Doctor Who_ Infinite Requiem Part 2

The Phracton seemed agitated. Lights flickered on its surface. Again the grille commanded. 'You will leave.' The laser-tube retracted into the globe.

Slowly, unbelievably, the Phracton bobbed backwards, starting to move out of the shattered building.

Suzi wondered whether to let out the breath she had been holding. And then, with the Phracton's shadow still receding, something moved at her feet.

She thought it might be a rat. She jumped. There was a movement of grey and black, a cascade of dust. Faster than Suzi could move or even think, the woman beneath the ruins had sat up, dust streaming from her like water as if repelled by an inner energy. It was only now that Suzi noticed with horrified fascination that the woman's body was naked. And those eyes, those eyes of green, were burning like beacons across the shattered land.

Inside its casing, the Phracton convulsed.

Suzi heard the unnatural, tortured screech from the translation grille an instant before she realized what was happening. The alien's globe-shaped module wobbled, sank like a deflating balloon, the creature within thrashing in agony as if impaled. The module crashed to the dust with a crackle of sparks and a scream. Suzi watched in mounting horror as the globe began to fill with blue droplets which spattered like glutinous rain against its interior.

Suddenly it was all over. The globe rolled once with a slight squelching noise, and lay still. The only sound was, once more, the distant gunfire of some small pocket of resistance.

Somehow Suzi tore her eyes away from the wreck and back to the being she had saved. The woman was glistening as if wet. Suzi saw her put her spindly fingers to her temples once, which seemed to make the emerald glow recede from her eyes.

She slumped, as if a terrible weakness had seized her, but still the eyes in the bony face met Suzi's with a level gaze.

The eyes in the almost alien face.

Suzi swallowed once. 'It wasn't going to do us any harm,' she ventured.

The woman did not answer. Her long face seemed to wear an expression of intense agony for a second, like a mere shadow of pain, and then it pa.s.sed and a smile of serenity settled there.

'You killed it,' Suzi said in horror, pushing her silver fringe from her eyes.

The aftermath of terror was rushing through her limbs, searing them with cramp.

18.I merely induced a conflict. I sent a message persuading the organic cells they were being attacked by the technology with which they harmonized. were being attacked by the technology with which they harmonized.

The voice, to Suzi Palsson's creeping unease, was inside her head.

It soothed, like an ambient lullaby.

This produced a mental breakdown. The creature was dangerous. It had to die. die.

Somehow, it resolved itself, like one of those pictures of a young woman which is simultaneously an old crone. The thought settled in Suzi's mind and she recalled the Phracton's laser-tube pointing at her. It had been going to kill her. This was a war, surely? No amount of pleading would have dissuaded a hostile from eliminating its prey. The woman had saved them both.

The green eyes smiled at Suzi.

They said: My name is Shanstra. Take me to your place of safety. My name is Shanstra. Take me to your place of safety.

Bernice found the console room dim and empty. The Doctor's hat and umbrella were hanging on the hatstand. She sighed, pivoted on one heel and wondered where to go and look for him next. As she slipped her hands into the pockets of her waistcoat, her fingers came into contact with the smooth little pyramid again. She took it out, stared at herself in its shiny surface.

How did one activate this kind of thing? There were no visible switches, not even flaws in the surface that might have been touch-pads. Maybe it had to be rubbed like a magic lantern, and out would pop the enigmatic little genie.

Absently, Benny stroked her thumb along the edge of the pyramid.

It lost its form in her hand, sparkling like fireflies, and before she knew what she was doing she had let go of the little pyramid and it was floating on a cloud of light. The cloud resolved itself into the shape of the Doctor.

It was immediately obvious that the hologram, although interactive, did not correspond exactly to the Doctor's current physical being, as the image was leaning on his umbrella and wearing a hat and the Doctor's old, chocolate-brown coat. The realism was perfect, though were it not for a slight haziness around the edges, it could easily have been the Doctor himself. He was looking around as if puzzled about something.

Bernice cleared her throat, and, although she had expected it, she was still surprised when the hologram's eyes alighted on her as if seeing her for the first time.

'Ah, Benny. Still here, are you?'

'Yes. And it might help matters if I knew where you you were, don't you think?' were, don't you think?'

'Mmm.' The Doctor nodded gravely.

'There doesn't seem to be much going on in the console room. I just thought you should know.'

19.'That's all right. Everything's perfectly in order.' The holo-Doctor Benny decided mentally she had better start calling it the h-Doctor if they were going to get acquainted smiled absently at her and began to examine the floor with an expression of intense curiosity; eyes flicking back and forth in that owlish way she knew so well. The mannerisms had been meticulously programmed.

'Tertiary console room,' he said to her. 'Come and find me.' The image started to dissolve.

Benny spread her hands. 'I can't remember '

'How to get there? No, of course, you weren't there when I last used it.' A neat map of blue lines floated out of the h-Doctor's mouth. 'Think you can memorize that?'

'Well, I suppose so '

'Good.'

The map became a funnel of light, which rushed downwards towards one single point. The pyramid sat on the floor of the console room, looking as if it were waiting for Bernice to pick it up.

She pocketed it. She closed her eyes and allowed the map to float in front of them again. 'All right, Doctor,' she said to herself, 'let's see what you're playing at.'

20.

3.

Memory Lane Ahead

England, Earth, 1997 In the grey city, it was drizzling, and Nita was beginning to wish they had brought an umbrella.

The sky above the city was like stained steel, and the tower blocks were standing out as if someone had painted them black. Traffic and people scuttled. Nita, adjusting her sari, hurried to keep pace with her mother, and thought now of the City Hall and the colours and sounds that would be awaiting her. There, too, if she was lucky, she might meet her future husband.

Parked at a meter in the street outside the City Hall was a white Volkswagen Polo which Nita recognized. She knew the occupant, too, but could not acknowledge her. Nita had sensed her mother's tight-lipped expression without even needing to see it, and lowered her eyes in shame while they went by the car.

They ascended the steps, pa.s.sing a large advertising pillar on their right and an archaic blue police box on their left.

Deep within the TARDIS, the tertiary console room cast its bluish light on the Doctor's face.

He was deep in thought, standing at the stone console with his fingers pressed together in an arch in front of his closed eyes. His face was even more deeply lined now, his tousled brown hair was tinged with grey, and despite several weeks of quiet meditation he still felt drained from his last adventure.

The TARDIS clicked and hummed quietly as the Doctor remembered.

Ace had gone. That much was certain. It was unlikely that he would ever see her again. It was too soon for him to say exactly what feelings that aroused in him the last few weeks had been spent in a kind of spiritual and emotional limbo. The Doctor had deliberately cut himself off from most activity, communicating with Bernice only in scribbled notes pinned to roundels. He a.s.sumed she would think he was sad, mourning Ace's departure; or maybe she understood him fully, knew that he had been trying to pa.s.s through a kind of gateway and make a fresh start? This time, even after all his suffering, the refuge and comfort of regeneration had not been afforded him, and he was 21 beginning to wonder if that natural process would ever happen again. Just how much did his body and mind have to be punished before it could be re-newed? The recent wound in his shoulder had not entirely healed, and every time it twinged he was reminded of his past, and all that had built up to this moment. The cycle of events that had brought him into conflict with the Monk again, the subsequent return to exuberant adventuring the three of them, a fine team and then . . .

There was no more Ace. There was Bernice Summerfield, a thirtysomething professor of archaeology and life, who would carry the torch of his travelling companions. They trusted each other implicitly; that was good. Perhaps she would leave him soon too.

Or maybe she knew. Maybe she had come closer than any of them to working it out, the sad and haunting truth that the Time Lord had worn ever since Susan left: that he was afraid of dying alone.

His eyes flicked open. He was trying to recall something.

The Doctor had not been idle in his weeks of seclusion, and when he had not been meditating he had been scanning the TARDIS databanks to refresh the gaps in his knowledge. If he was going to begin adventuring again, he wanted to do so with a full complement of useful facts, and even a few useless ones.

But had he not come across something that had rung a bell? A name?

His hands came down to rest on the cool blue-grey surface. There had been a sound.

He smiled. They were ready to start again.

A sc.r.a.ping, rumbling noise echoed through the tertiary console room and yellow light tumbled in, almost reluctantly, as if slowed by some special relationship to time in that sepulchral chamber.

A tall silhouette, hands on hips, she stood on the threshold and sniffed.

'Hmm. Early Baroque, with late Gothic hints. I'd hoped for something less obvious.'

It had taken Bernice longer than she had expected to locate the Doctor, and she made a mental note to brush up on her map-reading which used to be second nature to her one of these days.

Her first words sounded nonchalant, but could not hide the fact that she was impressed. The tertiary console room looked like a church of technology. Crumbling stone walls were adorned with alternating pilasters on which wisteria had made its home, while above, where the blue-greyness became dark and indistinct, she could make out a ribbed vault with pointed arches, supported by stone squinches at the corners. The elevation was also bound together by a series of cl.u.s.tered colonnettes reaching up into the darkness.

22.The room was cold. At the centre, there was a stone-coloured version of the hexagonal console, behind which stood the Doctor.

He opened his mouth to greet her, but words would not come out. Bernice took this for surprise at first, but then she realized that he had probably not uttered a sound for several weeks.

'There's no need to look quite so shocked,' she said, descending the steps with a smile. 'I live here too, you know.' She shivered, looking around at the strangely timeless carvings and shadows in the room. 'I always thought there might be a cellar. Needs a lick of paint, but we could probably let it out to someone who wasn't too fussy.'

'h.e.l.lo, Benny,' said the Doctor, and raised his eyebrows. 'Good grief, my throat feels dry.'

Bernice, her superficial flippancy as usual masking deep concern, was watching him intently from the other side of the console. 'You went through a lot back there. How is it? Your shoulder, and everything?'

The Doctor seemed to spring into life, his hands moving over the panels, lighting up coloured displays, revealing hidden monitors. Concealed lights of orange spilled warmth into the chamber, and the feeble illumination revealed the lingering hint of a bruise on the Doctor's face.

He looked up triumphantly. 'I'm perfectly fine,' he said, and he sounded it. 'The TARDIS has just landed.' He peered at a screen. 'I don't think it's a random landing, but I didn't programme any coordinates.' He looked up sharply. 'Did you?'

'Me? Heavens, no. Do anything for a quiet life, me.'

'Hmm.' The Doctor swallowed slightly. The unaccustomed act of speaking was still proving a challenge, Bernice supposed. 'I wonder if she's been trying to tell me something?'

Bernice frowned. 'Like what?'

'I don't know. First I was looking through those log records . . . ' He stabbed decisively at a control. 'No use hanging around here. Let's see where we are.'

He hurried up the steps, and Bernice, after a last glance around the unfa-miliar room, followed him.

Tilusha Meswani looked in her rear-view mirror.

She saw the pillars of the City Hall facade. She saw multi-coloured and filigreed cholis and saris glittering through the rain as the revellers hastened inside for the Navaratri celebrations. She saw a box, like a dark-blue work-man's hut or a strange telephone kiosk, which she was sure had not been there the day before. And she saw her own deep-brown left eye, and the thick fringe that fell across her deep-brown right eye, and a wide, strong mouth which she knew to be hers. A sad mouth.

23.Sitting inside Tilusha Meswani was a growing life which had no business being there. The life had been made by her and Philip Tarrant. Now she no longer wanted it and she was pretty much indifferent to what Philip Tarrant wanted, but at the same time fearful with the knowledge that he would get his way, again. At the moment, though, she thought, he was probably too far out of his skull to care.

Tilusha's family in effect no longer knew her. Her parents did not much care for Philip Tarrant, and with good reason. He tended to enforce his opinions with well-aimed blows, and to get what he wanted by keeping Tilusha in a more or less constant state of terror. Of course, she wanted to leave him now, but she lived in his flat and had been disowned by her own family, so there was nowhere really for her to go. Furthermore, she had been guarded so protectively by her family for the first eighteen years of her life that now, at twenty-one, she was certain that no one else would want her if she allowed herself to break free from Philip Tarrant. This was an unfortunate conviction, for if Tilusha had only known it, her trim figure and big dark eyes and glossy hair often caught the attention of young men as she walked down the street.

Secondly, and more sadly, she had decided that all white boys were probably like Philip Tarrant, and that no Asian boy would want her now that she was so disgraced.

Her only friend was her cousin Nita, who usually met her in secret. When they saw each other out in the city, they usually avoided each other's gaze, as they had done just now. Nita was respected, cherished, in the bosom of her family and off to dance the new year in and see if the stick she held would click with that of an eligible bachelor. It was a life Tilusha had lost.

As if that were not enough, the baby was talking to her.

It had been only a hint, not even a whisper at the back of her mind more an impression, a conviction that she should do a particular thing. One day she had decided not to go out to the shops, a decision which surprised her, as it did not seem logical, until the heavens opened five minutes later and hail came clattering on to the earth. And she felt that the child had known this, and had somehow conveyed it to her.

The second time, which had convinced her, was when, one Sat.u.r.day night with the video on, she had been seized with an urge to go into the bedroom and bolt herself in. Tilusha had sat in the dark with her heart thumping for several minutes, and then it happened. Phil. The worst he had ever been.

She heard him kick over the table, she heard the splintering of gla.s.s and his shouted obscenities, and she sat there shivering in terror as he thumped again and again at the door, calling her b.i.t.c.h and cow and other names. After half an hour it seemed as if the rage had subsided, but Tilusha sat awake till dawn, listening to the city breathe. At first light she opened the door a crack and saw 24 the inert figure on the sofa, his force expended, the chaos of a drunken rage around him. Had she been the first object he encountered on coming in, she would doubtless have served as that night's punchbag. She, and the child within her.

Tilusha sat now at the wheel of Phil's car and thought about what she had to do. She had come to talk to Nita and her family, to see if there was any possibility of refuge, or even just a number she could call. But would Nita thank her for breaching the unspoken protocol, for bringing their friendship into the open at the most public event of the year?

There was no choice. It had to be now, for Phil Tarrant was a man at breaking-point, and Tilusha knew that each day could be the one to bring the fatal blow. He was there now, she knew, down at the Four Pennants, drinking snakebite. There would be no stopping him when he came back, and there was no guarantee that the child was going to help her this time.

Tilusha Meswani took the keys out of the ignition and opened the car door.

She stepped out, neat and precise in the kind of clothes she wore to work behind the desk at the Department of Employment black suit with broad, white lapels and a belt with a gold clasp. She locked the door. Taking a breath of the wet air, she let the fine raindrops needle her skin.

The baby kicked.

Tilusha, shocked, stood rooted to the spot for a full minute, allowing the rain to soak her jacket. Inside her. It was there inside her, this thing that was half Phil, and it was watching her.

She shuddered. There were no more signs of movement. She took another deep breath and stepped towards the City Hall.

The Doctor, standing by the TARDIS, sniffed the air. Fossil fuels: always one of the first smells he noticed on late twentieth-century Earth. Shops and high grey buildings faced him on the other side of the street the bustling front of a Mothercare, a loudly throbbing Our Price, the gaudy blue and yellow of an Employment Service. Cars came and went constantly. Most of the people hurrying by did not pay him any attention, and he was not over-concerned with them, either except for the tall, beautiful and sad-looking Indian woman who was getting out of a white car about fifty yards from the TARDIS.

The Doctor checked his temporal disruption monitor. It had come in useful in London in 1976, and he occasionally used it now.

There were some very odd readings on the dial.

The Doctor looked up. He frowned at the figure of the woman as she ascended the steps of the City Hall. Maybe the TARDIS had brought him here for a purpose.

25.'You are going to regret that, son. You're going to regret it a great deal.'

When a table and chair crashed to the floor of the Four Pennants, several people were already grabbing their coats and leaving.

Barry was indeed beginning to regret what he'd just said to Phil Tarrant.