seconds, all the terrible revelations and suspicions run away like water, and she's like a child again, carefree, knowing all is well.She glances at the Doctor, standing beside her outside the holy of holies, the three-walled shrine. He has the wide-eyed and itchy look of someone who's sure they're being watched.

-You're aware of them.

-Yes.

Alcestis can't help but do a little pirouette on the path. She's washed clean by their presence, warmed and fed and comforted. Their gaze is nothing like a human glance, jealous over petty details, wondering what advantage she might bring them. It's more the gaze of someone looking out over the mountains, powerfully aware and yet detached, at peace. There's no deliberate mercy, no personal touch; their very distance is what makes them cool in the centre of the heat.

The Doctor has wrapped his arms around himself, as though he is cold on the very lip of h.e.l.l.

-I know who they are, he says. He tips and turns his head, as though trying to hear something clearly, a distant song, or an actor from the back of the crowd.-What do you mean?The Doctor sits down on the path, abruptly, rubbing at his eyes. - There are many ways for evolution to run up, a blind alley. Imagine tiny creatures that live at the very bottom of the sea. No sunlight, endless gloom.

-Tartarus, she says.

-There's only one source of warmth: the volcano, where it bleeds lava into the sea through cracks at its base. It's their only food, the only source of the energy in their world. They cannot evolve further in their hot, dark, heavy world. And so they evolve outwards ... into creatures untrammelled by the bounds of mortal existence. Beings that exist outside of time, able to enter or leave it as they please. (He gropes for a metaphor.) -As a frog can enter or leave the water of a pond, and can see the creatures in it from above. Your G.o.ds evolved to leave time, the way that fish evolved to leave the water. Colonising a new environment.Is any of what I'm saying making sense to you?

-Ah. You're saying that the t.i.tans came from the deep sea at the foot of the volcano, and that they weren't always so powerful.

He looks pleased, but thankfully not surprised, that she has understood. Mostly, however, he has the look of someone distracted by a headache.

-What I can grasp only through mathematics is as natural to them as swimming.

She slides her hand beneath his hair at the base of his neck and scratches, as though he's one of the half-wild cats that inhabit the town. His shoulders relax, just a little.

-There are only a handful of them left. The others have all sailed out into the vortex. These few have stayed ... because of the humans. Because you amused them. And then one of your people, or one of theirs, found a way to bind them. They're tied down to the volcano, as trapped as any fish living in the hot, dark waters.Alcestis stands, up, and offers him her hand. -Come inside, she says.The gems shine like stars in the red blackness of the shrine. The Doctor stands, near the altar, near the edge, looking down into the magma where the crystals sparkle like moonlight on water.

With a feeling like a great sigh, the Fallen are, there, all around them. Their bodies, trapped deep in Tartarus, are nowhere to be seen. But Alcestis feels the pressure of their eyes from the crystals all around. They have arrived unsummoned, curious, tasting the air.

-Wings, says the Doctor. -Scorching.

Alcestis touches his arm. -Don't be afraid.

-There are, so many of them. An entire species in thrall. All looking at me. All looking to me.-Pray to them, she murmurs. They'll hear you.The Doctor straightens, and his brow smoothes. She can hear the G.o.ds listening, waiting.-h.e.l.lo, he says aloud. -I'm the Doctor. And I want you to stop.There's a rustling in the glowing darkness, as though thousands of moths are flapping through the shrine, in love with the glistening crystals. The Doctor turns, and turns again, as though trying to pinpoint the source of the sound. But the whispering she feels is just a feather'stouch inside her head.Stop what?The rustling turns to laughter for a moment, then dies away again, into listening.

-I want you to stop co-operating with Rhadamanthys. I want you to stop devouring the Minoans' children and grafting that stolen time onto the ones the King tells you to.Crackling laughter works through her, like claws over her flesh. Alcestis is struck dumb with terror. This is not how you speak to the G.o.ds. You don't treat them as equals.

And yet, the Doctor is still standing, still breathing.

What is he?

Another wash of sensation: sudden sharp awareness of the wall of bone around her mind. Constraint, power bound, grounded. No choice. No food. No freedom.-I'll find a way to free you, offers the Doctor.A mix of laughter, of curious murmurs, an angry buzzing undertone through her teeth. Alcestis starts praying, silently, worshipping, praising, pleading. But they're not listening to her.

-Stop obeying Rhadamanthys. Go on strike! Refuse to do his bidding. You're G.o.ds why let yourselves be pushed around by some mortal, even if he is a King,?

Her bones are, laughing again, buzzing in their sockets, grinding faintly against one another. Tiny lightning-shocks of disdain through her heart: the King, not commanding, no control. He doesn't have the wisdom. He doesn't have the knowledge. He's not the one.

-Britomartis, says the Doctor.

-Britomartis, says Alcestis.

A shiver of certainty.

Alcestis sinks her fingers into the Doctor's shoulder, suddenly urgent, unmindful of her G.o.ds. -I'll make her tell us.

The Doctor looks into her face. Despite the dimness, his pupils have shrunk to points, as though too much light is being poured into them.-Yes, he says. -That might be best.

She turns without a word and leaps from the ridge outside the door, her arms spread wide.

The Doctor smiles tightly. He begins to put his hands in his pockets, before realising that he hasn't got any. -Now, she's gone, he tells the G.o.ds, with something dancing in his eyes, -we can really talk.

Britomartis descends into the pit, listening to the earth breathe around her. From here, the few flickering lamps that light the shrine disappear from view, leaving only the faintest sense of a glow above her. The full moon, high and tiny, framed in the light-well in the ceiling above the pit, serves only to outline rather than brighten.

She takes her position cross-legged on the limestone floor. Around her a scattering of snakes are emerging from their burrows through the cracks in the pit walls, but aside from the faintest brush they pay her no heed. Not for her the vast Python of Rhea at Delphi, who keeps her Pythia entranced; the G.o.ds that Britomartis serves are, small things.

She doesn't close her eyes; she simply wills herself not to notice the last wisps of light, and her sight becomes irrelevant. Here in the pit, in the cool earth beloved of Rhea, all else drops away. The life moves around her, but she is enfolded, so well secured that she can turn inward without fear. Here she searches the floor of her mind for any stray specks of doubt. When she finds one, she picks it up, examines it, and carefully sweeps it away, till her conscience is as smooth and perfect as the shrine itself. She sees nothing else.

But still she notices the moon going out. She looks up to see the vast winged shape hurtling through the light-well, straight down towards her and feels the hands of Alcestis pull her roughly away from the earth.

They speak without words. The G.o.ds are, amused by the need to explain themselves in equations, the mathematics of higher dimensions. They find it especially entertaining that to the Doctor, these numbers are profound, efforts to describe the deep processes of the universe. The highest expression of which he is capable.

-You don't belong here at all, he says finally. (He is dimly aware that he is lying on the shrine's floor.) -You belong free, in the vortex.A further flood of terms and factors, hints of the unimaginable shapes they describe. Timeless things, held within time, but able to be released.

-And, murmurs the Doctor, -you can reach out of your prison to manipulate time. You can carry out the orders you're given.

Slow needles of ice through his head, fury stretched through tens of thousands of years. The shapes behind his eyes collapsing and constricting to one set of solutions showing how they can reach beyond their temporal cage without being able to leave it. How their powers are restrained, proscribed: their fantasies of ageing Rhadamanthys to a fossil, of reducing Britomartis to an embryo. The waves and winds that they could minutely disturb, to reduce the island, to dust beyond their reach. Their glory constrained by mathematics.

-And yet you can send the bulls. (He can see it in the numbers now, the loophole someone has found.) -Bursts of directed chronons. Riding the currents created by your presence. Can't aim them at the n.o.bles or the priests. Kamenai, outside the mountain, protected. By the contours of the equations. Wouldn't aim it at themselves anyway. But their subjects ...

His words are, vast and vague, falling from his mouth like lumps of coal. The dancing needles in his brain move with precision, certainty, faster and sharper than he could ever catch.-But who?Again he feels the wall around him the paralysing pressure. No movement, no speech, no choice. Of course, anyone with the knowledge to force the G.o.ds to obey would also be able to force them to remain silent.

-So, it's twenty questions, is it? he says fuzzily. The mouth the words come from seems so far away. Already he's sure his skull has been crushed, his whole self scattered under the weight of the Fallen.Question one, who benefits?-Question two, says the Doctor, slowly and clearly. -Who says a G.o.d, has to tell the truth?

-A hundred thousand people in the empire, Alcestis tells Britomartis through her teeth. -A hundred thousand lives to prolong. Who did you take it all from?-I should have seen the mistake for which you were, setting your course. Long before you got to this point. I didn't intervene enough once you returned.

-Answer me!

-Yes, for that I blame myself.

Britomartis's voice is cool over the wind. Alcestis can feel no tension in the woman's body, even though Alcestis's arms and legs enfolded around her are all that keep her from plummeting to the ocean. Her calmness only drives Alcestis harder, her anger drawing sharp whiplash curves through the sky.

-We know about Glaucus. About the other princes.

-I have no need to justify myself.

-We know about the blessing ceremonies. What the Fallen give must be taken from others.

-You would judge me?

-Everyone would.

Britomartis turns to look at her, over her shoulder. Her eyes speak of weapons as yet unused. -By the end, you will know better.

Alcestis grips her heart tight in her chest, trying to keep it from pounding out of control. Trying to ride her fury with the same instinctive care with which she rides the currents. If she's going to crack Britomartis's composure, she'll have to strike with care.-You wouldn't hide the act so thoroughly if you had no doubt.-I remember your childlike eyes, the day I first presented you to the G.o.ds. It was like your first taste of honey. You embraced the sweetness, with no concept of what it truly meant to serve them.

She reaches back, touches Alcestis's head, a gesture she remembers from thirty years ago. Running her fingers proprietarily through Alcestis's ma.s.s of hair. Alcestis swerves sharply, twisting her head away.

Britomartis goes on. -I keep the truth from the people not out of shame, but out of pity. I protect them from the damage the knowledge would do to those who aren't prepared. It is the duty of each of us to care for our fellows ...-Oh, I know, you'll make sure I get all the care I need. You cared for me. Never about me. Never about Glaucus.

-I care for the empire. And now, you know how. My pity for you is rapidly being exhausted.

Now, the equations whirling through his head are, his own: dynamic forces, balances of power, the push and pull of the n.o.bles who could command the attacks. Britomartis, already using the G.o.ds for the King's own sacrifices but a servant at heart, one who asks the G.o.ds rather than commands. Nauplius, grasping for power and influence, reaching for war ... but resisting the involvement of the G.o.ds. Peneleos, the one who has most directly called for the G.o.ds to be unleashed, but with no apparent ambition beyond maintaining the status quo. Who benefits?

-Well, none of them, says the Doctor. -Not like the way you benefit. You're doing it yourselves.

Their irritation pins him to the floor, like a b.u.t.terfly pressed down by a finger. He struggles to find a breath.-Well, he wheezes. -That was a good guess, wasn't it?

They whirl now along the cliff-face of Thera, Alcestis spinning the pair of them wildly as she pushes straight up along the rocks. Fighting the currents, the sudden strong down-draft from the volcano. Rock and sky flash past their eyes over and over.

-How many people? she shouts. -How many did you kill for the empire?Britomartis turns her head to look at her. -Wars have causalities.-You fight a war against our own people? Feed our men their own brothers?

(A querulous look.) -Certainly not. What do you take me for? (A pause.) -They came from Athens.

-The tribute? You expect me to believe that seven youths and seven maidens -Is your grasp really so narrow? When I say the years came from Athens, I mean they came from Athens.

Slowly now, a mile above the island, Alcestis trailing to a stop in the air as the words wash over her.-The whole city?-The half of them. The plague that swept Athens, that ended the last war. You remember, don't you?

She remembers standing in the palace portico as young Philonis ran barefoot up, to her, calling out that the boats were, back at long last. Excited babble about a surrender and a famine and the end of the siege of Athens, and the wave of relief that had washed over her.-You?-The plague was a winged one. We let the Fallen go forth and descend upon them.

She feels her grip beginning to slacken, and redoubles it. The ease and certainty with which she held the currents has deserted her. She's overbalancing in the air, losing her sense of up, and down. If she loses her hold on the currents, there will be nothing left to do but fall.-Even the children?-And their children's children, and all the children they would now, never have. All those years came to us by right of conquest, through the G.o.ds.

For a moment she feels a knot untying in her stomach. Not Minoans, not her own people; foreigners, outside the law, far away across the water.

Then it's as though she hits a wall. Men killed not with swords, not with rocks or javelins, fighting to defend their women and their homes, but turned in an instant to diseased and crumbling powder. No songs. No funerals. No-one to remember them at all.

She stood on the palace docks the day their men returned. The war had never reached Thera, but she cheered their return, all alive.

She cries out: -We were never in danger from Athens! Not then!

-You think not?

-The war was for justice, not survival.

-They are implacably opposed to our way of life. To our prosperity, to our law, to everything we value. I would defend our world with any means at my disposal.-They aren't barbarians Britomartis cuts her off. -The Athenians worship children. They cast Rhea Herself aside to kneel at the feet of her upstart son. They would rise up against her, against us. And while Rhea would stand with her children to overthrow her tyrant husband, she will not allow herself to be overthrown in turn.-And so you do this in her name? You think she would approve? approve?Britomartis smiles. -Do the crops still flower? Are the bulls still strong? Do Minos and Rhadamanthys, and their children still prosper? Then you have your answer.-Your answer is in the thunder of the hooves.She feels, rather than sees, Britomartis's eyes. -Be careful which answer you listen for. Do you remember when we unleashed the G.o.ds?

-How could I?

-Because you did it.

She stares, not in disbelief, in simple incomprehension.

Britomartis turns in her grip, bringing her mouth up, to Alcestis's ear. -Three weeks before the return. The victory prayer.

She remembers it: all the priestesses crammed into the peak sanctuary, whirling through the dance while Britomartis led the chant of a ritual they had never heard before. On and on for hours, intoxicated by the nearness of the t.i.tans, following her own footsteps over and over till her mind lost any sense of time. That day, she had been intimate with the divine. For just a moment, the earth had no hold on her.-You're saying that I ...-It was your minds that freed the G.o.ds to strike. The dance that let them take flight.

She stumbles, with no ground beneath her feet. There's nothing to catch her as she tumbles forward. Her grip loosens, unthinking, but Britomartis has grabbed onto her just as fiercely, refusing to let go.

-I didn't know ...