Come into the drawing room with me awhile, and explain to me why Kedin thinks he needs to have Bilton. I’m sure we’ll be able to come to an understanding.’
As the Duke led her away Tevana glanced over her shoulder. Madok saw her confused expression, her wide eyes.
He made to follow, but felt Kedin’s hand on his arm.
‘We need Vethran to buy these vehicles,’ Kedin whispered urgently. ‘Tevana knows that. She’ll be all right.’
Later, after dusk had fallen and all the guests had departed in their carriages, Madok tried to concentrate on the intricate wording of the contract. From the room above the study in which he was working he could hear Tevana, no longer sobbing but instead exclaiming angrily that Vethran was an animal, and that she would never see him again no matter what depended on it.
He heard Kedin assuring Tevana that she was safe, that Vethran would not try to carry out his vile suggestions, that Vethran depended on Kedin’s advice and inventions.
But what will happen when Vethran has conquered the whole world, Madok wondered. He’ll need no one then.
Neither Tevana nor Kedin will be safe. The rocket: it must be made to work. We have helped to create Vethran; now we must be sure we can outrun him.
And then, some years later...
The only sound was made by insects buzzing angrily against the exterior of the translucent panels.
‘It’s awful hot here, Doctor,’ Jamie said. He shook his kilt to create a draught around his legs. He could see the shapes of bugs the size of his hand clinging to the outside of the circular structure, and he hoped that the cloudy material was less flimsy than it looked.
‘We’re on the equator, Jamie,’ the Doctor said, and continued his promenade around the curving desks.
‘That’s the wee line that runs round the middle of a planet,’
Jamie said. One day, he thought, the Doctor would realize that he had acquired an education during their travels together.
It’s as if he thinks that explaining the cause of the heat makes it more bearable, Jamie thought. And he can stare at those flickering lights and flashing numbers as long as he likes; I swear he’s no more idea of what they mean than he has of how to read the console of the TARDIS. It’s a miracle we ever get anywhere.
The TARDIS, incongruous as ever, stood like a weather-beaten hut that had been plucked from a hillside and set down in the centre of the circular room. The door was open, and Jamie knew that the interior was cool. And he’d never once found an insect anywhere in the ship’s labyrinthine corridors. A bead of sweat trickled down his chest.
‘Could we not go somewhere else?’ he said. ‘There’s no one here. It’s just a room full of electrical equipment,’ he added, enjoying the ease with which the phrase slipped from his tongue.
The Doctor stopped, turned to face Jamie, frowned, fiddled with his bow tie, thrust his hands into the pockets of his vast, dusty frock coat, and then pulled them out to ruffle his already untidy mop of dark hair. ‘I can’t help thinking that the TARDIS must have brought us here for a reason,’ he said.
‘When we turn up somewhere unexpected, something usually happens.’
‘Aye, and it’s usually something bad.’ And when do we ever turn up somewhere we’ve planned to, Jamie added in his thoughts. ‘But whatever it is, it’s not happening, Doctor. Not this time. We’ve been in this furnace a half-hour and we’ve seen no one and heard nothing. Perhaps we’ve arrived a wee bit early. We’ve a ship that can travel anywhere in time and space; let’s go away and come back again after a while. I’m sure you can bring the TARDIS back to within an inch of its present position and in exactly six hours from now. By which time it might be cooler.’
‘Now, now, Jamie,’ the Doctor said. His face attempted to look simultaneously amused, hurt and severe. ‘I’m pretty sure I know how to control the TARDIS, you know. The old girl simply needs a little sympathetic understanding.’
‘Aye, Doctor,’ Jamie said. ‘So we’ll go inside now, and you’ll just move the ship forward by a few hours?’ He stepped towards the TARDIS’s welcoming doorway, and was delighted to see that the Doctor was doing the same.
‘Well,’ the Doctor began, and then stopped, stared into the distance, and started counting on his fingers and muttering to himself. ‘I must admit Jamie,’ he announced at last, ‘that I’m not confident of performing a manoeuvre of such delicacy.’ His frown disappeared and was replaced by a toothy grin. ‘But I’m sure I’ll be able to do it one day. And, as you say, we can go anywhere in time and space. So it doesn’t matter whether we decide to come back immediately, or in two weeks, or in twenty years. We can still arrive just here, and six hours from now.’
‘That’s if you can remember to come back, Doctor. You’ll need a good memory if you’re going to leave it for twenty years.’ Jamie’s opinion was that he’d rather trust a redcoat than the Doctor’s memory.
The Doctor nodded enthusiastically. ‘Of course, Jamie, of course. I’ll need something to remind me. Something from here. Be a good chap and find something memorable, and bring it into the TARDIS.’ He strode into the dark interior of the big blue box, leaving Jamie alone and perspiring in the circular room.
Something memorable, Jamie thought as he surveyed the rows of illuminated desks; there’s nothing here that’s different from anything else. When you’ve seen one range of flickering wee lights you’ve seen all of them. Ah! I’ll take that.
It was the only unusual thing in the room: a tall column of brightly coloured wires, twisted together into a complex but organized shape. Better still, there was writing on the base of the column: Mendeb Two PCS. The Doctor couldn’t fail to remember where it was from.
Shaking sweat from his hair, Jamie wrestled with the thing until he was able to pull it free from the desk into which it had been set. He staggered backwards: the object was heavier than it looked. As he turned towards the TARDIS the socket from which he had tugged the artefact seemed to gape at him like a mouth, open in outrage or warning.
‘I’ve got something, Doctor,’ he called. ‘But I think it might be something important.’
‘Oh, I doubt that, Jamie,’ the Doctor’s voice said from deep within the TARDIS. ‘I thought you were keen to set off for somewhere with a pleasant climate. Come along.’
A vision of the Highlands swam into the young Scot’s mind.
Mist and drizzle; frost-rimed heather. He hefted the thing on to his shoulder and ran through the open doorway.
And then, later still...
‘You’ve been redecorating.’ The Doctor leant against the frame of the door of Ace’s room. His piercing gaze darted from the walls, newly bare, to the shelving, now with weaponry and explosives stacked separately from recorded music, to the colourful new rugs. ‘And tidying. I’m impressed.’
Ace laughed, for no reason other than that she hadn’t seen the Doctor for a couple of days, and she was pleased to see him.
She couldn’t even be bothered to find his lack of manners irritating, but for form’s sake she scowled at him and said,
‘Professor, I suppose you know you’re supposed to knock, and wait to be invited in, before entering a lady’s bedroom?’
He wasn’t listening. He was staring at the metal and plastic structure which she had installed as an objet d’art on a table in the corner of the room.
‘Where on earth did you find that?’ he said.
She might have guessed. He was probably about to announce that it was a timed-fuse anti-matter bomb, or a crucial component of the TARDIS’s hostile actions displacement mechanism. She’d had it sussed as part of a communications system. She resigned herself to losing it.
‘Nowhere on Earth, that’s for sure. Not from around my era, anyway. That’s seriously futuristic technology. I found it lying at the back of one of the storage cupboards on the twelfth level. Can I keep it?’
The Doctor strode across the room and plucked the object up with his right hand.
And that’s another
irritating thing about him, Ace thought.
I was sweating buckets by the time I’d hauled that object down here. Him and his Time Lord powers.
‘It’s part of a communications system,’ he said. Ace smiled to herself. ‘Have you noticed the lettering on the base?’
‘Gibberish, I thought,’ she said.
‘Mendeb Two PCS,’ the Doctor read. What do you make of that?’
Now that he’d said the words aloud, the meaning was obvious.
‘Mendeb Two sounds like a planet,’ she said.’ “PCS” could be planetary communications system, seeing as that what we think it is anyway.’
‘Yes,’ the Doctor said slowly. ‘Do you know, Ace, I think you’re right.’
‘And you’re surprised?’ she protested, but he wasn’t listening. He was already on his way out of her room, with the structure of twisted metal under his arm.
‘This may be important,’ the Doctor called over his shoulder.
I’ll stay here, then, shall I? Ace asked silently. Nice to see you, Doctor, thanks for dropping in.
Then she smiled. Maybe the Doctor would land the TARDIS, once he’d worked out why her metal sculpture was important. She wandered over to the shelves that she hadn’t yet dared tell the Doctor she called The Armoury. Maybe she’d have to blow something up again.
Chapter One
They would be there soon. That was all the Doctor had said.
All there was for Ace to do was wait.
And that’s just what I used to do, she thought, before the Doctor turned up in my life. I was waiting on tables in that grotty bar on Iceworld. And waiting for something interesting to happen.
Ace was lying, fully clothed, on her bed, a floor-level platform in the middle of her newly Spartan room. She looked at each of the four walls in turn.
She was feeling thoroughly fed up.
So this is it, then, she told herself. This is the lot of a Time Lord’s assistant. The excitement and adventure of travelling in time and space. Was I worse off as a waitress? Not much.
It was the bare walls that annoyed her most, she decided.
Because she had no idea what to decorate them with. Back on Earth, a lifetime ago, she’d known exactly what she wanted on the walls of her bedroom: pictures of sexy men.
At first she’d shared her bedroom with Adam Ant; then George Michael. Even when her musical tastes had moved on to Primal Scream and the Jesus And Mary Chain, she’d still secretly had a thing for George.
But who did she fancy now? She didn’t even know how long she’d been away. Who was it cool to lust for these days?
The last film she’d been to see, just days before she was in the chem lab at school and carried out the experiment that had gone only slightly wrong but had swept her up in a time-storm anyway, had been an arty thing called With nail and I.
She’d thought it was really funny, even though her mates who were with her didn’t get it. There had been a fanciable bloke in that; now what was his name? He was definitely gorgeous. Who was he? That was it: Richard E Grant.
Why couldn’t the Doctor be more like Richard E Grant?
That, Ace was sure, would make life in the TARDIS much more interesting. Richard E Grant wouldn’t treat her like an educationally sub-normal infant. He’d realise that Ace was grown up now, and had her own opinions; her own life to lead; her own feelings and desires.
Adam Ant; George Michael; who else? Who now?
Ace sat up suddenly. No use brooding. Might as well mix up some more high explosive.
Madok couldn’t help looking up again and again at the dome.
He recognised the geodesic steel polygons that contained the vast glass panes: Tevana’s theoretical model, one of her last projects, transformed into grandiose, awe-inspiring reality thanks to Kedin’s steel foundries and Vethran’s boundless self-aggrandisement.
Every time he came to court there was something new. The last time he’d visited the Summer Palace he’d been amazed to find that the entire structure had been faced with pink marble. And now the great courtyard of Vethran’s home Citadel had been roofed with this hemisphere of glass.
There was almost no trace of the compact fortress that Vethran had inherited with his dukedom: the sprawling, towering, expanding Citadel had smothered the older structure as completely as Vethran had obscured his relatively humble beginnings. Vethran’s father had been considered an upstart when he declared Gonfallon a duchy: it was smaller than many mere counties. Madok had been a child at the time, but he remembered the scandal. It was little more than a decade since Vethran had come into the dukedom, and now every duchy, county and manor on the planet acknowledged Vethran as King.
‘Remarkable, isn’t it?’ Balon Ferud said.
Madok lowered his gaze and forced himself once again to engage in courtly chat with the royal councillor. ‘Quite remarkable, my lord,’ he said, and couldn’t resist adding:
‘But of course, labour is - ah - cheap, these days.’
Balon’s bluff, round face broke into a smile that deceived Madok for not a moment. The councillor swept out a chubby arm in a gesture that encompassed the filigree decoration on the girders of the dome as well as the army of gardeners at work in the newly planted borders and the omnipresent serving-women in their indecently transparent skirts. ‘But surely you can’t disapprove?’ he asked mildly.
Madok’s smile was as wide and as feigned. ‘How could anyone?’ he replied, as images of the aftermath of Vethran’s latest conquest flashed through his mind. ‘With all humility I can claim to have played some part in helping to bring all this about.’
With all humility, Madok thought. Oh yes. I’m Kedin Ashar’s man, and Kedin made Vethran ruler of all. Great heavens, what have we done?
Balon raised a hand, and at once one of the women scurried to his side to refill his glass. Madok nodded and smiled at her: he didn’t know whether he was more discomfited by the proximity of her nearly naked body or by her pathetic eagerness to please. She seemed perplexed to find that his glass was still full.
Madok drank and ate nothing during his visits to the royal palaces. He was aware of the expertise of the King’s chemists.
He was so hungry now that his stomach was cramping, but he dared not so much as sip the wine.
Balon leant forward. The gilt buttons and brocade on his uniform glittered; medals jingled ostentatiously on his broad chest. It’s said that his majesty intends this entire courtyard to become his new throne room,’ he whispered, as though imparting exclusive news. ‘And in due course the Council will award him imperial honours. In recognition of his valiant deeds.’
It was Madok’s experience that Vethran always took whatever he wanted, and that if he wanted the title of Emperor he would have it. But he thought it undiplomatic to point that out to one of the King’s councillors, so he merely adjusted his expression to indicate polite surprise.
‘Did you see that?’ Balon exclaimed, sweeping his arm up towards the apex of the dome and indicating the cloudy sky beyond the glass.
‘What, my lord?’ Madok said. This was, he was sure, another transparent attempt to lure him into revealing sensitive information.
‘It’s gone now,’ Balon complained. ‘Moved damned quickly.
I think it might have been one of those flying darts that people have reported seeing.’
‘Have they, my lord?’ Madok said. ‘I haven’t heard these rumours.’ So, Vethran and his councillors knew something about the scout ships. He suppressed the sudden pang of fear that his own ship might have been discovered: it was much more likely that his ship, or others, had merely been glimpsed in transit.
‘I expect Kedin Ashar would know about such things,’
Balon went on. ‘But we never see him at court these days.
Why is that?’
At last: a direct question.
‘Kedin Ashar is kept busy, as you know, my lord,’ Madok replied. ‘Now that he has been awarded the title of Lord of the Skies he has to attend to
the responsibilities that are entailed. And there is still a war on.’ A direct answer, too, and truthful as far as it went.
‘So he’s -’ Belon jerked his head up and lifted his eyes, indicating both an interrogative suggestion and a skyward direction.
‘Exactly so, my lord,’ Madok said. ‘Kedin finds himself up there all the time. But he’s keen to return.’ And that was entirely true.
‘So let me guess,’ Ace said. ‘We’ve arrived on Mendeb Two.’
The Doctor hadn’t summoned her to the control room, but she’d hurried there anyway: she knew how to interpret the changes in the hums and groans that coursed like the complaints of an antique central-heating system beneath the corridors of the TARDIS.
‘Ah, well, yes,’ the Doctor said, struggling into his jacket while simultaneously trying to make adjustments to the instruments on the scanner module. ‘And no. Hello, Ace,’ he added, as if he’d only just noticed her. He grinned. ‘Good to see you again. All ready for the off?’
‘So where are we, then?’ Ace was in no mood to be diverted.
‘We’re approaching the Mendeb system,’ the Doctor said.
He had one finger raised: always a bad sign, it meant he was in lecture mode. ‘It’s really quite an interesting place. Three gas giants, in unusually close orbits.’
‘But we’re not going to the gas giants.’ Ace wanted to cut to the chase. Once the Doctor got going there was no stopping him.
‘Well, no, we’re not. We’re going to Mendeb Two. The smaller of the two inhabited planets.’
‘Two inhabited planets?’ This was more interesting. There could be scope here, Ace reckoned, for her to operate independently for a change. Meet some people. A thought struck her. ‘Inhabited by humans, right?’
‘Oh yes. Completely human, on both planets. Originally colonised by the TAM corporation.’
Ace grimaced. She’d frequently had reason to access the TARDIS’s history abstracts relating to mankind’s trek to the stars in the first half of the third millennium. ‘We don’t like the TAM corporation.’
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