Doctor Who PDA36 - Independence Day (2nd & 7th) by Peter Darvill-Evans

Author:Peter Darvill-Evans
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-07-13T02:43:14+00:00

* * *

Bep-Wor stood at the tall window and looked out across the courtyard. Beyond it there were more solid, stone-built extensions of the palace; beyond them the sea of roofs of the city houses; in the distance, the surrounding, forested mountains.

He longed to see the ocean.

It would have been unthinkable to refuse Kedin‟s hospitality. How could say that he didn‟t want this suite of high-ceilinged rooms, that he preferred his filthy rags to these heavy, itchy clothes, that the endless exquisite meals tasted bland and too rich?

He would have liked a simple meal of seared fish.

The convoluted carvings on the furniture made him uncomfortable, as did the extravagant patterns on the flouncy curtains. He wasn‟t used to walking on floor-coverings into which his feet sank.

On the open sea, or tilling the fields, on his home world, he had felt alive. Following the Doctor, freeing his people, flirting with danger as he led his growing army across the foreign landscape - then, too, he had felt alive.

Now he felt nothing. No - that wasn‟t true. He forced himself to look again at Kia-Ga. She hadn‟t moved: after all, he hadn‟t told her to. She was sitting, very upright, in one of the gilt-decorated chairs, her hands folded in her lap. In her borrowed clothes she seemed more distant from him then ever.

He turned away. What he felt, rising again from the pit of his stomach, swamping every other emotion, was hopelessness.

The Doctor had saved him from Kia-Ga‟s fate. The Doctor had proved he could revive the dead. Surely he could easily restore Kia-Ga, and all of Bep-Wor‟s people who had been poisoned and enslaved? Then why was there no word? What was taking so long?

Had the Doctor abandoned him?

There was a knock on the door. Bep-Wor leapt to his feet: perhaps this was a message from the Doctor. He ran to the door and opened it.

Madok stood in the corridor outside.

„Bep-Wor,‟ he said, „the session of the Grand Council is ended. Kedin Ashar has asked specifically for you and Kia-Ga to attend the announcement of its deliberations.‟

Bep-Wor nodded dumbly. What did the Grand Council matter to him? He didn‟t understand the complex structure of the society on this world. He had grasped that, thanks to Vethran‟s plans to proclaim himself even more absolutely the ruler of both his own world and Bep-Wor‟s, all of the most important people were already gathered in and around the palace. It had therefore been possible to summon a great meeting on the day after the overthrow of Vethran. The Grand Council had been in session for hours.

„Would you care to follow me?‟ Madok said. He looked expectantly from Bep-Wor to Kia-Ga.

Bep-Wor nodded again, and went to whisper instructions to Kia-Ga. He could feel Madok‟s eyes on him. He knew Madok was a good man, but he hated the way that, like everyone else here, he treated Kia-Ga as if she were in her right mind.

She‟s not like this, Bep-Wor wanted to shout. This isn‟t my Kia-Ga.

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