Chapter Three.
“Doctor?”
“I can’t reach that back door. Can you reach the front one?”
“Same problem. Are we going to stay stuck here until we starve to death?”
“Nonsense. We’ll die of thirst long before that happens.”
“I can hear a humming sound.”
“Like a TARDIS. Not as powerful.”
“Okay. If the aliens did this, they deserve to win. But if we did this, there’s a way out.”
“An interesting scientific test for you to ponder, Rose. If we find a way out of this, then the chances are high that we are responsible. In the town’s past. Which is to say, our future. Alternatively, if there is no way out of this, the aliens are responsible. Perhaps we never go back in time.”
“We must. Sonic screwdriver. Gallifrey. The Doctor. Not that kind of Doctor. The crossword clue. Sounds like a job for a Time Lord.”
“Yes. We take ages to turn up. But on the other hand, we can spend ages turning up instantly. Perk of the job. Let me think. I could run and run and run. See if that works. You know The Talking Heads, right? Sing Road to Nowhere.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Being silly’s my cause in life. Ravel this for me, will you?”
“A ball of string. Wrap it up? It is wrapped up.”
“Ravel.”
“Unravel.”
“Yes.”
“Which?”
“Either.”
“What does ravel mean?”
“Same as unravel. Shan’t be long.”
The Doctor ran along his road to nowhere. For effect he stopped and put on his glasses in a vague attempt at impersonating David Byrne, but his suit wasn’t quite baggy enough. Rose ravelled a ball of string. If nothing else, she’d picked up a piece of information.
“Still here? Now what? Knitting? This isn’t wool.”
“Now, dear Rose, we answer the question. How long is a piece of string? You hold one end, and I’ll hold the other. We split up and see if we can reach a door. GO!”
Rose followed the Doctor’s plan. The pair appeared to be hundreds of feet apart. Holding hundreds of feet of string. The original tiny ball had run to around twenty feet. Rose called the Doctor on her mobile. It seemed more dignified than shouting. Rose saw glints of metal, out of the corner of her eye.
“Have we just generated hundreds of feet of string?”
“Yes, we have. Hard to see how that’s going to help, you might cry.”
“Is that a dig about complaining and moaning, Doctor? If it is…”
“It is. I’m getting a feel for what’s been done in this house. To this part of the house. Though the energy field appears limitless, it isn’t. Assuming that we escape from this trap, and in turn escape from this time to travel to 1923, we will be responsible for setting this trap in the past. I hope it’s going to teach me a valuable lesson. Now why would I do something stupid like this?”
“The best question you’ve asked all day. It is TARDIS-related. This is…a bit like being inside a TARDIS, but we’re aware of the interdimensional effect.”
“You’re really coming along nicely as a fake Time Lord, Rose. Yes.”
“So we’re experiencing…Time and Relative Discomfort in Space.”
“Mm. Order of events. One. We escape from this trap. Two. We disable the alien signal which grabbed the TARDIS. Three. We travel to 1923 and I muck around as the Doctor. Four. I disappear during a huge storm. Five. I set this strange interdimensional trap using spare or working parts in the TARDIS. Temporarily disabling the TARDIS. That bit doesn’t make sense.”
“If you disable the TARDIS in 1923, and leave it in bits until now, what happens to me? Will I be stuck in 1923, waiting for 1933 to come around?”
“Maybe you don’t come back with me, Rose. We could keep in touch across the time-gap by using our fancy mobile phones.”
“This is getting weirder and weirder. And all we’re doing is standing here talking about what might happen. I’m afraid to take any action.”
“We’ll do something before the thirst grows too intense.”
The Doctor began measuring the super-elongated string with his sonic screwdriver. He frowned, hummed and hawed, pulled a carton of orange juice from his pocket and polished it off in no time. Rose smiled. He waved, as though from miles away. She burst out laughing. Which was his intention.
“What are you laughing about? My screwdriver antics?”
“From the air, you’ll be able to read DEATH TO THE DALEKS. For a limited time only. In English. That’s rather petty, and pointless.”
“I know.”
They both laughed. The Doctor returned to his measurements, and Rose twirled her ice brolly thoughtfully. For a moment Rose considered singin’ and dancin’ in the rain, but she might never run out of street.
“You’ll solve this before we need to pee.”
“Possibly.”
“Oh.”
“I can only offer an empty orange carton as a toilet. Might need to fill that myself soon. Shouldn’t have had tea followed by orange. I can’t really offer an empty orange carton at all. Whoops.”
“Is this the most awkward moment you’ve ever faced, Doctor?”
“No. Far from it. The lads from UNIT. We had some funny old times, back in the days when I was on the Intelligence Taskforce. I’ll never forget the night we’d seen off yet another alien invasion. Zutons, if I remember correctly. Someone hired a stripper.”
“Where’s this story leading? And who was the someone? Is he mentioned in a classified file?”
“This certain someone was…certainly not the Brigadier. No high-ranking officers present, of course. I was in my TARDIS, reversing the polarity of the neutron flow, and the Brigadier barged in to take command of another crisis just about to explode. The lads bundled this stripper through the TARDIS doors out of sight and out of mind. I covered the girl’s embarrassment with my floppy hat and offered her some Jelly Babies. She thought she’d been shoved into some mad scientist’s lab. Which was true.”
“How did that story end?”
“With a glass of champagne. What? I wasn’t the one who hired her.”
“You wore a floppy hat?”
“In those days.”
“You’re making this up to take my mind off…awful things.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Do you suppose there’s a time effect too? We’re being mucked around in space. But what if we escape this field and suddenly find ourselves in a different time?”
“I think the aliens would be very interested in something as powerful as that. They haven’t messed with this, as far as we know. I think their signal disrupted time travel more than space travel. They can detect time travel. Not the space part. That’s why they haven’t noticed this spatial distortion. Good job the TARDIS was zapped, or I’d have noticed this myself, on the instruments, when we landed. Might have affected events.”
“We ended up here anyway.”
“Mm. Trying to nail the pulse. You see the string is shimmering. Changing size. Or, the distance between us is changing. I can spot the difference on these mobile phones, too.”
“So do you have an answer?”
“We stepped into this. Easy enough to step out. Have to time it right. And weaken the effect with the sonic screwdriver. This will take a bit of doing. Time it wrong, and we might intensify the effect.”
“You keep saying we. But you’re the one with the sonic screwdriver.”
“Mm. We’re stuck in a space echo. Unusual. I’ve seen a time echo.”
“Hooray. I’m thrilled to bits for you. Did you pick up a Gold Medal at the Time Olympics?”
“Russia Russia St. Petersburg
The Doctor adjusted his sonic screwdriver and used it to test the mobile phone in his hand. Then he returned to the serious business of measuring string. Rose thought he was starting to drift further away. If she walked toward him, would that ruin the string experiment?
“To reach the Moscow
“A ghost?”
“Right there, in the trees, a train went roaring by. I say roaring. Didn’t make a sound. People were aboard. Brightly lit. Soundless. No railway.”
“What was it? Not a ghost train. A time echo.”
“Yes. Time echo. I looked up from the other side of the train, and I could see through it to these startled people in a sleigh. Wondered if they were part of the time echo, too. Suddenly, I recognised Felix. He went on to kill Rasputin. Several times.”
“You were there?”
“On the outskirts of that one, really.”
“So was Rasputin an alien?”
“What a question. Of course he was.”
“And he was immune to poison.”
“No. The poison they gave him just made him lust after human women. So he wasn’t immune to it.”
“They gave him interstellar Viagra.”
“Yes. What a laugh.”
“And shot him.”
“Ah, well, he wasn’t immune to bullets. Resistant, yes. Immune, no.”
“What was he after?”
“Control of Russia
“That turned out well.”
“He didn’t live to put his plan into effect.”
“Haven’t they done tests on his body since?”
“I’m not so sure. They might have done tests on a body. We’ll have to look into that. His real body mysteriously vanished.”
“How?”
“Mysteriously.”
“Inside a big blue box.”
“You could say. Want to see where Rasputin is buried? I mean, really buried. Remind me when we finish this business.”
“Where on Earth?”
“Not on Earth at all.”
He grinned as he snaked a piece of string and watched the movement travel hundreds of feet to Rose’s outstretched hand. The Doctor’s future self had set his past self a puzzle in the past which he would now solve in the present.
“Roll the string into a ball. Take my hand. And be ready to step through a door we can’t quite reach.”
“Which door?”
“Might as well keep heading toward the back of the house.”
*
Rose landed on the kitchen floor with a bump. The Doctor had gone ahead of her, but had fallen behind her. He sat up, with a bloody nose. Rose felt pressure in her ears. She was roasting from the journey. Her rain-soaked clothes were dry. Steam rose around the pair. Instinctively, Rose activated her ice brolly and brought the heat down to a reasonable level. She tasted iron on her tongue.
“Thanks.”
The Doctor thanked Rose for the ice machine, and for a handkerchief she fished out of her pocket. He stemmed the flow of blood and glanced around the gloomy kitchen. Rose stood and hit the switch with the tip of her brolly. She had no desire to trip near the door and fall into the mind-bending passageway.
“Explain why you did what you did to that hall in 1923.”
“Can’t. Don’t know what that was about. Perhaps it’s a trap to catch the aliens in.”
“The trap’s empty. Except for glitter. Did you see that stuff? I can taste metal.”
“If I were the aliens, I’d try to blast my way out. Very dangerous. A ray of that nature could feed back on itself, atomising the occupants of the passageway.”
“You mean…we were breathing in vaporised robot parts?”
“Possibly. No equipment in here. So that must be stored in the cellar. We’ll have to be careful, going to the cellar.”
“What was Rasputin’s assassin called?”
“Prince Felix Youssoupoff.”
“Did you ever encounter the ghost train again?”
“No. It’s a time echo, though. Could turn up anywhere.”
“Like a mirage. Or the ghostly echo of a battle long-done.”
“Mm. Luckily for us, this space echo was caused by material taken from the TARDIS. Regulated. Machine-generated. And, therefore, predictable.”
“Let’s look for clues.”
“You look. I’ll nurse this bloody nose. What can you see? Be careful what you touch.”
“Kitchen table. Some items here. An egg-timer. With the sand run down. There’s an eggshell. Not fresh. Old.”
“Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched. Someone has a sense of humour. Why does that ring a bell?”
“Maybe your future self thought of it after sitting on the floor nursing a bloody nose.”
“I could have left a note to myself at the door, warning us about avoiding a bloody nose.”
“Warning yourself.”
“I’d have warned us. Then you’d have felt better about avoiding what happened to me.”
“Aw, that’s sweet. Though I’d see a note like that and worry about getting a nosebleed for as long we stayed inside this house. I wouldn’t stop worrying after you were hurt. So, best for all concerned that your future self didn’t write a note.”
“Mm.”
“Hey. Do you think there are more clues in the newspaper?”
“Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers, Rose. This alien encounter of ours wasn’t in the newspapers of the time. Don’t believe everything that you don’t read in the newspapers. What’s the biggest news story in your own time? Going by the headlines.”
“If it isn’t some non-existent killer disease, it’s some killer disease.”
“Going by headlines in your own timeline.”
“Yeah.”
“No. How wrong could you be.”
“Bollocks. Bird flu. Unpronounceable diseases.”
“Think hard.”
“I give up.”
Having outlined the journalistic tendency to ignore the important and focus on the trivial, the Doctor turned his vast mental powers to the business of stopping the nosebleed. He leaned forward over the kitchen floor.
“Shouldn’t you be leaning back?”
“Not if I want to avoid choking to death. The people who tell you to lean back when you have a nosebleed are the people who don’t want you to bleed all over their carpets. Selfish swine, the lot of them. Lean forward. Let the blood follow the path of least resistance. Any other clues?”
“No. Plenty of doors, leading off. Did you see a greenhouse through the rain?”
“I thought so. To tell the truth, I half-thought so. Try that one.”
“Stairs down. Cellar. Hear that humming?”
“Leave that until last. That door there.”
“Short hall and a sturdy door.”
“I’ll watch from here.”
“No stretchy nonsense.”
“I hear laughter in your voice.”
“In a film, we’d kit up in camouflage gear and load ourselves down with weapons and ammo. Grenades. Rope. A rubber dinghy. Knives. Goggles. Scuba gear. Wetsuits. But you are content to send me into battle with a ball of string, a mobile phone, and a brolly.”
“Could you save the universe loaded down with guns? Maybe. Be far easier to save the universe with a ball of string and a brolly.”
“And a mobile phone.”
“You’d use the phone to spread the word that you’d saved the universe.”
“Doctor. No plants in here. There’s a statue of Medusa.”
“Careful. You wouldn’t want to be turned to stone. Petrifaction is Medusa’s game. Oh, that’s right. I forgot that little adventure we had in Rome
“If looks could kill…”
“I’d just come back to life again. And annoy you. Anything else through there?”
“Withered bits of plants. Fragments. The statue isn’t terribly large. It’s wobbly. Something underneath. A big tin box. I thought that was the base.”
“Can you open it?”
“No need for the sonic screwdriver. Lots of goodies in here. A solar-powered calculator. Big clue, that one. Bit of time travel involved. A piece of paper. DOCTOR RICHARD ASHLEIGH SLATE LIONS. RUM EXPERT. In those same block capitals. Same disguised handwriting. And a sketch of medusa beside his job description. A Doctor of Rum?”
“Rum-ologist. Must mean something. Are the aliens weakened by rum?”
“We haven’t found any rum in the house.”
“Perhaps we used it all up on our trip into the past. Anything else in the tin?”
“A bag. Containing metal objects.”
“Careful, Rose.”
“A screwdriver and some coins. Look at the size of this ten-pence piece. Dated 1973. More time travel. I hope you’re keeping note of all this junk. We’ll have to write it out, and gather these things. Unless you want to cheat and take the box back with us, leaving it under the statue for ourselves to find. That does sound like cheating, eh.”
“Very odd. Medusa. RUM EXPERT. Coins and a screwdriver. And why call myself Doctor Richard Ashleigh Slate Lions in the past?”
“Because we found a note saying so.”
“There’s more to it than that. Screwdriver and…coins. Yes. Coins. Scramble the letters, Rose.”
“Sonic. And a screwdriver. Hey, clues within clues. Medusa RUM EXPERT? That’s the image. The statue and the strange job label.”
“Anagram. TEMPUS EDAX RERUM. Time. The devourer of everything.”
“Put a statue of Medusa on your shopping list, Doctor. What about the name? Another anagram.”
“The name is unimportant. Except for the Lions. Ah. The initials. R.A.S. Lions.”
“Sirloin. No, there are letters left over.”
“It’s a message to me. Not to you. Rassilon.”
“Sounds like cream. For heat-rash or something.”
“Postmaster Dudley Simpson didn’t accept your use of Gallifrey by coincidence, just to fill a gap in a half-remembered Irish town. He must have heard of the place before. Rassilon was a Time Lord. A very important one.”
“What did he do?”
“He invented time travel. Had a bit of help from a bloke named Omega.”
“Omega. Gloomy name. Doesn’t sound like a happy camper.”
“No. Omega did a lot of the spadework. Moaned about the size of his pension. Didn’t end well.”
“And here I thought you’d give me the edited highlights.”
“Time travel clues. To let us know that our future selves are genuinely in the past.”
“Why leave a clue about a Time Lord? Eh? Why not leave a clue personal to me?”
“Was the statue of Medusa a reference to the time you were turned to stone in ancient Rome
“I don’t think so. That was all about Minerva and Fortuna, if you remember.”
“Mm.”
“Why not leave an empty carton of chips? Or a picture of myself? These are all Time Lord clues. Has another Time Lord left this stuff here for you?”
“Just me, Rose. I am the other Time Lord. The Doctor. From earlier. And later.”
“How’s the nosebleed?”
“Stopped. Let’s find the library. Before we confront the monster in the cellar.”
*
Another click, and another light came on. The rain cast its veil over the house. Rose was glad of the light in the murky library. She was also glad of the Doctor’s company. His disarming ability to make a joke out of almost everything chased the shadows away. Without the lighter side to things, she’d be twirling her ice brolly as though she were a gunslinger.
Rose didn’t feel the need to cover the windows with her ice bazooka. She let the Doctor take the lead again. Far too many books to check for clues. Would they set up intricate clues like that, though? She half-heartedly plucked at a few titles, to make it seem as though both travellers were searching. The Doctor was more interested in a gramophone.
“Look, Rose. Primitive music-playing technology.”
“Yeah. I’ve read about that in archaeology books.”
“Quality stuff, this.”
“Scratchy, you mean.”
“The silences are better on these old platters.”
“Yeah. But we listen to the sounds on more advanced technology.”
“Don’t you miss the hiss and scratch at the start and end of a record? And that wonderful idea of an album with two sides. Two sides. Distinct programmes of music.”
“Be still, my giddy heart.”
“This is a great one. I’ll put it on. Stardust. Hoagy Carmichael wrote this in 1927. Well, I say Hoagy Carmichael wrote it. There’s always been a bit of a mystery as to the origin of the tune. I hesitate to blow my own trumpet. This is the Artie Shaw version. Listen to that.”
“Great.”
“Johnny Guarnieri on the piano. Hollywood
“What’s it called?”
“Stardust.”
“Lose the first and last letters. You are left with tardus.”
“Coincidence.”
“Why else pick that tune? A tune written in 1920-odd, you said. But that recording won’t be made until 1940.”
“Yes, written in 1927. I suppose this copy has been lying around the house since 1923.”
“Out of time in 1933, and well out of time in 1923. Have you noticed that this house isn’t all that dusty? You’d expect a real mountain of dust.”
“I think the space echo effect repels most of the dust. Whatever’s in the cellar is powering the lights.”
“We’ll have to rustle up a copy of this record.”
“You mean I’ll have to arrange that. Another clue that I’ve been here before. For a second there I thought this record had fallen through a hole in time. Had me worried. I thought that the space-time continuum was falling apart.”
“If you don’t find a copy of that record on your travels, will that mean…”
“A disastrous collapse of the space-time continuum? Probably.”
“Just thought I’d clear that up.”
“Anything in the book that you are trying hard not to read?”
“Says the house is old. While you’re toying around with primitive sound equipment…”
“Compact discs are primitive. Computer files are primitive. Earth equipment is primitive. Nip through time in the TARDIS, and experience any concert you like. In the flesh. That’s advanced.”
“Anyway. Says here that Catholicism was suppressed and really old houses had secret passages inside, to hide priests. This house is no exception.”
“Where better to look for a secret passage, than in the library. We’ll pull a certain book. Look for something relevant. A title. Hidden Treasures. You know the drill.”
“I know the drill better than you do. Use the sonic screwdriver.”
“That’s no fun! We want to find the hidden switch to the secret door.”
“You want to find the hidden switch to the secret door. Then hide it again and find it in a mock-burst of infectious enthusiasm. I should say would-be infectious enthusiasm.”
“Rose! Look! Could that be a switch, hidden there?”
“When did you spot that?”
“Ages ago. I was so glad you mentioned secret passages. Gave me a way into the conversation. Come on! More clues ahead. I’d put clues inside a secret passage.”
*
He paused to point at the hidden button, flicked it, and bowed to let Rose go first. She watched the door swing open. There was a landing, and a switch for the light. Further in, she could make out stairs. In for a penny. That phrase again. She hit the switch, and illuminated the secret staircase.
Rose was surprised by how modern it seemed. She imagined priest-holes to be tiny holes with lids on top. Not actual passages and stairwells, as was the case here. The humming sound grew louder. She regretted not having a magnifying-glass, to hunt out more clues.
“Doctor.”
“Rose.”
“Why do you keep pulling the Sherlock act? Surely I should be Sherlock, if you’re the Doctor.”
“Next time someone asks my name, I’ll pretend to be Doctor Watson.”
“With a twirly moustache. You’ll have to go in disguise, in the past. Dudley Simpson never mentioned a Doctor Watson.”
“We’ll have to avoid Dudley , in the past.”
“Makes a change from avoiding people in the future.”
“Your mum, for one. Where have you been? Out at all hours of the space-time continuum, cavorting across the known universe with my daughter. You’d think I’m married to her the way she goes on.”
“That’s a chilling thought.”
“I’d rather…stop this conversation here.”
“If you were about to say that you’d rather face a Dalek than my mum, it’s a bloody good job you’d rather stop that conversation there. Come on, Watson. The game’s afoot.”
“Bond – James Bond. Call me Hoagy.”
“Are you feeling all right?”
“In terms of looks, James Bond was based on Hoagy Carmichael.”
“If we get out of this alive and sane, and in one piece, we are going to take part in a pub-quiz. That’s all you’re good for, you know. That and reversing the polarity of the conversation at every conceivable twist and turn.”
“I take exception to that, my dear Holmes. Why, I reverse the polarity of the conversation at every inconceivable twist and turn. Or are you my dear Holmes? Rose Holmes. Sounds like a housing-estate. Sherlock Tyler. I just can’t see it, myself.”
“Yeah. Let’s sneak down these stairs.”
“Doesn’t seem much point now. Not after the light’s been switched on.”
“And your babbling has nothing to do with losing the element of surprise.”
“We lost the element of surprise when we caught the aliens napping in 1923. That’s why they were ready to waste us in 1933. Now all we have to do is work out a way to go back to 1923 and nobble those aliens. Or, mostly nobble them. Their TARDIS-grabber still has to function in 1933.”
“Even allowing for a weird life facing odd situations, isn’t this odder than usual? We have to defeat the aliens in the past, but not too much?”
“Aliens have to launch their assault on Egan’s tearoom, after all.”
“Tom Hanks braves Omaha Beach
“Classic cover-up. The driver’s brakes failed, and he rammed the front of the shop. At least, I suspect the alien sabotaged the brakes when messing around with the van beforehand.”
“He escaped, I suppose.”
“The crash didn’t kill the alien. And his disguise was flickering, but I’m sure it was about to return to its normal state.”
“Hey. Could you salvage that disguise mechanism from the broken robot outside?”
“Excellent idea.”
“These stairs are quite long, aren’t they?”
“The space echo equipment in the basement might be affecting us. It’s trained on the hallway that leads from the front to the back of the house. And it probably affects the stairs leading to the cellar. But there’s only a residual dose covering this secret stairway. Even so, I think the cellar is quite deep. The stairs are long. That’s the way they were built.”
“Oh. Thought I’d have to ravel the string again.”
“Why ravel it when you can unravel it.”
“I’m booking us in. That pub-quiz. Here’s the door.”
“There’ll be a room with a secret door leading to the cellar proper, I think.”
“Maybe not.”
“I’ll insist upon it. In the past. If I have to carve it myself.”
Rose turned the handle of the stout wooden door before her. Locked. She stepped aside and gestured at the barrier. The Doctor knelt at the door and peeked through the keyhole. He half-expected, and dearly hoped, to see an eyeball staring back at him.
“Dark in there.”
“Screwdriver.”
“Oh, is the door locked? Right. I thought I was supposed to be checking for signs of life through there. Won’t be two ticks.”
“Maybe we should check for signs of life in here.”
The Doctor ignored Rose’s remark and unlocked the door. He paused, and put the handkerchief to his nose again. Rose tried to peer over his shoulder to see what he was up to. Did he waver? Had bending over brought back the nosebleed?
“Hey.”
“I’m fine. Nosebleed. Shouldn’t have bent over. A wonderful thought occurred to me. We must make sure all these doors are locked, ready for our journey into the past. Do you want me to go first? There could be spatial distortion ahead.”
“That distortion bothered me. But I should be used to it. After all those trips in the TARDIS. This effect is really like the inside of a TARDIS being on the outside. No worries.”
“That’s the spirit. You go first then.”
He leaned out of her way and rested against the wall as she strode valiantly ahead. The Doctor shook his head clear. Just a bump, on the control console. Nothing more dangerous than that. Unless ripping the TARDIS out of time had somehow caused more damage than a mere bump on the head. He thought there might be a hint of truth to that vicious rumour. A king-sized headache had floored him when that unexpected nosebleed kicked in. Nothing to do with tumbling out of the infinite hallway.
Rose stepped into a room filled with wood panelling. There were gas brackets on the walls, and ornate sofas patterned in red and black. The Doctor turned up the gas, which worked. He lit the room, and took the opportunity to sit down on one of the sofas. Then he swept his legs up and lay down.
“Very comfy.”
“Don’t get too comfy. We’re on a mission, remember.”
“Yeah. A mission into the past. We can take as long as we like to go there, though. What’s on that table? More clues?”
“Paperwork. Ownership of the house. Doctor Lions owns the house. He bought it in…1923. From a Mr Proctor, who bought it from Professor Grange. And the Grange family must have owned it before that. More Granges listed.”
Rose pulled up a marvellously-crafted chair and sifted through the paperwork. The Doctor made himself more comfortable, and soon drifted off to sleep. Rose studied dates, and names, and places. Facts and figures. Technically, Doctor Lions still owned the house.
Even though he’d moved away.
There were transactions dating back over a century. They seemed to have the same wording down through the ages. Was it a trick of the flickering gaslight, or did the signatures look similar too? Rose could understand legal documents sounding the same down through the years.
Professor Grange had the same sort of signature as the Doctor. Or, as Doctor Lions. Proctor had a wilder signature. He was a different man. The Doctor must go back much further than 1923. Rose’s mind started racing. She wondered how fast her mind raced.
“Doctor…”
But she saw that he was asleep on the couch. With a smile on his face. Dreaming of fluffy bunnies gambolling across the grassy plains of Skaro, most likely. No, not bunnies. Elephants. Shooting at Daleks. Elephants, with elephant guns.
Rose turned to the paperwork again, but her mind drifted over events. A light in the sky in 1923. The light signalled the arrival of the aliens. Rose and the Doctor would be forced to travel to 1923, to make sure that the Doctor met Dudley Simpson.
The aliens had a TARDIS-grabbing ray. As soon as the TARDIS appeared in 1923, it would undergo a bumpy landing. The aliens would snatch the TARDIS again. For the first time. Rose looked at the older transactions, going back into the previous century.
One signature. Grange. Selling the property to a relative. Also a Grange. With similar handwriting. The Doctor was popping up in the century before, making sure the house was sold from himself to himself. Until this Proctor man came along.
She wondered about that.
If I show these documents to the Doctor, he’ll see the name Proctor. And he’ll see the different handwriting too. So he’ll simply go into the past and sell to Proctor if Proctor’s interested. Please let Proctor be interested. Don’t have a whole adventure trying to sell him a house.
Rose’s mind did race ahead to another conclusion. The TARDIS visited 1923. But there was nothing to stop the TARDIS visiting 1823. If the TARDIS arrived before the night of the light in the sky, there would be no forced landing.
This was going to be an organised plan for once. Rose sighed with relief as the afternoon wore on. As she sighed, the flimsiest sheet of paper fell from the table, swished away, then swished back as it lost altitude. Rose reached under the table for the missing piece. She was worried about keeping the papers in the proper order. Then remembered that she only had to worry about keeping the papers in the proper order when they visited the house in the past.
She caught a glimpse of something white, lying in the shadows, against the wall. A rat’s skeleton. Retrieving the paper, she sat up. There were no holes in this room. The rat had probably settled down to die. Would she have to trap a rat in here, later in her future and in the room’s past?
The Doctor slept. Rose walked over to him. Her footsteps were absorbed by the carpet. As she reached him, the steps changed. There was a hollow sound to them. She looked down. Not a full carpet. A collection of overlapping rugs. No other door out. Was there a trapdoor?
She’d have to wake him to move him aside, then move the sofa. Probably for nothing. She sat on her own sofa and watched the Time Lord sleep. At least his nose wasn’t bleeding. Rose didn’t know that the Doctor was doing his best to heal the damage he’d suffered inside the crashing TARDIS.
Forty winks. Sounded like a good idea. Rose kicked her legs up over the sofa, keeping her feet off the end so as not to harm the material with her shoes. As she moved cushions to get comfy, she uncovered a sheaf of papers. Inkblots. For testing people on sofas. She couldn’t make anything of the first one.
Was it symmetrical, or was that an optical illusion? A maze? Or a mask? Was it the right way up? She decided to count blobs and see how many faces she could imagine. Landscapes. Machines. People. Nothing occurred to her.
While the Doctor dozed, and healed, Rose took the time to focus on every inkblot. She spent at least a minute on each one. And got nowhere. As far as she could see, only the first inkblot was symmetrical. The rest looked like alien landscapes. And she’d seen quite a few alien landscapes in her time.
She stopped looking. These were clues for the Doctor. Why couldn’t they have included a blobby version of Skaro in the packet of clues. On the other hand, the clues were left precisely where she was supposed to find them. While the Doctor slept.
Was this Rose’s revenge? I’ll get the Doctor to draw some blobby landscapes of places he’s been, then not tell him what they are for. And I’ll plant them in the sofa where I go to lie down. Could that be what happens? Or, what happened. Time travel. Very confusing.
Now she couldn’t sleep. She knew that if she dozed off, the Doctor would wake first. And he’d accuse her of sleeping on the job. Which would be rich, coming from him. And that’s why he’d say so. Just to annoy her.
He was so peaceful, lying there. No manic energy. Running around. Come and see this. Look at those. For a time traveller, he didn’t like wasting time on hanging around. On the other hand, if you could spend your time looking at interesting stuff, why would you waste time just hanging around?
The picnic had been an exception. A day off. They needed it, given the crash that followed. And being shot at. Then being stretched in an infinite corridor. And there was the bit about possibly having to trap a rat in a room with no way out.
Rose had quite forgotten the possibility of a trap in the floor. Funny word for a door. Trap. Not that kind of trap. She decided to finish looking through the inkblots. Unrecognisable alien landscapes. Were they unrecognisable? She recognised that they were alien landscapes. As for the names of the planets…she felt as though she were rifling through a holiday brochure. That one might be Spain France Germany
When she came to the second-last inkblot in the stack, she finally found one she recognised. There was an odd feeling in the pit of her stomach. As though she hadn’t wanted to recognise the image placed before her. Still, the picture was a clue. It harked back to her time spent aboard the TARDIS, and the Doctor’s multidimensional conversation.
Some of the panels in the corridors on the DEFAULT level of the TARDIS had circles within hexagons. Confirmation of her chat with the Doctor, she supposed. To what purpose? They’d met Dudley Simpson on the road, and deduced the next trip in time from that strange conversation.
These clues confirmed the trip into the past. But why bother? There weren’t any clues leading to the location of the alien spaceship. Or diagrams of machines the Doctor could build to jam the alien signal. Was the Doctor more erratic in the past?
She looked over at his sleeping form. Maybe that’s it. Yes. They could travel back to the time before the aliens arrived. But, eventually, they’d have to warp in with the aliens in place. In 1923. And they’d undergo another crash-landing in the TARDIS.
Would the Doctor bump his head again? And leave erratic clues for Rose to find on the sofa? She hoped that he was fine. Turning her attention to the last card in the stack, Rose found that there was no final revelatory inkblot to study.
Rose’s eyes opened wide as she stared at the image of a white rabbit consulting a watch as it stepped into a black hole. There was a sentence beneath, written in block capitals. To disguise the handwriting? Why bother. The handwriting was clear, in the financial transactions. Consistency, with regard to clues? Maybe.
“THERE ARE 100,110,002 REASONS TO AVOID BEING TARDY.”
Beneath the sentence was another white rabbit, going into another hole. Not quite symmetry. A case of two rabbits, being late. Late rabbits. Tardy rabbits. Not quite TARDIS. The Doctor stirred. Good. She’d put the puzzle to him.
“Doctor. Wake up.”
“Five more minutes, Davros. Then you can torture me all you like.”
“Oi!”
The Doctor shot up with a bolt. He didn’t know who he was, where he was, when he was, why he was, or how he’d come to be where he didn’t know where he was. As far as he knew, he wasn’t the blonde on the sofa. That was a start, at least. Then, triggered by a painful effort, it all came crashing down on his brain. A great wave of memory.
“I don’t care if it is on a double-yellow line, you can’t slap a parking-ticket on a Police Box.”
“Eh?”
“Rose. Hi there. Thought you were a mad scientist for a moment. Now, who is to say you aren’t? And that business with the parking-ticket. They are ruthless in London
“Mm. Did you pay the fine?”
“Couldn’t find me.”
“No fixed abode?”
“I have an abode. It’s true that my abode isn’t fixed. Doesn’t mean I’m homeless. What have you found? Are we ready for the off?”
“Not quite. I found some inkblots. Thought I’d test you. While you’re on the sofa.”
“Give me a moment to get as comfortable as you are over on your sofa.”
“Right.”
“Sofa, so good.”
“Please. It’s unbecoming. This is a serious moment. What do you make of this first one?”
“Could be the time vortex, seen from the front. Mostly the vortex swirls. Remains circular. Occasionally, you’ll find it warps into a diamond pattern.”
“These next ones are probably alien landscapes.”
“Yes. Oh yes. Mm. I agree. Yeah. Oh, haven’t been there. But I’ve read about it. Yeah. That one too. No, that’s an alien from the previous landscape. And yep. These are almost all landscapes.”
“This one even I knew.”
“Ah. Interior of the TARDIS.”
“On the DEFAULT level. We won’t be asked questions like this at that pub-quiz?”
“Luckily, no.”
“I think this is a play on TARDIS. No inkblots. Rabbits. Unless we went and set ourselves a clue so obscure that it makes no sense to us. Maybe we’re forced to set ourselves impossible clues.”
“THERE ARE 100,110,002 REASONS TO AVOID BEING TARDY. Not one rabbit, but two. Two late rabbits. Both are tardy. What’s the plural of a tardy person?”
“Tardy persons? No? Tardy people?”
“It is a play on words. One tardy rabbit. Two tardies.”
“Oh.”
“And the 100,110,002 reasons. Written another way, 10, 0, 11, 0, 0 by 02, the numbers form a multidimensional grid-reference to the location of a planet.”
“Gallifrey again?”
“Yes. Irrelevant these days, but yes.”
“I bloody knew these would all be clues meant for you. Not for me.”
“We have to be careful about how we handle things in the past.”
“I won’t take any delight setting these clues up, knowing they pissed me off here today.”
“Right. What’s next?”
“I suspect, Watson, that there’s a secret door under your sofa.”
“Astounding, Holmes. How did you manage that?”
“I walked over to see if you were in a coma, and spotted the hollow sound.”
“Let’s shift the sofa, then. Should give us a better view of the telly, anyway.”
The sofa moved easily. Flipped over, the rug no longer concealed the trap in the floor. Rose slid the point of her ice brolly into the ring built into the wooden trap. She would have flipped the ring up expertly in the movie-version of her life, but the metal proved tricky to shift.
Clink clink. Rattle. The Doctor looked away politely, started buffing his nails, and was about to blurt out an exasperated cry of…whatever he was about to cry out…when Rose hit the target and hauled the light wooden square from its resting-place.
A stronger light floated up into the gaslit space. Rose peered over the edge to see a ladder leading down into a control room. It looked remarkably like the white one she’d been in earlier. She lay down beside the trap and made sure that she couldn’t fall in. Then she had a second look.
Yes. There were some differences. The light inside the control room was dimmer than in the Doctor’s TARDIS. Bright enough to outshine the gaslight in the sofa room. The panels on the walls were black, instead of white. Most of the light came from the white circles.
The humming grew louder. Was that a complete TARDIS down there? And, if so, where had it come from? A riddle for the Doctor, and not for Rose. She rolled onto her back and looked up at him. He wasn’t close enough to see what was inside.
“Pretty strange stuff down there. Looks like a TARDIS.”
“That can’t be right.”
“There’s a control console. And a central pillar. Patterned walls. Reminds me of the control room I visited earlier today. Well, I say today. Really I mean…earlier. I’ve lost track of time. On Skaro. In the TARDIS. Here on Earth. What do you make of it? Is this causing the space echo, and powering the electric lights in the house?”
“Blimey. Would you look at that. Isn’t that weird.”
“Doctor? What were you thinking? Did you jump back in time and dismantle the spare control room? To make a trap for the aliens? Or was it to counter their signal? And what’s with the slightly different décor? Not enough power to bring it up to the full blue-white whiteness you only seem to get in those detergent ads?”
“I’m blowed if I know. That’s not a control console. It’s shaped like one, but the controls are related to space and not time.”
“So, you took the space part and set it up here?”
“Why the hell would I do that? I’d have no TARDIS if I did that in 1923. Is this the only way to escape the alien trap? If that’s true, I can’t take you with me. You’d be stuck in 1923. And have to live out your life for a decade before…events catch up. Or you catch up with events. That wasn’t an older version of you selling us scones in Egan’s tearoom? I thought she had a mad glint in her eye. Fair likes her own scones, does Mrs Egan.”
“Oi. I am NOT Mrs Egan. And as for a mad glint, I think she fancied you.”
“Yeah. Well, that’s understandable. Let’s take a closer look, eh. My capacity for genius should soon solve this little mystery.”
“Good job we don’t have to rely on your capacity for modesty.”
“So Mrs Egan had her eye on me, eh.”
“I suppose she goes for the black-marketeer type.”
“In an ideal world, I’d resent that remark. But on this planet, I’ll just have to put up with it.”
They descended to the floor of the strange room. Rose could see that this was still part of the house. The patterned walls trailed away and became stone. This old-fashioned console had most of its parts and switches missing. Out of sight of the trapdoor view, but within plain sight down on the floor, were two lines painted in red.
The lines began just inside the TARDIS-style walls, and led to a door, converging on the right-hand side of the frame. Rose thought over the various TARDIS-related clues. Leading to this moment. The Doctor’s handling of the TARDIS in their past would determine the nature and scope of his mission in 1923. If they could break the TARDIS free of the alien ray here in 1933.
“Now I see why all these clues were TARDIS-related. I'd have preferred a picture of me, waving, to let us know we’d travelled back in time. With a newspaper in one hand, or something like that.”
“We can still do the newspaper thing.”
“I’m not in the mood.”
“Doesn’t mean you don’t pose for that snap. We haven’t searched everywhere. Might exist. Stuck down the back of a sofa. You could pop into the photo-booth. I have one aboard the TARDIS.”
“Is it digital?”
“Heavens, no. The old-fashioned kind. Fully-stocked. Normally I’d say you can’t get the parts these days. But I just nip back in time and root around for what I want.”
“Do you have a huge photo album?”
“No. I have a huge photo album. You’d need a TARDIS to store it all in.”
“Photos of people who travelled with you.”
“Yeah. People. Machines. Things. And not forgetting D) None of the above.”
“So if I were to hunt around for some snaps…”
“There’d be…a bloke in a kilt. A few soldiers. Strange people in outlandish clothes. Probably earlier versions of me.”
“You were older, when you were younger?”
“I was. Except when I was very young. Then I was very young until I grew old. Then young again.”
“What sort of clothes did you wear? Besides the floppy hat.”
“I had a scarf as well as a hat. Before that, I wore a velvet jacket, cape, and a ruffed shirt.”
“Blimey Doctor. You went out of your way to avoid causing a fuss.”
“That was in 1970-odd. I just blended in. What’s funny about that? Classic fashion-sense, I have. Timeless. No spiv comments.”
“I’ll have to hunt out these old photos.”
“If you find any pictures of a cavewoman in a leather bikini, just remember that she’s not the stripper I mentioned.”
“You’re taking the piss again.”
“Yes. I am.”
“So. What has your past self done here?”
“Hard to say. Jettisoned part of a room, by the looks of things. That’s a drastic action.”
“You can ditch parts of the TARDIS?”
“Mm. Originally, jettisoning was only a maintenance feature. A room could be eased out back in the TARDIS yards on Gallifrey. Iron out the kinks. Or slot a new room in while you’re waiting for the tyre to be changed. Then it became a concern of safety. If a room threatened the integrity of your TARDIS, you’d hit the eject sequence.”
“Like a jet? A fighter.”
“No. More like throwing the rubbish out. If you had to leave the TARDIS in a hurry, you’d use the doors. Or the emergency exit.”
“How many trips have we made? And only now, you mention the emergency exit. How many emergencies have we faced inside the TARDIS?”
“Loads. There is a back door. Emergency exit.”
“Why would a TARDIS need an emergency exit?”
“If something catastrophic happened to the time engines, and you couldn’t leave through the front door, you’d be forced to use the emergency exit.”
“Right. If the TARDIS caught fire, and there were some stroppy Daleks waiting out the front, you’d go out the back way.”
“Still, you might not have time for that. Yes, you could jettison the control room. In a proper emergency. Time damage. Leak. Radiation.”
“Hang on. Is this all that’s left of your TARDIS? Do we jump back in time and have a very bad crash-landing? We haven’t had any clues help solve this problem. Maybe there aren’t any clues.”
“Don’t panic.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You’re the one who ejected the control room in your future.”
“I don’t think I have. Or will. This isn’t the main control room, remember. There are different models. And this console doesn’t have any time-related gadgetry attached. It’s a space echoing machine. See those painted red lines on the floor, leading to that door.”
“Yeah.”
“They mark a zone of spatial distortion. If we go through that door to our left, we’ll be fine. If we veer right, we’ll be caught in an infinite room. Bet you anything that door leads to the real cellar.”
“Can you switch the space distortion off?”
“Sure. Maybe it’s holding aliens at bay, though. We’ll leave that for now. This room might shrink down to the size of a priest-hole, then where would we be? All elbows-in-faces and mind-your-hands. Look at this console. Barely functional. Stripped of everything useful to time travel. Just a basic space echo generator. You can create a phantom hallway with this.”
“Just a trap for the aliens.”
“We have to lure them into this trap in our future, when we visit the past. And this time, Rose, I really do mean we. I think you do come with me.”
“So you don’t really dismantle the TARDIS. You just…shift the furniture around.”
“Mm. So it appears. We jump into the past, face another crash-landing, and eject the extra control room to this point. Hey, there’s an idea. This isn’t a time machine. I don’t think it would be affected by the alien ray. We could surf aboard this room, and coast to a nice easy stop. While the TARDIS bears the brunt of the alien ray during the crash in 1923.”
“That’s cruel. We’d avoid the crash-landing, though.”
“And be right here in the house. Where we could lure the aliens to their doom.”
“We can’t make friends with them, can we?”
“Whatever happens in the past, has happened. We know that one of them bites the dust in the garden. And we know that this interdimensional set-up must have SOME purpose. They messed with the TARDIS. And that’s not on. Are you starving? I’m starving.”
“Time-lag. I had a scone. You had some orange, and tea. Glutton.”
“Hardly that. Never a bag of Jelly Babies around when you want one. That’s why I stopped eating them. Bag was always empty.”
“Shall we check out the real cellar?”
“Lead on, Holmes. Or…Moneypenny.”
“Rose will do.”
“The pretty Rose, or the thorny one?”
“Watch it.”
The Doctor’s world, his perceptions of it, of having solved a puzzle, fell apart when they investigated the cellar. Things he’d forgotten. Events he’d suppressed. Other times. The event was in his future. A few moments away. Rose stepped through the door, taking care to steer to the left.
On the other side of the door, it was clear that the door was concealed. A click brought the cellar into existence. Light, from a bulb, revealing an ordinary room. On the left, leaning against the opposite wall, lay a discarded portrait.
“Another clue, Doctor? I see the stairs leading out are over on the right. We’ve avoided the space problem by using the secret passage.”
“All according to plan. According to a plan we will now formulate.”
“The secret stairwell provides an ideal escape-route.”
“As the space field automatically blocks off the regular stairs, and affects a stretch of hall too.”
“Hey, as long as we don’t let the robots know about the secret passage, we really can lure them after us. If they know we’re in the cellar, they’ll have to use the real stairs.”
“Let’s take a look at that picture.”
“Why is it facing the wall?”
“Last-minute surprise, Rose. The sort of nonsense you’d find in a story.”
“There’s a label on the back. Oh. R.A.S. Lions. Ah. Is it a portrait of you, or a painting of this Rassilon bloke?”
“That Rassilon bloke founded Time Lord society.”
“And what was the end-result? We popped up on Earth, well out of Gallifreyan time, to turn over a portrait of the scientist as a young Time Lord. This is the real clue you’re after. A painting of Doctor Lions. Oh, will it look like you?”
“If I do go back in time and meet Dudley Simpson as Doctor Lions, I’ll meet him in disguise. Using the salvaged disguise circuits taken from that dead robot in the garden. But this portrait is in the cellar, out of Dudley ’s reach. I think it’s safe to say that we don’t need to be coy. The picture of Doctor Lions will be a picture that’s instantly recognisable.”
“Another clue. Maybe it’s a picture of me.”
“Wouldn’t the label indicate that? Sherlock Tyler. Rose Holmes.”
“I’m not impressed by these clues, Doctor. Okay. A familiar face. We’ll leave it at that.”
“Deal.”
“Ready for the great unveiling?”
“Go.”
Rose turned the portrait to reveal a picture of Doctor R.A.S. Lions. The Doctor took a step back. His jaw dropped. It couldn’t be. But obviously, it was. What trickery was behind this? The worst kind. Rose caught his expression. She couldn’t see the picture from where she was standing.
“What’s wrong? We didn’t paint a Dalek did we? Doctor?”
“We didn’t paint the portrait at all.”
“Hang on. I’ll sit it down and come around for a better look.”
Rose stepped around the picture, propped it against the wall, and walked over to the Doctor. He was thinking like mad, she could see that. And he wasn’t in a good mood. Half-torn between fear and anger. Fear for Rose. And anger at the face staring out of the picture.
“Rose, this is very dangerous.”
“You said that before. And you know that I eat danger, not scones, for breakfast.”
“Remember when I said that this situation was a three-course meal of very dangerous, made that much riskier by the surprise addition of a second life-threatening dessert. Topped off with huge dollops of cataclysmic universe-shattering peril, and a light dusting of run-like-hell sprinkles. With sulphurous coffee to follow. Fire and brimstone. You remember?”
“Yeah. Not exactly a rousing Shakespearean speech in the traditional sense. Memorable, though. What’s the matter? Apart from the fact that the painting isn’t of you.”
“Rassilon.”
“He’s Rassilon? Looks like a stage magician. For my next trick, I’ll saw the lady in half.”
“No. He’s not Rassilon. But he is a Time Lord. He’s hijacked the name. Not all he’s hijacked over the years. And he’s had a long hearty laugh at our expense.”
“Aren’t the Time Lords done? Over. Finished with. You’re the last one.”
“Past. This is all in the past.”
“Yeah. In 1933, and later we’ll be going to 1923. Won’t we? Doctor?”
“I’m not sure. Not sure of anything now. He’s dead. Or…this version of him is. After this face wears out, he degenerates.”
“Regenerates, the way you do when you’re too old. Or when your body sustains too much damage?”
“No. He degenerates. And then he hijacks the Eye of Harmony to prolong his lifespan.”
“That anti-hijacking device you mentioned?”
“Forms the basis of time travel technology. As well as powering the anti-hijacking ability. Amongst other things.”
“He isn’t a…historical personality, like Rassilon. You know this one.”
“We went to different schools together. He was a rogue Time Lord.”
“Aren’t you a bit of a rogue Time Lord, Doctor?”
“Roguish. He was altogether different.”
“What’s his name?”
“The Master.”
“No name. Just a title. Like you…”
“Mention my name to the Daleks and they’d wet themselves. They’d do the same if you mentioned his name. He did deals with the Daleks. And they were looking over their non-existent shoulders, trying to calculate the best moment at which to double-cross the Master. Hoping that the moment they double-crossed him would come a split-second before he double-crossed them.”
“But he’s…gone. No threat to us.”
“I didn’t leave any of those clues in 1923, Rose. That’s why none of the clues is tied to you. The clues must have been left here by the Master. Look at him. With that widow’s peak and the grey-black beard, dressed in his trademark black Nehru suit. Yes, he’d make a fine stage magician. Except that, for his next trick, on sawing the lady in half, he’d neglect to restore her to normal.”
“What does this mean? For us?”
“That room back there was jettisoned from the Master’s TARDIS. Dudley Simpson met the Master on the road that night. The night of the light in the sky. When the aliens arrived, they trapped the Master’s TARDIS on the outskirts of town. Dudley heard the Master mention Gallifrey. He saw the Master’s sonic screwdriver.”
“We don’t go back in time, then? What about those documents I was looking through? The house paperwork. I thought you kept popping up through time, in the previous century, selling the house to yourself. Most of the signatures are the same.”
“Probably the Master’s handwriting. Hence the block capitals elsewhere.”
“Doctor Lions and Professor Grange are the same person. A Time Lord. But not you.”
“This changes everything.”
“Isn’t it a good thing? That he’s been helping you, from 1923?”
“He’s trapped. The aliens caught him. He was on his way to this house. A base he’s owned, in one name or another, for a long time. What did he keep here? Stores? Supplies. Spare parts. Plans for evil schemes. We’ve worked together before. At daggers drawn.”
“So, we fix the TARDIS and walk away?”
“Can’t. We daren’t destroy the aliens in 1923. Some must survive to trap us in 1933. And in a wider sense, I can’t allow the Master to remain trapped in 1923. He must escape, to menace me in my past.”
“This is starting to get a bit freaky.”
“In his future, he battles me. To a standstill. In the end, he’s worn out. Beyond hope. Certainly far beyond redemption. So he cheats death. In order to cheat death, he has to be there. In his future, but also in my past.”
“He’s the villain. But you’ll let him get away to fight another you, another day. I think I see what you’re saying. Jaws. From the Bond films. He’s in two Bond films. If I watch them in the wrong order, it’s going to be obvious, when I watch his first appearance, that he must survive to appear in the later movie I’ve already seen.”
“Are you sure you aren’t a Time Lord, Rose? You have a good grasp of non-sequential sequential event theory.”
“I’ve seen too many films.”
“Yeah. Me too. And that’s just the human ones.”
“There. You’re back. The old Doctor. Good as new.”
“I’ll have to think about this. Let’s look around for clues.”
“Clues he left you. Not me.”
“Be thankful that he doesn’t know about you.”
“How wicked is he? He looks sinister.”
“That’s just on the surface. He had a…troubled childhood. Grew up. Left Gallifrey. Tried to destroy the universe countless times. Saw it as an experiment. Something he could study.”
“Who stopped him?”
“Ha. Who do you think?”
Rose found the letter inside the gutted control console. Addressed to the Doctor. She recognised the handwriting, no longer concealed by block capitals. The Doctor scanned the envelope with his sonic screwdriver, but there was no trickery of a mechanical nature tied to the paper. He read it to himself. The letter was unsigned, of course.
Doctor.
The last piece in your puzzle serves as my first step on the road to assisting you. Send a letter to my current address. I know what you should write. Easier to trust you to get on with that, without going into specifics. Why do we both maintain the fiction that Gallifrey is now to be found in Ireland
Chapter Four.
Past. That night in 1923.
“Hello?”
“You don’t seem terribly sure of the greeting.”
“Ah, hello. I thought I heard someone crashing around in the woods.”
“That makes two of us. I just stepped in there to see what all the fuss was about.”
“Find anything?”
“An unusually tall tree. Surrounded by twigs. Something was rooting around in there.”
The two figures standing on the rough country road peered at each other in conditions of pitch darkness. Those snap-crackle sounds stopped as soon as the stranger stepped onto the road. An uneasy silence lengthened, as only the uneasy form of silence can. The human chose to break that silence.
“I’m Dudley Simpson. In charge of the local Post Office.”
“Is it far?”
“Are you lost?”
“I’m a long way from home.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Town, I suppose.”
“Looking for a place to stay?”
“Yes. I am.”
“How did you get here?”
“I drove.”
“Lost your car?”
“Stuck in the mud.”
“I didn’t catch your name.”
“Town’s this way, you say?”
“Yes.”
“I never give my name. Not easily, at any rate. What are you doing out at this time, Mr Simpson?”
“Couldn’t sleep. Saw a flash of light in the sky. Decided to investigate.”
“Ah.”
“Bloody dark, eh. Well, that’s night for you.”
“I can fix that.”
The stranger moved. There was a rasping sound. Dudley ’s night-vision melted in the glare of a very powerful match which the stranger held in the firmest grasp. The wind picked up, but the match wasn’t affected. Dudley found the sight fascinating.
“Who are you?”
“I am the Doctor.”
“We already have a Doctor in Fenby.”
“I’m not that sort of Doctor.”
“Oh.”
“Shall we?”
“I’ll show the way then, shall I?”
“Yes. I don’t think that wild dog will attack us if we stick together.”
“Do you suppose it was a big dog?”
“Mm. Tell me about the light in the sky.”
“Lightning, I think. But I heard no thunder.”
“Anything unusual happen here, lately, Dudley ? Apart from thunder-free lightning, that is.”
“No. Why?”
“If I’m to buy a house in the area, I’d like to know more about the place.”
“Is it the Grange you’re after?”
“Possibly.”
“Fanciest bit of property hereabouts. All that finery going to waste. An expensive proposition, though. Even for a Doctor of…”
“Money is no object.”
“That’s a peculiar match you have there.”
“Yes.”
“Slow-burning, is it? Looks as though the flame might last forever.”
“Mm. I picked up a packet in Gallifrey. Have you ever been to Ireland
“No. Is that where you’re from, Doctor…”
“Lions. With an i. I’m not Irish.”
“No. You don’t sound Irish.”
“I’m a terrible one for dates. It’s late. Have we crossed over into tomorrow?”
“Is it the next day, you mean? Yes. It’s Monday morning.”
“I’ll have to pick up a newspaper.”
“Be happy to sell you one from my Post Office.”
“Nothing strange happened, then?”
“It’s been quiet here. We haven’t had any excitement since the war ended.”
“Seems like yesterday.”
“I know. Hard to believe we’re half a decade on from the big finish. And the Germans are stirring up trouble again.”
“Odd year, 1923.”
“It’s not over yet.”
“No. How far to Fenby?”
“A mile. Where’s your car?”
“I’ll find it again in daylight.”
“Sh. Hear that?”
“No.”
“Imagination.”
“Lead on.”
“Right. This way, Doctor.”
The Master nodded imperceptibly.
He could kill this fool, but the aliens who crash-landed his TARDIS were quick off the mark. They had almost reached his landing-site by the time he’d recovered. The Master still felt shaky. A mild form of sickness linked to being ripped from the time vortex. With his TARDIS disguised as a tree he sought to buy himself a few moments, and slipped out through the emergency exit.
Best to head for his home in the area. The Grange. So many petty details snapping at his heels. Yes. His car was stuck in the mud. Forced off the road by a bunch of louts. He ascertained the year. Typical. The Master had made a lapse in judgement, and sold the property in this part of the timeline.
Constantly selling the property to himself was causing bother. Humans knew something odd was going on, but their brains couldn’t rise to the challenge. They would be far more likely to assume a foreign spy-ring was operating out of the building. And the Master couldn’t have that.
Solution. He would simply kill the latest owner, Proctor, a difficult man. Hard to manipulate, or cajole. Then set up the documents. Saying that Proctor had moved on. The Master could make some awkward questions go away. In the short-term.
He was up against the wall tonight. Confused by the crash-landing. He’d bumped into this buffoon. Still, a buffoon as camouflage could prove useful. He had to put distance between himself and those aliens. Rally his resources. Locate their spaceship, disrupt the signal, and get back to the task in hand. Planning Earth’s destruction.
Things started to go his way. Dudley Simpson invited the Doctor, how amusing, to spend the night on the sofa. Over some tea and biscuits, the Doctor could tell Dudley all about the car. And anything else they’d care to discuss.
When they reached the Post Office, Dudley escorted the Master to the rear of the building. The Master looked around, but sensed nothing untoward. He wondered why the human was acting in a surreptitious way.
“My wife’ll kill me if she knows I’ve wandered off in the night. And brought a Doctor back for tea. She hates surprises. And she’d hate being woken at this hour of the morning.”
No sooner was the key in the lock than a call came from inside.
“Dudley ? Is that you?”
“Just me, Dora. And the Doctor. Not burglars. I’ve had a bit of an adventure, helping this Doctor with his car. Doctor Lions. Are you in your bedclothes, dear, best not pop down.”
“See if the Doctor would like a pot of tea.”
“Yes, I was just seeing to that.”
The Master settled into the kitchen while Dudley left to console his wife. Humans in 1923. They hadn’t even left their world yet. There was some primitive stumbling toward a coarse form of nuclear power. Those first steps would give them the bomb within a human generation.
And here he was, knocked out of the time vortex by an unknown alien force. Daleks? Unlikely. His TARDIS was rattled. Creatures closed in. He decided not to wait around. They might be capable of forcing entry into the main control room.
Unlikely. Still. As he had another base of operations nearby, he’d decided to use it. Proctor would have changed the locks. Correction. Proctor would have exchanged one primitive set of locks for another. No great challenge.
Dudley Simpson returned, and sat at the kitchen table after setting up the kettle. The Master decided to skip the interrogation. He glared at the Postmaster. An overwhelming telepathic link should do the trick. Pity he couldn’t use the same process on Proctor. There were other ways to deal with Proctor.
“Feeling all right, Doctor?”
“I am the Master. You will obey me. Obey me.”
The Master slowed as he reached the Grange. He’d return the bicycle after seeing to his dirty work. The death of Proctor. He sat the bicycle against a tree and walked soundlessly to the front door. The grotesque-headed doorknocker he’d placed there a century before grinned in recognition.
No one followed him to the house. The Time Lord fished his sonic screwdriver from a pocket, and unlocked the front door. He stepped into the hall, and studied the air. Nothing stirred. He made straight for Proctor’s bedroom. The man’s death was agonising. A simple scientific process.
The Master picked the greatly-reduced corpse up in one gloved hand, and carried it downstairs. He moved through the library in darkness, opened the secret door, and marched down into the sofa room. There he threw Proctor’s corpse away. Then he descended the ladder to his secret lair.
He’d removed some walls from the TARDIS, beaming them into this secret space. Then he’d found an extra control console not listed in his records. An accidental addition during maintenance. That took him back to the time he left Gallifrey. The Doctor had done well out of the unofficial deal.
They left that business unspoken. The great duel between them started there. And developed into a struggle of scientific viewpoints that had grown to threaten the stability of the universe, the fabric of the space-time continuum, and the sanity of all involved. In a time long-gone.
On Gallifrey.
*** *** ***
A time, long-gone.
“Why do you want to skip history lessons?”
“I’m a Time Lord. History lessons are the only lessons we ever have. And what do we learn from them? Not to meddle.”
“Really Doctor, I am surprised.”
The Master poured three drinks, and smiled mischievously.
“They say field-studies will do that to the restless. To the misplaced. Hunting for lost causes to toy around with, before settling to dusty Time Lord life. An existence of endless history lessons. And now. After our cosy supervised trips across the length and breadth of the space-time continuum. Now that we are beyond academia, now we are free to choose our dusty paths, you decide to complain.”
“Don’t we have every right to complain?”
“It’ll be better when we qualify. Who said so, Doctor? You did. We’ll settle. Who said so, Doctor? You did. We are of Noble birth, you and I. Trust me, and do not resign yourself to a lifestyle outwith Time Lord society. Stirring words, Doctor? Why not, for they were your own.”
“I’ve…reconsidered my position.”
“Yes Doctor, so it seems. You now display the sentiments I held…before you talked me out of them! Really. Double standards, my friend.”
“I was wrong to talk you out of some misplaced adventure. Misplaced adventure might be just the thing I need right now.”
“Do I detect her influence…she’s on your mind and in your hearts.”
“Will she come, do you think? Here.”
“The third drink is for our illustrious friend, the dear Professor. So, obviously, I think she’ll come. I imagine that, when she tries your empty apartments, it won’t take long for the proud lady to favour us with her imperial aura.”
“There’s no need for arrogance, old chap.”
“She chose you, Doctor. The better man lost, isn’t that the saying? No matter. What’s your game? Exile, into the wilderness? Not your style. Too wasteful. Treasonous thoughts? Again, I think not. Politics? Will you play politics, Doctor, and bribe your way to an obscure field-assignment? You won’t hold it long if meddling’s your intention. They’d haul you in and roast you over a plasma fire. What’s your game, Old Chap?”
“I enjoyed my field-trips to Earth, true, but…school’s over now. Field-trips are an Educational Requirement, nothing more. So say our betters. Now…now I have to enter society’s lofty reaches. And I know it’s all the same from this point on. History lessons.”
“That’s what we do.”
“No field-assignments. And certainly no day-trips. Jaunts to the nearest decent restaurant. Or the nearest indecent one. No twice-around-the-lighthouse-and-home-in-time-for-tea. I don’t want to surrender my freedom. If I give up the ghost immediately, how long before I get a chance like this again? This body’s lifespan? Never? Forever? I’ve been bitten by the travel bug. Can’t wait for.”
“Years.”
“Earth years. They drag when you’re a Time Lord, cataloguing particles.”
“Seconds…years. Quaint Terran measurements. Meaningless. To us.”
“I can’t wait.”
“This is a human response Doctor, not a Time Lord response.”
“You felt the same.”
“And you talked me out of it!”
“Yes. And I’m talking you into it again. At least support me.”
“Support you when it comes to explaining yourself to her, you mean. She’ll look through me. Not at me. Remember, Doctor, I was restless. You talked me out of rash action. She’ll think I’ve changed my mind and persuaded you around to my original way of thinking.”
“I’m leaving.”
“The wilderness, beyond our sheltered City life? That would be a waste.”
“I’m grabbing a TARDIS and pottering off around the place, around the universe, from one end of time to the next.”
Silence. The Master sipped his drink, face devoid of schemes. Endless was an overused word in the Time Lord vocabulary. It usually meant in a little while. The word was a limitless one, capped and made limited by the ridiculous length of the user’s lifespan. And yet, there were endless possibilities in the Doctor’s rash statement. The Master’s momentary pauses said it all.
“There. Are safeguards to prevent this. I’ve made. Quite a study of them.”
“I found a bay with an old Type Forty capsule. And a more modern one. Type One Hundred. Both derelict, obsolete by the latest standards. Low security. Occasionally monitored, but always unguarded. I think they’re due for a maintenance overhaul soon, actually. Who’d miss them?”
“Type Forty, you say. Rather robust little creature. An inspired choice. No one, though. Doctor, really. No one’s ever stolen a TARDIS. Well, not according to the records. It simply isn’t the done thing. Who would want to?”
“Borrowed. No one’s ever borrowed one. I could pilot the thing, I’m sure. It’s a little archaic.”
“She won’t like this.”
“Nonsense. She can come with me. You too.”
“She has influenced you Doctor, but look at the seed of rebellion she planted! The Professor’s not a runaway type. She wants to use you to change the system from within. Thinks she needs you here.”
“No matter what she thinks, I have no Presidential ambition. And to change the system from within would take centuries.”
“Centuries.”
“Yes. Centuries.”
“You have a touching fondness for Earth and its ways. Well, for a Gallifreyan. As a Gallifreyan, our dear Professor loves Gallifrey first. Loves the place. The planet’s crying out for reform only she can deliver. With you by her side. No, she’s not the runaway type. And Gallifreyans are too set in their ways to listen to her, even over mere centuries, I fancy. A meaningless span, to our kind.”
“What about you?”
“Oh, I’ve developed a fondness for challenge. The main challenge being to find something to challenge me here. I was restless, and you said settle down. Now the tide shifts, and turns.”
“So I’ve talked you around. To my way of thinking, I mean.”
“On the contrary, Doctor. You’ve talked me around, to my way of thinking. I’d considered the avenues open to a wandering Time Lord, with a Type Forty TARDIS. There are two fine specimens in the maintenance bay you mention, true. The Type One Hundred would be my preference.”
“Oh?”
“I’d…scouted out the terrain, as it were, and simply voiced vague restless concerns to see how you stood on the matter. If I’d told you the main points of my plan, in complete trust, I’m sure you’d have reported me. And those lovely unguarded capsules would have been spirited away. Now, though, as we are of the same mind…”
“Then we are agreed.”
“We are alike, Doctor, and, yes, I dare say that we are agreed.”
“Excellent. Now. All we need do is convince her.”
“Easier said than done, my friend. She’s a tough one.”
“Yes. Tough as they come.”
beep beep beep beep beep beep
beep beep beep beep beep beep
“Ah, the fair one at my door. Well, Doctor, stealing a TARDIS. How unlike you. I truly believed you’d have to be desperate. Treasonous thoughts, after all. Somehow, I never thought you had those in you. Feel free to use my apartments, while you discuss things. I’ll…go and see to…this and that. You need a little privacy. But I’ll come and back you up, later.”
“Thank you, old friend. For a moment I thought you’d betray me.”
“Me, Doctor? Perish the thought. Door open! Take him Professor, he’s yours.”
“Thank you. I intend to.”
“Don’t suppose you’d take me later?”
“Celibacy is the preferred option. Master.”
“Professor. Doctor.”
“Later, old chap. Door close!”
*
The panel swished shut on a seated Doctor sliding the Professor’s drink across the Master’s table. Once outside, the Master’s sudden twist-uglified expression stained the corridor. Of all the schemes, and of all the times to implement…damn him.
“Can it be, Doctor? This was my plan. My desire. To leave Gallifrey. Seek adventure. To. Potter around the place. From one end of the universe, one end of time, to the other. Aye, and other universes too. You thought you’d talked me out of abandoning academia. My Time Lord life. Then realised it’s the only way. Truly you are my equal, Doctor. Almost.”
*
A Type Forty.
With several unique features. Sturdy. Over-designed, in fact. Safer than the later models. Rugged. Indestructible, or so the maker claimed. Capable of withstanding real time-stress. Warp Entropy. Holdspace. More technical terms than he could list inside five of those human minutes the Doctor was always babbling about.
Yes, yes, if any model were worth stealing, the Master mused, why, an over-designed obsolete Type Forty would be the one. Ninety per cent systems-failure still leaves a fully operational time machine in your grubby little hands. What with the ridiculous auxiliary control consoles, and all those special emergency features. Time Lord paranoia manifesting itself in design-terms, in those early models.
Suppose this fails, suppose that fragments, suppose the other falls apart. We’ll make them safe, they said, and so they had. Look at these relics, yesterday’s toys, marked down for overhaul in. Time? In human terms, fifteen years.
What a joke.
The discarded units would be fixed as soon as someone could spare the time. Could Time Lords not do so? Spare the time. Oh dear. What had the great civilisation fallen to? Time travel had spawned a race of watchers.
Keys in the locks. Tsk. He explored both capsules. One was better than the other. The type One Hundred. Smoother. With all the over-designed components thrown out. Making room for a massive power reservoir. The Master would take the best, and race his friend across space, eternities of self, and the near-endlessness of time. Time. Yes.
Time to face the Professor.
Leaving the maintenance bay’s two lonely old time machines, the Master returned to his apartments. Empty. Drinks, cleared away. How considerate. The communicator flashed a high priority signal. A call from the Doctor, who else.
*
“Doctor?”
“I’m at her apartments. Come over.”
“Is she angry?”
“No. She’s dead.”
*
“Door close.”
The Master surveyed the scene. Impressions. High rubied windows, slightly warped, distorted by an energy discharge. Towering view. Overlooking the world. A privileged site. Positively enchanting. Well, the Cityscape was. Beyond. A cold, wild, friendless, treeless landscape.
Classy furniture. Exquisite effects. Struggle-signs. Impersonal timeless styles. Two occupants. One living. The Doctor, forlorn, lingering by the forgotten communicator. Professor’s crumpled body. Charred smell. Almost a taste in the air. Discarded weapon. This didn’t look good for either of them.
“The truth now, Doctor.”
“I.”
“You know it’s not impossible, Doctor. Merely difficult. Killing a Time Lord. It’s not impossible. This certainly has been a surprising day.”
He knelt beside the Time Lord’s corpse. A blackened hole went clean through to the other side. Shot through both hearts. Nothing left to Regenerate. A hole he could shove his arm into. Up to the shoulder, if he so desired.
“Plasma bolt generator. Illegal. Though it’s been time and an age since anyone was reprimanded for owning one. It’s been time and an age since the last serious reprimand, for anything, on our endless world. Look. This one’s modified to evade weapon sensors. Energy selector reads maximum, Doctor. You can see bubbling up where those windows absorbed the blast, after it left her body. Very powerful. Overkill, you might say. Much of a struggle? Was there much of a struggle, Doctor?”
“No. Not much.”
“You tried to switch the gun off as you struggled.”
“I. Never did pay much attention to the design specifications of murder toys. Thought I was lowering the energy setting, not raising it.”
“How was it set, then? Before you intervened.”
“About halfway.”
“And she was going to shoot you.”
“Yes.”
“You’re certain.”
“As soon as she brought me here to discuss things in more detail, she produced the gun. Said she couldn’t allow this ridiculous excursion of mine.”
“Why here?”
“More private, she said. Didn’t trust your apartments. In case you had remote surveillance devices. I don’t understand. Was she a spy? Will I be arrested now? I meant to stop this…I.”
“We’ll concoct enough evidence against her, Doctor. Make her the attacker. After all, according to you, she was the attacker.”
“What do you mean by that? Don’t you believe me?! She was the aggressor! The Professor attacked me. But for our struggle…our positions would be reversed.”
“She didn’t mean you any lasting harm, Doctor. Clearly, she wanted to trigger your Regeneration. At mid-strength, this plasma weapon would have wounded you. Severely, yes, but not enough to cause an outright kill.”
“Regeneration.”
“Yes. Regeneration, and, with it, Regeneration Trauma. Memory-lapse, confusion, and a complete personality-change. You’d have been an empty vessel into which a determined woman poured the new you. The Professor…well, she was determined. As tough as they come, on this fossil-world. You should have lost. Still, luck was on your side.”
“I’m not ready to face the idea of Regeneration yet. You know how it scares me. It’s too. Too much a sign of our near-timelessness. I mean, you…”
“A prepared Time Lord can accept Regeneration with dignity, even master it through force of will to great advantage. Caught unawares, well. That’s dangerous. Violent Regeneration especially so. My first Regeneration was, without question, the most devastatingly difficult in Time Lord History.”
“Always understating the case…”
“As for you, I imagine you’ll handle it well. Don’t delude yourself into thinking your first change will be as traumatic as mine was, Doctor. Yes. There were exceptional circumstances. But I suffered no lasting harm. I’m as sane as you are. Anyway, she didn’t get you. Though I admit to a touch of nervousness. Clearly, she’d planned your change for some time. Scary, isn’t it.”
“Then she wasn’t a murderess.”
“No. A schemer. Not a murderess.”
“I won’t pretend that she was. And I won’t lie to them.”
“You’ll have to lie to them, to make her death seem plausible. If there’s any doubt, other Time Lords could instigate a study of this time-period.”
“A study? Travel back in time and watch us, you mean?”
“Of course. That’s what Time Lords do.”
“That isn’t possible on Gallifrey. Time travel into Gallifrey’s past is forbidden. Physically. Legally.”
“Not so, Doctor. There is a system for dealing with passive observation. In matters of criminal dispute. The Criminal Investigation Frequency. It isn’t used. There are virtually no criminal disputes on Gallifrey worth pursuing via that method. Much simpler to call out the guard, drag you off in chains, and mind-probe you. Quick, clean, easy. But murder…they’d use it to study an alleged murder…”
“Great Constructs such as the Eye of Harmony prevent time travel through Gallifrey’s past.”
“Lies Doctor, all lies. The Eye of Harmony is not fixed. We used the Eye to make time travel possible. It’s a power source, and, like any other power source, the Eye can be turned up, or turned down. The Time Lords would gladly subvert the Eye of Harmony’s power, to interfere if necessary. Of course, it has never been necessary. The Time Lords can interfere in the past. Best not give them a reason. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Tell lies instead. Rather than have our own people break our own rules to study our past.”
“We don’t want the Time Lords to do that, do we?”
“This is a life we’re discussing. Her wasted life. I didn’t fit in with her image of me. She wanted me to change, and died trying to bring that idea about. This is too terrible to take in. We had a sort of…”
“Love, Doctor? I think not. She was mercenary in her attitude toward you.”
“Now who’s using human terms?”
“What are we going to do? I’m caught up in your troubles, sad to say.”
“Leave, I suppose. I can’t lie.”
“They’ll ask why she had the weapon.”
“What am I to tell them? She was attempting to trigger my Regeneration, to create a new me once she discovered that this personality of mine wanted to steal a TARDIS? She wanted me to be a Doctor who would work to change the system from within. No matter what I think about the business of politics, they all believe that I’ll eventually come to fill a Presidential role…I’m sorry, old chap. For bringing this down on your head.”
“Why call me for help, if you’re going to be so sorry?”
“I thought you should at least know. We are so famously linked. You’d have to protect yourself, or go with me.”
“Then we’ll away. I have an idea.”
“What?”
“If we are to abscond. To steal a TARDIS, quit Gallifrey, and therefore implicate ourselves in alleged murder by leaving the scene in dubious circumstances…why not throw caution to the wind, and commit a real crime? I can gain easily access to the Criminal Investigation Frequency in one of those TARDISes. The whole mechanism is virtually prehistoric. Forgotten. Who would notice? We would have nothing to lose.”
“Prehistoric. For a Time Lord, that must be quite something.”
“Indeed. Think of it Doctor. Nothing to lose…”
“What are you saying? This Criminal Investigation Frequency…”
“We can subvert the Eye of Harmony, bend the rules, go back in time, here, on Gallifrey.”
“No!”
“Yes! Cross the time-stream, meet our past selves, and warn them to avoid the Professor.”
“Madness.”
“She will not share a drink with you at my place, will not learn of your plan to steal a TARDIS, won’t lure you away to her apartments, and therefore can’t possibly die struggling over that odious weapon. You won’t be in this ridiculous state, she will live, not die, and we can abscond, your dear Professor alive, well, and. Well, none the wiser.”
“You’re insane.”
“I’m a genius.
“A mad genius.”
“You’re a genius too. Are you insane?”
“I’m…”
“You’re reluctant, Doctor.”
“This is entirely beyond anything we’ve ever discussed! I won’t cross the time-stream with you. Not to fundamentally change things. No. Not to meet ourselves. We aren’t supposed to do that sort of thing. And certainly not on Gallifrey itself! The Professor…”
“She wasn’t the only Time Lord with a scan-free weapon, Doctor…”
The Master stood, pulling a slim black pistol from the holster nestling unseen at the small of his back.
“Sleep well.”
Vuhvuhvyow! Darkness time blur red haze waking.
*
“Welcome to the TARDIS, my dear Doctor. No need to thank me. We’re here. In the past. The journey’s done. Are you coming along, to the Great Outside?”
“Mm…wh. What…you. You’ve. What have you done?!”
“Nothing. Yet. Come come, Doctor. We’re going to do the very thing you always wanted to do. Why, we are going to meddle.”
“I want no part of this.”
“It’s all your fault. Know your weapons, Doctor. Now, listen carefully. I’ve hooked this TARDIS into the Harmony Device, which controls our link to the Criminal Investigation Frequency. Together, they subvert the Eye of Harmony. Which means we can travel back and forward through Gallifreyan time, but strictly for purposes of observation.”
“Then we’re doomed. Doomed before we begin. The moment we step outside, we’ll be apprehended by our own people for breaking more laws of time than you can shake a sonic screwdriver at. They’ll detect us…”
“The doors lock to prevent direct intervention. We can’t step outside. The communication devices are shut off too…and the capsule’s disguised, thanks to our chameleon circuitry. As the whole purpose of a criminal investigation mission is to observe without being seen, we don’t even register on TARDIS Flight Control central computers. If we are observers, studying our own past, we must be invisible to all detection devices. We must be unseen. Our TARDIS is a shadow of a shade of a glimmer of a nothingness. Viewed by blind watchers in darkened rooms with masks upon their faces. It’s all taken care of, Doctor.”
“If the doors are locked, we can’t interv…where did you learn all this?”
“I must have my little secrets, Doctor.”
“Really. Sounds more dramatic than saying simply…not telling, so there!”
“I do rather admire my own sense of the dramatic.”
“Unbelievable. I thought I knew you.”
“You do know me, Doctor.”
“Forget it. You won’t get away with this.”
“But I have managed to get away with this. I told you. We’re here. You worry too much.”
“We still have to go back to the future. You’ve half the job to get away with, yet. Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.”
“That’s something any time traveller worth his…salt…could do in his sleep. Trust me, Doctor. Even if the shielding systems fail, we’re still flying on the Criminal Investigation Frequency. Flight Control computers would pass priority orders, telling all security installations to ignore us. In case they upset an investigation from Gallifrey’s future. It really is terribly beautifully bureaucratic, don’t you think? If we pop up in the Time Lord past with no protection from Flight Control, they’d still leave us alone because of our…diplomatic status.”
“Yes, I get the idea. Diplomatic status. They daren’t interfere with a TARDIS from the future. No one would question it. They’d automatically assume that we’re legitimate investigators on a very important job. Not a couple of young tearaways on a joyride. The fools. They’d assume we’re as official as officialdom gets. That is, if they could detect us. Which you say they can’t. Very clever.”
“Simple, elegant, clever. Thank you, Doctor.”
“Quite academic, though, as we can’t leave this TARDIS.”
“Because the doors are sealed? The Type Forty is over-designed, Doctor. It opens the emergency exit at the lightest need, even during computer-simulated breakdowns. If we introduce a flight simulation to fake a complete system loss, the exit will open all by itself. Easy said, easy done.”
“Emergency exits carry alarm circuitry, so you’re still stuck. Open the emergency door and the TARDIS will broadcast distress signals. No Gallifreyan can ignore a TARDIS distress call.”
“Well, you know the basics. You’re determined, if ill-informed.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere.”
“A simulated emergency produces simulated emergency signals on consoles. They won’t be sent. Only a Type Forty really opens doors during a simulated crisis. That ability was removed in later versions. Those later models simulate door opening as well as alarms and distress calls during tests.”
“Surely the TARDIS will record this activity and send out some kind of warning.”
“It’s just a drill.”
“But…”
“The Criminal Investigation Frequency circuit built into this TARDIS won’t record simulated events. You are trying my patience, Doctor. A Type Forty TARDIS going through Gallifrey’s past on a real criminal investigation, experiencing a real emergency, would record real distress signals and transmit them to the future, to Traffic Control, asking for help. But a TARDIS, going back on a real criminal investigation, experiencing a simulated emergency, will stay silent.”
“Loopholes in procedure, eh.”
“Yes. Loopholes in time.”
“Well, if it’s possible…”
“It is.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“Good. I’m so glad.”
“But it’s immoral, of course.”
“Your notions of immorality don’t interest me.”
“Obviously not. If they did, we wouldn’t even be here.”
“Ah, but we are here. In the past, in a TARDIS now simulating complete breakdown of vital systems. We can step through that emergency exit, leaving no record of the fact.”
“Seems an awful lot of bother to go to, and we haven’t even achieved anything.”
“We’ll avert her death, isn’t that worth our efforts?”
“I doubt it.”
“Have faith, Doctor.”
“Pity I can’t knock you out, and take us back to the future.”
“The Eye of Harmony prevents physical violence within the confines of a TARDIS, my dear Doctor. Care to try hijacking the TARDIS? Even I can’t subvert that principle.”
“No? I wouldn’t put it past you.”
“I’m hurt. But not physically.”
“So. We’re here. Well. When exactly is here?”
“Now. Oh, don’t look at me like that. It’s now. Not long before we shared, share, a drink in my apartments. I’ve chosen a boring stretch of corridor.”
“Deserted, I suppose.”
“Do you remember meeting anyone on the way to my apartments?”
“Not yet. But I have a funny feeling that I’m going to, later.”
*
Doctor and Master turned a corner, and bumped into the Master and the Doctor.
*
“LET ME HANDLE THIS DOCTOR. I HAVE SOME IDEAS I WANT TO TRY OUT. HELLO YOU TWO. LISTEN CAREFULLY TO WHAT WE HAVE TO SAY…”
“YES, I SUPPOSE YOU’D BETTER LISTEN TO HIM. IT IS FOR THE BEST. HONESTLY. THOUGH I’VE A STRANGE FEELING THAT WE’RE GOING TO CEASE TO EXIST, SOON, IN A FUNNY OLD WAY.”
“What…what have you done?!”
“I’d say it’s rather obvious, Doctor. They’ve stolen a TARDIS, and come back in time to warn us.”
“You can’t travel back in time on Gallifrey! There are machines to stop future generations interfering with the development and invention of time travel in Gallifrey’s past. Can’t be done.”
“WHAT ARE WE THEN, OLD CHAP, SCOTCH MIST?”
“SCOTCH MIST, DOCTOR?”
“A HUMAN EXPRESSION. AN EARTH SAYING.”
“OH. RHETORICAL, ONE WOULD ASSUME.”
“BELIEVE THE EVIDENCE OF YOUR EYES, AND ALL THAT.”
“You can actually, Doctor. I’ve been considering a method involving that Type Forty capsule you’ve been hanging around recently. Don’t bother to deny it. The gleam in your eye betrays you. I don’t suppose you were going to steal the thing?”
“No. Well, it looks as though I will. I mean, it looks as though I have. You too, old chap. How can you send a TARDIS back here, though?”
“I…”
“DON’T TELL HIM. TELL HIM LATER, WHEN YOU’RE IN THE STOLEN TARDIS.”
“What makes you think I’ll…oh. Yes. You seem to have the advantage. How interesting. Must be serious, to risk coming here and affecting your, our, own past. Our own present, I mean.”
“DON’T GO TO MY APARTMENTS FOR DRINKS. GO TO THE MAINTENANCE BAY AND TRAVEL BACK TO THIS POINT. WARN OURSELVES NOT TO GO TO MY APARTMENTS. ONCE YOU’VE DONE THAT, YOU CAN RETURN TO THE FUTURE. THAT’S THE PLAN. STICK TO IT.”
“I DON’T WANT TO SPOIL THE FUN HERE, BUT I DO THINK THAT WE ARE GOING TO SEND OURSELVES OUT OF EXISTENCE.”
“THAT DOESN’T MATTER, DOCTOR. PROVIDED WE PASS ON OUR MEMORY OF EVENTS, ULTIMATELY, WE’LL SURV. HMM. I SUPPOSE THEY WILL HAVE TO KNOW WHY THEY’RE DOING THIS, AFTER ALL. WE SHOULD TELL THEM.”
“Why?”
“Yes. Amuse me.”
“WE SHARE DRINKS AT MY APARTMENT. I ANTICIPATE THE ARRIVAL OF OUR DEAR PROFESSOR. BEFORE SHE ARRIVES, WE DISCUSS THE MATTER OF STEALING A TARDIS. THE IDEA OF TRAVELLING THE UNIVERSE. I LEAVE WHEN THE PROFESSOR COMES TO SEE THE DOCTOR. DOCTOR?”
“I TELL HER THAT I’M ABSCONDING IN A BORROWED TARDIS. SHE TAKES ME ALONG TO HER APARTMENTS, TO DISCUSS MATTERS IN A MORE PRIVATE PLACE.”
“MEANWHILE, I’M IN THE UNGUARDED MAINTENANCE BAY
“SHE WANTED MY HELP IN CHANGING TIME LORD SOCIETY FROM WITHIN, AND COULDN’T BEAR TO PART WITH ME…”
“SO THE PROFESSOR SHOT AT HIM WITH A SCAN-FREE PLASMA GENERATOR, HOPING TO TRIGGER HIS REGENERATION. SUCH A TRAUMATIC CHANGE WOULD CAUSE MEMORY-LOSS, AND PERSONALITY-CHANGE. I BELIEVE SHE’D PLANNED IT ALL ALONG. SHE WANTED A NEW DOCTOR. ONE SHE COULD CONTROL. AS IT HAPPENED, FINGERLESS HERE THOUGHT SHE WAS A SPY OUT TO KILL HIM…”
“I’M NO GOOD WITH GUNS. WE STRUGGLED.”
“HE MANAGED TO SWITCH THE PLASMA LEVEL FROM HALF TO FULL.”
“JUST AS SHE FIRED.”
“IN THE CONFUSION, SHE WAS SHOT THROUGH BOTH HEARTS.”
“NOTHING LEFT TO REGENERATE.”
“AFTER THAT I STUNNED THE DOCTOR, AND BROUGHT HIM HERE TO WARN YOU. TO AVERT HER DEATH. SO. AVERT HER DEATH…”
“IF YOU DON’T, THERE’LL BE A COMPLETE INVESTIGATION…AND NONE OF US WILL COME OUT OF THAT ALIVE AND IN ONE PIECE, REST-ASSURED.”
“MAKE CERTAIN THAT YOU TRAVEL HERE AND WARN YOURSELVES. OURSELVES. US. YOU. THAT WAY, SHE NEED NEVER KNOW ABOUT OUR PLANS TO ROAM THE UNIVERSE. NOW. HAVE I FORGOTTEN ANYTHING, DOCTOR?”
“NOTHING OF IMPORTANCE. RIGHT. SHOULDN’T WE LEAVE THEM TO IT?”
“YES.”
“SOMEHOW I DON’T THINK WE’LL GET THERE. THE FUTURE.”
“GOODBYE.”
“YES. GOOD LUCK.”
*
“This is all your fault.”
“Why is it my fault, Doctor?”
“You knocked me unconscious and dragged me into that TARDIS.”
“I haven’t done it yet.”
“Right. I won’t let you near me.”
“That’s fine. I’ll shoot you from a distance.”
“You have a weapon…”
“Scan-free. Why not visit the Professor’s apartments…”
“What on Gallifrey for?!”
“To see if she has a hidden plasma generator. That would prove the story is true. If so, we’ll go back in time and warn ourselves. Just as our future selves have done.”
“But if we go back in time and warn ourselves, her death won’t happen.”
“Isn’t that the point?”
“No wonder you knocked me out. I’d never have entered into this willingly.”
“So. You were going to steal a TARDIS, then.”
“Yes. And now I will. Because of you!”
“And because of you, Doctor. You were with him, er, with me.”
“I think I see what he, I, meant, about their not getting back to the future. They won’t. Those versions of us don’t exist. We will replace them. Subtly. We don’t do the things they did, we just have their memories of the things they did.”
“Fascinating problem, isn’t it. Objective. Reach the TARDIS. Careful, now. Don’t want to bump into the Professor.”
“I can’t believe she’d shoot at me.”
“She didn’t. Yet. Now come on, Doctor.”
“Even so. I still can’t believe it.”
They wandered along to the empty bay, entered a TARDIS, breathed in, and closed the doors.
“So. You were going to explain travel into our past, which is clearly a violation of Gallifreyan physical and constitutional laws…”
“There is a way, Doctor. Naturally. After all, we’ve just witnessed the method in action. Our future selves are proof of the event. Consider a murder, in private apartments. Unmonitored communicators. No witnesses. There’s no hidden surveillance equipment, to help prove who did what to who. And there are no criminals in Gallifreyan society. Non-conformists become permanent exiles, not prisoners. Living out their days in the bestial wilderness. What of investigative procedure, then, in a supposedly crime-free environment?”
“According to our future selves there’s an argument, and a scan-free weapon discharges as we struggle? Is that to happen in my future? Rather a sticky situation. We’d both handle the gun. Knowing me, I’d leave physical evidence all over the blasted thing. I’m no good with weapons. What of criminal investigation. My mind’s reeling from this.”
“In any case, Doctor. Innocent or not, something strange would have happened in those private apartments. That’s clear.”
“Well, the authorities would see things that way.”
“A full investigation might prove awkward.”
“Brutal questions would be asked.”
“As a vaguely telepathic race, we all know that there are ways of evading the most perfect truth machines. Even Gallifreyan ones.”
“Really? You are a mine of information.”
“Answer?”
“As this sordid conversation revolves around time travel into Gallifrey’s past, and surveillance of a murderous event, I assume that you’re hinting at a link. Some secret method of travelling back, for purposes of observation? Chameleon circuitry would come in very handy there. Makes a TARDIS look like…anything. But Gallifreyan Flight Control…they’d spot a wayward TARDIS quicker than you can say reverse-the-polarity-of-the-neutron-flow.”
“Logical, Doctor. You have the answer.”
“Fairly elementary, now I’ve set my mind to it. Of course, the future selves we met…haven’t been spotted or scanned. As far as we know, they haven’t. There might be a flight of a hundred TARDISes out there, all watching us, watching ourselves, watching us. Er, best not to think about it really. How does this secret system work?”
“We’ve both had our eyes on these capsules in maintenance, but for slightly different reasons. You aren’t too familiar with the operating process, Doctor. You simply wanted a TARDIS, any old TARDIS. One in the bay with a low level of maintenance priority. The Type Forty is a unique vehicle. With several interesting features. I remember many tutors sneering at it, consigning it to history as obsolete. A ridiculous error, of course. Consigning any time travel device to history…”
“If we ever get out of this mess and travel to Earth, you really must try your hand at the profession of used-car salesman. You’d be a natural.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“You were saying…what does this switch do?”
“Doctor. That switch does something. Leave it alone, and it will do nothing. Now. Where was I?”
“Thinking of becoming a used-car salesman.”
“Ah yes. The Type Forty is a good example of a bad Time Lord trait. That of paranoid delusion leading to marked under-confidence in one’s own abilities. Something I do not share with the Type Forty designers. I have supreme confidence in my ability as Master of time.”
“You don’t say. I suppose I just Doctor around with it, then.”
“In short, to compensate, the Type Forty is ludicrously over-designed. The forty layers of back-up systems have forty layers of back-up systems. The Type Forty can outpace real time-stress, Warp Entropy, Holdspace, you name it. I’m not saying that the Type Forty version of the TARDIS is indestructible, but you’d have to be on the wrong side of a collapsing universe to scratch deeper than the non-existent paintwork.”
“Impressive. Quite a sales-pitch you have there. How many miles on the clock? I’ll take her.”
“You already have taken her, Doctor. In our future, remember.”
“I was hijacked. Kidnapped. Press-ganged.”
“Here’s my pistol. Care to look at the energy charge?”
The Master pulled a slim black pistol from the holster nestling unseen at the small of his back.
“My future self said that I stunned you. See. Full energy charge. Not a shot loosed in anger.”
“Where did you get the gun?”
“Assume the Professor’s not the only Time Lord with a scan-free weapon, and leave it at that.”
“Won’t do you any good in here, the Eye of…”
“…Harmony prevents physical violence within the confines of a TARDIS, I’m aware of that. At least we can harmlessly think violent thoughts if we wish.”
The Master rather sadly replaced the gun. His colleague frowned.
“Supposedly, the Eye of Harmony prevents travel into Gallifrey’s past. Our ultimate power source, and a self-preservation mechanism to stop potential enemies manipulating the historical development of time travel…”
“Don’t believe all we were taught in school, Doctor. This machine may be obsolete, but with ninety per cent systems-failure, we’d still have a fully operational time machine in our grubby little hands. What with the ridiculous auxiliary control consoles, and all those extra-special emergency features.”
“Time Lord paranoia, in the early models.”
“My very words, Doctor. Suppose this fails, suppose that fragments, suppose the other falls apart. We’ll make them safe, they said, and so they did. These relics, yesterday’s toys, are marked down for overhaul in fifteen years. As soon as someone can spare the time. Spare the time!”
“Oh dear.”
“And they go and leave the keys in the lock.”
“Tsk.”
“Now. While the Eye of Harmony prevents actual physical violence, it can be bypassed with regard to travel through Gallifrey’s history. There is a system for dealing with passive observation in matters of criminal dispute. The Criminal Investigation Frequency. It isn’t used, as there are virtually no criminal disputes on Gallifrey worth pursuing via that method. Much simpler to call out the guard, drag you off in chains, and mind-probe you. Quick, clean, easy. But murder…they’d use it to study a case of murder. Pardon my rather unseemly haste. The Time Lords would use the special system to study an alleged murder…”
“The Time Lord way…be neutral in all things. Our key philosophy.”
“Is a lie, Doctor.”
“You go too far.”
“Not far enough. The Time Lord way. A lie. The neutral-in-all-things Time Lords could easily subvert the Eye of Harmony. The Eye is ever-changing. It’s a power source. Like any other power source, the Eye can be turned up, or turned down, in order to interfere with things when necessary. Of course, it has never been necessary.”
“Thanks to the mind-probe. You think you can beat a mind-probe, just as you think you’ll cross our own time-stream, and remain undetected…”
“We already have crossed the time-stream. Our future selves did it. To save themselves the agony of being investigated. Terribly clever. Using the very apparatus designed to detect untoward criminal activity. Terribly clever.”
“Hmm. Too clever for their own good, I think. It hasn’t been necessary to use this equipment, until we, they, came along. What are we going to do?”
“Travel back. Gain access to the Criminal Investigation Frequency. The whole mechanism is virtually prehistoric. Forgotten. Who would notice?”
“Do you believe this solely because our future selves have already done so?”
“Amazing. The way time travel mangles language.”
“You’ll definitely end your days as a used-car salesman.”
“As we’ve already gone back in time to warn ourselves, it does seem rather inevitable. We can cross the time-stream, encounter our past selves, and warn them to avoid the Professor. She will not share a drink with you at my place, she will not learn of your plan to steal a TARDIS, won’t lure you away to her apartments, and therefore can’t possibly die in the struggle over her plasma generator. She will live, not die. Perfect.”
“And then?”
“Then, having sorted ourselves out, we can abscond, the Professor none the wiser.”
“Yes. How simple. You’re quite mad, of course.”
“Of course. No need to thank me.”
“True. No need at all.”
“Come come, Doctor. We’re going to do the very thing you always wanted to do. Why, we are going to meddle.”
“Meddle. Poor Professor…”
“It’s all your fault. If your future self hadn’t been so clumsy, we wouldn’t be in this mess now.”
“But I haven’t done anything.”
“Of course you haven’t.”
“I’m not to blame…”
“Naturally. I’m going to hook this TARDIS into the Harmony Device. It controls our link to the Criminal Investigation Frequency, and together they subvert the Eye of Harmony. Normally that would enable a TARDIS to travel through Gallifreyan time, for observation purposes only. The doors lock to prevent direct intervention. We can’t step outside. All communication devices shut down too, and we’ll be disguised thanks to our chameleon circuitry. As the whole purpose of a criminal investigation mission is to observe without being seen, we won’t even register on the TARDIS Flight Control central computers. If we are observers, studying our own past, we must be invisible to all detection devices. We must be unseen. Our TARDIS is a shadow of a shade of a glimmer of a nothingness. Viewed by blind watchers in darkened rooms with masks upon their faces. It’s all taken care of.”
“Where did you learn this?”
“I must have my little secrets, Doctor.”
“Really. Sounds more dramatic than saying simply…not telling, so there!”
“I do rather admire my own sense of the dramatic.”
“As do used-car salesmen.”
“Even if the shielding systems fail, we’re still on the Criminal Investigation Frequency. Flight Control computers would register that information, and pass priority orders telling all security installations to ignore us, in case they upset an investigation from the future. It really is terribly beautifully bureaucratic, don’t you think?”
“Yes. In the future, everyone’s so much wiser. When you look at what idiots have done in the past, you can’t help but feel wiser. The poor fools will automatically assume we’re legitimate investigators. Not a couple of young tearaways on a joyride. Locked doors, you say. Explain that to me…even if we already have done this, in order to meet ourselves. Aargh!”
“Counting chickens before they’re hatched!”
“Why did our future selves do this to us? They’d know how annoyed we’d be!”
“This may already have happened to them too, Doctor. I say it may. As far as we’re aware, the original Doctor and Master, the ones who experienced a Gallifrey on which the Professor died, well, they are gone.”
“Even so…”
“As to doors. The Type Forty is over-designed. Genius. It opens the emergency exit at the lightest need. During computer simulations, for example. If we simulate a complete system loss, the exit will open. As it’s a drill, the Criminal Investigation Frequency computer built into this TARDIS won’t record simulated events. A Type Forty TARDIS going through Gallifrey’s past on a real criminal investigation, experiencing a real emergency, would record real distress signals and transmit them to the future, to Traffic Control, asking for help. But a TARDIS, going back on a real criminal investigation, experiencing a simulated emergency, will stay silent.”
“And it’s only because our TARDIS treats simulations fairly realistically, that it’ll open the emergency doors? And not transmit distress calls.”
“Yes. Leaving no record of the fact.”
“Get on with it then.”
“You’re agreed?”
“Much as I hate the thought of meddling in my own affairs, I feel I am the one most qualified to. Shame about leaving the Professor in favour of a wild life on the outskirts of the known and unknown universe. But if that’s the way things have to be…”
“Very pragmatic, Doctor. For a moment I genuinely thought that you loved her.”
“Just get on with it, eh.”
“Touchy, Doctor?”
“No.”
“Not at all?”
“That’s right. Not at all.”
“How human of you.”
“Hrmph. Most of this business strikes me as being rather inhuman, as a matter of fact.”
“Well, that’s true. Neither of us is human.”
“Get a move on, before I change my mind.”
“I’ll plot the trip close to when we walked around the corner, and bumped into ourselves. That stretch of corridor is an ideal place to land the TARDIS.”
“That’s on our way to your apartments, where we planned to have a drink. To discuss things we now won’t waste time discussing.”
“Yes. In fact, when this is over, we can stop off at my apartments and share a toast.”
“To meddling?”
“Yes. To meddling!”
“Er, you’re sure about that stretch of corridor. It will be deserted…”
“Do you remember meeting anyone on the way?”
“Yes. Us…”
*
Doctor and Master turned a corner, and bumped into the Master and the Doctor.
*
And, with a self-mocking farewell echoing along the corridor after the conversation was over, Doctor and Master left Master and Doctor to argue over who was or would be or had been to blame. They argued over what to argue over.
The who, the why, and the how were all swept offstage by the when.
Even endless circular arguments must cease. But the Master and the Doctor who returned to their hidden TARDIS could hear the arguments echoing around their heads. The two wayward Time Lords stayed around to observe the space-time continuum’s cosmic punchline to an unfunny joke.
*
“Shall we watch on the monitor, Doctor?”
“Why? We know what they’re going to say. Time to get back to our proper future, and hope we haven’t been spotted.”
“You think there’s a delegation waiting?”
“Waiting to feel our collar over a dodgy car deal. Oh, all right, what are they saying…”
*
“This is all your fault.”
“Why is it my fault, Doctor?”
“You knocked me unconscious and dragged me into that TARDIS.”
“I haven’t done it yet.”
“Right. I won’t let you near me.”
“That’s fine. I’ll shoot you from a distance.”
“You have a weapon…”
“Scan-free. Why not visit the Professor’s apartments…”
“What on Gallifrey for?!”
“To see if she has a hidden plasma generator. That would prove the story is true. If so, we’ll go back in time and warn ourselves. Just as our future selves have done.”
“But if we go back in time and warn ourselves, her death won’t happen.”
“Isn’t that the point?”
“No wonder you knocked me out. I’d never have entered into this willingly.”
“So. You were going to steal a TARDIS, then.”
“Yes. And now I will. Because of you!”
“And because of you, Doctor. You were with him, er, with me.”
“I think I see what he, I, meant, about their not getting back to the future. They won’t. Those versions of us don’t exist. We will replace them. Subtly. We don’t do the things they did, we just have their memories of the things they did.”
“Fascinating problem, isn’t it. Objective. Reach the TARDIS. Careful, now. Don’t want to bump into the Professor.”
“I can’t believe she’d shoot at me.”
“She didn’t. Yet. Now come on, Doctor.”
“Even so. I still can’t believe it.”
*
“Pah.”
“That’s more or less how I remember it, Doctor.”
“So. There you have it on a plate.”
“I’m not with you.”
“Not the original version of you. Our future selves no longer exist. If they say she died, we’ll have to take their word. The scheme worked. I didn’t kill the Professor. And I’ve just warned myself not to. So. There you have it. On a plate. There’s no way to check an entire segment of time some…where, or when, cut off from the rest of the universe.”
“We-ell, Doctor…”
“If there is, I don’t want to know. Do hope no one spots anything untoward.”
“Even if someone does, Doctor, our other selves are responsible for the original crime of using the Harmony Device and Criminal Investigation Frequency fraudulently. You and I were forced into it by those future selves, in order to avoid unimaginable consequences.”
“Unimaginable consequences. I wonder what those might be.”
“You’ll never know, Doctor. They’re unimaginable. Time to complete the vast loop and head for our prosperous future.”
“Twice-around-the-lighthouse-and-home-in-time-for-tea.”
“Human phrases? You have a fondness for Earth and its ways.”
“Suppose I’ll see more of Earth now.”
“That planet of yours again.”
“Only place to go. Can’t stay here. Not after this.”
“Yes. Wouldn’t it be odd, joining the higher reaches of Time Lord society as though nothing untoward had happened. With this TARDIS sitting around, as evidence.”
“I thought the TARDIS wouldn’t record our excursion into the past!”
“No Doctor. The TARDIS won’t keep a record of doors opening during a simulated alarm. But the TARDIS will show a record of having engaged the Criminal Investigation Frequency circuits, the bypassing of the Eye of Harmony through usage of the Harmony Device, and our trip into the past on an observation mission. If we let that data fall into the hands of other Time Lords they’ll know where we went, and when. Then they’ll send their own undetectable TARDIS into the past, to observe us. What a shock they’d get, on seeing we left our TARDIS and went for a walk…”
“Can you erase the data?”
“Complicated. A lengthy process. I’ll fix that later, after we’ve visited our true timeline. To make sure we really have succeeded.”
“All right. But I’m not happy with the thought of leaving a TARDIS lying around the maintenance bay while we make sure the Professor is still alive. You never know who might come along and steal the machine.”
“Doctor, Doctor. Maintenance in fifteen years, remember. We have nothing to worry about. If you insist, I’ll take the keys with me. The benefits of low security. Here we go.”
“The other capsule. Remind me. Does it have its keys in the ignition too?”
“Keys in the ignition, Doctor? Are you going to stray onto the subject of used-car salesmen again?”
“Very nearly.”
“The other capsule has a set of keys, yes.”
“Are we back already, that was quick.”
“Home for a loyal toast, and then off we go.”
“I hope you’re right. You want me to pop my head out first?”
“We’ll use the monitor, to be on the safe side. Look. No one out there.”
“Unless…”
“Oh shush, Doctor. After you. I’ll lock up.”
“So that’s that. We rebel.”
“No. We travel, my friend.”
“Hmm. Rather that than an endless diet of history lessons.”
“We’re Time Lords Doctor, history lessons are the only lessons we have. And what do we learn from them? Not to meddle!”
*
The Master smiled mischievously and poured three drinks.
“To meddle, to meddling, to meddlers.”
“Three drinks? Will she come?”
“The third drink is for our illustrious friend, the dear Professor, yes. I assume when she calls at your empty apartments, as we know she must, that it won’t take long for the proud lady to grace us with her imperial aura. Our future selves…ah, but now we are our future selves. Our other selves met her, and caused all sorts of bother. Her most royal personage will appear. It is destined, Doctor. Destined.”
“There’s no need for arrogance, old chap.”
“Arrogance? She plans to change you. That won’t happen.”
“Change me. I’ve changed myself.”
“And you didn’t have to go through Regeneration. Cause for a toast!”
“Regeneration.”
“And with it, Regeneration Trauma. Memory-lapse, complete personality-change. You would have been an empty vessel into which a determined woman poured the new you. Having meddled, however, you needn’t face the possibility. You know what will happen if you discuss leaving Gallifrey. She’ll invite you to her apartments. And try to Regenerate you. Our future selves were a little paranoid, in that sense. We can safely sit here and wait for her visit. No need to run off immediately. We know she’s on the way. Simply avoid discussing our departure, that’s all. Find some excuse to sidestep a messy trip to her apartments.”
“I’m not ready to face the idea of Regeneration yet. It scares me. I’m so young. By our standards.”
“A prepared Time Lord can accept Regeneration with dignity, even master it through force of will to great advantage. Caught unawares, well. That’s dangerous. Violent Regeneration especially so. My first Regeneration was, without question, the most devastatingly difficult in Time Lord History. As for you, I imagine you’ll handle it well. Don’t delude yourself into thinking your first change will be as traumatic as mine was, Doctor. Yes. There were exceptional circumstances. But I suffered no lasting harm in the womb. I’m as sane as you are. With effort, Regeneration can be Mastered. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“You look glum.”
“I was thinking of going to Earth. But there’s no point striking up friendships. They’d be temporary affairs at best. Humans are notoriously fragile. On the other hand, that’s what makes them so damned fascinating. The brightest flame, the shortest span.”
“Don’t tell me you love the Professor…”
“We could spend eternity together.”
“I forbid this lunacy. You can’t tell her that you’re leaving.”
“It might be different this time. Her death happened when I voiced my intention to leave Gallifrey. But now I know that I have no choice. I know I will leave, or be caught out and? Executed? The TARDIS holds incriminating evidence…”
“I’ll erase the evidence. Trust me, Doctor.”
“Yes. Trust. I can persuade her to come with us by explaining what we’ve done. Then she’d agree that leaving is for the best. The best option. If I could phrase it in terms she’d understand…”
“That is too dangerous.”
“I disagree.”
“You’d give her the idea of meddling in Gallifrey’s past. Radically. She’d hook up to the Harmony Device and toy around with Gallifreyan politics and policies. She’d wipe us out, or worse. Do you want to take that kind of risk, Doctor. I think not.”
“Why not give tact a try. I trust her. This part of history is fresh. Why, we haven’t had this conversation before.”
“Time has a way of echoing Doctor, be careful. If she dies, we’ll have to flee. And then other Time Lords will go back and monitor absolutely everything. Everything.”
“I don’t accept that. No. I believe I can persuade her.”
“This came out of field-studies, didn’t it. The desire to wander through universes, with her at your side. I’d love to know what you discussed with her once you were alone, just before she died in that other future. Did you propose a near-eternal love-affair, spread out across the continuum? Well, we’ll never know. You are restless Doctor. Misplaced. You spent our education hunting around for lost causes in a vague attempt to avoid settling down to dusty Time Lord life. And now that we are beyond academia, now we are free to choose our dusty paths, now we have meddled in our own affairs and righted an accidental wrong, you complain.”
“We have every right to complain. Damn it. We meddled. Don’t you care? We gained knowledge of what might have been, before it is yet to be. That is the result of our meddler philosophy. Why not bring her round to our way of thinking? Why, we only have the word of our future selves that she was so against my leaving. We can be diplomatic. Subtle.”
“What were your options before we embarked on this course? Exile, into the wilderness? Not your style. Treasonous thoughts? Again, I would say not – but we have committed treason by crossing our own paths on Gallifrey. Politics? Would you have played politics, Doctor, and bribed your way to some obscure field-assignment? No. You went along with this treason. So do not speak to me of diplomacy, my dear friend.”
“I’m beginning to wonder if friend is a word we share. You, you from the future…you were the motive force behind the trip into our past. This mess can be laid at your door. I could have, would have, had an amazing life without this…this…treasonous scheming. And you, the you you are now, you’re clearly just the same.”
“And? You must leave her be this time, or time will echo. Trust me.”
“You are spoiling everything! My dream…”
“Oh. I’ve destroyed your dream of travelling the universe with her? Is that the underlying theme? Jealousy? Are you accusing me of jealousy, Doctor? I’m trying to spoil your voyage on a mystic marriage to the ends of time, is that it? Out of jealousy, because she chose you, and I wasn’t even in with a chance. If I can’t have her you certainly won’t, is that what you think of me? Ha! To my mind the better man lost, isn’t that the saying? No matter.”
“I believe her death mattered to you. Enough to force my other self into committing treason. I see now that you act on many levels, not all of them pure. Something burns within you. And it’s warped, evil. Dangerous. Regenerating at birth warped your sensibilities.”
“You’re imagining things.”
“I thought it would be better when we qualified. Remember? When I talked you out of some mad rebellious action. Now look at the mess we’re in.”
“We’ll settle, you said. We are of Nobl…”
“…Noble birth you and I, trust me and do not resign yourself to a lifestyle outwith Time Lord society. Stirring words.”
“And why not Doctor, for they were your own.”
“I feel lost. Lost, betrayed, because of something which never happened in my future. Look at us. Arguing. Not debating. You, saying I’m accusing you of jealousy. I’m wondering if we can use the word friend. Sorry we did this. It’s madness to suppose everything could have fallen apart in our future, had we not acted as we did. Why trust our other selves? They might have lied. Things should have been simple. So much easier than they turned out to be…”
“Your anxiety is natural. We’ve both reconsidered our positions so many times now, that it isn’t sane to be free of anxiety. Anxiety is the order of the day. Now we have new lives.”
“School’s over.”
“Rubbish. Our education’s beginning! You’ve found the capacity to display the rebellious sentiments I held…before you talked me out of them!”
“I was wrong to talk you out of some misplaced adventure, I suppose. Ultimately, I see misplaced adventure might be the very thing I need, now.”
“We both need it.”
“What’ll I say to her? I can’t surrender my freedom. Will you support me?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“No. We’re in this together.”
“Obviously.”
beep beep beep beep beep beep
beep beep beep beep beep beep
“Ah, the fair Professor. Well Doctor, we’ve tarried too long. Feel free to use the facilities, while you don’t discuss things with her. I’ll…go and see to…this and that. Tidy up a few loose ends.”
“Erasing the data?”
“Of course. Mustn’t forget, must I.”
“Thank you, old friend.”
“Try not to look too relieved.”
“I thought, on the matter of the data, that you’d betray me.”
“Me, Doctor? Perish the thought. Door open! Take him Professor, he’s yours.”
“Thank you. I intend to.”
“Don’t suppose you’d take me later?”
“Celibacy is the preferred option. Master.”
“Professor. Doctor.”
“Goodbye old chap. Door close!”
*
The panel closed on a seated Doctor sliding the Professor’s drink across the Master’s table. Outside, the Master’s expression twist-uglified, nearly illuminating the corridor. Weird radiation almost beamed from him as he whispered venomously to the imagined shadows.
*
“Can it be, Doctor?
“Will you repeat history?
“Time has a way of echoing.
“We have plans.
“The desire to meddle.
“To leave, and to commit grand adventure.
“Peddling and meddling from one end of the universe to the other.
“I’m glad you see the meddler’s way is the only way. Truly, you are an equal. But only if you fob her off. If you fool her. Lie. If you evade and avoid and sidestep and conceal the truth. Try not to be honest, Doctor. Anything, but that. Never rely on honesty.”
*
Not much longer now.
He examined the handful of miniature surveillance devices he’d lifted from his apartments while the Doctor’s back was turned. Good enough. They’d do the job if time echoed, as he feared it would. Somewhere in the space-time continuum, a couple of non-existent Time Lords and their future-past experiences were filtering through to the present.
It was the only way to maintain the structural integrity of time itself. Speculation. No way to check the idea except by being somehow outside time and able to observe time at the same time, but the notion felt right.
The Master triggered the energy setting on one device. Maximum. Enough to cause overload and blow the whole thing, but not just yet. Not with the tiresome toy switched off. He opened the Professor’s door and walked in, bold as you please, surveying the scene.
High rubied windows overlooking the City’s maddening spread. A privileged site. Timeless. Windows. Such extravagance. TARDISes were the Time Lords’ real windows on almost every thing and virtually every time. Such beautiful, bureaucratic, extravagance. For a beautiful bureaucrat.
The Time Lord known as the Collector would sell his own hearts to oblige a beautiful bureaucrat. Or to oblige an important ambitious witty entertaining genius. The Master remembered meeting the Collector and dismissing him as a tedious bore, a timeless entity.
A Time Lord’s Time Lord.
With one interesting obsession. The burning desire to study weaponry. To grudgingly loan it for historical research purposes, but only to the privileged trusted few. To Professorially beautiful bureaucrats, and to important ambitious Masterful genius-types. The Collector was the source of all those guns. A scan-free plasma generator for the Professor, and a scan-free stun pistol for the Master.
Poor Collector. Suicide? Mm. The Master tried to imagine the scene and scattered surveillance devices as he mused. Not much longer. Find the plasma generator. Make sure that the weapon does exist. No great difficulty.
In a non-criminal society, who would wander in and search the apartments for concealed weaponry? What a place to put it. He could rearrange time now. Fix the weapon, change the charge, but no. Time had a way of echoing. If it echoed, it echoed. He put the gun back. Providing the Doctor with a quick fix was not the way. Not challenging enough, of course!
Ah, challenge.
The surveillance devices nestled around the room, unseen. Visual only, no audio. Enough, time to be off. The Master left, closed the door, and activated the remote. Inside the Professor’s apartment, the Master’s machines began recording. One headed for spectacular overload.
They could have done it that way. Their original selves. Gone back in time, planted the surveillance devices, and, when the authorities investigated, produced visual proof that the Professor was a potential killer. Or removed the energy source from her plasma generator, but no.
He wandered the City’s dusty dustless avenues, thinking. So much would change. If she died. All historical weapon collections would be impounded or destroyed. The Collector questioned, possibly even mind-probed. Who else did you loan your weapons to? Name names.
The Master could play it two ways. Admit that he’d borrowed a stun pistol, out of curiosity. Could get away with that. Or. The news of a Time Lord’s death would spread quickly. The Collector, unstable, overcome, chooses a quick way out. Word of the Professor’s death, the cause of that rare Time Lord quirk. Suicide. Plausible.
If he kept records? Eradicate! A batch of weapons missing from a massive cache would excite much attention. But a massive cache of weapons stored in no particular order. Would be impounded. Few deep questions asked. Reform? Gallifrey was a slow place, when it came to that. But in this case, it would appear with unreal swiftness.
Weapon sensors. They’d need the best, to scent out scan-free toys.
And they’d introduce street surveillance too. Some bureaucrat had been working on the idea for a few hundred years, most likely, and his or her plans would be rushed in to stem the tide of horror and restore a sense of decency.
Restore decency. We are not the outcasts in the wilderness, after all. That sort of thing would go down well. The Master considered the scene. The Professor, dead, with visual evidence recorded. No need for anyone to use the Criminal Investigation Frequency. Easily studied.
No mind-probes.
Professor, dead. Surveillance device overloads. Look. The room is full of them. Dear Collector, a tragic suicide. No surveillance there. They’d cover that up without investigating at all. Yes. And the Doctor? He’d flee. And…
They’d take precautions against theft happening twice. TARDIS-theft. Worry about that in a little while. For now, homeward. When he finally returned to his deserted apartments, the Master saw that the communicator was flashing. High priority. A call from the Doctor, who else.
*
“Doctor?”
“I’m at her apartments. Come over.”
“Is she dead again?”
“Yes.”
*
He surveyed the scene.
High rubied windows overlooking the City, a privileged site. Furniture. Effects. Bubbling, where that shot struck the window after piercing her body. Her pale, charred, crumpled body. Shot through both hearts. But there had been a different struggle, this time. Or had there? He’d never know. She’d flown into a rage on hearing what they’d done, drawn the weapon from its hidden lair, and pushed the beam strength to maximum.
He’d struggled to survive this time, not to avoid Regeneration. He sat beside her corpse. The hole went clean to the other side. Massive. Where on Gallifrey was the Master? He should be here by now. To back him up.
*
The Master stood between capsules, wondering what to do next and when to do it. Instead of coming here to erase incriminating data, he watched and thought and decided. Details, details. He placed the Type Forty keys where they belonged. The Professor is dead again. Time had clearly echoed itself, and covert surveillance would prove the Doctor’s innocence.
Assuming she’d died trying to shoot him.
Let us assume this.
He unlocked his Type One Hundred TARDIS, stepped in, and resealed the doors. Activating the monitor, he requested life notification. Let his mind wander, impatiently. This was the best choice. More advanced. No over-designed safety measures. And no swimming pool. Those things were known to leak. He could do without petty annoyances.
His TARDIS, the TARDIS they’d not crossed the time-stream in, was the better of the two. It awaited mere routine maintenance. Yes, the best choice. Reliable. Almost perfect. The Type Forty capsule needed chameleon circuit upgrades and vital steering corrections. Routine work, in the TARDIS yards on Gallifrey. For an obsolete machine, not priority.
Quite a random vessel.
The Type Forty would serve the Doctor well, in his escape. Even the Time Lords wouldn’t be able to trace him immediately, thanks to the severity of the randomness. Might just be worth copying that particular fault. For his own nefarious use. The Doctor would overcome the random factor, in time. That chameleon circuit would blow, though. The Doctor would be stuck with some absurd exterior design wholly unsuited to the purpose of concealment.
What of the first trip, though? Imagine how it happens. The Doctor panics, and leaves. Flight Control registers a rogue exit, because he won’t use the Criminal Investigation Frequency to run silently. He’ll warp out in a blaze of publicity. Then, the investigation follows.
“Who is missing?”
“The Doctor.”
“Where are his known associates?”
“Hello Master, seen the Doctor?”
“Not since he and the Professor went to her apartments.”
“Why thank you, Master.”
“Not at all. Something wrong?”
“That doesn’t concern you.”
They check her apartments, and find…my, my. The Doctor – branded a murderer and TARDIS thief. It is most fortunate for the dear fellow that, around then, one hidden surveillance device explodes in a spectacular, though pre-arranged, energy blast. What was that, the official investigators quiver.
There might be more…why, they aren’t bombs, but hidden monitors. This one malfunctioned. See if they show the murder. Gracious, it’s the Professor who was the aggressor! So she placed monitors in her own apartments? How strange. And visual only, no sound functions.
Unfortunate.
We can’t hear what they’re saying. Can’t quite make out the words. Curse the quality of these shoddy unstable explosive surveillance devices. Charges against the Doctor drop to deserting the scene of a Time Lord’s death, and, under stress, stealing a faulty, obsolete, TARDIS. He’s placed on file under further action pending.
Yes. The Master would be questioned, but he’d nudge their investigation in the right wrong direction. They’d label the Professor subversive, trace her weapon to an incompetent historian with an unguarded armament collection, and close the case, to avoid further embarrassment. The foolish historian, poor Collector, would be dead by then.
Hearing of her demise, he’d kill himself before investigators reached him. Tragic. Imagine those uncatalogued weapons lying there for visitors to wander off with. Poor Collector. The beauty of their crime-free society was the privacy extended to unmonitored apartments, where anyone could walk through your door if they told that door to open. If they broke the cultural taboo and barged in. Which they never ever did. Unthinkable.
Utterly irresponsible. Uncatalogued weaponry. Tsk. That fool had wandered the time-stream picking up trinkets and kill-toys without a thought for the seriousness of his actions. More changes. Revised rules concerning collection of items on field-trips. Caution advised.
One slack procedural oversight, and. A tragedy! Yes. The Collector dies. Suicide. The Master would see to it personally. Outrage! Historical collections. Banned. He’d voice the idea as far, loud, and wide as possible. Just. A concerned citizen. Doing his duty. The monitor flashed. Life in the bay. Stage set. A fugitive approached.
The Master turned to the console, and, as an afterthought, hid his scan-free weapon close to the core where, even if a one-hearted search were made, it would easily be overlooked. The Master linked his more advanced TARDIS to the Doctor’s primitive machine. There was no one aboard the Doctor’s TARDIS to block the link.
“Transfer Harmony Criminal Investigation Frequency data from that TARDIS to paper records in Reserve Archive room aboard this TARDIS. Erase Harmony computer record aboard that TARDIS. Now erase computer memory of all commands covering the last six…Earth…years.”
He’d promised to erase the data stored in the Doctor’s TARDIS. The Master had said nothing of keeping such information for his own files. He wasn’t fool enough to store the information in his own vehicle’s memory. The information spooled out on a primitive paper storage reel in the depths of his own machine. Now he really set to work. In order for the Master to escape, the Doctor had to escape first. Then the dust had to settle.
“Copy Type One Hundred keys. Erase memory of key duplication including memory of this order. Conduct memory scrub of all vital and mundane functions, until the arrival of other TARDISes in this bay, and ensure erasure of these words I’m speaking now.”
– beep –
A spare set of TARDIS keys popped into his hands. They were still warm from creation when he pocketed them. Now the incriminating evidence in records had been transferred to paper files. Only the Doctor and the Master held a positive mania for the printed page, a character-trait considered almost aberrant in the average Gallifreyan.
The Master thought ahead, to maintenance reviews. Records of doors opening and closing. Gone. An unusual gap in TARDIS memory. Who would connect the Gallifreyan equivalent time with the Earth’s equivalent measure? A gap of six Earth years leading up to the Doctor’s departure. The memory gap would be dismissed as one of the minor problems harrying an obsolete machine, one of the legendary long-ago semi-obscured reasons for maintenance storage.
What of the scan-free weapon, nestling inside the console? He couldn’t keep that in his apartments or on his person, now. Best place for it, where the thing wouldn’t be noticed. This Type One Hundred didn’t need core maintenance. Had he thought of everything? No, but that didn’t bother him. The idea delighted his agile mind.
Yes. Maintenance security tightens, after this. They’d remove the remaining Type One Hundred’s keys to prevent further rogue flights. Obviously, they’d broadly review other security risks. Especially use of the Criminal Investigation Frequency. Not that they’d suspect its use. They’d just tighten everything and hope for the best.
Procedural change – ensure activation by Presidential computer order only. Signed by High Council majority, most likely. Criminal Investigation Frequency might even be switched off for good. Well, it was fun while it lasted.
The Doctor finally stepped from hiding, tried the Type One Hundred doors, scowled, walked to the second TARDIS, paused, and stared back. Scared. Hoping the data was gone, you saw that in his face. He’d be pleased to see this was the case, when he stepped inside his new Type Forty TARDIS. The Doctor had come looking for you. Hoping to find a missing Type One Hundred TARDIS.
With time against the Doctor, there was nothing he could do. The poor fellow had no choice. It was a question of taking the keys in reach. The Doctor stepped inside, and dematerialised his new time machine. Gone. Not quite.
The Master tracked him beyond Gallifrey, though soon lost him. He opened the doors, placed the original keys where he’d found them, and walked casually across the bay in the general direction of his own quarters.
Three Type One-Fifty capsules materialised seconds after he stepped around the nearest corner. Too little, too late. Slack Time Lord procedure. Not paying attention in Flight Control? Should’ve warped in to secure the area as soon as the unauthorised departure triggered the alarm. Some poor fool would get it in the neck for that one. He smiled to himself as he walked home. A child could do this.
Of course, in Gallifreyan terms, he was.
They came for him late, if Time Lord actions could properly be described as such on Gallifrey, late in the endless day, looking for missing inhabitants. The Doctor? He pointed toward the Professor’s lair. Being so famously linked with the Doctor, he was first to be told.
And first to be informed that the Doctor was not a murderer, merely a confused and frightened TARDIS thief, when the exploding surveillance device drew attention to a room full of recording machines. Why had the Professor placed machines in her own apartments?
The Master was sympathetic. Not distraught, yet saddened to hear of a second Time Lord’s death not long after the news became public. Just before that Time Lord was due to be interrogated on the matter of a massive yet unprotected and uncatalogued collection of phenomenal weaponry.
Unquestionably suicide.
Tragedy compounded tragedy.
Horrific.
They sealed the Type One Hundred and secured the keys.
Reviews were under way.
His plan, set.
In ten years. (Earth or Gallifreyan?)
He’d leave a message, saying he was off to bring the Doctor back.
Ten years. As meaningless to the Master as his message promising to return the Doctor. He’d do as the Doctor did. Grab a TARDIS, and potter around the universe, from one end of time to the next. Meddling. Lording over Time.
Having developed a fondness for challenge, he’d leave one tiny conundrum. The Time Lords wouldn’t stop him. They’d be happy to have someone out there, tracking the Doctor down. Even though he had no such intention. He’d leave them wondering how he stole a TARDIS after the security clampdown. The Master smiled.
*** *** ***
One night in 1933.
The Doctor simply never spoke of it. His friend had become an enemy to the entire universe. The Master had obviously stolen that Type One Hundred TARDIS. There were things a Type Forty could handle that no other type of TARDIS could.
Fate had handed the Doctor his trusty TARDIS. And now, a countless age later, it was up to him to find a way to save that TARDIS. He stared at the portrait of the Master. Forget him. And the past. You can’t alter the past without consequence. That sorry business involving the Professor taught you that. Time echoes. Even Time Lords have their limits.
The Doctor closed his eyes and thought of Rose. He couldn’t expose her to this sort of danger. The Master was gone. That man, in the painting, had Regenerated. The Doctor was trapped in the Master’s past. He couldn’t stop the Master. The Doctor had to make sure that the Master escaped the time trap, in order to meet the Doctor’s past self in the Master’s future.
Bluntly, the fate of the entire space-time continuum was at risk. If the Doctor failed to handle the Master’s past with great delicacy. The thought of it gave the Doctor a headache. He no longer had to make sure that he travelled to 1923 to leave clues for himself to read in 1933…
The clues they’d studied were the Master’s clues. Nothing meaningful for Rose to deduce. No quirky personal messages from herself in the past. The Doctor had to be ultra-careful. Perhaps he’d be forced to take a back seat. But he couldn’t expose Rose to the danger.
Had he a choice? His most loyal, most faithful, companion had been with him since the start of his adventures through time and space. Through Time and Space. He owed the TARDIS. And he owed Rose. But he would never do this for the Master. Only to preserve the Master’s part in the Doctor’s own past. Opening his eyes, the Time Lord prepared his plan of attack.
