Doctor Who: Harvest of Time

by Alastair Reynolds

  Lovelace left the chair and walked slowly to the window, the gun in his hand, ready to turn it on Irwin if needed. At least now he had proven that he was willing to fire the weapon.

  He tapped the body of the crab with the nozzle of the automatic. The crab dropped away, falling back towards the sea.

  ‘Do you think there was just the one?’ he asked.

  ‘Aye,’ Irwin said. ‘And the Clangers, they’re real as well.’

  Yates scanned the sky with watchful eyes. Aircraft had been coming and going since they had arrived at Durlston Heath, but far overhead, on their own urgent errands. ‘Then where are they?’ he barked into his walkie-talkie. ‘We were promised helicopter cover by now! What do you mean, twenty minutes? We haven’t got twenty minutes.’ He signed off, gritting his teeth in frustration as he telescoped down the aerial. ‘I’m sorry, Doctor. I’m afraid we’re not going to get much help here, at least not for a while.’

  ‘We can’t delay,’ the Doctor said. ‘The Sild may already have reached the Master.’

  ‘The who, sir?’

  ‘Try and keep a grip on it, Mike. The man we’re here to rescue. As bitter a taste as that leaves in my mouth.’

  ‘Right, sir. Chap in the posters, right?’

  ‘Chap in the posters, Mike, yes.’

  They were standing next to the lead lorry, parked askew so that it served as cover between the UNIT officers and the entrance to Durlston Heath. The guards had not so far opened fire, but the Doctor was under no illusions that the lorry would simply be allowed to drive on through. The Sild-controlled guards were hoping that they would make exactly that assumption, whereupon they would attack when the UNIT personnel had nowhere to hide.

  ‘We have no choice,’ he said, with bitter resignation. ‘Those men will never let us pass, and if we try to force our way through it will become a bloodbath.’

  ‘But those men aren’t really men any more, are they? Any more than those people we hit on the road?’

  ‘Those people on the road threw themselves at us, Mike. But are you really ready to open fire on those guards without provocation?’

  ‘Well, not without provocation, but …’

  ‘Get the cover off the TARDIS! I can’t attempt precision dematerialisation with a tarpaulin draped over the old girl!’

  ‘Are you sure, sir? You said you’d need to be inside the perimeter, to be absolutely certain.’

  ‘I was rather hoping,’ the Doctor said, ‘that if we managed to get inside the perimeter I wouldn’t need the TARDIS at all. As you are all so fond of reminding me, she’s hardly the most reliable transport just at present.’

  Benton came over with a walkie-talkie. ‘Brig for you, sir.’

  The Doctor took the handset. ‘I was just about to take the TARDIS for a little spin, Brigadier.’

  ‘Sorry to spoil your fun, Doctor. How long do you think you’ll need?’

  ‘How long have I got?’

  ‘Reports show Sild elements closing in from different directions. If there’s the slightest chance of them reaching the … um …’

  ‘The chap,’ the Doctor said.

  ‘Him – yes.’ The Brigadier made a harrumphing sound. ‘Well, it can’t happen. I can give you twenty minutes, but if you’re not out by then, I’ll have no choice but to pull out my men and resort to an airstrike.’

  ‘And what type of airstrike did you have in mind?’

  ‘The kind that requires Geneva authorisation, Doctor – which I’ve just been given.’

  ‘I see. Twenty minutes?’

  ‘It should be sufficient. If you haven’t reached … the objective … get back in the TARDIS and leave. Is that understood? No heroics, Doctor. I don’t have time for them.’

  ‘I shall do my utmost to ensure there are no heroics, Brigadier. Might I speak to Jo?’

  ‘She’s on her way to Scotland, as you well know. We can get through to the Hercules if necessary, but it ties up communications …’

  ‘Why on earth did you allow her to head to Scotland?’

  ‘Because you wanted her up there! Against my wishes, but she was very persuasive.’

  ‘Yes, I imagine she was.’ The Doctor’s tone softened. ‘I don’t suppose we should be too surprised. We can’t very well hire people on the basis of their independence and initiative and then complain when they demonstrate exactly those qualities.’ He paused. ‘She’ll find her way to that platform one way or another, even if she has to hire a rowing boat. Can you make sure she has as much assistance as you can spare?’

  ‘I’ll do what I can. Twenty minutes, Doctor. From the end of this sentence.’

  ‘Thank you, Brigadier.’

  The Doctor handed the handset back to Benton.

  They went back to the second lorry. Its tarpaulin covers had been pulled back in readiness. The TARDIS rested upright on a wooden forklift pallet, the time-space machine’s pseudomass straining down on the lorry’s already weary suspension.

  The Doctor climbed onto the rear platform as the UNIT men removed the temporary rigging which had kept the TARDIS from shifting around. ‘Well, old thing,’ he said, rubbing a hand against the battered blue exterior. ‘Think we’ve got it in us?’

  He fished out his keys, opened the TARDIS, prepared to disappear inside. But he hesitated before closing the door. ‘If all goes well, I’ll return directly to UNIT headquarters. Tell the Brigadier to prepare a cell for the Master – and make it a strong one.’

  The Doctor shrugged off his cape, moved to the central console, hands trembling with the magnitude of what he was about to attempt.

  Working quickly, but still with great care, the Doctor adjusted all the navigational presets he had carefully locked down while still at UNIT headquarters. If he had his calculations right, he should be able to use the residual energy from the time distortions to override the Time Lords’ control of the TARDIS. If he had it right.

  ‘Just this once,’ he muttered, as if he was talking to Bessie. ‘Just this one time. Work.’

  The Doctor pushed down the dematerialisation control.

  The central part of the console began to rise and fall as the TARDIS initiated reluctant entry into the Time Vortex. More warnings lit up. The Doctor danced around the console, cancelling indications, making small adjustments. The wheezing, groaning sound of dematerialisation intensified, and then died away to a gentle rhythmic hum. Time flight had been achieved. The subjective interval, inside the TARDIS, bore no linear relationship to the objective interval. But it would still take only seconds. The Doctor busied himself adjusting temporal trim controls.

  Abruptly, the TARDIS lurched. The wheezing and groaning returned. The console slowed, and then ceased its rise and fall. Time egress had been achieved. The TARDIS had emerged from the Vortex.

  The Doctor made a quick appraisal of the console readouts, satisfying himself that the numbers were not too far from where he had hoped they might fall. He turned on the external viewer. He was hoping to see the interior of the Durlston A reactor, but perhaps that had always been an unrealistic expectation. He was not so far off after all. The TARDIS had come to rest on a stretch of sand, drab and windswept, hemmed by dunes on one side. The Doctor made the view track around through 360 degrees. The sky was a cloudy grey, squatting low above a band of grey water that could only be the North Sea. He had obviously not come very far from his point of departure. The Doctor watched as the scene tracked around, expecting the blocky outline of the power station to hove into view at any moment. Once he knew exactly how far off course he had come, he could refine the parameters for the next attempt.

  The Doctor stopped the viewer’s tracking. It had locked on to some figures, dragging something out of the water. Curious, the Doctor touched the zoom controls. The figures resolved into bearded, wild-haired men clad in bedraggled costumes of leather, fur and simple metal armour. They had horns on their helmets, and the thing they were dragging out of the sea was some kind of wooden-hulled boat, with a crude dragon carved into
its prow.

  ‘Ah,’ the Doctor said to himself. ‘Close in space, but a little off in time.’ With a twinge of self-directed irritation, he realised that he had failed to engage one of the temporal lock overrides. Now one of the helmeted men had broken away from the boat-hauling party and was running toward the TARDIS in a state of some excitement, waving an axe and screaming. ‘Terribly sorry for the intrusion,’ the Doctor said, entirely for his own benefit.

  He threw the dematerialisation control again, and the TARDIS lurched back into the Vortex.

  The time flight lasted a little longer this time, but the reentry was smoother, and when the Doctor reactivated the viewer he was gratified to see that he was very definitely indoors, in what was clearly a modern industrial structure. He checked the readouts, encouraged to see that the spatial and temporal indices all appeared correct, within an allowable margin of error. He had travelled less than a second from his original moment of departure on the UNIT lorry, and much less than a mile in space.

  He was in the reactor building.

  But the Doctor had learned his lesson and before leaving the TARDIS he was careful to complete a 360-degree sweep of the building’s interior. He was inside the main hall, but not yet within the cube which contained the Master’s accommodation unit. The lights were still on, and there was as yet no sign that the Sild had reached this far. Perhaps there was still time.

  The Doctor opened the door, ignoring the TARDIS’s warnings that the air outside was moderately radioactive. He slipped on his cape and stepped out into the reactor hall.

  The TARDIS had come to rest on a section of elevated metal flooring between two huge turbines. Alarms were sounding, orange lights flashing all around the echoing space. There were no guards around: the Doctor presumed that they had been called away to defend the perimeter. He locked the TARDIS, then made his way quickly to the steps which led up the side of the central cube. But at the top he found his way blocked by a heavy metal gate, barring entrance into the cube. The Doctor struggled with it for a few moments, then dug out his sonic screwdriver. Glancing around nervously, doing his best to shut out the distraction of the alarms and the lights, the Doctor struggled to bypass the heavy electromechanical lock. But it was to no avail. The sonic screwdriver could get through most things, given time, but time was exactly the thing in short supply. Muttering to himself, the Doctor returned the screwdriver to his pocket.

  There was nothing for it.

  He descended the stairs and found his way out of the main hall, along the connecting office that led to Childers’ observation room. An automated voice was blaring from speaker grilles in the wall: ‘Security Warning. Perimeter has been breached. Level one lockdown is now in effect.’

  The Doctor found the observation room. The door was ajar. He pushed it open, flicking on the room light as he entered.

  Childers was sitting at his console.

  The Doctor looked at him, expecting a response. Childers was awake, but his mind seemed to be elsewhere. His hands sat limply in his lap. His eyes were fixed on the screens and controls of the console, but there was no focus in them.

  The Doctor spun Childers around in his swivel chair, snapped his fingers to bring the man out of whatever trance he was in. ‘For pity’s sake, man – snap out of it!’

  Childers blinked and frowned. He seemed not to have noticed the Doctor until that moment.

  ‘I’ve failed, haven’t I?’ Childers asked distantly, as if not really expecting an answer. ‘Let everyone down.’

  ‘Now’s not the time for that,’ the Doctor said. ‘Whatever you did, or allowed to happen, you thought it was for the best. But now we need to think about the Master.’

  ‘The Master?’

  ‘Prisoner M. Think, Director. Concentrate. Prisoner M. You remember him, don’t you?’

  ‘There was a Prisoner M once …’ Childers said. ‘That was a long time ago, though.’ A childlike questioning tone entered his voice. ‘Why are you asking about him now?’

  ‘Childers, listen very, very carefully. That man is still in your care – just. He’s in the main reactor core. But the people … the things … breaking into Durlston Heath want to get to him very badly. We have to get to him first!’

  Childers squinted like a man looking into the sun. ‘Get to who?’

  ‘Never mind.’ The Doctor could see that this was hopeless: Childers’ amnesia was too far gone.

  The Doctor leaned over and threw a sequence of switches on the console, watching until lights turned from green to red and red to green.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Paying a visit to an old acquaintance, before someone else does. I’ve opened the gate to the main cube.’ The Doctor flicked another bank of switches. ‘This initiates the elevation of his accommodation unit. Now all I need is to enter the override code to open the main door into the unit.’ The Doctor tapped the sequence he’d seen Childers use on his last visit, then turned to regard the row of status lights under the keypad. They flashed red three times, emitting a shrill buzz at the same time. ‘What day is it today?’ the Doctor asked, before his gaze chanced upon a tear-off calendar sitting next to one of the telephones. ‘Monday, of course. And you’ve changed the code, as you were meant to do.’

  ‘Is there a problem?’ Childers asked.

  ‘I’m rather afraid there is. I need to know the new code, Director. Four numbers. Do you remember them?’

  ‘Be a daft wazzock if I didn’t, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Then tell me the numbers.’

  But the Doctor drew breath, freezing on the last syllable. He was no longer looking at Childers, but at the thing creeping up the back of Childers’ chair. With Childers facing him, all that the Doctor could see was the extremities of its legs, the tips of its probing cilia. ‘Director,’ he said softly. ‘Would you … Slowly.…’ He beckoned gently, hoping to coax Childers out of the chair, before the Sild had a chance to clamp on.

  It was, however, a vain hope. The Sild clasped itself around Childers’ neck, and in an instant Childers seemed to break out of his shell-shocked state, reaching up frantically, trying to claw the alien thing away from him. He shrieked. The Doctor, no less horrified, sprang forward, spun the chair and tried to rip the Sild away from the rear. Childers thrashed and gurgled as the Sild’s tentacles locked tighter around his throat. It was not trying to strangle him, but to incapacitate him sufficiently to enable full integration.

  The Doctor stumbled back. Childers was turning a liverish purple, the Sild adjusting itself as it prepared to sink its nerve taps. Only seconds remained. Even as this urgency gripped him, the Doctor’s eyes scanned the room in fear, wondering if another Sild was close at hand.

  He remembered the sonic screwdriver. He pulled it out, adjusted its settings, and turned it to maximum sonic disrupt. The screwdriver made a rising whine, a note that rose in frequency and intensity until it was at first audibly painful, then beyond pain. He steered the beam in the rough direction of the Sild and hoped that this might work. Childers was slumping in the chair, losing whatever fight he had possessed. On the console, one by one, the glass-fronted dials and readouts began to shatter. The Doctor hoped that the glass in the Sild’s container might also succumb, but it was proving far more resilient to sonic disruption. The screwdriver was turning hot in the Doctor’s hands, approaching power overload.

  Suddenly the Sild released. Its legs had turned momentarily ineffective, allowing the Sild to dangle away from Childers. The Doctor pocketed the still-hot screwdriver and ripped the Sild from its host. Inches of blood-smeared cilia slid out of the man, and then as the tips popped free, they emerged with little specks of grey-pink matter. Brain tissue, the Doctor realised. The Sild had already touched Childers’ mind. Ordinarily, the severance of contact would be fatal for the host organism. But if it had only been seconds …

  The Doctor kicked the Sild away. It was spasming, unable to right itself. The Doctor grabbed at a metal waste basket. He upended it, tipping out it
s paper contents, and dropped the empty receptacle over the struggling Sild.

  ‘Director! Can you hear me?’

  Childers coughed. He coughed again, drew breath and let out an appalled shriek. He tried to pull himself out of the chair, but the Doctor held him gently down.

  ‘Easy, old fellow.’

  The shriek turned to a moan. The moan abated long enough for Childers to say, quite clearly: ‘Sild.’

  ‘I know,’ the Doctor said, feeling a combination of terrible pity and empathy. ‘It’s all over now. The Sild has gone.’

  But the damage it had done, that was very much not gone. This was what happened to the Sild’s victims. They either died straight away or not long after.

  ‘Hurts.’

  ‘Director, you’ve been a very brave man. But now I need you to be a little braver. In a few seconds, you’re going to start feeling very drowsy. Before that happens, I’d like you to tell me the numbers.’ The Doctor was cupping Childers’ head now, supporting him gently, not wishing to cause this poor man any more pain. ‘The numbers, Director. It’s very important.’

  ‘It’s all over now,’ Childers said.

  The Sild was rattling around inside the waste bin.

  ‘There’s still time. Give me the numbers.’

  ‘No, there isn’t. It’s over. Relegation time.’ Childers voice was slurred. He sounded like a man on the edge of consciousness, about to drift into sleep. ‘They’d have needed to score against Blackpool to stay in the division …’

  ‘Childers!’ The Doctor was about to slap the man. ‘This isn’t about rugby!’

  ‘Relegation time. Down the flipping table.’

  Childers slumped. The Doctor allowed the man’s head to loll, knowing it was over; that sleep had taken him and that death would follow quickly. The Sild had done too much damage to his mind, in the moments it was coupled. The Doctor’s revulsion sharpened to a keen hatred. It was an abomination that a living creature could to this to another.

  Then his eyes chanced upon the newspaper again. Now that he looked closer he saw that the paper was folded to the sports pages. The Doctor snatched it up and glanced down the long columns of rugby results. Hull Kingston Rovers versus Blackpool Borough. Hull: 3, Blackpool: 5. The score had been ringed in faint red biro.