Chapter Seven

William Shakespeare licked the salt from his lips and gazed forlornly at the distant horizon. There was still no sign of Venice, no blemish upon the junction of sea and sky that might indicate the presence of land. The translucent blue sea stretched all around them, as if they were mired in glass. For all Shakespeare knew, they might not have moved for days. He wasn't sure how much more of this he could take. He wasn't a good traveller at the best of times, and this was not the best of times. Not by any reckoning.

The deck beneath his feet rocked with a predictable rhythm as the ship fell forward into each wave and rode up again upon the wave's back, dragging its bulk forward, yard by precious yard. A gust of wind blew spume into his eyes. The salt stung, and he wiped his sleeve angrily across his face. Damn Walsingham! Damn both the Walsinghams. Damn both the Walsinghams and thrice damn the King!

Rope creaked alarmingly against wood in the rigging, and the cries of the sailors were almost indistinguishable from the cries of the birds that flew alongside the ship, waiting patiently, mindlessly, for the slops to be thrown overboard. The slops! Shakespeare's stomach rebelled at the thought of food. He'd forced down some wormy meat and hard biscuit that morning to blunt the edge of his hunger, but it had just come straight back up again. He hadn't kept anything down since leaving Southampton. He wasn't sure if he would ever be able to eat again.

He leant upon the rail and rested his head in his hands. Below him, past the line of portholes, the water slapped against the curve of the hull. And beneath that, what? Fathomless depths. Darkness and silence. How easy it would be to miss one's step, to pitch when the ship was tossing, and to tumble, alone and unnoticed, into that murky abyss. What was the nightmare that he had put in Clarence's mouth in The Tragedy of King Richard the Third? "Lord, Lord, methought what pain it was to drown: what dreadful noise of water in mine ears, what sights of ugly death within mine eyes! Methought I saw a thousand fearful wracks; a thousand men that fishes gnawed upon; wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, inestimable stones, unvalued jewels, all scattered in the bottom of the sea. Some lay in dead men's skulls; and in those holes where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept as it were in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems that woo'd the slimy bottom of the deep, and mocked the dead bones that lay scattered by."

He pulled his mind away from those morbid and somewhat flowery words, and found them migrating toward the play that they came from. Sudden anger surged up within him - or, at least, he thought it was anger. It might have been the last fragments of his breakfast. Not only had that zooterkin Christopher Marlowe stolen some of his themes for Edward II, but that coney-catching mountebank Francis Pearson had produced his own inferior copy and called it The True Tragedie of Richard the Third. Marlowe was dead, thank the Lord, and Pearson was a talentless hack who would never amount to anything, but there was no saying what was happening in London with Shakespeare gone. He could return to find his entire body of work being performed under other titles by inferior actors, with some upstart writer getting all the credit. Worse still, Macbeth was in rehearsal, ready to be performed before the King at Hampton Court Palace. What travesties might Richard Burbage and the rest of the King's Men commit upon it in his absence?

Perhaps he should think about returning to Stratford, his family and his grain-dealing business. Writing was a fool's game. Long hours, low pay and little praise.

Just like spying, really. "All right, Mr Hall?" Shakespeare almost didn't acknowledge the sailor walking past, but at the last moment he remembered his false identity - the one that Walsingham had persuaded him to take on for this mission. "Feeling a little unsteady," he replied.

"Get some victuals down your neck," the sailor shouted back over his shoulder.

"Thank you," Shakespeare muttered. "I'll try." He turned to stare across the damp boards at his fellow passengers, trying to distract his mind from the warring sensations of hunger and nausea. There were other Englishmen aboard, but they seemed to be avoiding him as assiduously as he was avoiding them. Their dress was old fashioned and much patched, and despite their gaiety he discerned some darker feeling within them, some hidden mood that could only be glimpsed in their eyes.

Or perhaps he was just being foolish. What had possessed him, agreeing to this absurd mission? His work as an informant and courier for Francis Walsingham, the Secretary of State whose network of agents and informers had been set up to protect the Queen from Catholic plots, had been fulfilling and financially rewarding. The work had taken him across Europe, from Denmark to Venice, and provided the raw material for many of his plays, but when Walsingham died Shakespeare had thought that he was free of the life of intrigue, free to return to grain dealing and acting. No such luck. Thomas Walsingham had taken over where his cousin had left off. Shakespeare was still an agent of the crown, as were Ben Jonson and half the other playwrights in London. If any of them needed to be reminded of the risks, all they had to do was remember Christopher Marlowe, stabbed in a tavern in Deptford. Marlowe, of course, had been one that loved a cup of hot wine: drunkenness had been his best virtue, and it was handy-dandy whether that or his spying had led to his death.

Shakespeare shuddered as he recalled Walsingham's ascetic face, floating on a foam-like ruff above his raven-black robes, his hair hidden by a skullcap. And that voice! That cold, dry voice! "You will travel to Venice. You are familiar with the city? Good. A reliable agent tells me that the Doge is negotiating with a previously unknown Empire - probably in the East - for lucrative trade concessions. The King wishes you to determine the truth of this matter and engage in preliminary negotiations on his behalf with this Empire. While you are gone, we will put about the rumour that you are secluded, writing a new play. It is an explanation that has served us before - it will work again."

Walsingham's planning was impeccable, his logic unassailable, his force of personality unquestionable. And so Shakespeare, playwright, grain merchant and sometime spy, found himself the prisoner of circumstance, bound once again for Venice - home of Shylock and of Othello - without a clue as to how to accomplish his mission.

He looked up into the ship's rigging: a tangled mass of ropes and wooden spars suspended like some solid cloud above his head. A sailor swung one-handed from it as he climbed up to the crow's nest. Despite his sea-sickness and his terror of heights, Shakespeare would happily have swapped lives with him. Quite happily.

"Sleep well, my dear." The Doctor smiled and patted Vicki's arm as they entered their salon. Somewhere out in St Mark's Square, a clock tolled twice. "Although I'm sure that you won't have any problems after that marvellous meal."

"I certainly won't," Steven muttered. He was weaving slightly as he crossed the ornate carpet towards his bedroom.

"Not considering the amount you drank." The Doctor's tone was reproving, but Vicki could see a twinkle in his eye. "Good night, my boy. Breakfast at eight sharp. Don't be late."

The sound of the door slamming behind him cut off Steven's grunted reply.

The Doctor took a step towards his own bedroom. Vicki felt a panicky sensation swell up in her chest. She didn't want to be left alone. Not that night. Not if she might wake up to find something... something alien... sitting on her windowsill. "You're in a good mood," she said rapidly.

The Doctor stopped and nodded. "I found Mr Galileo to be a most congenial companion. Most congenial indeed. It is so seldom that I get a chance to converse with somebody almost on my own intellectual level."

Vicki couldn't help but smile to herself. The Doctor was so blithely unaware of how conceited he sometimes sounded. "Better not let Steven hear you say that," she said. "He might take offence. He thinks he's the intellectual equivalent of everyone."

"That," the Doctor said drily, "is his main problem." He turned to face her. "You don't seem to mind an old man's ways, however," he said, his voice unusually hesitant. "Do I seem arrogant to you, child?"

Vicki opened her mouth to reply, then caught herself. For once the Doctor was asking her a serious question. The least he deserved was a serious answer. "No," she said finally, "because you're not an old man." She took a deep breath. "In fact, you're not a man at all, are you?"

His clear blue eyes gazed at her for a moment, then he nodded slightly, more in acknowledgement of a point scored than in answer. Crossing to the divan he busied himself with plumping up cushions and sitting down. "And what makes you think that?" he said finally.

"A lot of things." Vicki crossed her arms and walked over to the window. Outside, the throng of revellers and traders was no different from when she had woken up. Only the faces had changed. "Barbara and Ian were suspicious of you ... I don't mean that they thought you were evil or anything like that - just that you weren't what you seemed. Barbara confided in me one night, shortly before they left. Since then I've been watching you, and..." She shrugged. "You look like a man, you talk like a man, but you're not. There's something about the way you watch people sometimes, like I used to look at Sandy."

"Sandy?" he prompted.

"My sand monster, back on Dido. I loved him, but not in the same way I loved my mother and my father. And that's the way you love us, isn't it? Like we're pets."

She waited, feeling as if she was standing on the edge of a cliff, and it was too dark to see where the bottom was. The Doctor's face didn't change, but she could sense a certain re-evaluation going on underneath the surface.

"You're very... sensitive," he said finally. "That is your greatest strength. That, and your ability to play up to the image that people have of you."

"Then ...?"

He smiled. "Then what am I? A wanderer, my dear. A wanderer and a survivor. I am not of your race. I am not of your Earth. I am a wanderer in the fourth dimension of space and time, a refugee from an ancient civilization, cut off from my own people by aeons of time and universes far beyond human understanding."

"And was Susan a wanderer too?"

His face suddenly clouded over. "Susan? Who told you about Susan?"

"Barbara did." Vicki suddenly felt as if she had been thrown on the defensive. "She said that Susan was your granddaughter, and she left the TARDIS to get married."

The Doctor stood. "Yes, Susan was my granddaughter, if such terms can be applied to beings like us. I loved Susan. I loved her very much. And now that she has gone, I miss her more than you will ever know. I feel that I am..."

"Alone?" Vicki suggested gently.

The Doctor nodded. "Alone," he confirmed. "When I left, she came with me. She could have stayed, but she felt that I needed looking after." The Doctor's face was suddenly haggard. "Although she was sweet, and guileless, and innocent, she was the closest thing to a conversational partner of my own level. There were things that we could talk about that would be meaningless babble to..." He shot Vicki a guilty glance."...to anybody else. She was the only person who understood."

"Understood what?" Vicki whispered.

"Who I am," the Doctor said, not meeting her gaze. "Why I left. Where I was going. And now..."

Vicki was about to say something trivial and comforting when there was a flurry of wings outside the window. For a moment she thought that a flock of pigeons were landing on the ledge outside, but when the shadow of a huge pair of wings blotted out the firelight from the square below she gestured to the Doctor to back away, out of the line of sight of the window. He did so, quickly and silently. The windowsill creaked as something heavy settled upon it. The bright light of the moon cast a squat shadow across the carpet.

"Vicki?" The voice was as musical and calming as she remembered.

"Yes?" she said, her throat suddenly dry.

"Alarmed do not be. Albrellian it is. Souls briefly last night touched did ours."

"I thought you were a dream."

Albrellian laughed: a high-pitched trilling. "Happy a nightmare not considered am I. Afraid that forgotten might have you me."

"How could I forget," she said, "a charming alien perched outside my window."

There was a pause. "That not of this Earth am I know you. So, one of the Doctor's companions are you. That means..." Albrellian trailed off, as if it was thinking things through.

"Yes," the Doctor said, stepping forward into the light. "And I am the Doctor. The definitive article, so to speak. Might I ask you to step into the room, sir, and show yourself to us, rather than skulk outside the window like a common Lothario." Albrellian drew his breath in sharply. For a moment, nothing happened, then the bulky shadow on the windowsill moved forward into the light of the torches. The first thing to emerge from the shadows was a strangely formed limb like a length of bamboo terminating in something like the claw of a crab but with four opposable sections of different sizes. A second claw followed, and then the creature's body. Albrellian was an arthropod the size of a human, but much broader and shorter. He had three pairs of powerful walking legs and two pairs of the more delicate crab-like manipulatory appendages that Vicki had first seen. His hard shell was dark red in colour, covered in irregular maroon blotches, with a ruff of maroon hair sprouting from the top. Four stalked eyes emerged from the hair - two of which were fixed upon the Doctor and two upon Vicki. As Vicki watched, entranced, a pair of leathery wings folded themselves up and slid beneath a section of shell that hinged back to cover them.

"Thank you," the Doctor said. He slipped his thumbs beneath the lapels of his coat. "It seems that introductions are in order. As I have said, I am the Doctor. My companion, with whom I believe you have already-talked, is Vicki. And you are...?"

"Albrellian, of the Greld, am I."

"The Greld?" The Doctor frowned. "Forgive me: I am unfamiliar with your race."

"Dealers in ... technology are we. Home around the star that humans call Canopus make we."

"Then you are a long way from that home." There was a querulous, aggressive tone to the Doctor's voice. "I hope that you do not intend extending the Greld commonwealth in this direction."

"Home is indeed far away my," Albrellian said, maintaining eye-contact with the Doctor, "but further away still from your home, lord of time, are you."

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "You know of me?"

Albrellian bowed its great shell until the rim was touching the carpet. "Deeds the stuff of legend are your."

The Doctor glanced over at Vicki and raised his eyebrows. She shrugged helplessly. There was a definite subtext to the conversation, but she was at a loss to know what it was.

"What did you mean," the Doctor asked, "when you recognized Vicki as one of my companions and started to draw a conclusion from that fact?"

"Thoughts were bewildered my," Albrellian admitted, straightening itself up. "Arrival with awe and trepidation awaiting have been your we. Only this evening informed that on the mainland and taken to Laputa you and your travelling companions were met was I. Surprised was I, for when last night to Vicki talked I, convinced that with you she was was I, and both in Venice here were you. Somewhere along the line, a message has been garbled."

"I don't understand what you are talking about," the Doctor snapped. "Your grammar could do with some practice. What or where is Laputa?"

"The island." Albrellian turned to Vicki. "Surely understand you?"

Vicki shook her head. "All I know is that we were invited here for some reason, but we don't know why."

"Laputa," the Doctor murmured to Vicki, "was a fictional island in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, but that book won't be written for another hundred years. Is something happening here that Swift will write about, or does someone else here have knowledge before its time?"

"Show Albrellian the invitation, Doctor," Vicki urged. "Perhaps he might be able to tell us who sent it."

The Doctor slipped his hand into his coat and pulled out the impossibly white slip of material. "This was given to me under mysterious circumstances," he said. "Perhaps you can shed some light on its meaning."

Albrellian reached a claw into a crevice in its shell and drew out a similar white slip. "All have them do we," it said simply. "That is why here are we."

The Doctor reached out and took the invitation from Albrellian's claw. He turned it over and looked at it, then wordlessly held it out to Vicki. The words were the same as the ones she remembered from the invitation that the Doctor had bought back with him from... from wherever it was that he had been taken.

"An invitation to what?" she asked helplessly.

"Games do not play Doctor," Albrellian whooped. "The invitation a formality is. By the messenger who delivered it to you fully briefed must have been you."

The Doctor handed the slip of paper back to the Greld. "If I was briefed," he said, "then I have forgotten the briefing. There is a small period of my life that I cannot recall. Perhaps, if I could, then all would be clear to me."

"And the information within the invitation itself what about? How else did get here you?"

The Doctor shrugged. "My travelling machine took care of that. The invitation itself guided us."

Albrellian shifted all four of its eyes to the Doctor. "Difficult your assurances to accept find it I," it said. "Some kind of artifice this is off balance to get us all. Concessions from us want you."

"Don't be so foolish," the Doctor snapped. "How can I want concessions when I don't even know what's being conceded, or in what forum?"

"When the Convention only hope of peace is our, how games can play you?" Albrellian shouted.

"Convention?" The Doctor was frowning. "What convention? Where?"

"The Convention on Laputa!"

The Doctor and Albrellian were eyeballs to eyeballs now, and both were shouting so loud that they could probably be heard from the Square below. "I have no intention of going to any convention, on Laputa or otherwise, until I know exactly what is going on!"

"But needed are you! Without you proceed cannot we!"

The Doctor shook his head firmly and folded his arms across his chest. "I will not be manipulated any further," he said. "Here I am and here I stay until someone explains to me precisely what is going on."

"If prepared to games play are you, then so am I." Albrellian sprang across the room. Before she could move, Vicki found her arms and legs pinioned in a firm but gentle grip by all four of his manipulatory appendages. "On Laputa friend will be your, when bothered to turn up can be you."

"Doctor -" Vicki cried, but Albrellian's claws tightened on her limbs. She cried out, more in surprise than in pain, and struggled, but it made no difference.

The Doctor made as if to intercept Albrellian, but the alien moved towards the window.

"Where she'll be, know you," the alien whistled, and jumped out of the window.

In his library, Irving Braxiatel sighed in relief. Everything was going to be all right. "And you say that the Doctor is sleeping happily?" he asked, just to hear the good news again.

Szaratak nodded its thin, knobbly head. "The envoys brought him in an hour or so ago. Apparendy he was so tired that he fell asleep on the ground in front of them. They carried him into a skiff and took him straight to Laputa."

"And his companions?"

Szaratak shrugged, although with a Jamarian's build it was more of a ripple. "It would appear that they haven't been with the Doctor for very long. The sight of the envoys frightened them. They ran off."

Braxiatel ran a hand through his hair. "You've done well, Szaratak. Which envoys did you send, by the way?"

"The first ones I could find - Ontraag, Jullatii, Dentraal and Oolian."

"Nothing too frightening there," Braxiatel said. "And the imposter?"

"Imposter?"

"The person wandering around Venice pretending to be the Doctor. The one who ran away when you approached him in the Doge's palace."

"He's probably still there. Shall I deal with him?"

Braxiatel thought for a moment. He couldn't afford to have an imposter wandering around - not with the Convention about to start. It might prove - disruptive. "I have to leave for Laputa," he said. "Get him put of the way."

"Permanently?" Szaratak asked softly.

Braxiatel's mind was already occupied with agendas and arrangements. "Yes, of course," he said. Behind him, Szaratak snickered. Braxiatel thought little of it as he left the library and walked down the flight of stairs to the ground floor. His staff - Jamarians, most of them, but with their hologuises on almost all the time - were at the front door unloading vegetables from a boat tied up on the canal. He passed by them without a word and walked through to the back of the house. Checking to ensure that he wasn't observed - he had deliberately kept security on the house light because he didn't want to make the locals suspicious - he stopped by a particularly ornate tapestry and pulled it back from the wall. There was a metal door set into the bricks behind it, and he keyed his personal code into the security lock in its centre. The door slid back into the wall and he walked down the revealed steps into the new watertight room that the Jamarians had built beneath the house.

The room was essentially a white metal box with a path around the edge of a pool of water. A small control panel was set into one wall. The pool was at the same level as the canal outside, and in its centre floated an ambassadorial skiff, smooth and ovoid, like a rather fat metal egg. Braxiatel glanced back, checking that the security door had closed behind him, then walked to the edge of the pool.

"Open," he muttered. An opening appeared in the side of the skiff. He stepped into the cool, dark interior. "Shut." A constellation of multi-coloured lights sprang to life around the circumference of the skiff as the door closed. Braxiatel sat in the form-fitting central seat and ran his hands across the lights: adjusting course, speed and power. Laputa and the Armageddon Convention were waiting for him.

Galileo's hand began to ache - a deep-seated grinding pain in the bone that he was all too familiar with - so he switched the paddle from one side of the Doctor's strange boat to the other. "I still say we should have paid a gondolier to take us," he grumbled.

"I didn't want to involve anyone else in this business," the Doctor said, shading his eyes from the rays of the early morning sun which slanted across the flat surface of the lagoon. In his other hand he held a long tube capped with glass lenses - a spyglass, but one larger and better finished than Galileo's.

The island with the blue box from which the Doctor had retrieved the spyglass had vanished into the mists behind the Doctor, and Galileo had his back to Venice as he rowed. He felt as if they were cocooned in a white shroud. "You mean that you don't trust anybody," he said.

"That too."

"Then what about your friend - Steven? He's built like an ox. Couldn't he have rowed us?"

The Doctor squinted and peered ahead, over Galileo's shoulder. "No sign of Venice yet, my boy," he said. "No, I asked Steven to take a look around for Vicki. I don't hold out much hope that she's still there, but I prefer not to make unwarranted assumptions. Best to rule the city out of our consideration. I'm far more certain that if we can trace that spaceship you saw to this place Laputa that Albrellian talked about, we'll find Vicki."

"Ships that travel through the void of space, beings from other worlds, boxes that are barely larger than a coffin and yet can swallow you up for ten minutes while you look for your spyglass..." Galileo shook his head in bewilderment. "You ask a lot of a man's imagination, Doctor. By rights I should call you a heretic, if not a lunatic, but I find you strangely convincing, and your words strike chords in my own thoughts."

"You are a man of unusual breadth of vision, Galileo." The Doctor gazed into his eyes. "If anybody in this time is prepared to believe in life on other worlds, it is you."

"Twenty years ago," Galileo grumbled, "in the Academy of Florence, I gave a learned discourse on the exact location, size and shape of Dante's Inferno and, using pure logic, I proved that the Devil himself was two thousand arm-lengths in height." He gazed levelly at the Doctor. "That doesn't mean that I actually believe that the Devil is two thousand arm-lengths in height. I apply logic to everything and I believe nothing."

"An admirable, if somewhat narrow, outlook." The Doctor's gaze switched over Galileo's shoulder again. "I think we're bearing a little to port. You'd best switch back to your other hand."

"I get arthritis in my other hand," Galileo snapped. "Besides, I'm an astronomer, not a sailor. Perhaps you would like to take a turn?"

"The exercise will do you good," the Doctor said with a slight smile. "Besides, have you no respect for my age?"

"Not much," Galileo admitted. "There are older professors at the University of Padua who I hold in great contempt. Age can lead to stupidity as well as wisdom."

"Then perhaps if I point out that I'm doing this for you..."

"How so?" Galileo asked, then swore as a splinter jabbed into his palm. He let the boat drift for a moment while he carefully pulled it out, then took the opportunity to glance over his shoulder. The dark, low bulk of one of Venice's many islands was just visible through the veils of mist.

"The objective lens of your spyglass was smashed," the Doctor said as Galileo began to pull on the oars again. "It would take time for the Venetian glass-makers to make a new one - time we do not have. This particular model -" he waved the metal tube "- has somewhat greater magnifying power."

Galileo was about to make a cutting rejoinder when he felt the boat rock beneath them. "I think we've hit a sandbank," he said, pulling back on the oars.

"I don't think so." The Doctor frowned. "I can't see anything."

"Well, there's something beneath us." Galileo glanced over the side.

And saw mad, red eyes looking up at him.

Before he could shout a warning to the Doctor, the entire boat heaved to one side. The last thing Galileo saw before his head went beneath the waves and water forced its way into his mouth and nostrils was the Doctor's despairing face, and the bony hand that was pulling him down.