Stealing Honey

Extreme north on Hyspero was like nowhere else on that world.

The Doctor sat up and gazed around. The air was golden and blue, shining lucently through ceilings and walls.

He stood and brushed himself down.

In the distance he could hear the manic humming and drone of the bees.

He knew all about them. He knew about the alchemy of their honey-making process. He knew it was fresh honey he needed, not the sickly, stultifying brew that the Scarlet Empress had basked in. This much he had learned from his study of the Aja'ib . He patted the book in his coat pocket. Everything came in useful. Now he had work to do.

He strolled and got used to the soft waxy feel of the walls and floors, the cloying sweetness in the air. It was like walking and breathing in a whole new substance. Somewhere, beyond the walls of these tunnels and cells worked bees the size of bicycles. But they didn't bother him. He'd dealt with viruses the size of lobsters, lobsters the size of dinosaurs and dinosaurs and other horrors again and again in his hectic career. He started to whistle.

When he came to a wide, open s.p.a.ce and a choice of routes, he took out the old leathery book and opened it to the relevant page.

He traced through the arcane words with his finger and muttered a particular spell.

With a flash and a rush of dusty air, the ma.s.sive, bronzed figure of the kabikaj, djinn lord of insects, stood patiently before him.

'Doctor,' he grumbled. "This had better be good.'

'I've got a little task for you,' smiled the Doctor.'Something I think you might help me with.'

Chapter Thirty-Two.

A Month Later

Sam woke in her unfamiliar bed. Satin sheets. Street noise outside.

Incense burning still. All around her bed, night lights flickered. She stirred and decided she had slept quite enough.

For a while she sat out on her parapet, watching the bustling streets below. She picked at and peeled grape after grape. The crowd down there, below the palace, consisted of an odd mixture of the night-time crowd, still out enjoying themselves, and the early-morning traders, wheeling their multifarious produce into the streets on barrows. The offworlders were back. Hyspero had returned almost seamlessly to its usual routines.

There was a knock at the heavy wooden door and she turned to see the Mock Turtle apologetically poking his head round the gap. She motioned him in.'Sit out here with me,' she said. He was a little less shy with her now. He peered cautiously over the balcony.

Apparently,' he said,'the Empress will see us this morning.'

'Good,' Sam murmured, and wondered what she ought to wear.

'I don't think it will be good news,' he added gloomily.

'She has to help,' Sam burst. 'She's got the resources. She can send a whole platoon out to look for him.'

'The way she looks at it, she needs all of her resources here, rebuilding the palace. Undoing everything the previous Empress did wrong.' How resigned the Turtle looked, she thought, slumped inside his sh.e.l.l like that.

'Do you think she's going to suggest we give up on waiting for him?'

'I think so, yes.'

Sam's eyes flashed with anger.'If it wasn't for him and Iris, Ca.s.sandra would never be back on that throne. She'd still be out in the wilds of Kestheven. Living in a jamjar.'

The Turtle looked uncomfortable. 'I wish Angela hadn't gone back there.

We could do with her help in pet.i.tioning the Empress.'

Sam was still cross with the Bearded Lady for leaving so soon. She should have been more grateful, too.'I suppose she wanted to get back to those bears of hers.'

'Go and get ready for our audience,' the Turtle urged.'I'll wait here.' Sam was bathing, moments later, in the deep verdigris tub in the next room, when she heard the Turtle shout through.'Have you checked that the Doctor's Ship is all right?'

She told him that it was all sorted. It was ready for him whenever he returned. Then she was quiet as she got out, dried herself, and pulled on Hysperon garb. Layers and layers of gaudy fabric, most of them scarlet.

For the past month she had dressed as a local. On a sudden impulse, though, this morning, she went to the cupboard and found her own clothes, her T-shirt and shorts, washed and good as new. She took off the layers of scarlet and put them on. Sam was ready to go.

In the staterooms of the palace, everything appeared to be back to normal. The guards were back on duty, resplendent in their tattoos, marching about. The rubble had been cleared, the frescoes refurbished, and the ceilings patched up. One of Ca.s.sandra's first decrees was that the rooms filled with motorised mannequins, h.o.a.rded tattooed skins and severed heads should be dismantled. These relics of the previous monarch's obsessions were buried, safely, in the desert. The guards who buried the staked heads of the seers said that, as they poured the sand into the hole to cover them up, the poor devils were still muttering their dire prophecies. Ca.s.sandra had announced there would be no more prophecies. Hyspero would have to concentrate on living in the present.

Sam and the Turtle went before the Empress.

They found her in a pleasant mood that morning. Since her youth was restored, and she had found her place on a gold and crimson throne, her moods had been changeable to say the least. In the past weeks she had been rather volatile at times, stressed by the work still to do.'I've been on holiday for thousands of years,' she had moaned at one point. 'Of course I'm stressed now I'm back!'

She chatted happily with the two of them and suggested that they should all go and look at Iris together that morning and check that the old lady was doing all right.'Perhaps there has been a change in her,' she said brightly.

Sam wouldn't bank on that. She didn't relish the idea of an afternoon spent beside Iris's tomb.

In a gilded cage beside the new Empress's throne sat the small alligator.

He snapped his jaws at them.

'Poor Gila,' said the Turtle reflectively.

'Maybe he's happier like that,' said Sam.

'Perhaps,' said the Empress, and led them out of the throne room. She trod lightly across the marble floor.

Behind them, narrowed beadily, the alligator's eyes glowed a livid crimson.

Iris lay on a bier in an antechamber lit by tall, pale-yellow candles.

Someone had brought in sheaves of exotic purple flowers, and their heads stood perpetually opened, flaunting themselves.

In the dimmer recesses of this mausoleum, the bus was parked, as if ready to go off on another journey. Waiting for its mistress to awake.

Iris's face was quite peaceful. Her eyes were shut.

Walking after the Turtle and the Empress, Sam felt almost rebellious.

The two of them were so hushed and respectful whenever they made these afternoon visits to Iris's chamber. Sam wanted to tell them: she's not going to move. Nothing's going to happen. Why are we even bothering? And anyway, Iris would hate you going on like this, being all quiet and hushed and awed. She wasn't like that. She was raucous and disrespectful. She would hate this! This was a woman who drove a bus through a desert and sang along to Abba at the top of her voice! Don't go singing ancient Hysperon death dirges at her bedside!

She sighed as they turned the corner, into the mausoleum.

And there was a figure bent over the bier.

A tall, dark figure. Slumped and fatigued, stooped over the supine and defenceless Iris.

Sam was the first to react. She bolted into the oppressive silence of the smoky room. She ignored the shouts of the others and went to grab this spectre, ready to pull him away.

He turned as she grasped his arm. Her hand had grasped a green velvet sleeve. Of course she knew who it was.

The Doctor turned to her and smiled tiredly.

Sam hugged him, burying her face in the silk of his waistcoat. He smelled sweet. He smelled familiar.

'I did it,' he said, addressing all of them. 'I got it and I've given her the honey. It's all swirling around her insides now. Now we just have to wait and see.'

Ca.s.sandra came up to greet him. 'Doctor,' she said. 'No wonder she loves you.'

Sam turned sharply. '

She means Iris,' he said.

That night they feasted. They let their hair down. They tried not to think about Iris. The Mock Turtle talked about returning to the sea. The Doctor spoke briefly about having to leave soon, too. He had new projects afoot.

In the night she sat up.

She looked around. She didn't feel fantastic.

'The b.u.g.g.e.rs have left me!' she muttered. "They've sealed me in a b.l.o.o.d.y tomb!'

Then she saw the bus, standing in the shadows.

Iris clambered down off her bier, took a deep breath, and crept off to her ship.

Then it disappeared.

In the morning there was, of course, no trace of her or the bus.

'I hope that means she's all right,' said the Mock Turtle.

'Silly old thing,' said Ca.s.sandra.

'Doctor,' began the Turtle,'Do you think she -'

But the Doctor and Sam were gone.

Chapter Thirty-Three.

Inside The Machine

My TARDIS. I haven't been here in a long time.

The mahogany of the console smells of lemons. I stroke the panels and they are glossy under my fingers. Layers of varnish as if they had been lovingly polished for decades. The needles and dials rasp nicely as I turn them.

The gantries and pillars are all ironwork - with the holes through them that remind me of the roundels that lined the walls of the old, old console rooms. When I used to live with all that claustrophobic white. This, this is open. Cathedral-like. If you touch the ironwork you get rust, proper age-old rust that comes away on your fingers like pollen. Or like the scales from a b.u.t.terfly wing if you're not careful enough. Lovely, felty dust.

I'm working at my console again. Paying attention to my own Ship, after weeks of absence. I know she knows I've been away.

I plunged us deep into the vortex, far from Hyspero, far from anyone.

Quite elsewhere is where I want to be right now. This is the place I like to go when I want to forget what's been happening. Replenish myself, ready for the next thing. And there's always something new!

I stare at the blinking lights and enjoy their calm busyness. Their random, bingo-like flicker.

Sam comes in. She's washed and rested. She too is ready for the next thing. She always is. She's so young.

'You're thinking about Iris,' she tells me. I nod.'If she went off alone,'

says Sam,'then she must be all right.'

Yet I can't help thinking that she slunk off like a wounded animal. She went off somewhere to die alone, in private. At the same time I know that solitude and dignity are not exactly Iris's forte. But you never know.