Free Doctor Who: Lungbarrow by Marc Platt Page A

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.
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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 Space/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 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 assist 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?
    Quartinian Faculty? It was signed F.
    Satisfied, Yeux poured himself another glass 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 massive 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