The Tomb of Valdemar Read online

  ‘You know, I never thought it was real, all this Valdemar stuff. It’s just that Neville...’

  ‘I’m glad I’m down here with you. So I can share in your life story.’

  ‘Hush!’ says Erik (‘ Hush’? Only Erik would actually say

  ‘ Hush’.) ‘I think it’s opening up. The top... it’s opening up.’

  One good thing about whatever is now driving the bathyscape is that the ride is a lot smoother. Pelham can actually see. Whether or not she wants to see, is another matter.

  The bathyscape drops into darkness, through the top of the construction that appears to have found them. Prahna activates the docking lights. They don’t help much; the walls of the well are obsidian, black and smooth. It’s hot still.

  Pelham, in her finery, feels the perspiration sticking the lace and silk to her back.

  A bump, and they’ve hit some sort of ground. Pelham is now very definitely thinking of her nice old apartment in Antigua, purchased with the proceeds of her first Valdemar book. Gentle waves, white sand, blue sky. If only she hadn’t made Valdemar out to be quite as terrible as she had.

  Ears pop. All gulp. ‘Airlock?’ asks Erik.

  Prahna gingerly touches at his controls, as if whatever possessed them is still inside, like it’s contagious. ‘Oxygen.

  Gravity too. Seems like these Old Ones breathed like we do.’

  ‘Unless this is all being done for our benefit.’ Pelham won’t be optimistic. She refuses. They’re all going to die.

  ‘Well, um... shall we go outside then?’ asks Erik. Keen, far too keen. If it weren’t for his muscles, and tan, and those little glasses he wears that make him look so delicious...

  They are looking at her. She is still nominally in charge.

  ‘We don’t have much choice, do we?’

  Prahna, perhaps instinctively, breaks open a weapons pack. Pelham places a hand on his arm to stop him. ‘I wouldn’t. Unless you’re thinking of using it on us if we’re naughty.’

  Prahna shrugs her off. ‘I like to be prepared.’

  Erik is squinting out into the blackness. ‘Do you... do you really think this is the tomb? That Valdemar could still... you know?’

  Pelham shakes her head. She doesn’t want to listen.

  Erik is lost, gone off on one of his daydreams. ‘The tomb of Valdemar,’ he breathes. ‘The Dark God. Captured and destroyed by the Old Ones after centuries of the biggest war in mythology, and buried here. After all the work we’ve done, Miranda. This is an historic moment. And all thanks to you, Miranda. You showed us the way.’

  ‘We all have our cross to bear.’

  Prahna opens the hatch. Chilled air relieves the travellers in their stuffy oven. The first fresh air they’ve breathed in months. ‘Whoever installed the air conditioning, we should use them,’ says Pelham.

  ‘You could show a little more reverence, Miranda,’ Erik snaps. He seems totally unafraid. Keen, far too keen.

  ‘Just keep your eyes open,’ says practical Prahna.

  They are in a vast black cavern. Looking up, high above, Miranda sees their gigantic chain rising up to a small aperture, through which rage the gleaming gold storms of Ashkellia. Some kind of force field must be holding back the planet. She tries not to think how long it’s all been operating.

  Heavy, heavy technology. Or magic.

  In a way, it’s all a bit of an anticlimax. Maybe it will be all right after all. Maybe Valdemar is just lying in some sarcophagus somewhere, smaller than you expected. Just bones, if anything. The mundane truth behind centuries of mythology. Behind her fanciful pseudo-factual stories.

  Erik and Prahna are waving their torches around this cavernous nothing. Circular beams latch on to bumps and protuberances, natural or not they cannot tell.

  Pelham feels the goose bumps lacing her arms, spinning a web on her skin. She shivers and the torches snap on to her like spotlights. She smiles. ‘Come on then. If we’re coming.’

  Romana is wondering whether the TARDIS ever lands anywhere pleasant. It’s cold in this dark tunnel. And what had he said?

  It is thanks to him that she decided on this flimsy diaphanous collection of silks and drapes. She readjusts the silly costume jewellery coronet on her head. ‘They like trifles and tit-bits and fancies and follies,’ the Doctor had said. The twilight of the Second Empire, he’d said; discreet technology, fun. Highly aristocratic, he’d said, blend in with the surroundings, better to be one of those at the top... Opens more doors.

  So how come he never wears anything except that ridiculous theatrical get-up? Blend in?

  This know-it-all attitude is beginning to grate. Especially as they are already off-mission. She just hopes the Doctor’s infamous curiosity doesn’t get the better of him. As far as she is concerned, they need to find the source of this energy pulse, switch it off, repair K-9 and get back on track. What was that name he mentioned earlier? The one he presumed she is unfamiliar with; the one she is unfamiliar with.

  Valdemar? Who or what is that?

  The Doctor is bounding out of the TARDIS, ready for the adventure. Romana expects to feel nervous, or wary or something. Not anticipation, excitement.

  She hadn’t been expecting this new life, back at the halls and lecture rooms of the Academy where she had spent most of her life slaving away for that triple first. Only when she graduated did she begin to wonder quite what the purpose of it all was. The serenity, the complacency had become familiar enough to be tiring. She wonders whether she had been bored.

  The search for the first segment had been like a shock of cold water. Surely all their stop-offs weren’t going to be like that? She is pleased with her own derring-do.

  ‘K-9’s still in shock,’ says the Doctor. ‘I think his system is trying to expel the new data from the energy burst. Exposure to the higher dimensions can do nasty things to the mind.

  Even metal minds.’

  ‘Doctor,’ says Romana impatiently. She isn’t feeling particularly impatient but Doctor-baiting is good sport. ‘It’s cold.’

  The Doctor licks a finger and raises it in the gloom. She sees the spittle gleaming on its tip fade out as the TARDIS

  door shuts. ‘It is cold,’ he affirms. ‘Wind from the east.’

  ‘I thought you said...’

  ‘I know what you thought I said. Acid clouds, mean temperature in the low six hundreds. We’re obviously inside an artificial structure. With very advanced air conditioning.’

  Romana inspects a wall. She runs her elegant hand along its side. ‘Artificial? This is igneous rock. Eroded. Which would make it...’

  ‘Oh, at least a million years old. So it’s a million-year-old artificial structure.’

  ‘So how come the air conditioning is still functioning?’

  ‘Look. Oh...’ He is off down the tunnel. East, he said. ‘Do I have to explain everything? You must learn to work things out for yourself. Come on, we’re wasting time.’

  Romana looks down at the smooth floor, aggrieved that he still treats her like a child. ‘Oh yes, Doctor. Coming, Doctor,’

  she sniffs and strides haughtily after him.

  The tunnel is short and ends in a crossroads. The Doctor peers into each road in turn. ‘Isn’t this always the way?’ he says, perhaps affronted that the structure could do this to him. ‘We really don’t have the time.’

  ‘If you’d brought the tracer like I’d suggested...’

  ‘I don’t need that. Anyway, it’s a delicate machine, regenerating itself. And...’

  ‘You don’t trust it any more,’ she realises.

  ‘I don’t trust it any more.’ He turns and looks at Romana, for the first time since they left the TARDIS. He beams his smile at her. ‘Good, Romana. Good. You’re learning. Well done. You took the words right out of my mouth.’

  The patronising... ‘Thank you.’ Romana curtseys and gives him her icy smile, perfected over months of dealing with ancient, similarly patronising Academy lecturers. ‘So which way?’

 
The Doctor puts an arm around her shoulders. ‘Now then, as a test for you. Which way?’

  Romana, all politeness and sugar, shrugs him off. ‘Wind from the east?’

  He nods.

  ‘Then I think east. At worst we may discover who did the air conditioning.’

  There is a tremendous roar, a blast of cold energy, like the bellow of some gigantic, incensed animal. The walls of the tunnel shudder as a gale hurls itself at them. Romana feels her flimsy coronet ripped from her head. Both she and the Doctor strain to keep their balance.

  The roar subsides. The ringing in her ears remains.

  ‘Very good,’ says the Doctor, approvingly. ‘East it is.’

  Romana stays still. That roar was like... like nothing she has ever experienced. She is now extremely cold. ‘What was that noise?’

  The Doctor sniffs. ‘I don’t know. Let’s find out.’

  ‘It might be dangerous.’

  ‘Oh, undoubtedly. These things often are. Try not to let it worry you. Shall we?’

  Romana follows the Doctor then realises she is clutching his arm. She has discovered another character trait: she doesn’t like walking down dark corridors towards hideous roaring noises.

  Five minutes later, they reach the docking chamber of the tomb of Valdemar, where Miranda Pelham’s bathyscape hangs from its chain. The Doctor identifies the make – a customised Star Probe Seven shell, with toughened uber-alloyed chain links – the fact that this device must have cost a fortune, and the inverse ratio of baroque design over efficiency. Romana wonders what the chain is attached to.

  The hatch is open but the occupants have gone.

  Five minutes after that they hear the screaming. They race to help, back into the tunnel they have just left, and collide with Miranda Pelham. Her clothes scuffed and ripped, she is running clumsily back to the bathyscape, her face utterly white with fear. As she falls into the Doctor’s arms, she faints dead away, the growls of the transformed Erik ricocheting up the tunnel after her.

  Chapter Three

  The Janua Foris is a mixture of confusion and uproar. All around the tavern, trappers howl and brag and shout. Many had arrived late and use this break to loudly demand the beginning of the story again. The very air seems thick with camr’ale.

  ‘This don’t make no sense!’ shouts Ponch, unaware that he has had a further two camr’ales since the story commenced.

  The old woman is giggling to herself. ‘What is it that’s confusing you, Ponch?’ she asks.

  ‘All of it! Big metal tubs swinging on chains, waves travelling back through time. Men turning into monsters. It’s stupid.’

  ‘Don’t believe a word of it,’ roars another good-humoured critic.

  ‘And that way you tell it, all this “He says... she says”, it ain’t right. It should be “He said... she said”. Like proper stories.’

  The woman spreads her lined fingers. Ponch can see right up her sleeves, where the flesh hangs off her arms. He realises she is much older than anyone he has ever known.

  Maybe even thirty-five. ‘I just tell it like it was,’ she says. ‘And what I didn’t see, I make up. Using the best available secondary evidence of course.’

  ‘We ain’t got time to listen to stories. I thought it’d be short but that took ages.’

  ‘And nothing happened. Just a load of folk talking.’

  ‘Thought it’d be scarifyin’. Wouldn’t frighten a child.’

  Suddenly, from beneath the table, a white-faced Ofrin, reminiscent of Miranda Pelham in the story, emerges from beneath the table. He is shaking, looking around nervously.

  ‘Get me a drink,’ he gabbles. ‘Christ, that put years on me.

  That thing with the dog and the eyes. I thought me heart was going to give out!’

  He shivers, then stops. His tiny eyes swivel to the assembled company. All are watching him. ‘What’s up with you lot?’ he growls, punching two nearby trappers into unconsciousness to reimpose his status.

  Ponch finds himself staring at the ‘book’ on the table in front of him. Somehow, far beyond his befogged comprehension, there seems to be a face on the book. A woman. And beneath, strange scribbles. ‘This is where stories end up. If you’re lucky,’ says the old woman, slyly.

  Ponch squints at the face. A young face, beautiful, very much like...

  ‘That’s you,’ he breathes. ‘That’s you, younger.’

  The crowd gasp, theatrically. ‘How’s that then... ?’ Ofrin scorns.

  ‘That’s the storyteller,’ says the woman. ‘Many, many years ago. That is Miranda Pelham.’

  ‘But it’s you!’

  The woman opens her mouth to reply, then seems to change her mind. She sits back and stares at Ponch, an amused glint in her eye.

  ‘What I don’t get,’ says Ponch, ‘is why you came here to tell us this.’

  ‘Or how you got here.’

  The woman smiles. ‘None of these things are important.

  Perhaps I just mean to entertain you. I know of the reputation of the trappers, their brutality. Perhaps it’s a survival tactic. Perhaps you will discover there is meaning after all. It’s all a question of perception.’ She turns suddenly to Ponch. ‘How long do I have before the guild sleds arrive to take your furs?’

  ‘End of the autumn. A few cycles.’

  ‘Long enough.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For you to find out what I’m doing here. This is an interactive story.’

  ‘Uh?’

  Miranda Pelham is unable to explain herself. The Doctor, much more worried than he has been letting on to Romana, carries her back to the bathyscape.

  The growling is emanating from somewhere between them and the TARDIS. The Doctor isn’t sure what has happened, but he knows growls when he hears them.

  He lowers Pelham into a seat as Romana clangs the hatch shut. ‘What now?’ she asks.

  Indeed. It’s a quandary. Once again, events seem to have conspired to prevent his reunification with his ship. And poor old K-9. For a moment he feels irritated by this human woman. Why did she have to come here just at the wrong time and start messing about and causing all this trouble?

  Doesn’t she realise what this delay might mean?

  He sighs. Because she is human and that is what humans do.

  ‘I don’t mean to worry you, Doctor,’ says Romana. ‘But that growling is getting louder.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he replies. ‘We need to go up. You’d think they’d have a telephone. Or a bell.’ He looks at the crude operating controls. Brass levers and switches and round clock dials, a nostalgic facade for such powerful instrumentation.

  Shouldn’t be too difficult.

  ‘Doctor!’ hisses Romana, just as Erik thumps on to the bathyscape. He bangs and pounds at its sides. Through the portholes the Doctor sees eyes grown over by matter resembling black coral, a face warped as if by tremendous gravity, a mind gone.

  The man is bellowing, screaming. The sounds are odd, as if something has added tones to their range. The bathyscape rings and echoes with the noise and thumping.

  ‘Please...’ pleads Pelham, ‘get us out of here.’

  Without further ado, the Doctor hauls one lever back. It snaps into its new position with a clunk. There is a feeling of anticipation as the chain tautens. Somewhere up ahead, metal grinds.

  He looks at a worried Romana and gives her his smile.

  ‘Going up!’ he says.

  The bathyscape rocks as the chain yanks them aloft. The Doctor is ready, he has braced himself. Black rock speeds by.

  Romana and Pelham, on the other hand, are tumbling all over the place. Outside, Erik scrabbles and, by accident or design, grabs the hatch lock. The bathyscape begins to swing as its speed increases. Climbing over the women, the Doctor clamps a hand over the inner locking wheel on the hatch, just as the unfortunate creature starts to turn the latch.

  He is surprised by the strength Erik is exerting. Like a man possessed.

  ‘Help me, Romana!�
� the Doctor bellows, feeling the wheel start to turn. She is at his side in an instant. She feels cool next to him. Her slender fingers grip the wheel. Still, the shrieking creature outside is twisting. Through the glass in the hatch, the Doctor studies his adversary’s face. The ears, nose and brow have been subsumed by the coral growing from the eyes. The skull is changing shape, becoming elongated. Only the large, slack, noisy mouth points to the original species. Its breath steams the window. The Doctor feels pity for the unfortunate man. He knows, with finality, that this process is irreversible.

  Still, there are more pressing concerns. As the bathyscape is reeled in ever-faster to wherever it is heading, the creature’s strength is intensifying. Wind generated by speed tries to haul it off. The wheel turns some more. Romana grits her teeth.

  Then they are out into the red and gold sky. The grip releases. There is a final wail of despair and the Doctor turns away. He doesn’t need to see; he knows precisely what the concentrated acid, the pressure and the heat will do to the creature’s flesh. Something liquid drops like rain over the porthole.

  ‘Erik...’ moans Pelham, clutching the jewelled bangle on her wrist as if it were a life belt.

  The vessel is swinging more freely now. The Doctor clumsily reaches for the leather hand-straps to keep himself upright.

  Romana is still gripping the wheel. She is struggling to remain detached. ‘What affected him? Those were the same symptoms as K-9.’

  The Doctor nods, nasty theories swirling inside his head.

  ‘You know, I’ve got a feeling that someone here is trying to open the tomb of Valdemar.’

  He looks at Pelham, who reacts to the name. ‘How...’ she stumbles, ‘how did you know?’

  ‘Because wherever there is trouble, I must always find it.’

  Pelham is staring at him and Romana, as if aware of their presence for the first time.

  ‘You’re from the Protectorate...’ she says.

  ‘Oh no,’ Romana replies instantly, ‘we’re travellers. This is the Doctor and I am Romanadvor-Romana. We arrived by accident.’