Doctor Who_ Infinite Requiem Part 22

The Director felt himself forced back into his chair, pinned there by invisible bonds.

'Now, please, Director. Do as I say. Otherwise I will have to resort to violence again, which is so . . . shabby, don't you think?'

171.

Part Four

DARK TRINITY ASCENDANT.

Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible . . . is a source of the sublime.

Burke, Philosophical Enquiry Philosophical Enquiry Remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land.

Christina Rossetti, Remember Remember

22.

Dreaming of Me

The gate to the Dreamguide was easily found. It seemed to be at the hub and heart of the Dream Centre, in one of the echoing, light-filled halls that were its trademark. Suzi saw a great isosceles triangle, framed with a metal so white that, from a distance, she thought it to be pure light. Around the chamber, high above them, gravpads waited, inert, defying gravity. A senior-looking Pridka, clad in red robes with gold trim, stood at a globe-shaped console, dwarfed by the huge gateway. Presumably he/she (Suzi did not know quite how to cope with the Pridka concept of gender) was communing with the Dreamguide through some sort of interface.

Suzi had decided that she trusted the Doctor instinctively. She admired his easy charm as he strolled up to the Pridka monitor, introduced them with the utmost politeness. He then exchanged a meaningful look with the Pridka, after which they bowed slowly to one another. Suzi was annoyed something had pa.s.sed between the Doctor and the alien of which she was not aware. But hadn't she just decided that she trusted him?

The Doctor touched her arm, gently. 'I have a mission to complete, and you have to restore your self-esteem,' he was saying. 'You see, part of the effect of the transition from mind to matter, which the Sensopaths have been perfecting, is the effacing of the limit between subject and object. Hopefully, the Dreamguide will give you back your sense of self.'

'Is it dangerous?' Suzi asked, shivering as she looked up in awe at the huge, triangular gateway.

'It's therapeutic. The Pridka have been doing this sort of thing for centuries, in your terms.' The Doctor smiled. 'My own a.s.signment, on the other hand, is probably very dangerous indeed. Which is why I want you all out of the way while I decide what to do with the Sensopaths.'

'Supposing Kelzen won't cooperate with you?' Suzi demanded. 'And what if Leibniz and Bernice don't succeed in keeping Shanstra occupied?'

The Doctor shrugged. 'I shouldn't worry about it. If that happens, none of us will have the freedom of thought even to feel resentment, let alone object.'

Suzi, puzzled, opened her mouth for another question, but the Pridka was making agitated movements.

175.

'Please,' it said, with its big, glistening eyes open wide and staring at Suzi.

'The Dreamguide is ready for you. Please enter the interface.'

Suzi gathered her cloak around her, and started to ascend the ramp. She looked back at the Doctor, who waved and smiled, then she walked forward into the blackness.

Welcome to the Dream Experience. Do not be alarmed by anything you appear to see or feel. The purpose of the Experience is one of transformation: of the to see or feel. The purpose of the Experience is one of transformation: of the negative into the positive, of the unsettling into the everyday. negative into the positive, of the unsettling into the everyday.

The voice caressed the innermost mind, like a hand smoothing silken sheets.

Suzi felt her healing consolidate itself, and finally let her body relax, immerse itself in the energy fields. In her mind, the dust and fire and chaos of Gadrell Major were but a bad memory.

She let herself dream.

As soon as Suzi had entered the gateway, the Doctor's face had fallen, and the rea.s.suring smile had slipped, freeing the wrinkles of cosmic angst on his ageless face once more.

His expression grim, the Doctor turned on his heel, nodding briefly to the Pridka. 'If I don't come back, get her out,' he said, and strode from the chamber, stiffly, as if containing some dark emotion that dared not be released.

She was in a bare room, covered with dust, shimmering with water light as if at the bottom of a swimming-pool. She looked around, uncertain as to where she should be.

Then, oblong segments of the floor began to slide upwards, revealing themselves as bookcases stacked with ancient tomes, bound in leather of maroon and red and ivy green. All books, Suzi knew, which she had not read. New knowledge.

The library desk was a gigantic, hexagonal console, surmounted by a cylinder that moved up and down like a breathing creature. It rotated gently in the rippling light.

The bookcases grew, looming over her. High up above her, bats screeched and fluttered between the summits of the towering bookshelves. But it was strangely calming for Suzi to be there, in her second home. She looked up, smiling. The library ceiling could just about be seen; it was a disc, no, a dome, rippling like water.

Books detached themselves from the shelves and floated down in front of her, with smiling, cherubic faces. 'Take me,' they said. 'Love me.'

Suzi flung her arms out wide, caught the books, and embraced the dazzling sunshine pouring through the dome of water above her.

176.

The Doctor had been carried upwards through spiralling columns of light, and now he strolled through the foyer of the administrative globe. Everything was a curve, a globe, or a circle, and every surface was suffused with gentle light.

He entered a large, circular s.p.a.ce and was immediately greeted by two attendant Pridka with highly developed crests of fins, one in a green robe, the other in orange. They seemed to appear there in the centre of the floor, like images activated by the Doctor's presence.

'May we help you?' said the green-robed Pridka.

'I was wondering if I could see the Director of the centre?' said the Doctor hopefully. 'Tell him the Doctor a Time Lord would like to speak to him.'

The Pridka looked at one another, and something unheard by the Doctor pa.s.sed between them. 'Is it a matter of some urgency?' asked the Pridka in green, with an attempt at a smile. 'The Director has a full schedule of appointments for this cycle.'

The Doctor shrugged, looked slightly bashful. 'Well, I don't like to shout about these things, but actually it's to do with the fundamental stability of the cosmos. Could you manage to squeeze me in today?'

'It really isn't on,' said Cheynor moodily. 'Not on at all.' He unholstered his sidearm and checked the charges for the third time in five minutes.

The Phracton Commandant buzzed quietly to himself, his floating globe casting an egg-shaped shadow across the roundels. 'The Sens-o-path is communicating,' he announced.

Cheynor hurriedly snapped his gun closed again and leapt to his feet.

'What?'

'My sensory input is vastly more refined than that of a Ter-ran. I can hear a communication.'

Cheynor glanced up at the screen to check on Kelzen, and was startled to see that the image had broken up. Instead, the monitor was displaying coloured flashes, like the lights of an exotic ballroom, twisting and dancing. Were they forming pictures? Resonances, in the back of Darius Cheynor's head?

With sudden, startling clarity he saw the face of his dead brother, Simeon, the face of his dead brother, Simeon, the boy destined for success, for academia, for the mud of a battlefield and they the boy destined for success, for academia, for the mud of a battlefield and they hauled him out, the man with no face hauled him out, the man with no face The Phracton was crackling. Smoke was pouring from the casing, while blue sparks danced like demons in the dimness, strobing on Cheynor and the alien. Horrified, Cheynor covered his eyes.

A sound the rending of metal and the bawling of a baby, fused cyberneti-cally into a grisly whole burst outwards from the Phracton's grille, enveloping the console room.

177.

The noise was unbearable.

Cheynor dropped to his knees, his hands clamped over his ears. There was a tingling in his mind It was urgent, like a hand in the wilderness of noise tapping on his shoulder to show him a way out. But he dared not look. What if it was the dead hand of his brother?

Darius Cheynor. Sound became solid, tore like curtains to reveal more sound, an angrier mob of noise, behind it. Sound became solid, tore like curtains to reveal more sound, an angrier mob of noise, behind it.

He was aware in a dimmer, thinner physical world like a mere ghost of itself that the Phracton Commandant's casing shattered, that the limp form within it slopped to the TARDIS floor like a dead baby, twitching and writhing Darius Cheynor! I cannot hold her any more. Shanstra is breaking through to Jirenal! Jirenal!

His eyes were clamped so tightly shut that they throbbed with pain. The thought crackled like burning plastic in his mind What do you want me to do?

Stop the Dreamguide.

It was the voice of Keizen.

Stop the Dream. Stop Suzi Palsson or she will die!

The noise in Cheynor's head seemed to become a mere din, rather than the brain-throttling cacophony it had been. He unclamped his hands from his ears, staggered to his feet, blinking.

And stepped in the Phracton.

Horrified, he lifted his boot from the mess on the TARDIS floor. It came away unwillingly, like cheese from a pizza, and there was a pungent smell, ammonia maybe. Something fizzed in Cheynor's mouth and nostrils, as he drew breath to gasp in horror. The pool of sticky flesh oozed from the ball of wrecked circuitry, as if something had slipped in through the crack in the casing and pummelled the creature to death with pure sound.

He backed away, bile rising in his stomach.

The irrational, wild thought bounced around in his head that they were going to think he did it, that the enmity had flared up again and he had killed his new ally in a burst of xenophobia.

Find her, Darius Cheynor. Stop the Dream.

With Kelzen's words like an alarm bell in his head, he operated the door control and dashed from the TARDIS.

The books fluttered around Suzi Palsson, cooing gently.

She saw the Dreamguide, its giant Pridka face floating like a sunset above a meadow of blue flowers. The Pridka were n.o.ble and beautiful, Suzi decided, with their skins of damselfly blue, their soft, expressive features, and that elegant crest of receptor fins on the forehead. n.o.ble and beautiful. Suzi giggled. She must 178 be getting sentimental. The Dream Experience seemed to be having the same effect on her as alcohol.

She remembered a party: on one of the Earth stations, with mostly Colm's friends, no one she knew, really. At the start she had been restrained, de-mure even, and after several hours of nervously knocking back the home-made punch, she had been embracing these strangers and telling them how lovely they were.

You have suffered, child, said the Dreamguide gently. said the Dreamguide gently. Arrangements have Arrangements have been made for you. been made for you.

'Arrangements?' Suzi, perplexed, heard her own query as if it were spoken by someone else.

Your credit has been validated by an independent agent. You are now ready to receive the Dreamguide's ministrations. receive the Dreamguide's ministrations.

The Doctor, thought Suzi with a smile. He must have really wanted me to go through with this. 'So, what do I do?' she asked, leaning her back against the cool trunk of a tree, and letting golden-green light caress her body.

You merely have to remember. It will not seem painful. The past will truly become the past, the present the future. Your life, after you have spoken to the become the past, the present the future. Your life, after you have spoken to the Dreamguide, will have meaning once more. Meaning that you, yourself have Dreamguide, will have meaning once more. Meaning that you, yourself have given it, not us. That is the Pridka way. given it, not us. That is the Pridka way.

'Sounds cool,' said Suzi. 'Could I have a vodka and lime while you're at it, please?'

She thought she was joking, but a c.o.c.ktail shaker appeared, on a small picnic table at her side. Reality shifted once again, and to her astonishment, there was a young man in a waiter's tuxedo, smiling as he shook her drink for her. He had a friendly, lopsided grin that creased his face, and a black fringe falling over his eyes.

We hope you find this image pleasing. The memory is summoned from a favourite Terran entertainment archive of yours. favourite Terran entertainment archive of yours.

'You extracted that rather niftily,' Suzi said with a smile. 'Plenty of ice, please.'

He is named Hugh.

Suzi couldn't help laughing. 'Yes, I know.' She took her gla.s.s. 'Thanks.'

The young man's hand, as he gave her the drink, brushed Suzi's.

It was a pale, mottled hand, the flesh flaking from it like steamed fish.

Startled, she looked up into his face. It was no longer the face of her favourite vid-actor. She saw Empty, white eyes A putrefying skull, rippling as if immersed in unquiet water Suzi leapt to her feet and tried to scream.

179.

On the horizon, the face of the Dreamguide shimmered and blurred, splintering into a thousand howling Pridka faces. Ten thousand.

'h.e.l.lo, Suzi,' said the dead Colm Oswyn, reaching out a rotting hand to her.

'I thought we would meet again soon.'

When the Doctor entered the sculpture of pastel light which represented the office of the Pridka Dream Centre Director, the V-shaped chair was turned away from him. 'May I see you for a moment?'

'Of course, Doctor.'

The Doctor's surprise did not really have time to register. The chair swivelled, and the imposing figure of the Director of the centre sat there. The Doctor took in the salient details of the face: the proud crest of fins, the sheen of his blue skin. His eyes were open wide, his hands were folded neatly in his lap and he was smiling in a benign, welcoming manner.

He did not move at all, due to the fact that his head had been neatly severed from his body and was fixed to the back of the chair, about twenty centimetres above the neck, by a thick bolt of steel.

The Doctor was repelled, but he leaned across the desk and examined the incision. It was a clean cut, which seemed to have severed all of the nerves and muscles at once.

The door sealed itself behind the Doctor. Out of the shadows, a dark, lan-guid figure unfurled itself. Without turning round, the Doctor straightened up, alert, listening, like a hunting cat. Only when he was fully ready did he turn around and face the other occupant of the room.

He knew who it was what it was immediately. The mane of black hair, the oval face with its staring, round eyes and impressive dual sweep of cheekbone.

Jirenal folded his arms, tilted his head to one side and unleashed his hideous clown's smile. 'Welcome, Doctor,' he said. 'You requested an audience with me. What can I do for you?'

180.