Captain N'hn continued to watch the spectacle. 'These
aren't the big wind. These are like breezes compared to a
hurricane. A little jig rather than the full ballet. But they're
still spectacular. They represent the forces pushing us while
black holes are the forces pulling us within our own galaxy.'
'And this is important, why exactly?'
The Doctor ran his fingers through his hair as he considered
this. 'There are people who can use that energy to travel at
millions of miles an hour in vessels which can dodge in and
out of the different planes, moving between the near-infinite
worlds of the multiverse and somehow navigating in order
to take a kind of shortcut. Really it's mostly an astonishing
skill at negotiating the gravitational pull from universes
or galaxies within those universes that aren't visible to us.
They've been moving away from the centre of our galaxies
for at least two and a half billion light years.'
'More than I can take in,' said Amy. 'Why are they dancing
like that?'
'That's just what it looks like to us. Some sort of
reconfiguration where most of the essential elements can't be
seen. We'd need special instruments to detect all the different
gravities in play. Beautiful, isn't it?'
'And dangerous,' murmured the ship's captain.
'Something's fouling it up, setting things off too soon. It's
powerful. That's just a squall. But enough to tear us apart
i f - '
He cursed as the ship suddenly shifted and spun, her
gravity simulators working overtime, whining and throbbing
as they attempted to keep her steady. Elsewhere the crew
were yelling, busy with the jobs they had been trained for.
' — if they get a good grip on us.' He headed off towards
his control room, galloping as fast as he dared, the sound of
his hoofs growing fainter until he disappeared.
'There's a dark wind blowing through all the multiverse we
know and our destinies are determined by its contrary flow. Joli
grand, joli chant, joli trista, funning you, allez vous, etherista...'
The Doctor had dropped his voice again and seemed
to be quoting someone. His tapping feet sounded like the
distant, complex drumming of the Arcturan Cyclops as they
galloped and trotted and cavorted in all their half-human
glory, celebrating the great gathering which came every ten
years. He continued to mumble, almost as if the words were
an equation he had memorised. He looked up suddenly.
A moment later they were floating in free fall and could
hear the captain yelling orders to his men. Struggling to keep
their balance, they were dragged this way and that. Then the
ship's gravity was restored. But Amy already had some new
bruises, and she guessed she wasn't the only one.
Behind her now the Doctor was ruefully rubbing his shin.
'Hadn't expected that. Sorry.'
'Wasn't your fault,' she said. 'Or was it?'
He laughed at this.
'Wasn't your fault. Or was it?'
Why was she repeating herself?
She was back with the Doctor and Captain N'hn, looking
out of the observation port. She opened her mouth to speak.
Then, once more, she was floating in free fall. She was on
her own, watching the star clusters begin their dance again /
rubbing her bruised leg / talking to the Doctor / boarding the
ship / flirting with Bingo / watching an arrow impale itself in
the backside of a gaudily dressed little man she'd never seen
before / leaving the TARDIS on Peers™ / practising in the
grounds of the big country house...
It was too much to take in. She passed out. Red and white
candy stripes twirled away in a familiar pythonoid pattern.
And her body was moving slowly in an arc which mirrored
the greater arc of the ship.
She felt horribly sick
she was about to throw up...
something flung her against
yielding metal and she bounced
there over and over again
she fell down a long arc of fierce
rainbow colours
advanced towards spiralling
galaxies...
Until she was following the Doctor along a rocking
gangway where strange muted golds and fiery greens
attacked her, stinging her wherever they struck.
She realised she was experiencing her first real space-time
storm. The ship had been caught by precisely those forces she
had witnessed outside. They were pushing instead of pulling.
Anti-gravity? Anti-something... She had thought that by now
they would be using the pull of the black hole to rendezvous
with their destination. Instead, something else was pushing
them backwards, and she was again trying to visualise a
cosmology so complex, so vast that their entire galaxy might
be the merest speck, as invisible to others as a microbe was to
her. There was no guessing the dimensions of the multiverse
and no point in trying because size had no meaning to her.
She wondered if it had any meaning to anyone. Everything
was relative, after all. She found this enormously funny but
hated the sound of her own laughter. She wanted to go home.
How she longed, longed to be home where some things were
more important than others. Where...
There were tears on her face and she had her head against
the Doctor's shoulder, but she couldn't remember her own
name as she watched scarlet words in an unknown language
rush from her head and mingle with her long red-gold hair
then disappear into a black funnel. 'Doctor?'
'It's all right.' His voice was warm. 'Just a minor storm.
Those awful time winds...'
Time winds? Time tornadoes, it feels like.'
'That's closer to the truth than you know, Dorothy.' He
drew a long, deep breath. 'Or, at least, I think it is.'
'I'm really trying very hard not to kill anyone,' she heard
herself saying.
'Of course you are,' he said comfortingly.
From somewhere came the sound of singing. She thought
at first she could hear some of the crew but then she realised
the voices were too light. Too light? What was going on in
her head?
'Hello, boys.' That was the Doctor. He was setting her
gently into her bunk, looking at a beautiful pale blue globe
containing three handsome young men whose eyes smiled
into hers as they rested, apparently on currents of thin air.
'Well spin yer there, capano, never fear, for we're the
mighty Bubbly Boys, no system can confine us. Or even wine
and dine us. So ask us what and ask us why, don't ask us
who in case we die. Toot too a roo. How's the future looking
to you, cousin? Don't worry, we'll be there to lend a hand
when the time comes:
We're Bubbly Boys from Ketchup Cove
Bright blue we are and purple too and brave
enough to face the kids from Kettle Cave.
Yaki do, yaki doan, yaki dye-o
Yaki fight, yaki tight, yaki spy-o
Song like that sing for cinco de mayo...
Hoo la la, magic jar w
onder why-o...
She became horribly self-conscious. Her stomach churned
and she heard herself, a little Scottish girl who had never lost
her accent, asking awkwardly, 'Who did you say you were?
I don't think we've been formally introduced. Or informally
either, for that matter.'
She heard the Doctor's voice. 'Don't worry. They're on
our side. Probably. Blood's thicker than any wild tide. Al,
Tom and Bob Bubbly. Captain Abberley's crew. Three of the
Famous Chaos Engineers. They know the Second Aether
better than anyone.'
She turned her head. They had all gone. The ship's
movement seemed slow and she was certainly steady. The
storm was over. Amy got out of her bunk.
She found the Doctor in the dormitory he was sharing
with another twenty or thirty men. He was leafing through
star charts, making notes on a V-pad, and looked up when
she came in. 'You OK now? I'd have warned you if I'd had
any sense that was going to catch us. Those winds shouldn't
have occurred anywhere near here. It's just plain wrong. Did
you meet the Bubbly Boys? I asked them to keep an eye on
you.'
She nodded.
'What are you doing, Doctor? Puzzles?'
'I wish. I'm too easily bored. Why is it, Amy Pond, that
we're travelling at twice the speed of Earthlight and I feel like
we're limping along at a snail's pace? Was that Mrs B-C out
there? Before the storm caught us?'
'Yes. I think I was wrong about that theory of mine. She'd
never deliberately have brought this on herself. What do you
think?' It didn't seem strange to be talking normally again.
Somehow the storm had refreshed her, like a long sleep.
'I'm sticking to my theory - that we're looking in the wrong
places for the thief.'
He glanced up to watch cobalt blue bands of light winding
themselves around knots of copper pipe. A little spillage
from the nuclearoid engines which he had assured her wasn't
dangerous.
'I suppose you never came across that book by Barry
Pain?' he asked. 'The One Before? I was enjoying it. Funny how
nobody ever reinvented that kind of fiction. I knew most of
those guys who came out in the 1890s - the New Journalism
some of them called it. More than one bunch under the same
tag. Like the 1960s. Nothing was around in your day that they
hadn't thought of. I'd like to take you back there some time.
Pett Ridge. Arthur Machen. J.M. Barrie. H.G. Wells. Jerome
K. Jerome. P.G. Wodehouse. Lots of 'em, when they were all
writing for the Pall Mall and The Fortnightly. Very funny, too, Pain. A lot of them...' He spoke absently, like someone trying
to remember happier days.
Amy had the feeling he was reluctant to say what was
really on his mind. But she knew he wouldn't tell her any
more than he wanted to, unless -
'Are you trying to protect me from something?' she
asked.
He looked at her with a bit of the old twinkle in his eyes.
'If I am, I haven't been very successful. I think I've told you
everything I can be sure of.'
'What? Enough to alarm me?'
He smiled. 'Everything alarming you is what's alarming
me. And I don't really know much more. I can't address any
of the big questions, not without help from the TARDIS, and
I'm still too scared to try bringing her in. I think there are
powerful people looking for her. I can't afford not to keep
her hidden. And the dark tides might rip the TARDIS apart.
Or she could slip into another universe and we'd never see
her again. The TARDIS is safest hidden from me as well as
from anyone chasing us. So let's concentrate on the questions
we can answer! Why is that hat still bothering me? It seems
trivial but it's important to what we're here for, I know it is.
We've worked out who planned to steal it, who was going to
steal it and why. We aren't any further forward working out
who actually stole it or why...' He was tired, leaning back on
his bunk with his hands behind his head. 'I think if we had
just a couple of answers we'd know better what to do. So we
keep on hopping from one grubby old spaceport to another
and hoping well find out before we get to Miggea. Do you
know who the planet's named after?'
'Who?'
'A legendary Queen of Seirot. In the great fight between
the forces of Law and Qiaos, she stood for Law. There was
a war between the Archangels of Law and the Archangels of
Chaos. A bit Miltonian, but there you go. Only without all
that religion, thankfully. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, this
queen led her forces into what was called the Battle for the
Balance. So that was more like Ragnarok, I suppose - the end
of everything. But the old chronicles rarely describe her as a
force for good. Though she fought for Law, which is supposed
to be good, right, she was seen as one who would rather kill
for a principle than let an enemy live for a chance to make
things better. That's Law gone sour. Function forgotten. And
E.J. Milton wrote a whole epic poem about it. Her own troops
stopped trusting her in the end. She spread so much carnage,
they were sickened by the amount of blood she spilled for
what she considered an ideal. You've heard people say: "That
was positively Miggean?" Oh, you haven't. Really? Well, you know what I mean. Makes you think. That's why sports are
so important. Well, I've just decided sports are so important.
People rarely play sports for a principle, do they?'
'It depends,' she said, glad finally to get a word in and
determined to make use of it, 'whether you're a Rangers or a
Celtic supporter.'
She was glad when he laughed spontaneously. She realised
it had been far too long since she had seen him do that.
Chapter 10
A Time to the Dance of Music
THEY WERE A GOOD few parsecs from the source of the storm when
the pirates were spotted, spiralling out of a globular cluster
locally known as Grone and very quickly moving in parallel
to their ship.
The Doctor had been playing six-dimensional chess with
the captain when the screens began to burp and sigh with
warning signals.
'They're after our water, almost certainly.' N'hn brought
up the visuals, a thin spread of stars, and locked them into
focus. 'They have instruments that can sniff it across the
whole damned Milky Way. But they have no way of sniffing
the Chronii.'
'I didn't know you were carrying any.' The Doctor put his
head to one side. 'I was a bit surprised when I saw your only
big armament was an old-fashioned Kruppmeyer shunt-
action Ganymede gun.'
'That's more for reaction than it is for defence. The quickest
way of getting out of a low-grav situation I know.' The
centaur had become friendly with the Doctor, recognising
his know-how and grateful to find a 6D player among his
passengers. 'You can play with it, if you like. It might reassure
the passengers and
draw their attention away from our real
defences which—'
'Not really my sort of thing,' the Doctor cut in. 'Aren't
exactly legal, are they? Chronii, I mean.'
'Don't ask me why we're criminals if we fly with the best
protection anyone ever came up with. Mutuality. A perfect
union of species.' The captain was keyboarding as he spoke.
Now he started to flick unfashionable Horspool toggles and
pass his free hand over his screens in configurations which
once would have been thought magical.
The Doctor was more interested in staring at the screens,
trying to make out the nature of their likely attackers.
Crenellated jade-like figuring along the hulls of the seven
ships closing in on them was a sign that they had belonged
to the old Manakai invaders from the Arkwright Cluster, but
that lot had been wiped out ages ago. The ships were probably
owned now by renegade members of the Dructionjen clans,
exiled many generations earlier for Dalek-worship, a quasi-
religious cult which believed the Doctor's old enemies would
one day return to take over the galaxy. The Doctor had no
time for the renegades or their beliefs but he knew their
potential for destruction and took them seriously.
N'hn was issuing orders in his full-throated accents,
his hoofs drumming rapidly on the old insulating tiles,
threatening to shake them loose again. The Dructionjen were
moving into battle formation, clearly seeing the tanker as an
easy mark.
The Doctor slipped out of the control cabin to check on the
passengers. Pale yellow light blazed up and down her jade
crenellations. They had settled down after the storm. Many
were still playing various games and remained blithely
unconscious of the further approaching danger. A few had
been alerted by the crew's changed behaviour. As the Doctor
passed by, Hari Agincourt called out to him. 'Anything
up, old boy? Something we can do? I was told we weren't
seriously damaged by the storm.'
'Nothing to do yet.' The Doctor slowed for a moment and
lowered his voice. 'Don't say anything now, but we're about
to be attacked by pirates. If we're boarded, which is unlikely,
it might be a good thing to be ready to defend yourselves.'
Hari's whispered response was typical. 'Oh, gosh! That's a
spiffin' bit of luck. We're going to see some action, eh? What
can I do?'
'Just get some of the team together so they're ready for