"Barbara did." Vicki suddenly felt as if she had been thrown on the defensive. "She said that Susan was your granddaughter, and she left the TARDIS to get married."
The Doctor stood. "Yes, Susan was my granddaughter, if such terms can be applied to beings like us. I loved Susan. I loved her very much. And now that she has gone, I miss her more than you will ever know. I feel that I am..."
"Alone?" Vicki suggested gently.
The Doctor nodded. "Alone," he confirmed. "When I left, she came with me. She could have stayed, but she felt that I needed looking after." The Doctor"s face was suddenly haggard. "Although she was sweet, and guileless, and innocent, she was the closest thing to a conversational partner of my own level. There were things that we could talk about that would be meaningless babble to..." He shot Vicki a guilty glance."...to anybody else. She was the only person who understood."
"Understood what?" Vicki whispered.
"Who I am," the Doctor said, not meeting her gaze. "Why I left.
Where I was going. And now..."
Vicki was about to say something trivial and comforting when there was a flurry of wings outside the window. For a moment she thought that a flock of pigeons were landing on the ledge outside, but when the shadow of a huge pair of wings blotted out the firelight from the square below she gestured to the Doctor to back away, out of the line of sight of the window. He did so, quickly and silently. The windowsill creaked as something heavy settled upon it. The bright light of the moon cast a squat shadow across the carpet.
"Vicki?" The voice was as musical and calming as she remembered.
"Yes?" she said, her throat suddenly dry.
"Alarmed do not be. Albrellian it is. Souls briefly last night touched did ours."
"I thought you were a dream."
Albrellian laughed: a high-pitched trilling. "Happy a nightmare not considered am I. Afraid that forgotten might have you me."
"How could I forget," she said, "a charming alien perched outside my window."
There was a pause. "That not of this Earth am I know you. So, one of the Doctor"s companions are you. That means..." Albrellian trailed off, as if it was thinking things through.
"Yes," the Doctor said, stepping forward into the light. "And I am the Doctor. The definitive article, so to speak. Might I ask you to step into the room, sir, and show yourself to us, rather than skulk outside the window like a common Lothario." Albrellian drew his breath in sharply. For a moment, nothing happened, then the bulky shadow on the windowsill moved forward into the light of the torches. The first thing to emerge from the shadows was a strangely formed limb like a length of bamboo terminating in something like the claw of a crab but with four opposable sections of different sizes. A second claw followed, and then the creature"s body. Albrellian was an arthropod the size of a human, but much broader and shorter. He had three pairs of powerful walking legs and two pairs of the more delicate crab-like manipulatory appendages that Vicki had first seen. His hard sh.e.l.l was dark red in colour, covered in irregular maroon blotches, with a ruff of maroon hair sprouting from the top. Four stalked eyes emerged from the hair - two of which were fixed upon the Doctor and two upon Vicki. As Vicki watched, entranced, a pair of leathery wings folded themselves up and slid beneath a section of sh.e.l.l that hinged back to cover them.
"Thank you," the Doctor said. He slipped his thumbs beneath the lapels of his coat. "It seems that introductions are in order. As I have said, I am the Doctor. My companion, with whom I believe you have already-talked, is Vicki. And you are...?"
"Albrellian, of the Greld, am I."
"The Greld?" The Doctor frowned. "Forgive me: I am unfamiliar with your race."
"Dealers in ... technology are we. Home around the star that humans call Canopus make we."
"Then you are a long way from that home." There was a querulous, aggressive tone to the Doctor"s voice. "I hope that you do not intend extending the Greld commonwealth in this direction."
"Home is indeed far away my," Albrellian said, maintaining eye-contact with the Doctor, "but further away still from your home, lord of time, are you."
The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "You know of me?"
Albrellian bowed its great sh.e.l.l until the rim was touching the carpet. "Deeds the stuff of legend are your."
The Doctor glanced over at Vicki and raised his eyebrows. She shrugged helplessly. There was a definite subtext to the conversation, but she was at a loss to know what it was.
"What did you mean," the Doctor asked, "when you recognized Vicki as one of my companions and started to draw a conclusion from that fact?"
"Thoughts were bewildered my," Albrellian admitted, straightening itself up. "Arrival with awe and trepidation awaiting have been your we. Only this evening informed that on the mainland and taken to Laputa you and your travelling companions were met was I.
Surprised was I, for when last night to Vicki talked I, convinced that with you she was was I, and both in Venice here were you.
Somewhere along the line, a message has been garbled."
"I don"t understand what you are talking about," the Doctor snapped. "Your grammar could do with some practice. What or where is Laputa?"
"The island." Albrellian turned to Vicki. "Surely understand you?"
Vicki shook her head. "All I know is that we were invited here for some reason, but we don"t know why."
"Laputa," the Doctor murmured to Vicki, "was a fictional island in Jonathan Swift"s Gulliver"s Travels, but that book won"t be written for another hundred years. Is something happening here that Swift will write about, or does someone else here have knowledge before its time?"
"Show Albrellian the invitation, Doctor," Vicki urged. "Perhaps he might be able to tell us who sent it."
The Doctor slipped his hand into his coat and pulled out the impossibly white slip of material. "This was given to me under mysterious circ.u.mstances," he said. "Perhaps you can shed some light on its meaning."
Albrellian reached a claw into a crevice in its sh.e.l.l and drew out a similar white slip. "All have them do we," it said simply. "That is why here are we."
The Doctor reached out and took the invitation from Albrellian"s claw. He turned it over and looked at it, then wordlessly held it out to Vicki. The words were the same as the ones she remembered from the invitation that the Doctor had bought back with him from...
from wherever it was that he had been taken.
INVITATION.
Formal dress required.
R.S.V.P.
"An invitation to what?" she asked helplessly.
"Games do not play Doctor," Albrellian whooped. "The invitation a formality is. By the messenger who delivered it to you fully briefed must have been you."
The Doctor handed the slip of paper back to the Greld. "If I was briefed," he said, "then I have forgotten the briefing. There is a small period of my life that I cannot recall. Perhaps, if I could, then all would be clear to me."
"And the information within the invitation itself what about? How else did get here you?"
The Doctor shrugged. "My travelling machine took care of that.
The invitation itself guided us."
Albrellian shifted all four of its eyes to the Doctor. "Difficult your a.s.surances to accept find it I," it said. "Some kind of artifice this is off balance to get us all. Concessions from us want you."
"Don"t be so foolish," the Doctor snapped. "How can I want concessions when I don"t even know what"s being conceded, or in what forum?"
"When the Convention only hope of peace is our, how games can play you?" Albrellian shouted.
"Convention?" The Doctor was frowning. "What convention?
Where?"
"The Convention on Laputa!"
The Doctor and Albrellian were eyeb.a.l.l.s to eyeb.a.l.l.s now, and both were shouting so loud that they could probably be heard from the Square below. "I have no intention of going to any convention, on Laputa or otherwise, until I know exactly what is going on!"
"But needed are you! Without you proceed cannot we!"
The Doctor shook his head firmly and folded his arms across his chest. "I will not be manipulated any further," he said. "Here I am and here I stay until someone explains to me precisely what is going on."
"If prepared to games play are you, then so am I." Albrellian sprang across the room. Before she could move, Vicki found her arms and legs pinioned in a firm but gentle grip by all four of his manipulatory appendages. "On Laputa friend will be your, when bothered to turn up can be you."
"Doctor -" Vicki cried, but Albrellian"s claws tightened on her limbs.
She cried out, more in surprise than in pain, and struggled, but it made no difference.
The Doctor made as if to intercept Albrellian, but the alien moved towards the window.
"Where she"ll be, know you," the alien whistled, and jumped out of the window.
In his library, Irving Braxiatel sighed in relief. Everything was going to be all right. "And you say that the Doctor is sleeping happily?"
he asked, just to hear the good news again.
Szaratak nodded its thin, k.n.o.bbly head. "The envoys brought him in an hour or so ago. Apparendy he was so tired that he fell asleep on the ground in front of them. They carried him into a skiff and took him straight to Laputa."
"And his companions?"
Szaratak shrugged, although with a Jamarian"s build it was more of a ripple. "It would appear that they haven"t been with the Doctor for very long. The sight of the envoys frightened them. They ran off."
Braxiatel ran a hand through his hair. "You"ve done well, Szaratak.
Which envoys did you send, by the way?"
"The first ones I could find - Ontraag, Jullatii, Dentraal and Oolian."
"Nothing too frightening there," Braxiatel said. "And the imposter?"
"Imposter?"
"The person wandering around Venice pretending to be the Doctor. The one who ran away when you approached him in the Doge"s palace."
"He"s probably still there. Shall I deal with him?"
Braxiatel thought for a moment. He couldn"t afford to have an imposter wandering around - not with the Convention about to start. It might prove - disruptive. "I have to leave for Laputa," he said. "Get him put of the way."
"Permanently?" Szaratak asked softly.
Braxiatel"s mind was already occupied with agendas and arrangements. "Yes, of course," he said. Behind him, Szaratak snickered. Braxiatel thought little of it as he left the library and walked down the flight of stairs to the ground floor. His staff - Jamarians, most of them, but with their hologuises on almost all the time - were at the front door unloading vegetables from a boat tied up on the ca.n.a.l. He pa.s.sed by them without a word and walked through to the back of the house. Checking to ensure that he wasn"t observed - he had deliberately kept security on the house light because he didn"t want to make the locals suspicious - he stopped by a particularly ornate tapestry and pulled it back from the wall. There was a metal door set into the bricks behind it, and he keyed his personal code into the security lock in its centre. The door slid back into the wall and he walked down the revealed steps into the new watertight room that the Jamarians had built beneath the house.
The room was essentially a white metal box with a path around the edge of a pool of water. A small control panel was set into one wall. The pool was at the same level as the ca.n.a.l outside, and in its centre floated an amba.s.sadorial skiff, smooth and ovoid, like a rather fat metal egg. Braxiatel glanced back, checking that the security door had closed behind him, then walked to the edge of the pool.
"Open," he muttered. An opening appeared in the side of the skiff.
He stepped into the cool, dark interior. "Shut." A constellation of multi-coloured lights sprang to life around the circ.u.mference of the skiff as the door closed. Braxiatel sat in the form-fitting central seat and ran his hands across the lights: adjusting course, speed and power. Laputa and the Armageddon Convention were waiting for him.
Galileo"s hand began to ache - a deep-seated grinding pain in the bone that he was all too familiar with - so he switched the paddle from one side of the Doctor"s strange boat to the other. "I still say we should have paid a gondolier to take us," he grumbled.
"I didn"t want to involve anyone else in this business," the Doctor said, shading his eyes from the rays of the early morning sun which slanted across the flat surface of the lagoon. In his other hand he held a long tube capped with gla.s.s lenses - a spygla.s.s, but one larger and better finished than Galileo"s.
The island with the blue box from which the Doctor had retrieved the spygla.s.s had vanished into the mists behind the Doctor, and Galileo had his back to Venice as he rowed. He felt as if they were coc.o.o.ned in a white shroud. "You mean that you don"t trust anybody," he said.
"That too."
"Then what about your friend - Steven? He"s built like an ox.
Couldn"t he have rowed us?"
The Doctor squinted and peered ahead, over Galileo"s shoulder.
"No sign of Venice yet, my boy," he said. "No, I asked Steven to take a look around for Vicki. I don"t hold out much hope that she"s still there, but I prefer not to make unwarranted a.s.sumptions. Best to rule the city out of our consideration. I"m far more certain that if we can trace that s.p.a.ceship you saw to this place Laputa that Albrellian talked about, we"ll find Vicki."
"Ships that travel through the void of s.p.a.ce, beings from other worlds, boxes that are barely larger than a coffin and yet can swallow you up for ten minutes while you look for your spygla.s.s..."
Galileo shook his head in bewilderment. "You ask a lot of a man"s imagination, Doctor. By rights I should call you a heretic, if not a lunatic, but I find you strangely convincing, and your words strike chords in my own thoughts."
"You are a man of unusual breadth of vision, Galileo." The Doctor gazed into his eyes. "If anybody in this time is prepared to believe in life on other worlds, it is you."
"Twenty years ago," Galileo grumbled, "in the Academy of Florence, I gave a learned discourse on the exact location, size and shape of Dante"s Inferno and, using pure logic, I proved that the Devil himself was two thousand arm-lengths in height." He gazed levelly at the Doctor. "That doesn"t mean that I actually believe believe that the Devil is two thousand arm-lengths in height. I apply logic to everything and I believe nothing." that the Devil is two thousand arm-lengths in height. I apply logic to everything and I believe nothing."
"An admirable, if somewhat narrow, outlook." The Doctor"s gaze switched over Galileo"s shoulder again. "I think we"re bearing a little to port. You"d best switch back to your other hand."
"I get arthritis in my other hand," Galileo snapped. "Besides, I"m an astronomer, not a sailor. Perhaps you would like to take a turn?"
"The exercise will do you good," the Doctor said with a slight smile.
"Besides, have you no respect for my age?"
"Not much," Galileo admitted. "There are older professors at the University of Padua who I hold in great contempt. Age can lead to stupidity as well as wisdom."
"Then perhaps if I point out that I"m doing this for you..."
"How so?" Galileo asked, then swore as a splinter jabbed into his palm. He let the boat drift for a moment while he carefully pulled it out, then took the opportunity to glance over his shoulder. The dark, low bulk of one of Venice"s many islands was just visible through the veils of mist.
"The objective lens of your spygla.s.s was smashed," the Doctor said as Galileo began to pull on the oars again. "It would take time for the Venetian gla.s.smakers to make a new one - time we do not have. This particular model -" he waved the metal tube "- has somewhat greater magnifying power."
Galileo was about to make a cutting rejoinder when he felt the boat rock beneath them. "I think we"ve hit a sandbank," he said, pulling back on the oars.