Doctor Who_ Infinite Requiem Part 27

There was a horde of telepathic voices in Shanstra's head, clamouring for attention. And now, she could not enter where her mind was. Something was stopping her.

Kelzen.

Shanstra realized, in a bright, loud millisecond, what had happened. She loosened her hold on the physical world and tried to let her mind, her powerful mind, leap through the shrinking gap.

In order to do so, she had to relinquish control, momentarily, over the flint embedded in her chest.

And when she did so, Shanstra died.

Leibniz saw the image of his lost and beautiful Karin fading in his mind. It was as if she were being put into a drawer again, where he could choose to take her out as and when he wanted.

He heard Bernice say something and only then did he become aware of the way his uniform was clinging to a sweat-drenched body, of the grime and blood on his hands, of the wreck of a house in which they stood.

On the bright red stairs, the Sensopath's long legs were sagging now, unable to support her weight. She fell to her knees, then pitched forward on to her face; and was still.

It was as if the last three seconds had happened within the s.p.a.ce of an hour.

207.

Above the Sensopath, on the stairs, Leibniz saw the tall, crisp figure of Livewire smiling sadly to herself. She lowered her crossbow.

For a moment, n.o.body moved. Then Leibniz, wiping his eyes, staggered towards the p.r.o.ne body of the Sensopath at the foot of the stairs. She was as pale in death as she had been in life, alabaster-white, strangely calm and beautiful.

He heard Bernice come running up behind him. 'Careful,' she said. 'I've seen this old vid called Fatal Attraction Fatal Attraction. Just when you think it's all over, the baddie comes up out of the water and tries to throttle the hero.'

Leibniz shot her a withering look. He extended a booted foot, nudged Shanstra's body. It did not move.

Within the Dreamguide's domain, darkness was closing in on itself. The whirling confusion of bodies seemed to s.h.i.+mmer like rain under neon, and then, momentarily, to pulse more brightly, as if something else had joined them.

You betrayed us, Kelzen.

The voice reverberated in the domain, whispering yet thunderous. An answer came, like part of the same voice, the wind of eternity sighing through every syllable.

No, Shanstra. It was you. You did it all yourself. Now, I have to leave the human boy to his own life. For now we die. human boy to his own life. For now we die.

In the funnel of light, something flashed and glowed like igniting magne-sium, and then, there was one body left alone in the darkness.

Amarill dell'kat.i.t vo'Pridka was sitting at the feet of the Pridka elder, hunched into her green robe, weeping quietly to herself.

Darius Cheynor, embarra.s.sed, turned away. At that very moment, the gateway blazed with new light, and the figures of the Doctor and Suzi Palsson, hand in hand, s.h.i.+mmered out of the domain.

'Well,' Cheynor said to himself, 'wonders will never cease.'

The Doctor, his every movement twitchy and agitated, ushered Suzi down from the ramp and followed her. He took his hat and umbrella back, nodding his thanks to the Pridka and to Cheynor.

'Well?' Cheynor wanted to know. He was still reeling from the events of the past hour, and he had no idea what had gone on inside the gateway.

The Doctor, placing his hat back on his head, drew a long breath. 'Kelzen has made her choice,' he said in grim satisfaction.

The giant face in the gateway seemed to stabilize, its clouds of darkness coagulating against the background of white light, forming a shape. Cheynor 208 watched it in concern. 'You did something terribly clever, I a.s.sume,' he said worriedly. 'Didn't he?' He addressed the question to Suzi, who shrugged.

The Doctor's face was impa.s.sive. 'She knows Shanstra. She knew that the evil side of her wanted to absorb all minds to exist as a sole, independent being.'

Suzi's mouth fell open. 'So she never wanted to reunite across time with her other selves?'

'If that was all she wanted, she had the power to do that a long time ago.

No, she wanted to absorb them.' The Doctor sighed. 'I realized, after I traced her with Leibniz, when she destroyed the sports centre on Gadrell Major.' The Doctor tapped his forehead. 'The thing about opening up a mind-channel,' he said, 'is that it's like a catflap. Things can go through either way. That's how I was able to weaken her link to the Phracton Swarm. But I also managed to convince her it was Kelzen I was interested in protecting. As if I'd forgotten about the third Sensopath. She tried to unite with Jirenal, and played right into my hands.' He brushed a speck of dust from his lapel.

Cheynor thought he understood, but he still had a question. He raised a finger, like a nervous schoolboy. 'And if she'd carried on trying to break through to Kelzen . . . '

'We'd all be dead, Trau Cheynor. Kelzen had been sitting quietly, gaining power too. She wasn't too happy that her sister's plans for universal absorp-tion included herself and Jirenal. When the time came for the transfer, Kelzen was in control. She weakened the link, and stopped it.'

There was a silence in the great hall, punctuated only by the soft weeping of Amarill.

'I hate having to prompt,' said the Doctor, tilting his head slightly, with a hint of a smile, 'but I think it's time for someone to say, "Doctor, you took a terrible risk."'

Suzi Palsson stepped forward, blus.h.i.+ng slightly. 'No,' she said. 'I owe you something more than that.'

The Doctor blinked.

In the s.p.a.ce of time that it took to do so, Suzi's fist had achieved the desired velocity. The punch took him totally unawares, sending him sprawling on the floor with a loud thump.

Cheynor and the senior Pridka wore expressions of utter horror. Suzi, her hair glinting like armour, strode over to the Doctor, who was struggling to sit up, clutching a broken and bleeding lip. Hands on hips, she looked down at him and chuckled. 'For using me,' she said. 'Just so you never forget.'

Then, though, she leaned down and planted the gentlest, kindest kiss on the top of his head. 'But that,' she said, 'was for saving us.'

209.

27.

Redemption

Two days.

It has been two whole days since the loss of our self our mind-sister. We are preparing for death. preparing for death.

I am not whole again, nor am I quite splintered as before. It presents a strange feeling of . . . calmness. feeling of . . . calmness.

Our race would learn much from the one known as the Doctor. We I became cast into the void for the crime of being too dangerous to live with. For being too cast into the void for the crime of being too dangerous to live with. For being too far advanced for my own race. That same crime must now lead me away from far advanced for my own race. That same crime must now lead me away from this world, away from the humans, the Phractons, the Time Lord. this world, away from the humans, the Phractons, the Time Lord.

Maybe, one day, I shall return.

The option is there.

But soon, I die. And the thoughts, the memories, all die with me.

That morning, two days after calm returned to the Pridka Dream Centre, the Doctor had several appointments. His first port of call was the rest.i.tution network.

The green-robed Pridka in charge greeted him As they strolled over to Amarill's cubicle, the healer confided in the Doctor that they had already made considerable progress with the subject. The burnt magna-synapses, the fractured interfaces, could all be restored over time, just as a bone could be reset by human technology. The Doctor nodded gravely.

Amarill was seated in a bell-shaped gla.s.s dome, surrounded by six white-robed, silent Pridka, their fins rippling gently as they continued the painstak-ing operation of restoring her.

'Of course,' the Doctor ventured, 'those who do have physical injuries repaired sometimes never walk again.'

The Pridka caught the modulation of his vocal inflexions, and nodded. 'She may never be as strong as she was. It was thought that, one day, maybe, she would be ready to be absorbed into the gateway, to become the Dreamguide.

Now, we will be content for her to share her thoughts with us in the smallest way.'

The Doctor sent a genuine smile of affection to Amarill. She would not see it, he knew, but maybe someone, later on, would tell her that he had looked 211 in on her.

She had recovered herself remarkably quickly, he thought. It was not every day, after all, that you had to face sudden, wrenching distance from what you perceived as your G.o.d.

'And the Phracton Commandant?' the Doctor ventured.

The Pridka's eyes were downcast. 'We attempted emergency healing, Doctor, after the body was found in your s.h.i.+p. But he was isolated from his cyborg unit for too long. I am afraid life functions ceased during the last micro-cycle.'

The Doctor's next appointment took him upwards, on a gravpad. An info-projector told him that the election of the new Dreamguide from senior Pridka candidates would be taking place in this micro-cycle, and that the rematch between the Rakkhins and the Rills would be staged in hall seven this afternoon. Non-ammonia-breathers who wished to watch from the gallery were requested to make special arrangements.

He reached his destination, the projection halls, and hopped off.

A handsome young human with smooth brown skin and l.u.s.trous black hair was sitting alone in one of the halls. Its screens were dark, and all the other seats were unoccupied. He was obviously deep in thought.

'h.e.l.lo, Sanjay,' said the Doctor affably, from two rows behind him.

Sanjay Meswani jumped. It seemed he had not heard the Doctor's approach.

He blinked, several times, opened his mouth and shut it again. He was thinking carefully of the right words to use, for speech was still a novelty to him.

'I . . . have so much to learn,' he said in wonderment.

The Doctor nodded. 'Don't worry. You're in good hands with the Pridka.'

He rested his chin on his umbrella, seeming to lapse into deep thought for a moment.

The boy was troubled. 'It was like . . . being imprisoned, but loved at the same time. My body was only half in the real world. Kelzen . . . took over for me. She made everything so easy.'

The Doctor nodded solemnly. 'That is their way. Don't worry, you weren't to blame for any of it.'

'And now . . . for me to stay here is surely . . . wrong, somehow?'

'I suppose I might get into terrible trouble with the Time Lords. Ah, well.

I can always come back for you one day, deposit you back in 1997. When you're ready.' He nodded to himself.

'My mother . . . ' Sanjay began, hesitantly, his eyes big and dark, still, in many ways, the eyes of a baby. Perhaps it was just as well for him that he had accepted marvels from the day he was born, or this vast distance, in time and s.p.a.ce, from his home might have unhinged him.

'Yes?' asked the Doctor.

'Was she a good woman?'

212.

The Doctor smiled. 'She was kind, yes.'

The answer seemed to satisfy the young man, and the Doctor left him there, staring into the dark.

The Doctor's final visit was to the preservation unit.

Here lay the bodies of those whose minds had been temporarily suspended from life. Minds that were exploring higher existences, freeing themselves from the physical, or which simply did not wish to be enc.u.mbered for hours, days on end with the everyday work of controlling flesh.

It was a new discipline, and only open to certain races. There were many Pridka who found the concept to be too far removed from what they considered their work to be.

A chamber was set aside for the body which had been recovered from the domain of the Dreamguide. Inside the chamber, which was softly lit in olive green, and attended by a single Pridka at a globe-console, there was an egg-shaped, upright hollow, containing the huge and inert body of the Sensopath the one body that two of them now inhabited. The skin was like old wax, now, and the hair, though still long and full of darkness, had lost its s.h.i.+ne.

The Pridka had dressed the Sensopath in one of their plain white tunics, the Doctor's cloak and other clothes having been returned to him.

Suzi Palsson and Darius Cheynor were standing in front of the inert, waxen body, watching it with half their attention, while talking in low, urgent voices.

They looked like visitors to some macabre museum, admiring an exhibit's form while cagily not quite admitting to one another that they were unsure of its true meaning.

The Doctor nodded respectfully to the attendant Pridka, and bobbed up behind Suzi and Cheynor, who seemed oblivious to him He tried the other side, leaning around them, but the low and urgent conversation continued.

Eventually, the Doctor cleared his throat, and Suzi and Cheynor jumped apart as if a grenade had been hurled to the floor between them.

'Good morning,' said the Doctor, with a disarming smile.

'Doctor,' Cheynor said, scratching his ear. 'We were just, er, wondering . . . '

'What happens to them now? I can't tell you that. They're a race unknown to me as well, you know.'

'But Shanstra is dead,' Suzi said.

'Yes,' the Doctor answered, and for some reason, with that one, drawn-out syllable of his, creaking like an old door, it was as if the winds of ancient memory cut briefly through the room, sending detritus skittering through their minds.

'And so . . . ?' Cheynor ventured.

'And so nothing!' The Doctor's face creased in irritation. 'And so the cow jumped over the moon. The princess lived happily ever after and everyone 213 went up the wooden stairs to Bedfords.h.i.+re.' He sat down on the floor, staring moodily up at the body of the Sensopath. 'Why do people always expect me to have all the answers?' he grumbled. 'It's never that simple. Never.'

Cheynor looked at Suzi, who seemed rather shocked by the Doctor's outburst.

'It . . . doesn't seem to surprise you as much as other people, Doctor,' she ventured, with a desperate look at Cheynor. 'That's all.'

'Surprise me? Hmmph. I've fought the Daleks, the Cybermen and Sutekh the Destroyer. I've made a bargain with a creature of antimatter, visited universes like parodies of this one. I'm rarely surprised now. Sickened, saddened, angered by the things the peoples of the cosmos seek to do to one another.