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Chapter Seventeen - Chapter Seventeen

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Have You Seen the Muffin Man?

The wordless protest started on the high-benches and quickly spread down through the lower amphicircles to the Panopticon floor.

To any observer on the Public Register network, the silence would appear to mark a time of contemplation or remembrance. In the great drum-shaped Council Hall of the Time Lord Citadel, it was deafening.

Chancellor Theorasdavoramilonithene was delivering her report to the High Council on investigations into the bomb outrage, when the thoughts began to project across the chamber. It was the Arcalian claque, always ready to stir trouble, who started it.

Where is she? Where is she?

The thought chant was taken up by Councillors of the minor Dromeian and Cerulean Chapters on the opposite galleries and on the Patrexean circle lower in.

Theora tried to continue, but she was drowned out. She glared up from the floor around the taciturn ranks of unmoving Time Lords above her. Councillors and Cardinals alike. The weight of their thought-chorus almost floored her. On the Prydonian circle, among those on whose support she had reckoned to count, many sat with lowered heads, neither attacking nor defending. That abstinence was more damning than either active stance. Gold Usher, the Guardian of the Chamber, who should have been regulating the debate, also lowered his head; so impartial as to take no side at all.

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Chancellery guards gathered on the Panopticon entrance ramp, muttering among themselves about whether to intervene.

The protest continued and Theora sank to her knees under its weight. 'My Lords,' she struggled to call out loud against the uproar in her head. 'My Lords. . . the President is engaged in negotiations of momentous consideration.'

'Who with?' a single voice shouted out.

'Her Tharil astrologer,' shouted another wag.

'Her hair stylist,' called a third.

'She's opening an embassy for the Daleks,' sneered an Arcalian Councillor.

There were shocked cries of 'Never!' and 'Shame!'

'But only,' he added, 'if the Ambassador's the right colour!'

Some laughter from the high-benches.

'My honourable Lords!' protested Theora. 'You insult the President's integrity. She is working tirelessly to further Gallifrey's policy towards the other worlds with whom we share the Universe...'

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'Dragging us down,' someone shouted.

'And ... and she will deliver her report to the High Council in the appropriate time.'

There was a moment's silence.

From somewhere on the Patrexean circle, a quiet voice said, 'It's an insult.'

The entire Panopticon erupted in shouting.

The Chancellor, focus of the protestations, shut her mind and walked from the Chamber with as much dignity as she could maintain.

Lord Ferain, Director of Allegiance to the Celestial Intervention Agency, flicked off the plasma image of today's Panopticon proceedings. He took down a datacore from its rack.

An Alternative History of Skaro: The Daleks without Davros

His own study of the most strategically dynamic race in the Cosmos. He inserted the core into an invisible socket between the arms of a compass set on his office wall. He turned it four times.

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A new plasma screen appeared in the air. 'Is it time?' said the grey-helmeted guard on the screen.

'Yes, Commander. It is time. We move immediately.'

The garden shimmered. Doroth\xE9e and Leela were encircled by light. Blues and greens in dabs and strokes that seemed to move on gauzes around them. The light and colour had texture which, in places, coalesced into shapes that were both defined and insubstantial. An impression of things. The thought of things. Clouds of grey and green, moving like the sky reflected on deep water.

'Where is this?' whispered Leela, and Doroth\xE9e shook her head.

'Unreal,' she said. 'Like a painting.' The air was soft and soothing here. She caught the heady perfume of jasmine and buddleia. Her senses, so often closed against cruelty and harshness, opened to the stream of sensation.

From the Agency building, they and the K9s had been directly transmatted into an airy room high enough to overlook the Gothic towers and turrets of the Gallifreyan Capitol. An officiously formal secretary had asked them to wait there for the President. Only moments after her departure, the solid fact of the room dissolved in a welter of light.

There was no sky above them. The surface of the lake rose up into the haze. On it were strewn green-white-pink ideas like rafts of waterlilies. Between them on the deeper surface were the dark reflected shapes of towering trees. Somewhere there were pan pipes playing.

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They walked forward across the grassy bank, pushing aside a green curtain of rustling leaves like brush strokes that hung from not even the idea of a tree.

Ahead of them, rising out of the willow curtains, was a grey-white bridge that over-arched the green-blue-white water.

A young woman in a flowery dress and wide-brimmed straw hat with red ribbons stood on the bridge.

'It's Romana,' said Leela.

Romana waved. 'It's lovely, isn't it?' She started down the bridge and came through the drifting impressions of willows to meet them. 'Hello again, Ace. Or is it Doroth\xE9e now?'

'Doroth\xE9e. I've had enough of Ace.'

Romana raised an eyebrow. 'I really must apologize again to both of you for the way you've been treated,' she said. 'It was an appalling security error. You see, your transduction beam from Paris was hijacked. Certain elements in the Celestial Intervention Agency are to blame. That's something else I'm going to have to deal severely with. You know that I'm President now.'

'I remember,' said Doroth\xE9e. 'Where's my bike?'

'Safe, thank goodness. It eventually materialized in the Presidential Suite, only you weren't on it. But I gather all your shopping is still intact.'

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President Romana turned to Leela. Doroth\xE9e thought she seemed almost too concerned. 'And Leela, you are unharmed, aren't you?'

Leela smiled with surprise. 'Of course, I am all right. But your enemies have black hearts, Romana. You should crush them. They are not worthy of you.'

'Yes, well ...' Romana looked flustered. 'Well, that's a relief. Um, I first met Doroth\xE9e when we were in E-Space fighting the Great Vampire. Just before I came back to Gallifrey.' She stooped and looked from one to the other. 'You two have been introduced properly, haven't you?'

'Not exactly,' said Leela. She turned to Doroth\xE9e. 'I am Leela. You are a brave fighter.'

Doroth\xE9e smiled. 'I'm a good fighter. I don't know about brave. I'm Doroth\xE9e.'

'You realize that both of you have travelled with the Doctor,' said Romana.

'You're joking,' said Doroth\xE9e. Immediately she looked at the Lady Leela in a new light. 'Not my one? Which one? God, the old bugger's a dark horse, isn't he?'

'I only know one Doctor,' said Leela. 'But I knew there must be more if he was a Time Lord. All I get from him these days are notes apologizing for not having visited me.'

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'From what I hear that could be any of them,' admitted Doroth\xE9e.

'I have a treat,' said Romana, who looked extremely satisfied with the encounter over which she was presiding. 'This way.'

They started to stroll along the edge of the lake, warmed by the reflection of the sunlight in the water. Time was lazy here. Doroth\xE9e closed her eyes and breathed in the stillness of the honeyed air.

Romana pushed her hat back on to her shoulders and said, 'What do you think of my garden?'

'Impressive,' said Doroth\xE9e. 'Anything's better than the Tuileries or on La Grande Jatte on a Sunday.'

They climbed up on to the bridge and paused to gaze out over the lake. Something like an emerald dragonfly flitted over the lily pads.

'It is beautiful here,' said Leela. 'But it is not real.'

'Not exactly,' Romana said dreamily. 'It was a gift from the Chairman of Argolis. It's a four-dimensional artform that they've just come up with at the Leisure Hive. It's proved very successful with the tourists. You can create an artistic concept like a painting and then actually go inside it. I'm having it installed for public use in the Capitol.'

'But I've seen this place before,' said Doroth\xE9e.

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Romana beamed proudly. 'I hoped you'd recognize it. I created this garden from the works of Claude Monet. The Doctor and I saw some of his paintings when we were in Paris.'

'My mum had a calendar once...'

'I hoped it would make you feel at home.'

'Thanks. That's erm... thoughtful.'

Romana turned to Leela. 'Doroth\xE9e travelled with the seventh Doctor. Yours was the fourth.'

Leela frowned. 'That's sad. He has died so many times. He must be so ancient.'

'That's a bigger bone of contention than you know,' said Romana.

'And did your Doctor have a K9 too?' Leela asked Doroth\xE9e.

'A what? You mean one of those robot dog things?'

'Actually, Leela,' said Romana awkwardly, 'that's something I need to speak to you about.'

'You never told me you had a K9 as well,' Leela said with a grin.

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'He's spent a lot of time with the Tharils in E-Space. Enforced actually. He's only recently overcome the problems of making the transition back into our Universe. So this is his first visit to Gallifrey. He was granted special leave from his administration post in the Tharil government. And it was meant to be a secret trip.'

'But my K9 knew,' said Leela.

'Yes,' sighed Romana. 'My K9 was supposed to be upgrading our administrative records with his own data from the Tharils, when I discovered that he was talking to your K9 through the panatropic net. And of course, between them they started digging up all this data about the Doctor and Lungbarrow.'

'Hang on,' complained Doroth\xE9e. 'Just hang on. Who or what is Lungbarrow?'

Romana glanced quickly both ways along the bank. 'Let's have some tea,' she suggested.

'I need more guards now, madam!' shouted Castellan Andred. 'Otherwise the Citadel will be overrun.'

'There are no more guards,' said Theora. 'The Arcalian squads have gone over to the Agency's side.'

Her beleaguered staff stood huddled behind her desk. To Andred, they appeared to be expecting the worst. From somewhere near, he heard the rattle of staser fire.

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'Then I cannot vouch for the safety of the Citadel,' he said formally. 'We can't deploy the force barriers. The gravity cordons round the bomb are taking all the power we have. I must insist that you, your retinue and your guest evacuate the Capitol now.'

'We will not abandon the Citadel,' said the Chancellor.

'Madam, this is a military coup. There's nothing you can do here. Now, what about the President?'

'She has important business elsewhere.'

'I was told she had returned. Where is she? She won't have an Othering Presidency unless we act now. And where's the Lady Leela?'

'She and Doroth\xE9e McShane are safe. The President considers their business vital.'

'So vital that they cannot be reached? What on Gallifrey is going on!'

There was a distant explosion. The lighting dimmed for a moment. The Chancellor's staff drew back as a ring of grey guards materialized in the office. The circle opened to reveal the man in black who had called himself the Agency gatekeeper.

'Lord Ferain,' muttered Theora.

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He bowed formally. 'Madam Chancellor, this building is now under the aegis of the Celestial Intervention Agency.' He held up a document. 'Under the articles of emergency power that govern possible un-Gallifreyan activity, I am here to investigate the alleged conduct of the Lord President of the High Council. And if that conduct is found to be in breach of Gallifreyan Law, to have her impeached and removed from office.'

Romana shepherded Leela and Doroth\xE9e through the green willows to where a table, a substantial more-than-the-idea-of-a-table table, was set with tea things in a very English style. There were two chairs. Romana sat down on the grass.

'I have to ask you to pour,' Romana said. 'I'm afraid I can't join you.'

'I wondered why it was only set for two,' said Leela. 'You said you were away from Gallifrey.'

'I am away. The Romanadvoratrelundar you can see is a projection of the real me. I'm speaking to you from. . . well, from somewhere else. And I hope the K9s haven't blurted out where.'

'No,' Leela assured her. 'But many are speculating on your whereabouts.'

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Romana groaned wearily. 'If only they'd give me more time. I suppose it's my fault for bullying them. I shouldn't expect to change the habits of a thousand millennia overnight. Most of the Council have been in their jobs for a thousand years at least. It's like trying to stampede a herd of tortoises.'

'You have problems,' said Doroth\xE9e, pouring the tea.

Leela lifted the lid of a silver dish and exclaimed, 'These are muffins!'

'Freshly toasted,' said Romana.

'Thank you. The Doctor bought us muffins in London.'

Doroth\xE9e grinned. 'He knows how to party, doesn't he? He once bought us both baked Alaska, but I landed up paying.'

The three of them laughed.

Doroth\xE9e sipped at her tea. It was Earl Grey and far better than the French could ever manage. The cups were the best porcelain. She noticed that Leela didn't quite have the knack of social etiquette. She was holding the cup by the bowl rather than the handle and had her muffin in the other hand. Not much of a ladylike bearing at all.

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She turned to Romana, but the President's expression had suddenly turned very grave.

'Go on then,' said Doroth\xE9e with a sigh. 'You didn't haul me halfway across the Galaxy just in time for tea for nothing.'

'That's true,' admitted Romana. 'Are you prepared to tell me what the Agency asked you?'

Doroth\xE9e felt herself freeze up. She looked at the two other women. If they'd both travelled with the Doctor, then they'd both seen hell too. So how come they were so nice about it?

'I didn't like it,' she said. 'They tried ...' She felt her blood suddenly starting to burn with angry confusion. 'I don't know what they were trying. They wanted me. No, not me. My identity!' She wanted to hit something. Or shoot the hell out of something. 'They had all my memories, but they wanted more!'

She looked up and met Romana's blue eyes. They pierced her the way the Doctor's eyes could. A concern for her that cut deep through the bewilderment and bloody rage, but did not diminish her right to her anger.

That's cruel, said Romana's eyes. And Doroth\xE9e knew that the eyes could read and understand her fears and experiences.

'She shot me,' said Doroth\xE9e. 'Ace shot Me. And when I came back she said I'd been dead for twenty minutes.'

That's all the time they'd need. You died so they could copy and upload your memories into the Matrix.

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'That wasn't enough though, was it? She kept on at me. She was me and I was nothing. And she was me too. A right vicious little bitch. All the worst bits slung together. She had all the facts, but she didn't understand them. I could see right through her. She'd got all the lurid details, but she didn't know how I felt or what I imagined and that's what I hung on to. But she went on and on, always coming back to the Doctor. Who was he? And why and what was he? And that's what I hung on to. 'Cos I believe in him and she didn't know why!'

The teacup cracked into a dozen pieces in her grip.

Romana's face slid to one side.

There was another woman there. She wore robes the colour of embers and her face was painted silver. Her fingers reached out and touched Doroth\xE9e's face.

'It is passed,' she said gently.

'You see, Gallifrey is a temporal anomaly,' Romana said as the others tucked into their tea. 'It exists not only in the Universe of N-Space, but also within its own exclusive time stream. Long before the Time Lords came to power, the ancient Gallifreyans had a sensitivity towards time and its movement. Our world was ruled by a line of oracles who could see and predict far into the future. Ultimately, they failed to predict their own downfall, and that resulted in probably the most terrible day in Gallifreyan history.'

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'When the planet was cursed and became barren?' said Leela.

'And we've been in post-matricidal trauma ever since. There are plenty more muffins if you want them.'

'Strewth,' said Doroth\xE9e. 'The Old Time. I remember the Doctor carrying on about that once. He got really worked up.' She noticed that the stack of muffins on the dish had been completely polished off, and she had only eaten one.

Romana, who had been watching Leela, continued, 'These days we have the Matrix of course, which pretty well serves the same oracular function. The thing is that Gallifrey moves at a different time speed to the rest of the Universe. That's what sets it apart, but for a long time its metabolism has been running down. In Earth terms, it's like a clock that's losing perhaps a second every hour and it's getting slower all the time.'

'What's that got to do with me?' said Dorothee. 'You still haven't told me about this Lungbarrow place.'

'Haven't I?' Romana said, her eyes reflecting the clouds and the sky in the deep, deep water. What do you think it is?

'It's his House,' said Doroth\xE9e without thinking at all. 'On the slopes of Lungbarrow mountain. Mount Lung in the mountains of Southern Gallifrey.'

Yes?

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'Yes, I'd forgotten. There are Cousins, because there are no children. They're all born from the Family Loom. Do you all have families like that?'

And?

'Well, it's ...' She faltered, shocked by the next revelation. She put down her tea. 'Jesus, I didn't remember that bit before.'

'It's true,' said Leela. 'That's what K9 and I discovered.'

'But that's crazy. A whole House can't just vanish. There'd be a crater or something.'

'There might well have been,' said Romana. 'The trouble is that the House of Lungbarrow's last official entry on any record was almost seven hundred years ago. That was the Deathday of the House's Kithriarch, the head of the Family. A guard captain was dispatched to carry out certain official duties, but there's no record of his return, or of any investigation.'

'The captain was a Cousin of Andred's,' said Leela.

'The Castellan?' grinned Doroth\xE9e. She had just stopped herself calling him Leela's toyboy. 'Are you married then?'

'Like Housekeepers to Houses? No. We are. . . together.'

'In fact, until Leela started to investigate, no one had even noticed that the House was missing.'

'Does he know? I mean, he didn't cause...'

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Romana shrugged. 'I sent a message to his TARDIS. Just please come home, really. I thought the ship was less likely to ignore it than the Doctor was. You know what he's like.'

Doroth\xE9e picked up her tea and swirled it in the cup. 'Look, I know we're talking about seven hundred years ago, but was he there?'

'No,' said Romana. 'K9 found records that said he'd been disowned and disinherited by that point. Technically and legally, he had no Family.'

And yet he was always lecturing me about my mother, thought Doroth\xE9e. No bloody wonder.

'Besides which, we know that he was in the Capitol at the time,' Romana added.

'And of course, he never answered your message.'

A sudden breeze stirred the willows and the tablecloth. Doroth\xE9e shivered. Romana stood and walked to the lake.

'He didn't come to me, no. But I put a let-pass with the message and last night his TARDIS came through the transduction barrier system.'

'Then where is he?' said Leela.

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Doroth\xE9e rapped the table with a teaspoon. 'Give you one guess. OK, so you want me to go and find him.'

'And the House, please. It's absurd, but I can't be seen to be involved.'

'Romana,' said Leela quietly. She nodded across the water.

A man was watching them from the bridge. He was dressed in a black robe.

'It's him,' Leela muttered. 'The one who held me captive. He is a serpent.'

'Ferain,' said Romana. 'How did he get in here?' She pointed over the edge of the idea of the bank. 'Doroth\xE9e, please reach down there.'

Doroth\xE9e hurriedly crouched at the edge and reached down into the impression of the lake. She felt something solid and pulled out a black globe. It wasn't wet.

'You want this delivered, right?'

Romana glanced back towards the bridge. Ferain was moving down towards them.

'I shall deal with him now,' said Leela.

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'No,' snapped Romana. 'Doroth\xE9e, please take the Doctor this dispatch. I've had the TARDIS's coordinates fed into your motorcycle's temporal guidance system.'

'The House of Lungbarrow?'

'No... not exactly. The coordinates are directly below where the House should be. Inside Mount Lung.'

'Inside?' said Doroth\xE9e.

'And when you give the dispatch to him, say Fred sent you.'

'Madam President,' called the man in black. He was waiting on the edge of the glade.

'Please just go,' urged Romana.

'I am going too,' said Leela.

'You will stay with Andred,' Romana insisted. 'His position is already in danger. And there's your status to think of.'

Leela scowled. 'That is my business.'

'Of course,' said the President with a knowing look. 'And that's why I can't let you go.'

The lake of light and clouds dissolved. Doroth\xE9e found herself back in the room in the Capitol. She still had the dispatch globe. The K9s were gone. Leela was picking irritably at her robe.

A door slid open and another secretary appeared. 'Doroth\xE9e McShane, please come this way,' he said urgently. 'We have very little time.'

Leela turned away without a word.