Part 24 (1/2)

How do you communicate?'

'Oh, Doctor, we are bonded, we have a unity that transcends time. Our race has access to the vortex, and Time Lords are but a distant legend.'

'I know that. Through Kelzen.'

'Kelzen. Yes. There is that small matter.'

Jirenal strode up to the Doctor and, smiling, gripped his lapels. He hoisted him up so that the diminutive Time Lord, legs flailing, was eye to eye with him. The Sensopath's eyes were like spheres of polished jet, reflecting the depths of another world. 'You could choose to deliver Kelzen to me, or I could extract her whereabouts from your mind. It is a simple choice.'

The Doctor, red-faced and choking, managed to meet Jirenal's gaze with defiance. 'She . . . trusts me, Jirenal . . . I . . . helped to save her. She won't . . .

come willingly, even if I do tell you '

Jirenal's fingers radiated like sudden sunbeams. The Doctor crashed to the floor, his shoulder burning with old, revitalized pain.

The Sensopath kicked him, forcing him over on to his back, and then, suddenly, it was as if the pastel light of every surface in the room became an unbearable, cartoon brightness. At the centre of it all was the ghastly face of the Sensopath, pinning him to the floor with a bar of solid thought.

I will break you down, Doctor. I will smash the dungeons of your mind to yield their secrets. Give me Kelzen! their secrets. Give me Kelzen!

186.

And the thought returned, uncompromising, bright and ancient like a su-pernova from the dawn of time, shattering the Doctor's fragile thoughts as if they were coconut sh.e.l.ls.

Jirenal burned his mind. Blazing with a fire of determination.

The Sensopath crashed in, ram-raiding the Doctor's consciousness.

187.

24.

Pretty Occupied

The security network around the Phoenix Phoenix skimmer bays was totally automated. It took Livewire no more than the stolen key to get through to the airlock of bay three, and then she was faced with a simple combination lock. skimmer bays was totally automated. It took Livewire no more than the stolen key to get through to the airlock of bay three, and then she was faced with a simple combination lock.

She dropped to one knee, forced the keypad away from its housing, and took a small, circular object from her pocket. Ancient technology 22nd century, she was sure. It had been one of the first things she'd liberated when the looting began in earnest. Its display began to interact with the circuitry in the lock, showing each combination on its tiny LCD screen as it was tested.

Livewire held her breath.

The combination began to appear, digit by digit.

'You must get them out,' Cheynor pleaded. 'Something very, very wrong is happening here!'

He did not understand what was going on, but he had been consumed with the urge to do something. Weeks, months of hanging around waiting for the next move of the enemy: it had helped to galvanize Darius Cheynor into action. To be part of something important, something morally right. Kelzen had somehow communicated to him what he had to do, and although Cheynor did not trust Kelzen, he had faith in the Doctor, and he seemed to trust Kelzen.

On top of that, there was the urge to respond to the horror of seeing his Phracton friend reduced to a pulp. Cheynor had just enough of his old, almost prim restraint left to realize, deep down, how dangerous that made him now.

The Pridka exchanged the briefest of glances, and then, apparently responding to instructions, the younger one turned back to the globe-console, ready to place his hands on it and to send a request.

As he did so, the gateway blazed.

Cheynor saw a tall, mainly female Pridka step out on to the ramp, her emerald-green robes glittering in the light, and her face commanding and serenely beautiful. 'I am Amarill,' she said haughtily. 'I forbid you to interfere with what is to happen.'

'Who's she?' Cheynor snapped.

The senior Pridka looked shocked. 'That is Amarill dell'kat.i.t vo'Pridka, Pri-mary Healer and a.s.sistant to the Director.'

189.

'The Director is dead.' The voice that emerged from Amarill's mouth was almost robotic, as if something were using her vocal cords without prior experience of how they worked.

Cheynor felt a chill spreading through him, and in that same instant he saw Amarill lift one blue hand, palm outwards.

There was a scream, which lasted only a few seconds, because after that time, the young Pridka's mouth became a beak. His head warped, pushed out on both sides and twisted upwards, blossoming into giant wings. At the same time his body was shrinking conversely and his limbs were curving, forming giant, serrated talons.

A shape larger than a fighter shuttle began to lift itself up from the floor.

Cheynor, aghast, drew his sidearm, but the senior Pridka knocked it away.

'No! Something is interfering with reality. You will not injure a Pridka!'

Deep, rich laughter echoed from Amarill's mouth, and Cheynor, as he desperately ducked for safety under the console, knew that the voice could not be her own. d.a.m.n you, Doctor, he thought. Where the h.e.l.l are you?

A huge shadow, falling, blotted out the light from the gateway.

The office of the director became a palimpsest, a bridge to another layer of existence. A realm where colours screamed, where sounds stabbed at the Doctor's brain cells and shook the pupils of his eyes.

He recognized, vaguely, the reddish-black void in which he had communed with Kelzen. A place between life and death, where the mind never normally went.

I've communed with both of your other selves, Jirenal. You're making a big mistake. mistake.

Jirenal laughed. The sound travelled, hurtling towards the Doctor like an oncoming train in a close-fitting tunnel.

'This is not the way, Jirenal!' the Doctor shouted, and it echoed as if in the real world. He summoned his defences to meet Jirenal's a.s.sault.

Come, Doctor, do not resist. I merely want to know you. To help you.

'All right, know me, then!' he snarled. He thought of words, commonplaces.

Blocking the way to the higher centres of his mind 'I'm a mysterious traveller in time and s.p.a.ce known only as the Doctor '

Mysterious? You are as transparent as water!

'I travel in the time vortex in the TARDIS, which means Time and Relative Dimension in s.p.a.ce '

And we have never come across one another before.