Shada

by Douglas Adams

  The Doctor peered over her shoulder at the print-out and pointed. ‘Look there.’

  Clare gulped. ‘A minus sign. Minus twenty thousand years…’ She looked helplessly up at him. ‘What does that mean, Doctor?’

  ‘It means,’ he said, ‘not only that the book is not a book, but that time is running backwards over it.’ His features took on a particularly stern and forbidding aspect. ‘I think I’d better return it to my friends as soon as possible, don’t you?’

  He held out a hand.

  Clare knew that if she handed the book to him she would never see him or it again. An entire new world of amazing possibilities would be closed to her for ever, and she would wonder to the end of her days about the last crazy twenty minutes. On top of that, Chris would probably go ballistic over the loss to science and the forfeiture of his amazing, if accidental, discovery.

  But somehow, Clare knew, the book wanted to go with the Doctor. It felt the same way about him as she did. He was the right pair of hands.

  So she handed it over.

  For the first time, the Doctor touched the book. Clare watched as, the moment it touched his skin, he flinched and stood back, his eyes closing involuntarily. A seraphic smile formed on his lips. What was he seeing, she wondered?

  Then his eyes opened and he waved cheerily to her. ‘Thank you, Clare Keightley. It’s been a pleasure working with you. I’ve rather missed your sort.’

  ‘Can’t I come with you?’ Clare protested.

  ‘I think it’ll be much safer if you stay here and wait for your friend Parsons,’ said the Doctor. ‘Goodbye! Sorry we didn’t get to do any running!’

  And then he burst out of the lab and was gone.

  Chapter 22

  THE BELLS OF Cambridge struck six.

  Skagra sat in the passenger seat of the brown Capri, considering his next move. The book was the antepenultimate part of his plan, a precisely detailed scheme to which he had devoted most of his life. So where was the book now? Where had the Professor hidden it?

  He pressed the tips of his fingers around the cold metallic surface of the sphere and accessed the mind most recently added to it.

  He flinched as he anticipated the full force of Chronotis’s mind, the mind of a Time Lord, bursting into his own. He blinked, for once taken by surprise.

  This was it? What he felt now might once have been a powerful mind. Now it was nothing but greyness, mist and confusion.

  A faintly unpleasant taste surged at Skagra from the melee of Chronotis’s thoughts. It was a weak, warm sensation with an aroma of scorched plant material, and for some reason it was accompanied by the letter T. Skagra cast it back, searching deeper.

  Suddenly, from out of the greyness, a large shape began to form. This was more like it, thought Skagra. Whatever this thing was, it was at the heart of Chronotis’s deepest thoughts. It was roughly circular, a hoop of some kind, with a web of netting suspended from it, and a metallic strut at one end.

  The object got larger and larger, and Skagra concentrated harder and harder, trying to divine its meaning.

  Letters formed beneath the object.

  S, I, E, V, E.

  Skagra suppressed his irritation and rejected the object. It was irrelevant.

  He pushed deeper, aiming to bypass the general disorder and access recent memory traces.

  He saw himself in Chronotis’s rooms, from the Professor’s viewpoint.

  No – he needed to go further back.

  He pushed deeper still.

  The mental image disintegrated in a haze of grey and then reformed in a different pattern. This time it showed a tall figure with a long scarf. The face of the man was hazy, unformed. The Professor had clearly attempted to hide the man’s identity. Futile. Skagra immediately recognised it as the Doctor. Did he have the book?

  No – that was suddenly clear. The Doctor had gone to fetch the book from Young Parsons.

  Skagra concentrated, trying to break through and bring up an image of this Young Parsons. The grey veil lifted for a moment and he was suddenly seeing through Chronotis’s eyes again. He was busying himself preparing the T liquid in an antechamber of his dwelling. Skagra was distantly aware of a twittering noise from the main room. The twittering noise asked something about borrowing some books about carbon dating and the Professor said something about creative disarray –

  Skagra felt Chronotis’s mind slipping away from him. Again the metal loop appeared, the sieve.

  For all his slippery forgetfulness and senility, Chronotis had still evidently retained some of the mental training and telepathic discipline of a Time Lord.

  These efforts at concealment would almost certainly have proved fatal.

  Skagra made one final attempt and demanded all Chronotis’s knowledge of the book.

  Chapter 23

  CHRIS LOOKED ANXIOUSLY as Romana leant over the Professor, her face lit eerily by the green glow of the collar and the red eye-screen of K-9.

  ‘The collar’s working,’ she told Chris. ‘K-9, is there any trace of conscious thought?’

  K-9’s radar-dish ears twizzled. In some way, thought Chris, he must be able to connect wirelessly with the collar. ‘Processing data, Mistress.’ There was a pause, then he added, ‘It is too early to tell.’

  ‘Good,’ said Chris.

  Romana’s eyebrows shot up. ‘What do you mean, good? What’s good about any of this?’

  ‘Well, don’t you see?’ asked Chris, who thought it was obvious. ‘When one works as a scientist, one doesn’t always know where one’s going, or that there even is anywhere for one to go, only that there are always going to be big doors that stay permanently shut to one.’ Chris had often noticed that when he was at his very best, when he was communicating the abstract (and yet concrete) wonder of the scientific method, that people tended to assume an enthralled, glazed expression, as if he was opening their minds to entirely new ways of thinking. He was delighted to see that even Romana eyes seemed to be frosting over, and K-9’s tail antenna had drooped as if in fascination.

  Chris waved a hand around the room, taking in the dog, the collar and the police box. ‘You see, I look at all this. And suddenly I know that a lot of things that seem impossible are possible, so yes, that’s why I say “good”—’

  K-9 made a peculiar noise, almost as if he was clearing his throat. ‘Mistress!’ he said. ‘The Professor’s condition is rapidly deteriorating!’

  Chris was astonished to see tears forming in Romana’s eyes. ‘Oh, K-9, isn’t there anything we can do?’

  K-9’s head lowered. ‘Negative, Mistress. The condition is terminal.’

  Chris almost put out a hand to console Romana but stopped himself.

  K-9’s eye-screen flashed. ‘Minimal cerebral impulses detected, Mistress!’

  The Professor’s dry cracked lips moved. ‘He’s trying to talk to us?’ gasped Chris.

  ‘Negative,’ said K-9. ‘The speech centres of the Professor’s brain are completely inoperative.’

  Romana checked the Professor’s chest, both sides, again.

  ‘Well,’ Chris said sadly, ‘the collar was a good idea but it doesn’t seem to be helping—’

  ‘Shhh!!!’ Romana said sharply, and to his astonishment Chris found he couldn’t say another word.

  ‘K-9, amplify the Professor’s hearts beats!’

  K-9 extended the probe from his eye-screen to the middle of the Professor’s chest. Suddenly a throbbing double pulse beat filled the room, fast and irregular.

  Romana clapped her hands together. ‘Brilliant! The Professor is a brave and clever man.’ She waved to Chris. ‘Listen!’

  Chris listened. The pulse beats were wildly irregular, thumping fast then slow then fast again. It didn’t sound very healthy at all. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘He’s beating his hearts in Gallifreyan Morse!’ she cried. She leant over the body. ‘Professor, I can hear you! What do you want to tell us?’

  The pulse beats resounded. Romana tran
slated the message slowly. ‘Beware… the… sphere. Beware… Skagra. Beware… Shada.’

  The heartbeats stopped suddenly.

  ‘Professor!’ cried Romana.

  ‘All life function has now ceased, Mistress,’ said K-9. ‘Professor Chronotis is dead.’

  Chapter 24

  THE DOCTOR PEDALLED furiously through the twilit streets of Cambridge, an ancient and dangerous Gallifreyan artefact of potentially terrifying power sitting rather casually in the woven wicker basket attached to the handlebars of his bike. The Doctor rounded a sharp corner, emerging onto one of the footbridges that criss-crossed the Cam, tinging his bell to clear the way, though there was nobody to be seen. It did add a much-needed sense of urgency, he felt.

  Suddenly, as the Doctor’s bike started up the cobbled incline of the bridge, he saw a man striding forcefully in his direction. As the man reached the crest of the bridge, he stopped and stood still, right in the Doctor’s path. Even a barrage of irritated tings wouldn’t get him out of the way. The Doctor had no choice but to brake hard, wobble a bit, and slither to a halt a few feet in front of the fellow.

  He was a tall, slender, fair-haired man wearing ordinary Earth clothes of the period which didn’t seem to quite fit him. In one hand he carried a large carpet bag.

  By the sodium glow of Cambridge’s municipal street lights, the Doctor stared hard into the man’s eyes. They were cold, icy blue, with an almost staggering condescension behind them. Otherwise his face was blank, lent a slightly sinister note by what looked like a duelling scar across the left cheek.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry, am I in your way? Or are you in mine?’ the Doctor enquired.

  The stranger ignored this remark.

  ‘It’s just that I’m on a rather important errand, and—’

  ‘Doctor,’ the man said, simply and emotionlessly.

  The Doctor blinked in surprise. ‘Though it’s terribly flattering to be recognised,’ he said, spreading his arms in apology, ‘I simply don’t have the time for autographs right now.’ His tone changed, suddenly serious. ‘But if I did, who would I be making it out to?’

  The man’s eyes never left the Doctor’s. ‘I am Skagra,’ he stated. ‘I want the book.’

  The Doctor smiled broadly. ‘Well, I’m the Doctor and you can’t have it.’

  Again, there was no flicker of reaction from Skagra. ‘So you possess it? And yet you attempt to hide it from me?’ he asked.

  The Doctor waved a hand airily. ‘Yes, I suppose I do. But don’t worry, it’ll be taken to a place of safety.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Oh, just a little place of safety I have in mind.’

  Skagra lowered his carpet bag to the ground and a small grey sphere suddenly shot out of it, hovering next to its master’s right hand. Skagra glanced at the sphere, then back to the Doctor.

  ‘What you have in mind, Doctor, you will reveal to me. In fact, everything that you have in your mind will be mine.’

  The Doctor leant forward over the handlebars of the bike and looked Skagra up and down, casually letting a length of his scarf fall into the basket as he did so, covering the book. He pulled a disparaging face. ‘Do you know, I’m not mad about your tailor,’ he said.

  Skagra’s face betrayed no reaction, but the sphere at his side gave a small jerk, as if anxious to begin its work. From it came the babble of inhuman voices the Doctor had heard before. But there was something different about it. Another voice had been added to the hubbub, a vague, scratchy voice the Doctor thought he recognised.

  With a small gesture, as if handling a well-trained dog, Skagra released the sphere and it flew straight for the Doctor’s head.

  With a violent kick, the Doctor shot his bike backwards, using the downward curve of the bridge to gain momentum. At the bottom, he wrenched the handlebars around and described a perfect 90-degree turn, only wobbling very slightly in the process. As the sphere zoomed after its prey, the Doctor gave another mighty kick, then began pedalling furiously away from his pursuer, heading back into the narrow Cambridge streets.

  Skagra watched as the absurd figure on the absurd vehicle vanished into the darkness, the sphere close behind. He turned smartly and began to walk in the opposite direction. He now had full access to the dead human’s knowledge of this dwelling area. He knew precisely where he needed to be.

  The Doctor tinged his bicycle bell for all he was worth. It was typical, really. Now he was fleeing for his life from a presumably homicidal alien device, the people of Cambridge seemed not to want to miss all the fun. The streets were teeming with life. Innocent people with no clue of the danger they were in from the Doctor’s spherical stalker. Not to mention the Doctor himself. He’d passed his cycling proficiency test, he was sure, but it had been a few centuries back and in a different body with a different centre of balance. Frankly he was more than a little out of practice.

  He sped around the corner of one of the grand college buildings and found himself on a collision course with a cluster of undergraduates gathered beneath a lamp post, singing at the top of their voices. The Doctor swerved desperately, causing one of the choristers to jump back in fright and momentarily spoiling the harmonies of a very good a cappella Chattanooga Choo Choo. The Doctor sped on, waving in apology and tinging his bell to punctuate a downbeat, reflecting that ham and eggs in Carolina would have been considerably finer than his current predicament. He risked a look over his shoulder and saw the sphere rounding that same corner, luckily ignoring the surprised students as it fixed again on its quarry.

  The Doctor turned back to the road ahead. Now this looked more promising. He had a straight run and began to pedal with ever more energy, trying to get as much distance as possible between himself and the sphere. It all seemed to be going surprisingly smoothly, and he allowed himself a momentary hope that nothing could possibly go wrong –

  And then he reached the crossroads. Directly ahead of him, milling over a zebra crossing, cameras slung around their necks, was an enormous gaggle of Japanese tourists, snapping away at the buildings, the lamp posts and even the crossing beneath their feet. If they started snapping at the sphere, thought the Doctor, it was more than likely to start snapping back. So he braked hard and looked desperately to the turnings on either side of him.

  The left turn was completely blocked by an enormous truck, with almost equally enormous men in denim jeans and black T-shirts lugging musical instruments and amplifiers into an adjacent building. The truck, the men and the amplifiers were all emblazoned with a Latin motto. So, thought the Doctor, he couldn’t go that way either – he had no wish to upset the status quo.

  Desperately, the Doctor looked to his right. Down that way, to his horror, he saw a chapel disgorging nun after nun after nun until the street was black with them. For goodness’ sakes, thought the Doctor, why weren’t all these tourists, roadies and nuns at home watching television on a Saturday evening like normal people.

  The babbling noise of the sphere was getting closer. He risked a quick look behind him and saw it zooming down the street, almost upon him.

  That was when his eyes alighted on a small, narrow alley, running parallel to the street on his right. He had no choice, he’d have to chance it.

  He kicked off and swerved into the alley, bouncing heavily on its cobbled surface. The alley was barely wide enough for the Doctor’s broad form. His elbows and shoulders knocked against the brickwork as he frantically made for the patch of lamplight at the far end.

  Suddenly, with a screech of brakes, a brown car slammed to a halt ahead of the Doctor, totally blocking the only way out of the tiny alley. Only seconds from a collision, the Doctor was forced once more to brake hard. The wheels of his bicycle locked and he found himself propelled over the handlebars, landing painfully on the stone cobbles several feet in front of his former conveyance.

  The Doctor groaned and looked up. The door of the car which had so effectively barred his escape clicked open –

  And Skagra stepped out,
casually slipping on a pair of immaculate white gloves. He looked down at the sprawled figure of the Doctor with no appreciable reaction. The Doctor looked behind him and saw the sphere approaching fast from the other end of the alley. There was no way out. Instinctively, the Doctor pushed himself backwards on hands and knees, trying reach the basket of the toppled bike. The book was the most important thing, after all.

  The basket was empty.

  Though the sphere was now only feet away, Skagra’s voice made him turn.

  ‘At last,’ Skagra was saying as he reached down to pick up The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey from where it had fallen, knocked from the basket along with the Doctor, and until he’d gone and crawled off it, shielded by the Time Lord’s formidable bulk. The Doctor cursed inwardly – he’d virtually handed his precious charge to the enemy!

  The sphere was almost upon him.

  With an almighty effort, the Doctor leapt to his feet, grabbed the toppled bike and flung it up at the sphere. The bike hit the sphere’s metallic surface with a clang, sending it skittering through the air and back down the alley.

  The Doctor, panting with exertion, whipped round – to see the brown car carrying Skagra, book and all, speeding away into the Cambridge night.

  Suddenly, like a bullet from a gun, the sphere shot back up the alley behind him, buzzing almost angrily. It began to whizz at head-height, lightning-fast, in a circle around the Doctor. It was too fast to make a break in any direction.

  The Doctor was trapped.

  The hissing, whispering voices grew louder and louder, and the Doctor clapped his hands to his ears. The sphere dived at him, sending him sprawling on to the cobbles with a smack.

  He cried out as he felt the cold impress of the sphere on his forehead, plucking at the edges of his consciousness. Then it began to suck out the Doctor’s mind.