Shada

by Douglas Adams

  The Doctor smiled. ‘Don’t worry, Bristol, it’s not the end of the world. It could have been, but it wasn’t.’

  ‘It’s all my fault, sort of, though, isn’t it?’ said Chris. ‘I mean, if I hadn’t borrowed that book in the first place—’

  The Doctor interrupted him. ‘But you didn’t.’

  ‘I think I did,’ said Chris. ‘I’m quite clear on that bit.’

  The Doctor shook his head. ‘You didn’t borrow the book. The book borrowed you.’

  Chris just stared at him, his forgotten ice cream dripping onto his jeans.

  ‘Oh yes,’ continued the Doctor, ‘these incredibly powerful and unknowable old Artefacts, they’re nobody’s fools, you know. It sensed danger, and it chose you as its protector. Probably subconsciously influenced the Professor to guide you to it. It liked the look of you, Bristol.’

  ‘That’s a very odd way for a book to behave,’ said Chris.

  ‘It’s a very odd book,’ said the Doctor. ‘None of us had a hope of reading it. But through this whole thing, right from the very beginning, it’s been reading us.’

  ‘What?’ spluttered Chris.

  ‘Yes,’ nodded the Doctor. ‘That book has been able to read every one of us, like a…’ He paused. ‘Like a book. And when Skagra actually touched it—’

  ‘When was that?’ asked Chris.

  ‘Oh yes, you wouldn’t remember,’ said the Doctor, ‘your mind had been sucked from your body and your physical form was a mere puppet of Skagra’s demented will at that point.’

  The Professor grunted. ‘Could happen to the best of us.’

  ‘Luckily I was able to reverse that,’ said the Doctor, waggling his miniature sphere at Chris.

  Chris opened his mouth, full of questions.

  ‘Anyway,’ the Doctor breezed on, ‘Skagra touched the book and obviously he didn’t like what he saw.’

  ‘I saw the past when I touched it,’ said Chris.

  ‘I think Skagra saw the future,’ said the Doctor. ‘And he didn’t like it. Because the book didn’t like him, you see. He was shocked out of himself for a moment, and lost control of his precious Universal Mind.’

  ‘And I’m very glad to be me again, thank you,’ said Chris. ‘But those other poor people. That fisherman, the scientists on the Think Tank. It was too late for them, I suppose, with no bodies left to go back to.’

  He looked sadly out to sea where a small group of young, bronzed holidaymakers were gathered around a surfboard, apparently without a care in the world.

  ‘Of course it wasn’t too late,’ said the Doctor. He pointed to the same group of holidaymakers. ‘There they are, all present and correct. There was another one in there too, nice chap called David.’

  Chris reeled. ‘What? What?’

  The Doctor waggled his sphere again. ‘I lashed up my own control for the telepathic matrix. Condensed the five little spheres you’d all been lumbered with into this one. Then, with great skill, sent your mind and the Professor’s mind and those naughty Ancient Outlaws’ minds back home to your bodies. Oh, and sent the others into new ones.’

  ‘New bodies? How? Where do you get new bodies?’

  The Doctor waved around the beach. ‘This is a level eleven civilisation. The people on this planet have got genetic engineering down to a fine art. Never mind a facelift, they can run you up a whole new you if you ask nicely. I asked nicely, I got them to brew me up seven new bodies for the homeless minds in the sphere.’

  He waved to the holidaymakers. They waved back.

  ‘They all look rather different,’ said Chris. ‘All young and muscly and sort of beautiful.’

  ‘Well, why not?’ said the Doctor. ‘And now they all seem rather keen to stay here and have some fun. Who can blame them? They deserve it.’

  Chris squinted as a middle-aged woman emerged from a bathing hut, called ‘Coo-ee!’ and skipped across the sand, joining the group as they splashed around in the sea. She pulled the largest, most handsome of the men into a massive hug, ruffling his hair.

  ‘Oh,’ the Doctor said, ‘and I promised David I’d fetch his mum from Earth for him. He seems like a nice boy, and she’d only have worried.’

  Chris shook his head in amazement. ‘You really are wonderful, Doctor,’ he said.

  ‘It has been noted,’ said the Doctor.

  The Professor grunted. ‘I helped with all that, you know,’ he said. ‘As he seems to have forgotten to mention. Mind like a sieve, that one.’

  This comment reminded Chris of what he’d been going to ask earlier. It was a rather delicate matter. ‘Er, Doctor,’ he began, leaning towards the Doctor and trying to keep his voice low. ‘Another thing. If our friend here –’ he pointed to the Professor – ‘is – or was – S, A ,L—’

  The Professor’s eyes sprang open. ‘Salyavin? What about him? Good riddance, I say.’

  Chris jumped guiltily. ‘Well, I was just going to say – no offence, or anything – wasn’t Salyavin supposed to be evil? The terrible criminal, the Great Mind Outlaw, and all that stuff. Which is why they, you know, locked him up forever, and all that.’

  ‘I’ll let the Professor tell you his story in his own words, just as he told it to me,’ said the Doctor.

  The Professor leant forward and opened his mouth to speak.

  ‘You see,’ the Doctor said, before the Professor had a chance to begin, ‘the Time Lords, for all their great power, are a frightened people, they always have been. When you’ve got all that power, it can make you a little jumpy. They tend to react very strongly to anything unusual, anything they don’t understand or that doesn’t fit in with their particular way of doing things. Anything that could be considered a threat to them.’

  ‘Yes, I remember you saying,’ said Chris. ‘They might have destroyed Earth just because the book went missing.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said the Doctor. ‘Good to see you’ve been paying attention.’ He gestured to Chronotis. ‘Carry on, Professor.’

  The Professor opened his mouth to speak.

  ‘Poor Salyavin here,’ said the Doctor before he had the chance, ‘had a very unusual talent, the power to place his mind into other people’s. We Time Lords have a minor gift for telepathy, but Salyavin’s talent was unique. But he was different, that was all, not evil. The most he actually did was to play a few regrettable, childish and very enjoyable pranks. Making the Lord President think his knickers were on fire, making everyone dance round the Panopticon doing the can-can, et cetera.’

  The Professor chuckled. ‘Yes, those were the days, the folly of youth—’

  The Doctor interrupted. ‘But the High Council didn’t like his talent one little bit. I don’t just mean the knickers and the can-can, but the potential of that talent. If Salyavin wished it, they reasoned, he could dominate Gallifrey.’

  ‘But why would they assume that?’ asked Chris.

  ‘Because,’ replied the Doctor, ‘if any of them had possessed such a talent, that is exactly what they would have done.’

  The Professor managed to get a few more words in. ‘They were devious, corrupt, self-regarding—’

  ‘And it’s not much better today,’ interrupted the Doctor. ‘Look how they treat me.’

  ‘Rather better than they treated me,’ said the Professor.

  ‘Oh yes, sorry to interrupt,’ said the Doctor. He waved at the Professor. ‘Do go on, this is fascinating.’

  The Professor coughed and opened his mouth.

  ‘So young Salyavin,’ boomed the Doctor, ‘gifted with this power, but in all other regards rather a decent sort of chap, made his way up the ladder of the Gallifreyan hierarchy. Not using that talent, just by hard graft and basic honesty, qualities I see in myself. The High Council got more and more jumpy. What was he planning, they wondered. And then he became a junior senator, and that really put the cat among the pigeons. Something had to be done about him, they thought. And covertly, away from the eyes of the plebeians. They played it carefully, terrified that he would
tumble to their plan and use his power against them.’

  ‘And was it your plan, Professor?’ asked Chris. ‘Did you want to take over Gallifrey?’

  ‘Of course it wasn’t his plan,’ said the Doctor. ‘Look at him. He just likes to potter about making tea and reading books. But the High Council couldn’t accept that, their paranoia was too great. So, one day, the Council request that their newest junior senator makes a routine tour of inspection of their unmanned, remote and time-locked prison facility.’

  ‘Shada!’ cried Chris.

  ‘Well, of course Shada,’ huffed the Doctor, ‘it wasn’t going to be Wormwood Scrubs, was it? And off Salyavin goes to Shada, apparently suspecting nothing, smiling broadly at the great honour done him. So they laid on an ambassadorial TARDIS, and a couple of high-ranking honour guards from the personal staff of the Chancellor himself.’

  ‘And you didn’t suspect anything?’ Chris asked the Professor.

  ‘Like heck I didn’t,’ spluttered the Professor. ‘The whole thing smelt very highly of – what are those things called, that swim about in the sea?’

  ‘Now you can see why I’m telling this story,’ muttered the Doctor. He carried on. ‘And Salyavin was quite right to find it fishy. Because the moment that fancy TARDIS dematerialised from Gallifrey, the High Council’s PR department went into overdrive. They trumped up a list of charges twice as long as your arm, branding Salyavin as a madman, a subversive terrorist hell-bent on taking over Gallifrey with his terrible mind powers, enslaving the population with the strength of his will. The Great Mind Outlaw, they called him. And the public lapped it up. Hurrah for the High Council, they’d packed him away to Shada and saved Gallifrey.’

  Chris turned the Professor. ‘But you escaped from Shada, didn’t you?’

  ‘I’m coming to that,’ said the Doctor. ‘Salyavin was on to the scam. Before the honour guards could honour him by staser-pistol-whipping him into unconsciousness and bundling him into a cryogenic cabinet for all eternity, Salyavin set his own plan into action.

  ‘Firstly, he put his mind into his two guards. They took him to the cabinet that had been prepared for him, where he left that understandably aggrieved message for posterity. Then he and the guards returned to their TARDIS and set off back to Gallifrey. He implanted a new reality into the minds of the guards – the mission had been a complete success, and the Great Mind Outlaw was safely behind cryogenic bars, as it were.’

  ‘But hold on,’ Chris said to the Professor. ‘What did you do when you got back to Gallifrey in that TARDIS?’

  ‘Oh, he’d thought of that,’ said the Doctor. ‘He wasn’t in that TARDIS when it got back.’

  ‘But he wasn’t on Shada?’ asked Chris. ‘Have I missed something?’

  ‘Oh, everyone missed it,’ chuckled Chronotis. ‘It was just a little thing. You know how I like my knick-knacks.’

  ‘I’m not getting this,’ said Chris.

  The Doctor pointed to the wooden door in the nearby bathing hut. ‘Bristol, you know how a TARDIS can be bigger on the inside?’

  ‘Yes, that’s clear,’ said Chris.

  ‘Well, think about it. That means they can be much, much smaller on the outside.’

  Chris smiled at the Professor. ‘So, all along, you had your own TARDIS—’

  ‘Safely in my pocket, yes,’ said the Professor.

  ‘Disguised as a book!’ cried Chris.

  ‘No, disguised as a book mark,’ said the Professor. ‘So when I needed it, I expanded the outer plasmic shell and stepped inside, and I was off.’

  Chris crunched the last of his cone. ‘I think this is the oddest conversation I’ve ever had.’

  ‘Clare’s not back yet,’ said the Doctor.

  Before Chris could react to that remark, the Doctor was again in full flow. ‘Then poor Salyavin had to cover his tracks.’

  The Professor looked slightly pained. ‘Only because I was forced to it, Doctor,’ he said sadly. ‘You take over from here, young fellow. I’m not particularly proud of this bit.’

  ‘Well, if you insist,’ said the Doctor. ‘Salyavin parked his TARDIS in hover-mode above Gallifrey, and linked his mind directly to its power source. Then he used his special talent on a grand scale. He extruded his mind into his TARDIS’s telepathic circuits and boosted them to cover the entire planet. Then, with a mighty effort, he made the entire population of the most powerful planet in the universe forget Shada. He made them forget that it had ever existed. He simply couldn’t risk his secret being uncovered.’

  Chris whistled. ‘That’s incredible.’

  ‘And very dangerous,’ continued the Doctor. ‘And morally dubious, leaving all those prisoners behind forgotten for eternity.’

  ‘You and I both know, Doctor,’ said the Professor. ‘The prisoners were sent there to be forgotten. It’s not an excuse, but I paid a heavy penalty for what I did. The process almost killed me. In a way, it did. As far as I was concerned, it certainly killed Salyavin.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Chris, ‘this “coming back from the dead” thing, is that part of your power?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said the Doctor. ‘That’s quite common. What the Professor meant was that he regenerated. He was reincarnated in a new body.’

  ‘Back to new bodies, are we?’ said Chris.

  ‘Bristol,’ said the Doctor, ‘if we’re ever going to get to the end of this, you really must stop interrupting the Professor.’ He coughed and carried on. ‘In his new body, Salyavin simply returned to Gallifrey – with a new name as well. With a little bit of less dubious mental jiggery-pokery, he managed to convince everyone he was the kindly old archivist Professor Chronotis, a man with no political ambitions whatever. A simple soul who could be left alone to potter about and do all the reading and all the tea-drinking he wanted. That’s when I first met him, when I was a lad.’

  ‘And I swore,’ said the Professor, ‘that from the moment I became Chronotis I would forget Salyavin, my past life, push it to the back of my mind. And I would never, never use my power again.’

  The Doctor took over again. ‘All that was left of Salyavin were the legends the High Council put out, the cover story, which suited the Professor fine.’

  ‘And the book,’ said Chris.

  ‘Ah!’ said the Doctor. ‘With Shada forgotten, the book was left to gather dust in a display case in the Panopticon Archives, where any kindly old archivist could keep a weather eye on it.’

  ‘But after everything they did to you,’ Chris said to the Professor, ‘you just went back and lived there.’

  ‘Well, it’s home,’ said the Professor. ‘And it really does have an excellent library. Not such a bad old place.’

  ‘Back to the point,’ said the Doctor.

  ‘Let me guess,’ said Chris. ‘The book stayed there on Gallifrey until the Professor retired, when he came to Cambridge.’

  The Doctor nodded approvingly. ‘Gold star, Bristol!’ Then he frowned. ‘Hang on, hang on – even the Time Lords would have noticed a whopping great empty display case, even through the dust. If you took the book, what was in that case for the last three hundred years?’

  The Professor shrugged. ‘I simply replaced it with another book, similar size. Tried to match the binding as best I could, doesn’t really matter what it’s about…’

  ‘What book, Professor?’ demanded the Doctor.

  ‘An Earth classic, by one of the greatest writers in that planet’s history,’ said the Professor. ‘Terribly funny, terribly thoughtful, wish I could remember the name of it, something about thumbing a lift, and there were towels in it, I remember that, yes, let me think – oh yes, of course, it’s called The Hitch—’

  He was interrupted – not by the Doctor, for once – but by a now very familiar wheezing, groaning sound. The police box shell of the Doctor’s TARDIS faded up from transparency on the beach. Chris got to his feet as Romana, K-9 and Clare stepped out on to the sparkling sands.

  Chris wiped the ice-cream stain from his jeans. Cl
are was wearing an especially mysterious expression. Chris had a sudden weird flash of memory. He felt like he’d shouted something important to her. But what had he shouted? And when had he shouted it? And why did things always get even more confusing whenever Clare appeared?

  The Doctor nodded to Romana without getting up from his deckchair. ‘Now, have you done everything on the list?’

  ‘Yes, Doctor,’ said Romana patiently, pulling a scruffy piece of paper from her pocket. From her other pocket she produce an elegant pair of sunglasses, popped them on, and began to read off the items. ‘Item 1. Returned the Ancient Outlaws to their cabinets on Shada, with K-9 as escort, check.’

  ‘You put them back in Shada?’ said Chris. ‘Isn’t that a bit morally dubious?’

  Romana smiled at him. ‘Item 2,’ she said. ‘Send message to Gallifrey containing selected details of recent events.’

  ‘You’ve told the Time Lords about Shada?’ spluttered Chris. ‘What about the Professor here? They’ll be coming to get him!’

  ‘Item 2B,’ said Romana. ‘Make sure you tell them Salyavin is dead and get K-9 to blast his cabinet as proof. Make no mention of Professor Chronotis at all.’

  The Doctor nodded in approval. ‘And Item 3?’

  Romana jabbed a finger at the list. ‘That should really have been item 2C. Send The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey back to the Time Lords.’

  ‘Item 2C?’ the Doctor huffed.

  ‘Yes,’ said Romana coolly. ‘I just popped it into the thought box with the message to save on postage. I think that’s everything.’

  The Doctor coughed. ‘Actually there was an Item 4 on the back, if you’d bothered to look.’

  K-9 wagged his tail. ‘Item 4 also accomplished, Master,’ he chirped.

  Clare pulled a large paper bag from her jacket and handed it to the Doctor. ‘It was a bit of a detour, but we eventually found some on a planet called Barastabon,’ she said. ‘Actually we almost crashed onto it. I’m afraid that was about the time when all that fancy technical stuff the Professor lent me just sort of faded away.’

  ‘Good thing too,’ the Doctor said, reaching inside the bag and pulling out a handful of small silver spheres. ‘Edible ball bearings,’ he beamed. ‘I’ve such a craving for this recently. I’ve no idea why.’ He tossed a handful into his mouth and crunched happily. ‘You’re better off without a temporal mechanics syllabus bouncing around your bonce,’ he told Clare. ‘Have a ball bearing.’