Doctor Who_ The Death of Art Part 19

Chapter 20.

From Emil's chest a disc of black fire flew into the Doll's House.

The surveyor watched as the 'War' left the Cl.u.s.ter. It was travelling in the inter-spatial voids now, heading for Quoth s.p.a.ce. It was beyond recall.

Still, those of the Quoth who had rejected Truthseeker's words could heal the wounds it had carved in s.p.a.ce.

Diligently they began to recreate from their memories the correct patterns for the ravaged order the 'War' had left in its wake, to put things back as if they had never been destroyed.

The 'War' cut through the outermost edge of Quoth s.p.a.ce.

For a million pattern-lifetimes it cut its way towards the Core. In the first ten thousand of those it destroyed the fragile observation post of a team of Quoth Surveyors. In the second ten thousand it pa.s.sed through an inhabited region, pulling apart the energy matrices of its population as a side-effect of its proximity. A hundred thousand Quoth, each a potentially immortal individual, died as it pa.s.sed.

Survivors fled before it towards the Core; taking it for a manifestation of the Blight, a new and dangerous crystalliza-tion of their race's image of all that was wrong and broken, they signalled their alarm in jagged wrenching patterns.

a.n.a.lysing its motions, the scientists of the Core devised their own weapons in response. Weapons built of Quoth.

At the Hub of the War, Truthseeker sensed the activity of 215 the Core Quoth as their signals were condensed and magni-fied a thousandfold by the resonant patterns of the Quoth turning within the black wheel. A spasm of grief broke through it, but it clung to its determination. Its research had proved one great and irrefutable fact. The further their own Cl.u.s.ter had wandered into the inter-spatial voids, the more cause they had to mourn the loss of their fabled Quoth s.p.a.ce, the less the Blight had affected them. When had it struck first in Truthseeker's own life? Had it not struck when they had come close to that area of s.p.a.ce in which, if the Oldest remembered true, their Cl.u.s.ter and its Parent Cl.u.s.ter had once been in conjunction with Quoth s.p.a.ce?

Truthseeker had not known what it expected to find. Other beings? G.o.ds? An enslaved population of its own kind, labouring in the deep heart of the Blight?

It had not expected Quoth going about their art, as those of its Cl.u.s.ter did. Free Quoth, apparently unBlighted. Free Quoth that it had - what was the new term? - that it had made 'War' against. As the War approached the arrayed forces of the Core Quoth, Truthseeker doubted whether it was right. For a thousand pattern-lifetimes it debated with the Quoth that composed the War, all of whom had felt the sickening, jagged deaths of the Core Quoth they had killed.

In the end there was only one thing to do.

Dismantle the War, and turn itself over to the Core Quoth for judgement.

The Quoth are a thoughtful race; in their own terms a slow one. Those of Quoth s.p.a.ce, of the Core Worlds, are more so than most. Patient; rational; savouring facts like the gradual motion of the Cl.u.s.ters around them. Ancient as the distance.

Truthseeker came before them, body convulsing with cilia of guilt and shame. Foolishness was written in its dimension-ripping spines and its partially withdrawn ma.s.s. It told them its theories without apology. How it had thought them tools of the Blight, wrapped in its cold core. It knew it deserved its shame.

It knew they would send it and its kin back. That they 216 would be forbidden that which they had sought for so long: the reunification of the Talking Ones. Truthseeker had cost the others in the lost colony all they had dreamt of, all that their patterns had ever attempted to depict.

The Oldest let the decision of its peers creep over its surface.

< you="" will="" return="" to="" your="" colony,="" and="" take="" the="" knowledge="" of="" this="" 'war'="" with="" you.="" you="" will="" prepare="" more,="" to="" strike="" at="" the="" blight="" in="" the="" shadowed="" and="" the="" blighted="" cl.u.s.ters.="" you="" will="" be="" our="" warleader.=""> Warleader shuddered. The verdict was just. It had made war on its kin, should it not be made to lead the war it had meant to make? But it could not let its followers suffer that exile. The Oldest's words came slowly: By the time that the great exodus of the Quoth had left the vacant s.p.a.ces of their old s.p.a.ce forever, to journey across the frightful emptiness that stretched between the Doll's House that was Quoth s.p.a.ce, and the Cl.u.s.ter that - unknown to them - called itself Emil Montfalcon, Dominic Montfalcon's hand was already tightening on the doork.n.o.b of the toyshop.

The Doctor walked along the boulevard Raspail through the heart of Montparna.s.se, south of the Seine, less than five miles from the Family's stronghold under avenue de 1'Opera.

Around him the shopkeepers were beginning to set out their goods.

Under their shops, under the Boulevard, under Haussmann's sewers, the dead waited. Far below, hundreds of tunnels excavated by the Romans had been filled with corpses. The catacombs housed millions of skeletons and shrouded remains, moved there by the city's authorities a 217 century before when the overcrowded burial grounds of Paris had threatened plague and disease. The gravedigger's name for Montparna.s.se was Montrouge: the red hill, the place of blood. Under the hill, according to Dominic, the Brotherhood had carried out the rituals that had given them the precise and fully conscious control over their powers that the Family lacked.

They had found Emil on the floor of the toyshop, apparently uninjured but unconscious.

His mother cradled his head in her hands and turned to Dominic with joy in her face. 'He has your eyes; just like he always had.'

'You think so?' Dominic said, staring at the painter's unfamiliar face. The Doctor had been sure that Emil's power was returning. His plan, or the part of it that Dominic had been told, hinged on it.

As he watched the flesh began to crawl around the painter's eyes.

Their son looked up at them.

The Masonic lodge stood on the corner of the boulevard and the rue de l'Abbe. The compa.s.ses of the order, carved into the cornerstone, were only partly obliterated by time or bigotry.

The Doctor circled it warily, as if it was a sleeping beast rather than a building. Twice students darting between book-shops almost collided with him, only to veer away at the last minute with pupils narrowed to pin-points. He was concentrating on not being seen.

The building was very Masonic. Foursquare. A good, solid, normal house. The fountainhead, if the Family's information was right, of the Brotherhood. The core and centre of their evil.

The Doctor sniffed the air. Nothing. No pressure from out of s.p.a.ce, no feeling of absolute inhuman malevolence, no malignancy, virus-like, infecting the stonework. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. He didn't like this at all.

Several times he looked at his watch. Over Singapore the 218 moon was full; on the fourth planet of the Rigel system the thousand-year sygyzy was raising methane tides higher than Everest, in Ormskirk an inch of rain had fallen. He needed to wait a little longer.

An hour pa.s.sed. The Doctor fidgeted with his jacket, read an Act of Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great Tamburlaine the Great which he found in his pocket, devised a five-line solution to Fermat's last theorem using only Boolean algebra, and played a quick game of kick-the-can with some young Apaches. He lost, and suspected sadly that his hearts hadn't been in it. Time hangs heavy when an attack is about to be launched; when everything is already set in motion, and at the still point of the foxhole the newly enlisted men wait for the first echo of the guns. He wondered how they had explained the plan to Emil. which he found in his pocket, devised a five-line solution to Fermat's last theorem using only Boolean algebra, and played a quick game of kick-the-can with some young Apaches. He lost, and suspected sadly that his hearts hadn't been in it. Time hangs heavy when an attack is about to be launched; when everything is already set in motion, and at the still point of the foxhole the newly enlisted men wait for the first echo of the guns. He wondered how they had explained the plan to Emil.

'The Doctor believes, from what he has seen,' Dominic said, not meeting Clarissa's gaze, 'that the power extracts a terrible price from those who use it extravagantly. Since we have the Doll's House, the power that the Brotherhood use now has no source external to themselves. The Doctor is convinced that it should be possible to force them to use their power up.'

'And what do you believe?' Emil said.

'I believe.' Dominic bit his lip. 'I believe that the Doctor knows best.'

The Doctor knocked on the great bronze knocker of the lodge.

'Excuse me, will anybody help the widow's son?' he shouted, wracking his brain for other Masonic pa.s.swords and phrases. 'Erm, Twenty-three-skiddoo.'

The man who opened the door shoved a rifle under the Doctor's chin and grabbed his arm, pulling him inside the lodge. The Doctor smiled to himself. This was more like it.

Montague clambered over the supine bodies of his concubines and leered at the sunlight that fell from the gratings in the arch, high above.

219.

He felt much better now. Well enough to turn his attention back to his two most interesting toys. The negress and the blind man.

One of his more humanoid retainers, oh how he hated the unimaginative, sidled up to him nervously and bent down to whisper.

A man had come banging on the door, demanding to be let in. Like a cow b.u.t.ting its head on the door of the slaughter-house.

Montague disliked surprises not of his own making. He wondered what it would be like to bite off the messenger's ear.

So he did.

The climb back up to the lodge was a long one. Montague liked to think that it reminded him of Lucifer's climb up from h.e.l.l in Milton's Paradise Lost. Paradise Lost. This time it only made his chest hurt. This time it only made his chest hurt.

Furious, he stalked along the lodge's corridors. Partly human creatures scuttled out of his sight as he pa.s.sed.

He had no desire to make it easy on them. His followers owed him everything. Their new lives were his gift. If they birthed themselves into monsters, was that his fault? He thought not.

He had not become a monster. Eventually he would find others who could hold power and not be corrupted by it. A world of Montagues.

He opened the locked room where the new prisoner had been placed to await his coming. The heavy iron door with its multiple locks swung open. The room was empty. A twinge of paranoia tickled Montague's nerves.

He looked high. He looked low. He even looked under the narrow wooden bunk. Since he had killed the Grandmaster, again, he had begun to feel a power moving in the city. A new power; tightly controlled. A powerful mind wrapped in its own enigmas.

He felt the psychic spoor of that mind here.

220.

Below the lodge the bone erupted into flame.

Montague whirled, sensing the psychic screams of his guards dying.

They dared do this? The sheep dared to attack him?

The members of the Family the Doctor had chosen fought their way in from the sewers. Through Jessica's telepathic link they had all the energies of the other Family members to draw on.

Dominic's face was a mask of flesh stretched tight over power. Where he looked members of the Brotherhood flared and burnt. Things withered where he glanced.

Johann used his claws.

Clarissa just walked very carefully, and around her members of the Brotherhood fell back, confused as their actions failed and twisted. An attack on her left two members of the Brotherhood dead and her untouched. Even this tiny use of her power, which the Doctor had stressed she must not exceed, was bringing new wrinkles to her face.

Dominic could not look at her.

Emil waved to them from up ahead. Dominic shuddered.

His son had used his shape-changing abilities to take some frightening forms in the past but this was unbearable.

Clarissa grabbed Dominic's arm.

'You are sure he'll be all right?'

'Yes of course,' Dominic said. Although he was not sure; not sure at all.

Outside the lodge, a horse-drawn hospital van drew up.

Major Henri tugged on the reins to bring the horses to a final stop and stepped down.

It felt good to be back. He had dominated Montague before; he could do it again. La Fraternite La Fraternite was not a toy. It was his instrument of policy. His creation. Montague could only warp it, destroy it. He was no builder. was not a toy. It was his instrument of policy. His creation. Montague could only warp it, destroy it. He was no builder.

Besides, Henri suspected that the items he had recovered from Mirakle's body on the way here might re-affirm his authority if need be.

221.

The golden gun felt at home in his fist. The chair rested in its wooden box in his pocket.

Montague let his mind flow out into the Brotherhood.

This was intolerable.

He felt the surges of power.

Interesting. What was the woman doing?

She was taking hold of s.p.a.ce and time, and tugging.

Dimly Montague saw how it might be done.

Roz felt a hand grab her ankle. She twisted and saw the face of the Doctor.

'You're not looking yourself,' she said feebly.

The Doctor blinked. 'Well, actually I ' m...'

Then Montague made everything better.

222.

Chapter 21.

When the world re-formed, after aeons of nothing and old night, the first thing Roz saw was the wall built out of skeletons. The next thing was the iron ring set into it above her head, to which her hands were fastened by chains. Heavy-duty machine chain. Ah, the joys of industry. The third thing was everyone else; chained in the same way. The wall had been made to surround one of the shelved mausoleums, and she could just make out the heads of her fellow captives over the low tomb. A gap in the bones to her left looked like a missing tooth in a dead baby's smile.

Running right to left, the roll-call of prisoners was: the Doctor, his head still crowned by that wretched battered hat; an old fat man, his face framed by an antique frock collar; a woman who looked about ninety years old; and Pierre Duval.

The blind man worried her. Monsieur Duval had been useful - he had probably saved her life - but he was too smooth. If h e ' d been a suspect she'd have had him deepscanned before he could say 'Oh no, not the mindprobe'.

'So I think introductions are in order,' the Doctor was saying brightly, rattling his chains by way of punctuation.

'Roz, this is Dominic and Clarissa. I ' m sorry I can't introduce you to their son Emil, but he's still not himself at the moment. They are the "first family" of a group opposed to Montague. Collectively you might call them the yin to Montague's yang. The Family is a disaffected splinter-group of the Brotherhood: very keen on peaceful co-existence with ordinary people like us. Marvellously egalitarian, in an elitist 223 sort of way. Some quite talented telepaths; that sort of thing.'

'I don't know if I would have put it so insultingly,' the old man snapped.

'I've seen quite enough of the Family to have drawn my own conclusions, I a.s.sure you,' the Doctor said, his eyes twinkling.

Roz felt a dull ache developing behind her eyes. This was like the household arguments of her childhood. Powerful political groupings picking at each other over the dinner table. Never a word of real explanation. Never a dialogue where the words meant only what the dictionary said they did. There was some by-play going on between the Doctor and this Dominic. No wonder Montague had triumphed if they had been at each other's throats the whole time.