Doctor Who: Shada (19 page)

The Doctor shrugged. ‘I have a very boring reading voice. By the time I’d got to the bottom of the first page you’d be asleep, I’d escape, and then where would you be?’

‘Read it to me,’ said Skagra.

‘I presume you can’t read Gallifreyan, then?’ said the Doctor.

‘Like a native,’ said Skagra, indicating the other books in his collection. ‘From the Old High Gallifreyan of the Rassilon Era down to the scrawlings of the Sheboogans. But as you know, the book is not written in any form of Gallifreyan.’ He nodded. ‘Read it to me, Doctor.’

‘All right,’ said the Doctor affably. He flipped open the first page and coughed. ‘Are you standing comfortably?’

‘I am,’ said Skagra.

‘Then I’ll sit down,’ said the Doctor, leaping into the padded white leather chair. He was uncomfortably aware of the sphere, sat atop the cone right next to him at head height. He concealed his apprehension, crossed his long legs, coughed again, and began.

‘“Squiggle squiggle”,’ said the Doctor. ‘“Squiggle, wavy line, sort of an eye I think, squiggle, squiggle…”’ He stopped and smiled up at Skagra. ‘I’m paraphrasing wildly, of course.’

Skagra’s lip trembled slightly. ‘Doctor,’ he said warningly, ‘let me remind you that your friends—’

The Doctor held up a hand. ‘Shhh, this is a good bit. “Squiggle squiggle wavy line, wavy squiggle!”’ Suddenly a look of mock worry came over his face. He flipped through the book again. ‘Skagra, do you realise this book doesn’t make one bit of sense?’

‘Doctor,’ said Skagra, composed again. ‘Any fool would realise that the book is written in code.’

The Doctor stared at the book for a good ten seconds. Suddenly he sat bolt upright in the chair. ‘Skagra!’ he exclaimed.

‘What?’

‘This book is written in code!’ He winked. ‘How am I doing?’

‘I believe that you know the code,’ said Skagra.

The Doctor shrugged. His eyes kept turning between Skagra, the book and the uncomfortably close sphere. ‘Who, me? Oh no no no.’ His tone changed suddenly, becoming less flippant. ‘I’m afraid I’m very stupid. Very stupid. I am very, very stupid.’

It was almost as if he was trying to convince himself of that fact.

‘Doctor,’ said Skagra patiently, ‘I believe that you, as a Time Lord of some experience, know this code. Unlike the Professor’s, your mind is relatively young and strong. You will decipher the code for me. Immediately.’

‘There’s no point in giving me orders,’ said the Doctor, looking up at him with an oddly vacant expression. ‘As I keep telling you, I’m very, very stupid.’

‘That was not an order,’ said Skagra.

‘It wasn’t?’

‘It was a statement of fact.’

‘Ah,’ said the Doctor. ‘How stupid of me not to realise.’

Skagra raised his hand in a sharp, up-cutting gesture.

The sphere buzzed into life. Gently it left its position on top of the cone.

The Doctor made to leap from the chair. Skagra barked out, ‘Ship, restrain him!’

A warm, female voice said, ‘Certainly, my lord.’

Suddenly the Doctor cried out. He found that he could not move from the chair. A searing pain surged through his body, pinning him back.

‘You will give me the code because you have no choice,’ said Skagra.

The Doctor grimaced and spoke through gritted teeth, fighting the pain of the chair’s force field. ‘I don’t know about that, Skagra,’ he managed to say, beads of sweat running down his forehead. ‘I don’t know about anything, in fact.’ He closed his eyes and gasped in pain. ‘I am an… appallingly stupid person…’

‘That, Doctor, will soon be very true,’ said Skagra. He gestured to the sphere.

The sphere attached itself to the Doctor’s gleaming forehead. He let out a long cry of terrible pain, and his whole body shook in a series of agonised spasms.

Skagra watched the process, unmoved. He considered using up a smile but decided against it.

Finally the sphere detached itself from the Doctor and moved gently into Skagra’s outstretched hand.

The Doctor lay still and slumped, eyes staring open.

‘Scan for life signs,’ ordered Skagra.

A melodic electronic burble sounded as the Ship carried out a sensor sweep. ‘My gracious lord,’ it reported finally. ‘I am pleased to confirm that your enemy the Doctor is dead.’

Skagra reached out and took the book from the Doctor’s lifeless, unresisting fingers.

Chapter 33

CHRIS COMPLETED HIS circuit of the tiny white room. ‘So there are no doors,’ he began.

‘Correct,’ said Romana, who had drawn up her feet and was sat next to K-9, her chin propped in her hands.

‘So,’ said Chris, ‘we must have been transported here, wherever here is, by some form of matter transference.’

‘Very clever,’ said Romana, staring straight ahead.

‘Commendable deduction, young master,’ said K-9, and Chris could have sworn they exchanged a glance that was not entirely favourable to him.

‘Oh well,’ said Chris, feeling confident enough to throw a little sarcasm back their way. ‘I suppose you two do this sort of thing all the time.’

Romana sighed. ‘Yes, actually.’

There was a silence. Chris was never loath to take the opportunity to fill a silence. ‘Do you know, I was meant to be delivering a paper to the Physics Society next week.’

‘Oh yes?’ asked Romana.

Chris nodded. ‘Finally disproving the possibility of teleportation.’ He shrugged. ‘Well, I can always deliver it the week after. Means a complete rewrite, though.’

He sat down next to Romana, crossing his legs. ‘You’re very calm,’ he said. ‘And that makes me calm. Thank you.’

Romana smiled. ‘Actually, Chris, I’m desperately worried.’ She turned to K-9. ‘K-9, do another scan. Can’t you pick up any trace of the Doctor?’

K-9’s ears rotated. ‘Negative, Mistress. Every signal is shielded. Suggest that this is a primitive zero environment, isolated from all external sources.’

‘That’s one of the things that has me desperately worried,’ said Romana. ‘Skagra’s technology, it’s frighteningly similar to our own.’

‘You mean,’ said Chris, ‘similar to yours and the Doctor’s in particular, or to the Time Lords in general?’

‘Both, in a way,’ said Romana. ‘The shielding around this Ship. The invisibility screen. Now a zero environment. And how did he know to find the book here in Cambridge? The Professor was surely the only person in the universe who even knew it had been stolen from Gallifrey.’ She dug her chin harder into her hands. ‘What does he want from the book anyway? And who or what is Shada?’

‘Could Skagra be a Time Lord?’ asked Chris. ‘A bad one? There must be some bad ones.’

‘Let’s hope the Doctor’s finding that all out now,’ said Romana.

‘You’ve a lot of faith in him,’ said Chris.

‘He’s saved your planet many, many times. And not just yours. He’s the most wonderful man in the universe,’ said Romana, quickly qualifying her remark. ‘If you tell him I said that, I’ll kill you. Same goes for you, K-9.’

Chris’s mind was buzzing with questions. If they were stuck here for a bit, it was time to ask a few more questions. And it might distract Romana from her worries. ‘I always thought,’ said Chris, ‘that aliens, if they existed, would be gas globules or big bat creatures or something, or something we might not even recognise as life. No offence.’

‘There are plenty of creatures like that in the universe,’ said Romana.

‘But you and the Doctor and the Professor,’ went on Chris, ‘you look just like us, really. You even drink tea and ride bikes. You’d think that would be disappointing. But as a scientist, I think it’s actually a good thing, it opens up so many areas of thought and theory as to the parallel evolution of the humanoid form.’

Romana seemed to have the glazed fascinated expression falling onto her face now, noted Chris. She turned her attention to K-9, pressing a sequence of some of the flashing buttons on his top side. ‘I suppose we could try altering K-9’s sensors to overlap rather than influx.’

Chris abandoned his questioning and decided to go for a decisive course of action. He sprung up and examined the inward-curving walls of the white room. They felt neither warm nor cold. In fact, though he could most definitely touch them, they felt like nothing at all. ‘This wall. It’s made of a very curious substance.’

‘Zero technology again,’ said Romana casually. ‘Give me a year, I’ll explain it to you.’ She finished her reprogramming of K-9. ‘Try again, K-9. Overlap scan this time, there’s just a chance it could penetrate the null interfaces of this place.’

Chris tapped the wall. ‘Even looking at these walls is hard. It’s as if there’s nothing there at all, though I can see there is.’

‘Your senses can’t operate properly in a zero environment,’ said Romana. ‘Don’t try to understand.’

K-9’s ears whirred around again. ‘Overlap scan commenced.’

‘Yes,’ said Chris, ‘so the senses of my lot, Earthlings I suppose you’d call us –’

‘Among other things,’ said Romana, bending over K9 anxiously.

‘– Earthling senses can’t fully comprehend this wall,’ went on Chris.

‘Negative scan, Mistress,’ said K-9.

Romana sighed and ran her hands through her hair in frustration.

There was another awkward silence.

‘I suppose the thing about this wall—’ began Chris.

Romana banged her fist on K-9’s side in frustration. ‘Oh, blast the wall!’ she shouted.

‘Affirmative, Mistress,’ said K-9 brightly. A bolt of bright red laser-light shot from his snout with an ear-splitting zap.

‘Duck!’ shouted Romana. She grabbed Chris roughly and flung him to the floor.

The red laser bolt ricocheted wildly around their tiny prison, lancing inches from them. It had no effect on the walls whatever, but Chris was not so hopeful about their chances if it hit them.

Suddenly, Romana tore off her hat and threw it with expert timing up into the air, directly into the path of the laser bolt. There was a small explosion and the hat was reduced to a cloud of ash that rained down on them.

Another silence followed.

‘Apologies, Mistress,’ said K-9 finally. His head and tail drooped. ‘Action was precipitate.’

‘Not at all,’ said Romana, letting go of a big sigh and getting to her feet, dusting the ash from the pristine white lace of her dress. ‘It was a good try, K-9.’

Chris got up and found he was grinning. ‘One thing you’ve never solved out there in space, then,’ he said. ‘Computers, however advanced, just do whatever you tell them to. Whatever it is, however stupid, they just do it. On Earth we call it the sophisticated idiot problem.’

K-9 spun to face him. ‘In this unit’s memory bank regarding Earthling behaviour, instances of idiocy outnumber instances of sophistication by a ratio of 77 to 1.’

Before Chris could take him up on that, and there was certainly no chance of taking the dispute outside, K-9’s sensors whirred again. ‘Mistress! I am picking up faint telepathic signals.’

Chris and Romana knelt at his side.

‘Must be the sphere again,’ theorised Romana. ‘To be detected in here, it must be active again. And enormously powerful.’

‘Can you let us hear it?’ asked Chris.

‘Affirmative, young master. I have calibrated the signal so that your unsophisticated Earthling senses can hear it.’

A new noise issued from K-9.

To Chris’s ears at first it sounded like a lot of static and interference, like Radio Moscow on long wave during a blizzard. But instead of announcements on tractor production and the progress of the glorious revolution, Chris could just make out the thin distorted babble of inhuman voices, all speaking together. The words were indistinguishable. The effect was haunting, like the lamenting of lost souls. He shivered.

‘Yes, that’s the sphere, and it’s active,’ said Romana. ‘But it sounds different this time.’

‘Different how?’ whispered Chris.

‘Ssh,’ she ordered. Her face was creased in concentration as the ghostly voices cried out.

For a second, Chris thought he recognised one of the voices. Deep, dark and distinctive tones, so far away, so insubstantial.

Romana gasped. ‘K-9, did you hear that?’

‘A new voice has been added, Mistress,’ said K-9.

‘Oh please, no,’ said Romana, her eyes suddenly wide and wet.

K9’s head drooped. ‘It is the voice of the Doctor.’

Romana’s face was a mask of horror. She reached out automatically to grab Chris’s hand, and he saw the light go out of her eyes.

Chapter 34

CLARE SAT IN an armchair in Professor Chronotis’s study and found that she was literally twiddling her thumbs.

Hang on.
Hang on
.

It was at least twenty minutes since that little porter person had gone off to ‘ring around’ and find his perfectly reasonable explanation. Incredibly, thought Clare, yet another man had told her to stop worrying her little head and go and wait for him to sort everything out. And yet again she had obeyed him. At least she fancied Chris, and had been overwhelmed by the Doctor’s force of personality. The little porter was just anybody, so she had even less excuse this time.