The Tomb of Valdemar

by Simon Messingham

  The twins Diana and Juno, the two bovine ladies in yellow and red from the masque, particular playmates of Huvan’s, have hidden themselves in their plush apartment and blocked the doors with furniture. Like Srohan, they are not overly burdened with intelligence or sense, such needless qualities bred out of them over the centuries. They have been frightened out of their wits by the day’s proceedings. They curse their dispossessed parents for sending them here with Neville, conveniently forgetting it was they themselves who staged the tantrums and sulks until they got their own way (Hermia had said it would all be a blast. One supposes that for her, it was).

  ‘No one is getting through that door,’ says Diana, taking her red-handled lady’s pistol from the cabinet.

  ‘No one,’ replies her sister, taking the equivalent yellow handle.

  ‘You’re getting fat,’ says Diana.

  ‘So are you,’ says Juno.

  Now only Neville remains in this precis of the night’s proceedings. Shocked beyond all reason by the display of Valdemar’s power via Huvan, and the overwhelming success of his plans, he has spent the last few hours communing with the Dark One, praying for guidance.

  It is the Doctor who upsets him the most. How has Valdemar allowed him to live? It was his interference that prevented Neville’s final transformation. He had been so close, so close to Becoming. He would have got away from himself, yes, if it hadn’t been for the Doctor and those meddling kids...

  The Magus releases the answer. The human Neville is not worthy of Becoming. He has not completed the tasks Valdemar has set for him. The Doctor is his responsibility.

  And the Doctor is still alive. There is work to be done.

  Neville returns from his meditations. He opens his eyes and stands. He needs to find some guards.

  The night wears itself out. Morning triggers the palace to light up the Doctor and Pelham still at work in the library. Well, the Doctor anyway. Pelham has fallen asleep.

  Even the Doctor is reaching a point where fatigue is overriding efficiency. He could swear he has read this knowledge cylinder before. He senses that the palace is in some way to blame for this. It has done something to time, slowed him down, given itself a chance to grow. The night seems over much too quickly.

  And then, as he thinks about this, the solution pops into his brain. He hadn’t read this cylinder before after all.

  It shows him the dormant organs of the human brain, collected and dissected by the Old Ones when man was merely an unthinking brute, little more than the ape he grew out of. Yes, the Old Ones visited then. They knew the Earth.

  The organ is located inside the hypothalamus; a mere stub in a mass of newer, better-developed cells and synapses. It is a vestige of a time when all life was connected, without the barrier of consciousness and self-awareness, to the complete and synchronous universe. Before there came a severance somewhere along the line, for some evolutionary reason, and life moved outside the whole.

  No wonder the Old Ones were so curious about the higher dimensions, no wonder they risked everything. They had discovered so much, the interconnection of everything. And they rushed like lemmings to re-attain it, not caring what they might lose. Only their experiment turned back on itself.

  Instead of reaching into the higher dimensions, the higher dimensions reached into them.

  There had to be a way that they had protected themselves, there had to be something.

  Now that the Doctor has learned the cylinder’s tricks he forces it to reveal its secrets. What did you do? he asks. What did the first explorers do to protect themselves from madness and transformation when they opened the gateway? Tell me, relic of the Old Ones, give it up!

  Miranda Pelham wakes to find the Doctor sprawled over the table, his face utterly white, his right hand clasped around one of the knowledge cylinders. His hat is jammed on to those vibrant curls. For a moment, nothing registers but the disappointing revelation that sleep is over. Then the panic hits her.

  ‘Doctor!’ she shrieks.

  To her intense relief, he jumps awake. ‘Search the plastic factories, Brigadier!’ he yells, much to her confusion. He turns and laughs. ‘I found it, Miranda. I found it!’

  Still, she doesn’t understand. She just wants to get out of here. But she is glad he’s glad. ‘Great. Now what do we do?’

  ‘We go to the control room and find the neural-inhibition vaccine the Old Ones left there for us.’

  ‘I remember, I remember... a man, he was following you. You and Tenn... Stanislaus. I didn’t like it.’ Huvan is clutching her, like a drowning man. Romana concentrates on a spot on the wall. Remove oneself from the physical proceedings, rise above them.

  ‘Really?’ she replies. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I don’t know how I saw him. I could do anything. He tried to kill you. I stopped him, made him stop himself.’

  ‘How?’ She tries to remember when this might have happened, or whether Huvan is lying again. The guard. The guard they found in the corridor.

  Huvan chuckles. Romana feels his mirth shaking her. ‘He was afraid, I knew that. He thought something was in the palace. He was right, but he created it out of himself.’

  ‘That was clever of you. And what was it he created?’

  ‘Big.’

  The anti-grav lifts don’t seem safe, she doesn’t trust them. In fact, she doesn’t trust anyone or anything. And that includes this Doctor. Somehow, using this strange pencil-like sonic device, he unscrews a panel Pelham hadn’t even guessed was in the ceiling.

  This guy is impressive.

  Once off, the panel reveals an upward-leading shaft and a set of pipes that maybe a small mouse could scale. ‘Doctor, I’m forty-two, not twelve.’

  ‘Breathe in,’ he offers. Smart arse.

  At least he goes first. The climb isn’t as bad as she’d thought. The squeeze only hurts if she does something silly like breathe, or attempt to move any of the limbs of her body.

  It isn’t so much a climb as a corkscrew, arms up, fingers brushing the underside of his battered shoes. Get me out of this alive, Doctor, Pelham promises, and I’ll get you a new pair. Ten. A hundred.

  One of the other really nice advantages of this climb is this

  – it gives her plenty of opportunity to think about the nightmare in that black magic room. It was one thing to write about Valdemar. It had even seemed a sensible rationalisation to agree to come here with Neville to reopen the tomb. It was quite another to come face to face with the Dark God she had equated with the destructive power of the big bang. Yes, she could really have done without that. And knowing that it was all her fault.

  In the next life, Miranda, she promises herself, you’ll write a romance. OK?

  Just as she is going to die of claustrophobia, there is light at the end of the shaft. Pelham hears a clanging noise and scrapes her head on the Doctor’s shoe. ‘Sorry,’ he says in what sounds suspiciously like a stage whisper.

  ‘I take it we’re there,’ she snaps.

  Much more lithely than she expected, the Doctor is out and helping her clamber awkwardly from the shaft. They are right inside the cavernous control room. Pelham has only been here once but she is pretty sure that the corridor where they were before was not immediately underneath it. Someone’s been mucking around with the geography of the palace. Is it alive? she wonders. Does it actually know what we’re thinking?

  She hugs herself, afraid to admit how scared she really is.

  The Doctor is orientating himself. The consoles and controls hum with an energy that this place never possessed before. Pelham thinks about the Old Ones, imagines the control room full of them, whatever they looked like. A million years ago, panicking, perhaps realising that their day was passing, that they were making way for history.

  Were they afraid, like she is afraid? Or did they think they could seal Valdemar up and walk away?

  Pelham looks at the Doctor’s back, as he performs some arcane task with one of the consoles. The way his arms and legs b
lur as he moves, suggests to her that the Old Ones were possessed with more than the standard allocation of limbs.

  She realises she doesn’t believe the Doctor. She knows Valdemar is real. Real and waiting.

  The Doctor turns, holding two long clear vials like champagne flutes. The contents look appetising – vomit suspended in transparent liquid plastic. ‘Nice of them to leave some,’ the Doctor says.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ Pelham asks, feeling nauseous.

  ‘What do we do with it, dare I ask?’

  ‘Eat me. Drink me,’ the Doctor replies cryptically.

  ‘Alice had cake, not liquid garbage.’

  ‘There’s no other way. The effects of the higher dimensions have already taken root. We need to keep clear heads.’

  ‘There are only two portions.’

  ‘We’ll take one between us. I’ll analyse the other and try and synthesise more.’

  ‘That’ll take time.’

  ‘We’d best be starting then, hadn’t we?’ He snaps the top from the first vial. Immediately a stench, an odour, spreads through the room like something crawled in there and died.

  Pelham finds herself instinctively backing away. ‘Uh-uh,’ she waves her arms. ‘No way. I’m not drinking that. The Old Ones, they weren’t human. Maybe that stuff sorted them out but how do you know that for us it isn’t poison?’

  The Doctor sniffs. ‘Good point,’ he says reasonably. ‘I know, I’ll drink some. If I drop dead it’s probably best not to use it.’

  He up-ends the vial. Slowly, the ooze trickles out and drops into his mouth.

  Pelham watches. For a moment, the Doctor is still. He seems to be thinking about what he has ingested. ‘I think the effects will probably be immedia-’ He stops talking.

  ‘Doctor?’ she asks. Christ, what the hell has he done?

  ‘Doctor?’

  His eyes bulge. Slowly he raises a hand to his throat. Some kind of noise, a cross between a gargle and a choke, emerges from inside him. His eyes start to water.

  Suddenly, he bunches his fists and bends over. He drops to his knees and begins to pound the floor. Oh God, thinks Pelham, it was a poison, it was a poison after all.

  She is just about to move to his aid when he raises a trembling hand. His face is red, very red. However, despite the watering eyes and laboured breathing, he stands again.

  ‘Yes,’ he announces. ‘I think you’ll find it’s probably not that nice.’

  ‘Oh, Doctor!’ she sighs and moves to embrace him. Instead, he holds out the vial. That stops her. She glares at it, like it was a spider.

  ‘Has anything happened?’ she asks, suspiciously.

  The Doctor looks around. His tongue is hanging out.

  ‘Mmm. The effects are subtle but yes, it’s definitely done something. Your turn.’

  ‘Do I have to?’

  ‘It’s too late to just say no.’

  Cringing, as if the sample is alive, Pelham takes the vial.

  She closes her eyes and breathes deeply. With a quick movement, she up-ends the whole lot into her gullet.

  Ten minutes later, once the Doctor has helped her down from the ceiling, and stopped her screaming, she starts to feel she might actually live. She gulps in air, trying to stem the torrent streaming from her eyes.

  ‘Did...’ she coughs the words out, ‘did I scream much?’

  He smiles. ‘A little. And some interesting new words I was unfamiliar with until now. How are you feeling?’

  Pelham looks around. The stuff was so foul, she’d completely forgotten that it was supposed to do something.

  Yes. Yes, there is a change. Subtle, like he said. Not so much in the way things look, but rather the way she sees them, as if certain filters and lenses have been removed from her mind.

  ‘It may take some getting used to,’ says the Doctor.

  It is as if the palace has been put into perspective. It no longer seems a magical, fairy-tale structure, full of mystery.

  She can see it as it really is, a rather dank, rather ordinary space station, old and tatty. This control room, once so alien and unknowable, is actually bare and functional; the baroque decor, once so impressive, is actually nothing more than a few tatty plants and some chipped stone tiles. The air is warm and stale. The palace machinery thumps and bumps deep below them, creaking and inefficient.

  ‘How odd,’ she remarks. ‘To think this all seemed so strange.’

  ‘Indeed,’ the Doctor replies. ‘We just couldn’t see how things really are.’ He looks down at the remaining vial. ‘Hmm, unless this isn’t how things really are, and we just think it seems that way.’

  ‘Yeah, OK, Doctor. Let’s not go down that road. You’ve got enough to do as it is.’

  Yet, she can’t shake off this new feeling. Even Neville seems nothing more than a tired, desperate and rather moth-eaten old man.

  She turns to the entrance. For some reason she is hungry.

  Too late, she registers Neville standing right behind her, his face cold and impassive. He smacks her across the face. She feels the blow, feels the red tide and the sting and then the stone of the floor crashing into her mind.

  Romana is getting seriously close to breaking point. She has been alternately cooing and praising this idiot boy for hours now. Isn’t it time the Doctor came and gave her something else to do?

  Huvan is pacing his bedroom. There is a red flush in his face that to Romana looks conspicuously like the first sign of madness. ‘I can see so much,’ he crows. ‘I can do anything, destroy this palace if I feel like it. I feel so happy, Romana. I don’t care about anyone else, just you and me. I feel like we’re the last two people in the universe, that everyone else is dead.’

  ‘Right, yes. I feel the same way too... of course. Er... Huvan, do you... would you mind if I went to find the Doctor? I’m sure he’s in some kind of trouble.’

  An angry expression crosses Huvan’s face. ‘No! Why do you want to go? Do you hate me, is that it? Just like all the others!’

  ‘No, no,’ she replies, putting an extra-special layer of saccharine sadness in there for good measure. ‘How could you think that? Listen to me. If we are to become... to get to know each other... then we must learn trust. I have to trust you and you have to trust me.’

  She isn’t sure whether he is falling for it. He screws up his face. ‘You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?’ The stare is penetrating. Can he actually read her mind?

  It’s time for desperate measures. He’s a child. A psychotic child perhaps, but still a child. In for a penny...

  ‘Huvan,’ she states. ‘Don’t push me. If you want me to like you, you’ve got to earn the right. I’m not some object. You don’t own me.’

  He’s starting to get angry. Keep going, keep going...

  ‘Now, I know you’re a sensitive, mature man. We are both adults. Let’s not rush things. I like you, you know I do, but we must allow each other room. The Doctor is my friend and I am going to him.’

  She hasn’t got anything else to say. She can only wait.

  Huvan’s lower lip begins to tremble. ‘All right, all right, go.

  But you will come back, won’t you?’

  Steeling herself, Romana takes his hand. ‘Of course I will.’

  She keeps her eyes on him as she opens the door. There, outside, freedom and fresh air. ‘Goodbye, Huvan.’ She smiles sweetly and walks out.

  Closing the bedroom door, Romana leans against it and sags. She exhales for a very long time. Sorry, Doctor, I just couldn’t go through with it any longer.

  There is movement in the corridor. A corridor that seems suddenly full of shadows. ‘Who’s that?’ she asks. Her heart sinks. She recognises the slinky black suit of Kampp and, behind him, a guard. Romana raises her hands. Even this seems a relief after Huvan. ‘All right, all right. I’ll come quietly.’

  Kampp hisses and lunges at her, black eyes glistening. She sees his gloved fingers heading for her throat and leaps back.

  Kampp arches h
imself up to strike her and Romana opens the door hard into him, its leading edge catching his head.

  Rattled, the butler staggers back. Behind him, the fat guard is also preparing to attack.

  Romana leaps back into the bedroom, hurling the door shut and hurriedly slamming its bolts.

  Huvan leaps up, sheer joy on his face. ‘You came back!’

  Romana starts piling the furniture on to the door. ‘I couldn’t stay away,’ she mutters.

  The Doctor regards Neville and his guards. With the vaccine or whatever it is running through him, he has penetrated the illusions created by the higher dimensions.

  He is surprised at how strongly the liquid has affected him: without its protection the men in front of him are well advanced in their condition.

  Organic black fronds grow from their eyes; their skin is coarse and leathery, their heads beginning to elongate like in a distorted photograph. They do not realise what they are becoming. Except perhaps Neville; yes, perhaps he does know.

  ‘Give me that, Doctor,’ Neville orders, indicating the remaining vial.

  Sighing theatrically, only too aware of the rifles trained on him, the Doctor does as he is told. ‘This is your only protection. I wouldn’t drop it if I were you.’

  Neville inspects the grainy liquid within. ‘Really, Doctor?

  Protection against what?’

  ‘The infiltration and transformation of your mind. Without this fluid, your brain won’t be able to cope with the shock of regrowing receptors for the higher dimensions. Already your physical forms are changing. Very soon you’ll either die or go mad. In your case, madder.’

  Neville looks up and smiles. ‘Always the wit, eh, Doctor?’

  ‘Not always. Sometimes I use simple sarcasm, sometimes...’

  ‘Silence!’ Neville mutters to himself, trying to gain time, trying not to let on how important this liquid is to him.

  ‘You did ask...’

  Neville breaks the vial open. He begins to tip the liquid on to the floor. The Doctor attempts to remain impassive as the drops burst on the stone tiles. ‘You see, Doctor,’ (drip) ‘you see how the Magus deals with these pathetic tricks.’ (Drip)