Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies Part 2

'Yes. We missed him.' The General turned back to his desk.

'Sorry, Sir.'

Tchike waved the apology aside. 'There will be other opportunities. I thought this might be the time. Perhaps I should have known better.' He consulted the desktop organiser next to the chessboard. 'We're scheduled to play again on July 16th next year. You can have another shot at him then.'

'Sir... do you think he'll show up? I mean, after today '

'He'll be there. He has to be there.' The General sat, somewhat wearily, the mock-leather chair sighing pitifully under his weight. 'Now I've had my chance to cut off his head, he'll want the chance to cut off mine.'

The Unthinkable City, 15:36 (Local Time)

'Can't you just answer the d.a.m.ned question?' demanded Mr Homunculette. 'Who, exactly, are you supposed to be representing?'

Mr Qixotl tried not to smirk. That, he thought, was as close to diplomacy as Homunculette ever got. The man acted as if he'd been on the edge of a nervous breakdown since birth, as if he were still waiting for a good excuse to have a full-blown psychotic fit. Homunculette's people had been involved in a particularly unpleasant war for some time now, and it had left them horribly neurotic. Qixotl had stopped in the stone pa.s.sageway outside the anteroom, hoping to hear something interesting from the other side of the doorway, but all he'd heard so far was Homunculette's usual whining gargle.

Not that Mr Qixotl really had to eavesdrop. He had the whole ziggurat bugged anyway.

There was a brief silence from the anteroom.

'Confidentiality?' spat Homunculette. 'Don't talk to me about confidentiality. Let me tell you something, you're dealing with an agent of the most secretive and... are you listening to me?'

Mr Qixotl decided to step in before the man started ranting.

'Afternoon,' he said, brightly, pretending not to have heard any of the preceding conversation. 'Getting to know each other, are we? Lovely. There's some cheesy nibbles in the c.o.c.ktail lounge, if you're interested.'

The chamber was small, and lit by flaming torches which, in Mr Qixotl's opinion, lent a lovely Gothic feel to the place. The anteroom was sandwiched between the pa.s.sageway and the conference hall, the area unfurnished except for a table and a handful of oak-flavoured plastic chairs. Homunculette was sprawled across at least three of these, staring at the front page of the New Bornean Gazette New Bornean Gazette. Mr Qixotl had only left the newspaper on the table to add a touch of local colour to the room, and he was frankly amazed anyone was bothering to read it. Homunculette still hadn't changed out of the black business suit he'd been wearing when he'd arrived, even though it was spattered with mud and stained with something that looked disturbingly like organic waste. Evidently, thought Qixotl, he'd come straight here from the roughest boardroom meeting in history.

No one else was visible in the room, but that wasn't surprising. The other occupant, the one Mr H had been shouting at, wouldn't be seen or heard until it wanted to be.

'We were wondering how much longer we're going to have to wait,' hissed Homunculette, almost literally lying through his teeth. 'I mean, I wouldn't be so rude as to suggest we're getting impatient '

'Perish the thought,' cut in Mr Qixotl.

' but we're reaching the stage where we might be thinking about getting impatient, at some point in the near future. If you get my meaning.'

Mr Qixotl tried to look cheerful. 'Not getting edgy, I hope, Mr H. Saw your little friend up on the roof, on the way in. Still expecting trouble, are we?'

'Marie isn't my friend,' snapped Homunculette. 'She's my companion. There's a difference.' Then he stopped scowling, just for a moment, and looked generally anxious instead. 'On the roof? What was she doing on the roof?'

'She's your "companion", Mr H, not mine. Looked like she was keeping watch, to me.'

Homunculette relaxed. Visibly. That didn't happen often, in Mr Qixotl's experience. Homunculette's face looked as if it had been built for tension; it was long, it was narrow, and it was topped by a crop of thinning black hair that all the gel in Mutter's Spiral couldn't make stylish. 'Marie isn't happy about the security arrangements in this place,' he muttered. 'She's worried about an attack from the outside. You don't even have any atmospheric defences set up.'

Mr Qixotl smiled disarmingly. He hoped. 'Relax, Mr H. Only another three, er, parties to come before we can start proceedings, and one of them's only a couple of minutes away now. Listen, if you're getting itchy feet, why not go and have a chat with Mr Trask in his guestroom? Sure he'd be glad of the company.'

'Thank you, no,' spat Homunculette.

Mr Qixotl opened his mouth to say something facile and rea.s.suring, but found himself suddenly distracted by the table. There was an unusual pattern in the wood grain, a pattern he'd never noticed there before. It looked almost like... letters?

THE HUMAN REPRESENTATIVES ARE COMING? spelt the table.

Mr Qixotl grimaced. 'Yeah. Yeah, that's right, Mr s.h.i.+ft. Why d'you ask?'

He stared at the table, but the words had faded away. His eyes wandered towards the newspaper.

I WAS EXPLORING THE FOREST EARLIER, read the front-page headline. I SAW THEM MAKING THEIR WAY HERE.

Mr Qixotl picked up the paper and started reading the lead story, which had until a few seconds ago been about a major scandal involving the President of Malta. 'Didn't see you, did they, Mr S?'

BARELY, read the newsprint. THE WOMAN MIGHT HAVE CAUGHT SIGHT OF ME AT THE VILLAGE, BUT I (CONTINUED ON PAGE THREE) Mr Qixotl turned the page.

(FROM PAGE ONE) DOUBT SHE KNEW WHO I WAS. TELL ME SOMETHING, MR QIXOTL.

'Whatever you like, Mr S.' Mr Qixotl tried to maintain his smile. He hated talking to the s.h.i.+ft. He hated talking to any non-corporeal life-form. The s.h.i.+ft was the messenger of a power which enjoyed dealing in abstracts, for some reason. It was a purely conceptual ent.i.ty, only existing as a set of ideas inside the head of whoever it wanted to communicate with. Right now, it was somewhere inside Mr Qixotl's neurosystem, altering his perceptions so he could see its little "messages" worked into the text of the New Bornean Gazette New Bornean Gazette. He flipped through the rest of the paper, eventually stopping at the crossword.

1 ACROSS. Why exactly did you invite humans to this auction? My employers a.s.sumed that only representatives of time-active cultures would be here (8,6).

'That's what we thought, as well,' scowled Homunculette, evidently having read the same thing on the sports page.

Mr Qixotl sniffed. 'Yeah, well. They're from UNISYC, they've got their own reasons for wanting the property. That's why the auction's being held on Earth, so the human reps can get here without busting a gut.'

3 DOWN. Speaking of the "property"... I've been looking over this City of yours. The Relic's in your vault, true? Two levels below ground level (5,2,4,2).

'There a problem with that, Mr s.h.i.+ft?'

17 ACROSS. No. I took the liberty of inspecting the security devices protecting it, though. Interesting. Maybe a little over-complicated. However... (3,4) 'The security had better be up to scratch, that's all,' Homunculette snapped, interrupting the crossword. If such a thing were possible. 'You know how many major powers are going to be after that Relic, don't you? The last thing we want is a bunch of Cybermen turning up on our doorstep.'

Mr Qixotl shook his head. 'Everything's sorted, Mr H. The City's got a Brigadoon circuit in effect, so you'd need some pretty smart technology just to get in here without an invite card. And the Cybermen aren't going to be coming back to Earth for another year or so, I checked. No one's going to gatecrash the auction. Trust me on this, all right?'

Homunculette made a muted grunting sound that might just have been a laugh.

'I'm a Time Lord,' he said. 'We don't trust anyone unless they're dead or stupid. We're like that.'

HOMUNCULETTE'S STORY

London, Earth, September 2169

The Square's a ruin, you can smell that much from here. Scorched concrete and sick air, streetlamps melted into puddles by fusion engines, skeletons of burned-out vehicles sprawled across the pavements. The city's too old and tired to even bother sinking into the dust.

This is where it all started, then. Where the first of the invaders dropped out of the sky, where the local politicians were herded together and incinerated. "Exterminated", I should say. Right there, across the river in Parliament Square. The sky's grey over London, full of pus, full of old pollution. By now, Homunculette will have taken that as his cue to be maudlin and depressive for the rest of the day, the moody old stoat.

All I know about the English weather is this: it plays h.e.l.l with my monitors. I lost track of Homunculette three minutes ago, and he's the only lifetrace around here. Of course, he could have taken me with him to the Square, but he says I'm not too good on my legs. He likes to think he's better than me at some things. It makes him feel good about being carbon-based.

The ground had vanished from under Homunculette's feet. He wasn't used to the ground doing things like that, so he was too surprised to panic properly as he tumbled towards the river. One moment he'd been standing on the bridge, the next he'd been treading air. Simple as that. No warning, no explanation.

His body twisted as he hit the water, his arms instinctively thras.h.i.+ng around in search of a handhold. He swallowed his first mouthful of sludge before he even knew he was sinking, and felt the chemical pollutants burning the membrane at the back of his throat. The next thing he knew, his feet were touching the thick mat of detritus at the bottom of the river. He felt something crunch under his shoe, though he wasn't sure whether it was plastic or bone. During the invasion, the humans had dumped a lot of their dead down here, leaving the corpses to have their fleshy bits bitten away by the parasite species that had learned to live in the blackwater areas.

So. The bridge had disappeared. From right underneath him. Without a sound.

Anarchitects?

Homunculette suddenly realised he wasn't breathing. He panicked, and thrashed his limbs around for a bit longer, until he remembered that he wasn't supposed supposed to be breathing. His respiratory system had gone into emergency shutdown, and he hadn't even noticed it. How long could he stay like this, though? How long did he have before his lungs popped? to be breathing. His respiratory system had gone into emergency shutdown, and he hadn't even noticed it. How long could he stay like this, though? How long did he have before his lungs popped?

One problem at a time, he decided. Anarchitects. Think anarchitects. Disembodied intelligences, created by the enemy during the early years of their a.s.sault on Gallifrey. According to the information the Celestis had slipped to the High Council, the average anarchitect was like a primitive computer virus, a cl.u.s.ter of pre-programmed instructions designed to corrupt and re-order data. But anarchitects could exist outside the confines of a computer system. They could infiltrate architecture, inhabit buildings, manipulate corners and angles. They could disrupt the information that held structures together, rebuild whole cities at will.

When the High Council had been told what the things were capable of, they'd thought it was absurd. Then they'd realised that the anarchitects were products of the same kind of technology the Time Lords had used to build the early TARDIS models. They'd had always had the knack, but only the enemy had thought of turning the technology into a weapon.

Homunculette tried not to scowl, but it went against his basic nature. Anarchitects. Obviously. The enemy had tracked him and Marie, just like the last time, and they'd taken the bridge away while he'd been crossing from the Albert Embankment to Parliament Square. Homunculette swore, sending bubbles full of expletives up towards the surface of the river. He should have asked Marie to land closer to the Square. He found himself remembering the horror stories he'd heard, about how the Lord Ruthventracolixabaxil had starved to death inside his own TARDIS when an anarchitect had hijacked the vessel and turned the central corridor into an endless Mobius loop...

No. No. He couldn't let his imagination get the better of him, not now. He had a mission to complete, he could complain about the working conditions once it was all over. He was safe under the water, at least, where there were no walls or floors for the anarchitect to possess. So, he could try moving across the bottom of the river, getting as close to Parliament as possible before making any attempt to break the surface. If he was lucky, he might even shake off the anarchitect that way.

If he was lucky. Right.

Everyone stays away from this part of London, apparently. It smells of politics and bad radiation.

This city was a major population centre, once. One of the twelve key political sites on the planet, according to the Matrix records. The invaders came here, in their little toy saucers, letting Earth know it was hopelessly outgunned, casually wiping out the odd city by way of demonstration. When the demand for surrender came, some of the politicians sealed themselves into the Parliament buildings, and let the aliens set the corridors alight with them still inside.

Not out of principle. Politicians don't have principles, not even on this side of Mutter's Spiral. They just had nowhere else to go.

Wait. The weather must be clearing up, I'm getting traces again. Lifetraces, two of them, from inside one of the buildings. Homunculette must be one, so who's the other?

Broadly speaking, the House of Commons hadn't changed much in the 300 years since its construction. There'd been a renovation every half-century or so, the odd terrorist bombing to blow out the windows or gut the offices, but for the most part it was still the same old monstrosity it had always been.

Homunculette regarded the corridors of power with a mixture of contempt and disinterest. This, according to the High Council's Information, was where he'd find the Relic. If the Matrix was right, it had belonged to the human military for the last century or so. When the invasion had come, and Earth society had collapsed overnight, all the trinkets the military had collected over the years had been dispersed, falling into the hands of the looters and the traders. One such individual, the Matrix data claimed, was holed up here.

Homunculette kept moving along the oak-panelled pa.s.sages of the House, idly wiping the black river-sludge from his hands onto the lapels of his suit. The High Council had infopacked enough data about local culture for him to be able to find his way around, at least. There were still scorch marks on the walls, plus patches of ash where secretaries and security guards had been gunned down by the invaders, but other than that the corridors were cleaner than Homunculette would have expected. Well lit, too, by neon striplights that seemed to have been fitted quite recently. Signs of habitation, Homunculette deduced. Someone was in residence here, despite the local taboos about the Haunted Ground of Westminster.

A few years ago, these pa.s.sages would have been crawling with invaders. Homunculette imagined them killing off the local politicians, issuing commands in their stupid tin voices. Invaders always took out the leaders first, it was a standard tactic. Like the enemy's first strike on Gallifrey, their botched attempt to kill off the High Council. "Botched": meaning, the Time Lords had been lucky.

Earth had been lucky, too. It had been invaded, yes, but only by a bunch of mindless biomechanoids with speech impediments. The Time Lords, meanwhile, were up against something really really dangerous. dangerous.

From somewhere up ahead, there was a hissing, crackling sound. Homunculette froze, and his breathing switched itself off again. Moments later, the crackling was drowned out by a voice, smooth and feminine, but gargling static.

'Every time we say goodbye, I cry a little...'

Definitely a human lifetrace, somewhere near the centre of the House. I can smell Homunculette moving in on it. Smell? Bad vocabulary. Some day, I'll have to devise a proper terminology for sub-organic sensory experiences.

No, maybe not. I'd be the only one who'd understand it.

Homunculette didn't know much about English architecture, but he knew a debating chamber when he saw one. The hall was ringed with balconies and camera nests, and, by the look of them, the seats on either side of the hall two great banks of them, all covered in sickly green leather had been in place for centuries. The patch of floor at the centre of the chamber was graced by a mosaic. The pattern was faded, but Homunculette knew enough local history to recognise the symbol of the World Zones Authority.

'I can hear a lark somewhere, waiting to sing about it...'

The mosaic wasn't the focal point of the debating chamber, though. Nor were the plastic mannequins, three or four hundred of them, each seated in one of the chairs, their faces painted with mad eyes and twisted smiles. Nor were the weapons, the thousands upon thousands of old firearms that had been pinned to the walls like b.u.t.terflies, hanging by their trigger-guards from rusted nails. Nor were the speakers, four huge black cuboids set into the corners, making the floor vibrate as they pumped out the song Homunculette had heard from the corridors.

'There's no love song finer...'

No. The focal point of the chamber was its other living occupant, who sat on a faded throne directly between the two seating blocks, his legs draped lazily over one of the arms of the chair.

The man's skin was black. Pure black. His skin tone wasn't purely genetic, by Homunculette's reckoning; decades of exposure to pollutants and alien radiation had done their bit, as well. The Black Man had dark braided hair, stuffed under a top hat that looked older than Parliament itself, while his clothes were expensive-but-frayed, probably looted from one of London's many nouveau riche nouveau riche corpses. His topcoat was black, his suit was black, his tie was black. In fact, the darkness of him was only broken up by two things. corpses. His topcoat was black, his suit was black, his tie was black. In fact, the darkness of him was only broken up by two things.

The first was a flower, a brilliant red bloom pinned to his lapel. Artificial, Homunculette guessed, maybe grown in a plastogene tube. The second was his smile. A white, beatific smile, the kind of white that needs chemical applications to maintain.

'...but how strange the change, from major to minor...'

The Black Man waved his hand. Some mechanism in the chamber must have noticed the movement, because the music stopped in an instant.

'Ella Fitzgerald,' he drawled, as if that explained everything.

The Black Man's eyes were shut, Homunculette realised. Cautiously, he moved down the aisle towards the throne, inspecting the mannequins on either side of him as he walked. Their faces were grotesque, all leers and snarls.