Doctor Who - New Adventures - 32 - Falls the Shadow by Daniel O'mahony

Author:Daniel O'mahony
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780426204275
Publisher: London Bridge
Published: 1994-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

‘Summerfield remains.’

The grey man hummed thoughtfully.

‘Go,’ Mandelbrot voices echoed off the walls.

The grey man moved close to Benny, taking her unresisting hands.

‘I could hardly refuse,’ he said. His voice was wistful. He almost sounded happy.

‘That was a threat,’ Benny hissed angrily. ‘They were threatening me!’

The grey man nodded, but stared to the side of her, as if distracted by his own thoughts.

‘I fear this may not be easy for you,’ he said. ‘But it removes the element of certainty from the threat. I’d like to thank you before I go. If you had not been here I would never have chosen as I did.’

And with those words he pulled her into a tight embrace. It was too brief, but while it lasted Benny felt like a baby again, held securely and with love in the arms of her father. She didn’t flinch at the intimacy.

The grey man said nothing further to her. He simply smiled and flowed from the arena of the Mandelbrot Set, back into the black corridor and beyond that, into the material world.

Benny didn’t watch him. Her attention was fixed on the ranks of the Mandelbrot Set. She was smiling, and she wondered why. And even as she wondered, her smile cracked and she burst into tears.

199

15

Götterdämmerung

The sky was a churning sea, dark and ominous. Subtle pastel shades coloured the clouds, lining the darkness for fleeting moments before being swallowed by the overall greyness. The clouds swirled. The grey man watched patterns form and dissolve. He felt no cold, but shivered.

This was ominous weather.

No – he quickly dismissed the thought as superstition. The weather was the weather, no matter how bleak. It simply set the tone. The grey man considered this wearily before starting the journey to the house. He was in no hurry. He did not relish this moment. His path led either to death or compromise – he wasn’t certain which would be worse.

The earth was silent, as if life had been extinguished in his absence. This, the grey man mused among a jumble of pessimistic thoughts, is a world holding its breath.

As he reached the bottom of the hill, he saw Gabriel and Tanith already there, dark shapes invisible against their context. He halted beside them, breaking the fragile silence with a sigh.

‘I don’t want to fight you,’ he said, perhaps apologetically.

Tanith turned her head towards him, and it seemed to the grey man like the slowest action he had seen in his lifetime.

‘We know,’ she replied.

‘Nice weather for it,’ Gabriel remarked, folding his arms against the cold.

‘We could rustle up some thunder and lightning if you want.’

The grey man shook his head, forcing a smile onto his lips.

‘That would be needlessly Wagnerian.’

He found himself warming to the atmosphere here. Here was a cheery vein of nihilism which appealed to him. In better circumstances he might get along well with this couple.

‘But appropriate,’ Gabriel continued languidly – there were three people here and none of them were in a hurry. ‘Götterdämmerung.’

‘Twilight of the Gods,’ the grey man said, almost to himself.

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