The Tomb of Valdemar

by Simon Messingham

  ‘But he’s not?’

  Huvan looks around, as if worried that perhaps Neville is listening. ‘Oh no. He’s just using them. It’s me. I’m the special one. I’m going to get it all and then they’ll be sorry.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean, Huvan.’ Romana is worried.

  Very worried. Just what is this Mr Neville going to do? She recalls Pelham and the bathyscape. ‘He’s going to open the tomb of Valdemar, isn’t he? Why? What does he expect to find?’

  Huvan smiles. He is keeping a secret from her, and very pleased with himself he is too. ‘That is not dead which can eternal lie,’ he says cryptically. ‘Waiting for me...’

  ‘Huvan!’

  Instantly, the boy is back with her. That feverish stare running up and down her body. ‘Don’t worry Romana, nothing will happen to you.’

  ‘I’m sorry to say this, Huvan, but you’re young. I mean, how do you know Mr Neville isn’t trying to trick you too?’

  Huvan snorts. For once his arrogance overcomes his awe.

  Something is definitely out of kilter with this boy.

  Adolescence is one thing, but Romana is beginning to think he is much more hysterical than is normal even for that.

  ‘Young? What do you know? Do you think I’m some sort of kid?’

  He is up off the bed, advancing towards her. Romana backs away. Indeed, he shows distinct signs of a deep-rooted ego-deficiency complex. Huvan barks at her, eyes wide and red-rimmed ‘How old do you think I am? Eh?’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to say. You’re obviously mature for your years...’

  ‘How many years?’

  Romana feels the cold, black-painted wall against her back.

  ‘I don’t know – fifteen, sixteen...’

  He is glaring right into her face. She feels the hot, lemon breath on her lips. ‘I am thirty-four years old,’ he states, ever so proud of himself.

  Chapter Five

  In the morning, Ponch does not feel well. In fact, he feels like someone has been kicking him repeatedly in the head.

  Perhaps someone did, he can’t remember. That godless cam’rale, scourge of the Black Mountains. There should be a law, except there aren’t any laws.

  He finds himself in a corner of the Janua Foris, wrapped in a blanket. He stands, head drumming, and walks out into the morning. The dry cold air helps him feel a little better as he coughs out the wreckage from last night. The feeble sun is brightening, filtered through the watery sky.

  Already the fights have started, out in the tundra, where the ruins of last year’s township lie like some charcoal skeleton. Fights about furs, fights about money – let’s face it, fights about anything they can think of.

  They have a season before the guild sleds appear, twinkling on the horizon. Ponch has always feared these gigantic metal slugs, their annual crawl over the mountains. Their huge metal hands that grab at the precious furs, greedily bundling them deep inside themselves, as if their mysterious masters can no longer wait; they must have them now. NOW!

  He wonders who they are, these guild procurers. What they look like, how they live. He has never wondered this before.

  The woman! Miranda Pelham (for Ponch is sure it is she).

  How could he forget?

  Ponch rushes back through the growing streets, past the trappers who eye him with suspicion. Many grasp their fur bundles close to themselves, as if he’s going to steal them.

  He races into the inn to find it empty. There is no one around. The fog in his head is bright with the tips of icebergs-nuggets of the story Pelham was telling.

  He can’t believe he missed the end, it had only just got started.

  It is not the trimmings of the story that have worked on Ponch – the funny Doctor, the floating golden palace, the silly lovers in their draperies. It is something else, something he can’t quite place or remember. He feels that, somehow, the woman made it clear that the events on Ashkellia (and it’s amazing how real that name is to him, more real than his own world, which he never knew even had a name) are related to events in his life, here in this frozen waste. He feels he is undergoing some test, some mystery he must solve. He feels compelled to prove himself worthy.

  She is nowhere to be found. He looks and looks but finds no trace that she was ever here. He feels aggrieved, he has better things to be doing, work on his furs that must be completed. This inertia towards the tasks he has performed for his whole life cannot be allowed. He will die if he comes in below quota.

  Ponch sits in the snow and thinks about the story. His head reminds him it was his own fault he missed the end.

  What a fool!

  ‘Something on your mind?’ asks the woman. She is there, sitting next to him, laboured breath falling in droplets from her mouth. In the light she appears almost see-through, ethereal as the ghosts reputed to haunt the foothills he is staring at. Her white furs and the snow contrast with the brown seams of her face.

  ‘I never heard the end,’ he says mournfully.

  The woman smiles, at her own private joke. ‘I never got to the end. Perhaps there is no end.’

  ‘I thought...’

  ‘The story is for you, Ponch. For your ears. It ends when you end it.’

  Miranda Pelham raises an arm and points at the sun. ‘I am old, Ponch. This sun, also. I sometimes believe this is the last sun.’

  He tries to listen, understanding some, the rest dangling just out of his reach. She continues.

  ‘Centuries ago, philosophers and scientists often thought about the end of all things. The physical universe, time itself, ceasing to be.’

  ‘You mean dying?’

  ‘I mean ending, Ponch. The way a story ends, complete, all thematic possibilities explored and exhausted. Universal heat death, some said, and you never know, they may even have been right. I sit here in the cold and think. The last humans, light years and millennia from home. Humanity’s end.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  She places a hand on his. The flesh is withered but surprisingly warm. Ponch is entranced by her eyes. ‘It doesn’t matter. Understanding is incomplete. It’s part of the answer, perhaps most of it, but governed by the conscious. And the conscious is such a small thing. The story of the Doctor and the tomb of Valdemar, I think you already know some of why I tell it. I can see it in you, Ponch.’

  Quite simply, Ponch doesn’t have the faintest idea of what she is going on about. There’s no need for the complications.

  Part of him just wants to kill her and get them out of the way.

  At last, at last, he manages, ‘Why does it all have to be so difficult? When we speak to each other, the trappers, we speak plain. What happened, what will happen. Why can’t you tell me like that?’

  ‘Why not? Fair enough, my way irritates the hell out of some but whoever wanted things to be easy? I might also answer that some of what I say cannot be told easily. That you must make your own meaning. When the time comes, and you are ready, you will understand.’

  ‘If it’s a story, you should have more fighting and killing.

  Otherwise it’s just not interesting. What sort of answer is that?’

  ‘The one I’m giving. Now, do you want to know what happened to the Doctor or not? The arrival of Hopkins, the opening of the tomb, the death of...’

  ‘Don’t tell me! I don’t know those bits!’

  Pelham stands and offers Ponch her arm. The effort makes her wince. ‘I forget where I am sometimes. Let’s go somewhere, away from all this noise.’

  The Doctor sometimes wonders if it is fate that keeps tripping him up. This whole situation is becoming far too complicated.

  His options are shrinking alarmingly. He has to see things in the widest possible perspective.

  Only one thing matters, and that is the Key to Time. The stability of the universe is at stake; he had thought he understood that. So how has he managed to get himself tangled up in this mess?

  His instincts tell him to stay and sort out this tomb
of Valdemar business. This Paul Neville, this so-called theurgist, judging by the brief time he has known him, is obviously very dangerous.

  Under normal circumstances he would have felt compelled to stay. However, these are definitely not normal circumstances. The time is coming when he is probably going to have to leave this situation as minimally damaged as he can risk.

  The Key to Time has to take precedence. Time is running out for the universe; the White Guardian’s voice rings in his memory.

  All right, Doctor. What is the right move? How much time would he waste by acting on his instincts?

  The easiest course of action is, obviously, to get back to the TARDIS with Romana and leave, hoping the situation will resolve itself. It’s a nice idea. Because so many of the situations in his travels would always have resolved themselves for the best without him. Wouldn’t they?

  It is important – no, imperative – to discover Neville’s motives. Why has he gone to such effort and expense? When the Doctor knows this, he will be able to choose the correct path. After all, it’s not the end of the universe, is it?

  To discover Neville’s motives he will have to find Pelham.

  Romana seems to have gone missing, certainly no accident, so he will have to do this himself.

  His brain whirring, filtering the important from the unimportant, the Doctor sonic-screwdrivers the door of the room where Neville has locked him, and saunters off into the depths of the palace.

  He chooses, at random, an ornate door. Inside is a bewilderingly large hall full of ferns and creepers, emerging from a range of outsize pots, colonnades and what are unmistakably tables. Or perhaps one table, large and curving, constructed to some inconceivably arcane design.

  The walls contain a thousand round holes, each filled with shining brass cylinders; the floor is a chequered mosaic that sends the eye looping back on itself. The design is vaguely fifteenth-century Venetian... vaguely. The Doctor whistles. He has never seen a library like it. He wonders about the fine for a late return.

  ‘Doctor, I knew you would find your way here eventually.

  Everybody does. The palace seems to send everyone to their most appropriate destination.’

  Paul Neville, still draped in his ridiculous conjuror’s outfit.

  All he needs now is a pointed hat with stars and moons. ‘Far be it for me to go against the majority,’ the Doctor replies, wondering what devices Neville is using to track him.

  He lies down on the table, expansively puts his hands behind his head and stares up at the high, faraway ceiling.

  Let Neville come to him to find out what he wants. A something burnt bronzed glows up above to capture his attention. He feels the hum of the palace stabilisers through the warmth of the table.

  ‘Interesting architecture,’ he muses.

  ‘Fascinating,’ comes the booming, echoing reply. ‘The Old Ones. So similar to us in so many ways, yet so much remains defiantly beyond our understanding.’

  ‘I don’t know, I’m sure a good painter and decorator could knock something up for you in no time.’

  Footsteps, a sharp staccato on the floor. The Doctor relaxes his muscles. He needs to be ready. ‘Your flippancy does you credit, Doctor. A lesser man might take you for a gabbling idiot.’

  ‘But not you.’

  ‘No, Doctor. Not me. You know as well as I do that the information stored here in this library contains knowledge a million years old. A data-storage repository that spans millennia. It staggers the mind.’

  Neville’s shrouded face looms over him. The Doctor sees the greed there and smiles. ‘Now, you know you’re only allowed four books at once.’

  ‘Sit up when you speak to me.’

  Shrugging, as if disappointed, the Doctor obeys. ‘You really think your little cult could hope to activate this archive?

  Those nice people downstairs?’

  Neville looks around and the Doctor can feel his frustration, his anger. ‘It will be done.’

  ‘Why, Mr Neville? Why do you want to know?’

  ‘How can you understand? The years I have spent finding this palace, the countless setbacks and failures. Now, I have the secrets in my grasp and yet this final step, this last simple process, I am unable to achieve. To have victory snatched from me at the last... Understand this, Doctor. I would give anything, anything at all to bring this palace to full life once more.’

  ‘I asked why, Neville.’

  Neville raises his arms. He spins, taking in the whole halll.

  ‘The Old Ones were a mighty race, Doctor. Proud, inquisitive, philanthropic. A rule that spread halfway across the universe. Nothing could stop them, nothing! Yet one day, they simply disappeared, never to return. What could have done that to them? What immeasurable force could make that happen?’

  There is a pause as Neville’s words ring round the empty hall. ‘Valdemar,’ the theurgist affirms simply.

  ‘Valdemar is a myth,’ says the Doctor gently. ‘There is nothing here for you.’

  ‘NO!’ Neville smashes his fist down on to the table. He brings his temper under control. ‘No, Doctor. The evidence is too conclusive. Pelham found everything. Her work proved conclusively that Valdemar was real.’

  ‘And what do you get out of all of this?’

  Neville’s innocent expression must have taken a supreme effort to manufacture. The Doctor could almost believe it was real. ‘Me, Doctor? Knowledge, of course. Knowledge to take back to the New Protectorate. With one gesture, I will have accelerated the progress of humanity by ten thousand years.

  Once I return with the secret sciences of the Old Ones, they can hardly refuse to restore my titles and lands, can they?

  That is all I humbly ask, Doctor. Is that too much?’

  The Doctor shakes his head, not believing a word. ‘Of course not,’ he replies. ‘A noble cause, if I may say so.’

  ‘As for Pelham, it pleases me that I should have restored the reputation of a great visionary, the woman who rediscovered Valdemar.’

  ‘Indeed. I wonder if she knows how honoured she is.’

  Assuming he could, the Doctor would have found Miranda Pelham in what has become Kampp’s dungeon. An appropriate word, despite the lack of chains, ankle-deep water and mouldy bread. Dungeon – yes, she thinks. Or how about torture chamber?

  Her nerves still ring from the ‘interrogation’. She told Kampp everything, immediately; there was no other choice.

  Well, not quite everything.

  After so many sessions over so many years under Kampp’s care and attention, Pelham has worked out a method of keeping her sanity intact. ‘You have done this before,’ she tells herself, as she waits for the needles and the shocks and the metal. ‘It does end. No matter how long it lasts, it will end.’

  And it does. Kampp is always faintly disappointed when he realises she has told him everything he wants to know. It is not for the gathering of information that he does what he does best. That is of no importance to him whatsoever.

  Miranda hates Kampp and often dreams of situations where their roles are reversed and she is given the opportunity to revisit the many occasions upon which she has been taken to him. And, she knows without hesitation, get this straight – whoever said that the interrogator and the interrogatee develop a unique and personal bond can join him when the time comes.

  She finds herself thinking about the Doctor and Romana.

  Who the hell are they, where did they come from and what are they doing here? If they’re New Protectorate they sure don’t act like it. Apart from anything else, they have no idea who Neville is. It is inconceivable that Hopkins would send them here without that most basic of information.

  Furthermore, how did they get into the tomb? Unless they’ve got some kind of fancy ship that defies all known laws of physics, there’s no way they could have got there. They can’t have followed the bathyscape; they would have to have known the location in advance. And Hopkins could never have found the tomb. She herself had only found it when N
eville’s scans had chanced upon the mineral anomalies.

  No, there is only one thing they can be and that is a rival expedition. Which means there is someone else out there, with her knowledge and after the same thing.

  She realises she is frightened. Sick and frightened. Not just of more of Kampp’s handiwork, although that is daunting enough. No, Kampp is a known quantity, a sick dream.

  She is frightened because events are out of control. Coming to a head. Events she sparked off nearly thirty years ago.

  Birds coming home to roost and all that.

  Miranda sighs and leans back in her chair. The straps are beginning to chafe her wrists. She eyes the bangle that sits placidly, uselessly, in a plastic tray with her other personal belongings and jewellery.

  Christ, it’s impossible to know anything these days.

  And Romana? Where is she in this summation of the first day’s activities?

  There’s not much more to say than has already been said.

  After a great deal of polite pleading, only starting to verge on the hysterical, she finally gets away from the poet.

  Unbelievably relieved, she wanders the corridors until a kindly armed guard emerges from the shadows and silently escorts her to her own room.

  Where she is in for a shock. She walks in to find her own room from the TARDIS. The exact same room, up to and including that huge wardrobe filled with clothes from all corners of the universe. For a moment she reels, falling on to her own bed. The ornate sheets even smell the same. This place, it seems like a dream to her, like a fragment of her own consciousness.

  Her shock at Huvan’s revelation is considerable. A thirty-four-year-old adolescent? Genetic tampering on such a thorough scale is monstrous. The kind of biological, chemical and radiation-led tampering that is morally, utterly repugnant. Surely the Daleks had proved...

  No matter. It had been done. The question was why? Why take a fifteen-year-old boy and restructure his metabolism to trap him indefinitely in the misery of adolescence? What possible motive could there be behind that, unless someone wished to cultivate a perverse taste for bad poetry?