Bernice watched through the window in the otherwise bare sentry room as the Skel"Ske Skel"Ske hung for a moment, stationary in mid-air. Its harlequin colours 234 hung for a moment, stationary in mid-air. Its harlequin colours 234and spiky, organic texture were out of place against the wet, grey surface of the towers. Her heart missed a beat as she thought that it might never drop, that Powerless Friendless had changed his mind and turned the engines on.
Finally, as if it had committed itself to a difficult decision, it dropped: slowly at first, but gathering an unstoppable speed, and she breathed again.
Bernice winced as the ship smashed straight through a section of walkway with two people on it. They didn"t even seem to notice.
Behind her, Forrester and Cwej were browbeating the INITEC security guards. Beltempest was lending his considerable weight. The guards were trying to refer back to their superiors, but there seemed to be a vacancy at the top. n.o.body seemed to know what to do.
Bernice knew how they felt.
The ship started to tumble as its irregular vanes and spines caught the air.
It fell away like a leaf falling in the breeze. The rain-clouds swallowed it up within a few moments, and then it was as if nothing had happened. The towers and the slice of rose-tinted sky above were the same as they had always been.
The explosion, when it came, was distant and quiet. Quieter than Powerless Friendless And Scattered Through s.p.a.ce deserved. He should have had fireworks, symphonies and a vast cosmic thunderclap.
Bernice closed her eyes and leaned against the window. The surface was cool against her forehead. What was it about her that meant that her friends and acquaintances had to die? Homeless Forsaken and Powerless Friendless were only the most recent. Behind them, the queue stretched so far that she couldn"t see its beginning.
On the other side of the window, the sky glowed with the distant fires.
Sixty seconds.
He pelted along the white, roundel-lined corridor that led away from the console room, ignoring the screams of pain from every limb, every muscle, skidding at the next junction and heading left past the boot cupboard, the rose garden and the swimming pool.
Fifty seconds.
A right and a sudden left led him through the library, past rows and rows of dust-covered tomes and a very surprised tabby cat.
Forty seconds.
To save time when he came to the spiral staircase in the centre of the library he slid down the bannister, hopping off two floors lower and limping as fast as he could across the echoing vault of the wine cellar.
Thirty seconds.
235.A broad white avenue led past paintings and statues from myriad worlds, myriad centuries, and terminated in a roundelled white wall which the Doctor flung himself against, panting, frantically searching for a small white b.u.t.ton.
Twenty seconds.
The wall slid open, and five steps took the Doctor across the TARDIS airlock a large room lined with hooks upon which quilted s.p.a.cesuits with clear helmets hung to the TARDIS"s back door.
Ten seconds.
Emerging from behind the TARDIS, in the small gap between it and the wall of Vaughn"s office, the Doctor discovered the butlerbot desperately attempting to collect the tea crockery with its plasma blade still lit.
Zero.
The room was shaking. Bernice had obviously come up with the goods, and the Doctor had to do the same. He used every last iota of his strength to wrench the arm holding the blade from its socket. The bot tried to resist, but he pushed it out of the way. It fell onto Vaughn"s desk in a shower of broken crockery, cracking the translucent surface. Holding its arm like a spear in one hand, its blade of pure energy pointing straight ahead, the Doctor shoved his key into the TARDIS lock for the second time in five minutes and kicked the door open.
Tobias Vaughn stood at the console, his hand closed around the k.n.o.b of the door control. His head snapped around as the TARDIS doors opened.
"Make the most of that dramatic entrance, Doctor," he said, "because it will be your last. This machine is childishly simple to operate."
The Doctor took three steps into the centre of the console room and swung the butlerbot"s arm like an axe, turning the plasma blade into an arc of eye-numbing white that sliced through the air and Tobias Vaughn"s neck with equal ease. Coolant fluid sprayed into the air as his head tumbled from his shoulders, trailing wires and jagged blue sparks. In the few seconds before it hit the floor, the expression on it changed from triumph to surprise, and then to utter fury. It bounced twice, then came to rest lying on one ear. Bereft of a power source, the metal muscles surrounding the mouth and eyes drooped.
Vaughn"s body stood for a moment by the console, its hand still clutching at the door lever. Without Vaughn"s mind to control it, sub-systems and failsafes came into effect. The stocky metal body carefully sat, cross-legged, on the floor of the TARDIS and placed its hands, palms up, on its knees.
The Doctor moved slowly across to the console. He felt old. Old and tired.
His hands moved to the twin nubs of the telepathic circuits. As they tingled beneath his palms he reached out with his mind, seeking the heart of the TARDIS.
236.There! She surged up to greet him, glad, as always, of his company but reproachful that he had not communed with her for so long. He soothed, he apologized, he explained. She understood, and gladly lent him her energy.
The lights in the console room dimmed as the pure artron energy flowed into the Doctor"s body. He straightened up, feeling his pain, his tiredness and the dregs of despair that he had not been able to admit to having washed away.
"You were taking a bit of a risk, weren"t you, Doctor?" he murmured to himself. "a.s.suming that Vaughn kept his mind somewhere in his head. The logical place would have been in his chest, where he could protect it better.
Still: once a Cyberman, always a Cyberman, I suppose." He bent down and picked Vaughn"s head up. Striking a pose, he proclaimed, "Alas, poor Tobias.
I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite . . . " He grimaced sadly. "A fellow of infinite arrogance, in point of fact." He patted the console. "Don"t worry, old girl, I wouldn"t have let him have you."
The Doctor paused, as if listening.
"I don"t know," he admitted. "I should dispose of him completely, I suppose, but . . . "
Another pause. The Doctor smiled and shook his head.
"No, I can"t do that. I . . . I owe it to the memory of a man named Zebulon Pryce to keep Vaughn alive."
He turned the head over and delved around inside the neck. His hand came away covered in coolant and lubricant fluid, but clutching a small crystal.
"Delight becomes death-longing if all longing else be vain," he quoted softly, then slipped the crystal into his pocket, threw Vaughn"s head away and walked towards the doors.
"Let"s see how Bernice is getting on with that Hith ship," he said, then paused in the doorway. "And you"d better prepare two guest rooms," he added. "We may be playing host to a few more pa.s.sengers."
The TARDIS seemed to make a soft, contented sound.
"Yes," he agreed. "It will be just like the old days."
Bernice was still staring out of the window into the red darkness when she-realized that the Doctor was standing beside her. Behind him, Cwej and Forrester seemed to be arresting security guards wholesale.
"It"s all falling apart," she said dully.
The Doctor nodded. "Entropy gets to us all, in the end," he said. "People and computers and empires. Nothing survives. Nothing goes on for ever."
"Except for death and injustice," she said without looking at him.
"But," he added, "we can rage against the dying of the light."
She nodded towards the scarlet sky and the scattered fires outside.
237."I thought that once we"d turned the ship"s engines on, everything would be all right. I thought we could just turn off all the madness, like we had a switch or something. I thought Powerless Friendless"s death would matter!"
"No," he said. "It had all gone too far. The riots have their own momentum now. And there are still people out there whose madness hasn"t emerged yet.
They"re just time bombs, walking around, waiting to explode. When they do, they may take someone with them. They may take a lot of someones."
"Then what have we accomplished?" she whispered.
He thought for a moment. "We"ve stopped more people going mad," he said finally. "Lanced the boil, if you like. The riots will die away, instead of leading to full anarchy. The Earth Empire will still fall there"s a lot of pain here that wasn"t caused by the icarons, a lot of planets that want to secede but it will fall more gracefully and slowly than it would have done had we not been here.
Fewer people will die. A lot fewer people. And what replaces the Empire will grow out of stability, rather than destruction. In the end, the scales are tipped a little bit towards the light."
"But not by much."
"But not by much," he agreed. "And there are other things that won"t happen, because we"ve been here."
She turned to face him. He was looking shifty. "Other things?" she challenged.
"I"ve faced some of my own personal demons," he said, "and prevailed. Earth will be a better place. For a while."
Now it was her turn to nod. "We did good?"
He thought for a moment. "We"re not the score-keepers," he said finally. "But, in the end, when the points are tallied, I think they"ll say we did good."
She smiled at him, and he smiled back at her.
"I keep meaning to ask," she said. "Do we get a salary for doing this?"
238.Epilogue.
"More tea, Roslyn?"
"It"s Roz Roz," Forrester said to Cwej"s mother, trying not to snap. The poor woman would probably have a heart attack. "No. No thanks."
Mrs Cwej wandered off, not looking at all hurt. Forrester silently cursed.
She did not want to be there.
Then again, where did she want to be? Her empty apartment? The Adjudication lodge which, if it hadn"t been destroyed in the riots, would be staffed by colleagues she couldn"t trust? Her family estate on Io? Where could she go where she would feel welcome?
"Something stronger?" Cwej"s father said, coming in from the kitchen. He was carrying a bottle.
"Yeah," she said, "why not?"
"My thoughts exactly," he said, handing her a gla.s.s and pouring a generous measure. "Three hundred years old. Got it on Gallavax Prime. Brewed from the fermented pollen of mutant s.p.a.ce bees."
"Lovely," Forrester said. "There"s nothing better than mutant s.p.a.ce bee pollen when you"re looking for something to ferment."
"I"ve had it ever since I was Chris"s age," Cwej"s father continued, oblivious to Forrester"s sarcasm. "Saving it for a special occasion. Last night, while we were barricaded in, I thought, if we ever get through this, I"ll drink it."
"Moments don"t get much more special than living when you thought you were going to die," Forrester agreed. She glanced over to where Cwej stood talking to Bernice beside a large blue box that belonged to the Doctor. "Or seeing it happen to someone else," she added, and took a sip. It tasted of honey and sunlight. Not bad. Not bad at all.
Then again, anything would taste nice after what they had been through.
The simcord was on in the corner, and she tuned in to the voice of the news-caster saying: "I"m Shythe Shahid and this is The Empire Today The Empire Today, on the spot, on and off the Earth. Martial law was rescinded this morning as the Imperial Landsknechte and the Order of Adjudicators reported that their attempts to get the riots under control were succeeding. Fires still rage throughout the Undertown, but reports of violent incidents are dropping and flights have resumed from most major s.p.a.ceports. Damage is estimated at up to nine hundred trillion Imperial schillings, most of which is expected to be raised by taxation of offworld dominions, but the questions now being asked are: why 239did it happen, and will it happen again? Meanwhile, news just in from the planet Solos . . . "
"We"re thinking of moving off Earth," Cwej"s father confided. "It will happen again. Bound to. People just aren"t happy."
"Off Earth?" Forrester was taken aback. Despite the riots, she couldn"t imagine living anywhere else.
Except, a cold voice within her said, you"ll have to. Adjudicator Secular Rashid is on the INITEC payroll. You"ll never be able to forgive her for that, and for Martle"s Martle"s death but you"ll never make anything stick. Never.
"Yep," Cwej"s dad continued, "but we"re still trying to work out where. I mean, the galaxy"s so big, and the Empire extends so far."
"Why not try Hithis?" the Doctor said, emerging from the kitchen. He was carrying his jacket slung over his arm, and he had his shirt sleeves rolled up as if he"d just been doing some work.
"Hithis?" Cwej"s dad said.
"A lovely world, soon to be returned to its rightful owners, I hope. Provost-Major Beltempest or whatever his real name is has promised to intercede directly with the Empress. You"ll be welcomed there." He turned to Cwej"s mother. "Oh, by the way, I think I"ve managed to fix your irradiator, Mrs Cwej."
"Was it the techbrain?" she trilled.
"Indeed it was," he replied. "Fortunately I had a replacement with me. It might be a tad more intelligent than your irradiator actually needs to be, but it should work perfectly." He smiled to himself. "Just promise me that you won"t go connecting it up to a radio transmitter."
Mrs Cwej smiled vaguely, and moved off towards Bernice.
"If you"re operating a travel agency," Forrester murmured to the Doctor, "then I"d like a chat."
"Of course," he replied. "Thinking of emigrating?"
She sighed. "We can"t stay here," she said, glancing over at Cwej. "I don"t know if the boy wonder"s realized yet, but there"s a lot of angry people out there. Conspiracies always run deep, and Rashid knows that we know. We can"t touch her for it there"s no evidence but she"ll always be worried.
We"ll have to start over, somewhere else."
The Doctor nodded, and was about to say something when Cwej walked over.
"Doc, there"s something I need to ask you," he said.
"Ask away," the Doctor replied. "Advice is free."
"It"s well . . . "
"It"s about this friend of yours," the Doctor prompted.
"Yeah. Right. He"s got a problem."
"Friends always do."