Doctor Who: Harvest of Time

by Alastair Reynolds

  ‘It will take some time to compile the report,’ one of the technicians said. ‘And even then, there probably won’t be much we can say for certain.’

  ‘Do what you can. In the meantime, all volunteers are to be released from their obligations. No one should have to go through that.’

  ‘And the time machine project?’ asked the other technician.

  ‘Suspended, until we can be sure of not doing that to anyone again.’

  ‘We’ll never have that certainty,’ the first technician said glumly.

  ‘Your Majesty?’

  It was one of the other volunteers speaking, one of the two that had been waiting.

  ‘You are excused,’ she said, with a generous sweep of her hand. ‘You’ve proven your courage by coming this far. Go, return to your families. You owe Praxilion nothing.’

  ‘We’d still like to go through with it,’ said the other. ‘We’ve been studying the statistics, and …’

  ‘Technically, there’s an improved chance of success after a major failure,’ said the first volunteer.

  ‘And by anyone’s reckoning,’ the second said, ‘that has to count as a pretty major failure.’

  ‘Did you know Ver?’ the Red Queen asked.

  ‘Ver was our friend. Ver would not have wanted Ver’s death to dissuade us,’ said the first. ‘Ver understood what a difference the time machine could make to Praxilion. We must have that technology. No matter the costs.’

  ‘Ver’s bravery mustn’t be wasted,’ said the second forcefully. ‘The technicians aren’t to blame. We trust them. We are ready to take our chances with the Infinite Cocoon. We are ready to become like you.’

  ‘And risk becoming something worse?’ she asked.

  ‘For Praxilion,’ they said in unison.

  The Red Queen looked down. Her instinct was to turn them away. They were courageous, it was true. But they also craved the glory that would come to anyone who managed to get far enough into the Consolidator to find the fabled time equipment. Fame, fortune, prestige beyond measure.

  For now, she suspected glory had the upper hand.

  The inescapable fact, though, was that sooner or later someone was going to have to get into the box again.

  ‘Your names?’ she asked.

  ‘We are Hox and we are Loi,’ they answered in unison.

  ‘Very well then, Hox and Loi. I commend your dedication. Which one of you wants to go first?’

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘Cromarty. Wind: variable three or four, becoming west or north west five or six. Sea state: smooth or slight, occasional moderate later. Weather: fair. Visibility: moderate or good, occasional poor. Fair Isle. Wind: variable five …’

  The upper-class BBC-accented voice on the wireless was delivering the shipping news. It was an old battery-operated set, sheathed in imitation red leather with a circular plastic dial, perched between bottles and fishing weights on a makeshift plywood shelf.

  Listening to the shipping news was one of the few pleasures Pat McGinty allowed himself. He imagined the man in a hut, much like his own – the shipping forecast passed to him under the door. Perhaps it was all this man did, delivering the forecasts. There was a practical component to McGinty’s enjoyment, too. His livelihood depended on the weather, the storms and high tides.

  Right now, though, what McGinty most needed was new batteries for the wireless. It was turned up to the maximum and still the voice was scratchy. He would turn if off in a little while, save the power a little longer. He looked at the toy crab he had found out on the beach after the last tide. The strange, nasty-looking thing was still skewered on the end of the harpoon McGinty took when he went out with his wheelbarrow. It was funny the way he’d found the crab, out on the beach, the seagulls picking at it.

  He examined it again now, pulling it off the harpoon’s spike, wondering what kind of toy it was meant to be, and if he could get at the batteries. Some kind of science fiction nonsense, probably. The main part of it, the crab body, its legs and feelers (or were they tentacles?) was made of a brittle silver. On its back, the size of a miniature whisky flask, was a glass cylinder. The body had broken easily under the harpoon, but the glass part had already been shattered when he found it.

  McGinty turned the toy over and over, looking for screws, a hatch that he could open and get at the insides. There had to be batteries in it somewhere, didn’t there? The thing still twitched every now and then.

  ‘Forties. Wind: variable three, becoming east or north east four. Sea state: moderate. Weather: fair. Visibility: moderate or good. Forth. Wind: variable four …’

  McGinty was just moving to turn off the wireless when there was a knock at the door.

  Not exactly a knock, more a sharp but deliberate tapping, as if a seagull were pecking at the base of the door. McGinty frowned and rose from his chair. It might be one of the children from the village, come down to the beach to taunt him. Perhaps the same ones who’d sprayed ‘nutter’ on his hut.

  The tapping came again.

  McGinty fetched his harpoon. He crept to the door, unlatched and opened it in one easy movement. It was dark, but there was a moon out. A soft, salt-laden breeze drifted off the sea. The beach was colourless, receding to the water’s margin where a phalanx of low waves broke into foam.

  But on the ground was another metal crab. McGinty recognised it for what it was, and in that instant he recognised also that this crab was not broken; that the glass and metal canister on its back was as yet undamaged. Green light spilled from the container and the neat little joints in the crab’s mechanical anatomy.

  The crab looked as if it was squashed down, pressed into the sand by an invisible force. But the crab was only waiting.

  McGinty raised an arm in a reflex defence, but it was too late. The crab sprang onto him, clutching its legs around his sleeve, and then – almost too quickly to believe – it was scuttling up the sleeve, up to his shoulder. The legs gripped hard enough to make him yelp. He dropped the hook and tried to paw the crab off him. Screaming now, he felt it scuttle around his neck. The crab’s grip tightened. Those metal legs were tipped like talons … McGinty felt two stabs of pain and coldness. The crab had sunk its fangs into the back of his neck, beneath the base of his skull.

  And then there was a pain beyond pain, a pain that smothered and consumed like the sea, rinsing away the last human trace of the man he had been. His body thrashed and whirled as if in the throes of some terrible electric shock.

  And was then still. McGinty stood, his arms at his side. There was something not quite right about his stance, as if his entire body now hung from an invisible thread. A long line of drool spilled from his mouth.

  ‘I am Sild,’ McGinty said, his voice slurred and slow, as if talking to himself in his sleep. ‘I am Sild and I must find the one. Find the one called the Master.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  An iron and concrete fist rammed its way out of grey waters, like the great gauntlet of some vast drowning knight. It was a production platform, an oil rig, located 200 kilometres from the Aberdeenshire coast.

  A helicopter, much the same grey as the sea below, chugged its way toward the platform beneath an ominous cloud ceiling. The bulky craft had a military look to it: matte paint, various bulges and bumps suggesting weapons, sensors or countermeasures. But in the way of markings it was remarkably devoid of obvious affiliation to any of the regular branches of the British armed forces. Only a small circular logo betrayed the helicopter’s current operational assignment. In truth, few people would have been any the wiser even if they had been close enough to read the letters and words on that logo.

  UNIT: the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce.

  Whatever that meant.

  Certainly the young woman pressing her face to the helicopter’s window had not had much of a clue about what she was getting into when she was first assigned to UNIT. Time travellers, ancient enemies from beneath the Earth, forces and factors beyond the planet – elements both be
nevolent and hostile and just as often imponderable in their motives. Even now, years into her career as civilian scientific liaison, she was only just beginning to grasp the sheer scope of what her job with UNIT might yet entail. Literally, the fate of the Earth and human civilisation.

  Dizzying, really.

  Would she have accepted, had she known? It was a question Jo Grant came back to time and again. And always, upon due reflection, the answer was the same. Yes, and yes, and yes. Despite all the terrors, all the sleepless nights, it was better to know than not to know.

  And sometimes, just occasionally, on the very good days, she had to admit that it could be quite good fun.

  Today was not shaping up to be one of those days.

  She wasn’t overly fond of helicopters to start with, noisy, cramped things that they were. Helicopters and rough weather was a bad combination. Helicopters, rough weather, a long flight, an early start and a greasy canteen breakfast was about as bad as it could get. Jo doubted that she had seen anything less inviting than the production platform. But right now all she wanted to do was get down onto it, onto what passed as the nearest thing to dry land.

  Above the four thick cylindrical concrete pillars that supported the platform from the waves – and vanished into the dark, roiling waters below – was a rectangular structure about the size of an office building or large multi-storey car park. Various extra rectangles had been stuck on the side of the main one, cantilevered out over the sea. The whole blocky mass was wrapped in a dense dark tracery of pipes and walkways and ladders, giving the unnerving impression that it was still some way from being finished, or indeed even safe. Rising above the main mass was a tapering skeletal tower, as tall again as the whole part of the rig below it, and off to another side, leaning at an angle, was a long crane-like boom with a dirty yellow flame burning at its tip. Near the base of the boom, Jo caught sight of a pair of tiny orange-suited oil workers. The scale of the platform kept tricking her: it was far too big a thing to be out here, surrounded by all this churning grey water. Even the fully enclosed lifeboats, perched far off the water on their drop platforms, looked tiny.

  A big ‘M’ was painted on the side of the main rectangle, stylised to look like an oil rig itself.

  ‘A dreadful waste, of course,’ the Doctor observed, from the passenger seat next to hers. ‘Burning fossil fuels – whatever will you think of next?’

  ‘Don’t approve, do you?’ she asked, folding her arms.

  ‘Hydrocarbons are no way to generate energy,’ the Doctor said, in his best sanctimonious voice. ‘Most mature civilisations realised that a very long time ago.’

  ‘Petroleum’s made up of hydrocarbons, isn’t it?’ Jo asked brightly.

  The Doctor looked pleased. He had a dim opinion of Jo’s grasp of scientific matters and was always glad when she displayed even the most rudimentary knowledge.

  ‘Most certainly.’

  Now it was Jo’s turn to smile. ‘Then I’ll remind you of that the next time you take Bessie out for a spin!’

  ‘That’s different!’

  ‘Oh, right. One rule for you, another for the rest of us.’

  ‘It isn’t like that at all!’ the Doctor said. ‘Anyway, when I’ve a spare afternoon, I fully intend to convert Bessie to run on pure hydrogen.’

  ‘You had a spare afternoon yesterday – you spent it with your head stuck under the TARDIS console, driving everyone mad with your inane humming.’

  ‘There was an excellent reason for that.’ The Doctor left a weighty pause, which Jo resisted the temptation to fill. ‘Time disturbances,’ he went on. ‘Someone seems to be opening up localised time ruptures. I thought I might see if I could pinpoint their origin.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Didn’t get very far. In hindsight I’d have been better off with my head stuck under Bessie’s bonnet. Oh – and by the way – that inane humming happens to be a rendition of one of the greatest tragic operas in the history of the Venusian arts.’

  ‘You’re right about one thing,’ Jo said. ‘It was definitely tragic.’

  They were coming in to land. On the top of the platform’s main structure, cantilevered out over the sea, was the white square of a helicopter landing pad. The helicopter hovered over it and began to descend, pitching uncomfortably as it did so.

  ‘You don’t think those disturbances are anything to do with …?’ Captain Mike Yates nodded out the window, at the nearing platform. ‘This business? The thing that man said over the short wave?’

  ‘I’m inclined to doubt it. It’s well enough of Lethbridge-Stewart to send us out here, but I’m sure it’ll turn out to be a fuss over nothing. Things do go missing at sea, after all.’ The Doctor paused. ‘Even quite big things.’

  ‘Entire oil rigs?’ Jo asked.

  The Doctor offered one of his most infuriatingly inscrutable smiles. ‘We’ll just have to see, won’t we?’

  Jo felt the helicopter settle down onto the helipad. The rotors whirred down and at a signal from the crew Yates opened the passenger door. They stepped out into biting salty wind that pushed Jo’s hair against her face. She wished she hadn’t worn such a short skirt now. The Doctor tightened his cape, wrinkles cutting into his skin as he narrowed his eyes against the gale. Yates reached up and jammed his UNIT beret down firmly. ‘Lovely day for it!’ he muttered. ‘Wish I’d brought my suntan lotion!’

  A big man in an orange anorak was already on the pad. He walked over, raising his voice over the dying whine of the helicopter. ‘Tom Irwin,’ he said brusquely. ‘Deputy operations, Mike Oscar Six.’

  ‘This is Josephine Grant,’ the Doctor said. ‘This is Captain Mike Yates, and I’m the Doctor.’

  Irwin nodded at the helicopter. ‘You’ll no be staying long, I take it?’

  ‘I see Scottish hospitality’s all it’s cracked up to be,’ Yates said.

  ‘I was talking about the weather, Captain,’ Irwin answered. He was a burly, bearded Scot, who looked strong enough to have swum his way out from Aberdeen. His anorak had a fur-lined hood and the same ‘M’ stitched onto the shoulder that Jo had already seen on the side of the rig. ‘Nasty bit of work coming in from Norway,’ he went on. ‘You lot want to be back home in time for your Ovaltine, you’d best not dawdle.’

  ‘We were asked out here, you know!’ Jo said.

  ‘That’s between you and Eddie McCrimmon.’

  ‘McCrimmon?’ the Doctor said, raising his eyebrows. ‘I used to know a McCrimmon once – awfully decent fellow.’

  ‘Not Eddie’s father, by any chance?’

  ‘I doubt it – not unless Eddie’s father was involved in the Jacobite rebellion.’

  Irwin’s eyes sharpened. ‘I thought this was a military delegation, not a visit from the local nuthouse.’

  Yates was making an obvious effort to sound civil. ‘Actually, we are a military delegation.’

  ‘You maybe, but your pals look like a pair of civvies.’

  ‘We are,’ Jo said. ‘But we’re on attachment to UNIT. And if that’s a problem, you can take it up with Geneva.’

  Irwin eyed her hand dubiously, but after a moment he offered his own gloved hand by way of reciprocation. Jo shook, but only maintained contact for an instant.

  ‘I asked for that. First time on a rig, is it?’

  ‘Last too, if I’ve got any say in it.’

  This seemed to win her a flicker of grudging respect, judging by the twitch that creased the corner of Irwin’s mouth.

  ‘Aye, it’s no picnic out here. You’d best come with me. Your boys on the helicopter need a brew?’

  ‘They’ll be fine,’ Mike Yates said. He had told the pilot and co-pilot to remain aboard, so that they could make a quick getaway if the weather worsened. ‘I suppose you know what this is all about?’

  ‘Any reason I should?’

  ‘Your boss was the one who called us in.’

  ‘I can guess.’ Irwin was leading them along a gridded metal catwalk, into a corrugated metal shed. �
�That business two days ago?’

  Yates continued: ‘Your man sent a short-wave distress call which was picked up by every wireless station between here and Stavanger. Why was he so worked up?’

  Irwin paused on a landing between two sections of staircase. ‘He was on an oil rig that was collapsing into the sea. In his shoes, you’d be a bit “worked up”.’

  ‘This was another one of your rigs, was it?’ Jo asked.

  ‘Half the rigs out here belong to the company.’

  ‘And was there anything special about this rig, the one that collapsed?’ the Doctor asked, as they began to descend a clattering metal staircase.

  ‘The boss’ll tell you what we all know. Mike Oscar Four was ready to fall over. That’s why it was being scrapped.’

  ‘You don’t sound as if anything unusual happened,’ Jo said. They were on Mike Oscar Six now; Mike Oscar Four was the one that had had the accident. ‘But rigs don’t just collapse, do they? And there was that thing the man was supposed to have said, about the sea …’

  ‘Pete Lomax was scared witless,’ said Irwin. ‘Not really cut out for this line of work. What he said he saw, and what he really saw, are two different things.’

  At the bottom of the stairwell was a pair of double doors, with round windows in them, like the doors into an operating theatre. Beyond was a short corridor, metal doors on either side. The floor and walls were also metal, painted over in various uninspiring greys and greens. Other than the occasional equipment locker, fire extinguisher, first-aid box, safety notice or framed photograph of an oil rig or refinery, there was little in the way of comforting décor. No flowers or potted plants or delicate watercolours of trees and meadows. Compared to this place, UNIT headquarters was like the Ideal Home Show.

  Irwin halted them at one of the metal doors. This one had a small white nameplate fixed above it, with stencilled black letters. He took off his glove, knocked twice on the door, then waited for an answer.