Doctor Who: Harvest of Time

by Alastair Reynolds

  Or the creation of something worse?

  ‘It will be a little while, if I’m not mistaken,’ the Red Queen said.

  ‘Good. There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you, and now’s as good a time as any.’

  ‘Go ahead, Doctor.’

  ‘Two things, actually. My taking the Master to the Consolidator is your last best hope for the survival of this planet, wouldn’t you agree? If the Sild don’t agree to spare the survivors, it will all have been for nothing.’

  ‘Your point being?’

  ‘Now may be your only chance to strike back at the Sild. They will be expecting me to arrive with the Master, so their defences will be lowered. I could also carry the Axumillary Orb.’

  ‘How could you know of such a thing?’

  ‘Because I saw it being used.’

  ‘There is only one Axumillary Orb, Doctor, and I assure you it has never been used.’

  ‘But it will be,’ the Doctor said. ‘In the future, you succeeded in smuggling it aboard the ship. You used it to destroy the Consolidator, along with the Master’s final surviving incarnations. But this is an earlier timeframe. The Axumillary Orb still exists – it has yet to be taken aboard the ship, let alone detonated. I know. You’re holding it in your ungloved hand. It’s the sphere on the end of your sceptre. It wasn’t there when I met your future self.’

  ‘You are very perspicacious, Doctor.’

  ‘I’ve been called worse. I take it I’m right, though?’

  ‘Of course. Why pretend otherwise? And yes, I have often wished I could find a way to bring the reactivated device aboard the Consolidator. You say I succeed?’

  ‘Yes, but by then it’s too late to save Praxilion. But now it isn’t!’

  ‘I will consider it. Why did you wait until now, before discussing this matter?’

  ‘Because I’d rather the Master didn’t know I was prepared to blow him and me into the middle of next week.’

  ‘You would be ready to make that sacrifice, Doctor?’

  ‘If there was no other choice.’

  The Red Queen nodded sagely. ‘I have met many brave individuals in my time, and many that consider themselves brave, until the moment of testing. I believe I have learned enough to know the difference by now.’

  ‘None of us really know, until the time comes.’

  ‘But the time has come for you, over and over. I see it in your eyes.’ The Red Queen clutched the Axumillary Orb and unscrewed if from the rod. ‘If there is a way to trigger it remotely, I’m afraid my technicians haven’t yet figured it out. I’m afraid it can only be detonated manually, by twisting the two parallel rings until they line up. You’d have a few seconds, no more, before the device activates.’

  ‘It’s a shame we don’t know the remote trigger. I wish I’d asked yourself when I had the chance.’

  ‘Too bad, Doctor. Catch!’

  She tossed him the Axumillary Orb. The Doctor caught it deftly, hefted the dense metal sphere, then slipped it into his pocket. ‘Thank you, your Majesty. I sincerely hope I don’t have to put it to good use.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll do your best. And the other thing?’

  For a moment the Doctor’s absentmindedness had the better of him. ‘The other thing?’

  ‘You said there were two things you wanted to ask, Doctor. The Master is still … preoccupied. Now’s your chance.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Well, it was about your ship, actually – the one you came in on. Would you mind awfully if I took a closer look at it?’

  ‘There’s nothing to be learned from it, I’m afraid. My technicians have searched every inch of the thing, from top to bottom. There’s no visible means of propulsion, no obvious control or navigation systems. They must be incorporated into the basic form of the vehicle at an extremely high level of integration.’

  ‘Or not there at all,’ the Doctor said.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because I don’t believe that saucer is a spacecraft at all, your Majesty. The reason you haven’t found any control systems is that none are present.’

  ‘Preposterous if you don’t mind my saying so. How did I fly my ship to Praxilion?’

  ‘You didn’t. You simply tumbled through a rupture in time, out of control. Your ship was not a ship at all.’

  ‘What was it then?’

  ‘A simple escape pod, an airtight metal shell with just enough integrity to cope with passage through time.’

  ‘And what brings you to this shattering conclusion?’

  ‘Because I’ve seen your ship before, your Majesty. Or something very like it, on the side of an oil platform. It’s a lifeboat, designed to be dropped into the sea. The saucer shape is simply the most efficient form for an airtight vessel, designed to weather the worst storms.’

  ‘You are making very little sense, Doctor.’

  ‘That’s because you’ve forgotten who you are and where you came from. I don’t blame you; it was a long time ago after all. But somehow you were caught up in the Sild time ruptures, sucked through eternity, across an immensity of space and time.’

  ‘I arrived on this world long before we woke the Sild. How can I have caused my own arrival?’

  ‘Very easily, I’m afraid – just as the Master and I overshot, you undershot.’

  ‘This is absurd.’

  ‘But true. You came from the twentieth century, your Majesty. You were caught up in the Sild time disturbances happening in the North Sea, and hurled into this future. How, I don’t know – you probably didn’t intend this to happen. But I do know that we’ve already met.’

  ‘In my future. Yes, we know. It’s how you knew about the Axumillary Orb.’

  ‘Also in your past. Hold up your hand, your Majesty – the one you keep in the glove.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I want to see if I can spot the missing fingers.’

  ‘How could you …’

  ‘Your name, your real name, is Edwina McCrimmon. You lost two fingers in an industrial accident, proving your mettle in the oil industry.’

  ‘How dare …’

  ‘The name means something, doesn’t it? You haven’t heard it for millions of years. Who would know it, here on Praxilion? But it’s your name. You know it. You own it.’

  The Infinite Cocoon stopped gurgling. It was still now. The dance of lights on the control matrix had ceased. The lid began to slide off to one side, a bar of yellow light ramming up from the interior.

  The Doctor dashed to the side and looked into the machine with supreme apprehension.

  But it was as if nothing had happened. The Master was still there, lying on his back, arms folded across his chest. His clothes were as immaculate as when he had entered. His eyes were closed. He almost looked serene.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘He’s breathing.’ The Doctor leaned down, stationed an ear over the Master’s chest and listened carefully. ‘Two heartbeats. Regular pulses. He’s alive. He’s come through the Infinite Cocoon!’

  Yet the Master was deeply unconscious. The Doctor extracted him from the Cocoon with great effort, two of the Praxilions assisting with the job. They placed the Master onto a kind of stretcher. Externally, he appeared intact. There was no guessing what had happened to his mind.

  ‘Will you take him?’ the Red Queen asked.

  ‘That was the arrangement.’

  ‘You’ll consent to deliver your enemy to the Sild?’

  ‘It’s the worst thing I’ve ever had to do. But there is no alternative. We could run, now, but the Sild will always find him. Help me take him to the TARDIS.’

  ‘And have you escape with him into time? I’m afraid not, Doctor. It’s nothing personal, but for the sake of Praxilion, I simply cannot take that chance. You will ride my flier up to the Consolidator. It has the necessary range, and the Sild will not attack if they believe you have the Master.’

  ‘It would be quicker and easier by TARDIS.’

  ‘This is the way it happens, D
octor. Please do not argue unnecessarily.’ She had made her mind up, clearly.

  ‘The Sild may not be in a hurry to see me leave,’ the Doctor said.

  ‘Then I wish you the best of luck. I am sorry that circumstances have … reunited us in this fashion. You seem like a good man, but I also have my people to think about. They have suffered enough for my errors. I will not perpetuate their misery.’

  The Praxilions helped the Doctor and the recumbent Master to the flier. They would be travelling alone, with no other crew, but the flier would be on automatic pilot, its course locked against outside interference.

  The Doctor kept an eye on the Master as the Praxilions readied the craft for flight. He remained comatose, breathing slowly but regularly. As vulnerable, in his way, as when he had been inside the Infinite Cocoon.

  ‘If our positions were reversed,’ the Doctor whispered, ‘what would you do? Smother me? Something worse? Or accept that there’s a part of me in you, a part of you in me?’

  The craft had sealed itself for departure. The Doctor strode to the broad sweep of the forward window and watched the city fall away below. The saucer-shaped flier accelerated steadily and had soon slipped free of Praxilion’s thinning atmosphere. The craft bucked and swayed as it made the transition to flight through vacuum, but artificial gravity allowed the Doctor to remain standing. He returned to the Master.

  ‘Doctor …’ his lips moved, shaping the word at the limit of audibility. The Master’s eyes were still closed.

  The Doctor leaned closer. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Very tired.’

  ‘You came through the Infinite Cocoon. If you remember me, I think that is a good sign.’

  ‘I am free of it. Whatever it was.’

  ‘The Sild.’ For now, the Doctor thought. The Master would have died without the Cocoon’s intervention. But this was only the most temporary of respites. He added: ‘Do you remember where we’re going?’

  ‘I remember that there is something that must be done.’ There was a long interval before the Master spoke again. ‘Forgive me, Doctor. I make a poor conversationalist.’

  ‘Rest. There’s nothing more you need to do now.’

  The Doctor returned to the window. There, coming up fast, was the vast dark bulk of the Consolidator, backlit by the purple and red glory of some squid-like stellar nebula.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  When the helicopters landed in Aberdeen, nearly exhausted of fuel, Jo was still numb from what had happened at the rig. Everything they had done – had it been for nothing? And Eddie McCrimmon’s bravery – had all that been futile? It was so unfair. How could the universe be this callous, this unfeeling?

  And the Doctor – still no word on him. So they had both failed. Blowing up the MERMAN equipment had not had any effect, and whatever had happened to the Doctor and him, the other one, good or bad, it had also had no influence on the Sild’s ambitions. Failure on two fronts. Failure and futility and death. And this was just the start of it – the beginning of the beginning of the end. That was what the Doctor had promised. Sild takeover was inevitable, once they gained a claw-hold. And this was starting to look very much like a claw-hold, wasn’t it?

  A military ambulance was waiting to collect the injured Yates. He had been in and out of consciousness all the way back, disorientated and rambling about his situation. Jo was almost on the point of envying him. Perhaps the greatest kindness of all would be to die, now, in a state of blissful confusion.

  But Jo and Benton were ushered into a white wooden cabin near the landing area, and in the cabin was a telephone, and on the other end of the telephone was Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, and something in the Brig’s voice had the effect of snapping Jo out of her funk almost from the first word.

  ‘Miss Grant. So glad you’ve made it back to dry land. I am very sorry to hear about Miss McCrimmon – she did a very courageous thing, and she has our utmost gratitude.’

  The Brig had obviously been briefed on events at Mike Oscar Six. ‘I’m sorry, too,’ Jo said. ‘But it counted for nothing, did it. The time ruptures kept on happening. That’s why she fell into one.’

  ‘That was unfortunate. But I am pleased to say that Miss McCrimmon’s actions may have had some consequence. We have been tracking the frequency of time ruptures, Miss Grant. They are still continuing, but the interval between them is increasing and the scale of the ruptures appears to be diminishing. There is no doubt in my mind that the destruction of the MERMAN equipment has had a very detrimental effect on Sild operations. They obviously needed that signal to fine-tune their temporal incursions, like a homing beacon. We’ve denied them that, and now their attacks are becoming scattershot.’ The Brigadier coughed. ‘Of course the war isn’t won yet – not by a long margin. Sild parties are still advancing inland, and more of them are coming ashore by the hour. But if we are beginning to stem their arrival through time, we may yet have a chance.’

  ‘But the Doctor …’

  ‘Still no word, Miss Grant. Rest assured that you’ll be the first to be informed if there are developments.’

  It was hard to shake the sense that he was returning to the Consolidator. They had been aboard it, witnessed its destruction, and yet all that lay in the future.

  The flier jolted. Some violent force had seized it. The Doctor guessed that it had been intercepted by the approach and docking systems of the Consolidator itself: tractor fields powerful enough to crush an unwanted visitor like an ant under a heel. He glanced at the Master but the man was deeply unconscious again.

  A mouth opened in the forward hull of the ship, gaping wide like a whale’s jaw. Inside was a ruddy red docking bay. The flier slid into that mouth as if riding rails. The Doctor very much doubted that he could have done anything to resist the tractor fields, even if he had had control of the flier’s motive systems. The Consolidator was much too powerful for that. They were being reeled in like an insect on a chameleon’s sticky tongue.

  Ribbed red walls slid by on either side. The mouth began to close. The Doctor felt a few more surges and bucks and then the flier came to rest with a definite bump. They were in a large interior space, similar perhaps to one of the chambers the Master and he had already explored in the future.

  The Doctor returned to his passenger. The jolt of landing had stirred the Master.

  ‘I think we’ve arrived,’ the Doctor said gently. ‘Here. Let me help you to your feet.’

  The Master was groggy, weak, but just about able to support himself with the Doctor’s assistance. Together they hobbled toward the flier’s door. They had not reached it when it began to open on its own, even though the Doctor had yet to verify that there was breathable air outside. He felt a pop of equalising pressure, but the differential could not have been great.

  They hobbled down the short disembarkation ramp.

  ‘It was good of you to bring me here,’ the Master said, wheezing between words. ‘You should leave now, while you’re able.’ He coughed. ‘Frankly, I fear for your welfare.’

  ‘And dump you here like a parcel? Sorry, but that’s not really my style.’

  ‘I will grant you this. You have always had an idiotic attachment to style.’

  ‘Why, thank you.’

  The two men made their way out from under the overhang of the flier. The red-lit chamber soared far above them. The atmosphere was forbidding.

  ‘No welcome party,’ said the Doctor.

  ‘I believe you may have spoken too soon.’ The Master jabbed his chin into the gloom. ‘Here they come. Whatever they may be.’

  It was an amorphous, shuffling thing – not one type of creature, but dozens of different ones, all under Sild control. This made perfect sense, in hindsight. Aboard the Consolidator, held in stasis for eternity, were countless examples of alien intelligences deemed too malevolent or aggressive to remain at large. The welcoming party was made up of individuals from a couple of dozen of these hostile species, no two of them even remotely alike. There
was a towering, grey-furred, hunchbacked thing with two red eyes set somewhere in the middle of its sternum; there was a thing like a brain moving around on three prehensile spinal cords; there was a thing like a cactus; there was an alien that seemed to be made entirely of water, a single wobbling blob of it, contained by some impossible, directed surface tension, with coloured organs floating around inside. There were half a dozen species that the Doctor thought he recognised. A Quagulan, in its glittering, knife-edged armour. A Social Craint, half organism, half unicycle. A multi-legged sting-tailed Mepuloid, fixing him with a cluster of eyestalks.

  All that they had in common was the fact that each was controlled by an ambulator, and that each ambulator contained a tiny Sild pilot.

  ‘Friendly-looking bunch,’ the Doctor whispered to the Master. ‘All they need are some burning torches, and we’d really feel at home.’

  ‘The Master will step forward!’ commanded a shrill electronic voice.

  ‘What do you want with him?’ demanded the Doctor. ‘What do you hope to achieve?’

  ‘Completion! Fulfilment of the Assemblage!’ It was impossible to know which of the creatures was addressing him. ‘This is the final element. It will bring about our total mastery of time!’

  ‘To what end? So you can leave Praxilion a shrivelled husk, and turn Earth into a drowned world? It won’t get you anywhere, you know! The civilised species of the galaxy united against you once; they’ll do so again.’

  ‘Enough,’ the Master said wearily. ‘I thank you for your efforts, Doctor, but I fear they are wasted.’ He released himself from the Doctor’s support and stepped unsteadily toward the waiting party. ‘I am ready. I am yours. Do with me as you would.’ He raised his arms in surrender.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the Doctor called after him. ‘I’ll do what I can, I promise.’

  ‘The fault is mine,’ the Master said, turning back to look at him. ‘If I had not shone so brightly, I would not have come to their attention.’