Doctor Who_ The Tomb Of Valdemar Part 9

'The one I'm giving. Now, do you want to know what happened to the Doctor or not? The arrival of Hopkins, the opening of the tomb, the death of...'

'Don't tell me! I don't know those bits!'

Pelham stands and offers Ponch her arm. The effort makes her wince. 'I forget where I am sometimes. Let's go somewhere, away from all this noise.'

The Doctor sometimes wonders if it is fate that keeps tripping him up. This whole situation is becoming far too complicated.

His options are shrinking alarmingly. He has to see things in the widest possible perspective.

Only one thing matters, and that is the Key to Time. The stability of the universe is at stake; he had thought he understood that. So how has he managed to get himself tangled up in this mess?

His instincts tell him to stay and sort out this tomb of Valdemar business. This Paul Neville, this so-called theurgist, judging by the brief time he has known him, is obviously very dangerous.

Under normal circ.u.mstances he would have felt compelled to stay. However, these are definitely not normal circ.u.mstances. The time is coming when he is probably going to have to leave this situation as minimally damaged as he can risk.

The Key to Time has to take precedence. Time is running out for the universe; the White Guardian's voice rings in his memory.

All right, Doctor. What is the right move? How much time would he waste by acting on his instincts?

The easiest course of action is, obviously, to get back to the TARDIS with Romana and leave, hoping the situation will resolve itself. It's a nice idea. Because so many of the situations in his travels would always have resolved themselves for the best without him. Wouldn't they?

It is important no, imperative to discover Neville's motives. Why has he gone to such effort and expense? When the Doctor knows this, he will be able to choose the correct path. After all, it's not the end of the universe, is it?

To discover Neville's motives he will have to find Pelham.

Romana seems to have gone missing, certainly no accident, so he will have to do this himself.

His brain whirring, filtering the important from the unimportant, the Doctor sonic-screwdrivers the door of the room where Neville has locked him, and saunters off into the depths of the palace.

He chooses, at random, an ornate door. Inside is a bewilderingly large hall full of ferns and creepers, emerging from a range of outsize pots, colonnades and what are unmistakably tables. Or perhaps one table, large and curving, constructed to some inconceivably arcane design.

The walls contain a thousand round holes, each filled with shining bra.s.s cylinders; the floor is a chequered mosaic that sends the eye looping back on itself. The design is vaguely fifteenth-century Venetian... vaguely. The Doctor whistles. He has never seen a library like it. He wonders about the fine for a late return.

'Doctor, I knew you would find your way here eventually.

Everybody does. The palace seems to send everyone to their most appropriate destination.'

Paul Neville, still draped in his ridiculous conjuror's outfit.

All he needs now is a pointed hat with stars and moons. 'Far be it for me to go against the majority,' the Doctor replies, wondering what devices Neville is using to track him.

He lies down on the table, expansively puts his hands behind his head and stares up at the high, faraway ceiling.

Let Neville come to him to find out what he wants. A something burnt bronzed glows up above to capture his attention. He feels the hum of the palace stabilisers through the warmth of the table.

'Interesting architecture,' he muses.

'Fascinating,' comes the booming, echoing reply. 'The Old Ones. So similar to us in so many ways, yet so much remains defiantly beyond our understanding.'

'I don't know, I'm sure a good painter and decorator could knock something up for you in no time.'

Footsteps, a sharp staccato on the floor. The Doctor relaxes his muscles. He needs to be ready. 'Your flippancy does you credit, Doctor. A lesser man might take you for a gabbling idiot.'

'But not you.'

'No, Doctor. Not me. You know as well as I do that the information stored here in this library contains knowledge a million years old. A data-storage repository that spans millennia. It staggers the mind.'

Neville's shrouded face looms over him. The Doctor sees the greed there and smiles. 'Now, you know you're only allowed four books at once.'

'Sit up when you speak to me.'

Shrugging, as if disappointed, the Doctor obeys. 'You really think your little cult could hope to activate this archive?

Those nice people downstairs?'

Neville looks around and the Doctor can feel his frustration, his anger. 'It will be done.'

'Why, Mr Neville? Why do you want to know?'

'How can you understand? The years I have spent finding this palace, the countless setbacks and failures. Now, I have the secrets in my grasp and yet this final step, this last simple process, I am unable to achieve. To have victory s.n.a.t.c.hed from me at the last... Understand this, Doctor. I would give anything, anything at all to bring this palace to full life once more.'

'I asked why, Neville.'

Neville raises his arms. He spins, taking in the whole halll.

'The Old Ones were a mighty race, Doctor. Proud, inquisitive, philanthropic. A rule that spread halfway across the universe. Nothing could stop them, nothing! Yet one day, they simply disappeared, never to return. What could have done that to them? What immeasurable force could make that happen?'

There is a pause as Neville's words ring round the empty hall. 'Valdemar,' the theurgist affirms simply.

'Valdemar is a myth,' says the Doctor gently. 'There is nothing here for you.'

'NO!' Neville smashes his fist down on to the table. He brings his temper under control. 'No, Doctor. The evidence is too conclusive. Pelham found everything. Her work proved conclusively that Valdemar was real.'

'And what do you get out of all of this?'

Neville's innocent expression must have taken a supreme effort to manufacture. The Doctor could almost believe it was real. 'Me, Doctor? Knowledge, of course. Knowledge to take back to the New Protectorate. With one gesture, I will have accelerated the progress of humanity by ten thousand years.

Once I return with the secret sciences of the Old Ones, they can hardly refuse to restore my t.i.tles and lands, can they?

That is all I humbly ask, Doctor. Is that too much?'

The Doctor shakes his head, not believing a word. 'Of course not,' he replies. 'A n.o.ble cause, if I may say so.'

'As for Pelham, it pleases me that I should have restored the reputation of a great visionary, the woman who rediscovered Valdemar.'

'Indeed. I wonder if she knows how honoured she is.'

a.s.suming he could, the Doctor would have found Miranda Pelham in what has become Kampp's dungeon. An appropriate word, despite the lack of chains, ankle-deep water and mouldy bread. Dungeon yes, she thinks. Or how about torture chamber?

Her nerves still ring from the 'interrogation'. She told Kampp everything, immediately; there was no other choice.

Well, not quite everything.

After so many sessions over so many years under Kampp's care and attention, Pelham has worked out a method of keeping her sanity intact. 'You have done this before,' she tells herself, as she waits for the needles and the shocks and the metal. 'It does end. No matter how long it lasts, it will end.'

And it does. Kampp is always faintly disappointed when he realises she has told him everything he wants to know. It is not for the gathering of information that he does what he does best. That is of no importance to him whatsoever.

Miranda hates Kampp and often dreams of situations where their roles are reversed and she is given the opportunity to revisit the many occasions upon which she has been taken to him. And, she knows without hesitation, get this straight whoever said that the interrogator and the interrogatee develop a unique and personal bond can join him when the time comes.

She finds herself thinking about the Doctor and Romana.

Who the h.e.l.l are they, where did they come from and what are they doing here? If they're New Protectorate they sure don't act like it. Apart from anything else, they have no idea who Neville is. It is inconceivable that Hopkins would send them here without that most basic of information.

Furthermore, how did they get into the tomb? Unless they've got some kind of fancy ship that defies all known laws of physics, there's no way they could have got there. They can't have followed the bathyscape; they would have to have known the location in advance. And Hopkins could never have found the tomb. She herself had only found it when Neville's scans had chanced upon the mineral anomalies.

No, there is only one thing they can be and that is a rival expedition. Which means there is someone else out there, with her knowledge and after the same thing.

She realises she is frightened. Sick and frightened. Not just of more of Kampp's handiwork, although that is daunting enough. No, Kampp is a known quant.i.ty, a sick dream.

She is frightened because events are out of control. Coming to a head. Events she sparked off nearly thirty years ago.

Birds coming home to roost and all that.

Miranda sighs and leans back in her chair. The straps are beginning to chafe her wrists. She eyes the bangle that sits placidly, uselessly, in a plastic tray with her other personal belongings and jewellery.

Christ, it's impossible to know anything these days.

And Romana? Where is she in this summation of the first day's activities?

There's not much more to say than has already been said.

After a great deal of polite pleading, only starting to verge on the hysterical, she finally gets away from the poet.

Unbelievably relieved, she wanders the corridors until a kindly armed guard emerges from the shadows and silently escorts her to her own room.

Where she is in for a shock. She walks in to find her own room from the TARDIS. The exact same room, up to and including that huge wardrobe filled with clothes from all corners of the universe. For a moment she reels, falling on to her own bed. The ornate sheets even smell the same. This place, it seems like a dream to her, like a fragment of her own consciousness.

Her shock at Huvan's revelation is considerable. A thirty-four-year-old adolescent? Genetic tampering on such a thorough scale is monstrous. The kind of biological, chemical and radiation-led tampering that is morally, utterly repugnant. Surely the Daleks had proved...

No matter. It had been done. The question was why? Why take a fifteen-year-old boy and restructure his metabolism to trap him indefinitely in the misery of adolescence? What possible motive could there be behind that, unless someone wished to cultivate a perverse taste for bad poetry?

Romana's sense of moral decencies prevents her pursuing this line of inquiry. Unlike the Doctor, she is incapable of projecting herself into the mind of her opponent.

Oh, she can play the victim well enough. She can empathise with Huvan himself, his feverish sufferings, his hormonal imbalances, his decades of stretched-out misery.

This is not a problem.

What Romana lacks are the resources to imagine how degraded, how cynical, how unfeeling the perpetrator of Huvan's agony must be. Perhaps later, when travelling the universe has ingrained itself into her, these faculties will develop, but now, now all she can think of is to find the Doctor and ask his advice. She knows he will understand her feelings all too well.

Reluctant to confront the mad lovers in the piazza, she wanders the corridors, dodging guards, poking her head into empty, incomprehensible rooms. Unfortunately, somewhere in the upper floors, when she is thinking of simply giving up and going back to bed, Paul Neville steps out from the shadows in front of her and holds out a hand.

Watching from his control centre, Neville had considered sending Kampp to fetch Romana, but thought better of it. He didn't want to frighten the lady and his butler tends to get over-excited when it comes to the opposite s.e.x. However, Neville doesn't want her interfering with Huvan, putting ideas into that idiot's head.

The Magus has expressed an interest in the Doctor and Romana. These people intrigue him. Neville is surprised when that deep, resonant voice tells him to allow them limited freedom, to see what occurs. It is all part of the great plan.

Whether or not they are Hopkins's lackeys does not concern the Magus. Neville tries to explain that there could be danger in this freedom, that people are looking for him and the Doctor and Romana may find a way to communicate with them. The Magus cuts him off. Neville's master wants the power of his palace restored and believes their visitors are capable of doing it.

Neville has listened to the Magus long enough to know not to argue with him. He wearily accedes to all demands. The logic of his mentor's words is inescapable.

It has been a long journey getting here and Neville has no intention of rushing it now. The Old Ones were clever enough to set traps and already two men have been lost on what was obviously a stupid mission. And perhaps Romana is important.

So he goes himself.

Romana is startled to see him. 'Looking for something?' he asks kindly. 'Don't tell me, your friend the Doctor.'

'Well, Mr Neville, yes.' She looks around, blinking. She is afraid of him. Good. An advantage.

'Let me escort you. I've just left him in the library.'

She does not want him to, but agrees. 'Thank you. You are most kind.'

He offers a hand. Elegantly, very elegantly, she takes it. He leads her.

'I understand you have met my protege, Huvan,' he states.

'Indeed. An interesting boy. Man.'

Neville gives her his sincere, amused glance. 'I can only apologise as to the quality of the poetry. However, be rea.s.sured that although you were obliged to be privy to but one of his tragic epics, I have been audience to them all. On numerous occasions.'

Romana is amused. He has got through. She tries not to speak, and fails. 'My condolences,' she says, no doubt considering herself wicked. He knows he is good, very good.

'However,' she continues, 'it is not in my nature to mock those who cannot help the way they behave.'

Ah. She is obviously less delicate than she appears. He bows, acknowledging his mistake. 'My apologies, Romana.

You clearly disapprove of my little experiment. But before you judge too harshly, you should be fully conversant with the facts of the matter.'

'I am conversant, as you put it, with the fact that you have violated a young man's genetic structure in such a manner as to cause considerable damage to both body and mind. On many civilised worlds, this would be considered a grave moral crime.'

She lets go of his hand, clearly ready to take him on. He stops, all contrition. 'Of course, and you would be correct in your thinking. It was a heinous act. I am a man fully aware of the crimes he has committed. If there had been any method other than the one I was forced to use, I would have used it.

Alas, I was young and the disease too advanced.'

'Disease?'

'A most unfortunate syndrome Baylock's palsy. Rare but undeniably fatal.'

'Baylock's palsy?' She is sceptical.