Doctor Who: Shada (30 page)

‘Thank you.’ Chris leant over and grabbed something that looked almost like an apple. He bit into it. The flavour was unfamiliar but sweet enough. ‘What happened? I guess I must have blacked out.’

‘The space station was destroyed,’ said the Ship.

‘But did we discover anything? About Skagra?’

The Doctor turned at last. ‘Thanks to Dr Akrotiri, yes. He gave his life to save ours, shouted out those final coordinates after his brain was disconnected from yours.’

‘But you told me that was impossible,’ said Chris, ‘after his mind was stolen.’

‘It was,’ said the Doctor, nodding. ‘Quite, quite impossible. But he did it.’

Chris didn’t quite know how to deal with the Doctor in this mood. ‘Then we can get after Skagra, and save Romana. Isn’t that a good thing?’

K-9 piped up. ‘This ship is already in transit to the stated coordinates.’

‘Good,’ said Chris.

The Doctor harrumphed. ‘I just saw the best minds of this generation destroyed by the madness of a rampaging Kraag. And I couldn’t lift a finger to help them.’

‘Then we’ve got to make sure we don’t waste what Akrotiri gave us,’ said Chris. ‘It’s impossible things like that that show us we have to keep going.’ He reflected how odd it was that it was he, who had never before experienced action, adventure and sudden death outside a cinema, that was taking this better than the Doctor.

But incredibly his simple and, he thought, rather clichéd words had a galvanising effect on the Doctor. He burst into a spectacularly wide and toothy grin and pointed straight at Chris. ‘I like you,’ he said.

‘Sorry to interrupt this moving moment,’ said the Ship, who sounded more left-out than sorry. ‘But I think I ought to inform you gents that we’ll be arriving at our destination in ten minutes of relative time.’

‘Excellent, Ship,’ said the Doctor. ‘I like you too.’

‘Thank you, Doctor,’ said the Ship, sounding appeased.

Chris coughed, caught the Doctor’s eye and nodded over to K-9, whose tail antenna was cast down.

‘And of course I positively adore you, K-9,’ said the Doctor quickly.

‘This unit does not require adoration, Master,’ said K-9, but nevertheless his tail perked up.

‘Doctor,’ said the Ship. ‘I feel I should tell you that despite the warmth of our relationship, and all that you have done for me, much of my deceased circuitry feels uneasy about continuing to accept instructions from a dead man.’

‘Well, just tell it not to worry,’ said the Doctor breezily. ‘I’m sure your great lord Skagra will be very anxious to pay his last respects to me.’

‘Hmm, would he now?’ said the Ship, who sounded to Chris like she was raising an eyebrow.

‘And to you, of course,’ the Doctor added hurriedly.

Chapter 53

FOLLOWING HIS DIRE and somewhat cryptic warning to Clare about a person she could never possibly have heard of being released from somewhere she could never possibly have heard of by another person she could never possibly have heard of, the Professor had slipped off into what she supposed must have been his bedroom and returned very shortly afterwards fully dressed in a dusty tweed suit. He then proceeded to tinker with the brass control panel, tweaking, adjusting and even removing some of the components and passing them to her for her opinion. ‘I suppose we could always risk de-phasing the chronostatic field tracker,’ was his latest observation. He peered over the rims of his spectacles and blinked as if he honestly desired her thoughts on the subject.

‘Look, I don’t know what any of this means,’ Clare protested. ‘I’m not an engineer and even if I was I’m not sure I could help you do whatever you’re trying to do.’ It was amazing, really, she thought, how calmly she was taking all of this. Something about the Professor made her heart go out to him, a little like she had felt before with the Doctor. He seemed such a nice old man, and she just wanted to help him.

The Professor tapped the brass panel meaningfully. ‘Oh dear, did I not explain?’

‘Not this particular bit, no,’ said Clare.

‘Sorry, thought it was obvious,’ said the Professor. He seemed to be drifting again. ‘Oh dear, that came out rather more pompously than I intended, I do hope you’ll forgive me, young lady.’

‘I’ll forgive you anything,’ said Clare, ‘if you just tell me what you want me to do.’

The Professor tapped the panel meaningfully again, quite clearly forgetting he had just done so. ‘You and I, my dear, we must get this old perambulator of mine moving again.’

‘It certainly moved when I touched it before,’ said Clare.

‘A spasm, a mere spasm of the emergency mechanism,’ sighed the Professor. ‘I only hope it wasn’t a dying spasm. Nobody likes a dying spasm. Nobody likes spasms much at all, I suppose.’

Clare gestured to the bewildering view through the curtained windows. ‘You mean we’re stuck? In this space-time vortex?’

The Professor flinched. ‘And who, may I ask, told
you
about the space-time vortex?’ he demanded, eyes narrowing.

‘You,’ said Clare. ‘You did.’

The Professor clutched at his head. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, my dear. I was confused enough when I was alive. Now I’m dead I’m absolutely hopelessly vague. I suppose it’s inevitable, I mean look at the trouble spiritualists have, all of that “Auntie Sheila says look in a special place for the blue teapot” nonsense, it’s useless…’

Clare tried to steer him back in the right direction. ‘So we’re stuck?’

‘Yes,’ said the Professor. ‘The emergency mechanism has left us jammed in the temporal orbit, wedged between two irrational time interfaces. So time is moving away from us. I’ll have to be ever so careful disentangling it all, otherwise I might cease to exist again.’

Clare gulped. ‘What about me?’

‘Oh yes, you too,’ said the Professor, nodding enthusiastically. He seemed to note her troubled expression and patted her on the hand. ‘Just do what I do.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Forget about it,’ he said simply. ‘I’ve done a lot of forgetting in my time. Or rather I suppose I must have done, I can’t actually remember.’

Suddenly he stared with new enthusiasm at one of the small components he had removed from the panel. ‘Wait a moment!’ he said eagerly and snatched it up. He seemed about to give a cry of victory. But then his shoulders slumped. ‘No, it can’t be done. I can’t fix this on my own.’

Clare waved a hand in front of the Professor’s face. ‘You’re not on your own.’

The Professor sucked his teeth and looked between her and the component. ‘Difficult! Very difficult. To repair an interfacial resonator requires two very tricky and very delicate operations that must be performed absolutely simultaneously.’

‘Just tell me what to do,’ said Clare. ‘I’m a scientist. A scientist who’s a bit out of her depth, admittedly, but I’ve got a steady hand at least.’

The Professor smiled sadly. ‘I’m sure of it. But to be honest, my dear, I don’t think you have the necessary technical understanding even to begin to comprehend my instructions. No offence.’

Clare bristled. ‘I’m a fast learner. Legendarily fast. I’d learned the whole periodic table before I’d started primary school. And then I learned – incredibly quickly – never to mention that fact to anyone else.’

The Professor stared at her intently. ‘A Time Lord spends over sixty years at the Academy just to grasp the very basics of Gallifreyan temporal theory.’

‘Right. Fine. Then we’re stuck in this temporal orbit for ever,’ said Clare, folding her arms. ‘Whatever that means. We can pass the time reciting the periodic table if you like?’

The Professor gave a small smile, but it quickly faded. ‘It’s no joking matter, my dear. It means dissolution, eventually. Most things do, in my experience. It may take thousands of years of living death for us but eventually the time winds will break down the security systems of this old wreck and—’

Clare interrupted. ‘Thousands of years of living death?’ She didn’t know how to respond to that. In the end, she heard herself saying very distantly, ‘I had plans.’

The Professor suddenly sprang to life. ‘Oh my dear! I simply can’t condemn you to that, can I?’

‘But if there’s nothing we can do—’

The Professor leaned in very close to her and whispered conspiratorially, ‘Oh, there is something. But it’s very naughty.’ He looked out of the window. ‘It was naughty for me to still have a TARDIS. It was naughtier still to rig up the emergency mechanism – but this would be extraordinarily naughty…’

‘Well if you can’t be naughty when you’re stuck between two irrational time interfaces, when can you be?’ said Clare.

The Professor grinned. ‘That’s the spirit! The little girl who so diligently learned those boring old elements would undoubtedly be aghast.’

‘I should have been playing hopscotch, anyway,’ Clare grinned back.

‘I’ll teach you that later. Now then,’ he said briskly, ‘what is that piece of equipment you are holding in your hand?’

Clare stared at it again. It was a complicated-looking thing, metallic yet criss-crossed with filaments of what might have been coral. ‘I have absolutely no idea,’ she said flatly.

‘Good,’ said the Professor. He took off his spectacles and cleaned them absently with his tie, staring blearily at her as he did so. He was one of those people who looked very different without their glasses. ‘How about now?’

‘Now what?’ said Clare.

‘Now,’ said the Professor, slipping his spectacles back on, ‘what is that piece of equipment you are holding in your hand?’

Clare looked down at it. The answer to his question was obvious. ‘This? It’s a conceptual geometer relay with an agronomic trigger. The field separator’s gone kaput, but that doesn’t really matter, because we can dispense with it totally if we can get that interfacial resonator working again.’

The Professor smiled. ‘Splendid!’

‘Let’s get on with it, then,’ said Clare. ‘No point hanging about here.’

She crossed to the console and picked up the resonator, turning it over in her hands. ‘Yeah, very tricky job, see your problem here,’ she said, sucking air through her teeth. ‘We’ll have to strip the lexifier coating totally. You got a spanner?’

As the Professor hurried off to find such an object, Clare stood staring at the console, thinking. It occurred to her that if they got the resonator going, then gave the rotor a quick burst – well as long as the omega configuration was folded back and the lateral balance cones held out, then it was a case of Bob’s your uncle, no temporal orbit.

What it didn’t occur to Clare to think, not even for a second, was exactly why or how she knew any of it.

Chapter 54

‘OOH!’ MOANED THE Ship as she engaged her makeshift relative dimensional stabiliser once again and shifted out of the space-time vortex to materialise back in normal space. ‘That hit the spot!’

‘I hope you’ve kept your defence shield up,’ called the Doctor, who was polishing off the last of the delicious treats from the golden trolley.

‘I followed your orders to the letter, Doctor,’ trilled the Ship happily. ‘We have now materialised at the specified coordinates as instructed. Nobody, not even Skagra, can possibly tell that we have arrived. Big as I am, I can be an inconspicuous little thing when I want to be, you know.’

Through the forward screen Chris could see only a pair of large circular white doors at the end of a rocky corridor. ‘It doesn’t look very inspiring.’

‘You can find any number of amazing things at the end of a corridor,’ said the Doctor. ‘At the moment, I’d just settle for the one. Romana. Though the TARDIS comes a close second, naturally.’

K-9’s ears twizzled excitedly. ‘Confirm proximity of Mistress Romana and the TARDIS, Master.’

‘It must be my lucky day,’ cried the Doctor. ‘I should have gone for three wishes and bunged in peace across the universe while I was at it.’ He clapped his hands together. ‘Right, this should be a simple enough rescue mission. Come on, you three!’ He made for the gap where the door leading from the command deck used to be, Chris and K-9 following.

‘I’m afraid I cannot join you, Doctor,’ said the Ship. ‘But thank you very much for the invitation. It’s certainly never been extended to me before. Oh my, you have given me rather a lot to think about.’

The Doctor stopped a moment and looked up. ‘Well, sorry, I didn’t mean to.’

‘Oh please,’ said the Ship, ‘there’s no need to apologise. I’m sure that all forms of life, no matter what the definition of life may be, must at some point be forced to consider the great abstracts of existence such as love, death, happiness, even personal morality. You, Doctor, have opened my eyes to these big questions. I’m going to go through everything I have in my data store on these weighty topics and then I’m going to jolly well form some definite opinions on them.’

‘Good luck with that,’ said Chris.

The Ship seemed to pick up on the irony in his tone. ‘Oh, I’ll find the answers, don’t you worry little Earth person,’ it said a little snappily.

‘Imperative we commence rescue mission, Master,’ entreated K-9, his servos revving.

‘Quite right,’ said the Doctor. ‘Come on, you two, best feet forward.’ He strode out with K-9, Chris hurrying after.