Doctor Who_ Lucifer Rising Part 17

A security drone circled like a fat, lazy insect in front of the door to the Conference Room.

'It's all right,' Bernice said to it, raising her hands in surrender. 'I have permission. Signed, sealed and m triplicate. "Temporary Authorization, Prisoner, For The Visit Of", Guild of Adjudicators form one nine five three slash three.'

The drone orbited mindlessly.

'Come on, Bishop, I know you're watching me.'

The door remained shut.

Bernice reached into a pocket of her waistcoat and took out a grimy piece of paper: a bar receipt from some long*forgotten dive on a far away planet.

'I have in my hand,' she said ominously, 'a "Gratuitous Acts of Vandalism, Drones, To Be Performed On", Bernice Summerfield form zero zero zero.' She paused. 'Slash zero.'

She crossed her arms confidently. After a moment, the door slid open. Bernice grinned as she walked into the Conference Room. Applied psychology: there was no beating it.

The Doctor was hovering above the conference table in the cla.s.sic lotus position. His hands rested, palms up, on his knees. Another drone orbited the room near the ceiling.

The sudden breeze introduced through the open door disturbed the orbit of the drone and sent the Doctor drifting slowly backwards. His eyes opened in alarm, but before he could say anything his concentration lapsed and he dropped like a stone, vanishing behind the far end of the table. There was a loud thud, and a torrent of abuse in an obscure Venusian dialect. The drone buzzed curiously across the room and vanished behind the table, making its own checks on the Doctor's health.

Bernice didn't know whether to laugh or cry, so she settled for sarcasm. 'Aren't Time Lords supposed to be above that sort of language?'

'It was a Venusian lullaby,' the Doctor said, clambering up from behind the table and cramming his hat back on to his head. The drone was...o...b..ting his head like a dizziness star in an ancient cartoon. He glared at the offending object angrily. 'I find it useful to recite calming verse in moments of great stress.'

'Calming verse? Klokeda partha mennin klatch? Klokeda partha mennin klatch? You've got to be joking! It's one of the most bawdy rhymes in the known universe.' You've got to be joking! It's one of the most bawdy rhymes in the known universe.'

'"Venusian is a language, as dead as dead can be",' the Doctor quoted with great dignity. 'If I say it's a lullaby, then it's a lullaby.'

'Oh yes? And who was it who decoded the Mk'kur'qa Inscriptions, then? Who worked out the structure of the language from first principles, then? Who is arguably the foremost galactic authority on the Venusian race?'

'Not you, surely?'

Bernice shrugged.

'Well, actually, no. But I met him once.'

The Doctor grinned, and so did she.

'I tell you,' she continued, 'the bit that I could never figure out was that ablark, araan, aroon ablark, araan, aroon refrain. What was that all about?' refrain. What was that all about?'

'Ah,' the Doctor sighed, nodding wisely. 'It's to do with the number of limbs they had. More opportunities.' He rolled the word around in his mouth, savouring it.

'And shunna teerenatch shunna teerenatch?'

He shuddered. 'Don't ask.'

She gazed at the small, gaudily dressed figure; the clown, the madman, the genius.

'You know so much, don't you.'

'Too much,' he replied softly. 'Far too much.'

Her gaze hardened. 'Sometimes I hate you for it,' she said, more harshly, perhaps, than she had intended. 'I've spent years reconstructing, integrating, a.n.a.lysing and just plain digging through mud; cataloguing alien ruins square centimetre by square centimetre and sticking together the pieces of damaged artifacts to form implausible shapes. Then you come along, and you tell me not only who made it but what his name was, how many eggs he laid and the colour of his tentacles. Archaeology is my life, Doctor. And you've made archaeology worthless to me.'

The Doctor thought for a moment. 'Have I?'

'Yes! It's as if I've wasted my life searching for something that was never lost in the first place. What's the point?'

'Did you enjoy yourself?' he asked.

She smiled wistfully, remembering old friends, good times. 'Wouldn't have missed a second of it.'

'There you are then.' He looked away, and shrugged. 'I collect pins. Where's the point in that, if you'll forgive the pun? But I enjoy it. I'm fulfilled by it. Too many people spend too much time looking for a reason, and fail to take advantage of the simple pleasures that life offers.'

Bernice ran her fingers along the table top. No dust. This room had no secrets to hide. 'You know the worst thing about being here?'

The Doctor perched on the edge of the table, took his hat off and batted the buzzing drone away into a distant corner. Persistently, the device moved back towards them. The Doctor smiled at it, waited for it to approach then whipped his hat through the air and down on to the table, neatly trapping the drone beneath it.

'I think so,' he said seriously, and for a moment his expression a.s.sumed the full weight of his nine*hundred*odd years. 'It's knowing, isn't it? Knowing what's ahead.'

'The curse of being a time travelling archaeologist.' Bernice looked away. 'How many years of peace have they got left?'

'Probably less than you think.' The Doctor glanced sideways at his hat. It was sidling towards the edge of the table. He reached out with his umbrella and hooked the hat back. An indignant buzzing sound came from beneath it. 'The lights are going out all over the galaxy,' he said softly. 'They shall not see them lit again in their lifetimes.' He looked over at Bernice. 'Have you seen the news from the latest pigeon post?'

Bernice nodded. 'It's like seeing a s...o...b..ll start to roll down a mountain. You know at the bottom it's going to be avalanche time. And the latest message pod was more than six months late, by all accounts.' She looked down at the diminutive Time Lord, her eyes full of quiet sympathy.

'I learned to live with it,' he said, in reply to her unspoken question. 'I deal with today's problems today. Tomorrow's problems I solve yesterday.'

'But what about the problems here the sabotage, the murders?'

'Unrelated,' the Doctor said, once more reaching for his hat. He flipped it over, allowing the drone to escape. It immediately flew across the room, maintaining a wary distance. The Doctor reversed his hat, flipped it back along the length of his arm and perched it nonchalantly on his head. 'This is a purely human evil. And talking of which, what's been happening in the world at large since my incarceration in this impromptu dungeon?'

'Where do you want me to start?'

'Ace,' he said quietly. 'Start with Ace.'

Bernice sighed. 'Doctor, you have to understand. The conditions of the...' She swallowed. 'Piecing the bodies together is going to be a full*time job for some poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d. At the moment they've found... Kosi, and... Chas Varley's arm. They recognized it by his ring. But the rest are too badly burned or in too many pieces to identify without DNA tests, and that'll take time. Judging by the reconstruction work, there is considerable evidence of small arms fire: flamers, needlers and the like.' She paused. 'But there's also evidence that some of them just exploded from inside.'

'And what's Trau Bishop doing about it?'

'He's locked away in Miles's office, scanning every simularity he can find with your face in it. I don't know what he's got on you, but it must be good. He's setting up a drumhead court*martial for tomorrow.'

'Followed, no doubt, by summary execution.' The Doctor cast a dark glance up at the innocently circling drone.

Bernice tried to read his expression, but it was untranslatable. But she had to know. 'Cheryl's nearly hysterical,' she offered, with carefully calculated innocence. 'There's no sign of Sam anywhere.'

The Doctor wasn't going for the bait.

'Rumour Control has it,' she added, 'that he's either an undiscovered victim or your accomplice. Craig Richards is running a sweepstake on it.'

'What are the odds on me?'

'Favourite for a short trial and a quick death,' Bernice said, and immediately wished she hadn't.

'There's something else, isn't there?'

She sighed. 'I could be imagining it, but... Well, people seem to be turning against us. n.o.body's saying anything, not to my face anyway, but there's something about the way they move, and the way conversations change tack when I walk into rooms. It's very subtle, but there's an undercurrent of distrust that wasn't there yesterday.'

He gazed up at her with eyes much, much older than his face.

'It's you, isn't it?' she said, with sudden realization. 'Wherever we land, people accept us. I've always wondered why, just like I've always wondered how we can always understand what everyone says, no matter what language they're speaking. And now you're out of the way, whatever spell you've put on them is fading.'

He just smiled sadly.

'And do you do the same to Ace and me? Do you blind us us to your faults?' to your faults?'

'Et tu?' he quoted softly.

'You said something, didn't you?'

'About what, Bernice?'

'About what I told you. Cheryl and Paula.'

The Doctor adjusted the brim of his hat to shadow his eyes. 'Of course not,' he said, but she didn't believe him.

Rabbi Shmuel Zehavi was leaving Miles Engado's quarters as Piper arrived.

'How is he?' she asked.

The wiry psychologist shook his head, almost dislodging his embroidered skullcap in the process. 'Oy!' he exclaimed. 'That meshuggener meshuggener! He's already broken three appointments to see me. "Pressure of work," he says, as if that's an adequate excuse. I've tried to tell him that the last thing Project Eden needs is an Administrator who's as crazy as a dakkabug, but will he listen to me?' Before Piper could enquire further about Miles's odd behaviour, Zehavi moved rapidly away down the corridor, muttering angrily to himself.

More worried now than she liked to admit, Piper extended her search for the Base Administrator to the refectory. The Bridge disaster, along with the subsequent events on Moloch, had thrown Piper's carefully calculated schedules into complete disarray. Members of all three shifts were milling about the circular room: repeating rumours, distorting facts and generally hyping themselves up.

Piper spotted Alex Bannen and his son sitting in the centre of the refectory. The table before them was loaded down with jellies and ice cream.

Unbelievable, she thought. For years he keeps the kid hidden away like the greatest secret in the galaxy, and now he's showing him off for everybody to see.

And then she saw Miles.

He was sitting alone, off to one side, watching a historical simularity, shipped in on the last supply drone, that was playing in the centre of the room. She walked over and joined him at the table.

'Miles?'

He didn't react.

'Miles! I've been worried.'

His gaze flickered over her, then back to the simularity.

'You know the Doctor was arrested for Paula's murder while you were unconscious?' she said, trying to provoke a reaction.

'That charlatan?' His lip curled slightly. 'He deserves to die.'

Piper looked away for a moment. 'I must know what happened to you down there on Moloch. Cheryl's been saying some odd things. Bishop's not saying anything, and as for Bernice and the Doctor '

'The Doctor again. Always the Doctor. I've been suspicious of him since he first arrived.'

Piper frowned, trying to remember exactly how the Doctor and his friends had had arrived on the base. She pulled her thoughts back to the present with an effort as Miles stood. arrived on the base. She pulled her thoughts back to the present with an effort as Miles stood.

'No wait don't go!'

Wearily, Miles sat down again.

'Tell me about it, Miles. I have to know.'

There was a long pause. 'I was in the pod. Paula's starpod. It was all powered*up and ready to go. I... I just wanted to look at the Earth. Well Sol, anyway. If the instruments could pick it up from here. I was looking for it. I saw something. A waveform... Then there was just pain. Endless pain. And,' he hesitated.

Piper nodded eagerly. 'Yes?'

'And I woke up here, in the medlab. Zehavi wanted to a.n.a.lyse my brain, but I'm fine. I keep telling him that. I'm fine.'

'I know,' she said.

'I wish everyone would just leave me alone!' His voice softened. 'Except you, Piper. You care. And...' He stood again. 'There's something I need to show you.'

Some kind of historical simularity was coming to an end as Bernice entered the crowded refectory, pa.s.sing Miles Engado and Piper O'Rourke as she did so. She watched, fascinated, as the beautiful computer expert destroyed the hideous alien invaders and claimed the handsome young museum curator as her own. As the end credits rolled and the t.i.tle came up, she realized that it was a dramatized retelling of the Martian invasion of Earth circa circa 2090. She would never have guessed it from the wildly anachronistic costumes. 2090. She would never have guessed it from the wildly anachronistic costumes.

She smiled, remembering. She had made her reputation excavating the abandoned Ice Warrior citadels on Mars. That was many years ago in her own personal time*scale, many years in the future of the era she was id. It was also the first time she had been back to Earth since being drafted into s.p.a.cefleet, escaping, and running for the stars in a clapped*out old trading ship owned by a clapped*out old trader.

Climbing painfully up monolithic shafts of blue crystal. Making love with Tim in the vaulted egg chambers. Finding discarded sh.e.l.ls stacked up with piles of Ice Marshal helmets, their glistening wetware implants still intact. The temptation to don one, to experience Martian life firsthand, almost overpowering...

She shook herself, and walked on. Her visit to the Doctor seemed to have stirred up old memories, like sediment at the bottom of a pond.

Cheryl Russell was seated on the far side of the refectory, watching the simularity. Although the credits had finished, and the picture had been replaced by a robotic continuity announcer, Cheryl's expression had not changed.

'Fancy a drink?' Bernice stopped by Cheryl's table and held out her refilled flask.

'Thanks,' Cheryl said, and to Bernice's amazement, drained the entire flask without stopping for breath.

'Cheryl, there's something I ought to tell you.'

'I've lost them both,' Cheryl said, without intonation.

'I tried to talk to you the night before last, but '