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Lungbarrow - Chapter Six

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Mingling

Almoner Crest Yeux was dozing in his office, when the alert came through.

A direct visual feed showed him the source of a disturbance at the Space/Time Accessions Bureau. The elderly Surveillance Actuary Hofwinter was being harangued by no less than the Lady Leelandredboomsagwinaechegesima.

'Listen, old one.' She was stabbing at the air with her finger. 'Contact the Doctor now, or I'll... I'll...'

'What Doctor? Doctor who?' quavered Hofwinter, physically shrinking from this alarming woman. 'You must be more specific, madam.'

'The Doctor who was your President.'

Yeux craned forward in his chair.

'Oh, that Doctor,' said Hofwinter. 'President Fly-by-night. Well, I'm afraid I can't help on that count. Have you tried the President's office? That's what they deal with there, you know. Presidents. It's all quite logical.'

'The President is not on Gallifrey,' protested the Lady.

'Really?' Yeux started to access Leela's personal Agency records on a secondary plasma port.

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In the Bureau, Hofwinter was shaking his head. 'Very sorry, madam. I'm sure her office will assist you, unless they've all disappeared too. Or perhaps the Castellan could be of help.'

'Castellan Andred is busy,' she said firmly.

'Drilling the Chancellery Guard to escort more alien dignitaries?' said Hofwinter. 'So sorry. Pressing work. Good day.' He immersed himself in a pile of accession invoices.

Yeux watched Lady Leelandredloomsagwinaechegesima turn on her heel and vanish from his screen. The fact that this very excitable woman was consort to the Citadel's Castellan, a member of both the High and Inner Councils, was surely a grave threat to security. And she was un-Gallifreyan too. He couldn't understand how that had been overlooked in the process of Andred's promotion. He studied the readout on the other display. The woman's status was briefly given, but with no reference to her involvement with the Doctor. Further in-depth data was blocked by a caveat: all reports to be referred to the Agency's Allegiance Command Cell.

Yeux filed an immediate memo concerning Lady Leela's attempts to contact a known subversive and her knowledge of the President's activities. The response was almost immediate, as he had come to expect from his masters in the Allegiance Command Cell of the Celestial Intervention Agency.

Let her continue, it instructed. Already under observation. And it added: Nicely done, old boy. Dinner tomorrow? Quartinian Faculty? It was signed F.

Satisfied, Yeux poured himself another glass of tea and added a tot of magenta rum. 'Give Lady Leela enough clear water and she'll liquidate herself.'

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The cavernous hall was empty. Chris watched the last rays of dappled sunlight playing through the high windows across the wooden floor. The hall was galleried on several levels right up to its rafters, and the balconies were festooned with green and silver garlands. At one end of the area, beneath an intricate astronomical clock, stood a carved plinth, box-shaped like a sarcophagus. Even at a distance, he could sense the energy emanating from the object. It was more than alive: it was dense with a concentrated life force. He reckoned it was the source of the holo-environs.

Then the furniture began to move. The massive tables, chairs and candelabra slid and scuttled across the floor, like a herd on the move. Eventually they arranged themselves, with much shuffling, into ordained positions along the length of the hall. Like rookie cadets getting on parade, thought Chris. As the sun finally vanished behind the mountain, the lamps lit themselves all along the galleries that overlooked the hall.

He waited in the silence for the event that must surely be the climax of the program.

Suddenly he was standing in a crowd of extravagantly robed guests. They filled the hall. Chris had only seen this sort of social event when he was drafted in on security surveillance at the Overcity Adjudicator Intendant's annual dinner dance. Fancy dress bepple optional.

He was still invisible and could move easily among the guests. He'd rather do that than walk straight through them. Everywhere, the furniture and fittings of the building were too big for the people who lived there. They had thrown the Giant out of his castle and moved themselves in. The great tables were laid with all the sumptuous festive food that Chris had seen in the kitchen.

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'I see Cousin Rynde has done us proud again,' declared one of the guests and he raised his goblet to the throng.

'An auspicious Otherstide to us all!'

'And a thoroughly ill-judged time to choose for a Deathday,' complained another. 'I'm supposed to be at the Tercentennial Observation Archivists' Otherstide Stocktake Dinner. You would have thought old Quences could have held on a bit longer.'

'Oh, stop grizzling,' said the first, who was robed in brown. 'At least it gets two visits to the House out of the way at once.'

Several of the company nodded in agreement.

'I suppose none of us come home these days except for Loomings and Tombings,' he continued. 'Reckon you're up for anything in Quences's will, Cousin?'

The second, who was wearing a black tunic, shook his head grimly. 'Not a solitary brazen pandak. The Ordinal-General never had any time for me.'

'None of us were good enough,' agreed a third. 'The sour old snudge-snout wouldn't even recommend me for a post at the Bureau of Temporal Anomalies. He said Averages Clerk wasn't good enough a position for a member of the Family.'

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'He did just the same to Cousins Celesia and Almund,' said Black Tunic. 'Besides, we all know who's going to get the inheritance.'

So it's a funeral, thought Chris. Maybe this Ordinal-General guy's died in mysterious circumstances. Maybe that's the point of the program.

'You can't mean that Cousin Glospin will inherit everything,' said Brown Robe. He stared round at the gathering. 'He's not even here yet.'

Black Tunic gave a condescending smile. 'He's the obvious successor and heir.'

'And he's Satthralope's favourite,' piped in the third.

Brown Robe laughed aloud. 'Surely that's enough to condemn him completely. Quences would count him out on principle.'

'It's true,' said another bystander. 'But have you heard the other rumour?' He lowered his voice as everyone in earshot clustered round 'I heard that Glospin's post as a Cellular Eugenicist is a complete sham.'

'Citadel gossip,' sneered Black Tunic.

'No, listen,' continued the speaker. 'Cousin Glospin has been seen on several occasions entering and leaving the Citadel Constraint Block.'

'Great grief,' whispered Brown Robe.

'The Intervention Agency,' said the third.

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Chris noted the nervous glances that passed around the group. Even Black Tunic drained his goblet without comment. The Agency's name seemed to cast a pervasive gloom.

'Front or back entrance?' asked somebody brightly, but was ignored.

The lengthy silence was finally disrupted by a hoot of laughter from across the hall. The guests turned to stare in disapproval. 'Who's that?' said Brown Robe.

A young man, podgy with curly brown hair, was helping himself to a plateful of food from the tables.

'Cousin Owis,' said Black Tunic. 'The unspeakable little oik is the Replacement.'

'Why? Who else has died?'

'No, no. He's the Replacement.'

Brown Robe assumed a look of stunned surprise. 'I didn't realize the House had actually. . . Great grief. There'll be all bells blazing in Sepulchasm when the authorities find out. I assume it's the Replacement for...' His voice tailed off and he grimaced.

'Quiet,' hissed Black Tunic. 'Satthralope's forbidden that name in the House. But you're correct: Owis is the Replacement for whom you imagine. They say Quences never got over the disinheritance.'

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'Great grief.' Brown Robe glanced around the hail again. 'Our Family really is an unutterable shambles!' He smirked. 'Five thousand pandaks on Glospin not getting a thing in the will.'

'Done,' said Black Tunic and they linked crooked fingers on it.

Chris wondered how anyone in a family could be a replacement for someone else - was it a recognized job that could be applied for, wherever here was exactly?

He made his way across the room to where a group of guests had gathered to watch the pudgy Cousin called Owis. He had climbed on to a chair to reach the food and was piling it into a precarious pyramid on his plate. As he tried to juggle a stuffed blue fruit on to the side, a woman came pushing through the crowd. She still wore the rust-coloured robes she had worn when Chris had seen her in the study.

'Owis,' she said sharply. 'What did we learn yesterday about No?'

Owis, suddenly crestfallen, studied her over the top of his stacked plate. 'But Cousin Innocet, it's Otherstide. A holiday. Have you seen these dactyl eggs? They've been shipped in especially from Ringed Yufrex.'

'It is also a grave and solemn occasion,' said Innocet coldly. 'Come down off there. What do you think Satthralope will say if you're caught misbehaving on the Ordinal-General's Deathday?'

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Owis discarded his plate and clambered sulkily down.

Chris looked round at the other mourners and didn't see anyone else looking very grave or solemn. Then he noticed one figure who was totally out of place. It was the pale little man in ragged clothes whom he'd seen in the old woman's room.

He was walking among the guests, staring each of them in the face with a look of frightened bewilderment in his huge eyes. The guests never noticed him. He actually jumped as he saw Chris and ducked away through the crowd.

Chris moved after him. As the little man started running, Chris cut straight through the images of the hologram family. He caught up with the man, tackling him with a desperation that floored them both beside the garlanded plinth.

'Who are you?' Chris demanded. 'Where is this? How do I get out?'

The little man was shaking. 'Don't touch me,' he kept saying.

'I'm the only thing here that can touch you,' said Chris. 'So you'd better tell me what planet this is and who you are.'

The little man's eyes welled with tears. He pointed miserably at one of the guests. 'I'm him.'

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Chris turned to look. The resemblance was extraordinary, except that the guest was considerably younger and plumper. His clothes were new and he had the hearty colour of someone who worked in the open.

'So it's a home holovid of some special occasion and we're stuck inside it,' Chris said.

The little man was starting to shake again. 'It's not a recording. It's real. This is what happened. It's happening again...'

Chris sat down on the floor. He didn't want to spend the rest of his life trapped inside someone else's family schlock-vid, dragged out only when the relations called or the guys got drunk and wanted a laugh. 'What's your name?' he said firmly. He pointed to the young version. 'What's his name?'

Leave me alone.'

'Name,' demanded Chris.

The man's face crumpled and the tears rolled streaks down his grimy face. The crying rapidly became a shuddering torrent of despair like the unleashing of something that had been bottled up for years. Chris leant awkwardly in and put an arm round his shoulders. 'It's OK. It's OK,' he said uselessly and tried to contain the shaking while the ghost family milled around them.

'Arkhew,' choked the little man eventually. 'My name's Arkhew.' He repeatedly used his grubby sleeve to wipe his nose.

'I'm Chris Cwej,' said Chris gently. 'I'm here to help.'

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'Have you really come to get us out?' Arkhew clutched Chris's arm in anger. 'Why now? Why did you wait? Why didn't you come centuries ago?'

Chris shook his head. 'It's an accident. I don't know where I am. I don't know what this occasion is. I'm not even sure if I'm alive.'

Arkhew took his time before answering, gulping in air and snuffling a lot. He kept on gazing towards the windows and the gathering dusk outside. 'This is Ordinal-General Quences's Deathday. It's Otherstide Eve, six hundred and seventy-three years ago. We're all here. All the Cousins. This is the most miserable, cursed day in the House of Lungbarrow's miserable, cursed life.' He began to shudder again. 'Please, make it stop. I don't want to see. Stop it. Don't let it get dark again!'