Doctor Who_ The Tomb Of Valdemar Part 26

Not really listening, hearing only what he wants to hear, Hopkins draws his sword and begins to hack at the lock.

The whole process takes longer than he thinks. The door is tough and he doesn't want to make any more noise than is necessary. He hauls his helmet off to cool himself down.

Finally, the lock breaks under repeated pounding from the hilt of his sword. With a crack, the door inches its way open.

The room beyond is dark.

Hopkins boots the door fully open, dropping his sword and pulling out his pistol. He cannot understand why his breathing should be so jerky, why he feels cold. The will, he steels himself, the will is absolute.

'Come out,' he shouts, louder than he had intended. 'I warn you, I am an officer of the New Protectorate under full jurisdictional provenance from the Civil Matriarch herself.

Any attempt to impede me will result in your immediate execution.' Somehow, these familiar words in this mad place make him feel much better. 'Do I make myself clear?'

'Oh very. Our saviour,' the female voice emerges from the gloom. Or is that two voices? They sound so very much alike.

He doesn't have time for this. Forget the mumbo-jumbo, those cyborgs of Neville's making are surely prowling around looking for him. It's only a dark room, and the voices sound too weak to put up any resistance. Why is he even standing out here?

He strides in, gun first. 'All right, all right, show yourselves.'

The room is large, and dim but not totally dark. There is fancy Elite furniture lying around in dark, black bundles.

The stubs of candles flicker weakly. 'Well?' he asks, aware but not afraid. He spins around, looking for the source of the voices. 'Come out.'

'Here we are...' says the voice. Hopkins squints.

One of the ornate tables is still standing the right way up. A candle burns at its centre. There is an awful, cold smell he can't place. Two sacks sit in seats, black cowls draped over their heads. He can just make out thin bony fingers spread over the table-top. 'Help us,' says the voice.

'I just want Neville,' Hopkins says, not venturing too close.

'Give him to me.'

'Neville?' says one of the bundles. 'There is no Neville, not any more.'

'What? But you said...'

'Something else he is now, in his own mind,' says the other bundle, shaking with a terrible, thin chuckle.

'Down in the gateway he is, ready for the Return.'

'Don't give me riddles,' Hopkins snaps. 'Where is he?'

The sacks continue their amused shuddering. Hopkins glimpses faces as they turn thin, dreadfully thin, a flash of exposed teeth, flickering yellow in the candlelight.

'Left us here he did, didn't he, sister?'

'Left us, yes. Something happened.'

'Something happened? What happened?' asks Hopkins, feeling his voice constricting with a terror he does not want to feel.

Eyes gleam beneath the cowls. 'Something to do with time.

Left us here, for such a long time.'

'So long... so dreadfully long. It's the boy, you see. We were unkind and the boy, he remembers.'

Hopkins raises the gun. He begins to back out. These women, these stinking crones, they are of no use to him.

The sisters start to rise. 'So long...' says one. 'So long.'

'So hungry...' says the other and Hopkins screams. Long, skeletal arms reach for him. They move with frightening speed, droolish laughter spilling from their salivating mouths. Hopkins fires once and they're on him, teeth bared.

'No! No!' he yells, fighting off their cold clutches. He fires again and the bullet pa.s.ses right through one of the hags, he sees it happen. She staggers and renews her gnawing attack.

Hopkins feels his legs give away under their furious charge and the rotten robes smother his face. Their sour breath warms his body as they bite into his armour.

Then, the weight is gone and the crones scream. A high-pitched, piercing noise Hopkins will take to his grave. A fusillade of rapid shots thuds into their wasted forms.

Hopkins punches himself clear, feeling the bullets whine over his head.

He rolls over to see Mr Redfearn firing, faster than even he has ever seen him fire before. The marksman is calm; shooting two-handed, pumping bullets into the witches, blasting them away from him.

'Ah suggest you crawl towards me, Citizen,' says Mr Redfearn, smoothly flicking the smoking barrels open to reload. Hopkins obeys, hearing the dreadful laughter dying behind him. Mr Redfearn helps him to his feet.

Hopkins turns and sees the riddled bundles jerk and cease their scrabbling movements. 'Nice to make yo' acquaintance, ladies,' says the sharpshooter.

The bundles begin to move. If Mr Redfearn is affected by this, he doesn't show it. He raises his guns again. 'Well, now there's a thing.'

'Get out of here,' says Hopkins, 'Get out!'

The bundles rise. 'Not polite,' says Diana.

'Most impolite,' says Juno. 'Feed us!'

Mr Redfearn fires enough bullets to bring them down once more. The air is sickly with cordite and smoke.

Hopkins has had enough. He turns and bolts into the corridor.

He should have been more cautious. Of course he should. It is his own fault Neville has so successfully routed his entire task force. For the first time in his life, Hopkins has been guilty of overconfidence. Or perhaps over-eagerness; after all, he knows his determination to bring the cult leader in is becoming obsessive.

The element of surprise simply hadn't worked. These fiendish traps are the result of careful planning on the part of his rival. Pelham must have betrayed him. That is the only possible reasoning. Odd really he had felt he understood the woman's weaknesses better than anyone, her morbid fear of her own mortality that underlined everything she did. This made her particularly malleable, or so he had thought.

As he waits for Mr Redfearn in the lip of an anti-grav shaft, he broods over his mistakes. Never blame others. The only failure is the failure of one's own conscious will. Still, the game is not over. Neville hasn't escaped him yet. There is still time.

Gunfire blazes down the corridor. 'Redfearn!' Hopkins bellows, no longer caring whether he is heard by anything his rival has left prowling for him. Time is of the essence; he must get back to his ship.

The gunslinger finally appears, very quickly indeed. The hat has gone, his long grey hair flows behind him. As he runs, he thrusts his smoking pistols back into their holsters.

'Ah do believe nothing in creation can satiate that partic'lar hunger,' he says, skidding to a halt. 'Even with nothing left of 'em but strung-together holes.'

Indeed, Hopkins hears even now their dreadful screeching.

Without a word he leaps into the shaft, forgetting his previous suspicions concerning such devices. Mr Redfearn follows, hawk eyes trained on any potential pursuers.

'Where's the Doctor?' asks Hopkins.

Mr Redfearn allows an eyebrow to rise, a sure sign of intense rage. 'That gen'leman is full o' surprises. Used some underhand trickery to wrap that scarf o' his around my legs afore my pistol was even out of its holster. The devil take him for a quick draw; said somethin' about takin' lessons from Doc Holliday and disappeared with his lady friend into thin air. Ah look forward to sparring with that particular gen'leman again, trust me on that.'

Hopkins doesn't need to berate Mr Redfearn for his failure.

He knows only too well how the marksman is feeling. If the Doctor wasn't worried about Hopkins's avowed intention to destroy him before, he will definitely be worried now. Mr Redfearn looks up at the shaft stretching ahead of him.

And then Hopkins takes in what he has just been told. The heights into which they are ascending are turning warmer.

'Did you say he disappeared into thin air disappeared into thin air?'

'Ah am not reputed to bandy falsehoods, Citizen. Especially where the Doctor is concerned. He muttered a few choice phrases, touched a panel on the wall and faded from view, like a phantom.'

'You mean he operated a transmat-beam.'

'Do not presume to tell me what ah mean.'

Their movement seems to be slowing. Hopkins is on the verge of replying when there is a loud boom from above. The lift suddenly shakes and all his old fears of the anti-grav return. He imagines himself and Mr Redfearn dropping to the far-distant base of this shaft. The palace rocks again, violently.

'Oh what now?' Hopkins moans. 'What more?'

Something liquid drops on to his cheek with a sizzling hiss.

It hurts, a lot. In fact, it burns into his face. He screeches and clutches at the burning droplet, wiping it away with his gloved hand. All around, similar hisses send up smoke signals from the casing of the shaft. 'Acid!' he bellows. 'It's raining acid!'

'The time has come to depart this particular thoroughfare,'

states Mr Redfearn.

'Oh, shut up,' snaps Hopkins. 'Why can't you talk properly?'

Before this rather unwise comment provokes a response from the icy Mr Redfearn, both hear the rumbling and look up. A great ball of cloudy acid is dropping towards them.

Through it, they see that the roof of the palace has gone, the flaming sky of Ashkellia clearly visible over them.

Without further ado, both men flail their way back down to the nearest doorway.

'What is it? What could it be?' Hopkins asks as they dash away from the shaft. All around them the palace is falling apart, loudly. From far distances they hear roaring, as if the structure is a great prehistoric beast sinking into a tar pit.

There is another explosion, somewhere below, and the whole palace tilts, sending the two men spinning and rolling over each other.

Mr Redfearn rolls and rights himself, whereas Hopkins cannons headfirst into a wall.

When the stars stop spinning in his eyes, he stares at the gunman, who is listening intently, his eyes narrowed to snakelike slits.

'What do you think has happened?' Hopkins asks.

'In mah considered opinion, ah have the feeling we have no more tub up there ready to ferry us out of here. Something, or someone, has exploded it and lifted the lid from this fine building in the process.'

'Oh...' Hopkins lies there and considers their predicament.

Neville has won. There is nothing they can do except wait for this structure to collapse in on itself, or blow up or whatever it is going to do. Another few tilts and rocks and groans seem to confirm this hypothesis.

No. This cannot be the end of it. There has to be a way out.

It is a question of will and intelligence. For every problem there is a solution.

The palace begins to list. All over, the bangs and crashes of the slow turn ring through the corridors. Already the angle is steep, soon they will be walking on the walls... a.s.suming the palace holds together that long. There has to be something, some way to get back at Neville. He cannot be beaten by that fake, that bearded charlatan! He will not!

'No way out,' says Mr Redfearn. Strangely, he is smiling, pink tongue licking his lips, a gleam of triumph in his eyes.

His hands dance over his pistols.

And then it comes. Yes! Hopkins grabs Mr Redfearn's arm.

The gunslinger pulls away. 'Ah will not be pawed at, suh...'

'You remember the way to where the Doctor disappeared?

This panel you talked about?'

Mr Redfearn nods, 'Ah do, Citizen. However, without the words he spoke aloud, we may find a similar feat beyond our means.'

Hopkins glares at the man. 'But you heard him say whatever it was!'

'Once. Ah cannot be expected to remembah the exact words.'

Hopkins thinks through his repertoire of techniques for helping people to remember. He has a small leather pouch full of aides-memoires aides-memoires tucked away in a pocket in his blouson. Be prepared, the iron-clad motto. tucked away in a pocket in his blouson. Be prepared, the iron-clad motto.

'Oh, you will remember all right, believe me.'

And, for the first time ever, Hopkins is treated to the sight of Mr Redfearn turning as pale as his pistol grips.

Mr Redfearn may have derived some comfort in fact it seems most likely that he did from the knowledge that although he had been outdrawn, for the first time in his life, by the Doctor, he hadn't entirely missed a target.

He had still managed to fire when the scarf brought him tumbling over. However, instead of hitting the Doctor, he had planted his bullet in Miranda Pelham's upper left arm.

She lies now, on the hard ground of this strange new cavern, inside the tomb where they suddenly found themselves, the Doctor staunching the unyielding flow of blood. He has been at this for half a day now. The pyramid chamber is trembling, as if in the grip of a permanent earthquake. The Old Ones' planet-circling particle accelerator is racing round, building up for its headlong crash through reality.

Pelham is semi-conscious and, worryingly, the Doctor is not convinced the wound is entirely the cause of this.

'Help me,' she moans. 'Where are we?' She looks up at the hollowed-out rock, its banks of instrumentation matching the control room in the palace.

'The reciprocating station. A minor control centre, at a guess.'