Doctor Who_ The Tomb Of Valdemar Part 3

Pelham, in her finery, feels the perspiration sticking the lace and silk to her back.

A b.u.mp, and they've hit some sort of ground. Pelham is now very definitely thinking of her nice old apartment in Antigua, purchased with the proceeds of her first Valdemar book. Gentle waves, white sand, blue sky. If only she hadn't made Valdemar out to be quite as terrible as she had.

Ears pop. All gulp. 'Airlock?' asks Erik.

Prahna gingerly touches at his controls, as if whatever possessed them is still inside, like it's contagious. 'Oxygen.

Gravity too. Seems like these Old Ones breathed like we do.'

'Unless this is all being done for our benefit.' Pelham won't be optimistic. She refuses. They're all going to die.

'Well, um... shall we go outside then?' asks Erik. Keen, far too keen. If it weren't for his muscles, and tan, and those little gla.s.ses he wears that make him look so delicious...

They are looking at her. She is still nominally in charge.

'We don't have much choice, do we?'

Prahna, perhaps instinctively, breaks open a weapons pack. Pelham places a hand on his arm to stop him. 'I wouldn't. Unless you're thinking of using it on us if we're naughty.'

Prahna shrugs her off. 'I like to be prepared.'

Erik is squinting out into the blackness. 'Do you... do you really think this is the tomb? That Valdemar could still... you know?'

Pelham shakes her head. She doesn't want to listen.

Erik is lost, gone off on one of his daydreams. 'The tomb of Valdemar,' he breathes. 'The Dark G.o.d. Captured and destroyed by the Old Ones after centuries of the biggest war in mythology, and buried here. After all the work we've done, Miranda. This is an historic moment. And all thanks to you, Miranda. You showed us the way.'

'We all have our cross to bear.'

Prahna opens the hatch. Chilled air relieves the travellers in their stuffy oven. The first fresh air they've breathed in months. 'Whoever installed the air conditioning, we should use them,' says Pelham.

'You could show a little more reverence, Miranda,' Erik snaps. He seems totally unafraid. Keen, far too keen.

'Just keep your eyes open,' says practical Prahna.

They are in a vast black cavern. Looking up, high above, Miranda sees their gigantic chain rising up to a small aperture, through which rage the gleaming gold storms of Ashkellia. Some kind of force field must be holding back the planet. She tries not to think how long it's all been operating.

Heavy, heavy technology. Or magic.

In a way, it's all a bit of an anticlimax. Maybe it will be all right after all. Maybe Valdemar is just lying in some sarcophagus somewhere, smaller than you expected. Just bones, if anything. The mundane truth behind centuries of mythology. Behind her fanciful pseudo-factual stories.

Erik and Prahna are waving their torches around this cavernous nothing. Circular beams latch on to b.u.mps and protuberances, natural or not they cannot tell.

Pelham feels the goose b.u.mps lacing her arms, spinning a web on her skin. She s.h.i.+vers and the torches snap on to her like spotlights. She smiles. 'Come on then. If we're coming.'

Romana is wondering whether the TARDIS ever lands anywhere pleasant. It's cold in this dark tunnel. And what had he said?

It is thanks to him that she decided on this flimsy diaphanous collection of silks and drapes. She readjusts the silly costume jewellery coronet on her head. 'They like trifles and t.i.t-bits and fancies and follies,' the Doctor had said. The twilight of the Second Empire, he'd said; discreet technology, fun. Highly aristocratic, he'd said, blend in with the surroundings, better to be one of those at the top... Opens more doors.

So how come he never wears anything except that ridiculous theatrical get-up? Blend in? Blend in?

This know-it-all att.i.tude is beginning to grate. Especially as they are already off-mission. She just hopes the Doctor's infamous curiosity doesn't get the better of him. As far as she is concerned, they need to find the source of this energy pulse, switch it off, repair K-9 and get back on track. What was that name he mentioned earlier? The one he presumed she is unfamiliar with; the one she is unfamiliar with.

Valdemar? Who or what is that?

The Doctor is bounding out of the TARDIS, ready for the adventure. Romana expects to feel nervous, or wary or something. Not antic.i.p.ation, excitement.

She hadn't been expecting this new life, back at the halls and lecture rooms of the Academy where she had spent most of her life slaving away for that triple first. Only when she graduated did she begin to wonder quite what the purpose of it all was. The serenity, the complacency had become familiar enough to be tiring. She wonders whether she had been bored.

The search for the first segment had been like a shock of cold water. Surely all their stop-offs weren't going to be like that? She is pleased with her own derring-do.

'K-9's still in shock,' says the Doctor. 'I think his system is trying to expel the new data from the energy burst. Exposure to the higher dimensions can do nasty things to the mind.

Even metal minds.'

'Doctor,' says Romana impatiently. She isn't feeling particularly impatient but Doctor-baiting is good sport. 'It's cold.'

The Doctor licks a finger and raises it in the gloom. She sees the spittle gleaming on its tip fade out as the TARDIS door shuts. 'It is cold,' he affirms. 'Wind from the east.'

'I thought you said...'

'I know what you thought I said. Acid clouds, mean temperature in the low six hundreds. We're obviously inside an artificial structure. With very advanced air conditioning.'

Romana inspects a wall. She runs her elegant hand along its side. 'Artificial? This is igneous rock. Eroded. Which would make it...'

'Oh, at least a million years old. So it's a million-year-old artificial structure.'

'So how come the air conditioning is still functioning?'

'Look. Oh...' He is off down the tunnel. East, he said. 'Do I have to explain everything? You must learn to work things out for yourself. Come on, we're wasting time.'

Romana looks down at the smooth floor, aggrieved that he still treats her like a child. 'Oh yes, Doctor. Coming, Doctor,'

she sniffs and strides haughtily after him.

The tunnel is short and ends in a crossroads. The Doctor peers into each road in turn. 'Isn't this always the way?' he says, perhaps affronted that the structure could do this to him. 'We really don't have the time.'

'If you'd brought the tracer like I'd suggested...'

'I don't need that. Anyway, it's a delicate machine, regenerating itself. And...'

'You don't trust it any more,' she realises.

'I don't trust it any more.' He turns and looks at Romana, for the first time since they left the TARDIS. He beams his smile at her. 'Good, Romana. Good. You're learning. Well done. You took the words right out of my mouth.'

The patronising... 'Thank you.' Romana curtseys and gives him her icy smile, perfected over months of dealing with ancient, similarly patronising Academy lecturers. 'So which way?'

The Doctor puts an arm around her shoulders. 'Now then, as a test for you. Which way?'

Romana, all politeness and sugar, shrugs him off. 'Wind from the east?'

He nods.

'Then I think east. At worst we may discover who did the air conditioning.'

There is a tremendous roar, a blast of cold energy, like the bellow of some gigantic, incensed animal. The walls of the tunnel shudder as a gale hurls itself at them. Romana feels her flimsy coronet ripped from her head. Both she and the Doctor strain to keep their balance.

The roar subsides. The ringing in her ears remains.

'Very good,' says the Doctor, approvingly. 'East it is.'

Romana stays still. That roar was like... like nothing she has ever experienced. She is now extremely cold. 'What was that noise?'

The Doctor sniffs. 'I don't know. Let's find out.'

'It might be dangerous.'

'Oh, undoubtedly. These things often are. Try not to let it worry you. Shall we?'

Romana follows the Doctor then realises she is clutching his arm. She has discovered another character trait: she doesn't like walking down dark corridors towards hideous roaring noises.

Five minutes later, they reach the docking chamber of the tomb of Valdemar, where Miranda Pelham's bathyscape hangs from its chain. The Doctor identifies the make a customised Star Probe Seven sh.e.l.l, with toughened uber-alloyed chain links the fact that this device must have cost a fortune, and the inverse ratio of baroque design over efficiency. Romana wonders what the chain is attached to.

The hatch is open but the occupants have gone.

Five minutes after that they hear the screaming. They race to help, back into the tunnel they have just left, and collide with Miranda Pelham. Her clothes scuffed and ripped, she is running clumsily back to the bathyscape, her face utterly white with fear. As she falls into the Doctor's arms, she faints dead away, the growls of the transformed Erik ricocheting up the tunnel after her.

Chapter Three.

The Janua Foris is a mixture of confusion and uproar. All around the tavern, trappers howl and brag and shout. Many had arrived late and use this break to loudly demand the beginning of the story again. The very air seems thick with camr'ale.

'This don't make no sense!' shouts Ponch, unaware that he has had a further two camr'ales since the story commenced.

The old woman is giggling to herself. 'What is it that's confusing you, Ponch?' she asks.

'All of it! Big metal tubs swinging on chains, waves travelling back through time. Men turning into monsters. It's stupid.'

'Don't believe a word of it,' roars another good-humoured critic.

'And that way you tell it, all this "He says... she says", it ain't right. It should be "He said... she said". Like proper stories.'

The woman spreads her lined fingers. Ponch can see right up her sleeves, where the flesh hangs off her arms. He realises she is much older than anyone he has ever known.

Maybe even thirty-five. 'I just tell it like it was,' she says. 'And what I didn't see, I make up. Using the best available secondary evidence of course.'

'We ain't got time to listen to stories. I thought it'd be short but that took ages.'

'And nothing happened. Just a load of folk talking.'

'Thought it'd be scarifyin'. Wouldn't frighten a child.'

Suddenly, from beneath the table, a white-faced Ofrin, reminiscent of Miranda Pelham in the story, emerges from beneath the table. He is shaking, looking around nervously.

'Get me a drink,' he gabbles. 'Christ, that put years on me.

That thing with the dog and the eyes. I thought me heart was going to give out!'

He s.h.i.+vers, then stops. His tiny eyes swivel to the a.s.sembled company. All are watching him. 'What's up with you lot?' he growls, punching two nearby trappers into unconsciousness to reimpose his status.

Ponch finds himself staring at the 'book' on the table in front of him. Somehow, far beyond his befogged comprehension, there seems to be a face on the book. A woman. And beneath, strange scribbles. 'This is where stories end up. If you're lucky,' says the old woman, slyly.

Ponch squints at the face. A young face, beautiful, very much like...

'That's you,' he breathes. 'That's you, younger.'

The crowd gasp, theatrically. 'How's that then... ?' Ofrin scorns.

'That's the storyteller,' says the woman. 'Many, many years ago. That is Miranda Pelham.'

'But it's you!'

The woman opens her mouth to reply, then seems to change her mind. She sits back and stares at Ponch, an amused glint in her eye.

'What I don't get,' says Ponch, 'is why you came here to tell us this.'

'Or how you got here.'

The woman smiles. 'None of these things are important.

Perhaps I just mean to entertain you. I know of the reputation of the trappers, their brutality. Perhaps it's a survival tactic. Perhaps you will discover there is meaning after all. It's all a question of perception.' She turns suddenly to Ponch. 'How long do I have before the guild sleds arrive to take your furs?'

'End of the autumn. A few cycles.'

'Long enough.'

'For what?'

'For you to find out what I'm doing here. This is an interactive story.'

'Uh?'

Miranda Pelham is unable to explain herself. The Doctor, much more worried than he has been letting on to Romana, carries her back to the bathyscape.