Doctor Who_ The Death of Art Part 2

'Why is it worse for psi-sensitives?'

'Fall-out.' The Doctor must have felt he had scored a point, for his eyebrows waggled furiously. 'Psychic fall-out, that is. Auguries, nightmares, pre-cog episodes, lucid dreams, out-of-body experiences, flashbacks, spontaneous combustions, monsters from the id. The usual. Look up Bernice's monograph about Altair IV sometime.'

Roz knew when the Doctor was right. When his lips move, she thought, quoting the tagline of an old joke at her own expense. Coming round the bar, she helped him prop up the American. The man groaned.

'And just what will you be doing?' Roz asked.

'The same as I've been doing for a week. Trying to get locked up.'

'It doesn't usually take you that long.'

'As a madman. I've been working up the chain of asylums and sanatoriums looking for the most secure, least friendliest, most official b.o.o.by-hatch in Paris.'

Roz smiled grimly. 'Looking for victims of the fall-out?'

'Yes. I got tired of the last padded cell and escaped. The paperwork was taking too long. So I ' m going to pay a couple of unofficial visits.' The Doctor nodded at the American. 'Look after him, d o n ' t forget what's in your handbag, and stay in touch. Oh, and if you meet any psychics who look about to tear open the fabric of time 22 and s.p.a.ce, stop them. Things are very fragile at the m o m e n t . '

In one of the birthing areas, the only one now in use in their tiny lost colony, the entrance of three further parents sent a ripple of speculation spreading. So few new Quoth could be made now that any addition to the Craft was a cause of speculation. Even those of the makers in their final phase of construction created sensing organs to examine the newcomers.

They were unusual in themselves. It was not their number; with appropriate resources any single Quoth could reproduce itself and, according to the Oldest Inhabitants, liaisons of twenty or more Quoth had been known in the vaster dimensions of Quoth s.p.a.ce. It was their configurations.

The first of them possessed few of the aesthetic extensions into the ten s.p.a.cial dimensions currently favoured by Quoth artists. Instead it had chosen to lodge most of its ma.s.s in the time-like 'eckward' dimension. According to the pseudo-science of vectormancy, long transcended by the true Craft but still practised by some Quoth, this indicated considerable energy and singlemindedness, but also suggested a limited experience of society.

The second was arranged as zones of equal potential in all the ten dimensions, and was hence, again according to vectormancy, clearly a well-rounded character with widespread interests.

The third was almost as strongly focused in the time-like 'andward' dimension as the first was in the 'eckward'. This suggested more than a lack of social graces. It showed a complete disdain for the normal experiences of Quoth life.

It was rare for Quoth with dimensions as strongly opposed as those to value each other enough to seek to craft a child. The general consensus among the gossips was that the second parent must be exceptionally patient.

Oblivious to the commotion their arrival had caused, the three parents curled around the cl.u.s.ter of raw matter that would be the core material for the birth. Time pa.s.sed.

23.After three hundred thousand complex patterns had been worked into the ma.s.s the newborn stirred, entwining its barely focused extremities in and out of local s.p.a.ce. As yet it was too small to grip the four major dimensions, and its parents were able to suspend it happily between Here and There, and Then and Now, while they contemplated their questions.

This time was crucial. If the newborn could not answer its parents then it would not be a Speaking One, not a member of the Quoth Race.

The first of the three parents asked, This was an important ritual question. It was more a test of the memories that every new Quoth should have than a test of sentience, but tradition demanded it.

A fraction later, the second asked, < what="" is="" the="" purpose="" of="" the="" making?=""> This was harder, but still a basic philosophical idea. A true Quoth should even at birth have summed the memories built into it and begun to draw its own unique conclusions from them.

Time pa.s.sed. The third parent suppressed its inner shudders and prepared to pattern its question across the plane of energy it had created for the purpose. It was still angry and astonished at its own audacity, even though it had made its decision when the first shape was cut in the raw material. The moment of birth was a point of supreme receptivity and synthesis in the newborn. In the past the young had solved many of the race's problems. Yet now when births had become so rare, no one dared ask a newborn an important question for fear their child might fail to answer and be condemned. The phrase 'vicious circle' did not exist in the pattern language of the Quoth, but the third parent knew the concept well enough. The fewer children, the greater their value, and hence the less likely they would be risked even if that risk might bring great benefit.

Even as the third parent began its question, the first parent withdrew its ma.s.s completely from orthogonal s.p.a.ce in protest as it registered in full the act of infanticide. The second quivered in all its multiform dimensions. No successful answer to this question 24 24 had ever been found. Their mate had sacrificed their mutual child to no good end.

The Shadow was the rare madness that fell on their kind; forcing them to twist their bodies into meaningless patterns and perform odd tasks. Transitory, it was still shocking and burden-some, although a million pattern-lifetimes could elapse without a case of it. The Blight was worse; it was the Shadow raised to the nth degree. Quoth afflicted by it were permanently cut off from communication with their own kind; slaves to the same madnesses as those merely shadowed but without the hope of the eventual return to normality. The causes of both of the afflictions, or if they even had separate causes, were unknown.

The newborn stirred. A pause for consideration. The child moved again. The second parent stopped quivering.

Perhaps we can persuade the a.s.sessors that the third had no valid question. > Neither of the others answered. The first still maintained its distance, not daring to extend its perceptions to sense its child's failure. The third waited, alone in its own thoughts. Had it killed its child? Even if it had not, already the first was traumatized by its action. Who would make art with it ever again after this? Would the first ever forgive it?

The child roiled, its limbs contorting. Tiny chunks of s.p.a.ce-time ripped in its clumsy grasp. The drive to answer is strong in a newborn. < yes.=""> The second parent convulsed in pleasure. < an="" answer="" and="" a="" commitment.="" the="" child="" is="" a="" true="" quoth.=""> Unfolding from its dimensional denial, the first parent a.s.sented slowly, its patterns full of wonder. < perhaps="" the="" 25="" child="" is="" more="" than="" that!="" truthseeker,="" i="" name="" it,="" and="" i="" foresee="" other="" names="" yet="" to="" be="" revealed.="" we="" have="" birthed="" a="" wonder.=""> The third could not find a pattern to express its thoughts.

They lay too deep for patterns. To have the child answer was like an unknown eleventh spatial dimension opening for the first time, like no joy it had ever known. It was the selfish relief that it had not killed, and the selfish knowledge that it had, perhaps, helped birth the Quoth that would save them all. It was the selfless knowledge that a child had not died, and that there was after all hope.

Separated from the vast domains of Quoth s.p.a.ce by the empty desolations of the bleak cl.u.s.ters that surrounded them, at the mercy of the Blight and the Shadow, a moment's hope was worth any risk.

The second parent took the newborn up gently in a fold of s.p.a.ce-time.

< shape="" my="" newborn,="" sweetly="" shape,="" do="" not="" err.="" shadow="" will="" not="" find="" you="" here.=""> The cold light of the two o'clock moon shone in through the garret window and woke David. He reached out with his hand across the crumpled sheets, and found Claudette gone, if she had ever been there. His memories of the previous night were blurred at best, and in the early morning light he doubted even the possibility of their truth.

He remembered that they had drunk brandy and liqueurs in the Hotel Caillaux near the Gare St Lazare, and spent an hour guessing at the contents of the yellow canvas valise of the traveller in the next booth. Eventually the bearded man, obviously a foreigner, had flung open his case in pity or exasperation at their whispering and showed them his snuff box and his laundry, confirming David's guess. He remembered that they had walked hand-in-hand down the avenue Matignon, and had seen from the place de l'Etoile, behind the houses and across the river, the great crescent moon over the tower remaining from the World's Fair of 1889. He remembered that, as always, they had argued: Claudette holding that Eiffel's three-hundred metre flagpole was nothing but a monstrosity; David 26 holding out for its boldness and efficiency, and hoping it would survive the end of its lease. He remembered that they had gone to La Belle Epoch on the Champs-Elysees . He did not remember what happened next. Whether she had come back here with him, or whether they had agreed to meet again was all one to him. Memory was no comfort anyway. To remember was not to be sure that those things had happened. In the dark, he felt as if a shutter in his mind had fallen, cutting off his past so that in the earliest morning nothing was available to him but fictions.

He had drunk absinthe initially to quench his dreams. It had not worked. Now they were mingled more horribly with life, until his head ached and he could not remember what was fact and what was fancy. He could see Claudette's milk-white skin and hazel eyes, and the smell of her perfume was in his nostrils, but despite that he could have imagined her - as he had imagined worse things. Even if he found that she was as real today as anything else in the world, he still would not know if last night had been real, or whether they had ended up - as he had once devotedly hoped they would - in bed, or only in another round of the eternal bickering he remembered about light and shade, art and life, red wine or white, Eiffel or Haussmann, the age of reason or some new sophistry or paradox of her pet cult.

In this half dream he reached for the paper he knew was on the floor; the paper that was, for him at that moment, the only reality. His hand touched a rounded shoulder.

'Who the h.e.l.l are you?' he shouted, ending with an exclamation badly m.u.f.fled by a pillow. His arm had been seized and he was suddenly face down into linen stuffed with duck feathers, with a knee in the small of his back.

The Maison Nationale de la Santee at Charenton was an Italianate mausoleum of a building in the middle of a ruined maze of topiary. Its grounds were extensive and patrolled. Its gates were wrought iron, heavy, thick and tall. Its walls were topped with spikes, cut like barbed arrowheads. It was, all in all, the Doctor thought, a splendid example of medical psychology.

27.You would have to be mad to want to be anywhere near the place.

He took one of Jo Grant's old hairpins out of his vest pocket and started to pick the lock on the gates. The sonic screwdriver was no use for this pure mechanical work; besides, the hairpin seemed more eccentric, and hence appropriate.

Roz found herself fully awake with her knee in the back of her suspect. Her witness, she corrected herself. Her whatever-he-would-turn-out-to-be, the man she was supposed to be keeping away from anything odd. Her reflexes were still good. She allowed herself a certain pleasure at that, even if the circ.u.mstances were amusing. Twenty-five years of experience had not dulled them.

The weight of the black handbag clutched under her arm reminded her of the gun inside; alien, and as yet untested.

The Doctor must be worried if he wanted her and Chris tooled up. It was refres.h.i.+ngly out of character.

She got off the struggling man, keeping her hands on the pressure points in his neck.

'I think we have to talk. Promise not to make any more sudden moves.' It was not a question.

He grunted. She let go.

'I make any sudden moves!' He was apoplectic. 'You come into my room, and, and Roz took the initiative smoothly: 'And undressed you, and put you to bed because you were so drunk, and very equitably -' there was a certain edge in her voice as she used that word '- slept on the floor myself so as not to give you the wrong idea.'

'Ah,' said the American ruefully. 'You do seem to have caught me at a disadvantage.' The ghost of a blush lightened his pale face and he thrust a hand out from the rumpled covers. 'David Clayton: artist. I ' m pleased to meet you properly, and thank you for bringing me home.' His eyes, though shadowed by lack of sleep, were brown and attractive. This might not be too bad, Roz thought.

'Roz Forrester, part-time cafe-cabaret hostess and traveller.'

28.David nodded. 'Charmed. Only one thing still bothers me.

Did you you take all my clothes off?' take all my clothes off?'

The ward was the deepest in the building, the furthest inward. It had no external windows, and was painted a rosy pink. It was quiet; very, very quiet. The Doctor tipped his head on one side like an inquisitive sparrow, and whistled an aria from The The Magic Flute. Magic Flute. The acoustics of the room were strange. The walls had been curved inwards, with plasterwork hiding the angles. The lone patient in the middle bed, flanked by three empty ones on either side, lay curled up, a grey splotch under white sheets. The Doctor read the notes at the end of the bed. The acoustics of the room were strange. The walls had been curved inwards, with plasterwork hiding the angles. The lone patient in the middle bed, flanked by three empty ones on either side, lay curled up, a grey splotch under white sheets. The Doctor read the notes at the end of the bed.

They were remarkably skimpy. No names, no packdrill, no causes of injuries. No evident injuries.

He pulled a black-backed wooden chair over to the bed and sat down. He did not say anything; nor, visibly, did he do anything other than look at the patient. After ten minutes he started to eat the grapes he had brought with him. He made a smacking sound with his lips and spat the seeds into the enamel chamber-pot under the man's bed. After twenty minutes a nurse taking an unauthorized short-cut through the ward glared at him as she strode past. She took another two steps before realizing that it was the early morning s.h.i.+ft, and that there were no visitors allowed at any time in that ward.

When she turned around there was no sign of the man or his grapes. The chamber-pot was empty. She frowned, shook her head, and suddenly remembered an errand elsewhere.

After she had gone the Doctor came out from under the bed and reached for the grapes. The man in the grey pyjamas opened his eyes. They were crusted over with dried tears. He started to cough. Finally he spoke in a thin weak voice: 'If you must eat my fruit, at least eat it with your mouth closed.'

The Doctor raised his hand and let a stream of grape seeds fall like rain.

I think you know why I ' m here,' he said in his most official voice.

'I've told my story already'

"They want you to tell it again.'

29."Who are they?' the man said, and a determined look entered his watery eyes.

'Oh, isn't there a "they"? I a.s.sumed there would be. I mean, you're not here for your health. Are you?'

'No.'

'So you must be here for some other reason. And the only other reasons I know for being locked up are doing what "they" think is wrong, or knowing what "they" think is important. Am I right?'

I suppose so.'

'So tell me about it. Perhaps I can help.'

'What do you want to k n o w ? '

The Doctor smiled. 'What have you got?'

30.

Chapter 2.

Head aching with other people's secrets, the Doctor opened the TARDIS doors and stepped out of the early morning of the real Paris, onto the replica Arc de Triomphe. The TARDIS console stood out like a wart or a parasitic nodule on the flat roof of the memorial. Leaning forward, against the synthetic wind, he stabbed at the interior wallpaper controls and watched the edges of the mock-Paris begin their slow resolution into the default settings. In the false distance the Eiffel Tower collapsed into extra closet s.p.a.ce.

The Arc melted into the floor of the console room like an iceberg that had lost an argument with a sun G.o.d. He hesitated as the rectification lapped about Notre Dame, and punched a hold command into the architecture. He might need a cathedral sometime. He could always incorporate it into the Cloisters.

The true shape of the TARDIS interior re-formed around him, and he heard his own breath come harshly. His hearts were both beating fast, for a Time Lord.

This was the first real silence he had experienced since he had stepped out into the cold winter air of the real Paris.

The room in the Charenton Asylum had offered a brief respite, albeit a disturbingly advanced one for this period, but everywhere else the random cluttering of the disturbances in Paris's psychosphere had rumbled inside his head like antique bells. He was running out of old Gallifreyan loom-tenders' rhymes, and if he had to go on to Tibetan mantras or old Venusian lullabies he might as well leave it to Roz and 31 31 Chris, and go and lie down with an ice-pack. Antarctica should do the trick.

Now that the noise was gone, his memory of it was fragmenting, breaking down into dislocated snippets of sensation. Sound was no real a.n.a.logue for it. It tasted like biting iron filings and monkfish. It felt like the blue fur of the Great Sloths of Neopremus. It made the third finger of his right hand ache, and it smelt of spam and war-time cooking. It was an unusual experience for someone as well travelled as him to have an unusual experience, but this was worse than Centauri Colour-Opera. Turning the telepathic TARDIS circuits up to full gain might help, unless it was an attack, in which case it would probably make things worse. He did it anyway, of course.

At the very start of this regeneration, when aphorisms and saws were running loose in his new head like tiny animals before the forest fire of his renewing Time Lord consciousness, he might have said that the long arm of coincidence had his name on it. Or that someone had crossed his palm with a black cat. Or that he had broken the mirror of the horses of instruction, and the tigers of wrath wanted a word about his seven years of bad luck.

For a time of late, in his many lives, he had acquired a reputation for pre-planning and stage-managing his campaigns against the dark. Sometimes he had a p.a.w.n or two concealed about his person. At one time he had always been able to finesse an Ace, even one led by another player. This time he felt forces playing him. Not an old enemy, not a Time Lord megalomaniac with a flash TARDIS and a habit of leaving minuscule bodies in jamjars and lunch boxes, not even the Black Guardian; something worse. He faced a force that, perhaps, only frequent time-travellers can know. He felt on the back of his neck the soft breath of historical necessity. Was he just playing out a part already ordained by the inexorable grinding engines of eternity? The notion had a certain grandiose Wagnerian inevitability, but not even the most operatic cliche was necessarily untrue. The noise reminded him of fairgrounds, and the Miniscopes that 32 unethical species had once used to pin down their fellows like insects in a box. See the Doctor in the Amazing Loop of Causality. He pokes himself with a stick, and makes himself j u m p .

He straightened his dusty hat and shrugged his shoulders. It would be interesting to find out. Not all the dry philosophies of Gallifrey had ever solved the question of whether Fate or free will ruled the cosmos.

He left the TARDIS, which was frozen as ever (give or take the occasional flicker of interest from its chameleon circuits) into the form of a twentieth-century British Police-box, whistling. It couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, but the high-pitched note that had replaced its usual steady hum spoke of the circuits functioning faster and faster in its more-than-machine heart.

Chris Cwej swivelled in his boss's chair and surveyed the cramped office on the dark side of the Prefecture building.

The chair, pivoting on one of its back legs, threatened to give way and he eased it back into an upright position, feeling faintly ridiculous. The wooden chair was too narrow for him anyway.

He had lit the gas lamps to augment the fragile sunlight that was just creeping around the side of the building. Under the wavering light he made his eyes scan every surface, every possible clue. He hoped they looked narrow, penetrating, supremely in control. He knew they probably looked bored.

I expect you're all wondering why I called you here,' he rapped. 'One of you murdered Jean Mayeur, and before anyone leaves this room I will unmask that murderer.' The empty room remained unimpressed.

It was so much easier in fiction. In real life not only were there no suspects, at least none to speak of, but the officer who was supposed to be in charge of the case had not even bothered to report for duty yet.

Chris had spent the previous day in the file room of the Prefecture, reading up on Jean Mayeur's political career, trying to find out why anyone would want to kill a reputedly 33 senile octogenarian politician. It had been one of the dullest days of his life. Paris politics made the Landsknechte look airy, open, and enlightened. As near as he could work it out, the Chamber of Deputies was an elected body deriving its legitimacy in theory from universal male suffrage. Universal male suffrage apparently meant that women were not allowed in. He had spent a slightly more interesting twenty minutes trying to find a book that would tell him why. No luck.

In an effort to counter corruption, both the Second Empire and the Third Republic had shaken up the election system to the Chamber. Chris had not had time to find out what the First Empire and the First Republic were, but they had probably had trouble with it as well. In the 1870s it had been operating by departmental proportional representation, then when that was seen to have failed, by single-member con-st.i.tuencies, and then in the 1880s by proportional representation again. The only interesting fact was that whatever the method, Jean Mayeur had always got elected for his department. He did not seem to do anything particularly controver-sial, but he was always near those who did. When a deal was made or a treaty broken, he was there to offer to shake the hands of the peacemakers or applaud the warmongers with equal dexterity. Chris wished for the sort of computerized record systems he had formerly taken for granted. There was a reason behind the man's every action; he could feel it.

Unfortunately he was d.a.m.ned if he knew what it was. Or why someone should have hung him up in a faked suicide, forgetting that Doctor Tardieu of the Surete's forensic department would discover the quick-acting poison that had really killed him.

One thing that stuck out was the man's ubiquity. He was always there. Only once in twenty-six years had he failed to attend the Chamber, on 9 December 1893. The day the anarchist Vaillant had exploded his bomb.

Chris wondered if he had known, and if so did that mean conspiracy or precognition? If the Doctor was right, and he invariably was - although sometimes in such a confusing way that it was like wrongness seen in a distorting mirror - 34.someone in Paris had psychic powers so strong that the existence of time itself was in danger.

Chris grinned. He could be fairly certain that whoever it was, it wasn't his murder victim.

A stone clattered softly against the window.

David and Roz greeted the dawn together like two old friends; five hours too late and with hangovers. After their brief struggle midway through the night, David had insisted on opening a bottle of red wine. G.o.ddess alone knew what had been in it, Roz thought. Her head felt like it had bees in it.

She had chivvied David into fetching half a loaf of bread from the patisserie on the corner, while she tidied up the kitchen. Here at least the past's gender-stereotyping played into her hands. Next to the virtual disks in a suspect's sensorama, the habitual programming of an autochef or the contents of a larder defined a lifestyle. The way to a crime's heart was through the stomach. Often violently.

This time, however, the results were inconclusive. According to the contents of his kitchen, David was either a fanatical poisoner with a fearsome collection of moulds - many, Roz suspected, unknown to thirtieth-century toxicology - or he was a sad loner whose next meal was going to be a cold spaghetti sandwich made with stale bread and one patheti-cally small anchovy.

' I ' m back,' David shouted from downstairs. Hastily Roz s.n.a.t.c.hed some of the least lively cheese from the larder and swept a pile of crockery to the edge of the table. 'I've got some croissants as well,' David said, pus.h.i.+ng into the kitchen, barely glancing at Roz's handiwork. 'And throw that cheese away, it's full of mites.'

Roz stared at the cheese. It was slightly mouldy, they all were, but insects? She prodded the cheese with a knife, and watched a white threadlike ma.s.s break through the rind.

Interesting. They had not been visible, and David had hardly glanced in the plate's direction. Of course, he might have mites in all his cheese, but even so his perception was 35 unusual. She started a mental list of abnormalities, and then thought hard of something else for five minutes just in case.

Adjudicator-funded studies claimed that anger could help block telepathy, so she thought about her childhood and the unfairness of history.

'What's wrong?' David was looking straight into her eyes over a plate of croissants.