Doctor Who_ Infinite Requiem Part 6

A squat, ugly body which Benny a.s.sumed to be that of Philip Tarrant was hanging by its fingertips on to the fake leather sofa. With a rip of animal hide and a gush of foam, his mooring gave way and the force smashed him against the wall. Bernice could feel the wind blowing her hair, and at the back of her mind something was trying to tell her about unexplored possibilities. The Doctor's hand was huge in her field of vision, like that of a celebrity grasping for a press photographer's lens. She realized, in a dreamlike haze, that he was trying to keep her out of the room.

There was a gasp, an all too human sound. And then the chaos ceased.

The room could have been the lounge of any suburban flat after a particularly nasty row. Benny registered a girl kneeling in pain at its centre, and the Doctor rising swiftly from concealment to take command.

To Benny's surprise, he came to her first. His palms were warm against her cheeks. She realized her heart was pounding.

'Everything all right? Nothing broken?'

'No Doctor, I '

'Save it for later.' He flashed her a brief smile, and dropped to squat beside the groaning specimen of humanity at Bernice's feet, who was still clutching a chunk of sofa in his white-knuckled hand, and who smelt most strongly of Skippington's Old County Brew and smoke.

'He'll live,' muttered the Doctor, and with a sudden burst of energy he tossed his umbrella to Bernice. She caught it, to her astonishment. When she blinked again, the mercurial Time Lord was at the side of the gently swaying girl.

Benny knew this had to be Tilusha.

There was a rustle of silk at Bernice's shoulder. She jumped, but it was only a very dishevelled Nita Bedi. Benny, guiltily, realized she had forgotten all about her.

'I don't believe this,' said the girl. 'Tilusha! What happened here?'

Nita was about to rush over to her cousin, but Benny placed a restraining hand on her arm. 'Leave it to him. He's a doctor.'

51.The Doctor finished s.h.i.+ning a pencil-torch into Tilusha Meswani's staring eyes. 'Catatonic trance,' he said curtly, with a dismissiveness that, even after all this time, shocked Bernice slightly. 'Help me get her on to the the ' He waved almost absently at the sofa, with its unorthodox garlands of magnetic tape.

The three of them laid Tilusha down and made her as comfortable as they could. The Doctor put his hat on the floor beside the sofa.

'Can I get her some water, or anything?' Nita was desperate to do something useful.

'No,' said the Doctor, his eyes barely flicking in Nita's direction. Bernice raised her eyebrows in apology, but Nita just shrugged.

The Doctor was giving his whole attention to Tilusha Meswani, smoothing her hair, peering at her face. After a moment he took a small, conical device out of his capacious pockets and placed it against Tilusha's belly, where he listened intently. 'Almost time,' he said, with a dazzling and unexpected smile.

Then, the object was gone, the Doctor's head was lifted upwards again and he somehow flicked his hat up from the floor to his head. 'Do either of you,' he asked carefully, 'feel anything remotely unusual?'

Nita shook her head, with a jangle of jewellery.

'Baffled,' said Benny, folding her arms, 'but that doesn't qualify.' She rubbed her eyes, suddenly aware of how heavy they were. Then she began remembering. 'I did feel a kind of tingling, like a s.h.i.+ver, but as if it was inside my head.' She looked up, and saw the Doctor nodding, gesturing with both hands in that way of his which showed that he wanted to hear more. 'It was just as we were coming up the stairs. And just now, as . . . ' Benny gestured vaguely around the wreck of the sitting-room. 'All this happened.'

'Excellent,' said the Doctor. 'You're slightly sensitive to telepathy. I'd suspected as much.' A grim smile adorned his lined face for a second. 'But Tilusha's child has greater powers. Especially when defending itself and its mother from a potential aggressor.' The Doctor spared a brief glance for Phil Tarrant, who was still lying on the floor, breathing drunkenly, with his hand over his eyes.

'I suppose you're going to explain to me,' Nita ventured, trying to keep her voice level and rational, 'why it is that my cousin looks nine months pregnant, given that when I last saw her she was barely showing a b.u.mp?' Her face was taut and angry, her blink rate unnatural.

The Doctor perched himself on the nearest chair. 'Yes,' he said, 'that is rather interesting.'

Benny felt an involuntary s.h.i.+ver. She looked in horror at the rounded flesh under Tilusha's loosened blouse, and then back to the Doctor again. 'So what's growing in there?' she asked, steeling herself.

52.Rain spattered gently against the window-panes. The Doctor rested his chin in his hands and scowled. 'If I'm right,' he said, 'a Sensopath.'

'Excuse me?' Nita stared in incomprehension.

'A highly telepathic humanoid, for whom mental images and communication supersede all the conventional senses of experience. Linked to another, similar being. Possibly others. I'd imagine being shut in there, helpless in amniotic fluid, is only marginally worse than the mental distance from its fellow.'

'Fellow?' Bernice gaped at him.

'Yes. I'd suspected something like this for a while. The TARDIS picked up on one of the traces and it's been trying to warn me. There were a couple of hitches. First of all, I've had so much on my mind that I didn't immediately notice.' The Doctor smiled briefly at Bernice. She knew he was thinking of their recent experiences, and of the still unsettling absence of Ace. 'And secondly, as a result of that, I'd imagine the trace it latched on to was recorded and followed, but maybe not consistently.'

'Which means?' said Benny.

'That the Sensopath in the other time zone or others, if there are more than one may have caused the TARDIS to be diverted. The TARDIS attached itself to the wrong part of a splitting signal.' The Doctor returned to face the window and stood for a few moments looking at the grey, rain-lashed city.

'The question is,' he murmured, 'does the other want to be found?'

Bernice realized that this all had to be rather incredible for Nita, but there was no escaping the fact that her cousin was now in an advanced state of pregnancy.

And softly talking to herself.

Bernice and Nita realized and turned in unison. They saw Tilusha's mouth moving, glossy and wet, forming sounds that were as beautiful as they were alien.

It seemed to Benny that the sound was in perfect harmony with the whispering of the rain.

'Got it,' said Trinket.

The others crowded round the terminal, and he used the blip-pointer to show them what he had found.

'Librarian and archivist Suzi Palsson,' said Trinket, clicking on an icon to bring up a hi-res image of the person they were looking for. Her pixelled hair gleamed, sparkling at them from the screen. 'Apartment in Zephaniah House, Argolis Avenue.'

Poly was chewing page six of an old book called A Suitable Boy A Suitable Boy. Her breath was hot and rank on Trinket's face and it was making him feel sick. 'Argolis Avenue's a bomb site,' she objected.

53.'He knows that,' said Livewire.

Trinket brought up three frames of information. 'Not hard to get into Government records from that protocol. Listed all her connections. See this? She was a member of the gravball team.'

Livewire was, naturally, keeping up. 'She'd have a pa.s.s key for practice access. And it's in one of the intact areas.' She nodded, smiled. 'Where do you go when your home is bombed?'

'Somewhere you can get into, of course,' said Trinket. 'Somewhere you'd have a pa.s.s key to.' He thought his services were still being required to explain the obvious. He had not seen Livewire straightening up, the sleek hunter, beside him.

There was the slicing sound of a crossbow being expertly reloaded. 'Corp Boulevard,' said Livewire. 'Come on.'

When Cheynor got his update from Leibniz, it was not quite what he had been wanting to hear. The relief s.h.i.+p Darwin Darwin had sent communication: it was still 48 hours away from Gadrell Major, and the evacuees on the orbital station would just have to sit things out until then. had sent communication: it was still 48 hours away from Gadrell Major, and the evacuees on the orbital station would just have to sit things out until then.

On the communications front, things were not much better. TechnOps were still working round the clock, valiantly trying to delouse the computer systems Cheynor had just not realized how much work would be necessary to create a whole new batch of antivirus programs.

He looked around the sleek, reflective table in his briefing room. To his left, Horst Leibniz, unmistakable with his spiky ash-blond hair and hangdog face.

To his right, Major Joca.s.sta Hogarth, the communications officer, dark hair cut so close to her pale skull that it was almost invisible, her long, translucent fingers tapping on a pile of info-cards. Her good right eye was flicking its focus back and forth between her captain and Leibniz, while the sensor-pad over her left eye pulsed gently. Cheynor knew that she and Leibniz did not really get on, but their working together was essential if the Phoenix Phoenix was to become operational again. was to become operational again.

'How close is the comsat to launching, Horst?' Cheynor asked.

Leibniz exchanged a glance with Hogarth. A tiny image of him was reflected in the square over her left eye.

'It's ready for final testing,' Leibniz confirmed.

Major Hogarth made a disgruntled sound. 'It's been tested,' she objected tersely, folding her arms.

'Not under the kind of conditions I want, Major,' Leibniz answered. This argument had a stale air, as if it were being aired for performance in front of the captain after endless and dull rehearsal.

54.'It's imperative,' said Cheynor sternly. 'You both realize,' he added, leaning forward with his hands folded under his dark beard, 'that if the Phractons were to launch a full-scale attack upon this base, we would have little chance of repelling them?'

'I suggest that the Phracs know that too,' said Hogarth lazily, leaning back in her chair with an a.s.sumed ease.

'What do you mean?' Leibniz asked crossly.

Ca.s.sie Hogarth smiled. Her mouth was thin and pink and the smile caused her face to crease from chin to temple a couple of face-jobs showing there, Cheynor thought with grim satisfaction, and wondered for a moment if she were older than the 35 or so that she looked.

'Simply that if they wanted to attack us, they had the perfect opportunity as soon as our systems went down. And they didn't. The logical surmise from that is that they don't want to attack us. Yet. Wouldn't you say, Captain?'

Cheynor spread his hands, nodded slowly. 'Ca.s.sie does have a point, Horst,'

he said apologetically. 'For the moment I suggest that we step up security as high as it will go, try and get some force-field capacity back on line, and get that comsat launched within the hour.' He stood up, and the two officers followed suit. 'And keep plotting the Darwin Darwin from its scan bolts. I want to know if it slows down or speeds up.' from its scan bolts. I want to know if it slows down or speeds up.'

He departed for the bridge, leaving Ca.s.sie Hogarth and Horst Leibniz glowering at each other across the briefing table.

'Come on, big boy,' Hogarth said, and threw Leibniz an info card. 'Let's go and fix our thrusters together.' She forced a grin, but her face was taut with tension.

'My lucky day,' muttered Leibniz through gritted teeth, and followed Hogarth out of the room.

His officers' bickering was not as high on Cheynor's agenda of problems as it should have been. For one thing, it was happening all over the s.h.i.+p. It might have had something to do with all these months in the colonial outposts, but he was hard pressed to remember working with such a jaded, tiresome and generally lax crew as this one. Many s.h.i.+ps in s.p.a.cefleet ended up being run on similar lines, but he never thought his would be one of them.

All the same, there was something more than stubbornness and conviction about the way Horst Leibniz's eyes shone when he was putting his views. Leibniz was new for the Gadrell Major mission he hadn't been part of the crew before. Cheynor wondered whether his first officer was the kind of person who took some getting used to.

Something else was bothering him, too.

55.He thought about it in the elevator as he ascended to the bridge. He kept thinking back to that briefing, and the faces that were present there: the general, Adjudicator Hagen. He had wondered at the time why he, of all people, should have been chosen for such a mission. Cheynor did not flatter himself that the general's words of praise had actually been meant in all sincerity. No.

It was something very obvious, he decided, but he was going to have to reflect on it.

56.

7.

Splintering Heart

Phil Tarrant had been getting in the way. He was eventually moved to the kitchen, which was as chaotic as the lounge. He sat slumped by the sideboard, amidst the broken crockery.

In the lounge, Nita channel-surfed through Sky (the television had remained undamaged). The Doctor brought everyone some tea which he had managed to make before the kitchen was Phil-filled.

Bernice monitored Tilusha Meswani's pulse with one of the Doctor's portable instruments, a small black rectangle with an LCD readout. Both breathing and pulse were quite normal.

'I should really be getting back to my family,' Nita murmured. 'They won't thank me for being here at all, let alone getting mixed up in this.'

The Doctor sipped his tea as he watched Benny attending to Tilusha. He waved his free hand absently at Nita. 'Don't worry, no one's going to get you mixed up in anything.'

Nita sighed loudly.

Benny knew the girl found him patronizing and she wished she could explain about the Doctor, tell her that he could be perfectly charming sometimes.

That he operated according to a different set of rules from humans, and that she shouldn't take any of it personally.

'What I want to know is,' muttered the Doctor, 'why the TARDIS brought me here instead of the 24th century.' He took a brief, angry sip of his tea.

'The 24th century?' Benny looked up in surprise. 'I thought you didn't know the location of the original trace?'

'I was in the tertiary control room, remember. Some things didn't pa.s.s me by.'

Once again, the Doctor was a couple of steps in front, but this did not unnerve Bernice Summerfield as it used to. When someone's ahead of you, her friend Clive on Heaven used to say, at least you can see which way to go.

The Doctor swung around and squatted by Nita. 'Tell me about Tilusha. Tell me what kind of life she has.'

The girl was sulky and petulant in her answer, punctuating every sentence with a flick of the remote-control. 'Her family hate her because of the way she's led her life. She went to university, lost touch with her loyalties. She's 57 a good person, but fiercely independent, she loves our sacred texts but she doesn't believe in ritual. I don't know, Doctor. Where do you begin to describe someone you've known all your life? I seem to be the only person who cares what happens to her.'

The Doctor had been hanging on every fragmented word. 'Don't stop. I was just getting a fascinating picture.' His voice was coaxing, kind, almost desperate, and he looked up at Nita with the pleading air of a lost puppy. She met his gaze, shrugged, and continued giving her attention to the remote-control.

'I can help her,' said the Doctor urgently. 'I understand what's going on here, and it's got something to do with time, Nita. "Time ripens the creatures, time rots them".'

Nita spared him a brief glance which was slightly less hostile she did not meet many non-Hindus who could quote the Mahabharata.

'Trust me,' said the Doctor gently. 'What's happening to Tilusha is only part of a very dangerous problem I have to solve. And until I've put the second phase in motion, I can't do very much at all.'

There was a clattering noise from the kitchen. Bernice shot a worried look at the Doctor and he motioned her to go and investigate. It was the sort of thing he did these days. There was a time, Bernice knew, when the Doctor had been overly protective of his companions, but the two of them had become so close by now that she knew he would never send her into real danger.

She crossed the hall and flung open the kitchen door. Phil was struggling to get up from the tiles, clutching his bruised head. Benny instinctively went for the nearest defensive weapon to hand on the wall behind her. It happened to be a large and heavy non-stick frying pan. She looked uncertainly at it for a second, her hand wavering, an unpleasant memory coming back, before letting it clatter to the floor.

'Just sit there and do nothing, will you?' she snapped at Phil. 'It's better that way.'

He had levered himself up, clutching at the cooker. 'Who the h.e.l.l are you sodding people? What are you doing here?'

'We're your uninvited guests. Want to call the cops? I'm sure they'd be delighted to hear from you.' Benny folded her arms, and looked down in contempt at the ugly man, who was slowly sinking to the floor again. 'Do you know, I've done a lot of reading about domestic violence in the twentieth century. About men who enjoy having someone to push around. Well, it's gone beyond that now. Beyond anything your puny mind could comprehend, even when sober. So just do us all a favour and go back to sleep.'

Bernice, somewhat surprised at the force of her own tirade, slammed the kitchen door behind her. She noted the sound of splattery chunks of vomit hitting earthenware, and shook her head wearily.

58.As she crossed the hall, there was a tingling in the back of her mind again.

And this time, it was more eerily perceptible. She got the distinct impression that someone or something was chuckling quietly just behind her ear.