Like A House Falling Into The Sea
Part II: The Wasteland
8. Back In Action
The Doctor was awake when we got back. And he was perfectly normal (for him). That's the way he is. No matter what happens, he's always back to normal when he wakes up. Okay, if he has a really bad knock on the head, sometimes he'd groggy for like thirty seconds, but apart from that … it's disgusting, really.
"Time storm!" he said. "I told you I detected temporal turbulence. Now, you say this is a recent phenomenon?"
"There were a few Storms when I was a child," said Threkian. "Or at least I now believe them to be Storms. But Storms like today's, only since … perhaps when Salar was half-grown. They grow ever worse and more frequent."
"Can you stop them?" I asked.
"I have to find out what's causing them, first." He fidgeted against the straps that held him upright in the diving bell. "Do you mind if we surface? It's getting rather stuffy in here."
"As you wish. It should be safe now, if we avoid the Teroi."
"Can you help Fethys, Doctor?" I asked. We'd told him about the Storm-sickness.
"Perhaps, if I learn more about it." But he had that sort of shifty look in his eyes he got when he didn't want to admit he couldn't do something. "The first thing we must do is get back to the TARDIS. I need to run some scans. Now, you say the Teroi are poisoning the water. When did that start?"
"A year ago, perhaps," said Threkian. "Or that was when we first noticed. It started on the edge of our territory, and it is death to venture there now. The water is poison to breathe, and the Teroi kill anyone they catch. And there is the Beast of the Water."
"Beast?" I said. "Is that a metaphor, or is it something we can harpoon?"
"No," said Threkian. She looked away. "It is a terrible monster."
"And?" said the Doctor, when she didn't continue. "What about this monster?"
"It is a curse of the gods," said Plecthros. Completely unhelpful.
"What kind of curse?" asked the Doctor. "Threkian, tell me."
She exchanged a look with Plecthros. "A great fish," she said. "Like an eel, but with many limbs."
It was obvious that she was holding something back, but the Doctor let it pass, and kicked me in the ankle when I started to ask. I shut up. I can too take a hint.
"We'll need a sample of contaminated water," he said. "If you could swim as close as is safe, there may be enough traces to analyze."
"Salar!" called Plecthros.
9. For Whom The Bell Tolls
The beach where we'd landed the TARDIS was over an hour's walk away from the Teroi guard outpost, and Threkian thought it was remote enough to be safe. When we got back, there was still nobody there, but we cut a few branches from the scrubby local plants and used them as camouflage. No sense in advertising.
Salar brought us a small jar of water (the Doctor supplied the jar) and came with us up onto the beach. He couldn't walk really well—he had a sort of stiff, shuffling waddle and looked twice as gangly as he did underwater. And he said he could only breathe for about half an hour. But that was long enough to have a good look inside the TARDIS.
He was impressed, but not as wowed as I thought he'd be. Apparently he thought it was just really good magic. Kind of disappointing, really.
The communications light was flashing (again) when we came in. The Doctor reached out a hand in passing and turned it off (again) without breaking stride, pretending nothing had happened. Then he turned to the rest of the instruments.
"Oh, dear, dear, dear," he said, tsking at the readouts. "Yes, there's a massive temporal distortion. It's affecting the entire planet, but there's a localized hotspot about twenty miles north of here. Destrii, let me see that water."
I handed the jar to him, and he put a few drops in the mass spectrometer. I could have run the mass spectrometer, but he had to do everything himself. It's no good talking to him when he's in his science mode. All you can do is hand him things and wait for him to get it out of his system.
"This jacket is toast," I said, pointlessly. "Soggy toast."
"Oh, very nasty. Very nasty indeed." He shook his head at the water sample results. I wasn't sure if he was impressed or appalled. Maybe both. "Gorindide, halathion, traces of broline … it looks almost like waste from … no, it couldn't be."
He does that in his science mode, too. Problem is, if you strangle him, you'll never get an answer.
"What?" I said.
"Unless …" He fiddled with a few controls. "Aha! Zordinite! They're mining for zordinite. See, here, there are traces of it in the runoff. The other chemicals are only byproducts of the refining process, highly toxic ones. They'd cause death at high levels of exposure, mutations at lower ones. That's probably where this Beast of the Water came from."
"So what's zordinite?" I asked. "And why are they mining it?"
"It's an explosive. Quite a powerful one, too." He stroked his chin thoughtfully. "The question is, what are they planning to do with it? Some sort of assault on the Istoi? No, that doesn't make sense. And here's an even better question—where did they get the technology to mine zordinite? That's far beyond those primitive guns they were carrying. And from what Threkian told me, the Teroi aren't that much more advanced than the Istoi."
"Aliens?"
"It seems likely."
"So, we go find this place up north, find Plan Nine from outer space, and we show it it ain't as tough as it thinks it is."
"More or less," said the Doctor. "Although I was hoping we could be a bit more subtle than that."
"Okay," I sighed. "So we whale on it till it begs for mercy, then we let it run away?"
"We only 'whale' if we have no other choice," said the Doctor sternly. "But otherwise, yes, that's the plan."
"Great. Come on, Doctor, cheer up. What could possibly go wrong?"
As if in answer, a terrible gonging noise came from the interior doors of the TARDIS. The Doctor flinched and turned towards it. "Oh, no."
"What?" Anything that scared him scared me. Much as it pains me to admit this, I think he's a bit braver than me. Just a smidge. But that's saying something. Nothing scares him. "I'm just guessing here, but you're gonna tell me that's not the oven timer, aren't you?"
"The Cloister Bell," he said. "It only rings when we're in terrible danger."
I fidgeted, made myself stand still, trying to look cool. "Yeah, but we're in terrible danger all the time."
"More terrible than that," he snapped. He slapped a few switches on the console, which bleeped at him testily. "Never mind the niceties, just tell me what's happening!"
That last was addressed to the TARDIS. He does that too, talks to the ship like it's alive. Funny thing is, I've tried asking it nicely for things—and it works. Spooky.
"Well, what is it?" I asked.
"The time distortion may be more serious than I thought," he said, his voice dropping to a grave almost-whisper. "It's dangerous now, but it's unstable. You remember Threkian said the Storms had gotten worse recently?"
"Yeah."
"This may be a warning that they could get much worse. Soon."
"Yeah, but we can stop it, right? Cos we can stop anything. You and me, Doctor, come on."
I meant it to sound careless and confident, like I didn't have a worry in the world, but the deep tone of the bell somehow distorted my voice, made it sound uncertain.
He stood there for a moment, staring down at the readouts. Then he took a deep breath and bounced back into action, grinning like a child. "Of course we can! That bell's rung a dozen times before, and I'm still standing! Come on!"
10. Plotting a Course
"The Abode of Monsters," said Plecthros.
Yippee! More monsters! Break out the pitchforks!
"Fairy tales," muttered Threkian. But she kept her voice low enough that the shaman didn't catch it.
The Doctor had managed to sort out a rough system of measurements and direction with the Istoi, and the only remarkable landmark twenty miles to the north was … guess what?
"When my grandfather was a boy, a star fell from the sky, into the sea," said Plecthros. "It burned, and the sea could not quench it. So the sea rejected it, pushing up an island. And that island was an island of fire, and the Beasts of Fire dwelt therein."
Yadda, yadda, yadda, big whoop. So a space-ship crashed (full of some sort of fire-alien) and they've got a leaky reactor or something, and that's what's making the Storms. Gee, tell me something new.
"I see," said the Doctor. He rubbed his temples, as if he had a headache. "How do we get there?"
Hey, Ma, guess where we're going on vacation! Oh, and don't forget to pack the marshmallows. I think there may be a bonfire.
Plecthros and Threkian were both shaking their heads. "That's beyond Teroi territory, now," said the Leader. "And the water is full of monsters to the east, and poison to the west."
"What about the land?" asked the Doctor.
This provoked some discussion. The Istoi didn't come out of the water very much, they didn't know what was going on up there. Years ago, when they were still on speaking terms with the Teroi, that area was mostly uninhabited, but the mining evidence showed that there was at least some activity there.
"I expect they will be on guard. We have made several raids, since they began to poison the water," said Hirass.
"Yes, we noticed," said the Doctor, dryly. He stroked his chin thoughtfully. "I think we might be better off sticking to the water. Or rather, above the water. The pollution may be toxic to flesh, but it shouldn't do much harm to a boat. Hopefully, if we can get deep enough into Teroi territory, they won't be so suspicious."
"But if they are," I said, "this time I'm hitting them."
11. Incognito
"Are you going to be able to adjust that thing back?" I asked.
"Hm?" asked the Doctor, not looking up from my hologram generator.
"I said, if you tinker with that thing, can you put it back the way it was later?"
This time he did look up. The magnifying lens he had screwed over one eyes made him look even more demented than usual. "Certainly! Here, it's done. Try it on."
I looped the chain over my neck, switched it on, and looked into the mirror that hadn't been there an hour before. The disguise looked almost the same as before—the brown-skinned human woman. But now her skin was a shade lighter and grayer, coarser, and her hair was silver instead of red. Her hands were webbed.
She looked like a passable Teroi.
"Not bad," I said. "But you'd better be able to change it back. I like being able to walk around on pre-stardrive Earth."
"I'll find you a new one if I broke it," said the Doctor. "But I didn't."
"Okay. And what about you?"
"Ah. Just a tick." He strolled through the interior doors and reappeared an improbably short time later, dressed in primitive trousers and tunic, sporting silver hair, gray skin, and webbed fingers. "How do I look?"
"You missed a spot behind your ear."
He pulled a jar of pigment from his pocket and dabbed a bit on. "Better?"
"Much."
"Good. Here, put these clothes on. I'm told it's what the stylish Teroi peasant has been wearing the last few centuries."
12. Departure
The Istoi had never seen a boat before. Well, if you can't breath air, I guess there's not much point.
"That will really take you past the poisoned waters?" asked Salar, staring up at me from the water while I leaned over the side of the boat. "And by the way, this is a very strange way of having a conversation."
"Yeah, you can say that again," I agreed, looking down at him. "Look, we won't be breathing the water, we won't even be touching it. We'll be fine."
"I wish you well, Doctor, Destriianatos," said Threkian. "Go with the blessing of all the Istoi."
"Go well," said Hirass. He'd warmed up to us a little. Enough to admit that maybe, just maybe, we weren't demons. But only because Plecthros vouched for us.
"The omens are not auspicious," said Plecthros. Well, speak of the devil … "The time has not yet come for our salvation."
Salar bobbed his head up out of the water long enough to whisper, "The fish whose entrails she used, it had a funny liver."
"Oh, horrors," I said.
"Yes, livers are unreliable. Now, if the spleen foretold doom, that would be serious."
"I'll keep that in mind the next time I disembowel someone." On impulse, I leaned forward and gave him a quick kiss. He fell back into the water with a splash and came up sputtering.
"What was that?" he asked.
"It's called a kiss," I said. "It's for good luck. Or if I like someone."
"Well, which one is it?" He glanced away nervously, and I got the impression he would have blushed, if a fish could blush.
"Cos I like you," I decided. "I don't need luck to win a fight, never have."
"Well, better him than me," muttered the Doctor, and dipped his oar into the water. I had to follow suit to keep us from going in a circle, and we left Salar behind before he could gather his wits enough to make a response.
13. Scylla and Charybdis
We could smell the change in the water before we could see it. Even when was still a clear pale violet, it smelled like an accident in a chemical factory and stung my eyes and throat.
"It's horrible," I said.
"Yes, it's worse than I expected," said the Doctor grimly. He pulled out a breathing mask from our supplies and handed it to me. "Hopefully that should last long enough."
It did help. "What about you?"
"Oh, I'll be fine. I don't have an amphibious respiratory tract."
That was an unpleasant reminder. I needed water periodically, or my gills dehydrated and I couldn't breath at all. And the hot sun and the fumes weren't helping. But I could probably go a day or two. The idea was that we'd be over clear water by then.
I looked down into the water. There were occasional patches of sickly green, but most of it was bare sand, or, more often, pus-colored mats of dead kelp.
The Doctor rowed in silence, lips pressed together in a grim line. It wasn't worry about the Cloister Bell thingy—he just does this Silent Brooding Disapproval thing whenever we see an ecological disaster or a massacre or something like that. I don't know why.
I tried talking to him a few times, but he tended to respond with grunts or irritated looks, and eventually I gave up. Maybe he was seasick. He did look a little queasy. I didn't have much to say, anyway.
Even watching the muscles in his arms as he rowed lost its entertainment value pretty quickly. Pity. The short-sleeved tunic showed them off so well.
"Ugh," I said. The smell had suddenly gotten much worse. Now it smelled like dead fish. Probably because we were rowing through dead fish.
"Victims of the chemical runoff," said the Doctor. "Even the scavenger birds won't touch them. Or, if they do—"
He pointed elegantly with his oar in between strokes. I saw a dead bird, a bit like a gull, floating among the fish.
"And there's the source of the problems," he said.
I looked to our left. There was a mass of land over there on the horizon, rising up in rough hills that seemed to be this world's idea of mountains. Before, the hills had been covered in brush. But here, large areas were cleared, just reddish-ochre exposed dirt, and a lot of the hillsides had washed out to form crumbling cliffs. There were a few huts visible even at this distance, clustered most thickly around a brown stream that ran down to the ocean.
"Let's steer a little further from shore," said the Doctor, and we did that. I could see a few tiny figures of Teroi moving around the huts, and they'd have to have pretty poor eyesight not to be able to see us, if they looked in the right direction. In fact, from the was some of them were standing on the beach, I'd say they already had.
The land receded, and the smell of the water grew slowly more tolerable, which was a relief. I'd been starting to feel like my eyeballs were melting. "Hey, Doctor. Maybe we should check the water. Don't want to get eaten."
"Right. Let's see, then." He dipped the probe from a portable meter into the water. "Still quite toxic—and therefore safe. The concentrations closer to shore were far above lethal levels."
Something splashed off to our right, just to prove him wrong. His head whipped around, and he stared in wide-eyed amazement.
"Toxic?" I asked, putting extra sarcasm into my voice so he couldn't pretend not to have heard it.
"Ah," he said. "Perhaps some of these mutations are resistant to the pollution. Or the toxins simply need more time to kill them at lower concentrations. I wouldn't have expected them to venture so far into the dead zone, but perhaps they were drawn in by the sound of our oars."
"So we row west really quietly, yeah?"
"Er, yes, more or less."
We started paddling west. Something in the east waved a couple of giant tentacles above the water, possibly in frustration. We paddled faster.
We got well back into the toxic zone (I could tell by how badly my eyes burned). The land was mostly empty again, and the sun was low behind dirty olive-drab clouds. Maybe fumes from something going on inland. We saw a few more streams dumping mustard-colored water into the sea before even that disappeared and the land became empty again.
By the time the sun started to set, the water was cleaner, and we strayed closer to the deserted shore. I expected the Doctor to cheer up, but he just watched the light, and he seemed more troubled than ever. But not grim—almost sad.
"Hey, are you gonna mope all evening, or are we gonna make camp?"
He turned around and gave me a quick smile, bright and cheerful as always. "Sorry. Miles away there. Goose walked over my grave."
"What? What's a goose?"
"Er—earth bird, eaten on holidays. It's an expression."
"Yeah? What's it mean?"
"A fleeting premonition of doom." He kept right on smiling, and I rolled my eyes. "Although I don't know why a goose. They're not very large, herbivorous, bit dimwitted. Not very menacing, although they've been known to chase joggers …"
He kept on chattering as we hauled the canoe up onto a tiny rocky islet covered in trees (and mostly held together by tree roots) and pitched a carefully disguised camp underneath their branches. There was no fire, and hence no toasting marshmallows (though I'd talked him into finding me some in the TARDIS) but the light cast by the setting sun made the whole world look like it was on fire.
"And then, of course, there's 'Your goose is cooked,' which means that you're in trouble, though actually the only one who would be in trouble in that situation would be the goose itself. If you had a cooked goose, you'd have yourself a nice meal and you wouldn't have any trouble at all. Unless, of course, it was the goose that laid the golden eggs …"
It was all those hours bottling things up while he brooded. All the happy nonsense was spilling out at once. Still, it was a relief to have him back to his usual self.
Then I noticed the way the last light of the sun painted his face crimson, like fire. Or blood.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"Nothing," I said, irritated that he'd noticed. "Just one of those goose things. Pass me that water, will you? I want to wet my gills."
14. Patrol and Paper
We had to stick to the shallows the next day, because the water was so much cleaner. But there were a lot of shallows now, dotted with atolls and sandbars. It was around here that we started to see more Teroi. By now it was pointless to try to hide. I turned on my hologram, and the Doctor touched up his makeup.
There weren't any other boats. I don't know if they were more afraid of the Beasts or the Istoi or if they just didn't like the water, but all the traffic we saw was on land, and on foot, mostly skinny-looking people with slumped shoulders and tattered clothes. Some of them were pulling heavy carts. None of them looked happy. They gave us a few nervous looks, and then pretended we didn't exist.
The land itself looked worse than it did around the mining areas. Withered, stunted, and burned bushes dotted sand and exposed rocks like bleached bones. Even the air had a dead smell.
"What's wrong with this place?" I asked the Doctor. It didn't seem like the home of the winning side.
"The time distortion," he said. He sounded a bit queasy, and he kept wincing, like his head hurt. "Can't you feel it? Taste it, in the back of your mouth?"
"Yeah, is that what that is? Ugh. It smells … well, it doesn't smell like anything much, just like all the life's been sucked out of this place."
"It has," he said grimly (he was back in his full-on Grim Mode again). "The constant exposure is destroying this place. It's not a healthy place to live. Look."
He nodded to the peasants shuffling along the road. I noticed one of them was hobbling, one hand holding a large basket of vegetables he had balanced on his shoulder, the other wielding a makeshift crutch. His left leg was withered and dragged uselessly on the ground. Another, a woman pulling a cart, had a sickly-looking baby in a sling. It had spindly limbs, an outsized head, and vacant eyes.
"Those are only the obvious mutations. And the ambulatory ones," said the Doctor.
We paddled for about two hours (and even my arms were starting to ache, after yesterday's marathon trip) before we got to the first guard outpost. I could see these guys had it a bit more together than the lot that tried to kill us. They came down to the water more quickly, and their clothes were in better repair. And cleaner. And they were in much better shape. In fact, the leader looked pretty fit.
"Halt!" he commanded, hefting his rifle but not pointing it yet. His pale hair was cropped short, and his skin was a grayish caramel, marked with a tattoo of a sea-serpent around one bicep. "Identify yourselves!"
"Travelers from Reskon!" the Doctor called back. Reskon was a Teroi village way to the south that the Istoi had told us about. "Name's Dectus. We're traders. Show them, Dessu."
The Doctor nudged us a little closer to shore, and I pulled a tarp away from our samples. The Doctor had set us up with some swank stuff (well, swank for Avarinne) from the TARDIS. "Beads, spices, dyes. Come on, boys, wouldn't your girlfriends love some of these beads?" I batted my holographic lashes at them.
"My girlfriend would be more grateful for them than my wife, I know that," said one of the guards, and his friends laughed.
The leader frowned. He was a bit on the young side, but he gave off an air of competence. Not exactly what we needed. "We haven't had visitors from Reskon in some time."
"All the more trade for us, then," I told him.
"Perhaps. You do have papers, don't you?"
"Of course!" said the Doctor, smiling, even though we had no such thing. We hadn't even known that the Teroi had invented writing. "Mind the boat a moment, Dessu."
He swung his legs over the side and waded to the shore, pulling a small leather ID holder from his pocket. I almost groaned. I'd gotten him that for Christmas a few trips back, on this planet call Calumnis where everyone was telepathic. I'm still not entirely sure what Christmas is, but apparently it revolves around ritualized shopping. I ended up regretting it, because he uses it all the time now—and when it doesn't work (which it doesn't, always) it ends up getting us both into worse trouble than we were in to begin with.
He handed the guard leader the psychic paper and waited while the man squinted at it. Maybe he couldn't really read, and didn't want to admit it. We might be okay—as long as the paper didn't go blank.
Then the leader broke into a sudden grin and handed the paper back. "Well, that's all in order, then, Dectus!" he said. "You can go on your way. I'm afraid there isn't much market for luxuries right now, but I'd buy some beads for my girlfriend—if I had one."
"You want one?" I asked. His men laughed and elbowed him, and he grinned at me like he was planning on taking me up on the offer.
"Maybe, if you end up hanging around a while," he said. "But I'd advise both of you to be careful. Boat travel isn't safe in these parts. There are some very fierce animals in these waters. And there's a strict curfew in effect—if you're found out of doors after dark, we have orders to shoot on sight. And you'll be lucky if we find you before the Fire Beasts."
"The Fire Beasts?" asked the Doctor.
"Yes, they guard the streets after dark. They'll burn you alive." The guard frowned. "I've seen the results. It's an ugly way to die. You'll need a place to stay, of course—my friend Ullan will probably put you up. Just tell him Captain Rei sent you."
"Thank you very much," said the Doctor, although we intended to go straight to the Abode of Monsters and sort things out.
"And don't lose your papers," called Captain Rei as the Doctor waded back to the canoe. "His Lordship's very particular about that sort of thing."
"We'll do that," I said. Then, to the Doctor, "His Lordship?"
"I expect we'll be meeting him," said the Doctor. "I have a number of questions I'd like answers to."
From the look on his face, His Lordship was not going to enjoy that little quiz session.
15. The Monsters
"So you think His Lordship is someone from space or something?"
"That would be my guess," said the Doctor, as we trudged through the crowded streets. We'd been forced to abandon the boat, as there were no navigable waterways that led past the village. "The guards' weapons—never mind the mining technology—can't be a product of this civilization."
"Yeah. So, are we gonna sort him out first, or the time distortions?"
"Both. But the time distortions are the more serious problem. If that gets much worse, we'll have bits of next week falling into last year. We—good grief!"
The Doctor came to an abrupt halt and stared. I stared, too. A group of grimy children were chasing what appeared to be a badly-damaged Cyberman through the streets, pelting it with rocks. It staggered and lurched, making electronic sounds of protest and flailing at the air.
"Careful with that thing!" I said, grabbing one of the children.
"Aw, piss off." The little tyke tried to kick me in the knee. "You it's mother, or what?"
"Better than being yours," I said. "I mean, it's dangerous."
"Yeah, right." The kid twisted away and scampered off with his friends.
"Very decent of you," said the Doctor. I couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or approving. He was rubbing at his temples again, and I think the headache was making him cranky. Well, crankier than insane dictators usually make him.
"I'm never having kids," I told him. "That came through some sort of time-rift, yeah?"
"Undoubtedly. The damage is even worse than I thought."
We kept walking, and soon reached the outskirts of town. There was no one in sight, and I turned off my hologram to conserve the battery. It was funny—all of the buildings sprawled to the south, some of them crammed pretty tight, but there was all this empty land out here. It rose up in a gentle slope, and as we came to the top we could see a coastline spread out beneath us, with a great dome-topped house (virtually a palace for the Teroi) surrounded by a few outbuildings. The only path down to the water led past it. Nothing grew here—just rocks and sand and the black branches of long-dead shrubs. There were no other dwellings visible.
When we got our first clear look at the Abode, off in the distance, we could see why. It was a mass of twisted … metal? Like an office building that had fallen out of the sky and been nearly turned into a pancake. But the details were difficult to make out, because the entire thing was wreathed in flames. The water sizzled and churned around it.
There was something wrong about the flames. They weren't quite the right color, and they moved too slowly, now and then flickering almost at normal speed, like time was a watch with a dying battery. They made no smoke, and they didn't consume the Abode—occasionally a bit melted or collapsed, if you stared long enough, but other bits were uncollapsing at the same time.
A hundred years. It had been doing this for a hundred years. No wonder nobody wanted to live over here.
"Hey! Hey, you two! What d'you think you're doing?"
I whirled around at the shout. We'd stood woolgathering for too long. A pair of guards had come from one of the dome-house's sheds, and were coming towards us. They carried guns, which they had half-pointed in our direction. Apparently, they thought we weren't that dangerous.
The Doctor didn't move. He was staring at the Abode, frozen. Hell, that wasn't good. It must be even worse than we'd thought.
"Oh, gosh, I'm sorry!" I said as the guards approached. We had to deal with them before we could do anything. "We didn't mean no harm, honest, we just got a bit turned around and—"
It was a really lousy act (see, I can admit when I'm not good at stuff) but the bozos fell for it. I could see them shifting their weapons, deciding we weren't much threat and getting ready to smack us around a bit and put us under arrest. I punched out the nearer one while he was still raising his own arm to backhand me, grabbed his rifle, and turned on his buddy.
I almost pointed and fired. But I guess the Doctor's been a bad influence on me. I reversed the weapon and hit him in the face with the stock, instead. It made a very satisfying crunch. Ah, I love the sound of breaking cartilage in the morning.
"Come on, Doc," I said. "Let's move!"
He stayed put, frozen in place. I grabbed his arm and tugged.
"Yes," he said, seeming to come back to himself a bit. His eyes were very wide, and his face had gone pale under the makeup. But at least he was moving again. "Let's go. There's not a moment to waste."
"Oh, you're not going anywhere."
The voice had come from the dome-house, smooth and cultured and self-assured. The Doctor and I turned to see shapes made of flame ghosting out through the walls, flanking the door. They were translucent, flickering, vaguely and monstrously humanoid when they had any shape at all.
"What?" breathed the Doctor. "No, oh no, no no no no no …" He stared at them with a stricken look on his face.
And from the door of the house stepped a tall, slender figure, elegant in his antique green coat and carrying a walking stick with a silver head in the shape of a cat's. I knew that walking stick. It had almost taken my life, once.
His own head was that of a cat's, if cats could smile, slick and self-satisfied.
"No," I said. It was my turn to freeze now. I thought I'd been prepared for anything, but I wasn't prepared to see him again.
"Why, hello there, Destriianatos," he purred. "Don't you have any greetings for your Uncle Jodafra?"
Coming Soon—Part Three: Defeat