Chris waited until he had almost reached the door, before emerging and blocking the way. 'There you are. I brought you this,' he said, holding out the tea.

The startled Doctor looked at the mug and took it in his free hand. Chris grasped the opportunity and slid past into the dark room. The air was warm and stale with a sort of earthy dampness that cloyed in the throat. 'Gloomy,' he said, testing the ominously creaking floor with his foot. 'What made us put down here?'

'I don't know,' fl.u.s.tered the Doctor. 'Time to go.' He looked from one occupied hand to the other, unable to stop Chris moving further across the area. 'Chris,' he hissed. 'Inside now!'

'OK, OK. No rush. No one's been here for years. This stuff's really built for big people, isn't it?'

The Doctor harrumphed. 'I've seen bigger.'

Chris put his beer on a tabletop level with his chest. He stooped to peer at its carved legs. Not really table legs as such, but forelimbs and hind quarters, carved in anatomical detail. He saw a movement near the floor and crouched to look. 'Bring the lamp over, Doctor,' he called.

The Doctor s.n.a.t.c.hed the bottle off the table and rubbed at the tel -tale ring it had left on the surface. 'Sorry,' he said, possibly to the table, before turning back to Chris. 'Christopher, come away now.'

'Look at this,' said Chris gleeful y. He pointed to the foot of a dusty table leg. The talons of its sculpted bra.s.s claw were slowly stretching themselves as if they belonged to some drowsy animal.

The Doctor grabbed Chris by the arm and started hauling him back towards the ship.

'Don't see what the fuss is about,' complained Chris.

'Never mind!'

They were pa.s.sing a monumental eye-shaped mirror that hung on one of the white tree branches. A dust web the size of a tent, which was stretched across the mirror, rippled and seemed to reach towards them. Behind it, a small gold light flickered and something whirred into life.

A strand of web drifted into Chris's eye. It stung fiercely. With a yelp, he yanked free of the Doctor's grip, rubbing at the pain.

37.'Don't touch it. Don't touch it!' He heard the Doctor's voice, but it was a distant echo. The sting intensified. He flailed out with a hand and caught the web, dragging full across his face. His whole face stung. His vision clouded.

He felt sick. He struck out at things and heard the Doctor's yel of pain. Then he keeled over.

The wallop of hitting the floor seemed to knock some sense back into him. In a moment, he was standing up again. His head felt strangely light. He looked down and saw the Doctor crouching on the floor over a prostrate shape. It took a moment for him to realize that the shape was his own body.

The Doctor struggled to turn the body over. He muttered something and pulled strands of web off the body's face with a pair of tweezers. Chris couldn't hear because his head was suddenly full of noise. Voices were whispering and laughing and crying and calling as if an invisible crowd was pa.s.sing by.

The lightheadedness was increasing. It was lifting him off the floor. He was drifting towards the big mirror. He saw his own reflection coming up to meet him. His hand went out, but it pa.s.sed straight into its mirror image and he followed, sliding through the surface of the gla.s.s like water.

The Doctor was not in the reflected room. The only light came through the mirror. It shone like a window back into reality. Soon the light faded and the piles of bric-a-brac around him dissolved into darkness. But Chris still heard the voices. He was drifting downward, sinking through the floor into the house below. New lights dancing in and out like reflections patterning a kaleidoscope. More and more lights. Myriad reflections of reflections stretching away from him. The white branches which grew through the house seemed to be bending and creaking in the wind.

The voices were gradual y hushed and a dreadful silence fell. The place was holding its breath. It was like the moment before a storm.

In a huge, high-ceilinged kitchen, Chris saw two ma.s.sive creatures, nearly two and a half metres tal , with hard angular faces carved of wood. Even the long ca.s.sock skirts that they wore resembled wooden panels, but the substance moved and folded like heavy material. The creatures were oblivious of Chris as they unloaded trays of steaming delicacies from the vast ovens. On the tables sat a number of extravagantly garnished dishes. There were pyramids of bulbous fruit, like gourds. A shovel-beaked animal with horns had been roasted whole. It had a purple fruit stuffed in its beak and yel ow berries were studded along its glazed body. The cooks were preparing a banquet, but there was no smell from their culinary labours. It was dreamlike. All around, solid, but at a distance too.

The kitchen dissolved in a welter of steam. Chris was floating along pa.s.sages and galleries bordered by the tall white tree trunks that grew through the house's whole structure. It was al on the wrong scale. All the furniture was as ma.s.sive as the stuff in the attic. He felt like a child wandering amongst it.

Time didn't seem to matter here. It occurred to Chris, but didn't unduly worry him, that he might be dead.

From a high window, he looked out over a valley where rows of silver-leafed trees ran down to a snaking river far below. The place was perched halfway up a mountainside. Another mountain rose on the other side of the valley, behind which an apricot-coloured sun would soon have sunk. Directly below the window, in a garden shaped like a basin, there were interlacing lines of plants that wound and tangled in coloured knots. At its centre, on a raised plinth, stood a weather-worn statue wielding a black rod. The rod's crystal head refracted the sunlight as a bright spear down on to the patterned garden. Chris guessed that the entire garden was an elaborate sundial or possibly an even more intricate timepiece.

Another wing of the house extended to the side. White tree trunks also grew on the building's outer walls. They appeared to be an integral part of the architecture, a tracery into which the stone and wooden walls were fused, or even grown. Here and there, outcrops of blue foliage, either from a rambling creeper or as if the house itself had come into leaf. The curving roof rose above the gables like the scaly carapace of a slate-grey pangolin.

Chris drifted on. He pa.s.sed framed portraits of grumpy characters in lordly historical dress, none of whom would have recognized a smile if it had come up and bit them.

He rounded a corner and saw one of the huge wooden servants, striding directly down on him, carrying a black object on a silver tray. No time to hide. His stomach churned as it walked straight through him. Gasping for air, he stared after it in disbelief. It had ignored him. Impossible. No one missed this shirt.

He reached out to steady himself against a table. His hand slid through the hard wood. No sensation at all. He tried again with the same result. For a moment he stood, heart racing, then he smacked his fist into the wall and nearly fell in after it. He pulled back, squeezing one hand hard in the other. He didn't exist. He really was dead.

'Anybody there?' he yel ed aloud. 'h.e.l.lo!' It was an odd sound. No resonance, as if it was echoing only inside his empty head. He came up in a cold sweat. The wooden giant was disappearing round the turning at the end of the long corridor. It had not heard him. He shouted as loudly as his throat could muster and ran after the creature.

He reached the far corner just as the servant disappeared into a side room along the next pa.s.sage. The door closed behind the creature. Chris slowly approached the entrance, listening to the m.u.f.fled cursing of an old woman that came from inside. He put his fingers to the wood and they slid right in.

He decided with relief that the place was a holo-environs; something like the Academy simulator ranges on Ponten IV or Captain Jamboree's Fun-dungeon of Mystery at Lunar Park where he hung about as a kid. Thank the G.o.ddess for this solution. He didn't believe in ghosts and he wasn't going to start now. He straightened and brushed at his shirt as if he was about to enter the Adjudicator Officers' Mess at the Academy for the first time.

Then he walked slowly through the closed door.

38.A large room, with threadbare tapestries hanging from the tree-pillars, was dominated by a large rocking chair.

The chair was carved like a hand, its fingers forming the back. In the hand's cupped palm sat the old woman, small, not giant-sized at al , but vigorously fierce, her grey hair in disarray. She was staring almost directly at the door where Chris stood, and he flinched at the maliciousness of her glare. But she couldn't see him. She cursed loudly again and s.n.a.t.c.hed the black object from her attendant's silver tray - a black bonnet which she planted over her wild hair. She scowled while the wooden maid adjusted the ribbons and tried to tuck the loose strands of hair inside.

Opposite her stood a dressing table carved in the house's animalistic style with a trio of looking gla.s.ses set on it.

The old woman glared angrily at the mirrors. It was all wrong. The central gla.s.s reflected the wrong room.

Chris moved closer. The mirror looked into another room in the house, where a very old man sat upright in a big chair His ancient head nodded in apparent irritation. His bony fingers tapped out the time on the carved arms of his chair. His feet did not touch the floor. He wore elaborate robes, too big for his frail demeanour. Occasional y, he glanced directly out of the mirror as if he knew only too well that he was being spied on.

The old woman cackled to herself. Her servant looked on, its carved, androgynous mask of a face devoid of emotion.

Suddenly the air moved. There was a second figure standing beside Chris. A ratty little man had just walked through the closed door. He had ragged clothes and corpse-coloured skin, and he returned Chris's look of disbelief with eyes like roundels. A mutual realization that each could see the other. He gasped, cringed and turned tail back through the door.

Chris grabbed at the little man, but missed. There was a cry from behind him. He turned and saw the old woman, her eyes darting in his general direction as if she had half glimpsed a ghost.

He slid through the door into the pa.s.sage. There was no sign of the little guy, but in the distance, where dusk was already gathering, he saw a light coming from under another door. Without thinking, he was drawn towards the glow. Halfway there he realized that his legs weren't even moving. He pa.s.sed straight through the wal into the full lamplight.

Three people were in the room. Two of them, both men, stood beside a crouching desk which was strewn with doc.u.ments. One was elderly with coa.r.s.e black hair, one metre eighty-five, angular, wearing a dark-green robe.

The other was a soldier, uniformed and helmeted in scarlet and white.

The man in green scooped up the doc.u.ments and glared round. 'My Cousin Innocet. She's been here,' he said, his rage barely contained. 'I'll kill her.'

Chris looked at the third figure. She was standing right next to him where he had come through the wall, oblivious of his presence. She held herself flat against the hidden side of a painted screen. A tall woman, taller than Chris, two metres at least, but still dwarfed by the furniture. She was pale-skinned, with shoulder-length red hair braided in a plait, wearing a rust-coloured gown, and a look of utter terror on her face.

'I have to leave, sir,' said the soldier. 'I'm overdue at the Capitol. What do you want me to deliver?'

The man in green took a moment to sift through the papers. 'It's gone,' he said.

The woman swallowed hard. She was unable to move. In her hand, she was clutching a doc.u.ment.

'Stolen?' said the soldier.

'Mislaid,' the man in green said firmly. 'I have a copy, Captain. You can take that to the Agency. It'll be enough.'

Chris began to suspect that these were events that he was supposed to see. All part of the program.

The woman moved slightly and her gown rustled. The man in green and the captain exchanged glances. They scrutinized the room and started to move around the furniture. Chris watched, intrigued, uncertain whether, or even how, to intervene in the holoprogram.

The woman looked as if she would either scream or faint at any second.

'Curtain,' ordered the man in green and the heavy drapes by the window lifted themselves to reveal nothing behind them.

The two men turned towards the screen.

Caught by that moment, Chris moved out into the room and shouted.

No one heard him. He ran at the desk and pushed at the stack of files on its top. His hands went straight through them. But there must have been some miniscule reaction, because three pieces of paper lifted off the surface and fluttered to the floor.

The two figures turned towards the movement, walking back to the desk. They glanced at each other again.

'Screen,' ordered the man in green.

The painted screen folded itself up neatly, but there was no one behind it.

From his vantage point, Chris saw a panel in the side of an alcove close silently. The others missed it.

'You said you had another copy of the doc.u.ment, sir,' said the captain.

The man in green scowled with embarra.s.sed anger. He slid a folded paper out of his robe. 'Twelve hundred pandaks to make the delivery.'

The captain paused. Then he took the doc.u.ment and put it in his case. 'I'm sorry about the business of the edict, sir.'

'You're just the messenger, Captain. The House's name wil be cleared.'

Chris was suddenly sinking through the floor. Show over, he thought. What next?

He was up to his chest in an animal-pelt rug when a cold thought dawned on him. Maybe the program was more interactive than he first thought. Or maybe the nightmares he'd been having weren't finished yet. Suppose he was trapped inside his own head.

Chapter Six.

Mingling

Almoner Crest Yeux was dozing in his office, when the alert came through.

A direct visual feed showed him the source of a disturbance at the s.p.a.ce/Time Accessions Bureau. The elderly Surveil ance Actuary Hofwinter was being harangued by no less than the Lady Leelandredboomsagwinaechegesima.

'Listen, old one.' She was stabbing at the air with her finger. 'Contact the Doctor now, or I'll... I'll...'

'What Doctor? Doctor who?' quavered Hofwinter, physically shrinking from this alarming woman. 'You must be more specific, madam.'

'The Doctor who was your President.'

Yeux craned forward in his chair.

'Oh, that that Doctor,' said Hofwinter. 'President Fly-by-night. Well, I'm afraid I can't help on that count. Have you tried the President's office? That's what they deal with there, you know. Presidents. It's all quite logical.' Doctor,' said Hofwinter. 'President Fly-by-night. Well, I'm afraid I can't help on that count. Have you tried the President's office? That's what they deal with there, you know. Presidents. It's all quite logical.'

'The President is not on Gallifrey,' protested the Lady.

'Really?' Yeux started to access Leela's personal Agency records on a secondary plasma port.

In the Bureau, Hofwinter was shaking his head. 'Very sorry, madam. I'm sure her office wil a.s.sist you, unless they've al disappeared too. Or perhaps the Castel an could be of help.'

'Castellan Andred is busy,' she said firmly.

'Drilling the Chancellery Guard to escort more alien dignitaries?' said Hofwinter. 'So sorry. Pressing work. Good day.' He immersed himself in a pile of accession invoices.

Yeux watched Lady Leelandredloomsagwinaechegesima turn on her heel and vanish from his screen. The fact that this very excitable woman was consort to the Citadel's Castellan, a member of both the High and Inner Councils, was surely a grave threat to security. And she was unGallifreyan too. He couldn't understand how that had been overlooked in the process of Andred's promotion. He studied the readout on the other display. The woman's status was briefly given, but with no reference to her involvement with the Doctor. Further in-depth data was blocked by a caveat: all reports to be referred to the Agency's Al egiance Command Cell.

Yeux filed an immediate memo concerning Lady Leela's attempts to contact a known subversive and her knowledge of the President's activities. The response was almost immediate, as he had come to expect from his masters in the Al egiance Command Cell of the Celestial Intervention Agency.

Let her continue, it instructed. Already under observation. And it added: Nicely done, old boy. Dinner tomorrow? Nicely done, old boy. Dinner tomorrow?

Quartinian Faculty? It was signed It was signed F. F.

Satisfied, Yeux poured himself another gla.s.s of tea and added a tot of magenta rum. 'Give Lady Leela enough clear water and she'l liquidate herself.'

The cavernous hall was empty. Chris watched the last rays of dappled sunlight playing through the high windows across the wooden floor. The hal was galleried on several levels right up to its rafters, and the balconies were festooned with green and silver garlands. At one end of the area, beneath an intricate astronomical clock, stood a carved plinth, box-shaped like a sarcophagus. Even at a distance, he could sense the energy emanating from the object. It was more than alive: it was dense with a concentrated life force. He reckoned it was the source of the holo-environs.

Then the furniture began to move. The ma.s.sive tables, chairs and candelabra slid and scuttled across the floor, like a herd on the move. Eventual y they arranged themselves, with much shuffling, into ordained positions along the length of the hal . Like rookie cadets getting on parade, thought Chris. As the sun finally vanished behind the mountain, the lamps lit themselves al along the galleries that overlooked the hal .

He waited in the silence for the event that must surely be the climax of the program.

Suddenly he was standing in a crowd of extravagantly robed guests. They filled the hall. Chris had only seen this sort of social event when he was drafted in on security surveillance at the Overcity Adjudicator Intendant's annual dinner dance. Fancy dress bepple optional.

He was still invisible and could move easily among the guests. He'd rather do that than walk straight through them.

Everywhere, the furniture and fittings of the building were too big for the people who lived there. They had thrown the Giant out of his castle and moved themselves in. The great tables were laid with all the sumptuous festive food that Chris had seen in the kitchen.

'I see Cousin Rynde has done us proud again,' declared one of the guests and he raised his goblet to the throng.

'An auspicious Otherstide to us all!'

'And a thoroughly ill-judged time to choose for a Deathday,' complained another. 'I'm supposed to be at the Tercentennial Observation Archivists' Otherstide Stocktake Dinner. You would have thought old Quences could have held on a bit longer.'

'Oh, stop grizzling,' said the first, who was robed in brown. 'At least it gets two visits to the House out of the way at once.'