Doctor Who_ Slow Empire Part 7

There was the vaguely fleshy-sounding crashing of fungoid undergrowth, and a crazed-looking figure burst into the clearing. Its hair was ragged, caked and matted with blood. The remains of fur clothing clung to its mean and abraded body as though it were only by the clotting of those injuries that the sc.r.a.ps were attached. The figure staggered forward, clutching something to its chest, before collapsing heavily, face first, halfway to the fire.

'Now there,' said Professor Miribilis, looking around from his veterinary ministrations to the snake woman, 'looks like a man with an exciting tale to tell.'

'I suspect it would have to be short.' The Doctor ran over to the fallen man and gently turned him over. 'Let's see if we can't do something about these injuries, yes?'

'I cannot...' The new arrival worked his ravaged face. 'I cannot protect...' Weakly, he lifted a hand towards the Doctor. Clutched in it was a faintly glowing shard of some material that seemed to be of the nature of crystal in the way that crystal itself might be similar to wood, in that both are solid matter but with quite different physical properties.

'Take it...' the fallen man rasped. 'Must keep it safe, keep it from the...' His mouth worked silently as his breath failed him. He fell back with exhaustion.

The Doctor regarded the unconscious form, then examined the glowing shard with a slightly critical air. 'Well, the chap seemed very insistent on the point,' he said to the world in general. 'I wonder what it is.'

It was at that point that he seemed to become aware of a multiple, animal growling. He turned to face it as several men burst into the clearing. Each wore a black, monk-like habit, each had a face crudely tattooed with black lines, each was barely restraining by way of a leash a reptilian creature with three branching, vicious-looking heads. For all the quasi-ecclesiastical specifics of their garb, these men were obviously soldiers at heart, rather in the same manner as the bandsmen on Shakrath.

The largest of these men, obviously a leader of sorts, surveyed the alarmed performing troupe and several companions with cold contempt, then turned his attention to the Doctor.

'The shard,' he said in a gravelly tone. 'You will give us the shard.'

'And if I refuse?' the Doctor said. 'I ask purely for the purposes of information, you understand.'

'You will die,' the other said simply. 'All here will die.'

The Doctor eyed the straining, snarling Cerberus-reptiles as they cast about, driven to a near frenzy by the prospect of so much available meat. 'Well, if you put it like that,' he said, 'I can hardly refuse.'

He walked towards the robed men, then brought himself up short to a halt, as if something had occurred to him.

'You know, it occurs to me,' he said, 'that once you have have this thing, there would be nothing stopping you from killing us all in any case. I can see that you know the shard has some power but do you know precisely of what nature and how much? Though I say it myself, I am noted among my people quite who those people are is another question entirely, of course as a sorcerer well versed in the most powerful of magicks. As such, I propose a trade. Spare my friends and I'll come along with you willingly, offering any such a.s.sistance as might be at my command.' this thing, there would be nothing stopping you from killing us all in any case. I can see that you know the shard has some power but do you know precisely of what nature and how much? Though I say it myself, I am noted among my people quite who those people are is another question entirely, of course as a sorcerer well versed in the most powerful of magicks. As such, I propose a trade. Spare my friends and I'll come along with you willingly, offering any such a.s.sistance as might be at my command.'

The leader of the robed men appeared to consider this. 'A sorcerer, you say?'

'The very same,' said the Doctor, smiling.

'Then prove it. Perform a sorcerous device for us.'

'Ah, well,' said the Doctor. 'My power is such that its misuse in common parlour games would anger the dark powers from which it comes. Their vengeance would be swift and devastating, quite probably laying waste to the land for leagues around. On the other hand, you lose nothing by trusting my word. Take me with you, put me to use, and if that use proves superfluous then you can always kill me then.'

There was one of those razor's-edge moments, where the entire world can go one way or another. The robed man nodded to himself.

'Your proposal seems acceptable,' he said. 'Provided any of what you say is true, you may be of some use. Give the shard.'

'It would be a pleasure.' The Doctor moved forward again, proffering the item in question to the robed man. Two of his fellows took hold of the Doctor from both sides and rained a series of blows on his head, beating him into unconsciousness.

The robed man once again surveyed the shocked occupants of the clearing, still with cold and icy calm.

'You are nothing to us,' he said. 'We have no interest in you. Tend to your business and keep away from us, for as long as you can, or you will find us ready to defend ourselves.'

With that, he and his fellows turned and disappeared back into the forest, taking their Cerberus-lizards and the unconscious body of the Doctor with them.

In his newly fumigated apartments in the Citadel of Souls (apartments that still, distressingly, contrived to retain a marked vestige of old-man smell from their previous occupant) the High Amba.s.sador Elect turned his eyes to the window as the night sky outside flared. It was a signal flare, the colour of which was more important than the actual detonation, the seeing of which might have given the position of the men his his men, now in the forest below. The colour was green, for go. men, now in the forest below. The colour was green, for go.

The Amba.s.sadorial Order had the final shard, now, and would be bringing it to him. The stage for Transformation was all but set. The High Amba.s.sador fell into contemplation of the change that would come, considering what form he might take in achieving, at last, the dominion of worlds. The retaking and domination of one one, in any event.

'Well of course course we're going to go after them!' said Anji hotly. 'We have to rescue him. We have to get him back. If we don't,' the more practical side of her continued, 'we're stuck here for good and I'm not at a place in my life where I feel like running off and joining the circus.' we're going to go after them!' said Anji hotly. 'We have to rescue him. We have to get him back. If we don't,' the more practical side of her continued, 'we're stuck here for good and I'm not at a place in my life where I feel like running off and joining the circus.'

She glared around the campfire at Professor Miribilis and his troupe, all of whom seemed to share a general sense of relief at having been left alone by monk-habited men with monstrous trifurcated lizards. None of whom seemed to be on the point of offering any actual help.

'Are you lot going to do anything or not?' she asked the clearing in general.

'They don't look interested, do they?' said Fitz. 'You can't exactly blame them. I mean...'

'If you'll allow me, dear lady.'

This from Jamon de la Rocas, who moved forward a little and began to speak, declaratively, in ringing tones: 'My friends! Much as I am unaccustomed to making speeches, I must at this point ask you a question that will cut to the very marrow of your interest, yea, to the core itself of good and sensible persons and what they may found on't. That question is, what is the measure of a Man? Five-footsix, I hear you answer, and I'll admit that is a worthy and quite n.o.ble dimension but I speak, you see, of something rather finer. My friends, the quality of puissance to which I refer is that of courage, or pursuing the manly course of affairs despite all p.r.i.c.ks and shocks the fates themselves conspire to throw. We have a man in peril, at the mercies of those with the very countenance of knavery. Are we to allow such an ign.o.ble state of affairs to continue? I think not. Come, friends, and show us your mettle. Though we all shall, quite probably, die in futile misery and crying in the voices of small girls before a merciful lapse into the arms of death broken and enfeebled by the torturous ministrations of those who would on all account slice our generative members from our bodies as soon as look at us and feed them to their lizard-hounds who among us can say that we would not be happy, nay, honoured, in such an estimable means of dispatch? So come now, who will join us in our n.o.ble and most estimable quest...?'

After an hour or so of forced marching through the forest, the robed soldiers of the Amba.s.sadorial Order of Souls reached the atoll on which their Citadel had been founded, and sent up a noise-making signal flare to announce their arrival. Presently, a large and somewhat rusted elevator cage descended. The unconscious body of their prisoner was dragged inside and, to the sickly-sounding chugging of some hydrocarbon-driven mechanism above, the elevator rose.

They were met at the top, on the paved outcrop that led to the Citadel itself, by a man whom they knew to be the aide of the High Amba.s.sador Elect, but who now wore the ceremonial robes of that office himself. They were new-made, and in fact still being fussed over by a pair of acolytes, who had been given the task of preparing them at short shrift. One did not survive for long in the Order of Souls without at least having some idea of the way in which the wind was blowing. The soldiers dropped the unconscious body of their prisoner to the paving and bowed in obeisance.

'You have the shard?' the High Amba.s.sador asked, in that curious way of those in authority, however unearned, who already know the answer to a query or at least know what the answer d.a.m.ned well better had be. 'You have brought it to me?'

'Yes, uh, High Amba.s.sador,' said the leader of the soldiers of the Order, the hesitation barely noticeable as his subconscious caught up with High Amba.s.sadorial events, but noticeable to earn him a small black mark or very possibly a large red stain in the not too distant future. Head still bowed in supplication, he approached the High Amba.s.sador, who took the alien shard from his outstretched hand and regarded it critically.

'Perfect and intact,' the High Amba.s.sador allowed at last. 'At the least, in size and form, it appears to be the final, missing piece.' His face remained studiedly calm, letting out no trace of an antic.i.p.ated joy that would be nothing less than rapture. His attention turned to the supine body on the flagstones. 'And who might this be?'

'A sorcerer of much power, so he says,' said the soldier.

'Well I hope, for his sake, that his powers extend rather further than the feigning of unconsciousness,' said the High Amba.s.sador Elect.

'Oh, well,' said the Doctor. 'It was worth a try.'

He stood up and dusted himself off, glanced about himself amiably and then looked beyond the High Amba.s.sador to the stronghold of the Order of Souls.

'Do you know you've got the remains of a big hyperwobble ship sticking out of your Citadel?' he asked.

'd.i.c.k and Jane,' muttered Anji. 'Janet and John. Sanjit Lives with Mommy and her Girlfriend.17 He could have told a b.l.o.o.d.y He could have told a b.l.o.o.d.y limerick limerick about a young woman from Rhyl and got some change out of them.' about a young woman from Rhyl and got some change out of them.'

'That's not exactly fair is it?' said Fitz. 'I mean, n.o.body could have known.'

'He should. I thought he was really hot on sliding into any situation and coming up with the one-page, double-s.p.a.ced skinny on it based on no hard information whatsoever.' should. I thought he was really hot on sliding into any situation and coming up with the one-page, double-s.p.a.ced skinny on it based on no hard information whatsoever.'

'He does, sometimes,' said Fitz, a little defensively. 'It's just that you can't count on it these days.'

'Too b.l.o.o.d.y true you can't,' said Anji. She didn't ordinarily swear, much, but the last few days had put that predilection under not a little provocation.

The curious indifference of Professor Miribilis and his troupe to the essaying of any kind of Doctorial a.s.sistance had been explained. It was to do with the stories they had told around the campfire. The telling of such tales, apparently, on Thakrash was an implied social ritual among strangers seeking succour, rather like the way, on Earth, that a Bedouin is honour-bound to take a guest into his tent for three days and nights, no matter if said guest is his mortal enemy. In forgoing to tell a tale, the Doctor had precluded anyone from going out of their way to help him. Professor Miribilis and his troupe had been quite nice about it, displaying no animosity in the slightest, but it was as simple as that.

Anji had pointed out that as she, Fitz and Jamon de la Rocas were proper tale-telling guests, any help given would be to them them. Professor Miribilis had pointed out in turn, and not unreasonably, that none of the three were in actual, clear and immediate danger. What they might decide to do on leaving the protection of the camp was their business alone.

'What makes it worse is that they'd probably have fought like tigers to protect him, otherwise,' Anji said.18 'Is true,' said the Collector, who was trundling along beside them on what looked like a set of organically force-evolved caterpillar treads. 'Have seen them fight nasty bandit-type monkey-hominids, doing lots of runny-jumpy stuff and using all special circus-type thing. Is throwing knives and doing somersaults and swinging from trapezes. Was very exciting.'

'So, tell me what you're doing here with us, again?' said Anji.

'Okey-dokey. Is thinking that Doctor-type feller very powerful sorcerer, like he say. Is thinking he come from other planet-type thing with big ship. Help him, maybe he give ride back to Collection and big piles of lovely stuff.'

Anji had visions of a Collector ravening its was through the TARDIS and grabbing everything that took its fancy. Hordes of destructive monsters such as the eyes of humans were never meant to see might be preferable. Oh, well, Anji thought, at least its presence had brought their happy little band up to four. The Collector might have extensible appendages somewhere or other that included useful weaponry.

The ragged man who had led the intruders into the camp had proved too weak and faint to give them more than the gist of events, so far as he was concerned that the Order from somewhere called the Citadel of Souls had destroyed his settlement so as to get their hands on the alien shard, the nature of which was of some profound but indefinite mystical significance. Leaving him to the care of Professor Miribilis and the troupe (his tale, such as it was, being enough for the offering of aid and succour), Anji, Fitz and Jamon, with the Collector tagging along, had set off using all their woodland tracking skills to follow the path of those who had abducted the Doctor. Said skills had consisted of noticing that a band of robed men and lizard-beasts had simply crashed off through the forest, without the slightest thought of concealment.

Their trek had not so much been hard as one of drudgery. It seemed as though they had spent hours following the freshly beaten track not too too freshly beaten, naturally, owing to the vague, unspoken, collective thought that to come directly upon the parties they were pursuing, while they were on the move and alert, would be rather too dangerous by far. Better, the unspoken thought went, to find out where the robed men were going, get some idea of the lie of the land and then take things from there. freshly beaten, naturally, owing to the vague, unspoken, collective thought that to come directly upon the parties they were pursuing, while they were on the move and alert, would be rather too dangerous by far. Better, the unspoken thought went, to find out where the robed men were going, get some idea of the lie of the land and then take things from there.

All the same, after hours of unchanging forest, Anji found herself almost wishing that something something would happen, whether for good or bad. The exercise of walking was keeping out the worst of the night chill, but a miserable kind of cold dampness seemed to have settled across the entire surface of her skin under her clothing and was working in by increments. It couldn't be that long before dawn, she hoped. At least that might lend a bit of variety to the surroundings, and in a relatively nonthreatening manner to boot. The only real punctuation thus far had been a flash above the fungus-tree canopy and a concussive crack but the sudden introduction of anything involving high explosives was just the sort of surprise that Anji could do without. would happen, whether for good or bad. The exercise of walking was keeping out the worst of the night chill, but a miserable kind of cold dampness seemed to have settled across the entire surface of her skin under her clothing and was working in by increments. It couldn't be that long before dawn, she hoped. At least that might lend a bit of variety to the surroundings, and in a relatively nonthreatening manner to boot. The only real punctuation thus far had been a flash above the fungus-tree canopy and a concussive crack but the sudden introduction of anything involving high explosives was just the sort of surprise that Anji could do without.

'We're coming up on something.' Fitz, who had wandered on ahead with Jamon de la Rocas, now came hurrying back.

'Is it something interesting?' Anji asked him. 'Is it far?'

'That's debatable,' said Fitz. 'No, it isn't. Far, I mean.'

Indeed, they had reached it before Fitz had finished speaking. It had been hidden from her by the dim lighting conditions and the forest cover, which ran right up to it like an arboreal b.u.t.tress.

Jamon de La Rocas was standing before it, looking up at it: a sheer, smooth and patently unscalable rock face.

'I rather fear that we have reached something of an impa.s.se,' he said. 'Would that stout hearts and mere physical prowess were enough to essay the ascent of such a topological phenomenon, but it seems that for the moment our progression has been balked.'

'Is pardon?' said the Collector, trundling up from behind.

'How the h.e.l.l are we going to get up that lot? I think he means,' said Fitz.

In the centre of the chamber at the very heart of the Citadel of Souls, held together by supports and clamps, stood the Engine of Transubstantiation a spire of mirror-bright material, shattered at one time and painstakingly pieced back together. From it there came what can only be called a soundless soundless sound. There was nothing audible to the ears of men, but something in the mind could tell that the Engine was emitting a constant whine on some very low, or possibly some very high, level and that the cracked harmonics of it were in some abstruse manner grating on the Soul itself. sound. There was nothing audible to the ears of men, but something in the mind could tell that the Engine was emitting a constant whine on some very low, or possibly some very high, level and that the cracked harmonics of it were in some abstruse manner grating on the Soul itself.

'Now I can see where you've gone wrong here from the start,' said the Doctor, nodding at a clump of organic devices connected to the Engine by way of tangled and uninsulated silver wiring. 'You've tried to incorporate Collector-technology into the thing. If you can get it to so much as do anything at all in the first place, which I doubt, the basic incompatibilities would trigger a chain reaction and blow it, and anything connected to it, sky high...'

'Enough!' The High Amba.s.sador Elect waved a hand and caused the Doctor to be clubbed to the floor by an enthusiastic guard of solders of the Order. 'Your opinions are of no import. I believe that you have completely misinterpreted the reason for your being brought here.'

The Doctor turned his head to look at the manacles attached rather ominously to the iron rack standing by the Engine. They appeared to have had a lot of use, from the patina.

'I don't think I have,' he said. 'Is it going to change the slightest thing if I remain silent?'

'It will not,' said the High Amba.s.sador.

'Then I shan't. I can see that you have something of a cargo-cult operation here, but you seem to be an intelligent enough man if, indeed, a little on the megalomaniacal side, if not completely round the twist. You must have some inkling that some procedures might work, while others are quite patently nonsugmf.'

This last exposition was due to the fact that, in addition to manacling the Doctor to the rack, one of the soldiers had stuffed a wad of leather into his mouth with little consideration for the free flow of debate.

'Oh, I'm perfectly aware that such things as magic don't exist,' the High Amba.s.sador said, his tattooed face forming a nasty little grin. He held up the alien shard for the Doctor's inspection. 'I do know, however, that this needs a conductive coating before it can be fitted to the galvanistic workings of the Engine. The blood of a man suits that purpose admirably. I was intending to use some minion or other, but that seems something of a waste with you to hand. And who knows? If the blood of a man has potency then, indeed, how much more potent might be the blood of a "most powerful sorcerer"?'

All the while this conversation was conducted, monk-like figures had been quietly filing into the room. Each wore hessian, each had tattooed markings on his face, but the details of refinement of each contrived to suggest degrees of status in the Order of Souls inferences confirmed by their eventual, silent positioning. All here were Amba.s.sadors, it seemed, but some were slightly more Amba.s.sadorial than others.

When they were finally a.s.sembled, the High Amba.s.sador turned his attention to them and began to speak in formal tones: 'My esteemed colleagues, for centuries we have subsisted, isolated from the Empire of our fathers, the might of which was the source of our power. For centuries have we skulked in the world, while lax sedition and unproductivity thrive. We have taken females from the slave-race settlements to propagate our Order, thus diluting our line unconscionably but still we have held fast to the old ways of our birthright. We have maintained. Our link to the glory of Empire was most cruelly severed, but we have maintained...'

The High Amba.s.sador faltered slightly as his attention was distracted by the Doctor, who was wagging his head, sarcastically, from side to side.

'I believe our friend is of the opinion that I'm being a little long-winded,' the High Amba.s.sador said, 'and possibly repeating myself. That may indeed be so. I shall therefore cut, as it may be, things a little shorter than I personally might like. Suffice it to say that this night is the night when all that ends. This night, in most correct and duly sanctified procedure, we re-establish Diplomatic Contact.'

And with that, the High Amba.s.sador turned back towards the shackled Doctor, raised the alien shard, and made ready to bring it down.

'Is ship!' that odd creature known as the Collector exclaimed, extending limbs and appendages in a manner rather similar to a small meat explosion and pointing frantically. 'Is lovely ship!'

And indeed, rising from the flagstones ahead of us, was a ruin, in which was buried, in a moderately slanticular manner, the skeletal remains of some large aerial conveyance. I must confess to a vertiginous sensation upon observing this spectacle; I had first seen its elements in miniature, by way of the extraordinary dexterities of the Collector itself, and so some part of me counted that smaller size as the correct one. To see such elements on this new scale took one slightly aback.

'Keep your voice down!' Anji hissed. She was white-faced not, I must say, in the manner of my own albinic complexion, but in the way that those who have never experienced some profound terror can go paler than is their norm. Even without the pigmentary capacity for such variation myself, I must confess to feeling something similar. Our sojourn up the sheer cliff face, Anji, I and Fitz hanging on for very dear life as the Collector ascended, by the means of a series of suction cups, had done nothing for my sense of equanimity.

Equally shaken, Fitz was looking about himself warily. 'The place seems deserted,' he said, with a certain degree, I thought, of unconscious hope.

'No, it isn't,' said Anji. 'You can bet on it. There's probably several hundred armed guards just waiting for us, out of sight, and they're all going to fall on us in the next three seconds.'

Fitz looked at her, worriedly. 'Why do you think that?'

Anji shrugged. 'Because it's just our luck. Come on.'

At complete variance with her words, she strode purposefully towards the Citadel as though oblivious to danger of any kind. It may have been mere startlement that had me, Fitz and the Collector falling in with her determination, but we all found ourselves following her closely, if somewhat more lamely, behind.

(Later, when I asked her about this, Anji would merely say, 'Maybe it was a premonition. It just felt safe on some deep level I can't put it any better than that. Besides, I remember thinking that if there were several hundred guards or whatever waiting for us, we were dead anyway, or alive for as long as they wanted us to be. The decision was out of our hands, so there was no point in worrying about it.') Premonition or not, it seemed that her decision was the correct one. Entering through the main doors as though we were some company of visiting dignitaries, we wandered through halls and chapels and refectory chambers completely unmolested. On banners and altar decorations and rood screens I saw such sigils and emblems as I have seen used by the Amba.s.sadorial Corps on well nigh a hundred worlds, ineptly maintained and restored over time, their meanings twisted and lost.

As we progressed, I became aware of a sound as familiar as the bones under my flesh but twisted, much in the same way as the Amba.s.sadorial signs and sigils, and, with a grating, shrieking quality so that for the instant I could not quite place it. Then the susurration, not of voices, but of a ma.s.s of people gathered together and not speaking and finally the piping tone of an individual speaker cutting through it.

We had come to a doorway, a curtain drawn across it of what I believe and hope was cured swine-skin leather. We glanced at each other, reaching an unspoken agreement, and cautiously peeked through.

Hundreds of those men whose garb and facial mutilation attempted to ape that of the Amba.s.sadorial Corps were gathered there. It was fortunate that their backs were turned to me as one, for at the moment I was not entirely sensible as to their existence. My eye was drawn from the first to what lay in the centre of this vasty chamber.

It was a Pylon from a Chamber of Transference, shattered long ago and cemented back together by what appeared to be quant.i.ties of ancient, crusted blood. It was from this that the strangely familiar, tortured shrieking came though mere words cannot express the horror of seeing something so otherwise perfect in its inviolate form in such a state. I still believe that those who had undergone Transference formed a strange variety of kinship with the mechanisms, and the sight of one such mechanism reduced to this mutilated state made me sick to my very spleen. Ironically, perhaps, given my partic.i.p.ation in events that would some short time later follow, when I found myself in full conclusion as to the fundamental nature of the...

But I am getting entirely ahead of myself. For the instant, I stood aghast at the defilement of something that was not so much Holy, but as much a part of my view of the world as my good right hand before me, so that the hideous transformation of it engendered nothing less than purest apoplexy. So diverted was I that I failed to take in any other detail until I heard Anji screaming the word 'No!' beside me, shoving me aside in her desperation to get past me.

Thus It was, belatedly, that I turned my attention to affairs slightly to one side of the monstrous Pylon just in the very nick of time, as it were, to see the man whom I would later learn to be the High Amba.s.sador Elect (I never did learn any other given name for the man) bring down the shard he was holding and plunge it deeply, up to the knuckles that were gripping it, into the Doctor's chest.