There was still no absolute confirmation that the Doctor had survived the attack on Durlston Heath. Equally, the TARDIS had not been seen in the wreckage. Soon, according to the Brigadier, it would be possible to send men into the area, wearing radiological protective gear. The Sild had abandoned their interest in the power station, appearing more intent on gathering hosts for a push toward larger population centres. UNIT forces were trying to move civilians out of the path of the Sild advance, clearing whole villages, but it was bound to be a losing battle.
Jo had to believe that the Doctor was somewhere, doing something that might make a difference. Equally, she had to believe that there was something to be gained in this risky expedition out to the now silent rig. Eddie McCrimmon might have cried wolf once, but she had asked for help a second time, speaking to Jo personally. Jo felt a personal connection with the woman now, an obligation to answer her call. Whatever had happened to her, Jo would not be able to live with her conscience if they did not make an effort to investigate.
Why did she feel this way, she wondered? Was she that good a person, or did spending time with the Doctor make her want to be better than she was? Was that, ultimately, the Doctor’s greatest achievement – not the deeds he himself did, but the deeds he inspired in others? The Doctor was one man, but he had touched countless lives.
Jo was ruminating on this when a time rupture opened right next to them, a hole in the sky that sucked in and then swallowed one of the three helicopters. She watched it tumble into a dark throat that had no business being in the air, rotors slowing and crumpling, air and life gasping from the cabin. Then it was gone.
She looked at Yates, reading the shock in his eyes. But there was nothing to discuss. They had to keep going now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Doctor shook his head pityingly. ‘You don’t even know if it works.’
‘If it’s still capable of generating an aura,’ the Master said, admiring the gleaming shaft of his neutron blaster, ‘I’d wager this weapon still has some potency.’
‘Very good. And are you willing to wager you can get that thing to work before I trigger the device around your neck?’
‘Ah, that.’ The Master chuckled. ‘A ruse, I confess. To inspire your confidence, your willingness to let me accompany you. I’m afraid I disarmed the triggering mechanism before I ever set foot in your TARDIS. Your control over me has been illusory.’
‘You’re bluffing.’
‘In which case I invite you to test that presumption. Meanwhile, be so good as to throw down the TARDIS key and kick it to me.’
‘Kill me and take it yourself.’
‘No, Doctor. If I killed you, I would miss the satisfaction of abandoning you here, without a time machine, beyond any hope of salvation.’ The Master waggled the blaster. ‘The key.’
‘Not on your nellie.’
‘Very well, Doctor: you leave me with no choice. With regret …’ The Master aimed the blaster squarely at the Doctor’s abdomen, and squeezed the trigger.
The Doctor should not have been surprised; he had been on the end of the Master’s homicidal ruthlessness on many occasions. That was what made the Master’s charm all the more twisted: that it could so easily transform itself into vicious single-mindedness. A dagger in the back, strangulation, the discharge from a neutron blaster … it mattered little, how the end would eventually come. There would always be that implacably composed face, dispensing murder as effortlessly as it dispensed the most vacuous of pleasantries.
But the Master yelped. The blaster had failed to discharge, and had instead self-destructed in a flash of pink that left the Master clutching one hand in the other, staggering back, pain and fury and indignation in his eyes. He stumbled and fell.
The Doctor too had fallen back. He had not been clutching a weapon, but in the same instant that the blaster disintegrated, a similar pink energy burst had impacted him hard in the chest. The Doctor landed on his back, his hands out of his pockets.
‘At least,’ he said, coughing, ‘we know where we stand now.’
Dusting himself off, the Master rose unsteadily to his feet. ‘A malfunction, for which you should count yourself very fortunate.’
‘I’m not sure it was a malfunction, actually.’
The Master followed the Doctor’s gaze. The suited alien was fading away. Even the bits of it that had shattered under the Master’s examination were disappearing.
‘What is this?’
The Doctor rubbed his chin, sitting upright. The pink energy burst had knocked the air out of him just as thoroughly as if he’d been whacked in the solar plexus.
‘What is this?’
‘Some kind of test, by the looks of things. Which we’ve either passed with flying colours, or flunked rather badly.’
The Doctor and the Master had both moved to the foot of the steps. A pattern of lights had begun to race up and down the three columns around the throne. The stasis machines began to emit a rising drone.
The Doctor and the Master climbed the stairs side by side. It was obvious that this woman had directed the spider to bring them here, and very likely that she had been responsible for the illusion that had tricked the Master.
‘A face you know?’ he whispered.
‘No,’ the Doctor said, and in the instant it was as true a thing as he had ever uttered. But a moment later, the tiniest of doubts struck him. He was sure he had never met this woman in her present condition. But Time Lords were very good with faces, and at stripping away the effects of time. It was an occupational hazard to bump into the same individuals at different points in their lives, often only hours or days apart from the time traveller’s perspective.
Had he once known this person, when they were much younger?
The rising drone reached a plateau, then quietened. The blur around the time bubble was now absent. The pocket of retarded time had been accelerated into the normal flow.
The woman moved her head. Her eyes, closed until now, opened wearily. She looked down at the two visitors, and her voice boomed and echoed from all corners of the vaulted chamber.
‘I was beginning to think you’d never come.’
‘Was there some point to that infantile trickery?’ the Master said.
‘To establish your intentions, violent or otherwise. Consider them established.’ The woman paused. ‘And for an infantile trick, it seemed more than convincing to you. Be warned that any further violent acts will be punished by your immediate destruction. I may not have much energy left, but I have enough for that. I know who you are – both of you.’
‘I’m afraid you have us at a bit of a disadvantage,’ the Doctor said.
The Master snarled: ‘Identify this world. What is its name and location? Confirm the identity of the spacecraft orbiting it. What is your name, and how did you come here?’
By way of reply, the woman said: ‘Did you explore the ship, before my robot found you?’
‘We had a pleasant enough stroll,’ the Doctor said.
‘And did you find your way to the place where the copies of him are kept?’ Her gaze, unmistakeably, was upon the Master.
‘Incarnations,’ he corrected. ‘Not copies.’
‘It is of no consequence. What matters is that you arrived too late, after the work was done.’
‘Too late for whose work?’ the Doctor asked.
‘Who else, but the Sild?’
The Doctor shot a look at the Master. Much was confusing, but at least the woman had mentioned something that made a kind of sense. The strange thing, until now, had been the utter absence of the Sild at this end of time.
‘Where are the Sild?’ the Doctor asked.
‘They achieved their goal. They gained access to a piece of technology aboard the ship. A forbidden machine, a device for opening ruptures in time, bridging the past and the present … their control over it was imperfect, to begin with.’
The Master could not hide his smirk.
‘What did they do?’
the Doctor asked.
‘The Sild detected the Master’s signal. At first they had no idea of its origin, but the psychokinetic imprint encoded into the signal enabled them to identify the sender. The records aboard the Consolidator told them who he was – who he had been, who he would be – a Time Lord with an unparalleled command of temporal engineering. They also discovered that he had played a part in their imprisonment – in the construction of the Consolidator itself. For the Sild the discovery of the psychokinetic signal could not have been more fortuitous. It gave them the means to reach back into history – to isolate and extract multiple facets of the Master, and to harness those facets to make their control over time even more powerful. And at the same time, to inflict eternal torment upon their Time Lord enemy!’
The Doctor glanced at the Master. ‘Not looking so cocky now, are you?’
‘The Sild harvested him,’ the woman went on. ‘Unstitched him from history, made him their prisoner, locked his minds together into a single Assemblage, a living computer linked directly to the time apparatus! His will was as nothing against their methods of neural control and coercion. The Sild have always been masters of pain and terror!’
‘And with this … Assemblage?’ the Doctor asked.
‘His mind gave them absolute control of the apparatus. The work of unstitching him from history was but the prelude, barely tapping the potential of the equipment. With his mind solving the ever-shifting time equations … compensating for micro-changes in temporal flux, the ebb and flow of chronosynclastic feedback patterns … the Sild were able to open vast portals into the past. Pathways and corridors into history, sufficient to bleed dry an entire world! They sucked the life from my world – drained Praxilion’s oceans and skies. Then they left, escaping into time through those same ruptures.’
‘To forge a new Sild dominion,’ the Master said. ‘Rewriting galactic history!’
‘How long ago was it when they finished?’ the Doctor asked, certain this was the first time he had heard of a world named Praxilion. ‘By how many centuries did we overshoot?’
The woman pushed her head back into the padded embrace of her throne. She emitted a retching cough of dry laughter. Whatever he had said plainly amused her. ‘Centuries, Doctor? Think again. You are ten million years too late.’
The Doctor scratched at his hair. ‘Well, the thing is, you see …’
‘If he had allowed me to navigate from the outset,’ the Master cut in, ‘that error would have been much reduced.’
The Doctor opted to ignore this criticism. ‘You said that the robot was yours, and you’ve obviously been expecting us. Were you alive when the Sild did … whatever they did?’
‘In the technical sense of the word, yes. But even then, I was confined to this stasis throne. I felt older than time – and yet from my present perspective, in those days I was almost youthful.’ The woman closed her eyes again, and for a few seconds it seemed as if she had fallen asleep. ‘I had another name once, but it is lost to time. To the people I governed – I will not say “ruled” – I was Her Imperial Majesty Uxury Scuita. They knew me better as the Red Queen. That is the only name that matters now. When I am gone, no one will remain to remember it.’
‘And these people …’ the Master said. ‘Were they also citizens of this world?’
‘Praxilion was theirs; they had evolved here. But it is not my world. I came to them in their hour of need. Twelve million years ago.’ With evident effort, she craned back in her seat to take in something of the saucer, suspended far above the throne. ‘My ship. I was its only pilot. My craft was … damaged, I suppose. Impaired, I made a crash-landing on this world. I remember little of that. But they found me, pulled me out of the craft. When they saw what I was, they made me their queen.’
‘Just like that?’ the Doctor asked. ‘You drop out of the sky, and they popped a crown on you?’
‘There was more to it than that.’
‘Twelve million years,’ the Master said, ‘still places us many billions of years beyond the EMTT.’
‘Quite correct,’ the Red Queen said. ‘This world, its creatures, its very ecosystem, all came into being long after what you think of as galactic history. Praxilion was not even a glint in creation’s eye when Gallifrey knew its last hour.’
‘But the ship?’ the Doctor asked.
‘Its name is the Consolidator, as you doubtless know.’
The Master had stopped clutching his hand – clearly the hurt had been superficial. ‘Are you certain of the identity of the ship?’
‘There is no doubt.’
The Master eyed the Doctor. For the moment the two of them were exactly as equals.
‘It can’t be the same craft,’ the Doctor said. ‘Not unless a very important piece of Gallifreyan history is a complete lie.’
‘I fear that may well be the case,’ the Master said.
The Doctor was doing his best to keep all this organised in his head, but it was becoming an effort. ‘So when you arrived, your Majesty – long before the ship – you must have seemed like something from the pages of myth.’
‘To the citizens of this world, I was no less than a god.’
‘And the citizens of this world?’ The Master asked. ‘Where are they, exactly?’
‘All gone. Extinct or annihilated. After the Sild onslaught, only a few lonely pockets remained – isolated groups of survivors, struggling to survive in a world stripped to the bone. The rest had died in their billions, under the vengeance and cruelty of the Sild.’
‘And you?’ the Doctor asked.
‘When all else was gone, they managed to keep me alive. This … stasis apparatus … was almost the last functioning machine on Praxilion. And for millions of years I have been here, as the support systems fail and I approach my last conscious thought, waiting for you.’
‘To toy with us?’ the Master asked.
‘No,’ the Red Queen said. ‘To send you back. Not to that remote time from which you have travelled, but a mere ten million years, into the earliest days of the Sild onslaught. I have a temporal coordinate lock, maintained by a bound-tachyon pair. You will neither overshoot, nor undershoot.’
‘And when we get there?’ the Doctor enquired.
‘You will give the Sild what they wish.’ Her gaze fell on the Master. ‘Him. The last piece of their puzzle.’
‘No,’ the Master said. ‘This will not be.’
The Doctor raised a hand. ‘We came here to find out what the Sild wanted, and then to stop them … not to surrender him to them!’
‘My argument is not with you, or even the Master. His crimes merit punishment, but that is not my concern. My duty is to appease the Sild. If they have the last component of the Assemblage, they may spare Praxilion. The desolation they wrought on this world and its people may be undone. There can be no other way.’
‘I assure you,’ the Doctor said, ‘that in my experience there are almost invariably about nine other ways. And it’s useless to bargain with the Sild!’
The queen moved her ancient limbs. The Doctor could almost feel the creaking of sinews, like an old tree bending in the wind. The queen worked a ring from one of the fingers of her ungloved hand, then tossed it to the ground. It came to rest at the base of the stairs: a gold hoop with a glittering red gem, twinkling with an inner spark.
‘One half of the tachyon pair. Cross-link it to your time machine, and it will carry you back to the other half. Travel back in time.’
‘I have no intention of submitting to your will,’ the Master said. ‘I do not obey. I am obeyed!’
The queen pointed a now ringless finger at the Master. She mouthed an incantation. The Master groaned and dropped to his knees, clutching his head.
‘You are damaged,’ the queen said. ‘That neural pulse was at the lowest setting … it should barely have troubled you.’ A trace of contrition crossed her face. ‘I did not mean to cause him pain … merely to assert my authority, and warn him that the next pulse would be wors
e.’
‘The Sild touched him,’ the Doctor said softly. ‘Just before we left Earth. Evidently the contact did more damage than he’s letting on. He must be using phenomenal powers of self-control, blocking the pain and re-routing thought processes around compromised brain areas.’
‘A Time Lord’s mental resilience is legendary. But even you have your limits.’
The Master forced himself to stand, although the evidence of the queen’s neural attack remained in the tense muscles of his face. ‘I am … weakened. But far from incapacitated.’
‘But even the strongest mind will eventually wither, after it has known Sild contact. Or do you deny this?’
‘She’s right,’ the Doctor said. ‘I thought you’d got off lightly, but I should have known better. There’s no good way to have a Sild shoving its feelers into your brain!’
‘Thank you, Doctor, for your tender sympathies.’
‘There’s medical equipment on the TARDIS. If you will allow me to carry out a full examination …’
‘Your medicine is useless in the face of Sild contact,’ the queen said. ‘But on Praxilion we lived under their oppression for half a million years! Once in a while, with the aid of an alien machine, we were able to spare those who had known the touch.’
‘And do you have this treatment now?’ the Doctor asked, guessing what the answer was likely to be.
‘No. The machine was lost, even before the end. But at the time of my earlier self, the one who holds the other tachyon pair … she will have the means. Ask her to show you the Infinite Cocoon.’
‘You cannot have such a thing,’ the Master said.
‘He’s right,’ the Doctor said. ‘Only a handful of those abominations were ever made!’
‘Nonetheless, my people found an Infinite Cocoon inside the ship. It had been put there, along with much else that ought to have been destroyed.’
The Master regarded the Doctor. ‘With the correct programming, it might be able to heal me.’
Doctor Who: Harvest of Time Page 22
