Deceit

by Peter Darvill-Evans

  Taka smiled grimly. ‘And we can’t see through it. So we don’t know what might be waiting for us on the other side.’ He stood up suddenly, and looked along the line of grotesque asteroid-faces that stretched away into nothingness round the drum, against a background of empty, starless black. ‘You might as well run the estimate, Navigator,’ he said. ‘If it continues to contract at its present rate, have we got room to jump into warp?’

  ‘Already done it, Captain. We can’t jump unless we ignore the usual safety parameters. And,’ he gulped, ‘the rate of contraction has started to increase.’

  ‘Monitor it,’ Toko said. He strode round the bridge to where Defries, Johannsen, Ace and Daak were standing.

  ‘We’ve fallen into a trap, haven’t we, Captain?’ Defries said.

  ‘And it looks like our chances of getting out are getting slimmer by the second. It’s your show, Belle. I’m just the chauffeur. Do you want to pull out now?’

  ‘No!’ Daak roared. For once Ace agreed with him.

  ‘Keep him quiet, trooper,’ Defries said to Ace. ‘Captain, I don’t know much about space physics, but I reckon anyone who can turn an asteroid belt into a portrait gallery and create a barrier across all wavelengths round an entire solar system probably has the means to prevent this ship leaving.’

  ‘I reckon I agree, Agent,’ Toko said. ‘Can probably crush a troopship, too, like I could crush a flea.’ He pinched together a finger and thumb.

  ‘So we lose either way.’ Defries laughed suddenly, and stretched her arms above her head. ‘What do you say, Jerval? What would your people do?’

  A thin smile appeared on the tall, slim trooper’s normally expressionless face. ‘Let’s put it like this,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘If they ever find out how much shit you’ve got us into, they’ll probably try to kill you. But it’s a safe bet they’d rather die fighting something than suddenly, out here in space, without knowing what it is we’re up against.’

  Ace had never heard Johannsen say so many words in one speech. Defries thanked him for his opinion, but Ace didn’t believe she needed it. Ace suspected that Defries had no choice: not a single fastline communication had been received on the bridge – Toko had commented on it – and that meant Defries was on her own. Spinward was a big corporation, everyone knew that. Defries had to come back with proof of something illegal, or not bother to come back at all.

  ‘Damnation!’ Abslom Daak thrust himself between Defries and Toko. ‘Are we going to stand around talking until that barrier strangles us?’ Let’s get down to that planet and find something to kill.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Johannsen.

  ‘Sounds OK to me,’ Ace said.

  ‘Your decision,’ Toko reminded Defries.

  ‘Then let’s go,’ Defries said. ‘Would you issue the call to battle stations, Captain?’

  Sirens on every deck summoned gunners to their consoles and landing parties to transmat stations. Weapons lockers on the bridge were broken open and small arms were handed out. Iris valves opened at intervals around the circular deck as escape pods were put on stand-by.

  Daak thumped a protective hand on to Ace’s shoulder. Ace shook it off.

  The red dot in the hologram display inched closer to the green sphere that represented the planet Arcadia.

  Every now and then the roar of falling masonry echoed in the chamber. Soon the circular space would be empty but for the barely-visible prisms, and prisms within prisms, that showed where the interior dimensions had been folded in upon themselves. Britta avoided them. The dust of the decaying stonework swirled round her feet.

  The old and long-disused instrument panels were all visible now. Britta was struggling to cope with the antiquated, manually-operated controls of a monitoring station. Ten small, two-D screens in front of her displayed visual signals from the planet’s surface.

  She didn’t know who she was, communicating with; she didn’t know how she knew where to direct the search. Something on the edge of her consciousness nudged her, towards the right location. You’re in the Net, Lacuna had told her; just do as you’re told.

  Lacuna was a few metres away, surrounded by arrays of dials and screens. Frequently she would throw her misshapen head back and gaze intently at the holographic display: things were moving among the planets and moons, things that were not naturally part of the star system, and only one of the things was the intruding ship.

  At other times she would freeze, suddenly, and close her eyes. At these moments Britta felt the presence in her mind retreat slightly, and she guessed that the Corporation and Lacuna were in telepathic conference.

  And when not transfixed by the hologram or communing silently with her masters, Lacuna was dashing from one console to another, reading dials, jabbing buttons, kicking recalcitrant machines and screaming curses.

  Britta dared to interrupt her.

  ‘Lacuna,’ she called. She scanned the video screens again. ‘Lacuna, there are people on the planet. It’s inhabited.’

  ‘What? Drown them all, where are the X-ship droids when you need them?’ She poked frantically at a keyboard. ‘Of course it’s inhabited, little fool. The programme required it.’

  ‘But everyone up here thinks... And everyone on Belmos... It’s an abandoned colony, isn’t it?’ Britta stopped to order her thoughts. Everything she’d ever learnt or believed was being upended. ‘There are people on the planet, Lacuna. Who are they? They look – primitive. And what will happen to them? The experiment’s ending.’

  ‘Get on with the search, child. Those – those people are unimportant. They are part of the programme. They are dispensable now. Pool is almost at optimum. Remaining stock will be culled, as I told you before. Some win be brought here for Pool, the rest will be left on the planet.’

  Britta looked at the flickering images on her screens. They were young men and women. Children, too. All in old-fashioned clothes. They were remaining stock. They were to be culled. She fastened on the least distressing of her thoughts. ‘Pool?’ she said. ‘Who is Pool?’

  ‘Questions!’ Lacuna broke off her attempt to insert a new sub-routine into the station’s defence system. She threw herself across the room towards Britta. ‘Enough questions,’ she said. Britta backed away from Lacuna’s flailing hands. ‘Pool is their name. Pool is the corporate mind of the Corporation. A mind as wide and deep as yours is narrow and shallow. Pool controls us all. Pool can alter reality by the power of thought. Pool knows all. Except –’

  Lacuna stopped. Something on one of the screens had caught her eye.

  ‘Found it!’ she said. ‘One of the droids has found it.’

  Britta took her hands away from her face. The anomaly was obvious. On one of the screens, in the middle of an otherwise ordinary rural landscape, stood a large, blue box.

  ‘Such a small physical manifestation for such an intractable paradox,’ Lacuna mused. ‘Britta, summon more droids to that location. Whatever that thing is, we’ll learn its secrets if we have to break it into pieces.’

  ‘Yes, Lacuna,’ Britta said. ‘Do you think – do you think the box contains any people?’

  ‘If they’re still inside, Pool will deal with them. If they’re on the planet, they can stay there and die.’ Lacuna’s eyelids fell, Two seconds later, her eyes snapped open again. ‘No,’ she said. ‘There is another impenetrable conundrum on the planet. It is one of two life-forms that emerged from the box. One was human, and is of no consequence. Pool cannot analyze the other. It must be found. It will be used, or destroyed. Bring the box here, and continue the search.’

  ‘Perhaps we should have used the TARDIS,’ the Doctor said, as the first drops of rain fell from the dark grey clouds that had rolled across the sky.

  Francis, as usual, didn’t understand what the strange little man was talking about. Perhaps he was insane. He had walked for miles under the morning sun without bothering to shelter beneath his parasol; now that the sun had disappeared, he had opened the brightly-striped device arid was using
it to protect himself from the rain.

  ‘It’s not a parasol,’ the Doctor had snapped at him. ‘It’s an umbrella. The technology’s the same. Which do you think is the more useful application?’

  Francis had to admit that the Doctor had a point. His cloak was already heavy with water. He pulled the hood over his head. ‘It doesn’t rain in the middle of the day,’ he said. ‘Not usually. The weather has been very bad this year.’

  The Doctor stopped and looked up at the sky. ‘It will get worse,’ he said. ‘I wish I could see what was going on up there.’

  Francis could almost believe that the Doctor’s hard gaze could pierce the clouds. He touched the Doctor’s sleeve. ‘The forest is hard by the road ahead,’ he said. ‘We could take shelter.’

  ‘A hard rain,’ the Doctor said quietly, letting the drops of water run down his face. He turned his sharp eyes to Francis. ‘There is no shelter!’ he said angrily. ‘You humans are always ready to ignore or deny unpalatable truths, but you never think to question pleasing falsehoods. This place,’ he revolved on his heels holding his umbrella as a pointer, ‘this whole planet is just one long, lazy, relaxing soak in a warm and scented bath. And now someone’s pulled the plug out.’ He shook his dripping hat. ‘Let’s shelter under those trees.’

  By the time they reached the margin of the forest, the sky was a quilt of black and grey. The rain was falling in sheets, billowed by gusts of icy wind. The interior of the forest was quiet, so quiet that Francis could hear the smack of the occasional raindrop that found its way through the broad-leaved canopy to fall on the carpet of dry leaves.

  He pulled his cloak more tightly round his shivering body and, pushed through some brambles. Every step into the dark took him further from the wind and the rain. He realized that the Doctor was no longer following him.

  ‘Francis!’ the Doctor called. ‘Is the forest safe?’ He was standing between two massive trunks, silhouetted against the wild sky, flapping his umbrella.

  ‘Safe?’ Francis shouted back. ‘What do you mean?’ It was obvious that the Doctor had no intention of moving. Francis sighed, and plodded back to the forest’s edge. I’ll catch my death of cold, he thought.

  The Doctor was examining the woodland plants, his eyes darting from fern to tree to bramble, and then suddenly to Francis. ‘Wild animals?’ he suggested.

  Francis shook his head angrily. ‘Of course there are wild animals,’ he said. ‘Fox, boar, badger, weasel, squirrel. Nothing to fear. Now let us–’

  ‘Imported fauna,’ the Doctor interrupted quietly, and pointed to a tree. ‘What do you call this?’

  I’m cold, I’m wet, I’m on a journey I don’t want to make to a destination I don’t want to reach. Now I’m being interrogated by a madman. I should go on alone.

  ‘It’s a beech tree,’ Francis said.

  ‘And this?’

  ‘Nettles!’ Francis almost shouted. ‘Stinging nettles.’

  ‘And what about that?’

  Francis turned to follow the Doctor’s pointing umbrella. He hesitated. ‘Holly. Some sort of holly?’

  The Doctor’s umbrella pointed unwaveringly at a low bush with convoluted leaves. ‘Try again,’ he said.

  ‘Laurel. It could be laurel. Or myrtle. I’m not a woodsman, Doctor. Let us continue into the forest.’

  ‘In a minute. I’d like you to fetch a small branch of that shrub for me, please.’

  Francis shrugged and stepped towards the bush. It must be some variety of holly, he said to himself. But you know it isn’t, he thought. It’s one of those plants you never really notice. They seem to be cropping up all over the place these days. Ugly things. Not quite right, somehow.

  He arrived at the bush. Yes, there were more of them: bigger ones, different ones, deeper in the forest. He looked down at the long, purple leaves. They seemed to move independently of the gusts of wind.

  He remembered sunlight. Christina. Their last day together, at the waterfall. Maize growing wild in the grasses. These things growing in the forests. The purple leaves were fleshy, like a baby’s fingers. What was the Doctor trying to make him see?

  ‘I can’t,’ he said, and turned back to the Doctor. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It belongs here,’ the Doctor said. ‘The beech trees and the nettles don’t. Neither do you.’

  ‘I know that,’ Francis said, suddenly angry. Had the little madman listened to nothing he had told him? ‘We are descended from people who came from another world. We came in ships from the sky, many years ago. The proof is in the books which I discovered.’

  The Doctor stared at him. ‘Are you trying to tell me, Francis,’ he said, ‘that the rest of the population is even less curious and inquisitive than you? You’re all being used for – for something.’ He scratched his head. ‘The ground is dry here. Let’s sit down, have a rest, and wait for the rain to stop. How much further do we have to travel?’

  ‘A long way. The road to Landfall is long and perilous...’ Francis noticed the Doctor’s impatience. ‘I don’t know. I found maps, but they are incomplete. The Humble Counsellors tell us only the things we need to know.’

  ‘They tell you everything but,’ the Doctor said.

  They sat side by side on the exposed roots of a tree, gazing in silence at the rain slanting across the fields.

  In the depths of the forest behind them they heard a noise. A roar, and a crashing of undergrowth.

  ‘Wild boar?’ the Doctor said.

  Francis shrugged.

  A fountain played in the pool in the centre of the square atrium. Its tinkling sound was drowned by the noise of the rain falling on the tiles that covered the terrace, where Bernice was sitting in a wicker armchair. She wasn’t cold: each of the romanesque arches that cloistered the paved atrium and supported the terrace roof contained glazed doors which kept out the wind and the rain. And the flagstones beneath her feet were warm.

  Under-floor heating, she thought. And damned good mulled wine. Comfortable cushions, with fine damask covers. And a view of fountains in the rain, surrounded by vast terracotta pots sprouting orange trees. It’s all rather hypnotic.

  She brought the goblet to her face and inhaled cinnamon and clove with the alcoholic fumes.

  Medieval life wasn’t so dreadful after all. Perhaps the text books were wrong. During her drive through the town of Beaufort she’d seen no dung in the streets, no beggars or cripples, no houses made of anything but straight timbers, well-laid courses of bricks, and dressed stone.

  The Delahaye villa – the smallest of the family’s residences, Lord Gerald had pointed out, and not at present being used by the household – was situated in a quiet suburb of Beaufort. It was the perfect place to house a visitor who might be a plague carrier and who might need protection from a fearful mob. The neighbouring villas were set wide apart, each in its own walled grounds, and most were as unoccupied as the Delahayes’. The suburb was the only part of the town on the eastern bank of the river known as the Slow Brochet, and the only way to reach it was across an arching stone bridge with its own crenellated guardhouse and mail-clad guards.

  Bernice was alone in the villa. There must be servants, she supposed: someone must bring in fresh food, and fuel for the heating. But she hadn’t seen anyone yet.

  Lord Gerald had opened a room for her. She was sitting outside it now, watching the rain fall in the courtyard. It was bigger than her room in the TARDIS. The bed was a four-poster, like the ones she’d seen in books, with a mattress as soft as marshmallow and curtains of shot silk. Lord Gerald, apologizing stiffly for the absence of domestic staff, had managed to locate clean sheets and towels, new items of what he called feminine attire (and which Bernice classified as very fancy fancy dress), and a tray of bread, cheeses, grapes and mulled wine.

  When he had departed, promising to return soon, Bernice had rolled up the slatted shutters to look out on a walled orchard of fruit trees and cropped grass. The rain had just started, rustling the leaves.

  I could get t
o like it here, Bernice thought, as she took another swig of the wine, if it weren’t for the bars at the window of my room. I really ought to start feeling guilty about not being much help to the Doctor. But this is more than just a touch more comfortable and interesting than the average prison. The architecture’s fascinating. Very fine carvings on those arches. Almost impossibly regular. Must have a closer look. In a minute.

  She wriggled deeper into the cushions, closed her eyes, and listened to the falling rain. She started to sing, a lullaby that her father had sung to her. The raindrops seemed to fall into the rhythm of the tune.

  She stopped, suddenly alert, eyes open. It wasn’t the sound of the rain. Somewhere in the villa, somewhere above the ceiling, a muffled knocking continued the slow rhythm of the song.

  It stopped.

  There’s something in here with me, Bernice thought. She shivered. She listed the possible candidates for imprisonment in a medieval society: dangerous animals, lunatics, criminals, and the infectiously ill. She couldn’t decide which she’d rather share a prison with.

  Doctor, if you’re as telepathic as you make out, this is a distress call, right? Maybe you’d better come and get me out of this.

  Francis spoke again. ‘Doctor?’

  ‘Hm? Sorry. Thought I heard something.’

  ‘So did I. It’s that noise again. Listen.’

  Above the noise of the falling rain, Francis could hear a scratching, rustling sound. Something was moving through the forest.

  ‘Ah yes,’ the Doctor said. ‘It sounds quite large, doesn’t it?’

  Bilious fear bubbled in Francis’s gut. He didn’t want to be here, in the rain, in the forest, in the cold, with this manic off-worlder and with something unseen among the dark trees. His life was books. Books and beds.

  ‘I don’t know!’ he almost shouted. ‘I’m just an Apprentice Scribe. Don’t ask me.’

  The Doctor stared at him, a schoolmaster staring at a wayward pupil. ‘You’ve had a better education than most on this benighted planet,’ he said. ‘Use it. What can live in the forest? Only creatures that can survive on the forest plants and on smaller forest creatures.’