Shada

by Douglas Adams

  Chris Parsons slept.

  Chapter 29

  THE DAWN’S EARLY light shone through the blinds of the physics lab, where Clare Keightley still sat slumped on the uncomfortable plastic chair. The magpie pecked on the window, probably coincidentally. Clare slept on.

  Finally, Clare woke up. It took her a moment to emerge from the latest stage of her dream, in which she had been loading her packed boxes into the hands of the Doctor, who was smiling encouragingly. But where was Chris? Why wasn’t he there with her, starting off on this amazing journey? ‘Aha!’ the Doctor was saying, but she didn’t want his ‘Aha!’ – she wanted Chris’s ‘Aha!’ And where was Chris?

  Now, as she blinked the sleep out of her eyes, the question remained. Where was Chris?

  She got up, stretched, then automatically checked her watch – it was, incredibly, half past seven. The events of the previous day, strange as they had been at the time, had been stripped of their mystique by the cold sunlight.

  She shook her head. Hold on. A bloke had told her to stay put – in fact, two blokes had told her to stay put, and she had meekly obeyed. When had she become the female lab assistant in a Fifties sci-fi B-movie, staying behind while the men went off to do mysterious and dangerous things that she was just there to react to? She wasn’t going to make tea and ask the obvious questions for anybody.

  She devised a new plan – she would find Chris, shout at him, demand to know everything she’d missed, then storm home and pack her boxes and set off for her new life.

  She grabbed the lab’s phone and dialled the number of Chris’s flat. She gave it a good twenty rings. He wasn’t going to have a lie-in today.

  But there was no answer.

  So she’d have to check with this Professor Chronotis. She got down a directory and flipped through until she found him – P-14, St Cedd’s. There was, very irritatingly, no phone number.

  She’d just have to storm over there and demand answers. However, in the sobering morning light of reasonableness, bursting in to the study of an old don that she had never met before at eight on a Sunday morning shouting, ‘Where’s that bloke I’m not interested in and don’t care about, and what was all that guff about that book anyway and who was that Doctor guy with the scarf?’ seemed an arbitrary and slightly emotional thing to do.

  So she scooped up the other books Chris had borrowed from Chronotis, the return of which would give her the perfect cover. She was a busy person, a level-headed, sensible academic, just returning some books, that was all.

  She didn’t want to admit to herself that she was terribly worried about Chris and terribly worried about the book.

  Chris needed looking after, he was an idiot.

  She put her coat on and set off for St Cedd’s.

  Chapter 30

  BERNARD STRONG SETTLED himself down on his fold-out stool, adjusted his hat, settled the bait box by his feet, raised his rod and cast off.

  He’d turned up early and got one of the best spots on this stretch of the Cam, along the water meadows a couple of miles outside the city. He had no real intention of landing anything good, he just wanted to clear out of the house before the missus woke up and gave him what-for after his late homecoming the night before.

  Suddenly he saw a grey metal sphere, about the size of a football, hovering in mid-air some distance away down the curve of the river. He watched in astonishment as it zoomed forward with short, aggressive spurts of energy. What the heck was that thing? Some remote-control gizmo, a computer thing? Or perhaps a satellite, another bit of Skylab? If so, it might be worth a bob or two. If nothing else it was casting a shadow and would scare the fish.

  Without really thinking about the logic of what he was doing, Bernard stood up and drew back his line from the water. He waited until the metal football-thing was within his reach and jabbed the end of his fishing rod at it.

  The rod slipped off the side of the ball with a metallic scrape. Then the ball stopped in mid-air and turned on its axis, as if somehow it was adjusting itself to look at Bernard.

  It made a loud buzzing noise, like an angry wasp trapped in a biscuit tin, and zoomed forward. Bernard felt its cold metal surface touch his forehead –

  Then there was a pain in the back of his head, sharp and searing – and then nothing.

  The mindless body of Bernard Strong pitched forward into the River Cam.

  The sphere zizzed angrily past him, heading out into the empty water meadows.

  It had been silent in the TARDIS control room for so long that Romana jumped when K-9’s high-pitched voice suddenly rasped out, ‘Master! Mistress!’

  The Doctor, who had said not one word after settling down in the chair the night before, woke with a start and leapt for the console.

  ‘Have you got something, K-9?’

  ‘Affirmative, Master,’ said K-9. ‘The sphere is active: 5.7 miles distant at bearing 4.378. Velocity 15.3—’

  ‘Good dog!’ said Romana.

  The Doctor punched new coordinates into the navigation panel with incredible speed, his fingers a blur. ‘We might still be in time,’ he told Romana. ‘Get Parsons up here!’

  Chris was jolted from sleep by the insistent ring-ring of an ordinary-sounding telephone.

  He looked around the guest suite. There was no telephone.

  He leapt out of bed, feeling rested and refreshed. The ringing continued – but where was the phone?

  He looked into the mirror – and suddenly he saw, instead of his own reflection, Romana. ‘Chris, we’ve picked up the sphere!’ she called urgently. ‘The control room, quick!’

  Her image disappeared.

  Chris reached for his clothes, which had somehow been pressed and cleaned and sat in a neat pile on the dresser. He was just getting into his trousers when a tremendous lurch sent the room spinning, as if the whole TARDIS had jerked to one side.

  Clare evaded the porter of St Cedd’s with ease. She waited until the little bespectacled man had unlocked the big padlock on the gate at 8 a.m. sharp, gave him another minute to start making his rounds, then slipped into the courtyard and headed for the corner which she assumed was the P Block. She didn’t fancy any rigmarole with a porter on top of everything else.

  She entered the long wooden-panelled corridor, the books on carbon dating clutched in one hand, and counted off the doors from P-1 down and around a corner. She was starting to feel more than a little ridiculous. There was probably going to be a perfectly reasonable, rational answer to yesterday’s events, after all.

  As she neared room P-14, she heard an unearthly noise, like huge and ancient engines grinding into life. And all the strangeness flooded back, worse than ever.

  What the hell was going on in there? She had a nightmare vision of Chris, the Doctor and the Professor standing around a machine that was about to explode – perhaps that was the explanation, they’d spent the night in there trying to scan that bloody book, and now it was going to kill them all…

  She ran for the door of P-14. The noise was definitely coming from inside, though now thankfully it was starting to fade away.

  She pounded on the door with her free hand, calling, ‘Professor Chronotis! Chris!’

  There was no answer. The groaning machine-noise slipped away completely.

  Clare tried the door and was surprised to find it open.

  She burst in.

  The room looked as if a bomb had hit it, with books pulled from their shelves littering the place. There were seven broken teacups. Chris’s denim jacket, the one that he never went anywhere without, lay abandoned on the floor. There was no sign of him or anybody else. In the far corner there was a large, square indentation over carpet and scattered books.

  Her mind started racing. All the worry she’d been repressing behind her anger surged up. What if the book had exploded or something – she wouldn’t put anything past it – vaporising whatever scanning device had stood on the spot groaning like that, and taking everybody in the room with it?

  She
shook herself. Things like that just didn’t happen. But then she remembered the book and Chris’s disappearance.

  The fear flooded back. She had to get help.

  She dropped the books and pelted out of the room.

  Wilkin had completed his first circuit of inspection on this fine Sunday morning. Apart from an inappropriately placed traffic cone and a pink-painted policeman’s helmet, there was nothing especially amiss in the grounds of St Cedd’s. The weather looked hopeful, with tinges of blue fighting through the cloud-covered sky. He stowed the cone and the helmet in his little office and was thinking of breakfast when he looked up suddenly. Through the little window of the office he saw a shape – a female shape, a young female shape – running pell-mell towards the gates. He recognised the signs at once. The mussed-up hair, yesterday’s creased clothes, the smudged make-up, the air of panic and shame. But this girl obviously had no real experience of the Sunday morning escape.

  He stepped out into the courtyard and raised his bowler hat to her. ‘Good morning, miss,’ he said with all the severity he could muster on these occasions. He preferred to turn a blind eye, but she had made that impossible by clomping across the grass like a scalded gazelle.

  To his surprise she altered her course, running right up to him. ‘I need your help,’ she gasped.

  This was new, thought Wilkin. He hoped to God she wasn’t going to consult him on contraceptive advice.

  ‘I will help you all I can, miss, within college rules,’ said Wilkin.

  ‘Have you seen Professor Chronotis this morning?’

  ‘Now, now, calm down,’ said Wilkin, instantly dismissing the possibly of any hanky-panky in this scenario. Professor Chronotis was far too old for that sort of thing, certainly not a roué. He seemed such a nice old man, in fact. ‘Isn’t he in his room, P-14?’

  ‘No, I’ve just come from there,’ the girl said breathlessly.

  Wilkin frowned. ‘You spent the night with Professor Chronotis?’

  ‘No,’ said the girl, ‘I’ve just arrived here, I slipped in, you must have been making your rounds. The Professor isn’t in his room, nobody is, that’s the point.’

  ‘Peculiar,’ said Wilkin. ‘The Professor certainly hasn’t left the college since he returned from a shopping trip yesterday morning.’

  ‘Could you have missed him as well?’ pointed out the girl.

  Wilkin was rankled now. ‘Certainly not, miss. Professor Chronotis has, in my experience, always exited and re-entered this college in a civilised and entirely appropriate manner.’

  ‘What about Chris Parsons, he’s vanished too,’ the girl went on. ‘Tall, dark hair, denim jacket, looks a bit hopeless but sort of sweet with it…’

  Wilkin nodded, back on familiar ground. ‘Mr Christopher Parsons, physics postgraduate of St John’s College, arrived here by bicycle at 6.20 p.m. to visit Professor Chronotis.’

  ‘And did you see him go?’

  ‘I’m rather afraid not, miss,’ said Wilkin. ‘I assumed he was joining the Professor and Miss Romana. Their friend the Doctor had gone out at 6.15 p.m.’

  ‘And when did the Doctor get back?’ asked the girl.

  ‘He did not return last night, miss,’ said Wilkin. ‘And I am quite, quite certain that I could not ever miss him.’

  The girl seemed to be concentrating hard, trying to fit things together. ‘So – the Doctor never got back with the book. So – where are the Professor and Chris?’

  Wilkin said reassuringly, ‘No need to worry. I’m sure they’ll be around somewhere. If you want to leave a message, I’ll see the Professor gets it.’

  The girl shook her head. ‘No, you don’t understand. Three men are missing, and it has something to do with a book.’

  ‘A book, miss?’ Wilkin was beginning to wonder about this young lady’s state of mind.

  ‘Yes, a book!’ said Clare. ‘A book, and I think it’s a terribly dangerous book.’

  Wilkin frowned. ‘Well, what I say is, people shouldn’t write things if they don’t want people to read them.’

  The girl groaned. ‘No, you still don’t understand, it’s the book itself. It defies all analysis, it’s blown up a spectrograph, it seems to be minus twenty thousand years old and now, on top of all that, the three of them have vanished!’

  Wilkin had maintained his blandest smile in this face of this onslaught of a sentence. ‘All right, miss,’ he said. ‘I’m sure we can sort this all out. I tell you what, you go back to his room, and I’ll ring around the College and see where he’s got to.’

  ‘His room!’ exclaimed the girl. ‘That’s another thing! It looks like a bomb’s hit it, there was a wheezing, groaning noise and books are just thrown around all over the place.’

  Wilkin smiled. ‘Ah yes. That’s quite normal. Our Professor Chronotis has his own ideas about tidiness and order. He will not permit the cleaning staff to enter, and in a college with such ancient and venerable plumbing as St Cedd’s, one hears the most awful noises from the pipes. The wheezing and groaning you heard was probably Professor Gillespie in P-18 running his Sunday morning bath.’

  The girl made one last protest, ‘But—’

  ‘Just wait in P-14, I’ll sort the whole thing out,’ said Wilkin. ‘Believe me, there’s nothing that can surprise me in this job.’

  The girl stared at Wilkin for a moment longer, then turned on her heel and stalked back across the grass towards the Professor’s rooms.

  Wilkin shook his head and rolled his eyes. ‘All this fuss about a book. I don’t know, they’ll publish anything nowadays.’

  He slipped back into the lodge. Those phone calls could wait until after breakfast.

  Chapter 31

  CHRIS ENTERED THE control room of the TARDIS, breathless from his run up from the guest suite. The big glass column in the centre of the console was coming to a halt, which Chris guessed was a signal that this miraculous craft had arrived at its destination.

  Before he had time to say good morning, the Doctor had wrenched the red lever on the console and dived out of the big white doors as they opened. Chris followed Romana and K-9 outside.

  The TARDIS had brought them to a place Chris recognised. These were the big water meadows outside the city. The autumn air was chill and spotted with fine drizzle.

  The Doctor had already run to the river’s edge, where he stood sombrely examining an angler’s fold-out seat and a small collection of fishing ephemera.

  ‘We were too late,’ he said grimly, nodding to the river, where a body floated, face down.

  Chris swallowed hard. ‘Why did the sphere attack him?’

  ‘Probably he tried to attack it,’ theorised the Doctor. ‘It must have a defence program of sorts.’

  Chris stood back from the river, shaking himself. Suddenly he saw two things. At the edge of the big meadow they had arrived in, a brown Capri was parked, very badly. And passing the Capri at that moment, zigzagging erratically and slowly from side to side in what he could have sworn was a sulky, frustrated manner, was the sphere he’d heard so much about.

  ‘There!’ he called, pointing out to the meadow.

  The others turned and followed his finger.

  They watched as the sphere disappeared. But this was not like the dematerialisations of the TARDIS or the body of the Professor. Chris watched in amazement as the top section of the sphere was swallowed up by nothingness. Then the middle vanished, then the bottom. It was as if it had been gulped up by some huge invisible monster.

  Chris was secretly pleased to see that the Doctor and Romana looked almost as perplexed by this as he felt.

  ‘Did you just see what I didn’t see?’ asked the Doctor, crunching forward over the long, dew-sodden grass.

  ‘No,’ said Romana, following him.

  ‘Neither did I,’ said Chris, following her. K-9 sped forward past the Doctor, leading their party, his gun probe extended from his snout.

  ‘It just vanished,’ said Chris.

  ‘That’s what I said,’ s
aid the Doctor, staring up at the very spot the sphere had done whatever it had done.

  The sphere drifted disconsolately back onto the command deck of the Ship.

  Skagra, now once again clad in his preferred garb of neutral white, sat back in his command chair, his mind searching endlessly through reams of information stored in the Ship’s data core. There had to be something in all the fruits of his long researches into the Time Lords that would give him the power to understand the book. He knew better than to try to scan the book’s composition or molecular structure – as an ancient Artefact it would have been constructed using materials chosen specifically to resist analysis. But hours of checking, rechecking and cross-checking the data core had provided nothing that helped him.

  He needed a Time Lord, or at least the mind of a Time Lord, to unlock the book’s secrets. Chronotis’s mind was useless, a hotchpotch of senility. But soon the sphere would return with the mind of the Doctor and, however erratic and childish that was, Skagra was certain he could force the truth from it.

  ‘My lord,’ said the Ship, gently insinuating itself into his thoughts, ‘the sphere, that construct of your unequalled genius, has returned to us.’

  Skagra disconnected his data-spike, opened his eyes, and turned to the sphere. He held out his hand and the sphere bobbed gently onto his palm.

  Skagra searched the sphere. A new mind had indeed been added. Skagra communed with it, asking it for knowledge of the book. Instead he got only confusing glimpses of the consciousness of another primitive human –

  Piscine creatures, wriggling worms and quiet teas with the missus –

  Skagra demanded an explanation from the sphere. The sphere, which had a rudimentary operating consciousness of its own, displayed a mental image – of the Doctor escaping from it into his ridiculous TARDIS.

  Skagra almost shouted out loud. A curse word formed itself and almost pushed itself from his lips.

  ‘My lord, is anything wrong?’ enquired the Ship.

  Skagra dismissed the sphere, which settled itself on the top of its cone.