‘Well, well. Not just beauty, but also a brain. You have much to contribute.’
The idea of resistance died as quickly as resentment had flared, but Britta could think of no strategy other than defiance. ‘What makes you think I’ll even want to contribute?’ she said, with more confidence than she felt. ‘And who is Pool?’
‘You are under contract,’ Lacuna replied. ‘You have no choice. And your consent is not required. You have experienced a demonstration of the Corporation’s might. You are not ready to meet Pool. Few ever do. But let me show you something.’ Lids dropped over the intense eyes.
Something was inside Britta’s mind again. And then Britta was inside somewhere else, a place that she somehow knew was vaster than she could imagine. She was disembodied, an incorporeal observer in the darkness.
And yet it wasn’t exactly dark. And it wasn’t an empty vastness. Gentle light was everywhere, revealing the outlines of shapes. It was like being underwater and able to discern the submarine rock formations. But there was no sense of up or down; just a viscous medium crowded in every direction with more solid shapes.
Britta knew, without knowing how she knew, that she could see only a tiny part of whatever she was in. She moved effortlessly through streams of colour, moving between structures that varied in size from a cube no larger than a fist to a rippled, curving cliff-face whose edges were beyond sight. Some of the shapes were regular, others were nebulous. Many were translucent, some were black, a few were bright with colours. And the shapes were moving, too, meeting each other and parting again, but also changing their formations. She saw a polyhedron become a sphere, and then an ovoid, as she passed it.
Bright streaks of light, like comets, flashed playfully between the shapes and, Britta saw, moved equally freely inside the translucent bodies. They left glittering silver trails in their wakes as they darted back and forth. In some places there were no streaks of light at all, in others there were lone sparks, while round and between some of the shapes the swooping and zooming fireflies were as thick as bees swarming round a hive.
Britta sensed something else. She caught sight of a movement, a darker presence at the edge of her vision. She turned, but it had gone: For the first time since finding herself in this strange environment, she felt the touch of fear.
And she was back in the circular chamber, under Lacuna’s unwavering gaze.
‘Where was I?’ Britta said.
‘You were inside an analogy,’ Lacuna said. ‘A model. A paradigm. It is as close as you – or I – can come to experiencing the reality. Was it not magnificent?’
‘Yes. Yes, it really was. But what was it?’
‘You haven’t understood, have you?’
‘Oh. I think I see. That was – that’s the Spinward Corporation, isn’t it?’
He cut a hole.
I couldn’t move. I was so scared. I wanted to shout, but my mouth felt blocked up.
I wet myself.
She was screaming, but there was no noise. She was in a golden cloud, it was killing her.
She was twisting like a tree in a storm. I saw a goldfish die once, flapping from side to side. She was like that, on her bed, inside a golden cloud.
He was getting nearer. You can always tell. Those foot-steps.
He cut a hole.
‘She’s improving, Gerald. Surely you can see that? She’s making sounds again.’
‘You call that an improvement? I said the leeches were a waste of time. Old wives’ tales. Look at her. Gibbering like a monkey.’
‘The chirurgeon says the shock could have brought on pressure in the brain. He says we should consider drastic action, whatever that means.’
He cut a hole.
Ace lay nonchalantly on the couch, trying not to look as though she was craning her neck and squinting through nearly closed eyes.
Only one door was marked No Admittance – Medical Personnel Only. That had to be the one.
One of the other doors opened and the ship’s doctor walked into the diagnostic bay. He was youthful-looking, but Ace knew that was no indicator of age. He was plump and smooth-skinned, with watery eyes and a vacant smile. Ace knew that vacuity of expression could conceal acuity of mind: it was one of her own favourite techniques.
The doctor started to remove the detector pads from Ace’s head, neck and arms.
‘Don’t tell me, doc. Let me guess. There’s nothing wrong, right? I’m as clean as a Tarian asteroid.’
‘On the contrary, trooper. You’re suffering from a viral infection.’
‘What?’ Ace was seriously alarmed. ‘But that’s not supposed to be possible. That shot you gave me before we jumped –’
‘No trace of it. Quite remarkable. But then, your virus is unusually pervasive. Every cell in your body is infected, according to my machines.’
‘Oh.’ Ace thought about illness for a while. Something didn’t add up. When in doubt, muck about, that was Ace’s motto. ‘So – how long have I got, doc? And should I leave my body to science?’
The doctor’s smile widened. ‘I didn’t say you were ill. Your virus appears to be benign. Have you noticed any unusual symptoms lately?’
Ace sat up on the couch and combed her hair with her fingers while she pondered. That was something she was doing more and more these days: thinking before opening her mouth. Had she been feeling sick? No – not at all. Not so much as a head cold or a hangover. Not for years. Not since before she left –
‘Doctor,’ she said softly, ‘what have you done to me?’
‘Done? What do you mean? These were diagnostic tests.’
Ace burst out laughing. ‘Not you, doctor. A different Doctor.’ She could hardly speak for laughing. ‘He made sure I got my jabs before I went travelling in foreign parts, didn’t he?’
‘Jabs? What are you talking about?’
Ace swept back her hair and gave him one of her most devastating smiles. ‘Like you said, it’s a benign virus. It looks after me. Keeps my cells on the straight and narrow, I suppose.’
‘But non-specific.’ The doctor’s voice was pensive, but his eyes were now anything but vague. ‘So it can’t work by recognizing specific pathogens. It’s an inversion of a benign virus. It must recognize every aspect – every possible aspect – of a healthy cell. It can’t be done, of course. Where did you say this doctor of yours practises?’
‘He travels. Very hard to track him down. Perhaps you’d better make sure you’ve made a private file copy of the test results.’
The doctor turned to go, and then swung back with a knowing smile. ‘You wouldn’t be trying to get me out of the way, would you? It’s just that you’re the fifteenth trooper I’ve had in here for a routine and completely unnecessary check-up. And everyone of the previous fourteen has tried to get through the medical security door over there.’
Wide-eyed, Ace shook her head. The doctor wasn’t fooled for a moment.
‘So, to save my time and your military conduct record: Defries’s weapon is in there, in a cryo pod. But the door is locked. And an alarm sounds if anyone attempts to enter without the correct security code.’
‘And I’ll bet you know the code, don’t you?’ Ace jumped from the couch.
The doctor backed away. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I do, But I won’t help you. There are guards just outside. I only have to shout.’
Ace held up her open hands and blew him a kiss. She continued to advance. The doctor retreated until he was backed against a tissue regrowth cabinet. Ace leant forward and placed her hands flat against the cabinet, one on each side of the doctor’s head.
‘Would you like a little bit of me?’ she said. ‘In return for that code.’
‘Are you suggesting – oh, I see.’ His mouth resumed its accustomed, smile. He giggled. ‘Oh yes, trooper. I’d like nothing more than a little bit of you. A small blood sample would be most satisfactory. You and I are going to make medical history.’
But Ace had already realized the flaw in her plan. Don’t
leave anything behind, that’s what the Doctor had always told her. Particularly anachronisms. And particularly advanced technology in less than advanced civilizations. And here she was, about to leave some Gallifreyan super-bug in the hands of a doctor who probably knew just about enough to realize what he was dealing with. And to spread it all over Earth-colonized space in the twenty-fifth century. It was just a drop of blood, but Ace couldn’t imagine that de-inventing the wheel would mess up the course of history in a more fundamental sort of fashion.
‘Don’t be so eager, doctor,’ she said. ‘You and I have different priorities. The door open, and you make yourself busy elsewhere, now. Blood sample when this mission’s over.’
‘I wouldn’t wish to spoil your war, trooper, but you must admit there’s a chance you won’t survive to complete the deal.’
‘That’s true. Then again, I’m not easy to kill. And your blood storage units aren’t invulnerable, either, if the ship takes a hit. I reckon my’ blood’s safest in me, until this thing is all over.’
The doctor raised a pudgy hand and touched Ace’s cheek. It was a strange gesture, as if he needed to be sure that she was real. ‘You’ll let me take a sample, if we both get through this?’
Ace nodded gravely.
‘Then we have a deal,’ the doctor said.
Ace crossed the first two fingers of her right hand and presented the hand as if in a salute.
‘And what does that mean?’ the doctor said.
Ace grinned. ‘It means we have a deal.’
‘Corridors are supposed to go somewhere!’
Bernice stood with her hands on her hips, as if daring anyone to refute her assertion.
‘You’re supposed to be long, in relation to your width. You’re supposed to have a plethora of doors and other corridors leading off you. I look to you for choices, for opportunities, for the possibility of randomness in an otherwise linear existence.’
She strode from one end of the short passage to the other, passing the only door in it. She glared at the blank, white expanse that sealed off the corridor.
‘And it’s all your fault!’ There was a hint of hysteria in her voice now. ‘I was here only five minutes ago. You weren’t. This was a corridor that went somewhere once. Just five minutes ago. And now. It doesn’t. And it’s all. Your. Fault.’ She struck the unyielding surface with her fists, again and again, until she started sobbing.
The TARDIS was closing in on her. Soon there would be no corridors, no rooms: just endless little, sealed compartments. And one of them would contain her.
She turned and faced the stump of passageway.
‘Bernice Summerfield,’ she said, loudly and distinctly, ‘you will achieve nothing by shouting at a wall. As long as there is still a door, there is hope. Run!’
She ran. The door opened, and she fell through it. It didn’t close behind her. She looked back. The door had disappeared. Where there had been a door, there was now a blank wall. She ran.
Round a corner. Another dead end. But another door. Even as it started to open, she saw the gap beginning to mist over. She jumped into the space, feeling the molecules tingle and sizzle as they accumulated.
The doorway became a solid wall. But she had pushed through and fallen on the other side. She looked up. She was in the control room.
Gasping sobs of breath caught in her throat. She’d made it. She’d reached a safe place. A familiar place. She dragged herself to her hands and knees. She couldn’t tell whether she was laughing or crying.
Both equally useless, she said to herself. And inappropriate. Nothing was amiss in the control room. It exuded its usual smug air of calm normality. The time rotor rose and fell in a slow rhythm. Around it, the six banks of instruments and lights flickered intermittently. None of the red warning lights was flashing. The only sound was the usual pervasive humming. The TARDIS was in flight, somewhere between here and there, somewhere between time was and time to be.
The big double doors were closed, but they were still doors. But there was no longer a door leading to the interior of the TARDIS.
Bernice almost succumbed to the temptation to curl up and sleep on the warm, gently vibrating floor. Instead she forced herself to stand, and to walk steadily to the hexagonal console.
The destination indicator was still blank. The TARDIS was, still going nowhere, hovering in the Vortex. She could enter some figures – any figures – and materialize the ship’s physical shell somewhere and at some time in the real universe. Then she could open the big doors, and escape. The TARDIS had been going wrong since before she had started travelling in it; now it was obviously beyond repair. The Doctor must have become trapped, as she almost had been, between the proliferating partitions in his collapsing time machine. It was up to her to do something.
She dismissed the idea. The TARDIS’s battered blue box might materialize anywhere: on an airless asteroid, a poisonous gas giant, a planet falling into its sun. She might find herself stepping out of the frying pan and literally into the fire. And she couldn’t abandon the Doctor. If he was still alive.
The control room was not a room for relaxing in. It contained only one chair, and Bernice had remarked to the Doctor on several occasions that it was only marginally more comfortable than a bar stool. Now, however, as Bernice fell into it, the chair seemed blissfully soft and accommodating. She could do nothing but wait, anyway.
She fell asleep.
Lacuna was waiting. Watching her, silently waiting. Britta turned her head, averting her gaze, but couldn’t help looking up to make sure that the tall woman’s hungry eyes were still on her..
It was a long time since Dimitri had looked at her like that. It was a long time since she had seen Dimitri. He might be dead by now.
She was surprised at the thoughts that were crowding into her mind. She remembered the bitter and unexpected disappointment of the meeting with her father. He had survived the plague after the attack on Yalmur. One of only a handful. Hundreds of thousands had died. She had never seen him before, and had never sought him since. She remembered the sense of relief when the awkward interview ended, the clumsy hug, his bewildered eyes, the lightness of her step as she returned to her dormitory in the Corporation’s Institute of Sciences.
Her diploma. The blushing, stammering, groping boys whom she had disdained. The handsome Captain in the Security Corps whom she had courted and won. His posting to Spacefleet. Her posting to Arcadia station. Regret, but again that feeling of relief.
In his first holo from the war, Dimitri had described the lives of the new settlers arriving on a planet liberated from the Daleks. She remembered the sudden stab of panic: did he want to go there, with her, after the war? He hadn’t even mentioned the idea. But how could she go with him, if he wanted to do that? She served the Spinward Corporation. The Corporation gave her knowledge, provided the means to further her career.
And now she was looking up at the biggest step. Spinward wanted her. She was being offered the key to mysteries whose existence she had not suspected. She glanced again at Lacuna. Lacuna wanted her.
There had been something biochemical about the underwater-like scene that Lacuna had inserted into her mind. Is that what had stimulated her curiosity? A straightforward appeal to her scientific training? Or had these thoughts of gratitude towards a benevolent Corporation been planted in her? But if she could imagine that possibility, surely there could have been no interference?
She needed to know more.
She was aware that terror had subsided to mere trepidation. It’s like learning to swim, she thought: once you’ve survived immersion, your fear is balanced by a sense of achievement.
She knew, also, that the reprieve was temporary. She expected to be scared witless again. But now, in this silent interlude, under Lacuna’s gaze, she was able to think clearly. There was no way out. It was sink or swim.
She wanted to know more.
‘Lacuna.’
‘Yes, my child?’
How could su
ch a cold voice contain such warm concern? Britta trembled, sensing the same thrill she experienced whenever her screens started flashing up the results of a successful experiment.
‘Belmos – all those colonists, the system station as big as a planet – isn’t that the Corporation’s main base?’
‘Administration. Trading. Finance. Personnel. Of course. All on Belmos. Other corporations exist only to fulfil those functions. The Spinward Corporation has a higher purpose. That purpose is here. Pool is here.’
‘But Arcadia is so isolated. There’s nothing here. And it’s so distant from the other Spinward worlds.’
‘Is it? Think again, child. Can it not be seen as the central point of the hemisphere of the Spinward systems? Or perhaps we should think of the Spinward systems as a shield, behind which Arcadia and this station shelter from the intrusive attentions of Earth, and other corporations.’
‘But why, Lacuna? What’s so special about this station? Is it something to do with Arcadia itself?’
Lacuna closed her eyes. Britta felt a sudden pang of panic. Something was going to happen.
‘Come here, my child. They are growing bored with your questions. They wish to see you now.’
The words were innocuous, but somehow menacing. I could turn now, and run away, Britta thought. But she walked slowly across the circular chamber. Lacuna was waiting with outstretched arms.
‘They have sacrificed much, in the pursuit of knowledge,’ Lacuna said, almost chanting the phrases. ‘They have lost in order to gain. They are unlocking the doors of creation itself, but they have no eyes, no ears, no mouths, no fingertips. I serve them. I am content to be their sensory organs. Through me they experience the beautiful, the delicious, the sublime. Kneel before me!’ Lacuna’s eyes blazed icily down into Britta’s. ‘Now I will show them beauty.’
Britta knelt. She tried to look up, but her eyes filled with tears. Lacuna’s long fingers gripped her chin. The great bulbous head descended towards her. She flinched.
‘Keep still, child,’ Lacuna said sharply, and continued in her declamatory tone. ‘You see her eyes, blue and so bright, so brilliant with tears? Feel the softness of this cheek, the wetness of her weeping, the heat of her burning shame. Is she not beautiful? The most beautiful I have brought to you?’
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