Doctor Who_ The Death of Art Part 16

183.

There was a narrow access path built into the wall of the catacombs by Haussmann's engineers. It had been a trial cut for a line of sewers that were never built; set aside as too expensive by the Prefect's successors. Pierre edged through it, Lucifer padding beside him. It should lead him past the site of the screams. Then he would decide where his duty lay.

Chris leant down and picked up the head. Its features were finely carved, worked as precisely as anything he had ever seen. He looked for tool-marks. If there were characteristic slips repeated across the different body parts that might tell him whether a single artist or several were responsible for them. Yes, very likely. The TARDIS records would be bound to have a big section on the microscopic textural a.n.a.lysis of the works of nineteenth-century obsessives. d.a.m.n, he missed the Doctor. He could just see him juggling heads, tracing a band of body-part loving artists from a jagged chisel cut or a stylistic flourish in the cheek-bones. Things seemed to fall open at the Doctor's touch. Mysteries unravelled themselves.

Chris just dug himself in deeper. He set the head down atop a pile of hands, and picked up another. There were no tool marks. They looked as if they had fallen off the tree that way.

He saw Jarre was staring at him. Had the detective noticed the smoothness of the carving? Chris wished he had a theory to offer him. What could have done it? An alien cutting device? It would be a relief if he could think of a good understandable superscience gimmick; a tool so neat that a sculptor might go a bit nuts trying it out. Carve another head? Hey, why not - it only took a minute or two. A couple of feet? Sure, ten seconds tops. Give the man a hand?

Definitely!

The alternatives were not good. Psychic powers that made ma.s.s go away? That was a lot to swallow. H e ' d hate to see physics get that sort of mauling. Even the Carnival Queen had fitted into science somehow; if only as a per-sonification of a potential Kuhn Paradigm shift in the 184 way the consciousness of observers was collapsing mixed-state events. At least he told himself that now, after a week shut in the TARDIS library reading Findecker's Der Der Nexus Doppelgangen Nexus Doppelgangen and an ancient children's book and an ancient children's book A Brief A Brief History of Time. History of Time. Now that the beauty and terror of it was only the subject of memory and dreams. Even the stuff the Doctor did sometimes, the hair-raising things Chris had read in the TARDIS logs, like taking a lighthouse and a couple of diamond cuff-links and making a laser cannon, seemed like a friendly burlesque of the sciences Chris took for granted, rather than an utter rejection of them. The conservation of matter was fundamental, wasn't it? Now that the beauty and terror of it was only the subject of memory and dreams. Even the stuff the Doctor did sometimes, the hair-raising things Chris had read in the TARDIS logs, like taking a lighthouse and a couple of diamond cuff-links and making a laser cannon, seemed like a friendly burlesque of the sciences Chris took for granted, rather than an utter rejection of them. The conservation of matter was fundamental, wasn't it?

'Uncanny, isn't it?' Jarre said.

Chris risked a terse nod.

'Why did the sculptor want so many carvings of politicians?

What can you do with a life-sized doll of a politician?'

'How familiar are you with French politicians?' Chris asked. 'Could you make a list of the ones who have been . . .

a h . . . immortalized?'

Jarre considered. 'I think so. They're good likenesses.'

'Right. I'll start collecting heads.'

Two figures loomed large in the haze. Dominic realized he was still in his own bed, looking up into the faces of his captors. One was the man with two hearts, who Dominic had taken for one of the Brotherhood; the Scottish man whom he had almost killed in the frenzy of his anger. The other was younger but just as much a stranger. Even so, there was something peculiarly familiar about him. There was a pattern underneath the grossness of the veins and arteries, like a spectre of heat. There were depths that shape-changers never altered; ways the Family had to recognize each other. This was like the ghost of such a likeness. With rising wonder, Dominic groped for an impossible hope. Aunt Jessica had told the Family that she had felt Emil's body die; felt its thoughts end, and y e t . . .

'Emil?'

The stranger bowed stiffly, and Dominic could see a 185 recognizable tremble about his left eye. Emil had pulled that face whenever he was nervous. Once he had stuck that way for a week, the skin crawling in a slow ruminative cycle around his eye-socket. That had been after the rogue faction of the Brotherhood had almost killed him; when Dominic's brother had brought him back through the sewers. He had wanted his mother to make it all better. She had been too exhausted. Her powers had been almost burnt out, then.

Dominic had thought about Emil's terror for longer than he wanted to remember. It had been then that he had finally accepted he could not defend the Family alone; could not stand against both Montague and the Grandmaster. It had not been a moment of choice, just a recognition of past choices.

Really, there had been no grand treachery, never a moment when a boundary was overstepped, only a slow encroach-ment of favours. Perhaps it had begun even earlier, with the theft of the Doll's House itself. It had taken him years to realize that the Grandmaster had wanted it stolen.

By then he was consciously in the Grandmaster's service.

He had told himself that he was the only one of the Family strong enough to do the things that must be done. Then when the other children were born warped, when Emil died anyway, when Aunt Jessica no longer trusted him, he had wrapped up his guilt like a kind of martyrdom. Even so he had never expected that his martyrdom might give birth to miracles. He reached out wonderingly.

'How is this possible?'

The other man smiled. 'He jumped out of his skin. I ' m the the Doctor, and this is my friend your son. We need to talk.' Doctor, and this is my friend your son. We need to talk.'

Coming back up the dark stairs with the bag of heads, Chris noticed Jarre shudder as he came into the chapel. Nothing had changed there, and the automatic filters that humans carry i n n their heads for blocking out horrors were already doing their stuff. As long as he didn't look at the corpse's eyes, Chris thought he could stand it. their heads for blocking out horrors were already doing their stuff. As long as he didn't look at the corpse's eyes, Chris thought he could stand it.

'Symbolism,' Jarre said suddenly. 'Don't you see? It must be s y m b o l i c '

186.

Chris felt his skin begin a slow migration across the peaks of his spine. A crucifix on a chain was symbolic. Two candle-sticks held across each other to hold off Dracula was symbolic. This was the real thing. Wasn't it?

Jarre was gesturing quickly with his hands, trying to keep up with the flash of his ideas. 'It's too clumsy, too slow for murder. It reeks of ceremony, of judicial killing. The Romans used it because they had the weight of the state to back it up.

They knew people wouldn't come and cut the sufferers down, but whoever did this couldn't know that. A man might be hours dying on a cross, gasping for breath as he dragged his chest up against gravity, giving his lungs room to expand.

There had to be a reason for doing it that made the risk of discovery acceptable. A statement they wanted to make.'

'I wonder.' Chris stared up into the eyes of the crucified priest. 'He looks a meek, innocent enough man. Could he have been hated so badly that this was considered a just punishment?'

Jarre shrugged. 'He was part of a web of subversives. Not the centre, perhaps, but very near it. Whatever else he was, he was not innocent.'

'Why were you watching him?' Chris asked.

Rule two of Konstantine's guide to spilling the beans was to temper the truth to the minds of the hostage-takers. It would do no good to tell a Hith on a vengeance kick that its snotty race lost the war against humanity because they were basically carpets with delusions of adequacy, and that it had as much chance of having its demands acceded to as of forming a successful string quartet.

Her best guess at Montague's psychology was that, because he had spouted rubbish for so long and had so much of it believed implicitly by his followers, he now had as much grasp of consensual reality as a politician high on Juke. It was incredible what people would believe just because someone had the power to turn their bodies inside out.

She opted for a headlong attack. 'The Doctor is the emissary of your masters, worm. He is the messenger of the 187 powers you draw upon.' She scuffled in her memory for mystic gobbledegook from her time on the fraudster watch. It had been a mind-numbing three months of punishment detail for some dress-code violation Konstantine had dreamt up, to give her a taster of the tedium of medium-level Overcity work. Three months watching inbred n.o.bles with the IQs of gene-freaked meat-animals throwing their money at Swami Rhan-Te-Goth and his Mystic Brazier of Light. The brazier had been a holographic lightshow strobing at human hyp-notic frequencies, and the Swami's mystic powers had been two unregistered telepathic a.s.sistants, unpeeling the audience's credit-chip access codes as well as the truth about Great-Grandfather m.u.f.fin's mysterious last words. Still, he had used a very impressive patter. They had nailed him on five counts of access to banned literature as well: Prinn; Lovecraft; Von Juntz; all on datachip. Konstantine had flamed them with a service blaster, and had sworn blind in the rec room later that the Prinn chip had burnt with a green flame, and the Von Juntz with a red sulphurous flare. The punchline was that the Lovecraft had not burnt at all. The joke had been enough to make Roz read the Lovecraft texts in the Adjudication Index Purgatum. Index Purgatum. She had found them more adjectival than terrifying, but they had a certain style. She had found them more adjectival than terrifying, but they had a certain style.

'He is more than man. He is the troubler at the gate, the walker with the thousand forms; the part of the idiot G.o.d which embraces the pain of reason. He is the thing from the void that mocks the blind apes of truth. He is the dark messenger, Nya . . . '

'Do not speak that name!' Montague shouted. A rogue muscle twitched at his temple. He screamed out at the a.s.sembled Brotherhood: 'Leave us; all but the sentries go about your tasks. I will speak with this heretic alone.'

Chris watched Jarre squirm. He hated to let anything out; that one. His policing was all secrets and mysteries.

Jarre pursed his lips. 'Tomas came to our attention recently. He had been a minor figure in the social life of le 188 Quartier Marais. All very liberal. The kind of priest who would ask the Devil nicely to step outside if someone asked him for an exorcism. He had some small political influence, but in essence he was an entirely harmless man. Suddenly he took an active turn. He spoke against the Jews, blaming Jewish brewers for poisoning the young with absinthe and Jewish chemists for peddling opium. He used the social contacts he had made in his years of quiet dinner parties to woo the radicals. In the last month he has been seen with Clemenceau.' Chris must have looked puzzled, despite his attempts at gnomic inscrutability, for Jarre burst into an exasperated rapid-fire summary of Clemenceau's career.

Chris caught about a third of it but gathered that the man was politically important, the ex-leader of the radical opposition to the current government, the editor of the liberal paper La La Justice. Justice.

'Clemenceau has yet to really take sides in the Dreyfus case,' Jarre said. 'His voice could rouse public opinion against the anti-Dreyfusards in the Government. He could press for Esterhazy to be investigated, help reinstate Picquart.

We placed an agent close to him, an advocate who had done some work for the Directory; but with the fragmenting of the Directory and the open hostility of the Ministry of War w e ' v e made no progress. No wonder, if this priest was poisoning his mind against Dreyfus.'

'If he was? D o n ' t you know?'

Jarre flushed. 'Kasper's reports indicated as much, but if Kasper had . . . '

'Been turned?' Chris said sardonically, and bit his lip.

That wasn't very gentlemanly. He was finding being mild-mannered an unprecedented strain; possibly because allies so rarely tried to spit him on their internal organs. Why was it so hard to act normally when it was was an act? Trying to be the Doctor's fifth self was making him want to blow something up. Possibly the Doctor's sixth self had felt the same. an act? Trying to be the Doctor's fifth self was making him want to blow something up. Possibly the Doctor's sixth self had felt the same.

This chapel would really benefit from nitro thirteen re-decoration.

189.

Chapter 17.

The Doctor sipped cautiously at the red wine Dominic had brought from his cellar.

'More?' Dominic asked avuncularly, hovering round with the bottle.

'It's earlier than I thought,' the Doctor said apologetically.

'You should have caught me a little while back when I had a better head for vintages. These days I tend only to drink on special celebrations. But go on telling me about the Family. It really does explain an awful lot. I ' m very grateful.'

'Not so grateful as I am, Doctor. I hope you will never know what it feels like to have lost a child. I cannot tell you how it feels to have one restored from the grave itself. If we can do anything to help you, we will.'

'Just tell me the truth.'

Laboriously, moistening his mouth at times with wine, Dominic sketched out the history of the Family. In 1847 a man had come to Paris seeking something he had lost; a doll's house which had been stolen from him. His name had been Montague, and he had been a toy-maker. In London he had killed people with his dolls; animating them with the power of his mind. Without the doll's house that had focused his natural powers, he had been reduced to a mere charlatan, hypnotizing the poor into imagining cures and pocketing coppers in the rue St-Christien. He had still attracted attention. There was a certain politician who was old enough to take any chance for health, and twice the chances for power. Montague had convinced him to arrange for the doll's 190 house to be stolen back. This part of the story was only guesswork; the Family did not know who had taken the house from Montague in the first place, but they presumed it was a powerful faction in French military intelligence.

Powerful but not wholly trusted by the Third Republic: a relic perhaps of the Bourbonist or Bonapart.i.te regimes that had preceded it. Suffice it to say that Montague got the house back. Together with his political backer, who brought to the bargain a ready made power-structure of Freemasons, political hangers-on and the most bribable members of the Council of Deputies and the Senate, he had begun to use the house's powers in earnest. He twisted the bodies of his followers: calling it 'freeing their inner selves'. He bound them to him with threats that only his power could ensure the abilities they developed would not rebound upon their children. He grew madder. His political backers grew scared and turned their loose Freemasonry into a shield against him. By 1870 they were organized like a cult, taking orders from one of their number who kept his ident.i.ty hidden; but who backed up those orders with his one strength: he wasn't Montague.

Montague was too wild and p.r.o.ne to delusions of G.o.dhood, to the illusion that everyone was plotting against him. Soon his unreliability had made his fears reality, everyone in the Brotherhood was was plotting against him. A very few of those Montague had empowered by means of the doll's house valued the chance to have normal children more than their own powers. Two couples risked it. Emil was one of the first children born to them. He seemed normal. Perfect, even. plotting against him. A very few of those Montague had empowered by means of the doll's house valued the chance to have normal children more than their own powers. Two couples risked it. Emil was one of the first children born to them. He seemed normal. Perfect, even.

They decided that Montague had lied, but to be sure they plotted to take the source of his power with them, reasoning that they could always use it to save their children if Montague had told the truth. After all, what could he do that they could not?

"They decided this?' The Doctor's interruption shattered the flow of Dominic's reminiscences.

'Yes.' Dominic faltered, 'but it was not as easy as they had thought. Montague had help in focusing the powers from the House, rituals taught by occultists in the pay of the 191 Brotherhood's Grandmaster. The Family rejected them.'

'What kind of rituals?'

'Ceremonies to whip the emotions of the Brotherhood to a frenzy. Vile displays of blood and lasciviousness. Nothing that we wanted for our children.'

'And you led the Family?'

Dominic paused. 'Above ground, yes. There is another order below.'

'Will you take me to meet the others?'

Dominic bit his lip. 'Yes,' he said reluctantly.

Pierre clamped his hand over Lucifer's mouth and held his own breath. Outside the narrow crack that led to the pa.s.sage-way they had traversed, things were brushing against the outcroppings of bone; forcing their way past with flabby undulating sounds, with the heavy echoing tread of things no longer human. He waited until most of the sounds had ceased, and then he let Lucifer go.

The Doctor held the chemical lamp high, and heard the thin high hiss of the calcium carbide stuttering into actinic light.

The dank sewer water lapped around his knees. Dominic plodded on stoically ahead, greasy clumps of black sewage clinging to his waders. Out of the dark the soft chittering of rats scrabbling their way out of the water sounded like rain falling.

The Doctor had suggested that Emil remain at the shop in case Chris or Roz made their way there independently. He had drawn Emil a picture of them both with sure strokes of chalk on a toy blackboard, and signed it with a capital D. Roz had been frowning, and the Doctor had tried to turn the expression into a grin, but had decided it spoilt the likeness and given up.

He let the light play over the muscles in the back of Dominic's neck, and tried to make casual conversation.

'So why hasn't the Brotherhood taken the Doll's House back? If y o u ' v e had it openly on display for so long, they can't have lacked opportunity'

192.

Dominic grunted. 'How should I know? T h e y ' v e made attempts now and then. When Emil was young we were always on the move. We shift the House every so often. Not as much as we should, perhaps. It can be dangerous. We were moving it by cart once, all covered up, and a nosy workman twitched the cloth aside to see what we had there. They tell me he put out his own eyes with a table knife. I would have asked Aunt Jessica for permission to have one of the Family's healers try to help him, but h e ' d vanished. It was as if the ground had opened up and swallowed him.'

The Doctor watched for the muscles that twitch when people lie.

They didn't.

'And why stay in Paris at all?' he asked.

'Because that's where we are needed,' Dominic snapped.

'Stop asking stupid questions. It's hard enough remembering the safe routes without your babbling.'

'Oh quite, you can never tread too carefully. Why, I know a country where the surface is broken by continuous ground-quakes, and the natives have to lay stiff mats made from the hides of the Uncommon Green Bear on the boulevard just to take a stroll in safety,' the Doctor said. 'They tell their children that if they don't walk on the bears, the cracks in the pavement will come and get them.'

Up on the fringes of the parliament of bones, where those of the Brotherhood altered for war stood sentry, David Clayton found his attention wandering to the veins of colour in the rock. Below, in the natural amphitheatre of the catacombs, Montague had stopped ranting and his audience was making its way on its thousand different limbs to the higher pa.s.sage-ways, but David hardly noticed.

He saw clearer now. Things were brighter, even underground. The rock sang with strange harmonies; the eye-searing primary colours of the morning of a new romance.

All his senses were keener, but under it all he felt dimly that one thing that was not brighter. Him. He found it progressively harder to think.

193.

When he held his hands up and watched the light glint from the claws that sheathed themselves in the bones of his three thick fingers, he felt a pang of loss. It was not their appearance, as everything seemed beautiful to him now, nor their strength. It was some other quality they lacked; a quality that he could not even remember. What else was there besides beauty and strength? He was still trying to think when a hundred and eighty pounds of snarling dog fastened its teeth into his throat.

Blind hate surged up in him as the rewired part of his brain fired its simplified neurons. Adrenalin triggered the fight response in his hindbrain. His neck was warm with the gush of his ruptured arteries. They sealed themselves as he pushed his bone spur-hardened thumbs in under the dog's stomach. It yelped and snapped at his face, tearing away part of his jaw.

The beauty of the play of its muscles under the skin made part of him want to weep. Then his claws pierced up under its breastbone, and sliced across. Its guts thumped out across David's chest, and it howled in agony. Reaching up inside the wound that his claws had made, David continued ripping until the noise ceased. Then he felt an odd listless sadness, and he realized that he had killed it.

The other guards started to come towards him; drawn like sharks to blood. One s.n.a.t.c.hed at the dog with razor-sharp tendrils that twitched around a mouth like a lamprey's. It had three rows of teeth. They all pointed inwards. It too was beautiful.

His back pressed hard against the stone, Pierre felt his way down the slope. The alcoves cut into the wall to form resting places for the bones and mummified tissues of the dead provided him with regular hand-holds. If he could just make it to the woman while Lucifer distracted the guards.

Roz tried to turn her head away from Montague's mad spitting face, towards the source of the cries, but he grabbed her chin and twisted, forcing her to look at him.

'I am the only power, not the Grandmaster, not your 194 Doctor. I and I alone command the power of the dark G.o.ds. In me me it lives and breathes and has its being. There is no messenger save I. They need no other. I am the immortal one. it lives and breathes and has its being. There is no messenger save I. They need no other. I am the immortal one.

Bow down before me oh ye crawlers in the mire. I am the Arts magical born in flesh, the puppet master, I am . . . '

He choked and a red froth spilt from his lips.

Fascinated, Roz watched the point of a long knife burst through his chest wall from behind. A mental calculation showed the strength necessary to do that must have been prodigious. A shape moved in the shadows behind Montague's corpse. Roz squinted. 'Chris?'