The Tomb of Valdemar Read online

  ‘A false assumption, Doctor. Trying is one thing. The fact remains that the ode is composed for a life form with three larynxes. It is not possible for you to render the piece. That proposition cannot be argued with.’

  ‘Cannot be... ? Don’t tell me what I can and can’t argue with.’

  Romana glides to the console, unruffled, already used to this bickering. She is starting to understand them, even to like them. ‘Anyway,’ she continues, ‘don’t you think we have more important things to worry about? That we should fully focus our energies on locating the next segment?’

  The Doctor, exasperated, crumples his hat. ‘Romana. The first thing you should know about me is that I’m never more focused than when I appear distracted.’

  ‘What’s that then?’

  An elegant finger, smooth and carefully manicured (vanity, thinks the Doctor, there’s another thing) points to a flashing light.

  ‘You don’t know, do you?’ she asks innocently.

  ‘Of course I know.’ Still, the way he bounds over, tripping and slamming, suggests otherwise. He glares at the light, as it were an enemy. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘Now that shouldn’t happen.’

  ‘Isn’t that the monitor for the dimensional stabiliser?’

  The Doctor can’t take his eyes off the light. It appears to obsess him. ‘Which means the TARDIS is about to suffer a trans-dimensional breach...’

  ‘Which can’t happen...’ Romana is up and expertly studying the controls. ‘The internal dimensional units are operating within normal parameters. As normal as this machine can ever be, that’s taken as read. Ergo, the light itself is malfunctioning.’

  The Doctor grins. Broadly, displaying innumerable gleaming teeth, each with a life and energy of its own. The grin is genuine, confident, happy. Romana knows this means he is worried. ‘Unless,’ he says and she knows she is in for a lecture, ‘exterior trans-dimensional forces are operating on the TARDIS.’

  ‘Oh Doctor. That’s impossible. Isn’t it K-9?’

  Previously hidden, ducked down in shadow in the corner as if sent there in disgrace or to hide from the singing, the little metal beast nods its head. Its radar ears waggle. Sometimes the Doctor believes the dog does that just for show.

  ‘Mistress,’ it affirms simply.

  ‘The higher dimensions are undetectable. Even for the TARDIS. There’s no instrumentation built to perceive them.’

  The Doctor keeps grinning. ‘Has anyone told the higher dimensions that?’

  ‘Doctor. It’s the light. It’s broken.’

  And then, right on time, the wave of dimensional energy smashes into the Doctor’s home, sending him, Romana, K-9, and several lifetimes’ worth of collected junk flying.

  The source of this energy? This wave of something or other that has assailed them? In time. In time.

  First, Ashkellia. Ashkelly-ah. Roll the syllables on your tongue. Who could have named such a place? Yes, a place, different to this place. What men once called a planet. The beginning and the end of Valdemar.

  You have never seen such a place. A place so inimical to life it could almost define the opposite. Though perhaps you, even you, have imagined it. Men had a word, when words still mattered to men. Hell.

  However, just a place. Just a planet.

  Imagine, if you can, for I know your powers are limited, a sky that really is liquid. An eternal hail and swirl of burning, yellow clouds of rubble. Acid that drifts like smoke over the boiling, unseen surface. Noisy too, with booming thunderous collisions as the muck sizzles and tumbles in the violent ether. Not a place for human beings, you might say. But human beings there are.

  Specifically, one human being. A discredited novelist named Miranda Pelham.

  Through the sulphur clouds, you might say emerging from them, a small brass bulb. Swinging like a pendulum from gigantic links, buffeted by the evil pressures surrounding it, tugged at by conflicting and deadly forces.

  At this moment, at this beginning, Miranda Pelham cowers, hugs herself inside this metal bathyscape swinging down towards the surface. To the tomb. Thick glass windows visibly scar as the elements of Ashkellia scratch and scrabble, trying to find a way in, acid fingers feeling for human flesh.

  Pelham, shivering despite the heat, wrapped in her flimsy cloak. Clichés ring through her head: reaping what you sow, the past that catches up with you, the one about the whirlwind that she can’t quite remember.

  The bathyscape bounces, jumps in one heartbeat-skipping hammer of turbulence. ‘OH MY GOD!’ she shrieks, her head colliding with one of the many equipment packs stuffed into this tiny bubble.

  ‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ says the helmsman, a cult techie called Prahna. One of Neville’s mercenaries. The yellow light transmutes his smile into something sinister, something devilish. The liquid winds howl.

  ‘Right,’ Pelham replies, wondering if the man is mad.

  ‘They built these babies to last; same construction materials as the star probes. Very expensive.’ He says this with pride, as if he’d bought the bathyscape himself.

  It lurches again. ‘Don’t worry,’ says Pelham, ‘I believe you.

  The other choice is worse.’

  Worse. An interesting word. She prefers worst. The worst it could get. Meaning no more worse. Yes, she thought, let’s use worst.

  The third occupant, Erik Hass, her assistant for twelve years, lover for three, never alters his stare, his unswerving meditation on the element detector. Its blue light gives his face an entirely different sheen. Different, thinks Pelham, but equally inhuman. Like a ghost.

  ‘Should pick up the surface density soon. You really think it’s there, Miranda? After all this time?’

  Valdemar. That which they seek. Her gold mine. Incredible to think that, despite this insanity, maybe their situation wasn’t the worst after all. ‘I never thought I’d be in a position to find out,’ she replies.

  ‘You must be really excited.’

  ‘Ecstatic. Oh yes.’

  Erik fails to catch the sarcasm and returns to his studies.

  He makes some adjustments to the screen.

  Perhaps if I close my eyes and make a wish, Miranda thinks, I’ll wake up and I’ll be back in Antigua. On a beach, watching the royalties wash in like waves. No New Protectorate, no Neville, no fear. Why had she chosen Valdemar? It had all seemed so safe such a long time ago.

  One of those things that ‘captured the spirit of the times’ (the European Review) and made her rich.

  Pelham can feel her stomach twisting, threatening to burst out of her mouth. They could have fitted this tub with anti-G, really they could have, couldn’t they? But then again, she knows full well it’s not the turbulence doing this to her.

  ‘Got it!’ Erik snaps. ‘Hard rock. Just keep this thing steady.’

  ‘You’re joking, aren’t you,’ says Prahna, sweating with the effort of hauling on the levers that are supposed to stabilise the precarious vessel. ‘If we corkscrew now, you can say goodbye to all this.’

  ‘Hey Erik, that’s fantastic,’ Pelham says brightly. ‘I can’t wait to go back up there and tell Neville the news. Let’s get back straight away!’

  At last, Erik looks up. He is puzzled. How little he knows her. She realises that without Valdemar, they would have absolutely nothing in common. And he has absolutely no sense of humour.

  ‘I thought you wanted to find it. It’s your life’s work.’

  ‘I do! I do! It’s just I feel it would be more appropriate to take things slowly. You know, correct procedures...

  protocol...’ She feels her voice slip away. They’re not going to do it, she realises, grimly. ‘All right. How about if I beg?’

  She looks at Prahna’s stern brown face. ‘I guess that wouldn’t work either,’ she mutters.

  ‘You know our orders,’ says Prahna. His expression has gone cold; the soldier coming through.

  ‘Aren’t you at least curious?’ asks Erik.

  You want the simple an
swer, Pelham thinks. She realises she is locked up with two madmen. All of a sudden, the bangle on her wrist itches like hell. Not yet, she thinks.

  Conceivably, this might not be the actual worst. Not worst enough to face... well, not yet anyway.

  ‘OK, OK. Let’s just get it over with. And in answer to your question, Erik, no I am not in the least bit curious. I’m incredibly scared. That’s what I am.’ Pelham feels herself starting to sob.

  ‘We must go on,’ says Erik.

  ‘We have to go on,’ says Prahna.

  The bathyscape swings once more. Perhaps everything is going to be OK.

  ‘Er...’ Prahna seems sheepish. He leans back and stares at his controls.

  What is she thinking? Of course everything isn’t going to be OK. Pelham grabs Prahna’s shoulder, digging her long, red nails into it. ‘What is it? What’s going on?’

  Prahna spreads his hands out, indicating the dials and levers as if she’s never seen them before. ‘They’re moving on their own,’ he says. ‘I’m not in control any more.’

  ‘A chronometric pulse?’ asks Romana, clearly not believing a word.

  ‘A chronometric pulse,’ the Doctor reassures her. ‘A wave of dimensional energy.’

  The TARDIS has stilled, for the moment. Mind you, the explosion that blew the tracer out of its nest on the console was a little worrying. Luckily, the Doctor was in just the right position to perform a dynamic double-handed catch before banging his head on the floor.

  Blackened, almost chastened, the panicked travellers have hurriedly disassembled the tracer’s components and are probing for damage. The Doctor squints, jeweller’s glass in one eye, and hopes he can put this infernally complicated device back together again.

  He waves away Romana’s attempt to bandage his head.

  ‘There’s no such thing as a chronometric pulse,’ she says.

  ‘Then what you experienced was impossible. Still, not to worry. We’ll just let it ride and when the universe tears itself apart you’ll know that that’s impossible too.’

  ‘That’s not funny.’

  ‘I’m not joking.’ The Doctor looks up, the jeweller’s glass still lodged in his eye. ‘What do you find so impossible? That this could have happened? Impossible is just another word for “I don’t understand”.’

  Romana backs away, unsure of herself. She’s only been with the Doctor for a short time but already she knows that events aren’t always controllable, or foreseeable. She decides to check the tracer’s slot on the console for damage.

  ‘A release of trans-dimensional energy,’ she mutters to herself. ‘The result of a rift between the lower and higher dimensions of matter. A rift in the kinetic dance. In theory.’

  ‘Theory my eye,’ says the Doctor, the jeweller’s glass dropping from his. ‘It’s the only possible explanation. What else could have done this to the tracer? Or the TARDIS?

  There, I think it’s done.’

  He rises, ready to plunge the tracer back into its slot.

  Romana looks on in horror. ‘Aren’t you going to test it? How do you know you’ve mended it correctly?’

  The Doctor smiles. ‘Test it? It’s perfect!’

  And with that he slams the tracer into place. The TARDIS

  lurches, tumbling once more.

  ‘Teething troubles,’ he grins, once he has untangled himself from the coat stand. Romana can only shake her head.

  Almost not wanting to, they look at the console. The tracer is back in place, lights pulsing merrily.

  ‘Seems to be functioning,’ says Romana.

  ‘Of course it is. And if I know my dimensional engineering, the location of the second segment should appear any second. Minute. Within the hour. Today.’

  They wait. No readings, coordinates or information of any kind appear on the console screen.

  ‘Doctor...’ Romana warns.

  ‘Well, it has got the entirety of space and time to search.

  You can’t expect miracles. That’s the trouble with you Academy types these days, no patience.’

  Mind you, he does slam his fist down on the console and yell, ‘Come on you stupid overgrown pencil!’ at the innocent device, confirming Romana’s view that the Doctor suffers from psychological cognitive dissonance and a fixated egocentric maturity deficiency. As Garron might have said: he’s a big kid.

  ‘Maa-ssterrr...’ comes a sorry-sounding voice from the shadows.

  The Doctor spins. ‘K-9,’ he utters, shocked. He leaps down to his forgotten companion.

  ‘Maa-ssterr...’ it says again, voice slurred, unmistakably mournful.

  The Doctor hurriedly hauls the dog into the light.

  ‘Doctor,’ says Romana, frightened. ‘His eyes. What’s wrong with his eyes?’

  The Doctor, on his knees, shuffles away. He is breathless, taken aback by the dog’s plight. ‘Oh, K-9.What’s the matter?’

  The dog’s ears waggle feebly; mangled electronics grind deep inside its casing. ‘Analysing tracer malfunction... Great forces... Chasms...’ it says, ‘breach fabling...’

  ‘What’s he saying?’ asks Romana. ‘Analysing the tracer?’

  The Doctor strokes K-9’s metal aerial, an aerial that is telescoping up and down. ‘Too much initiative, too impulsive.

  He must have tried to run his own diagnostic program when the tracer went dead. I think he’s picked up some kind of trans-dimensional feedback loop that’s scrambled his circuits. Either that or he’s drunk.’

  There is something disturbing, something cold and remote about the black husks that seem to have grown over K-9’s ocular sensors. Shining discs, like the eyes of an insect.

  Almost blurred, not of this reality. Romana is reminded of the segment of the Key, the way its alienness is fascinating, hypnotic.

  ‘Don’t look at him!’ shrieks the Doctor suddenly and hurls himself at her. ‘Look away!’

  ‘Poor steam...’ says K-9, backing away from the light. ‘Meet here...’

  The grinding inside ceases and its head droops.

  The Doctor holds Romana tight, too tight, but he is looking at the shadows where the dog lurks. ‘Doctor,’ she says, smoothing back her hair. She puts on her best haughty look.

  Anything to cover the fear that she suspects she feels. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘The higher dimensions,’ whispers the Doctor. ‘How could they... affect a machine?’

  ‘Almost nothing is known of the higher dimensions,’ says Romana. ‘Except that they exist... co-exist with this universe.

  A part of reality...’

  ‘A part!’ The Doctor finally releases her. ‘They are reality!

  Total reality! More reality than even pompous Time Lords can perceive. Somehow, it’s made itself apparent here.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘The chronometric wave. A release of trans-dimensional energy. We’re still on the shore. The real events are taking place out there, deep in the ocean.’

  ‘Doctor, you’re talking in riddles.’

  ‘Am I? Sometimes that’s the only way to make oneself clear.’

  ‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’ Romana asks.

  ‘Me? Forget something? Never.’

  She points to the segment, miraculously still sitting placidly on the white table. ‘Our task?’

  The Doctor seems trapped. He stares alternately at the segment, then K-9, then back to the segment again. ‘How could I... ? But wait. If something is causing the higher dimensions to become apparent. Perhaps the Black Guar–’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Never mind. It’s just that it might be a trick. To divert us.

  But we can’t take that chance, can we? The Key to Time must be paramount.’

  A bleeping comes from the console. Romana glances over.

  ‘Perhaps the decision has been taken for us. These coordinates. Oscillating. All over the place.’

  The Doctor stares at the hesitant numbers. ‘It could be that the forces are upsetting the tracer’s circuitr
y.’

  ‘Or you rebuilt it incorrectly.’

  ‘Impossible. If that’s not working, how can we be sure where the segments are? It could send us anywhere.’

  At last, the turning numbers settle. A coordinate, a place.

  Romana knows she doesn’t need to look it up in the star charts. He knows. He always knows.

  ‘Ashkellia,’ says the Doctor. ‘Interesting.’

  ‘Really? In what way?’

  He sighs, as if talking to an idiot. ‘Because, as everybody knows, it’s reputed to be one of the resting places of Valdemar. This is all starting to add up.’

  ‘Not to me it isn’t.’

  ‘Well, of course not. You probably don’t even know who Valdemar is.’

  ‘But you’re going to tell me.’

  ‘On the way. We have to materialise whether it’s the second segment or not. If for nothing else, for K-9’s sake.’

  Romana glances back at the machine. It sits, motionless, as if waiting for a command. She feels in need of some distraction therapy, some task to marshall her energies, as she was taught during the training she received on Gallifrey.

  One action always focuses her mind. ‘I’d better pick some suitable clothes,’ she says sternly. ‘What sort of planet is Ashkellia? Not cold again, I hope.’

  The Doctor seems distracted, barely listening. His eyes don’t leave the coordinates. ‘Cold? Oh no. Quite the opposite.’

  Pelham, when she’s not praying or trembling, watches through the portholes in the floor as the black shape below grows bigger. Luckily, the sensors are still working and Erik is very helpfully deconstructing just wherever it is that whatever it is that has them, is taking the bathyscape.

  ‘Some kind of artificial stone construction. Too dense for any kind of clear reading on these sensors. Just tough.’

  ‘It would have to be,’ says Pelham, almost to herself, ‘to have survived here without melting for a million years.’

  Prahna, now without anything to do, can only get in the way. ‘A million years?’

  ‘That’s my estimation as to when Valdemar was entombed by the Old Ones. They’re called “Old Ones” for a reason, you see,’ she says sweetly.