It was a mirror. Britta had been dreaming: she was in the shallows, surrounded by waving fronds of weed, and looking up she saw herself, floating naked, face down, gazing at the sea bed.
But it wasn’t a dream. It was a mirror, suspended from the ceiling of the alcove which was now her bedroom. The mirror hadn’t been there when she’d gone to sleep, but Britta was becoming accustomed to the instability of her new environment.
She stretched her arms above her head, and watched her stomach tauten and her breasts rise across her ribcage. A secretive smile appeared on the face of her reflection. She frowned: she hadn’t been aware of smiling.
Her reflection didn’t frown. Its smile widened. It spoke to Britta. Its voice was Lacuna’s.
‘Time to wake up, pretty little Britta. Today is a big day. We might have visitors, so you must look your best. Get dressed.’
Now Britta smiled, sleepily. Her reflection was now wearing the short voile dress that had been her usual uniform in her few days in Lacuna’s domain. It was impractical and a bit daring: the sort of clothing she never used to wear. She couldn’t understand why she liked wearing it here.
How was it possible to feel comfortable and frightened at the same time? It had taken all her courage to undress in front of Dimitri, that first time. Now, according to Lacuna, she was displaying herself through Lacuna’s eyes to the innermost circle of the Corporation.
Even when Lacuna made her do the most disgusting things, when she couldn’t stop herself bursting into tears while Lacuna crooned hateful descriptions of her, she felt a sort of pride. The Corporation needed her, Lacuna said, and it was strangely exciting to be so important, to know that her suffering and her shame were a necessary part of the Corporation’s grandest scheme.
As she dropped the soft material round her shoulders and tied the sash, she wondered what Lacuna would do to her today. Something horrible: it was something horrible every day. Visitors, Lacuna had said. A big day. Britta felt a fluttering in her stomach: fear, but also anticipation.
This morning there were no garish cosmetics waiting for her on the lop-sided glass structure that served as her dressing table. She brushed out her hair quickly, checked her reflection in the mirrors that lined. her sleeping quarters, and pulled aside the satin curtain.
She almost fell down the new steps. During the night, the area beyond her alcove had been remodelled as a sunken grotto. Twisting stalagmites of phosphorescent crystal illuminated a path that wound between walls of folded rock. As she picked her way past luminous boulders, she heard the tinkle of falling water.
She felt she was being watched. She looked up – and saw herself. A three-dimensional representation of her face, like a death-mask carved in stone, was set into the wall. The face’s eyes were wide with fear; the lips were slightly parted. The path was lined with her face: every few steps she came upon another image of herself, another exact replica of her face. Britta grimacing; Britta protesting; Britta blindfolded, her mouth open. The grotto was a shrine to the indignities she had endured.
The path ended by dividing into two sets of steps, leading upwards. Between them a fountain played: its centrepiece was a statue of Britta, naked, half crouching, arms outstretched as if in supplication. The statue’s face was a picture of misery. The tinkling water was a trickle of tears that fell ceaselessly from’ its eyes into the bowl in which the statue stood:
Britta knew that she should feel disturbed, but her scientific training demanded to know how the grotto had been constructed so quickly, and how the likenesses of her had been created so accurately. And she also felt pride: all this had been made for her. She reached towards the statue’s hands, but didn’t dare to touch; anyway, Lacuna was waiting for her.
The corridors at the top of the steps had been altered again, split into junctions, ramps and stairways, proliferating like fractal images. It isn’t possible, Britta thought. The original chamber isn’t big enough to contain this maze of paths and junctions. How can it keep growing? How will I find the centre?
As usual, finding the centre was a matter of heading for the central, source of light. This was more difficult than it had been before, but it was possible.
It is beautiful, in a weird sort of way, Britta thought as she passed a stepped bridge that shrank in size to an infinitesimal point in its short span across a lower walkway. But what is it all for? I’m out of my depth in this place. Lacuna says that I’m beautiful, but she likes to make me look – well, twisted and unhappy. She says they like to see me that way. Whoever they are. But I think it’s her. She’s a bit peculiar, really. I hope I am being useful. She says I’m helping a lot. She says they like me.
And I suppose it must be true. All those faces, and the statue. Someone appreciates me.
Lacuna was waiting in the clear space at the centre of the chamber. As Britta stepped out of the darkness, Lacuna’s eyes snapped open. She smiled her voracious smile.
‘Our visitors might arrive today,’ she said, ‘if they have made good speed. They will be too late.’
‘What visitors, Lacuna? And too late for what?’
Lacuna ignored the questions. ‘You are as lovely as ever,’ she said. ‘Are you ready to show our masters some more of the ways in which you can express your loveliness?’
Britta felt the shiver of fear and anticipation again. She knew now that whenever Lacuna started talking like that, something nasty and shameful would happen.
‘Good,’ Lacuna said. ‘That is one of, your best expressions, my dear. I show them all such moments, you know. They have such a desire to see beautiful things. There are – negative factors in the depths.’
Britta had given up expecting answers, but her curiosity was undiminished. ‘Negative factors?’ she prompted.
Lacuna’s mouth tightened. ‘It doesn’t matter. This phase of the project is almost completed. The planetary experiment has reached the end of its useful life. Shutdown is imminent.’
‘We’re going to close the base on the planet?’
‘Of course. It has generated enough material. We will cull the remaining stock and bring the more adaptable of the androids back up to the station.’
‘And the planet will be abandoned? Shouldn’t we restore it to its pre-experimental ecology? We’ve introduced off-world species, haven’t we?’
Lacuna smiled again. ‘How delightfully naive. You silly girl, the planet win be destroyed, and everything on it too. Its mass is needed to fuel the second phase.’
Britta frowned. The answers were more perplexing than the questions. She changed direction. ‘And who are the visitors?’
‘Intruders from Earth. Nothing to worry about.’
‘Earth? But the holovid reports said–’
‘Stupid! The Corporation filters and adjusts the news for the benefit of its staff, you foolish child. Did you think we would allow distractions? The war is over, or as good as. Earth has survived. And they are sending investigators to interrupt our work here. But all this was predicted long ago. Our visitors are expected, and we have made preparations to welcome them,’
‘Oh. That’s alright then, I suppose,’ Britta said.
‘Of course it is, my dear. Now, I have work to do this morning. But shall we give our masters a treat first?’
‘Yes, Lacuna,’ Britta said, trembling.
‘Have you bathed this morning, pretty Britta?’
You know I haven’t, Britta thought, ‘No, Lacuna.’
‘Then let’s see what games we can play in the water, shall we?’ Lacuna pointed to an archway: Britta saw, beyond the arch, rippling liquid reflected on a blue ceiling. ‘Come into my bathroom, my dear.’
‘How – how do you know the expedition from Earth won’t trouble us?’ Britta said. She had no fear of water, but she knew that Lacuna would toy with her until she panicked, for the benefit of the watching Corporation. The smallest delay was worthwhile.
‘It has all been predicted,’ Lacuna snapped. ‘Their strength is unknown, of course, but our d
efences can defeat any feasible combination of Spacefleet and External Operations forces. Our work here is secure from everything.’
‘Except the unpredictable,’ Britta thought aloud.
‘Get into the bathroom,’ Lacuna said. ‘I’m going to make you suffer beautifully.’
‘If it doesn’t hurt it isn’t working,’ Bernice said, rubbing her stiff neck and trying to remember where she’d picked up such an idiotic phrase.
She had woken up in the chair in the TARDIS control room, and was rather surprised to find everything except her muscles and joints exactly as it had been when she had fallen asleep.
‘I need coffee,’ she announced to the empty room. ‘Tea would do. Even Eridanian brandy. Why has the Doctor never put a food dispenser in the control room?’
There was still a blank wall where there used to be a door to the interior of the TARDIS. The double doors were still closed. The console lights were still glowing reassuringly. Then she noticed that the time rotor had stopped moving.
We’ve landed, she thought. Doctor, where are you? Come to that, where am I?
She stood, stretched, and walked stiffly to the console. Wherever the TARDIS had materialized, the gravity was near Earth normal, according to the instruments. Not that the instruments could be relied on, in her experience. The atmosphere, too, was breathable – almost suspiciously suitable for humans.
‘Let’s see what you look like, then,’ Bernice said, and operated the scanner switch. She turned to the screen, and whistled as she drew in a breath. The TARDIS had landed on paradise.
Rolling green grassland undulated up to tree-covered hillsides. Beyond the hills, the distant peaks of blue mountains were crowned with snow. Cotton-wool clouds hung in a deep turquoise sky. In the foreground, a herd of small deer trotted out of a copse of broad-leaved trees.
Either I’m watching a promotional vid for a vacation planet, Bernice thought, or we’ve landed in someone’s safari park. Either way, I’m going to have to take a look.
She pulled the door switch, and one of the embossed wall panels swung open. She stepped outside.
It was real. The air was warm, and full of the scents of leaves and wild flowers. Only the buzzing of insects disturbed the silence. Bernice couldn’t resist it: she ran down a slope, threw herself into the long fronds of grass, and rolled over and over, laughing.
Then she lay on her back, clutching a clump of leaves in each hand, staring up at the clouds and basking in the touch of the sun on her face. Travelling in the space-time vortex was all very well, but after a brush with mortality and a bad night’s sleep nothing felt as good as being on solid ground.
But she still needed coffee. And food, her stomach told her. She sat up.
The far-off mountaintops were still white-tipped, the dark forest still covered the hills and patched the grassland. The deer were a little further away now, nibbling tree-shoots and casting nervous glances in Bernice’s direction.
Most grazing animals are edible, she thought. But my blaster’s somewhere in the TARDIS. And I’m not sure I could live with the guilt, anyway.
She climbed back up the slope, past the incongruous police telephone box, and reached the crest of the hillock. She shook her head in disbelief. The planet was inhabited, after all.
A river meandered between fields and orchards. The snaking black ribbon of a. road curved upwards from the riverside, and passed close to the mound on which Bernice was standing. And at the place, in the distance, where the road met the river, there was a huddle of red rooftops and a wisp of rising smoke.
Bernice looked back to the TARDIS. She couldn’t think how she could communicate with the Doctor, still less release him from the interior of his walled-up time machine. And, she reasoned, she wouldn’t be any use to anyone if she allowed herself to starve. ‘You’ll know where I’ve gone, won’t you, Doc?’ she said quietly. An animal bellowed mournfully from the fields below. Bernice set off for the town.
Among the crops that she recognized as she strode past the groves and fields were apples, pears, grapes, cherries and apricots; maize, wheat, courgettes, cabbages and olives; there were hives of bees, and huge clumps of rosemary; thyme and laurel. Everything looked ripe and perfect: the fruit was unblemished, the vegetables were vast.
She didn’t resist the temptation. By the time she was half-way to the town she was considerably less hungry, and was able to confirm that the planet’s produce tasted as wholesome as it looked.
She had lost sight of the town when she had descended into the rolling patchwork of fields and groves. And her preoccupation with satisfying her hunger had kept at the back of her mind her awareness that she had not seen a single agricultural machine. When she trudged to the summit of a hill planted with olive trees, therefore, and saw the town again, now only a kilometre distant, she was not prepared for the sight that met her eyes.
A structure of yellowy-white stone rose above the red rooftops. It was a castle. Bernice sat on the hilltop and stared at it.
As a child she’d seen images of fairy-tale castles in story vids. Her history studies had included medieval Europe: the Tres Riches Heures of the Due de Berri contained gloriously-coloured paintings of landscapes similar to the view before her. As an archeology student she had reconstructed three-dimensional images from recorded measurements of the low, worn walls that were all that remained of the stone fortresses that had existed a thousand years previously on Earth. But she had never seen a real castle before.
She needed a vid recorder. She needed her surveying pack. Everything was in her inaccessible room in the TARDIS. She took her notebook from the pocket of her jacket and started to write.
I’ve landed in archaeologists’ heaven. The TARDIS has brought us to Earth. Europe, in the Middle Ages.
But even as she wrote the words, she started to doubt them. It was a long time – fifteen years – since she’d been on Earth, but it hadn’t been quite like this. The sky...
The turquoise firmament – well, it might have been like that, once. Before the pollution and the clean-up and weather control. But this sky wasn’t clear, anyway. It was hazy, so thick with smog that you could look straight at the sun. And the sun was bigger and yellower than she remembered it.
The creature that crawled on to her left boot clinched it. Bernice took it for a beetle, at first, and went to brush it away. Her hand stopped in mid-air: the thing wasn’t a beetle, it wasn’t an insect of any sort. It had four legs and a long, forked tail connected to its hindmost body segment; a small middle section carried four rows of spiky feelers; and the head was a featureless wedge. She flipped it over: on the underside of the head were the mouth, a pair of mandibles, and two round eyes like those of a fish. Nothing like it had ever evolved on Earth.
‘You’re an indigenous life-form, aren’t you?’ Bernice said to it. ‘This planet – or this part of it – has been terraformed. You’ve more right to be here than these olive trees.’ She flicked it off her boot.
‘So if this isn’t Earth, where in the galaxy is it? And what’s a medieval castle doing on a terraformed planet? And why am I asking myself these questions when I could ask those chaps in the brown suits?’
Bernice stood up and made towards the group of four men she had spotted walking across a field below her.
They were trudging cross-country towards the town, and hadn’t seen her. As she hurried to catch up with them, she tried to work out what they were wearing. They were dressed in similar smocks of coarse, brown cloth, with laced leggings and leather boots. Two of them wore wide-brimmed hats. Each man was carrying an implement: a wooden staff with a metal attachment. Bernice suddenly realized that the poles were tools.
‘Call yourself a historian, Summerfield?’ she said to herself. ‘You’re looking at real live agricultural labourers.’
But they’re-reassuringly human, she thought. Curiously pale-skinned, though. In fact, they look like medieval Europeans must have looked, in the days before mass communications on Earth. Perhaps t
his is one of the early colonies – perhaps a colony that’s reverted to a pre-industrial level. Perhaps after a catastrophe – perhaps they’ve lost contact with other worlds.
‘Too many hypotheses,’ she told herself, ‘and not enough evidence.’ The men were close to the town’s battlemented walls now, but Bernice wasn’t far behind them. ‘Hello!’ she shouted. ‘Do you know where I can find a cup of coffee?’
The men stopped, turned to look at her, exchanged a few words, and started to run towards the walls.
How does the Doctor do it, Bernice thought, as she followed them. People stop and talk to him.
As they reached the twin-towered gateway, the men started shouting. A small crowd of townspeople emerged through the open gates and stared at Bernice. A contingent of them were wearing metal helmets and carrying crossbows. They watched Bernice nervously as they slotted bolts into their bows and cranked up the firing mechanisms.
‘Read all about it,’ Bernice shouted, lifting her hands in what she hoped was a universally recognized gesture of peaceful intent. ‘Town terrorized by unarmed archaeologist in scruffy jeans and old jacket.’
She was only a dozen paces from the guards now. They were little more than boys. They lifted their bows. The townspeople huddled in the gateway.
‘What’s the matter?’ she said. ‘Look, no hidden weapons, OK? I give in, I surrender. Take me to your leader, and all that.’
She could hear some of the advice that the townspeople were calling to the guards. ‘From another planet,’ she heard several times. Also the word ‘plague’. The demand, ‘Don’t let her in’, was taken up almost as an incantation; as the guards hesitated, the chant changed to ‘Kill her, kill her, now.’
Hell and damnation, they’re going to shoot those things, Bernice realized. She couldn’t think of anything to do or say.
She heard one of the guards say ‘All right, lads. Now.’ And she saw fingers curl round crossbow triggers.
Back on Garaman, the Spacefleet station, a policeman with mutton-chop whiskers had discovered the contents of Ace’s security locker.
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