"How can I do that?" asked the Doctor.
"I need the full story of the Empress"s death. I think uncertainty about how I came to power is the motive behind these demonstrations. I think it"s safe to tell your story, especially now a replacement for Helen the First has been found my legal advisers tell me it would have been treason to ignore her direct request."
"I"ll give you my full cooperation," said the Doctor. "But first, there"s something I need to warn you about. There"s a moon in the Agamemnon system. It"s called Iphigenia."
255.
"Agamemnon. I"ve heard of it," said Walid. "One of the planets exploded, didn"t it? The Navy are still trying to decide exactly what happened."
"Ca.s.sandra is no longer a danger. It"s Iphigenia you have to worry about. You"ve got to keep ships away from that moon. The people in the original fact-finding mission murdered one another, and the survivors are... insane."
Walid took a DataStream from his pocket and tapped his finger on the screen. The Doctor admired an orchid while the palmtop, a square chunk of intelligent plastic, organized the information the Emperor wanted.
"I see what you mean," said Walid. "And the recent expedition is believed to have been killed in the Ca.s.sandra explosion. It certainly seems as though there"s a curse on the moon."
"It"s worse than that," said the Doctor. "No one must ever go there again. If you want to keep this new Empire of yours safe, you"ve got to keep that world completely isolated. It might even be worth ending mining operations on Fury, evacuating the population. At least the telepaths."
"You"ve been there, haven"t you, Doctor?" said Walid. "You were part of one of the expeditions." The Doctor nodded. "And what did you see?"
The Doctor considered for a moment. "Everything," he said.
"Everything?"
"You"ll love these," said Genevieve. "They"re astonishing.
Watch."
They had been walking through one of the Duke"s gardens, planted with flowers and floweroids from all over the Empire.
Jupiter hung overhead in the thin blue of the sky, an impossibly large ball of colour. It was almost noon.
Chris had been telling Genevieve about some of his adventures as they worked their way through a maze, but she seemed even more interested in life in the lower levels. It wasn"t just polite interest, either: it was the same curiosity as had driven Chris"s mother to watch endless docudramas about life at Court.
Now she had stopped at a tall hedge, covered with soft red flowers. The leaves were hexagonal, waxy and dark. The flowers 256 were the colour of wine, the petals geometric, complex, bunched into angular fists.
"Stay there," she said. He stood on the path, obediently, as she stepped up to the hedge. She cupped one of the flowers in her hand, held it there for a moment.
"Now you try," she said.
Chris peered at the bush, hesitant. "What does it do?" he said.
"Go on," she said. "Hold one of the flowers."
He reached out and cupped one of the roses in his hand.
It uncurled, slowly, a silky movement across his skin. He watched, half expecting the thing to bite him, but it just opened and opened until it filled his palm.
"See," said Genevieve. "It only does that with people who"ve got some latent psi ability."
Chris looked up at her. "What?"
"Not full-blown psis, it just ignores them. But it can tell if you"ve got a little bit of ability, or just the genes." She stroked the open flower in his palm. "No one knows why."
"It"s beautiful," he said.
"Lady Genevieve," said a voice behind them. "It would be a good idea if you went into the palace now."
They both looked up. A woman in white was watching them from the path. A moment later, a dozen security guards stepped out from another pathway in the maze.
"Iaomnet," said Chris, staring at the woman.
"What"s going on?" said Genevieve.
"Won"t you come with us, Mr Cwej?" said Iaomnet. Her voice was like an angel choir, dozens of voices coming out of her mouth. "It"s almost time for the conjunction."
"Everything," said the Doctor.
Walid was giving him a polite but sceptical look. "I"m not sure I understand, Doctor."
"Have you heard of a covert organization calling itself the Brotherhood?" said the Doctor.
"I know the name," said Walid. "Are they real, then? I thought they"d been dreamt up by some of the more paranoid investigators." There"s that word again, thought the Doctor. The 257 Adjudicators have been a.s.suring the Court for years that the Brotherhood don"t exist."
No wonder Armand had been let off so lightly. "Oh, they exist.
It"s my belief they were behind the attack on you at my trial. The second expedition to Iphigenia was a secret mission for the Brotherhood."
Walid consulted his DataStream again, running his thumbnail across the top of his moustache. "I see we had an Imperial agent aboard. She seems to have disappeared."
"Find her," said the Doctor. "She"ll confirm what I"m telling you."
"Doctor," said Walid, "if I"m going to keep the Empire safe from this threat, you"re going to have to tell me what it is. I need to know everything you know about it."
"I can"t tell you," said the Doctor. "Not precisely."
"Doctor," said Walid again. "I need to know everything you know about it."
The Time Lord looked up from the fern he"d been examining.
Professor Martinique was standing a little way down the path, hands clasped in front of him, his face perfectly blank.
"Good grief," said the Doctor.
Walid was looking at him with amus.e.m.e.nt. "You look surprised, Doctor."
The Time Lord shrugged in irritation. "I didn"t think you"d be so unsubtle."
Walid shrugged. "I"m the Emperor now," he said. "I can do whatever I like." He consulted his DataStream. "The conjunction occurs in ten minutes," he told Martinique. "You"d better hurry."
Chris knew the routine: he expected a dungeon and fists and needles. Instead, they led him through the maze, two guards behind him and two in front, the hedges high on either side.
Funny, this wasn"t half as nerve-racking as meeting the Duke would have been.
Genevieve had been bundled back to the palace by a couple of security guards. He figured she"d been told to take him somewhere secluded, but she had been as surprised as he had when Iaomnet turned up with her weird, weird voice.
258.
Eventually they came to an open area, a lawn. There were rose bushes and a white gazebo. It was so quiet.
"Have a seat, Chris," said Iaomnet in her choir voice. A very scared-looking Jeopard was waiting with cuc.u.mber sandwiches.
"What happened to you?" he asked, taking one of the chairs in the gazebo. The security guards stood just behind him, where he couldn"t see them.
"I speak for the Brotherhood," she said. "We picked up Ms Wszola shortly after her return to Imperial Intelligence." The Jeopard looked so awkward, Chris took a sandwich just to make him feel better. "We were dissatisfied with her debriefing. There was too much she wasn"t able to tell us. We needed a closer look."
Chris stopped with the sandwich halfway to his mouth. "You killed her," he said, aghast.
"She is not dead," said the Brotherhood. "She is, however, not here. Chris, we are aware of your presence on Yemaya Four in the year 2257."
Chris wondered what they"d do if he tried to fight. They wanted something from him badly enough to keep him alive?
"What about it?"
"We know that you are a latent psi."
"I"m not a latent psi," said Chris. "I"ve got some recessive genes, that"s all. And the cure we came up with for the Yemaya virus has probably mucked those up anyway."
The Brotherhood said, "Incorrect. You have immense potential with the necessary treatment."
"You want to make me telepathic again," said Chris. The Brotherhood just looked at him. Iaomnet"s eyes and face were blank. It was like talking to a robot her eyes reminded him of something, he couldn"t think what. "You b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. You think it"s OK to do whatever you like to people"s minds."
"We know you were traumatized by your experiences with telepathy on Yemaya Four," they said. "You will be similarly traumatized. Your mind will open like the flower you examined.
We will learn everything about the Doctor from you, and everything you know about the Nexus."
259.
"And then I"ll end up like Iaomnet? Just a machine to do your talking for you?"
"No, Chris," said the Brotherhood. "Iaomnet possessed no psychic potential. You are precious. You will be the first to be liberated from silence."
Chris stared at them for a moment. The plan was suddenly obvious. "You"re going to make everyone telepathic."
"Telepathic. Psychokinetic. Pyrokinetic. Clairvoyant.
Psychometric. Precognitive. Capable of teleportation and psychic healing. All those with the potential will be brought to fruition."
"You"re going to turn the whole world on?" said Chris. "You"ve got another virus, haven"t you?"
"We do not have another virus," said the Brotherhood. "That technology could not do the work on the necessary scale."
"What, then?" said Chris.
"It is time," said the Brotherhood. "The conjunction is occurring."
"The conjunction? What do you "
"Shall we continue?" said Professor Martinique. The pepper-haired professor waited for an answer from his guest.
The Doctor sat in a comfy chair in one of the private apartments. His arms rested on the chair"s arms, his head rested against the back of the chair. It took him a moment to get his breath back. "Yes," he said.
He shifted.
His body changed, stretching and altering, but it wasn"t some kind of grotesque biological movement, just a smooth, almost mathematical change.
"Anything interesting?" said Martinique.
It wasn"t Martinique. Martinique was very obviously brain-dead, his empty skull echoing with the voices of the Brotherhood"s leadership. The gestalt that consulted on every decision.
It wasn"t the Doctor, either. Not exactly. He was tall and imposing and blond, but he wore black, and a brightly coloured waistcoat with a golden badge in the shape of a cat.
260.
"This is who I would have been if I hadn"t regenerated," he said. "Or one of them. He seems a very serious fellow. His experience with Fenric changed him a great deal."
He changed again, flowing back into his own shape. Sweat was running down into his eyes. He moved trembling fingers over his brow. They felt insubstantial, fading.
Walid felt safe. Too safe. Safe enough to let his allies crawl out of the shadows in his own palace. He wasn"t even here, he"d left them to it.
"This is what Zatopek told you," he breathed. "He must have seen the pattern of the ley lines. Learnt that one pa.s.ses right through Earth"s solar system. That"s what attracted the N-form we encountered in 1987."
The Doctor had counted twelve alternatives so far. Presumably they couldn"t use any of the timelines where he was dead. There must be thousands of those. That left all the different paths his life hadn"t taken.
"One of these selves," said the Brotherhood, "will tell us what we need to know."
"There must be another Nexus here," said the Doctor. "Hidden somewhere in Earth"s solar system. There are only a few places it might be concealed." He heard his voice changing as the probability intercession gripped him again, flowing over him.
"You only think you can control your pet Nexus. Otherwise you wouldn"t need my help."
"Who is this?"
The Doctor wore full ceremonial Time Lord robes. He lifted a hand to his curly hair. "This is an earlier version of myself who became President of the Time Lords."
"We must remember that one," said the Brotherhood. "Shall we continue?"
The Doctor looked at him as his face flowed back. "Yes," he said.
Chris shook his head. He felt as though he was being rebooted, like a primitive computer. "Cold start," he said.