by Craig Hinton
Whatever it was, it hurt. It seared every nerve ending with microscopic red-hot pokers, taking her to a level of pain that she had never imagined existed. Any thoughts about the other end of the stunnel were overridden by an excruciating agony that seemed to last for an eternity.
When she finally stopped screaming she was back in the real world.
After her brain connected with her body, she felt the rough ground beneath her, and the cold air around her. She peered through the gloom and saw that she was not alone. She just hoped that they had all made it.
‘Is everyone okay?’ It was Rachel, on her feet and counting the others to make sure that they were all there, although it was difficult to see much in the dimness; the only light came from a few hand torches that some of the more alert colonists had pulled from their backpacks. Felice jumped to her feet, only to stumble; the gravity was considerably less than the Earth-normal of Charon’s gravitic web. She tentatively stepped forward, only to discover that her bloody gravity boots weren’t working. Then she cursed herself – she hadn’t turned the bloody things on. She reached down and pressed the contacts on both boots.
‘Rachel!’ she called out, standing up. ‘We made it!’
‘Go to the top of the class, Dr Delacroix,’ Rachel retorted. And then, more warmly, ‘How are you feeling? Pretty rough ride, wasn’t it?’
Felice began to answer, and then tripped over a lump that she realized was Maxwell and slowly fell onto him. She felt sick, and that wasn’t entirely due to the vertigo of the low gravity. Maxwell was a grade-A creep.
She felt hands rescuing her from Maxwell’s expectant expression and realized that it was Chris. ‘Thanks,’ she muttered.
‘Anytime.’ He looked embarrassed. And cute. ‘Rachel’s done a count, and we’re all here,’ he told her. ‘Was it as bad as I thought it was?’
Before she could answer, Rachel called her over. Gingerly stepping over the disoriented colonists – and refraining from stamping on Maxwell’s head – Felice shut her eyes as light erupted from near by and almost stumbled again. She assumed that someone had broken out the emergency lighting from the supplies, and stood still until she became accustomed to the brightness.
‘Oh shit,’ she whispered in awe as her surroundings resolved. She was staring into a carved stone face that looked back at her from the far side of the vast chamber. The image was unforgettable, and made their location obvious. It was the notorious alien Sphinx.
They were on Mars.
Unable to ignore the commotion, Sstaal looked up from his book – the third chapter of the Book of Oras – and frowned. Cleece was bullying Esstar again. Shouting and ranting, he obviously got a great deal of satisfaction out of belittling his mate. Sstaal held his ground; despite his feelings for Esstar, he would not – could not – interfere between them. It wasn’t his place to come between a betrothed couple. Shoving the book in his hide belt, he stood up and walked over to the Abbot, who was standing next to one of the purple Lakk-tiis-Pertum bushes.
‘Abbot Aklaar?’ he asked meekly. ‘Are we planning to hurt the humans?’ The Martian pilgrims had waited patiently in one of the parks as the humans had descended the causeway to Ikk-ett-Saleth, watching them ignore the Holy Seal of Oras that protected the city from all but anointed pilgrims. The pilgrims themselves had entered the city via the Fississ-cal-oon, The Way Reserved For Pilgrims, a more direct route. Thanks to the Fississ-cal-oon, Aklaar, Cleece, Esstar and Sstaal had reached Ikk-ett-Saleth well before the humans, and had watched and waited once more as the humans defiled the city without a soul, occupying the dwellings without regard for the spirits who begged forgiveness for the atrocities of their ancestors.
But, despite their heresy, Sstaal couldn’t agree with Cleece’s decision to exterminate them. Then again, it was not Cleece’s decision to make. The Abbot was in charge of the pilgrimage, and his decisions – wise decisions, based on his years of service to Oras – were the ones that counted, not the racist cant of Cleece.
Aklaar laid a clamp on his ann. ‘The humans are on this planet by virtue of superior force, Pilgrim Sstaal. But they would not have been on this planet had it not been for the hubris of the Warrior caste; the same hubris that Pilgrim Cleece feels. He must be tolerated for the good of us all. It is my hope that this pilgrimage will open his eyes to the greater truth.’
They both looked over at Cleece, just in time to see him attempt to grab Esstar’s clamp; obviously reason had deserted him, and he was resorting to the only other tactic he knew: violence. But Esstar was having none of it; she pulled her clamp away and hissed at him like a nest mother protecting her clutch. Which, in a way, she was. Sstaal felt a small warmth within him, a warmth which intensified when Esstar glanced at him and smiled.
‘If you have finished conducting your courtship, we must return to the matter in hand,’ said Aklaar quietly. Cleece looked embarrassed, but that was more to do with his humiliation by Esstar than his earlier behaviour towards her: Sstaal knew that Cleece never learnt from his mistakes. ‘The humans will undoubtedly sleep for another four hours,’ Aklaar continued, ‘but one of their kind is taking watch. Given their current state of exhaustion, our appearance now might prove disturbing to them.’
Cleece squeezed his clamp; Sstaal realized which clamp it was, and Cleece’s intentions. ‘Best to strike while they are asleep, Abbot Aklaar,’ he said. ‘Six humans will prove no match -’
‘Enough!’ bellowed the Abbot, his fury unrestrained. He strode up to Cleece and punched him in the chest. Despite the difference in size – Cleece’s warrior frame against Aklaar’s wizened body – Cleece stumbled backwards. ‘The humans are not to be harmed. They are travellers, pilgrims in their own right. The teachings of Oras are specific on this point.’ He turned away, the anger dissipating rapidly.
But Sstaal knew that Cleece wouldn’t leave it there.
The hexagonal dwellings were fully furnished, single rooms, with beds and chairs and ample blankets in relaxing russets and browns. Roz was surprised; she found it difficult to reconcile the fearsome Martians of myth and legend with what appeared to be futons and duvets. Soft furnishings and Ice Warriors – a bizarre combination.
She sighed with exhaustion, but still looked carefully around the room for anything which could have been hiding an Ice Warrior; she was still unconvinced – as, she was sure, was the Doctor – that the city was as deserted as he claimed.
‘This was a civilian nest, Roz,’ said the Doctor, as if he had read her mind. ‘Even Ice Warriors like their creature comforts.’ The Doctor threw his backpack and jacket onto the nearest Martian futon and sat on the thickly carpeted floor in the lotus position, his eyes closed. Roz began to wonder exactly how tired the Doctor was. More importantly, perhaps, what damage had been done to him by the destruction of the TARDIS?
‘This isn’t right,’ Roz muttered as she divested herself of her own rucksack and jacket and sat down on – although in was a better word – one of the Martian chairs, a huge thing covered in what looked like green fur. ‘It’s like the entire city population just got up in the middle of what they were doing and left.’
Without opening his eyes, the Doctor answered. ‘That’s exactly what they were supposed to do, Roz. When Mars surrendered at the end of the Thousand Day War, the UN team that arrived to beat out the peace terms couldn’t find a single Martian left on the planet, only the bodies of the members of the Eight-Point Table – their ruling assembly. They had been executed according to Martian tradition.’ He frowned. ‘Actually, only six of the eight were executed; Falaxyr and Abrasaar managed to escape.’ He yawned, and Roz was taken aback; she couldn’t remember the last time the Doctor had done something so human. ‘As we now know, the majority of Martians had already left for Nova Martia, a suitable planet on the edges of Arcturan space.’
Feeling slightly more certain that she wasn’t going to wake up in the middle of the night staring down the muzzle of a Martian disruptor, she decided that the time had come to say it.
‘I’m going to ask you one question, and I want an answer. Agreed?’
‘It depends on the question.’
‘Agreed?’ she hissed.
‘Agreed,’ he said with resignation.
It had been bugging her for hours, but she had been biding her time, waiting for the right moment. And this – almost asleep in an abandoned house in an abandoned Ice Warrior city – was as near as she was going to get to the right moment.
‘What the hell happened to the TARDIS, Doctor?’
He opened his eyes and smiled, but it was a smile so empty, so devoid of emotion, that Roz felt for him. ‘The TARDIS was destroyed, Roz. Torn apart because she was unlucky enough to be caught between two incredibly rare phenomena: a Vortex rupture and a subspace infarction. The former is incredibly rare; I’ve only ever encountered two of them. One was quite soon after I got the TARDIS, the other, well, that won’t occur for another nine thousand years.’
‘What is a Vortex rupture?’ Roz knew that the questioning was hurting the Doctor, but she had to know what was going on. First rule of Adjudication: be prepared, or be prepared to die.
The Doctor cradled his fingers. ‘On certain occasions, forces come to bear on the fabric of the Time Vortex, ripping it apart and allowing the substrate – the poly-dimensional foundation of the Vortex – to erupt. TARDISes – well, Type Forties, like mine – cannot cope with these events very well. But they can cope. Normally. But coupled with a subspace infarction ...’ He sighed.
‘Go on.’
‘Goodness knows what caused the rupture, although I have my suspicions. But the cause of the infarction is pretty straightforward if you apply a little reasoned deduction. The Daleks have a strange-icaron generator on Mercury, and it’s fouling up subspace across the entire solar system – an effective blockade which prevents starships from getting even close to Earth.’
‘Why?’ Starships and FTL-drives were more Chris’s area of interest, but it didn’t hurt to have too much information.
The Doctor tutted at the interruption, but answered. ‘Strange icarons are the black sheep of the icaron family, Roz, because they have no harmful effects on organic life.’ Roz remembered icarons only too clearly; the presence of an icaron generator on Earth had been the trigger to the events that had led to her and Chris teaming up with the Doctor. ‘But they have a most deleterious effect on starship jump-engines. Any ship attempting to either enter or leave subspace within a blockade field of strange icarons will explode.’ He chewed his bottom lip. ‘The only place still capable of attempting to break that blockade was Charon, the moon of Pluto: it was one of the few places where research into subspace engineering still continued after the Transit project was dropped. If I remember correctly, they spent the few months between the initial attack and the final assault – which killed them all – trying to bore through subspace. And if they ramped up the power a few thousand per cent – a likely stratagem – and tried to open a stunnel using brute force, it would undoubtedly cause an infarction.’
He closed his eyes once more, then continued.
‘The infarction engulfed the TARDIS, effectively causing her to stall. And then the rupture blew directly beneath her. She lasted about two minutes before the outer plasmic shell disintegrated.’
Roz could feel sleep making unreasonable demands upon her, but she needed to know the answer to one last question. ‘You said you had your suspicions about the cause of the rupture. Care to elucidate?’
‘The Time Vortex is virtually indestructible; it is the fundamental reality which supports all of creation. In many respects, the physical universe is nothing but a shadow of the Vortex. But the link is two-way: do something unimaginably nasty in the real world, and it might just affect the Vortex.’
Roz frowned. ‘But what could be so unimaginably nasty?’
The Doctor’s voice was sepulchral as he replied. ‘A Jonbar Hinge: an event which shatters the Web of Time, rewriting history on a major scale.’
This did not bode well. ‘Such as?’
‘Such as the destruction of Earth.’
She shook her head. ‘But Earth’s still there. We saw it.’ And the obvious defence. ‘It’s still there in the thirtieth century!’
‘The Vortex isn’t answerable to the laws of cause and effect, Roz. The destruction could happen tomorrow, or it could happen in thousands of years. But history has been or will be altered. Earth was or will be destroyed. Excuse the ambiguous tenses – this is a very ambiguous concept.’
‘Can’t you be less ambiguous? This is my planet you’re talking about.’ Roz felt a coldness, an emptiness, which had nothing to do with her exhaustion.
The Doctor looked at her, through her, with infinite eyes. ‘At a rough guess, from the location and intensity of the rupture, some time in the next week.’
The next week? But what of her future? What of the thirtieth century? It may not have been the most golden of eras, but... But it may not have been. Period. She swallowed.
‘I’m sorry, but you did ask.’ He got up and walked over to a transparent cone, about a metre high, that stood next to a green and black tapestry-covered wall.
‘But my world!’ she exploded. ‘And what about me and Chris? We won’t be born! Why haven’t I ceased to exist?’
The Doctor tapped the cone and watched as currents of pink fluorescence swam through the clear liquid interior. ‘Because you have travelled in the TARDIS. It protects the worldlines of its occupants; in many respects, you exist outside of time. The effect wears off after a while, otherwise it would disrupt the normal operation of the Universe -’
‘Wears off?’ The meaning behind the Doctor’s casual phrase hit her immediately. ‘So, how long have I got before I just fade away?’ she shouted. After all she had been through, the thought that her life would end with her being surgically removed from reality on account of some bit of cosmic book-keeping was almost more than she could bear.
‘Long enough for us to get to the bottom of this conundrum and find a way out, I hope. While I was playing around with Professor Esteban’s tablette, I learnt one, salient fact.’ He cocked an eyebrow. ‘The rupture was instigated at the Martian North Pole.’ With that, he reached out with his umbrella and tapped the contact on the light switch by the door, plunging the room into darkness.
‘Pleasant dreams, Roz,’ he whispered.
Pleasant dreams? How could she even think about sleep at a time like ... and then she felt her exhaustion batter her into submission, and she closed her eyes gratefully and sank back into the fur of the chair.
But just before she surrendered to the mercies of sleep, her eyes opened almost reflexively, and she found herself staring out of one of the slit-like windows set into the walls at regular intervals. She could have sworn that she saw a ghostly TARDIS floating past, a gossamer-thin police box that bobbed along for a few seconds before vanishing.
She wanted to tell the Doctor, but her tiredness finally won, and she fell into a deep sleep, haunted by floating, ghostly TARDISes.
Now that emergency lighting had flooded their current location with its antiseptic glare, Rachel could see they had materialized in some sort of a temple. The chamber was about two hundred metres across, an octagon of tall sloping walls which met at a vertex some half a kilometre above them. Each wall of polished amber stone featured a tall carving of the same figure in slightly different poses; dressed in robes, and adorned in jewellery, it looked exactly like an Egyptian pharaoh, except that it had the head of a jackal.
A table stood in the dead centre of the chamber; a huge, black stone table about a metre and a half tall and three metres across. It was shaped like an eight-pointed star.
But the chamber had been violated. A massive hole had been carved out from two adjoining walls, revealing an equally large antechamber beyond. And the Martian Sphinx... Rachel had heard of it, she had seen simularities, but nothing could have prepared her for its sheer majesty and grandeur. Its similarities with its namesake on Earth were obvious:
it appeared to be about the same size, with the leonine body and paws of its counterpart. But instead of a pharaoh’s face, it bore the helmeted visage of a Martian Lord.
‘Quite a sight, isn’t it?’ said Lebrun, one of the junior. technicians on the project. Rachel suddenly remembered that he was a bit of a Mars buff, and wondered whether he could clear up one problem.
‘What the hell’s it doing here?’ she asked. All of the simularities she had seen had shown the Sphinx as an impressive structure that lay beneath the pink Martian sky. So why was it sitting in the antechamber of a deserted temple?
Lebrun shrugged. ‘It was moved during the Thousand Day War, Professor. For reasons that aren’t very clear, the Greenies devoted a sizeable force to defend the transport, and it was brought here. It was all recorded by the satellite network in orbit around Mars. Nobody knows why, though.’
‘So where’s here, exactly?’ Mars was a big place, thought Rachel. And far too near Earth – and the invaders – for her liking.
‘Vastitas Borealis, Professor. The Martian North Pole.’ He pointed towards the grand table in the centre of the chamber. ‘And, unless I’m mistaken, that is the Eight-Point Table. The meeting place for the entire military high command on Mars.’
Felice had come over by this time, and Rachel considered her deputy. The last few hours had shown Rachel that the woman was far more than the arrogant upstart that she had first appeared to be; she was a fine scientist with a cool head, and Rachel couldn’t think of anybody else who she would rather have had backing her up.
‘What do you think, Dr Delacroix? Any suggestions?’
Felice frowned. ‘There has to be a reason for us being here, rather than on Ultima, so what is it? Unless...’ She slapped her forehead. ‘Christen me an idiot! Of course, there must be a subspace attractor near by!’ She reached into her jump-suit pocket and pulled out a micro-tablette which she then aimed around the cavern, allowing its sensor grid to soak up the ambient radiation.
