Doctor Who: Shada (23 page)

He gestured her forward. To one side of the TARDIS was a large computer console. The sphere bobbed forward and, at Skagra’s command, positioned itself on top of a slender spike.

‘For a logical, rational man, you like a bit of mystification, don’t you?’ Romana said. ‘Why don’t you just tell me who you are and what you want?’

Skagra turned to look at Romana. He inclined his head, as if evaluating her. His blue gaze was even more intense than usual.

He gestured around at the heavens. ‘Tell me what you see.’

‘I’ve already told you. Stars. Billions of them.’

Skagra nodded. Then he leaned forward, bringing his face closer to hers. ‘What are they
doing?
’

Romana shrugged. ‘What do you mean? They’re not doing anything. They’re just there.’

‘Exactly,’ said Skagra. ‘Spinning uselessly through the void. And around them, trillions of people spinning uselessly through their lives.’

Romana snorted. ‘Says who?’

‘Says me.’

Romana thrust her face into his. ‘And who are you? Salyavin?’

For the first time Skagra seemed almost passionate. ‘What I am now is not important. But what I – what we all – shall become. That is all that matters.’

Romana, acting a lot braver than she felt, laughed. ‘Messianic rubbish.’

Skagra cupped his hands together and slowly moved them up to her face. Then he parted the palms.

‘Look,’ he said.

Romana was hoping that he was as mad as he now seemed. A madman was fallible by definition. She looked into his cupped hands. ‘What am I meant to be looking at?’

‘What do you see?’

‘Nothing,’ said Romana. ‘I don’t know… Air?’

Skagra looked down into his hands. ‘Billions of atoms, spinning at random. Expending energy, running down, achieving nothing. Entropy.’

He broke the pose and gestured above himself. ‘Just like the stars. Heading pointlessly and futilely towards extinction and endless night and nothingness.’ A gleam came into his eyes. ‘But what is the one thing that stands against entropy, against random decay?’

He held out one gloved hand to her.

‘Life,’ said Romana.

‘Exactly!’ Skagra flexed his fingers. ‘See how the atoms are arranged here. They have meaning, purpose. And what more meaning and purpose than what is contained –’

Slowly he pointed to his head.

‘– in here?’

‘The living brain,’ said Romana.

‘
My
living brain,’ corrected Skagra. ‘My genius.’

Romana shot him her best look of utter contempt.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, stepping back and regaining himself. ‘I had hoped you might be different. But like everybody else, your mind is limited. You do not understand me.’

‘What is there to understand?’ said Romana and turned her back on him.

She found herself looking into the glowing red eyes of what appeared to be a living rock.

She jumped in sheer animal terror at the strangeness of the creature. It stood about seven feet tall, and its large body was formidable if not graceful. Its bulky frame consisted of crystallised lumps of smouldering black carbon. An intense aura of heat emanated from it.

‘Command station welcomes you, my lord Skagra,’ it said in a deep, rumbling voice.

Romana saw two more of the creatures emerge from the shadows at the edge of the domed observatory. ‘What are these things?’

Skagra had returned to his normal icy self. ‘My Kraags,’ he said evenly. ‘My creations. They shall be the servants of the new generation.’

All Romana’s fears came flooding back. ‘New generation? A new race, new people?’

Skagra shook his head. ‘You still do not understand. Not new people.’ He paused as if to emphasise his point. ‘A new
person
.’

He turned his attention to the Kraags. ‘It is almost time. I shall shortly require reinforcements. Begin the generation process.’

The first Kraag lowered its head in a gesture of obedience. ‘As my lord commands.’

The Kraags turned away and lumbered off into the shadows.

Skagra took Romana’s arm. ‘You shall see this,’ he said and pushed her forward.

As they moved into the shadows, Romana saw a large circular door leading out of the observatory down into a long tunnel of roughly hewn rock. A fiery glow came from the end of the tunnel.

The tunnel emerged onto a large metal platform that looked down into another circular area, this one some hundred metres in diameter, and covered by a canopy of rock. Romana shied away from the heat and the light. The entire central area of the room was filled with a bubbling pit of lava. The air was filled with a heavy thick green gas that caught at her throat.

The first Kraag pounded to a small console built into the edge of the platform and depressed a series of switches with its stubby, three-fingered claw.

The lava bubbled even more furiously. Suddenly a massive crane-like device swung out from the opposite wall. In its claw was a bare wire skeleton, roughly human-shaped.

The crane lowered itself. The claw dropped the wire frame into the pit.

The lava seethed. Suddenly, black crystals of carbon began to agglomerate around the wire frame. Romana watched as the crystals coalesced, forming the unmistakable figure of a Kraag.

The newborn Kraag groaned and strained, ripping itself free of the lava.

The first Kraag pressed another button. A long ramp extended from the platform down into the pit.

The new Kraag clambered on to the ramp, its heavy feet, still smouldering, leaving steaming black prints as it presented itself to Skagra.

‘What is your command, my lord?’

‘Join these others,’ said Skagra. ‘The time is nearly come.’

The new Kraag joined its fellows on the platform.

‘Test activation complete, my lord,’ reported the first Kraag.

‘Begin full activation,’ said Skagra.

The first Kraag – which Romana could now see was slightly larger than its fellows, some sort of commander – hit another button.

Panels in the ceiling slid back around the huge chamber to reveal more and more crane-arms. Each crane held a wire frame in its claw.

The cranes swung out. The frames splashed into the lava pit. New Kraags started to form around each frame.

The cranes swung back – then swung out again a second later, producing more wire frames.

Romana looked into the impassive face of Skagra. If this was madness, it was madness on a terrifying scale. For once, she could not hide or mediate her own reaction.

Romana was appalled.

Chapter 39

CHRIS LOOKED BETWEEN K-9, who had apparently turned himself off in a state of utter dejection, and the Doctor, who sat sprawled in the big white chair, his hat still jammed on his head and covering his eyes.

Chris assumed they were thinking. He hoped they were thinking, anyway.

He looked at the holo-screen, where the image of the quiet Cambridge meadow on this drizzly Sunday morning remained. There was nothing to prevent him, he supposed, walking out of here right now. He could find Clare and try to apologise and return to his normal human life.

His normal human problems seemed pretty irrelevant now.

He found himself distracted by three red lights that winked insistently in sequence by one of the control panels. He didn’t like red lights. Red light meant danger. Three red lights, logically, meant thrice the amount of danger. He considered asking the Ship what they meant but realised he wouldn’t get an answer, as he was an enemy of Skagra’s.

That was something at least, thought Chris. He’d never had any enemies before. Never made enough of an impression on anyone. And he’d never even met this Skagra bloke.

The silence had lasted a good five minutes. Chris decided to break it. ‘So we need to work out where he’s gone in the TARDIS? Yeah?’

‘Affirmative, young master,’ said K-9. ‘And/or when he has gone.’

‘When he has gone?’

‘Time machine,’ said the Doctor from beneath his hat.

‘Oh yeah,’ said Chris.

The silence formed again.

Chris couldn’t bear it. ‘He must have taken Romana because she can fly it.’

‘So can he,’ said the Doctor. ‘He’s got my mind in that sphere of his, remember. Everything I know is at his disposal.’

‘There’s one thing he doesn’t know,’ said Chris.

‘What’s that?’

‘You’re still alive.’

The Doctor ripped off his hat and simply stared at Chris. ‘No, I’m dead, remember.’

Chris hunched himself down next to the Doctor. ‘Doctor,’ he whispered, ‘why doesn’t the Ship realise that you’re – you know – if it’s really clever, I mean I can work it out—’

‘The Ship is programmed only to obey instructions, not to consider them,’ said K-9.

‘Blind logic,’ said the Doctor.

‘Right,’ said Chris. ‘Why don’t we try a bit of logic ourselves? Let’s work out what we know.’

‘Go on, then,’ urged the Doctor.

‘Well,’ said Chris, ‘we know that…’ He trailed off. ‘We know that… er, perhaps we could work out what we don’t know and work backwards?’

The Doctor grunted. ‘We don’t know where Skagra has taken Romana, we don’t know why he wants the book, we don’t know what he’s going to do with it, we don’t know what it can do.’

‘That’s enough don’t knows to win an election,’ said Chris sadly.

The silence descended again.

Chris sighed. ‘So. Back to square one.’

Suddenly, the Doctor leapt from the chair in an explosion of movement. Chris jumped back, astonished at how the man had gone from despondent lethargy to crackling vitality in less than a second.

‘That’s it!’ cried the Doctor.

‘What’s it?’ asked Chris.

‘Square one!’ cried the Doctor, exultant. ‘Work backwards, like you said!’

‘Did I?’ asked Chris.

‘We’ve got to go back to square one if we want to find out who Skagra is and what he’s up to,’ said the Doctor. ‘Once we know that, we’ll know where to find him now. Hopefully.’

He cleared his throat. ‘Ship! Me again, the late lamented Doctor, ex-enemy of Skagra and former all-round ratbag. I order you to take us to where your lord Skagra last came from.’

The Ship answered straight away. ‘Very well. The order does not conflict with my programmed instructions. I will activate launch procedures.’

‘Blind logic,’ said the Doctor. ‘Well done, Bristol!’

Chris couldn’t quite work out what he had done well, but he smiled anyway.

‘Launch procedures activated,’ said the Ship.

The floor vibrated beneath Chris’s feet.

‘Oh my God, we’re taking off!’ gasped Chris. ‘We’re going into space!’

‘Where did you think Skagra came from, Norwich?’ said the Doctor.

‘But –
space
,’ said Chris, gasping.

‘Oh, sit down,’ said the Doctor, pushing him into the chair.

Chris found himself looking directly across at the three blinking red lights. They probably didn’t mean anything. In space, red probably meant ‘hooray, everything’s fine’.

‘Launch procedures activated.’

The Ship’s voice echoed throughout itself. In the empty corridor, in the airlock, in the prison.

‘Launch procedures activated.’

The voice echoed in another area of the Ship, where a small chamber contained an empty tank. As if in response to the voice, tiny nozzles on either side of the tank began to spray boiling jets of lava.

A panel in the ceiling swung open, and a wire frame descended into the tank. Heavy green gas began to swirl.

Crystals of black carbon started to form around the frame.

Chapter 40

CLARE COULD HEAR a peaceful, smooth electronic hum. Was she in hospital?

Slowly the events of the last few hours swam back into her foggy head. Chris, and his amazing discovery of the book. The Doctor. The porter, saying he’d ring round the college to find Professor Chronotis –

A bookcase toppling onto her.

She moved her head, and immediately wished that she hadn’t. A sharp pain jabbed behind her eyes.

She got up slowly. She was still in the Professor’s study. The bookcase was back in its place, as if it had never moved.

She looked about. The humming noise was coming from all around her, as if the room was alive with power. She still had the key clutched in her hand. The brass control panel blinked and winked with flashing lights.

She had the strangest sensation that the room was moving.

The curtains were drawn and no light came from beyond. She must have been out for hours.

Dazed, she grabbed the arm of the nearest chair and slumped down into it. She couldn’t even begin to understand what had happened.