Doctor Who_ The Death of Art Part 18

'It hurts that much?'

'I was the leader of the Family then, not Jessica. It was my decision that Montague was lying to us. My belief that we could could have normal children; that was what decided the others. It was my fault.' have normal children; that was what decided the others. It was my fault.'

'Was it?'

'What do you mean?'

'Tell me why I can't have seen the Doll's House before.'

' W h y ? ' Dominic said puzzled. 'Because for the last nineteen years I have guarded it, and before that it was closely guarded by the Brotherhood.'

'But not so closely guarded that the Family could not make off with it, h m m ? '

'Obviously not.'

'You don't find that a trifle convenient?'

Dominic stopped walking. His face was drawn, and red with heat b.u.mps. 'Whatever you are implying, just say it.

Then perhaps we can go about our business.'

'Ilbridge House!'

'What?'

'That's where I saw your Doll's House before. It's Ilbridge House, one of the most haunted houses in England. M. R.

James will write a short story about it.'

'Please try to keep to the subject, Doctor.'

'Oh, I am. Your Doll's House is an exact model of Ilbridge House, and like the real structure a powerful psychic resonator. A structure that duplicates, partially in bricks or stone, the relationship between the psionic nodes in the human brain.'

'So all our powers are the consequence of a fluke of architecture?' Dominic said sarcastically. 'I find that hard to believe.'

The Doctor's gaze travelled over Dominic's face, but Dominic felt that he was not what the Doctor was seeing. His eyes looked oddly focused, as if they were staring at something far away in s.p.a.ce or back in time. As Dominic watched, the Doctor stooped and drew figures in the dust on the corridor floor, erasing them with his foot before Dominic could make 206 out more than a scrawl of alien symbols.

The Doctor straightened up. 'Architecture can have a strong effect on the psyche. Nothing raises monstrous carbuncles on the face of an old friend as quickly as an ill-matched annexe.

Some thoughts become impossible in certain places. My home was like that, and I expect Haussmann had in mind a somewhat similar effect when he "rationalized" Paris; but no, the mere presence of the House itself can't have forced the kind of pro-psionic mutations that the Brotherhood and the Family display. If that was all it took, then the proportionally greater amplifying force of the real Ilbridge House would have distorted evolution across the whole of the south of England.'

'So what else are we to blame?'

The Doctor shrugged. 'I don't admit this very often, because it isn't often true, but I don't have the least idea. It could be almost anything. Anything powerful enough to reweave the basic structures of human life.'

Dominic felt that he ought to laugh at the strange man with his ill-fitting suit and his ill-fitting face, who babbled about impossible things. He could not do it. The attempt would have choked him. It would have been like a rabbit crouching on the railway tracks laughing at an approaching train. He had lived through too much that was impossible to doubt that there were forces in nature outside his ken. His oldest son had never understood that, always trying to pin down the Family, turn them into facts of science, like b.u.t.terflies on a board. His younger son had never understood anything. His younger son was still in the nursery.

He realized the Doctor was ticking things off on his fingers.

'Not Helix energy; the stars are not right. Not ordinary evolution; telepathy is never selected because it makes breeding too unlikely if you know what's in your mate's head. Great intelligence? No, I'd expect to find a band of obedient human zombies running around Paris paving the way, not two squabbling political groups. Goodness alone knows why it keeps trying to break into this dimension -1 suppose it's like a trip to the seaside, or a hobby - but even it's bright enough to drum up a better cla.s.s of fanatical followers.' suppose it's like a trip to the seaside, or a hobby - but even it's bright enough to drum up a better cla.s.s of fanatical followers.'

207.

'I don't know whether or not to feel insulted by that remark, Doctor.'

'Oh I exclude you, Monsieur Montfalcon. I think you have the makings of an excellent fanatic. Come on then, I haven't got all day. For all I know my friends are on a slab somewhere while the obsidian knives are being sharpened.'

Roz felt a slackness in the bonds along her left side. A sharp pain lanced into her ribs.

'G.o.ddess,' she swore, and threw herself to the side. The leather about her right arm parted. What the h.e.l.l was that?

That stuff was tough. She could not believe it had come detached on its own.

She looked at Montague's body. Everything checked out.

Knife sticking out through the chest, one of, still there. Pool of blood, spreading, still well in evidence.

All very convincing, but still too familiar. Every historical drama she'd ever seen had the scene where the protagonist thought the villain was dead, only to be surprised a second later by the corpse pulling a fresh chainsaw out of its vest pocket and going back into the dismember-u-like business.

Roz had a standing plan for that. Shoot the body twice in the head, and then hamstring it. Not having a gun or a knife put a tiny crimp in that scheme, but she'd work on it once she got the rest of her bonds loose.

'Are you all right?'

The whispered question made her whip her head to the right, dragging the ragged tissue of her cheek against the straps. 'd.a.m.n, don't do that!'

The blind, kindly face of Pierre Duval loomed out of the darkness.

'Madame Forrester, is that you?'

In Tomas's study they had put aside the heads and were going through the piles of papers and ma.n.u.scripts, Chris nibbling in frustration at the end of the fountain pen he was using.

Tomas had been an inveterate letter writer, and an almost fanatical contributor to the columns of the radical press.

208.

Name a topic, from the question of revenge against Germany - Chris was not sure what this was revenge for, h e ' d thought that Germany and France only started hating each other with the two big pre-nuclear conflicts next century - to the refutation of the philosophy of Bayle's Dialogues concerning Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, Natural Religion, and Tomas had dabbled in it. Maddeningly, he never seemed to stick with a point long enough to set his views down clearly, and it was hard to see what he accomplished. and Tomas had dabbled in it. Maddeningly, he never seemed to stick with a point long enough to set his views down clearly, and it was hard to see what he accomplished.

Most of the letters were incomprehensible. Even with Jarre filling in the background, it simply was not possible to grasp the political structure of a country from the letter columns of one side of its political spectrum. Again, Chris was driven to wonder how the real Doctor would do it. Get captured and have it all explained to him? Deduce the species, life-cycle, and mythological practices of the perpetrators from an alien footprint in a misty quarry? H e ' d seen the Doctor use both those tactics, but for anyone else the universe did not seem inclined to cooperate.

'What about this?' Jarre said. 'Almost all the most recent set of correspondence is with a Jules Balmarian, one of the supporters of the Dreyfusards, pressing him to change his mind. It's heated stuff. "If you love the spirit of liberty that is the soul of France, etc., etc. etc. You will not rest when you see treason done, blah blah." ' Jarre's tone was vicious, self-mocking. You will not rest when you see treason done, blah blah." ' Jarre's tone was vicious, self-mocking.

'Any reason to think it's important?'

Jarre sighed. 'Not much. He's one of the people Tomas had a mannequin of, and he's recent, that's all.'

Action was what Jarre needed, Chris thought. He placed the fountain pen back in the inlaid runnel on Tomas's desk.

'Come on.'

Jarre dropped his pile of papers with a bang. 'To Jules Balmarian's?'

'Yes, I think we have to check everyone in whom Tomas was interested. Look at it this way, what three things do we know for sure?'

"The Government hates us, the Prefect despises us, and 209 something made one of my agents bust a gut trying to kill us,'

Jarre snapped.

'Close on the third one. Try these. Fact one: something got into Kasper, who I presume was a loyal Directory agent, and made him want to kill us. It also gave him weird powers which this was effective against.' Chris indicated the alien gun. 'Fact two: nothing happened to Kasper until we tried to go down to the underground laboratory, from this I infer that: (a) he was set to protect the laboratory rather than to kill us specifically; and (b) it was the owner of the laboratory, to wit Tomas, who possessed the power to do whatever was done to Kasper.'

'So?'

'So, perhaps not really Fact three, but certainly a strong worry is this: if Tomas could turn a Directory agent into a horror from h.e.l.l, what has he been turning other people into?

And what are they set to do, and when?'

Pierre pa.s.sed Roz his clasp-knife.

'I was going over the route you described to me,' he whispered, 'when I heard your screams. I didn't know it was you, but I knew someone was in trouble.'

The tearing sound he heard told him that she was stripping off the last of the leather thongs from her limbs.

"That someone is us,' she said. 'There are hundreds of creatures around here. Bad performance-art with teeth. Probably not an on-street licence between them.'

'I know a side tunnel out of the catacombs; that's how I got this close.'

'I don't think that's going to help us.'

' W h y ? '

'Montague's opened his eyes.'

The nursery was a cavern as big as Victoria Station. The Family had draped its walls with children's clothes, hung like talismans or diminutive heraldries against the stone. The air was warm and thick. It carried the odour of cow's milk, a sticky, fatty cloud that seemed to hang in the air. A long line 210 of cribs draped over with black clothes like mosquito nets or mourning hangings stretched into the distance.

As if to forestall a question, Dominic said, 'Births are fewer now, but there was a time when they were common.

Some of the children have never grown again since they were born.'

The Doctor nodded. His face was taut around his cheek-bones, as if he was grinding his teeth. 'May I see one?'

An old woman was tending a cot about five metres into the cavern. She looked up at the sound of their footsteps on the rock, and the Doctor watched the signals of recognition pa.s.s like semaph.o.r.e across her face and Dominic's. Recognition, and guilt, and a surprising joy. She started to run towards them.

Dominic caught her in his great arms, and embraced her.

'It's all right. It's all right. He's alive.'

'I know,' she sobbed. 'Johann told me. I've been going mad waiting for you to come and explain what happened.

Where were you?'

Dominic turned a rueful eye on the Doctor, who was fiddling with the netting on one of the cribs, as if indifferent to his surroundings. 'I would have come straight to you, but I had to take this outsider to see Aunt Jessica.'

He straighted up. 'Clarissa, this is the Doctor, a friend of Emil's. Doctor, this is Clarissa, my wife.'

On the floor of the shop, Emil twisted in pain as agony crawled its way along his guts. The pain had started gradually, shortly after the Doctor and Dominic had left. Emil had come down into the display area of the shop and had started to clear away the mess and clutter left by his father's tantrum.

The Doctor had tucked Emil and Dominic up in bed, having evidently carried both of them upstairs, although either of them was heavier than any weight the man looked able to carry; but he had not picked up any of the dolls, or brushed up the sawdust and cloth wadding that had snowstormed across the room.

211.

Drawn by a mixture of nostalgia and curiosity, Emil had bent to inspect the Doll's House. He had been shown it when he came of age, in a ceremony that he had found excit-ing and appropriate at the time but which, with his present knowledge of the world outside the Family, he considered a dark and gloomy ritual. Although there had been over fifty guests, almost the full adult complement of the Family, there had been no other children present, and even at the age of twelve he had understood that there was some bitterness or animosity between the other adults - except for Uncle Johann, and Aunt Jessica in her little cart, and his parents. by a mixture of nostalgia and curiosity, Emil had bent to inspect the Doll's House. He had been shown it when he came of age, in a ceremony that he had found excit-ing and appropriate at the time but which, with his present knowledge of the world outside the Family, he considered a dark and gloomy ritual. Although there had been over fifty guests, almost the full adult complement of the Family, there had been no other children present, and even at the age of twelve he had understood that there was some bitterness or animosity between the other adults - except for Uncle Johann, and Aunt Jessica in her little cart, and his parents.

There was something strange about the Doll's House, although he could not at first decide what it was. It looked in the light of day exactly as it had by candle-light all those years ago. The first onset of the pains had coincided with him deciding that it was the similarity that was wrong. He was bigger now; he wasn't even seeing with his own eyes any more, and yet the Doll's House looked as imposing and ma.s.sive as it had when he was a boy.

He had no time to think the problem out further, because the pains had started. They were worse than the pains of shape-changing; of bones resetting, of muscles swollen with weird energies. With them memories came; his memories of the Quoth.

The surveyor stared at the great work. It was an abomination.

Just as it had tried to tell the Oldest Inhabitant, five million pattern-lifetimes before, Truthseeker and its supporters had gone mad. They were Blighted without the Blight: Shadowed without Shadow. Where was the art or beauty in this horror?

It was too vast for normal senses to detect, and the surveyor was forced to make its body opaque to certain diffuse energies to feel its shapes dimly on its tactile skin. It was made of hosts upon hosts of Quoth, built into patterns that made bigger patterns, that made patterns greater still. It tormented the surveyor's mind to look on it. Oh, how Truthseeker must have been hurt to have birthed this monstrous idea. This 'War'. This vast circle bigger than some 212 Cl.u.s.ters. This engine which would, Truthseeker claimed, tear the causes of the Blight to shreds.

The causes which he claimed were so close now. The surveyor could barely bring himself to think the Blighted thought. The causes which he claimed were so close because they were in Quoth s.p.a.ce itself.

Trying to break the hold of the pain, Emil hammered his fists against the polished floor. Just to change the tenor of the pain, to make it a thing under his control would be a kind of victory. From the centre of his chest the burning speared out, until his whole body convulsed. A dark stain, perfectly circular in shape, bulged in his chest. A wheel of blackness turned through his body, slicing tissue and skin, yet leaving healed flesh behind it.

'Now, Doctor, you have seen our plight. Will you lead us against the Brotherhood?'

'Willingly, if you accept that I should pick the members of the Family to make the attack.'

Aunt Jessica twitched her tiny arms fretfully. 'As I may hardly fear enlistment, Doctor, I agree.'

'Then I pick Dominic, Emil, Johann, and Clarissa. More would be too unwieldy a force. As it is I ' m afraid I shall have to draft your services, Jessica, to keep us in telepathic contact. We will need every advantage we can muster.'

'I cannot allow my wife to be exposed to danger,' Dominic shouted. 'The idea is ludicrous!'

' I ' m not afraid,' Clarissa said sharply.

'No,' Dominic said, ' j u s t . . . '

'Just old?' Clarissa's anger made Dominic's tantrums look small. 'I earned these years in the Family's service. You should know that. If this ends it, I am prepared to take the risk.'

Dominic shrugged in resignation. 'We'll pick up Emil, and then make our plans. Eh, Doctor?'

'No. I've got the strangest feeling we haven't got much time. As if there's a deeper problem than the Brotherhood, 213 or the time-flux that brought me here. You get the Family together, then strike at the Brotherhood's headquarters. I can't wait any longer for my friends, I'll have to go in alone.

One more thing. Here's what I want Emil to do. His part is vital.'

214.