‘And do they know what your real plans are?’
‘Really, Doctor. I still don’t know who sent you here. And you know, until the power is revived it could prove most difficult to return you from whence you came.’
The Doctor stops his orbit. The planet confronts the star. ‘I thought it might,’ he says softly. ‘By the way, where’s Pelham? In your sick-bay, I hope.’
‘In a way, Doctor. In a way. What did happen in the tomb?’
‘Tomb?’
‘Come, come. We are practical men. You didn’t just wander into the tomb of Valdemar by mistake.’
‘You’d be surprised.’
Was that a twitch? Was he succeeding in irritating this Prospero of the palace into losing his temper and doing something appallingly dangerous?
‘It took me six years and an entire fortune to locate the planet, let alone procure the bathyscape that would withstand the drop to the surface.’
‘Well done, you’re a very patient man. Let me tell you what I want, Mr Neville. I want to get back to my ship down in this tomb and I want to get on with the very important task I have been assigned. Now, what do you want? To get the power back on, is that it? You only have to ask.’
Neville is thrown. A little. ‘I want the power back on.’
‘Why?’
‘That is my business, Doctor.’ Neville looks up at the controls, the gigantic power relays embedded in the ceiling.
The Doctor sees something like greed growing in the man. He presses again, trying to retain the advantage. ‘You realise that would be a highly dangerous and foolish thing to do.
Why do you want to disinter an alien corpse? What are you expecting to find?’
Neville stares at him. He isn’t used to being crossed. ‘Don’t push me, Doctor.’
Stop. Stop there. The Doctor now has no doubt that as soon as Neville thinks he knows everything about him, when he has outlived his usefulness, the magician will kill him.
He stares back anyway, guileless, inquisitive. Neville returns his stare. They glare like this for far too long for their stares to be innocent.
‘I forget my manners,’ says Neville at last, dropping his gaze, the anger that’s bottled inside him fermenting, growing.
‘Let us withdraw for some refreshment. Before you return and begin work on restoring the power.’
‘And what makes you think I can get the power back on?
I’m flattered of course, but we’ve only just met.’
Neville smiles and indicates that the Doctor go back into the lift shaft. ‘You’d better, Doctor. After all, this is a large and very strange structure. Without power I worry about the safety of your young companion, the lovely Romana, wandering around lost in the dark corridors. I worry. I really do.’
‘Ah.’ The Doctor tries to think, to gain time for himself. To weigh up the odds. The floor is marked with an odd bulbous relief pattern, like a three-dimensional mosaic. He looks up.
‘Did someone mention refreshments? I could murder a cup of rosie.’
Unaware of her position as bargaining chip, Romana is getting used to life with the young. She had never realised that those with so little time behind them could be so desperate. They work so hard to amuse themselves, yet are amused so seldom. These pretty children are bored.
Romana wishes she could help. All she does, all she has ever done, is study. There was never much levity at the Academy. All leisure time was given up to a quite conscious development of mental and physical skills, from telepathic meditation to learning the traditional waltzes (days of studying the steps in yellowing, dusty old tomes – they’d called them the ‘Foxtrots of Rassilon’) and swimming. She hadn’t minded the swimming.
The children don’t know why they have come to this strange palace in the sky and they don’t know what to do now they’re here.
The only clue is the way they reacted when this Paul Neville walked in. They bowed, lowered their eyes in a highly ritualised manner. Clearly a man with a great hold over them. Even she had felt an aura about the cloaked figure, a self-possession that inspired respect. Wary respect. She hopes the Doctor is being careful.
She picks at another bunch of so-perfect-they-just-have-to-be-artificial Burgundy grapes and tastes them. Sadly, they are delicious.
Every step she and the Doctor are taking here seems to be moving them further and further away from their mission.
There’s no focus here, no answers, just more and more that’s new until what they need to be doing, what they should be doing, is getting lost. As with the segment, she feels her mind is clutching at something just beyond her perception. She cannot allow herself to be drawn into this masquerade. The Key, she tries to concentrate, the Key is the focus.
‘Romana! We must find you a costume,’ chirps Tenniel, hauling her away from her wine and grapes with a surprisingly muscular grip. ‘What animal would you like to be?’
‘How about a cow?’ sniffs Hermia, sulking in the background.
‘Oh, I think I’m perfectly satisfied with being myself,’
Romana replies, smiling the way she was taught. She wonders whether she has made a mistake. Don’t contradict them, don’t do anything to upset them and you’ll be fine, she thinks, trying to remember the brief seminars on ‘what to do when confronted with hyperactive, unstable, dangerously wealthy children’.
‘Bor-ing!’ yells the girl in yellow. ‘Did she pick that herself?’
‘Come on, I’ll find you something.’ Tenniel wraps a great hairy arm round her waist and lifts her up from the floor, fully prepared to carry her away.
‘Do you mind?’ she snaps. He doesn’t let go.
‘It’s only a bit of fun! You’ve got to join in!’
Flailing, embarrassed, affronted, Romana yanks the lion’s head over his face. Somewhere on his back, fabric tears.
Tenniel lets go of Romana and slips. She holds her arms out to stop him but over he goes. His head bounces inside the mask as it hits the floor.
‘Are you all right?’ Romana asks. ‘I apologise for hurting you. However, it has been a very trying day and I’m not in the mood for games.’
The only sound is a kind of muffled grunting from the lion.
Tenniel writhes on the floor.
The other guests are looking at him, stunned. Well, that all went just about as badly as it could have gone. Wonderful.
Triple first. At least the Doctor wasn’t here to see it.
However, to Romana’s bemusement, instead of sending for the guards, Hermia and the others begin to giggle. They point at their companion and shake along with his agony. ‘Look at him! Tenny... “it’s only a bit of fun”!’
‘Doesn’t he look stupid!’
‘Like a little fish!’
Others have come to join in. Perfect specimens, aping his movements, his pain. Within seconds it has become a new dance. A dark-ringleted boy whisks Romana around. She starts to feel sick. The room with its mad curves and colours, the music and shrieking and baying of the guests, the choking stench of the incense. She must pull herself free; she must clear her head of this whirling vertigo.
Only when the yellow girl commences kicking Tenniel with her pointed shoes does Romana realise this has all gone too far. With a nervous swallow, she decides she is going to have to do something. Remember, this is why you joined the Doctor, to do things.
Luckily, before she risks another confrontation, someone else joins the party.
The three girls stop laughing and turn. Tenniel stops shaking.
Into this decadence, this mayhem, comes a donkey, a baroque donkey, wreathed in paper flowers. Not a mask this time, a full head. And a tail. And hooves.
The donkey enters in a decidedly bipedal fashion and Romana realises that this must be yet another guest. It brays, and she feels that whoever is inside probably feels the same way about these people as she is beginning to.
Like a pack of wolves, the party-goers fall on the unfortunate creature. ‘Hello ass!’ shrieks an
excited Hermia, eyes glittering with delight. They start to pull its ears and tail, as well as throwing kicks and punches. It falls, blindly.
Romana spins away, unable to watch. There is no forethought here, no planning. Just animals tearing at each other, with the slightest veneer – an excuse really – of civilisation to pretend this is still fun.
Surprising herself, she wades in. With a roughness she never believed she possessed, she pushes the others away and hauls the donkey to its hooves. She spots a merciful door and drags him through it, away from the curses and disappointed wails. She notes that no one has tried to follow.
‘Let me get this off you,’ she says when at last she finds a dark, cool corner. She wants to change her clothes; her flimsy garments are ruined.
With a heave, the donkey’s head comes away. Flowers sprinkle the metal floor. Romana flings the head back along the corridor where it rolls and ends up half in shadow, eyes staring stonily back at them.
To Romana’s surprise, instead of the gratitude she was expecting, the boy who is revealed pushes her away and squats by the curving wall, his head buried in his still-costumed arms. ‘Leave me alone!’ cries a cracked, high-pitched voice.
Romana takes several deep breaths. When she has calmed herself, she asks, ‘Are you all right?’
This is the first boy here she has seen with ginger hair.
At her voice, he stiffens. He peeks a green-eyed glimpse at her and Romana realises she was wrong. This isn’t a boy; it’s a man.
‘Who are you?’ he asks.
Not again, thinks Romana. ‘Did they damage you in any way?’ she asks in return.
‘D-damage?’
‘Your friends. I think they lost themselves for a moment.
I’m sure they didn’t mean it.’
A smile. Pale, freckled skin. ‘They’re not my friends. I hate them and they hate me.’
The face is revealed and it is a boy after all. How could she have been so sure it was a man? Those eyes were mature, they knew.
Romana feels those eyes on her now, and the sensation is not pleasant, as if they’d popped out of their sockets and are crawling over her. The boy’s face is a ruin, almost a model of the misery of puberty. Huge red pustules swarm across it and its surface swims in its own grease. The bright, carrot-coloured hair contrasts poorly with skin so pale it seems green, or at least bruised. Then the boy flushes red, his breathing increasing as he weighs her up with an equal lack of forgiveness.
For all these obvious signals, however, something is wrong.
Romana senses someone, another person, beneath the adolescent exterior. It is like he is the victim of plastic surgery gone drastically wrong. This person is not a child; she cannot help but know that.
His breathing reminds her that they are hunched close together in the corner of a darkened corridor. ‘Who are you?’
she asks, pulling her clothes in, covering herself up.
Arrogant now, proud he has been asked a question, the boy/man stands up. Romana understands that his manner is a front; she could crack him like a glass window. ‘I’m Huvan,’ he says, too brashly.
‘That... that’s a nice name,’ she replies, wondering how not to offend him.
‘No, it’s not. I hate that too.’
‘Oh. Is there anything you like?’ Try to keep the irritation out of your voice, Romana.
Huvan smiles, his teeth looking sour and repellent.
Romana tries not to let her repugnance prejudge this youth.
‘Oh yes,’ he says. ‘Oh yes.’
She understands what he means. Change of subject, she thinks. ‘I’m sure those people in there don’t really hate you,’
she says, for want of anything else.
‘Yes, they do. They just pick on me all the time. Said I had to wear this costume.’ He hauls off his false hooves.
‘Do you do everything they say?’
He seems unsure. She is on uneven ground once again. ‘Of course not, don’t be stupid.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Romana flinches as she realises Huvan is thinking about placing a freckled hand on her arm. He spots the flinch and the hand jerks away. Why did she flinch?
‘No, I’m sorry,’ he says charmlessly. ‘Thanks, I s’pose, for helping me. You didn’t have to. They won’t follow me, they’re not allowed out of the piazza.’
‘That’s all right. I’d had more than enough of their fun and games. Do you stay here, in the palace?’
Huvan looks round. ‘Yes. Mr Neville brought me. He’s my master.’
‘Master?’
‘I was sold to him, as a kid. Not like those others, they think they’re using him but they’re wrong. I’m special, you see. Mr Neville needs me.’
‘Really?’
Huvan winks, as if letting her in on a secret. ‘That’s right.
Come back to my room...’
He stops talking and blushes. ‘I mean, to talk.’
‘Of course. What else?’
He giggles, trying to hold the sound in. ‘Nothing. Just to talk. I’m going to tell you my life story. It’s really interesting.
Interesting and sad. You may not believe it, but I am a very sad man.’
Romana is having trouble following these illogical thought processes. There is something strange about this boy. Still, if he can shed some light on what is actually going on in this place... and what else has she got to do...
‘Great!’ she says, brightly. She doesn’t mean it. Something about him has unsettled her. ‘Lead on.’ She tries to remain enthusiastic.
Huvan leads her along corridors, up walkways, and up in the anti-grav lift. They seem to be heading somewhere very remote inside this labyrinth. Romana realises she had forgotten they were floating high up in Ashkellia’s atmosphere. The palace’s stabilisers are incredibly efficient.
Could it really be a million years old?
Finally, secretively, Huvan ushers her into a large bedchamber. The walls are a clumsily brush-stroked black.
‘It chose this room. The palace. It reflects my state of mind.’
‘It?’ asks Romana.
‘The palace,’ he replies loftily. ‘It knows me. Knows what I need.’
Clothing is strewn everywhere, none of it clean. Paper and books lie in scruffy piles over the floor and tables. The bed is a ruin. She daren’t even look at the sheets. ‘Sit down. If you want,’ says Huvan, vaguely gesturing her to a padded chair.
Romana walks to it and lifts a bundle of paper out of the seat.
‘You can read that. I won’t mind. I don’t let just anyone read it. In fact, I’d kill anybody else who tried to, but I don’t mind you looking at my work.’ Huvan is coy now, flopping down on the bed.
She eyes the bundle. It is scrawled with messy writing.
‘Thank you, what is it?’
‘A poem. I only write poetry.’
‘How nice. What inspires you?’
Huvan smiles at her. ‘Love.’
Something crawls at the back of Romana’s mind. A warning. ‘I see,’ she says, starting to realise why he is being so friendly to her. She has read about adolescence and what it does to human males. She feels a sudden need to find the Doctor. Huvan is too unpredictable, as if something in him is fighting to free itself.
Except, realistically, there is no way out; not without upsetting him. And she doesn’t feel ready to risk that.
Trying to keep the reluctance out of her body language, she sits back and reads, aware of Huvan’s sweaty gaze, a gaze that never leaves her.
Back at the Academy, Romana’s specialities lay in science and technical disciplines. Her knowledge of the appreciation of Gallifreyan poetry, she would admit, is at best functional.
It isn’t really her thing. But she knows when a poem is bad.
And this is poor. As poetry goes, it’s down there with the Sontaran battle odes.
‘Long ago when Love was real...’ it begins, and Romana knows this is the worst thing she will ever read.
‘It’s eighty pages long. It’s tragic,’ says Huvan triumphantly.
Romana sighs.
When the deed is done, when Romana has got through the endless repetitions of self-pitying misery, of relentlessly pompous, self-important, total-recall verse, of lonely, desperate lack of insight, she forces a smile on to her face.
‘It’s very good.’
‘It’s how I feel. The pain of existence. No one else understands. I seem to have been born with an extra-special sensitivity. If I didn’t have poetry I’d... I’d kill myself.’
‘You’re lucky, Huvan,’ she says, keeping a straight face.
‘You have a gift.’
‘I know,’ he replies modestly. ‘And now, I also have something else,’ he says. ‘I’ll tell you a secret.’
Please don’t, Romana thinks to herself. I can live without whatever it is, I’m sure.
‘I’m going to write a poem about you,’ he tells her.
The smile is there, fixed in place. She hopes her eyes aren’t telling a different story. ‘I am honoured, Huvan, but please don’t bother, not on my account.’
‘It’s no bother. I want to... I must!’
Romana stands up. ‘Don’t go!’ Huvan barks, all confidence gone. ‘Please...’
‘Huvan, I... I need to know why you are here.’
‘It’s my room.’
‘No, why you are here in the palace. All of you. Some very powerful forces are at work and the Doc– I think you could be in danger.’ Why doesn’t she want to mention the Doctor?
Does she think the boy could harm him?
‘Don’t be frightened, Romana,’ he says. To her, his voice sounds like curdled milk. ‘I’ll protect you. Anyway, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Everything is going to be all right.
We’re going to have the power.’
‘Power?’
‘That’s what Mr Neville calls it. Those others, those idiots, they think he’s going to make them rich again and get all their planets back.’
The Tomb of Valdemar Page 6
