Several of the company nodded in agreement.

'I suppose none of us come home these days except for Loomings and Tombings,' he continued. 'Reckon you're up for anything in Quences's will, Cousin?'

The second, who was wearing a black tunic, shook his head grimly. 'Not a solitary brazen pandak. The Ordinal-General never had any time for me.'

40.'None of us were good enough,' agreed a third. 'The sour old snudge-snout wouldn't even recommend me for a post at the Bureau of Temporal Anomalies. He said Averages Clerk wasn't good enough a position for a member of the Family.'

'He did just the same to Cousins Celesia and Almund,' said Black Tunic. 'Besides, we al know who's going to get the inheritance.'

So it's a funeral, thought Chris. Maybe this Ordinal-General guy's died in mysterious circ.u.mstances. Maybe that's the point of the program.

'You can't mean that Cousin Glospin wil inherit everything,' said Brown Robe. He stared round at the gathering.

'He's not even here yet.'

Black Tunic gave a condescending smile. 'He's the obvious successor and heir.'

'And he's Satthralope's favourite,' piped in the third.

Brown Robe laughed aloud. 'Surely that's enough to condemn him completely. Quences would count him out on principle.'

'It's true,' said another bystander. 'But have you heard the other rumour?' He lowered his voice as everyone in earshot cl.u.s.tered round 'I heard that Glospin's post as a Cel ular Eugenicist is a complete sham.'

'Citadel gossip,' sneered Black Tunic.

'No, listen,' continued the speaker. 'Cousin Glospin has been seen on several occasions entering and leaving the Citadel Constraint Block.'

'Great grief,' whispered Brown Robe.

'The Intervention Agency,' said the third.

Chris noted the nervous glances that pa.s.sed around the group. Even Black Tunic drained his goblet without comment. The Agency's name seemed to cast a pervasive gloom.

'Front or back entrance?' asked somebody brightly, but was ignored.

The lengthy silence was finally disrupted by a hoot of laughter from across the hall. The guests turned to stare in disapproval. 'Who's that?' said Brown Robe.

A young man, podgy with curly brown hair, was helping himself to a plateful of food from the tables.

'Cousin Owis,' said Black Tunic. 'The unspeakable little oik is the Replacement.'

'Why? Who else has died?'

'No, no. He's the the Replacement.' Replacement.'

Brown Robe a.s.sumed a look of stunned surprise. 'I didn't realize the House had actually. . . Great grief. There'll be all bells blazing in Sepulchasm when the authorities find out. I a.s.sume it's the Replacement for...' His voice tailed off and he grimaced.

'Quiet,' hissed Black Tunic. 'Satthralope's forbidden that name in the House. But you're correct: Owis is the Replacement for whom you imagine. They say Quences never got over the disinheritance.'

'Great grief.' Brown Robe glanced around the hail again. 'Our Family real y is an unutterable shambles!' He smirked. 'Five thousand pandaks on Glospin not getting a thing in the will.'

'Done,' said Black Tunic and they linked crooked fingers on it.

Chris wondered how anyone in a family could be a replacement for someone else - was it a recognized job that could be applied for, wherever here here was exactly? was exactly?

He made his way across the room to where a group of guests had gathered to watch the pudgy Cousin called Owis. He had climbed on to a chair to reach the food and was piling it into a precarious pyramid on his plate. As he tried to juggle a stuffed blue fruit on to the side, a woman came pushing through the crowd. She still wore the rust-coloured robes she had worn when Chris had seen her in the study.

'Owis,' she said sharply. 'What did we learn yesterday about No No?'

Owis, suddenly crestfallen, studied her over the top of his stacked plate. 'But Cousin Innocet, it's Otherstide. A holiday. Have you seen these dactyl eggs? They've been shipped in especial y from Ringed Yufrex.'

'It is also a grave and solemn occasion,' said Innocet coldly. 'Come down off there. What do you think Satthralope will say if you're caught misbehaving on the Ordinal-General's Deathday?'

Owis discarded his plate and clambered sulkily down.

Chris looked round at the other mourners and didn't see anyone else looking very grave or solemn. Then he noticed one figure who was totally out of place. It was the pale little man in ragged clothes whom he'd seen in the old woman's room.

He was walking among the guests, staring each of them in the face with a look of frightened bewilderment in his huge eyes. The guests never noticed him. He actually jumped as he saw Chris and ducked away through the crowd.

Chris moved after him. As the little man started running, Chris cut straight through the images of the hologram family. He caught up with the man, tackling him with a desperation that floored them both beside the garlanded plinth.

'Who are you?' Chris demanded. 'Where is this? How do I get out?'

The little man was shaking. 'Don't touch me,' he kept saying.

'I'm the only thing here that can can touch you,' said Chris. 'So you'd better tell me what planet this is and who you are.' touch you,' said Chris. 'So you'd better tell me what planet this is and who you are.'

The little man's eyes welled with tears. He pointed miserably at one of the guests. 'I'm him him.'

Chris turned to look. The resemblance was extraordinary, except that the guest was considerably younger and plumper. His clothes were new and he had the hearty colour of someone who worked in the open.

'So it's a home holovid of some special occasion and we're stuck inside it,' Chris said.

41.The little man was starting to shake again. 'It's not a recording. It's real. This is what happened. It's happening again...'

Chris sat down on the floor. He didn't want to spend the rest of his life trapped inside someone else's family schlock-vid, dragged out only when the relations called or the guys got drunk and wanted a laugh. 'What's your name?' he said firmly. He pointed to the young version. 'What's his his name?' name?'

Leave me alone.'

'Name,' demanded Chris.

The man's face crumpled and the tears rol ed streaks down his grimy face. The crying rapidly became a shuddering torrent of despair like the unleashing of something that had been bottled up for years. Chris leant awkwardly in and put an arm round his shoulders. 'It's OK. It's OK,' he said uselessly and tried to contain the shaking while the ghost family milled around them.

'Arkhew,' choked the little man eventual y. 'My name's Arkhew.' He repeatedly used his grubby sleeve to wipe his nose.

'I'm Chris Cwej,' said Chris gently. 'I'm here to help.'

'Have you really come to get us out?' Arkhew clutched Chris's arm in anger. 'Why now? Why did you wait? Why didn't you come centuries ago?'

Chris shook his head. 'It's an accident. I don't know where I am. I don't know what this occasion is. I'm not even sure if I'm alive.'

Arkhew took his time before answering, gulping in air and snuffling a lot. He kept on gazing towards the windows and the gathering dusk outside. 'This is Ordinal-General Quences's Deathday. It's Otherstide Eve, six hundred and seventy-three years ago. We're al here. All the Cousins. This is the most miserable, cursed day in the House of Lungbarrow's miserable, cursed life.' He began to shudder again. 'Please, make it stop. I don't want to see. Stop it.

Don't let it get dark again!'

42.

Chapter Seven.

Darkrise

Andred's office was deserted when Leela arrived. Even his private secretary was absent, but K9 had ways to bypa.s.s the security codes on the doors and they were inside soon enough.

Leela sat in Andred's chair, her legs dangling over the arm, and tried to think.

'Awaiting orders, Mistress,' said K9.

'Who else knows the Doctor, K9?' she asked.

'Many people are acquainted with the Doctor-master. Shall I list them by planetary location?'

'On Gallifrey, I meant. Who are his friends? Other than Romana and Andred and Spandrel . And Rodan a bit. And Damon too, that strange one who is fifty times older than he looks. And there is me, of course.'

'There is K9, Mistress.'

'Of course, there is you, K9. But who else real y knows him well?'

K9 whirred with consideration. 'Mistress? Does "to know well" imply longest duration of acquaintance?'

Leela spun the chair on its pivot. 'Possibly. But if that was the case, then the people that anyone knows best are their parents.'

'There are no parents on Gallifrey.'

'No,' she sighed. 'I thought that was sad.'

'Therefore the Doctor's earliest acquaintances were his Cousins at the House of Lungbarrow - no longer in existence.'

'We are going in circles,' she said, stopping the chair. 'There must still be Cousins.'

'Mistress?'

'The Doctor's Family. People leave the village, K9. It's an initiation when they leave the tribe to hunt in the forest alone. It is only the House that has disappeared.'

'The House is is the people,' said K9. the people,' said K9.

Leela was astonished. 'But there must be records of other Cousins.'

'Negative, Mistress. No records. I have checked.'

She pulled at the beads in her hair. 'What happened to them? They cannot all be dead.'

K9's head lowered. 'No information, Mistress.'

'Then we must find some.' She thought for a moment and said slowly, 'Do you know Master Andred's security accession codes? The ones that he will not give to me.'

'One moment,' said K9. Again there was the whirring, which made her think he was receiving data from elsewhere.

'Affirmative, Mistress. I have the codes.'

'Well, do not tell me. I must not know.'

'Affirmative.'

'Now use the codes I do not know about to access Master Andred's security system.'

A sensor extended from the centre of K9's head and touched the console port on Andred's desk. 'System accessed,' said K9, more quickly than turning a key. 'From here I have access to eighty-six thousand three hundred and forty-six other systems.'

'Good,' said Leela. 'He cannot have checked all of those. See if any of them make a reference to the word "Lungbarrow".'

'Why is everything so big here?' said Chris. 'I mean al the furniture?'

Arkhew snuffled into his sleeve again. 'It's the House,' he said as if it was obvious. 'Don't you have a home?'

'Yes, but not like this,' said Chris. 'We sit down on chairs. You have to climb up into them.'

Arkhew looked bewildered. 'I thought all Houses were the same. It's when you leave home that you grow up. The furniture here is big to make you feel small.'

Chris stood quickly as the tall woman cal ed Innocet hurriedly pushed through the gathering towards them. Like someone on the run, he thought. Behind her, leaning heavily on a cane, came the elderly man in dark green. The man who had been hunting her in the study.

'Cousin Glospin,' muttered Arkhew, making no attempt to disguise his hatred.

'I'd guessed,' said Chris.

'Innocet,' barked Glospin. 'I want a word with you.' He caught her arm and pulled her into an alcove by one of the windows. 'There were some doc.u.ments that I left in my room, but someone has disturbed them.'

'Yes,' she said simply. 'You were missed here. I came to find you, but you were busy with your "visitor" from the Chapterhouse.'

Glospin tapped his cane irritably on the floor. He scowled round at the glances they were getting from the rest of the family. Chris had moved in, followed by Arkhew, to get a front-row seat.