'Um, yes. So to compensate, the TARDIS may be sideshunting a few of my subconscious thoughts into the nearest available database.'

'Meaning me?'

124.

'Um, yeee-esss. It was only trying to be helpful. It hates losing information. So it augmented you as a receptor.'

'Sneaky,' said Chris. He picked at a small cut that p.r.i.c.kled on his arm, unsure where it had happened. 'I suppose I'm meant to feel honoured.'

The Doctor was tying slow knots with his fingers. 'Unfortunately, I'd had a few thoughts about this place lately. Just pa.s.sing thoughts. You asked me about families once... And I'd been dwelling on the implications of my own mortality.'

'So you think that I laid in the coordinates to get us here.'

'Entirely influenced by my my subconscious, Chris. Not your fault at all.' subconscious, Chris. Not your fault at all.'

The young man rubbed the back of neck. 'Anything else?'

'Well, yes. That interference by the TARDIS has also opened your head up to al the stuff that's echoing around the House. So it's me, you see. My fault. I should be saying sorry to you.'

He held Chris's eyes for a moment and then studied the floor hard. 'And I am so so sorry. This was never meant to happen. I never meant to come back here. I admit it.' He surveyed his surroundings with undisguised contempt. sorry. This was never meant to happen. I never meant to come back here. I admit it.' He surveyed his surroundings with undisguised contempt.

The floor, the racking, the dusty books, the veneered walls and ceiling through which grew the grasping, twining fingers of white wood. 'Once upon a time I was eager to flex the sinews of the Universe. After all, who wants to be a spectator, or even a player, when you can be a piece on the board in the thick of it?' He sighed deeply. 'But chains from the past drag you back into the dark. Lungbarrow is the worst place in the Universe. I vowed never to retum - but here I am, back. My mistake.'

'OK,' said Chris. 'I'll just sit here at the bottom of your Family's mental garbage chute...'

'Nothing gets out,' said Innocet coldly. 'None of the hate. None of the despair. Al the cold, tortuous helplessness that binds us together as a Family. That's what you condemned us to.'

The Doctor pulled a small gauge from an inside pocket and held it towards the ceiling. He pumped a b.u.t.ton on the top and studied the reading.

'The Family that stays together decays together,' he muttered. 'So where exactly are all my Cousins?'

'Gone away,' Innocet said. She had folded up the banana skin as if it was a treasure.

'No. That's not true,' said Chris. 'I think they're still here.'

The Doctor looked startled. 'Chris?'

'I heard them. When Maljamin went, I heard voices calling him. They were in my head, and I'm sure Innocet heard them too.'

Innocet hiccupped and looked away.

'Why didn't I hear them?' complained the Doctor.

Chris shrugged. 'The TARDIS again? Maybe I'm picking that up too. And it's so oppressive here. Suppose your missing Cousins are real y in hiding.'

'Or waiting.' He narrowed his eyes at Innocet.

'How should I know?' she said. 'None of us asked for this.'

The Doctor held up the gauge for her to see the reading. 'The House isn't buried that deep. So why has n.o.body done anything? Or are you just happy to sit and wait for the archaeologists to arrive?'

A layer of earth pressed down on him. Darkness. He couldn't breathe. He was going to scream.

125.

Then the earth opened. A trowel nearly went up his nose. The sky was blue-white above him.

A head slid into view. It was Bernice, a smug grin on her face. She started to dust him with an archaeologist's airbrush and shook her head. 'Look at the state of this. What a mess.' airbrush and shook her head. 'Look at the state of this. What a mess.'

She poked him about a bit. 'Stil , it's amazing how they can reconstruct things, even from the most dilapidated old fossil remains. He'll probably look quite good mounted in a museum.' fossil remains. He'll probably look quite good mounted in a museum.'

'Sorry,' said the Doctor. 'I think that was one of mine.'

Chris groaned.

'We have something important to ask you,' said Innocet.

'a.s.suming that you feel strong enough.'

'You know me,' said Chris wearily. 'I'm notorious. I'll try anything once.'

Glospin smeared the sample of Chris's blood on to a gla.s.s plate and slid it under the rickety lenses of an antique magniscope. It was underlit by sc.r.a.pings from a deposit of luminescent sodium he had found in the Family vaults, among the bodies of Lungbarrow's hardly ever ill.u.s.trious forebears.

In the plasma, there were reddish platelets and crudely developed pale white phagocytes.

As he suspected, not even remotely Gallifreyan. The Doctor had brought worse than an intruder into the House.

The wall opened a panel and Glospin extracted a small casket. Inside, neatly folded, were copies of his own notes and theories about the Doctor. They were yellowed with age. He wondered if Innocet still had the originals.

From somewhere below, he heard the angry, percussive snarl of a machine. The House gave a shudder.

Instinctively, he recognized the herald of yet another new threat to his inheritance and his birthright.

The Doctor flexed his fingers nervously over Chris. 'The only way to clear this murder business up is for Innocet to look into your mind. She's always had a gift for that sort of thing.'

'And a certificate from the Syndicate of Cryptaesthesians,' added his Cousin.

Behind them, the library door resisted opening twice and then flew wide with a protesting crack. A ma.s.sive shape, tall as a furry Drudge with ram's horns, lumbered into the room.

'Badger!' exclaimed the Doctor. 'I never expected to see you again.' He shook Badger's claw and, in an extraordinary display of affection, hugged the huge brute like a long-lost dog until his hat fell off. He whistled again and the Badger, which looked more like a stripy, pig-tusked bear, piped the response.

Innocet looked away, embarra.s.sed.

Badger's voice rumbled up from some subterranean cavern in his chest. 'Then why did you summon me?'

'Oh well, one lives in hope.' The Doctor turned to the others, grinning like the madman. 'Chris, this is Badger. He was my oldest friend, and my tutor when I was still in brainbuffing.'

Chris nodded politely, used by now to being introduced to far more unlikely acquaintances of the Doctor. He was aware that Innocet was sitting quietly, picking at her rice cake.

'And you know Innocet, don't you?' the Doctor enthused.

126.

'Correct,' announced Badger.

'Where have you been al this time?'

'He was in a cupboard for six hundred and seventy-three years,' said Innocet. 'Waiting.'

Chris slid off the table. 'Can we get on with this, Doctor?'

'Just a moment.' The Doctor reached up to Badger's wayward eyeball and jiggled it back into its socket. 'How's that?'

Badger looked about the library. 'Thirty-one-percent improvement.'

'It's your eye,' declared the Doctor. 'Not one of my essays.'

'We are ready now,' said Innocet.

'Oh, very well.'

The Doctor sat on the bed and watched as Innocet and Chris sat on a mangey pelt rug.

'I know.' Chris shut his eyes and tried to calm his ragged thoughts. 'It'll hurt you more than it'll hurt me.'

'Possibly not,' she said. 'Please open your eyes.'

She was staring at him as she had done before. Deep into him. Her grey eyes cutting and peeling away the layers of his thoughts.

'Um,' he said.

Think about Quences. What did you see in his room? When he... When he was...

Murdered, thought Chris. When he was brutally murdered.

The moment came easily.

The old man was laughing as Satthralope swept out of his room in a rage. He turned to work on the huge furry mound on the table. mound on the table.

The memory cracked across. A dozen simultaneous murders in one broken mirror.

A figure in black. An elderly man with white hair swept back behind his head. He had fierce eyes and a beak of a nose. nose.

Yes, it is the man in the portrait.

In his left hand, he held a double-bladed dagger. Quences turned and the intruder stabbed down once through both hearts. both hearts.

The old General, blood bubbling from his mouth, gaped in disbelief at his murderer. 'You', he mouthed.

127.

[image]

A black cloth was thrown over the mirror.

'Murderer! Murderer! It was you!'

'Innocent! Come back!' The Doctor's voice is echoing in the blackness.

'I saw you! Murderer!'

'Innocet, listen to me!'

Excuse me, thought Chris. This is my head.

'Murderer!' whispered Innocet.

Chris, opening his eyes, saw Badger loom behind Innocet.

'Badger!' The Doctor was there, pushing the brute back. 'I don't need protecting.' He turned to Innocet.

'Yes, it was me. My first self. I recognized me. You are right.'

'How could you see that?' she said, scrambling to her feet.

'I came in after you. I thought you might need a lifeline. Just as wel , wasn't it?'

'Then you admit to the murder at last.'

'Admit it? I don't even remember it.'

'Wait,' said Chris. 'Badger? That was you on the work bench.'

The robot creature shifted. 'Which bench?'

'The bench in Quences's room.'

'Leave this to me,' interrupted the Doctor. 'Badger, who murdered Quences?'

'I have no memory of such an event,' boomed the robot. 'Is it historical?'

'Do you have any memory of where Quences's will is?'

128.

'I have no such memory.'