Doctor Who: Shada (33 page)

‘Yes, so did I,’ said the Professor. ‘But about Skagra—’

‘Did you really?’ exclaimed the Doctor. He peered down at the brass controls. ‘I presume that you installed a very, very naughty emergency defence programme into your TARDIS’s sub-routines? Temporal orbit, crossing your own timeline to cheat death, that general sort of absolutely forbidden and highly criminal sort of thing?’

‘Well yes, I did,’ said the Professor sheepishly. ‘And then stabilised it with a little help from this charming young lady.’ He gestured to Clare.

Clare gave a little bow. To Chris it seemed quite a pointed little bow. Pointing at him.

‘You helped bring him back to life?’ he shouted.

‘So what if I did?’ snapped Clare. ‘I’m not an idiot.’

‘Oh, is that supposed to mean I am an idiot?’ snapped Chris.

‘
Stop!
’ called the Doctor. He turned back to the Professor. ‘Stealing a naughty book from Gallifrey. Hiding away a naughty TARDIS. Cooking up a naughty emergency program. What a naughty little professor you’ve been, Professor Chronotis.’

‘None of that matters now, Doctor,’ spluttered the Professor urgently. He lowered his voice gravely. ‘If Skagra has your TARDIS and the book, he can get to Shada!’

‘Shada?’ repeated the Doctor. ‘Shada? Why does everybody keep going on about Shada, particularly when nobody has the faintest idea about who and what it is!’

‘Hear hear,’ said Chris.

Clare coughed. Chris bristled. ‘Shada is the lost and forgotten prison of the Time Lords,’ she said.

Chris snorted. ‘And how could you possibly know that?’

‘Because the Professor told me,’ Clare sniped back. ‘The book is the key to Shada.’

‘Shada!’ cried the Doctor suddenly, smiting himself on the forehead with considerable force. ‘Shada!’

‘Yes, Doctor, the Time Lords’ prison, as the young lady says,’ said the Professor. ‘You’ve probably forgotten about it.’

‘I never forget anything!’ cried the Doctor indignantly. ‘I never, never forget—’ He stopped and smote himself again, this time on the back of his head. ‘I forgot Shada. The Time Lords’ prison, locked in a bubble outside the universe. Now why would I have forgotten it?’ He gasped as another thought struck him. ‘Romana mentioned Salyavin.’ He sank into an armchair. ‘Of course! Salyavin was imprisoned in Shada!’

‘You can ask me who Salyavin is,’ Chris said smugly without quite looking at Clare.

Without quite looking at him either, she replied coolly, ‘Oh, he was a great criminal imprisoned centuries ago by the Time Lords for mind crimes.’

‘Oh for goodness’ sakes,’ grumbled Chris.

‘A great criminal with unique mental powers,’ said the Doctor slowly, staring into the glowing gas fire. ‘Totally unique. He had the capacity to project his mind into other minds, didn’t he, Professor Chronotis?’

‘But isn’t that what Skagra’s doing?’ asked Chris.

‘Oh no, no, no, no!’ barked the Doctor. ‘Skagra has been doing quite the opposite. With that sphere of his he has the capacity to take minds
out of
people, but he couldn’t put minds
into
people. That was Salyavin’s great power. He could put anything he wanted into any mind he wanted. Dominate them completely. That’s why the Time Lords locked him away. The Great Mind Outlaw. And now Skagra wants Salyavin’s mind and the terrifying power within that mind for himself. And that’s why he’s going to Shada!’

Chris spluttered. ‘Then he is bonkers. He’s planning to move his own mind into every other mind in the universe?’

The Doctor nodded. ‘It might take thousands of years, millions of years. But his mind would be immortal. It would spread through the universe like a plague.’

Chris pondered. ‘It’s quite a thought, though, isn’t it? Every mind in the universe working together as a single organism, a single mind…’

‘A
bonkers
mind, according to you,’ snapped Clare.

‘I didn’t say I approved,’ Chris snapped back. ‘I just said it’s quite a thought for one to consider!’

‘Well I hope one enjoys considering it!’ said Clare. She crossed to the Doctor’s side and said, ‘Doctor, we’ve got to stop Skagra from getting to Shada.’

Chris flinched. Why was Clare annoyed with him? Why was he annoyed with Clare? And why was Clare so much better at this, whatever it was, than him?

‘Yes, Clare,’ said the Doctor. ‘But how? He’s got a head start on us and we don’t even know the way.’

‘Then we must follow him,’ said Clare.

‘Oh yeah, we’ll follow him,’ mocked Chris. ‘Let’s hail a taxi, “Follow that TARDIS!”’

‘Follow him to Shada the same way we followed him here,’ said Clare, not even looking at Chris.

‘Of course!’ cried the Doctor. He turned to the Professor. ‘You can follow the space-time trail of my TARDIS! Let’s go!’

He leapt to his feet, and vaulted over to the brass instrument panel. His hands hovered over the ancient controls, and then he finally coughed and stood back, beckoning the Professor forward. ‘You know this vehicle much better than I do, Professor Chronotis,’ he said. ‘And cross-tracing along a time path is a very sensitive and delicate operation. I wouldn’t like to break anything.’

The Professor nodded. ‘Thank you, Doctor.’ His wizened old hands flickered over the controls, adjusting a knob here, a lever there.

Clare leant forward and flicked a switch the Professor had missed. The Doctor didn’t seem to notice but Chris was fuming. Who did Clare think she was?

‘And while you’re doing that, Professor Chronotis, I’ll make tea,’ said the Doctor. ‘Come on, Bristol!’

Chris sighed and followed. Making tea was obviously about the only thing he was any use for around here.

Chapter 58

THE DOORS OF the TARDIS opened onto Shada.

There was no hint of decay, no sense of a place abandoned and forgotten. Existing as it did beyond a time-lock, and therefore in a state of perfect timelessness outside the normal physical laws of the universe, Shada could have been built yesterday, reflected Romana as she stepped from the TARDIS. Equally, she thought, it could have been built tomorrow. That thought made her wince. It was the kind of thing poor old Professor Chronotis used to come out with.

The huge, red high-vaulted chamber in which the TARDIS had materialised was silent and empty. Romana recognised traces of a long-past Gallifreyan architectural style, much less fussy and ornate than the Capitol she had grown up in. The huge sloping walls were a dark red, with occasional circular panels – similar to those in the TARDIS but much larger – pulsing with fierce crimson light.

She looked above her. The chamber seemed to stretch up and up, hundreds of metres of empty space. Suspended against one facet of the chamber, way above the heads of herself, the Kraags and Skagra, was a heavy stone block into which had been carved the complex pattern that was the Seal of Rassilon, the same design that adorned the cover of the book still clutched tightly in Skagra’s gloved hands.

Romana tried to tell herself that this was just a room. A room in a very strange place, admittedly, but only a room. She tried to push down the waves of panic, almost of revulsion, she felt as those long-blocked race memories – if that was what they were – surged and stirred deep inside her mind.

Skagra, followed as ever by the bobbing sphere, walked slowly into the very centre of the chamber and threw his arms wide in an almost messianic pose.

‘Shada!’ he cried.

The sound of the word echoed and re-echoed around the walls.

‘It looks horrid,’ observed Romana, trying very hard to sound unimpressed.

Skagra wheeled on her, pointing a finger. ‘Built by your race. A prison for the very worst criminals.’

‘You should feel quite at home here, then,’ said Romana. She had noted the effect of the Doctor’s often-terrible jokes on Skagra. They made him angry and distracted, and a weakened, distracted enemy was – according to the Doctor’s theory, anyway – better than a strong and focused one. To Romana, it had at first seemed one of those theories of the Doctor’s that would surely lead to getting your head blown off. To be fair, though, it seemed to have served him well after 525 years of space-time travel, so she had been starting to experiment with it.

‘Keep her silent,’ ordered Skagra.

The Kraags moved threateningly closer to Romana.

Skagra moved to a high red stone wall between two enormous pillars. He slid the book inside his tunic and ran his gloved hands over the wall. ‘Logically, the entrance must be here,’ he said. His hand found a small indented panel in the stone. ‘Yes – here.’

He pressed his gloved hand on to the panel. Romana hoped against hope that the builders of Shada had possessed the sense to install a booby trap. Then she remembered the arrogance of the classical Time Lords, even worse than those of her own time, and realised it was impossible they could ever have thought Shada could be threatened in this way, or any other. But still – perhaps, just perhaps…

But no. Romana knew her people too well. With a grinding, crunching noise, the wall heaved itself up, releasing a rush of long-trapped air from beyond.

Behind the wall was a long, long hallway, stretching deeper and deeper, more red stone walls and red light-panels. Indentations were marked above various junctions and turnings, Gallifreyan symbols, numbers and letters.

Right in front of the hallway, immediately before Skagra as the wall slid up, was a large control console with a central circular screen. The instruments on the console were archaic, but they were picked out in gleaming bronze as if they had just been polished. The main panel consisted of a simple-enough keyboard with the seven-hundred and twenty-three letters of the Gallifreyan alphabet in the centre, the thirteen numerical symbols ranged across the top.

Skagra nodded. ‘The index file. One of the best qualities of the Time Lords is their meticulous record-keeping.’

He tapped at the keys. The console and the screen remained inert. Without looking round, he gestured to the Kraags. ‘Bring her,’ he said.

Romana had no choice but to shuffle forward as the Kraags closed in towards her.

‘I don’t see how I can help,’ she said.

Skagra indicated the keyboard. ‘There were no personnel here in Shada. The systems are fully automated. The index file is obviously protected by a bio-morphic shield, which clearly only a Time Lord can operate. You are a Time Lord. You will operate it.’

‘I would rather die,’ said Romana.

Skagra nodded. ‘I only need your bio-morphic information to operate the index file. I can obtain that by removing your hands. Perhaps your eyes. Those pieces would be enough. But if you would prefer to live –’

He gestured her towards the keyboard.

Romana considered. It had been easy enough to say she would rather die, but would she? A voice in her head kept saying
The Doctor is alive, the Doctor is alive…
She couldn’t give up. There might be other chances. Other ways to stop Skagra.

So Romana ran her fingers lightly over the keys. Again she hoped there would be some catch, some defence mechanism. No. Instantly the circular screen lit up, data screeing across it.

‘Find Salyavin,’ ordered Skagra.

She punched in a request, her fingers shaking slightly – INDEX: SALYAVIN.

The screen chittered back, automatically scrolling down a long, long list of names. Names that struck horror into Romana’s hearts:

RUNDGAR – WAR CRIMES

SEC. 5/JL

SENTENCE TBA

CAB. 45, CHAM. S

SUBJATRIC – MASS MURDER

SEC. 7/PY

SENTENCE TBA

CAB. 43, CHAM. L

SALYAVIN – MIND CRIMES

SEC. 245/XR

SENTENCE TBA

CAB. 9, CHAM. T

SCINTILLA – CONSPIRING WITH CARRIONITES

SEC. 8/HT

SENTENCE TBA

CAB. 21, CHAM. T

‘There!’ cried Skagra, pointing to the screen. ‘Salyavin! Chamber T, Cabinet 9.’

He stared past the console and into the long hallway, noting the identifying marks at each junction. Then he grabbed Romana by the arm and pushed her forward. ‘Come!’ he commanded the Kraags.

Then he paused. ‘No,’ he said slowly. He pointed to one Kraag. ‘You will remain behind and guard the capsule.’

‘Yes, Master,’ the Kraag said and stomped back to take up sentry position outside the TARDIS.

‘I can’t imagine who you think might possibly turn up,’ said Romana.

Skagra tightened his grip on her arm. The little tic over his right temple twitched a couple of times. ‘The Doctor is most definitely dead,’ he said.

‘But, just in case…’ said Romana, indicating the Kraag at the TARDIS.