Doctor Who_ Theatre Of War Part 11

'None of the others have asked after her,' the Doctor said: 'Thank you for your concern. Benny will appreciate it.'

The com*link seemed easy enough: a simple plasma*gel to stick the suction cup to her forehead and then Ace would be at one with the machine. For what it was worth.

'Krayn told me it slowed him down,' Fortalexa told her. 'But you have to link in or you might miss something important.'

The interior door slid open.

'Lannic.' Fortalexa nodded politely and stood almost to attention, towering over the dark*haired woman.

Ace went back to her study of the equipment. She had little time for Lannic, who struck her as cold, aloof and interested in nothing other than the dead past. At least Benny had some appreciation of living people, of technology, and of hard liquor.

'How are you getting on here?'

'Just about done, actually. Aren't we, Ace?'

Ace answered without looking round: 'Give me a while to get plugged in, then I can start the pre*flight checks.'

'Good. Since we still have some time, I have a request, Fortalexa I need your help.'

'Oh?'

'Bannahilk is ready to leave as soon as possible. I agree that seems the best course of action, although obviously we'll be leaving most of our work here undone. I want to salvage something from this mess. Despite the problems, we have the chance to create quite a performance when we get back. Will you help?'

'What is it that you want?'

Ace held her breath: here it came.

'That machine. I want to know if it can be moved.'

'And if it can?' Ace could tell from his voice that Fortalexa already knew the answer.

'Then I want it back here I want to take it back to Heletia. I want to present it to the Exec.'

Bannahilk was supervising the work troupe which was reloading the lander from the base camp. The troupe consisted entirely of Tashman, who was not wasting any opportunity to point this out.

Fortalexa smiled as he approached. It seemed almost as if Tashman had taken over Krayn's role of chief moaner. Bannahilk seemed to welcome the opportunity to get away and they moved to the start of the tunnel and spoke in low voices. Fortalexa told his officer about Lannic's request.

'Seems fair enough, I suppose. Get that Doctor to give you a hand he seems to know his stuff.'

'Perhaps too much so, sir.'

'He is supposed to be a colleague of Professor Summerfield.'

Fortalexa nodded. 'And she was a late member of our cast.'

'So she was.' Bannahilk thought for a while. 'Have you seen her recently?'

Fortalexa had not. 'She may have wandered off like she did before.'

'Or she may be dead.'

Fortalexa did not think that likely. But then again, so many of the others were dead now why should the professor be any luckier?

'No,' Bannahilk told him. 'We have to trust the Doctor. And the woman, Ace. She is after all our only hope of getting out of here.'

'True.' Fortalexa had seen how Bannahilk watched Ace. And he knew what that meant; he had served with Bannahilk before. He shook his mind to clear the images he remembered from sh.o.r.e leave on Avidos, and the sounds from his commanding officer's cabin after they had overrun the Pletillon quarter of Cortasplay. They all tried to cope with the stress in their own ways. He favoured humour, diffusing the emotion rather than giving it free rein. Bannahilk, he knew, had other methods. Fortalexa took a deep breath. 'I'd be careful of her, sir.'

Bannahilk snapped his attention back to Fortalexa. 'What do you mean?'

'Just that I think the Doctor is a man to be reckoned with, sir.' He searched for a way of expressing what he meant without seeming insubordinate. 'I think we should help him see that nothing happens to her.' Bannahilk's eyes narrowed as he took Fortalexa's meaning. 'And, as you say sir,' Fortalexa went on, 'she is our only hope of getting out of here.'

Bannahilk was about to reply when a voice from behind startled them: 'Ah, there you are.'

They both whirled round, in time to see the Doctor replace his hat.

'I was thinking, perhaps we should take advantage of this lull in the proceedings to have another look at our dream machine.'

The two soldiers exchanged glances, both wondering how long the Doctor had been standing behind them.

The VIP suite was certainly plush. Bernice had installed herself at a workstation in the corner of the s.p.a.cious lounge. The lounge walls were lined with red silk and hung with portraits framed with heavy gilt. One wall was dominated by a huge marble fireplace, another was almost entirely taken up with a bay window which looked out on to the main lawn as it sloped away from Mansionhouse. Doors led off to a washroom, a simularity chamber and back into the main area of the archaeology department.

Bernice had kicked her shoes off and was curling her toes into the deep rug which ran almost to the sides of the room, the onyx floor just visible as a margin round the edge. She was impressed by what the research a.s.sistants had managed to dig out for her a '59 Chardonnay. She sipped at it appreciatively as the computer on the desk in front of her chewed its way through millions of facts and figures from Lannic's original survey, generating a simularity of the Menaxan theatre.

'Done,' said the computer. She had given it a deep male voice. It was attractive and sonorous, and the hint of an extinct Scottish accent was somehow comforting.

'Okay,' Benny told the machine. 'Feed that through to the simularity chamber and give me a direct voice link and control.'

'Done.' She might have to do something about the vocabulary and personality.

The simularity chamber was just a dark room, until a simularity filled it. Benny stood in the doorway. 'Playback,' she commanded, and at once the room stretched out and down before her. She was standing at the back of the theatre, looking out over the seats and stage below. I t was bright, twin suns s.h.i.+ning in no canopy of plastic, no rain, no mud. Exactly as it had been when Lannic's team had first uncovered it. Rather than the dark oppressive place she had seen on Menaxus, the theatre was bright and welcoming. She could imagine comedy playing here, the walls echoing with laughter. On Menaxus she had a.s.sumed that the only performances given were tragic.

'Are you familiar with Hamlet Hamlet?' she asked.

'Yes,' replied the deep voice from above and around her.

'Good. Give me Hamlet, on the stage. Play back a soliloquy something to test the acoustics. Normal human volume for an actor.'

'Done.'

Far below her a man appeared, standing centre stage. He was wearing traditional doublet and hose. He walked slowly forward and began to speak. His voice was the same as the computer's.

'O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I: Is it not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of pa.s.sion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit That from her working all his visage wann'd, Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!'

'Stop.' Benny could hear the words clearly. She wondered how the computer had decided on that particular speech, how it had decided at what points the voice should break slightly and the character shake his head in near despair. 'Add seats, wooden ones,' she said. 'You decide the size and shape, but fill the auditorium with them.'

The seats appeared, low wooden benches. 'Adjust the acoustics to compensate and replay the soliloquy. From the top.'

'O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I,' Hamlet began, snapping back to his original position and replaying exactly the intonation and gestures. His voice was still clear but slightly deadened, quieter, because of the wood.

'Stop. I want an audience now. Put someone on every second seat. Human, half of them male, half female. All adults.' She laughed as she watched the theatre fill from the front as if an invisible hand were pointing to each seat in rapid succession. Throughout the theatre, Hamlet sat a seat away from Professor Bernice Summerfield.

'Done.'

'Not much imagination but it will do, I suppose,' said Benny as she made to pat the head of herself sitting in the back row. Her hand pa.s.sed through. 'Adjust the acoustics to match, and then play it again, Ham,' she said.

The result was interesting. Although the audience was still and silent, she could barely hear Hamlet. If she had not heard the words a couple of times already it would it a real strain.

'Stop. Raise the actor's volume to the loudest reasonable level. Also add background noise from the audience, at the lowest realistic level. And change the words give me a different soliloquy.'

'Done.'

Hamlet started again. His voice drifted up to Benny as she strained to catch the words above the slight murmur and rustle of the unmoving audience. It was near impossible, She started to walk down the centre aisle. The feeling was slightly odd as the theatre rose up past her, the simularity matching her movements to the generated image.

Odd words began to resolve themselves into meaning: '... thought... wisdom... coward... I... say...' As Benny moved closer to the stage, she managed to decipher more and more of the speech. When she could hear it all clearly, she stopped. She was over two thirds of the way to the stage, The Doctor was right: the theatre, the whole premise of the Menaxan civilization just did not work.

In front of her Hamlet continued undeterred: '...to my shame, I see The imminent death of twenty thousand men, That, for a fantasy and trick of fame, Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot '

'Stop.' Benny carried on down to the front of the theatre and stepped up onto the stage. She was so deep in thought she hardly noticed Hamlet, frozen into a grey statue as she walked through him. Then she turned and looked back out over the unreal audience. Somewhere in the pile of material that Elliniko had brought her, was a clue something that would tell her what was going on, would explain the contradictions of a race that disappeared withou explanation, and a theatre that only worked when it ws empty. 'When a play is performed to an empty house, does it make a sound?' she murmured.

'More information needed,' the computer answered.

'You're telling me,' said Benny, and made her way back up through the silent seated figures.

Bannahilk looked round the hold. The only equipment on his manifest which was not yet back on board was the water cannon. Tashman was getting that now. He would probably need help on the ropes. Bannahilk took a last look round, and went out to the tunnel.

He was about half*way to the theatre when he saw a figure in the dim light ahead. He stopped, reaching for his side*arm. The figure was approaching, walking a little unsteadily as if afraid of slipping. As it reached the lamp immediately in front of Bannahilk the figure paused, as if it had seen him. Bannahilk could make out who it was now it was Ace.

Bannahilk grinned, and he could swear that the young woman smiled back at him. He remembered what Fortalexa had said, but he was in charge. She was a soldier; she would do as she was ordered. Just so long as she could fly the lander afterwards. Bannahilk moved his hand from the disruptor at his side to the hilt of the knife at his belt, then down to his side. Time enough for that later, on the way home.

Ace came closer, her body swaying heavily as she made her way carefully towards him. Her face was a wide grin, grey in the faint light.

As she drew level with him, Bannahilk said, 'h.e.l.lo there.' Then he paused, puzzled. 'I thought you were on the flight deck how did you get here ahead of me?'

But she shook her head slowly, almost ponderously and reached out to him.'

Bannahilk felt his stomach yawn. This was easier than he could have hoped. He opened his arms and let her reach around him, her face coming close to his own. Any moment now he would feel her breath on his face. He reached for the clasp on her combat suit, and in the same moment as he realized that she was not breathing, he felt the clasp moulded and solid with the suit. And cold.

He pulled back, but her arms held him tight. He could see her face close to his, the mouth stretching across, lips slightly parted as she pulled him back towards her. And as her cheek closed coldly on his, he realized that the edges of her mouth were cracked slightly as if her whole face were made of stone.

The pressure on his body increased to breaking point. He could feel his ribs cracking as he struggled to break from the cold embrace of the statue. Then suddenly the stone form seemed to melt, to give way, as if the outer sh.e.l.l had split open. Bannahilk was pressed relentlessly into the soft mud inside. He felt his face crack through Ace's cheek, and the dark slush behind it smothered his nose and poured into his mouth as he gasped for breath. His hands clawed at the soft innards of the lithe female figure as it moulded itself round him, pus.h.i.+ng him down to the ground in a parody of an embrace. The remains of her mouth was over his as he choked his last desperate breath and a long tongue of mud blocked his throat.

The figure lay p.r.o.ne and still as the mud slid away from it, disappearing into the floor of the tunnel, raising it imperceptibly. Then the body too began to sink away. Silence. Then a slight squelching noise as the wall of the tunnel bowed outwards. A female figure formed from it, and stepped free. She stood silent and still for a while, then started cautiously up the tunnel. The light from the lamps seemed almost to be absorbed into the dull grey of her sleek combat suit as the figure made her way towards the lander.

Source Doc.u.ment 7 An eyewitness account of Hagan's acting Braxiatel Collection Catalogue Number: 117GPR Fragment. Written by George Lichbergh. Dated 2407 Hagan was without doubt the greatest Menaxan actor of the time. I was fortunate enough to attend his version of Hamlet, hailed as the most profound interpretation of modern times.

I remember with particular clarity the scene in which Hamlet first encounters the ghost of his father. The theatre was darkened (it being an evening performance) and the whole audience of thousands was quiet and motionless as if painted on the walls. At Horatio's words: 'Look, my lord, it comes,' Hagan turned sharply, and at the same moment staggered back several paces, his knees giving way under him. His whole demeanour was so expressive of terror that it made my flesh crawl even before he spoke.

Finally, not at the beginning, but at the end of a deep breath, his voice trembling, he said the line: 'Angels and ministers of grace defend us!' These words completed the tension and fear inherent in this scene and made it in this writer's opinion, one of the greatest and most terrible that will ever be played upon a stage.

Chapter 7.

Saint's Day It is not often appreciated that, in archaeology, to see the big picture, it is necessary to examine the details and minutiae. This is one science where it is often better to extrapolate from detail than to look for supporting evidence.Down Among The Dead Men Professor Bernice Summerfield, 2466 Professor Bernice Summerfield, 2466 We won't get much further without an activator key,' Fortalexa said again. He hated to admit defeat, but he replaced the main cover and thumped it home.

'Perhaps we could make one,' the Doctor suggested, raising an eyebrow hopefully. But they both knew that it would take forever to decode the encryption sequence.

'Oh well, at least it's mobile. There doesn't seem to be any problem with getting it back to the lander.' Fortalexa wobbled the wheeled contraption experimentally to and fro. 'Look,' he quipped, 'travelling theatre.'

The Doctor laughed. 'We'll have more time to look at it once we're away from here.'

Fortalexa nodded. 'I'll get Tashman to drag it back to the lander for us. He should have finished with the water cannon by now.' They had both enjoyed an interlude of several minutes watching through the concealed window as Tashman tried to raise the dismantled elements of the water cannon one by one up to the tunnel mouth using a rope and pulley. They could hear him cursing volubly as he tried to swing it onto each successive step.

As they got back to the main theatre, they paused and looked down towards the stage. Tashman was just visible dragging the tied*off rope precariously holding the water cannon's main nozzle a.s.sembly into the tunnel mouth. It looked like the nozzle was the final component. Below him Gilmanuk, Klasvik and Lannic were frantically scribbling notes on their clip*paks as they examined various parts of the theatre construction.

'She's taking everything she can,' Fortalexa said. 'She'll get a good review for diligence.'

'You mean the water cannon?' joked the Doctor.

'I meant the statue, actually. Look.' He pointed down at the stage. There were only two statues there now those of the Doctor and Lannic.

'Are you all right?' Fortalexa asked after a moment. The Doctor was still staring at the stage, his mouth half open. He seemed entranced.

'Lannic,' the Doctor suddenly shouted down the aisle. Fortalexa took a step back in surprise at the strength of the Doctor's voice.

Far below them, Lannic paused and looked round for the source of the sound. She found the Doctor at last and waved up at him. 'I'm rather busy,' she called out, her voice clear despite the distance as it travelled up from close to the stage.

'Did you move the statue of Ace?' the Doctor shouted back undeterred.

She looked up again, annoyed. Then she registered meaning of his words and turned to look at the stage. 'S'blood!' she exclaimed, and from across the theatre Klasvik and Gilmanuk also paused to look.