Doctor Who: Harvest of Time

by Alastair Reynolds

  She was rather glad of that.

  ‘She should not have called in UNIT!’ said Callow. ‘In doing so she has very nearly jeopardised the secrecy of this entire project.’

  ‘She did her best to dissuade them from coming, once she had had time to reflect on the matter,’ the third man said, tightening his gloves as he spoke. ‘I have had experience with Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart myself. Miss McCrimmon cannot be blamed for his tenacity.’ He turned his gaze onto her. ‘Doubtless they wished to speak to Lomax. You did of course limit the contact, in so far as it was possible?’

  ‘I did my best.’

  ‘Well?’ Lovelace asked. ‘What did the UNIT delegation go away with?’

  ‘I told them that Lomax had had a fright. I was there when they spoke to him. He confirmed what he already told us. It was a freak event, a deep wave trough.’

  ‘Just that?’ the third man asked.

  ‘That’s what he said.’

  ‘Then there was no more mention of …’ Lovelace paused. ‘Holes opening up. Ridiculous great gaps in the sea. No more nonsense of that kind?’

  ‘No. But I can’t stop them talking to Lomax again, when he returns to the mainland.’

  ‘Let us hope,’ the third man said, ‘that they consider matters satisfactorily resolved.’ He stroked his beard with one gloved hand. ‘When is it intended to relocate Lomax, if I might be so bold as to enquire?’

  ‘In a day or two,’ McCrimmon said, ‘depending on helicopter availability. There’s no immediate grounds for concern, although he’ll receive a thorough examination on the mainland.’

  ‘Let us trust that he makes a speedy recovery.’

  ‘He really couldn’t have seen anything, could he?’ McCrimmon asked, directing her query at all three of them. ‘I mean, I know this is all top secret. But there’s no way that he really did see the sea open up, is there? I mean, that can’t have happened, can it?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Callow said, smoothing down his hair where the wind had elevated a greasy flap.

  ‘The people Lethbridge-Stewart sent,’ said the third man. ‘Was one of them an older man? White hair, about my height?’

  ‘I’d say he was a bit taller than you, but yes, white hair, aristocratic looking – quite a peculiarly dressed man, too.’ She resisted the urge to add: like you. ‘Opera cape, one of those old-fashioned frilly shirts. He wasn’t in a hurry to give his name.’

  The third man chuckled quietly. ‘No matter. We’re adequately acquainted.’

  ‘A friend of yours?’ she asked.

  ‘Of sorts. You might almost say we went to the same school.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Brigadier was on the telephone. ‘I see. Credible witness, and all that? Icelandic? What the devil was he doing fishing inside … Very well. Yes, I see. No, not at all. Thank you. And … anything similar … see that it’s passed on directly.’

  He placed the handset down. Halfway through his call, there had been a knock on the sturdy wooden door to his office.

  ‘Come,’ he bellowed.

  Jo Grant and Mike Yates entered the room.

  ‘We’ve just got back, sir,’ Yates said, pausing to take a bite from a ham sandwich. ‘Helicopter to Aberdeen, Hercules back to RAF Eastmere. Bit worn out, I’m afraid, and on top of that there’s bally all to report.’

  ‘I didn’t send you halfway to Norway for “bally all”, Yates.’ The Brigadier, suddenly peckish, was irritated by the apparition of a ham sandwich. ‘You met this McCrimmon woman? Did she cooperate?’

  ‘More or less, sir.’ Yates took another mouthful. ‘She was a bit evasive, but then again I don’t think she really appreciated a military presence on her rig.’

  ‘She called us in, Yates – it’s no concern of mine whether she appreciated the visit or not. And put that ruddy sandwich away, you’re not on a picnic.’ Set in front of the Brigadier was a dossier, containing a picture of Edwina McCrimmon, and a photocopy of a corporate report showing a cross-section of one of McCrimmon Industries’ production platforms. ‘What did you learn and … Good evening, Miss Grant. Where’s the Doctor?’

  ‘In his laboratory, sir.’

  ‘I believe I requested a debriefing with the three of you.’

  ‘I’m sure the Doctor will be along in a moment,’ Jo said. ‘He’s going on about something or other – time disturbances, I think he said.’

  ‘Related to this McCrimmon business?’

  ‘Not sure, sir. We did speak to Pete Lomax – the survivor – but he wasn’t very helpful.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Bit shell-shocked, sir,’ Yates said, stooping to dispose of the contraband sandwich in a nearby wastepaper bin. ‘Poor bloke had obviously been in the wars.’

  ‘The main thing,’ Jo cut in, ‘is that he doesn’t back up his original transmission.’

  ‘He denies that he made it? We have it on tape.’

  ‘I mean, he’s saying he was confused,’ Jo said. ‘What do you think happened, sir? Could he really have seen the sea disappear?’

  ‘If you’d asked me that a couple of days ago I’d have been highly sceptical,’ the Brigadier said. ‘But since then, all hell’s started breaking loose. Reports coming in from all over the place, all dashed peculiar, and more often than not there’s a maritime connection, or at least proximity to the sea.’ The Brigadier snapped the folder shut, pulled over a sheet of pink photocopied paper, and scanned a finger down a list of items. ‘Loss of contact with a tanker off the coast of Sunderland. Visual report of a hemispherical area of sea disappearing, from a car ferry near Kirkwall in the Orkneys. Reports of an abandoned and empty police station near Arbroath – suspiciously close to the shore. And just now, the third consecutive report of columns of water falling from the sky. Icelandic chappie, very het-up about the whole thing.’

  ‘Is that why you were so determined we should speak to McCrimmon, sir?’ Yates asked.

  ‘The loss of the platform fits the same general pattern, yes. Someone’s obviously got to her, and this Lomax fellow as well.’ The Brigadier was on the point of saying something else when one of the several telephones on his desk started ringing. He picked it up, muttered his name and started listening.

  When he placed the handset down, his expression was grave. ‘That was Geneva. Apparently one of the Navy’s Atlantic transmitters has just disappeared. They have the exact time it happened.’ He looked up as the door opened again. ‘Ah, Doctor. Good of you to grace us with your presence.’

  Jo said, ‘There’s been another disappearance!’

  The Doctor had arrived with a piece of the TARDIS in his hands. He cradled a lump of translucent machinery about the size and shape of an electric lemon squeezer. ‘Did it by any chance happen about … oh, ten minutes ago?’

  The Brigadier eyed the Doctor with familiar suspicion. ‘How would you know that?’

  ‘Because someone’s interfering with time, Brigadier. Time anomalies, time ruptures – call them what you will. The TARDIS began detecting them several days ago.’

  ‘And you didn’t think to bring this to my attention?’

  ‘Rather thought it might be an idea to have some idea of the strength and origin of these ruptures first,’ the Doctor said. ‘It’s not unusual for time travellers to pass through the present moment, on their way from the past to the future, or vice versa. The TARDIS picks up these signatures in much the same way a boat bobs up and down when a larger vessel passes it in harbour.’

  ‘Then that’s all it is – other time traveller chappies, jaunting around?’

  ‘Well actually, no.’ The Doctor took the weight of the object in one hand and stroked the side of his face with the other. ‘That’s what I wondered, but after the Mike Oscar Four business, I turned up the TARDIS’s detectors to maximum sensitivity. If there was time-travel activity, I wanted to rule out it having anything to do with our friend at Durlston Heath.’

  ‘You mean … him.’ The Brigadier hesitated. Something
was on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t quite bring it to mind.

  ‘The …’

  ‘The Master!’ Jo said.

  ‘Yes. Him.’

  ‘But you don’t think he’s involved, do you?’ Jo asked.

  ‘I would never rule anything out where the Master’s concerned,’ the Doctor said ruefully.

  ‘But we’ve seen him in prison,’ Jo said. ‘About the only thing he’s got is a television! You’re not saying he could have made a time machine out of a television, are you?’

  ‘Given enough time, the Master could make just about anything out of anything,’ the Doctor answered gravely. ‘Frankly, though, this doesn’t look like his handiwork. If I’m right about these disruptions, they’re originating from some other point in time and space, not on Earth – we’re just on the receiving end. Nonetheless it wouldn’t hurt to pay him a visit, all the same. We’ll need the necessary paperwork, Brigadier. Can you sort it out with Childers? Say, for a visit first thing tomorrow morning?’

  For a moment the Brigadier looked lost. ‘With whom?’

  The Doctor frowned. ‘The Master, Brigadier. The chap you and I have spent a great deal of energy putting behind bars. The chap we were just talking about.’

  The Brigadier pinched at the skin above his nose. ‘Forgive me, Doctor: it’s been rather a long day. I’ll get onto Childers.’

  ‘Very good, Brigadier.’

  ‘And these time disruptions – if they’re coming from somewhere else, any idea who or what might be behind them?’

  ‘Only that whoever is involved, the energies and ranges involved are considerable.’ The Doctor held up the piece of equipment he’d arrived with. ‘This is part of the TARDIS’s sensory apparatus – a chronometric stress analyser. I’m afraid the last pulse has damaged it entirely beyond repair.’ The Doctor turned the piece of equipment over in his hands, eyeing it with all the sadness one might reserve for a broken Ming vase. ‘My own silly fault. I had the sensitivity set too high. The temporal shear was a magnitude above the safe detection threshold.’

  ‘In plain English, please, Doctor.’

  ‘The force of that rupture, Brigadier, was beyond the capability of all but a handful of galactic species.’ The Doctor raised a gently silencing hand. ‘I’ve already run through a mental shortlist of candidates. Nothing that you or I have ever encountered fits the bill. And the fact the Daleks aren’t involved may well be the last piece of good news I have for you.’

  The Brigadier gestured at the damaged apparatus the Doctor was still holding. ‘That … gadget. Can you get it working again, or patch in a spare?’

  ‘This “gadget”, Brigadier, was assembled by the Blind Watchmakers, the finest temporal artisans in history. Repairing it here would be like trying to mend a Swiss chronometer with a handful of crude Neolithic tools.’

  ‘But you’ll give it a go, won’t you?’ Jo asked. ‘I mean, the Master could repair it, couldn’t he?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘And you’re better than the Master, aren’t you?’

  The Doctor hefted the damaged equipment, giving it a shrewd second glance. ‘I don’t suppose it’s completely beyond salvation. I’ll see what I can do.’

  Near midnight, just when he was beginning to think his head might have settled enough to begin to get some sleep, there came a soft knock on Pete Lomax’s door. Who might it be at this late hour? Eddie McCrimmon had already come to speak to him after the earlier visit from the military people, and as far as he was concerned he was going to be left alone after that. McCrimmon had come to tell him that she had appreciated his cooperation, his wisdom in denying what he had said on the wireless transmission, as Mike Oscar Four was collapsing. ‘No one thinks any less of you for it, Pete,’ she’d said, sitting on the bedroom chair while Lomax rested, still fully dressed, on the side of his bed. ‘Anyone who’s worked in this business for more than a few years knows what it’s like. This is a tough environment and it does things to us.’

  He liked Eddie McCrimmon, it had to be said. She’d always struck him as a fair boss. A lot of the men – maybe most of them – had a simmering problem with the idea of a woman running a large chunk of the organisation. Even when they said otherwise. But Lomax had known Cal McCrimmon, and if the Big Man reckoned his daughter was up to the job, that was good enough for Lomax.

  But when the door opened – Lomax hadn’t even had time to say ‘come in’ – it wasn’t Eddie McCrimmon.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Lomax. I trust I haven’t disturbed you?’ The man sounded sincere enough, but no one who knocked on a door at midnight really cared whether or not they were disturbing someone. Of course they were.

  The man closed the door behind him. Lomax had been sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing pyjama bottoms and a vest, looking through a week-old tabloid newspaper. The sheer mundanity of the news items – football results, an actor’s drunken rampage at a nightclub – had been soothing his thought processes. It was good to be reminded that there was a real world out there, over the sea’s horizon.

  He’d had the main room light switched off, reading by the light of an angle-poise lamp on the bedside table. He’d been finishing off a cup of milky tea, with a shortbread finger perched on the saucer’s edge.

  He could barely see the man who’d just come into his room. The man seemed to find the exact position to avoid being illuminated, as if the room’s shadows were rearranging themselves to obscure this late visitor.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘It’s less of a question of you helping me, Mr Lomax, than of me helping you.’

  The man was dressed in dark, formal clothes. He was bearded and gloved. Lomax had seen him already, skulking around. ‘Are you … working for McCrimmon? I don’t think I know your name.’

  ‘I am known universally as the Master,’ the man declared.

  The state of relative calm that Lomax had begun to feel – the sense that the worst was behind him – evaporated in a stroke. The man seemed to have brought dread with him. It was in the room, hovering like an invisible gas.

  ‘Away, man. I don’t want to speak with you.’

  ‘But we’ve hardly begun to get to know each other.’ The Master, if that was his name, stepped closer. ‘You’ve had quite a turn, Lomax. They say you’ll soon be returning to a hospital on the mainland. I regret to say that we can’t let that happen.’

  Lomax had had enough of this. He made to move from the bed, judging that he was easily the stronger of the two men. But the Master was surprisingly quick. He placed a gloved hand on Lomax’s shoulder, touching him gently. Although the contact barely registered as pressure – it was no stronger than the kind touch of a friend – something in the Master’s hand compelled Lomax not to rise from the bed. He could only sit there, bewildered at his own paralysis. The Master maintained the contact. With no particular hurry, he leaned over to reach the angle-poise lamp, and directed the beam into Lomax’s face.

  ‘I am the Master and you will obey me.’

  ‘Please,’ Lomax said.

  ‘The sea, the waves, Lomax. They’re calling you, even now. You feel that call. You feel powerless to resist it. You know deep down that you will not be content until you answer that calling.’

  ‘I don’t want …’

  The Master’s control over Lomax was now as absolute and binding as if he was working a puppet. He removed the gloved hand on his shoulder, and touched his forefinger gently to Lomax’s lips. ‘Shush, now. There’s a good fellow. We don’t want you waking everyone, do we?’

  Lomax whimpered another plea. But the Master only smiled. ‘It’s so close now, Lomax. The peace of mind you’ve been searching for. Those waves are waiting to welcome you. Hear them crashing against the platform, urging you to join them. Why resist a moment longer?’

  ‘The sea. I have to go to the sea.’

  ‘Yes,’ the Master encouraged. ‘You must. You know it is for the best. But take your time. Finish your cup of tea.’

&n
bsp; The Master’s vast experience told him that his hypnotic suggestion had taken sufficiently deep root. Seeing the almost willing ease with which Lomax had surrendered to his control, the Master could not help but feel a microscopic fondness.

  He looked around, satisfying himself that there were no loose ends, content that Lomax could be left to follow his programming. He was about to leave the man when he spotted the shortbread finger, still uneaten He dunked the biscuit into the half-finished tea and popped it into his mouth, chuckling at his own excellent good fortune. He had been a prisoner for far too long.

  Never mind. That was all about to change. ‘Goodnight, Mr Lomax.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  The panda car attracted no particular attention as it beetled its way south along secondary roads, paralleling the bleak and windswept coast. Although it was still dark, the cloudless sky to the east carried the faintest hint that dawn was beginning to break, and with it a calming in the weather.

  There were four people in the passenger compartment of the car: two up front, two in the rear. They were, respectively, PC Archie Hawes, the beachcomber Pat McGinty, and two occupants of the police station from which Hawes operated: DI Ian Staple and WPC Susan Cooper. All four sat bolt upright, staring straight ahead, as stiff as crash test dummies. All were now wearing police uniform, including the beachcomber. Occasionally one of the four would say something, but for long tens of minutes the vehicle’s occupants sat in stony silence as they motored south. They did not really need to communicate verbally, not now, but it was good practice to use the speech mechanisms that came with their host bodies. They never knew when it might come in useful, if for example their primary communication channel was blocked.

  ‘We should not have emerged so far north,’ Hawes stated, after a long interval of wordlessness. ‘We were meant to be much closer. It implies carelessness.’

  ‘The technique is as yet imperfect,’ said McGinty. His voice was slow, deep and zombielike. ‘We must use the signal as a homing aid. When the Assemblage is complete, Sild time control will become much more precise. Until then, be grateful that we are on the right world, in the right quadrant of the galaxy, in the right timeframe.’