Doctor Who: Shada (20 page)

She leapt to her feet and glared around the room, searching for any clue to what had befallen Chris, the Doctor and the Professor and, come to that, this girl the porter called Ramona or something. If he had been any of the other men in the faculty, she might have suspected Chris was off gallivanting somewhere with this mysterious Ramona character, but in his case that would be ridiculous.

Determined to initiate some positive action of her own, Clare started a methodical search of the Professor’s rooms. She went into the little kitchenette and ran the taps, and though the pipes groaned and wheezed it was nothing like the groaning and wheezing she’d heard before. She caught her reflection in the glass door of a cupboard and winced. Her hair was all over the place, and she looked tired and crumpled in yesterday’s clothes and make-up.

She went back into the study and began opening drawers, peering under tables, and rifling through sideboards. There was nothing but mess and confusion. Heaps of paper, tattered files and random odd objects like an orange, a catapult and a loose cassette tape marked
Bonnie Tyler’s Greatest Hits
. Clare huffed. Bonnie Tyler had hardly had enough hits to warrant such a collection. I mean, she thought, apart from ‘Lost In France’ and ‘It’s A Heartache’, what had the woman done? She looked closer at the cassette. There were more song titles printed on it, songs she didn’t recognise. She squinted at the little smudged white letters of the copyright information. She blinked and squinted again.

This compilation © 1986
.

Clare was at a loss. Why would anybody bother to make such a thing, have it done so professionally, then just leave it lying around? Clare tapped the cassette with her fingers, intrigued.

The simplest explanation? It was real. It did come from 1986. Somebody from the future, somebody who could travel in time, had brought it back with them.

No, no, that was the stupidest explanation. If somebody had travelled back in time from 1986 wouldn’t they have brought something more impressive from the future? A new kind of digital watch or a videophone? Not
Bonnie Tyler’s Greatest Hits
.

She didn’t know what to think any more.

So she put the cassette down, and grabbed Chris’s jacket. She could smell the cheap washing powder of the St John’s communal launderette.

‘Oh, where are you, Parsons?’ she said aloud.

And then a very curious thing happened. Her eyes were drawn to a cupboard in a far corner that she hadn’t noticed before. It wasn’t the normal way your eyes are drawn to something, thought Clare. It was as if some exterior impulse had entered her head and
made
her look in that direction, literally turning her eyeballs to the cupboard.

She folded Chris’s jacket over the back of a chair and went to the cupboard. It was a big, old wooden-panelled thing, quite an antique. It was also firmly locked. Which was odd because nothing else had been, even the Professor’s front door.

She looked around the room. Presumably there must be a key somewhere in all this mess.

Suddenly, a thin shaft of sunlight shone through the small gap in the closed curtains of one of the windows. It seemed to be coming in at a very peculiar angle. It illuminated a particular section of the cluttered mantelpiece like a spotlight.

Clare stared, blinked – although all this blinking didn’t seem to be doing her any good – and saw, in the very spot the light was shining, between a stopped clock under a dome and a bust of Dryden, a small brass key. The sunlight made the key glint and sparkle in a ridiculously magical way, as if it had been lit by a Hollywood movie’s production team.

‘No, ridiculous,’ Clare said, out loud again.

Behind her there was a crash. She jumped and spun around. One of the teetering piles of books had chosen this particular moment to overbalance.

Clare gawped at the titles of the books that had collapsed, fanned out on the rug like a window display.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The Secret Garden. The Phoenix and the Carpet. The Box of Delights
. And finally, inevitably, what looked very much like it could be a first edition of
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
.

Clare was briefly transported back to a childhood world of wonder, adventure and excitement where anything could happen. Secret passages, hidden treasures, mysterious gateways, epic journeys through imaginary lands.

It was as if the room was encouraging her into a world of magic and –

Rubbish. She was an adult, she was a scientist, there was a rational explanation for this, and she was going to find it.

She grabbed the key, stormed to the cupboard and opened it, almost daring it to reveal an enchanted kingdom.

Inside were a pair of cricket pads, some ancient spiked running shoes, a punter’s paddle and an old, folding wooden toolbox. Clare angrily flung them aside. There was nothing at the back of the cupboard but the back of the cupboard. So she kicked it.

With a hydraulic whirr the back of the cupboard swung around like a revolving bookcase in a corny horror film. It revealed a triangular brass panel at waist height which swiftly extended itself forward with a grind of gears.

It took Clare a moment to comprehend what she was seeing. The brass panel was old and weathered, but it was covered with levers, switches and dials whose function she could only guess at, many of them marked with curious circular designs similar to the scrollwork on the front of that strange book. There was a row of little glass bulbs at the top of the panel, unlit.

Whatever this thing controlled, it was obviously inert, thought Clare. So there’d be no harm in touching it.

She reached out and pressed a button at random. It switched in with a satisfying, springy ker-clunk, like a channel button on a television set.

All the little bulbs lit up.

Clare had just one second to raise an eyebrow. The next second, the faint humming noise suddenly rose in volume, loud and insistent. The curtains at every window swished shut. The lights in the room flared and dimmed, flared and dimmed. There was a tremendous creaking and cracking like splintering wood. The vestibule door slammed shut. She heard that wheezing, groaning noise again, but this time it was even more pained and protesting.

And then she felt the ground move under her feet.

She was thrown violently backwards on to the floor. A bookcase toppled towards her.

Clare had a sudden vision of her gran standing at her bedroom door in their old flat. ‘Ruddy books!’ she was saying. ‘Books won’t take you anywhere, young lady.’

Then Clare blacked out.

Wilkin knocked on the door of Room P-14. ‘Miss?’ he called. ‘Are you in there, miss? I’m afraid I haven’t been able to locate Professor Chronotis. Miss?’

The plumbing was kicking up a hell of a row again. She probably couldn’t hear him over that din. Gently, he pulled open the door.

And staggered back.

The little vestibule of Room P-14, with its coat hooks and welcome mat was just where it should have been. But beyond it there was a howling blue vortex. A whirling, distorted tunnel of impossible beauty and complexity extending for ever.

Wilkin slammed the door shut.

He straightened his tie, adjusted his hat, and, deciding to ignore the vortex completely, he knocked once more and opened the door again. He would give the room a chance to sort itself out and behave like a respectable part of St Cedd’s college.

This time, beyond the vestibule, there was no vortex. Just a view onto the backs of the college and a large, flattened area of mud, surrounded by flowerbeds, to mark where Room P-14 should have been, but was decidedly not.

Wilkin did not believe in third chances. He slammed the door shut, turned on his heel and went to find a policeman.

Chapter 35

SKAGRA HELD THE book open in one hand. The sphere rested in the upturned palm of the other.

Now, at last, he would learn the secret of Shada.

Skagra entered the Doctor’s mind. A bewildering array of colourful images spewed into his own head. Planet after planet, face after face, monster after monster. The Doctor’s mind was dizzying, undisciplined. It babbled like an excitable child with irrelevant observations and irrational thoughts.

Skagra drew a deep breath and steadied his own consciousness. He took a look at the body of the Doctor, where it lay slumped in the command chair. At least he had stopped up the mouth of the prattling idiot, where so many others had failed.

Reinvigorated, Skagra returned his attention to the sphere. This time he searched directly, using the Doctor’s stolen knowledge and faculties, and turned to read the book.

The symbols remained obstinately what they were. Symbols.

Angrily, Skagra pushed further, deeper into the Doctor’s mind. He caught glimpses of the man’s training, his long years of study at the Academy on Gallifrey.

Ranks of students attired in the long black gowns of novices, sat at their desks, ranged in a semicircle before their tutor. The tutor was talking of the Artefacts, of the codes, secret mysteries and legends of the Great Heroes of the Old Time
.

And the Doctor
– curse him!, thought Skagra –
was staring out of the window into the orange blasted outer wilderness. ‘That would be a lovely spot for a picnic,’ he was thinking
.

Skagra withdrew from the Doctor’s mind. He looked down at the body, fighting an impulse to kick at one of the long, lanky legs.

‘He does not know,’ he said out loud.

‘My lord?’ inquired the Ship politely.

‘He does not know the code,’ said Skagra. ‘He never knew it. He told the truth.’ He shook his head. ‘The fool died for nothing.’

‘Oh dear, my lord,’ said the Ship after a pause. ‘I am quite sure my gracious lord, as the most intelligent person in the wide universe, will soon overcome this latest unexpected obstacle.’

Skagra paused and thought. Every aspect of his plan had been checked and rechecked. Every step of the way to the fulfilment of his great destiny. And now he had the secret in his hands, and he could not read it.

A lesser being would have shouted with anger and despair, but Skagra’s icy detachment would not allow him to consider failure. Calmly and methodically, he weighed up all the factors involved, all the options available to him. He would adapt the plan, was he not the ultimate genius?

A few seconds later he reached a decision.

‘I am going to depart this planet in the Doctor’s TARDIS capsule,’ he told the Ship.

‘Oh,’ said the Ship, seeming a little taken aback.

Hurriedly she added, ‘I am sure my lord has excellent reasons for assuming this course of action.’

Skagra weighed the book in his hand. ‘This book is of Time Lord origin. I believe the code is hidden somewhere in the Doctor’s mind, without him even knowing it. It may require Time Lord technology to crack that code.’

‘What an astute observation, my lord!’ cried the Ship enthusiastically.

‘I shall return for the final phase of the operation,’ said Skagra. He waved his hand over a control panel. Interior lights glowed briefly and there was a set of three insistent
beep
s.

‘Forgive my abhorrent curiosity, my lord,’ said the Ship. ‘But you have just adjusted some of the manual controls, which as you know in your wisdom, are outside my schematics—’

‘Then obviously my actions do not concern you,’ Skagra said shortly.

‘Quite right, my supreme lord and master,’ said the Ship. ‘I apologise most humbly for my worthlessness and crave your forgiveness.’

Skagra did not bother to reply. Instead he walked to the container that housed his book collection and detached it carefully and slowly from its podium.

Inside the bubble scanner, the Ship’s scanner eye lifted curiously on its stalk. Skagra glared at it. The eyestalk quickly turned away and retracted.

He transferred the book container into his carpet bag. He summoned the sphere with a curt gesture. Then he tucked
The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey
inside his quilted tabard and left the command deck without a further word or a backward glance, the sphere bobbing behind him.

The Doctor’s sightless eyes stared up from the command chair.

Romana wrung her hands, looking pleadingly into K9’s eye-screen. ‘Are you positive, K9? Absolutely negative?’

‘Affirmative,’ said K9 sadly, his tail drooping. ‘No signals on any frequency, Mistress.’

‘It doesn’t mean the Doctor’s necessarily dead, though, does it?’ asked Chris, trying to salvage some hope from their predicament. ‘I mean, the Professor was a very old man. The Doctor can only be about forty, forty-five.’

‘He’s seven hundred and sixty,’ said Romana.

‘Well, there you go,’ said Chris, though he was trying to process that revelation at the same time as being encouraging. ‘He might have survived the psycho-active extraction process thing.’