The Tomb of Valdemar Read online

  Romana’s sense of moral decencies prevents her pursuing this line of inquiry. Unlike the Doctor, she is incapable of projecting herself into the mind of her opponent.

  Oh, she can play the victim well enough. She can empathise with Huvan himself, his feverish sufferings, his hormonal imbalances, his decades of stretched-out misery.

  This is not a problem.

  What Romana lacks are the resources to imagine how degraded, how cynical, how unfeeling the perpetrator of Huvan’s agony must be. Perhaps later, when travelling the universe has ingrained itself into her, these faculties will develop, but now, now all she can think of is to find the Doctor and ask his advice. She knows he will understand her feelings all too well.

  Reluctant to confront the mad lovers in the piazza, she wanders the corridors, dodging guards, poking her head into empty, incomprehensible rooms. Unfortunately, somewhere in the upper floors, when she is thinking of simply giving up and going back to bed, Paul Neville steps out from the shadows in front of her and holds out a hand.

  Watching from his control centre, Neville had considered sending Kampp to fetch Romana, but thought better of it. He didn’t want to frighten the lady and his butler tends to get over-excited when it comes to the opposite sex. However, Neville doesn’t want her interfering with Huvan, putting ideas into that idiot’s head.

  The Magus has expressed an interest in the Doctor and Romana. These people intrigue him. Neville is surprised when that deep, resonant voice tells him to allow them limited freedom, to see what occurs. It is all part of the great plan.

  Whether or not they are Hopkins’s lackeys does not concern the Magus. Neville tries to explain that there could be danger in this freedom, that people are looking for him and the Doctor and Romana may find a way to communicate with them. The Magus cuts him off. Neville’s master wants the power of his palace restored and believes their visitors are capable of doing it.

  Neville has listened to the Magus long enough to know not to argue with him. He wearily accedes to all demands. The logic of his mentor’s words is inescapable.

  It has been a long journey getting here and Neville has no intention of rushing it now. The Old Ones were clever enough to set traps and already two men have been lost on what was obviously a stupid mission. And perhaps Romana is important.

  So he goes himself.

  Romana is startled to see him. ‘Looking for something?’ he asks kindly. ‘Don’t tell me, your friend the Doctor.’

  ‘Well, Mr Neville, yes.’ She looks around, blinking. She is afraid of him. Good. An advantage.

  ‘Let me escort you. I’ve just left him in the library.’

  She does not want him to, but agrees. ‘Thank you. You are most kind.’

  He offers a hand. Elegantly, very elegantly, she takes it. He leads her.

  ‘I understand you have met my protégé, Huvan,’ he states.

  ‘Indeed. An interesting boy. Man.’

  Neville gives her his sincere, amused glance. ‘I can only apologise as to the quality of the poetry. However, be reassured that although you were obliged to be privy to but one of his tragic epics, I have been audience to them all. On numerous occasions.’

  Romana is amused. He has got through. She tries not to speak, and fails. ‘My condolences,’ she says, no doubt considering herself wicked. He knows he is good, very good.

  ‘However,’ she continues, ‘it is not in my nature to mock those who cannot help the way they behave.’

  Ah. She is obviously less delicate than she appears. He bows, acknowledging his mistake. ‘My apologies, Romana.

  You clearly disapprove of my little experiment. But before you judge too harshly, you should be fully conversant with the facts of the matter.’

  ‘I am conversant, as you put it, with the fact that you have violated a young man’s genetic structure in such a manner as to cause considerable damage to both body and mind. On many civilised worlds, this would be considered a grave moral crime.’

  She lets go of his hand, clearly ready to take him on. He stops, all contrition. ‘Of course, and you would be correct in your thinking. It was a heinous act. I am a man fully aware of the crimes he has committed. If there had been any method other than the one I was forced to use, I would have used it.

  Alas, I was young and the disease too advanced.’

  ‘Disease?’

  ‘A most unfortunate syndrome – Baylock’s palsy. Rare but undeniably fatal.’

  ‘Baylock’s palsy?’ She is sceptical.

  ‘Baylock’s palsy. Premature ageing. Those afflicted never live a year beyond puberty. He was a serf, one of my family’s people. The treatment was expensive and in its infancy. I took it upon myself to do what I could. Believe me, his family were only too relieved.’

  Forget that image of those greedy peasant parents grabbing at the pittance he paid them, shoving the screeching child into his carriage, dancing with joy as he drove away. You are telling a lie, it didn’t happen. If you’re saying it’s true, it is a lie.

  ‘Really,’ Romana says, but she is uneasy.

  ‘I’m sure you wish to find your friend,’ he continues, easily.

  ‘You know, one of these days you really are going to have to tell me who you are.’

  Romana smiles back. ‘One of these days. Am I a prisoner here?’

  ‘Oh no. I have no claim on this palace. I am merely a tenant. The real owners, well, who knows... ?’

  ‘Indeed, the riddle of Valdemar and the disappearance of the Old Ones is one of the ten great mysteries of the universe,’ says Romana. ‘Number six as I recall, from those on my planet who were obsessed with lists.’

  ‘You want the Doctor.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘You realise, of course, that this palace is nothing more than the control centre of a jumped-up particle accelerator,’ says Romana after Neville has left her and the Doctor together in the library. It is evening now, not that it makes much difference on Ashkellia, but somehow the dim palace lights have dimmed even further. Shadows loom large in this repository of the Old Ones.

  The Doctor grunts. He has been tinkering with one of the data-storage cylinders. Slowly, he lowers it on to the carved table. Oh dear. Romana realises she has made a big mistake.

  ‘Of course I know,’ he replies, patiently. ‘Now, undoubtedly, so do they.’

  ‘Ah. Sorry.’ She tries to spot the recording devices. ‘Which is why Neville was so helpful in bringing me here. How do you think he is observing us?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Nano-bugs, cameras, telepathy for all I know.’

  ‘I’m sorry Doctor.’ She is still painfully aware of the gap between intelligence (the understanding of the purpose of the palace) and experience (knowing when to keep one’s mouth shut).

  ‘Don’t worry. He would have worked it out in the end.’

  Romana paces the huge hall. ‘But applied on such a scale.

  Even Gallifrey... What could they possibly have hoped to achieve? These Old Ones.’

  The Doctor’s face is in shadow, but she could swear the lines on his face had deepened. He seems older, old as his years. ‘To breach the higher dimensions,’ he says.

  Romana is shocked. Really shocked. ‘But... but that’s impossible. The whole idea, that’s ludicrous.’

  The Doctor laughs, but without humour. ‘Why are you so upset? Because the Old Ones did it? Or that they achieved an engineering miracle not even the Time Lords could manage?’

  ‘The experiment was closed down. The Dimensional Ethics Committee...’

  ‘Banned any such experimentation. I know. The consequences would have been appalling.’ The Doctor sits back in his chair, furiously twiddling his thumbs. To Romana, it was as if he had been there, as if the experiment had been taken from him. A personal insult.

  ‘Why, Doctor?’ she asks. ‘What would happen if the higher dimensions were breached?’ She is on familiar ground – the debate, the discussion of evidence.

  ‘Reality would begin to c
hange,’ he muses, looking up at the data cylinders lining the walls. ‘Or more strictly, appear to change. The higher dimensions are reality, just a greater reality than we can perceive. Even Time Lords, with their occasional insights into the fourth and fifth dimensions, aren’t immune to their effects.You recall that poor man inside the tomb?’

  Romana shudders. She remembers all right. ‘And K-9?’

  ‘The mind and body adapt to exposure to the higher dimensions. Organs in the brain, dormant for centuries, begin to grow. The eyes...’

  ‘Yes, I know about the eyes.’

  ‘Ah!’ He is suddenly awake. The air pops with the sound of snapping fingers. His own wide eyes gleam in the dying light.

  ‘Of course! How could I have been so stupid?’

  ‘I don’t know. What are you talking about?’

  ‘Telepathy. Nano-whatever, cameras, telepathy, that’s what I said, isn’t it? Don’t you see?’

  ‘No. What’s all this got to do with Valdemar?’

  ‘Telepathy! That’s what this has got to do with Valdemar.’

  Romana frowns at him She thinks she understands what he means. She remembers a rather fanciful paper on this very subject at the Academy. ‘Doctor, that was only supposition.’

  ‘Supposition? Superstition? It’s fact and the Time Lords knew it! Valdemar. Of course. It has to be.’

  ‘That certain individual forms of life are more adapted to perceive the higher dimensions? It’s a childish conceit. Like the idea that certain privileged families could control and master some universal force...’

  ‘It’s undemocratic, I’ll grant you. But I think it’s true. The Old Ones must have had great quantities of psychic energy.

  Enough even to instil their computers with that knowledge.’

  ‘Doctor. This is speculation.’

  ‘Is it really?’ He is up and pacing now ‘Even on minimal power, the sensors could interpret your psychic energy and recreate an environment you felt a deep empathy towards.’

  ‘My room?’

  ‘What else would you call it? Magic?’

  Romana doesn’t want to be convinced. She doesn’t want to believe she is trapped inside a giant living computer that can read her mind. ‘“It knows”, Huvan said. A frightening thought.’

  The Doctor spreads out his arms. ‘Frightening, indeed.

  Imagine. A million years ago, the Old Ones breached the higher dimensions. The effect would have been catastrophic.

  But not for everyone. Certain individuals, perhaps only one, were sufficiently psychically evolved to control its influence.

  To shape reality to its own ends. With that kind of power, it could do anything. And in the end, millennia later, when even the universe itself has changed beyond recognition, the memories of this time still live on.’

  ‘Valdemar,’ breathes Romana.

  ‘This palace is only a fragment,’ says the Doctor. ‘An echo.

  If it can do what it does now, what would it be capable of when operating on full power?’

  The words ring round the hall. Together, they look up at the library. It seems to have provided them with knowledge after all.

  ‘We can’t allow that,’ Romana says.

  ‘No,’ the Doctor replies, somewhat evasively. ‘No. Of course not.’ He keeps himself impassive, not allowing his face to betray his real thoughts.

  Up in his control room, Paul Neville rubs his hands with glee.

  His fingers dance over the video-disc controls. The Doctor’s words are repeated once more. ‘No. No. Of course not.’

  It is time to begin work.

  Night falls in the palace. Its battered metal skin is still assailed by the same liquid storms; the stabilisers still spin and fire; the updraught from the core still holds it aloft.

  However, deep inside, self-maintaining sensors understand and respond to the needs of its latest occupants and perform operations, relevant to their biological clocks.

  In a way, the palace becomes even more fairy-like at night.

  We pass over the sleeping bodies of the young nobles, exhausted from yet another day of frolics. They dream of money and ease and love. We move to Huvan, muttering and flinching in his sleep from the thousand dark blows and slashes from the creatures living inside his mind.

  We see Pelham, who has been released from her bonds by the terrifying Kampp, and escorted to a comfortable cell. She will be summoned in the morning. She dreams of her golden past, the success she never appreciated, the greed that brought her here. Of Robert Hopkins and his threats.

  Mercifully, memories of her treatment at the butler’s hands, as well as the experience in the tomb, are overridden by these pleasanter scenes.

  Neville sleeps at his console, like a grey spider in its lair, the spying machines still bobbing and floating. It’s obvious what he dreams of – power. Limitless power. And Valdemar.

  Finally, we see the Doctor and Romana, doing whatever Time Lords do that passes for sleep. They are trapped here, they know it. The weight of the universe presses down on them; the need to get moving, to get on with their mission. As yet, they feel themselves unable to proceed. Worse still, unable to perceive those factors larger than themselves that would allow them to know which decision would ultimately prove correct. What do they do? Escape and continue with the Key to Time? Or stay and prevent the worst, the unimaginable, from happening again, as it did a million years ago?

  Sweet dreams, Doctor.

  Chapter Six

  You see, you have to see, the thing is – the Doctor is so very, very wrong.

  All this talk of higher dimensions and particle accelerators, that’s the typical kind of pseudo-rationalisation so beloved of our new lords and masters in the Protectorate.

  He lacks the true knowledge, the true perception of what is and what isn’t.

  Valdemar cannot be tidily explained away, much as they would like him to be. Valdemar is aeons old, almost as old as time itself, so how can this Doctor arrogantly spout that he knows better, that he can reduce the Dark God to such principles? It is the mouse saying to the cat that he cannot exist because he is not just a big mouse, carrying on these protestations as it is consumed.

  The truth can only be discovered through dedication, through exploration and, of course, through faith. Not the diluted, whining materialism of the New Protectorate, faith is an absolute belief that there is something more, something greater than this grubby life. One just needs the right eyes.

  Perhaps if the Doctor had suffered, the way the small bundle of life energy known to the universe as Paul Neville has suffered... Paul Neville. A name given to this bundle by other bundles. Quite accidental, quite random.

  Of course, nothing is random, or accidental. Neville was not born the eldest son of two of the richest and most powerful planet-owners in the empire for nothing. Oh no, there was meaning there, a predestination. This was always known.

  Neville has a memory. He recalls events perfectly. His upbringing on the private moon, its atmosphere and gravity terraformed to provide just the right effect. The parents had been ostentatious, something Neville disliked. Their home was a recreation of the famous Alton Towers, that apex of twenty-first century culture. Their Alton Towers, however, was large, much larger than the original. Ninety-five kilometres larger.

  Neville remembers long summers and skeletal rides; ornamental fountains that stretched to the horizon; the indolence of the duke and duchess.

  He himself preferred science. Oh yes, science. He gave it a go. Let the Doctor and his sceptics mock, but Neville tried their way. Determined to create something, something that would aid him in his destiny.

  For a moment, emotion breaks in. Neville had a pet, a dog, its pampered life extended through genetic manipulation.

  Neville remembers – he extended that life span himself with surgery, to see what he could achieve. And more, so much more.

  Neville remembers the horror on his parents’ faces when he introduced the dog (what was its name again �
� Pinch?

  Punch?) to the court, clad in its own fine doublet and hose, and it opened its augmented mouth and politely introduced itself with a languid bow.

  Alas, speech did not suit the creature. Despite the modifications to its brain, it lacked some spiritual component in its canine nature and failed to adjust to its new life. The new perceptions, the human perception, drove the creature mad.

  The dog... Oh, there was some unpleasantness with servants, a death perhaps; he was only eleven at the time...

  and it had to be exterminated. Neville remembers this was the first hunt he was allowed to attend; that and the dog’s blood on his face when it was eventually cornered.

  Soon after, he knew science was a dead end. The life of the spirit was what consumed him now. Could life be altered spiritually? Was life any more than just living?

  He gained entrance to the most prestigious arcane university on Earth, despite the parents’ disapproval and, in fact, refusal. Oh yes, that particular turning-point.

  When the shells of the duke and duchess were found poisoned in their private herb garden, no one could understand how this could have happened. The duke was an idiot; three centuries of noble breeding left no doubt about that, but the duchess, she knew everything she needed to know. Maybe it was a suicide pact, in the face of the impending revolts on their major planets. Even in his idiocy, the duke was rumoured to have extra-natural clairvoyance; perhaps he had forseen the day Hopkins would come and take his planets, wealth and lands off him.

  It had been interesting to Neville. To watch as the spirits left his parents’ physical trappings; their bewildered pleadings. At that moment, Neville realised he could breathe in those spirits and make himself stronger; compound his sense of self. They lived in him now, occasionally making their voices heard.

  The human Neville left university having learned little –