by M. J. Baker
Without hesitation, the old man stomped back to the still-stunned Derrin, placed his hand on the younger man's chest and shoved him roughly. Derrin staggered back, letting go of the spear which the man promptly grasped and swung around in a wide arc towards the serving boy. When Derrin hit the wall behind him, he found the head of a Kharus spear obscured slightly by his chin and felt its hissing point singe and scratch at his throat. His hands went out in surrender as he met the pitiless eyes of the Warrior wielding the weapon.
"Do what she said," he told Rula calmly, eyes still fixed on Derrin. "Then return here. If you tell anyone that you've seen me, I'll kill him. If you try to bring help, I'll know immediately and I'll be ready. Yes, I'm a shaman. I have powers and I. Am. Everywhere. Do you understand?"
Rula, who had taken a few steps towards the pair, froze on the spot. Her face was white with pure terror. She thought fast, her mind constructed the scenario, each possibly outcome and decided the safest course of action was to obey.
"Yes."
The young Sister stepped gingerly towards a cupboard on the other side of the room, quickening her steps as she had to pass behind the old man. She opened it, produced a large white globe from within and skittered towards the door. As Rula reached past Derrin's helpless, frozen elbow to press a button beside the door, she tried to give him another reassuring smile but failed. She considered doing something, anything, to get him free…but that would risk complicating things, introducing uncertainty. This was the plan and, if she did what he said, everything would work out. The door slid open and she stepped outside.
Once the door had slid shut, the Warrior grinned and tossed the spear aside.
"Fetch me a scronner from that tool cabinet, won't you?" the Warrior said, walking back to the array of lights Rula had been working on.
Derrin was enraged.
"What in PYTHIA'S NAME did you do that for?!" he cried, following the Warrior.
"I had to make sure she came back and didn't tell anyone," he said simply.
"Then why did you let her go in the first place?!"
"Timelines. I recognised her. She brought the viewing globe to my cell before the trial. Even then I thought she was a bit jumpy, much more than any other Sister I'd seen. So I've sent her off with the notion that I'm some omnipotent shaman and, when she sees my other self in the cell, she'll believe it and any idea she has of bringing a few Sister-Soldiers along with her will vanish for fear of my slicing your throat open."
"Or she'll just realise you're a Time Lord, like I did, and know you're not omnipotent."
"How much do you know about Time Lords?"
"Only rumours. Serving boys don't get an education in such things…or anything," Derrin said bitterly. "The Sisters get the full story though."
"Propaganda, you mean. Every time I pass by Karn, even on a whim, the Sisterhood panic and start expecting a Time Lord invasion. Even if she does figure out what I really am, chances are she's been given an exaggerated idea of what Time Lords are capable of and the threat they pose."
"Hardly exaggerated," Derrin snorted. "Have you seen the Universe lately?"
"That's down to the Daleks!" the Warrior said, offended.
"So you say. You could at least…apologise."
"For the Daleks?"
"For scaring me like that!"
"Apologise?" the Warrior fixed him with a look of utter derision. "My dear chap, you should be happy! I've helped your back-up plan of claiming you were a hostage if this all goes wrong."
"So you think it's going to?"
"Not exactly, but I doubt I'll be heralded as a hero. I rarely am. Scronner! Please!" he stressed, jabbing a creased finger at the tool cabinet. "Then go outside and guard the door until Rula gets back, we don't want any unexpected guests. And I need to work in peace."
Derrin handed the Warrior the scronner moodily, collected the Kharus spear and walked out, solid resentment in his eyes.
Chapter 9
Rula returned a few minutes later, alone. She and Derrin entered the room together and her mouth dropped open when she saw what had become of her machine. The neat row of lights had been torn out and scattered on the floor, their wires had been stripped, the boxes they were connected to had been prised open and their ionic circuits scooped out. The tool cabinet had been ransacked and the floor was a landscape of equipment as uneven as the surface of Karn itself. From the wreckage, the dishevelled old man poked out his head.
"Neural mainframe!" he declared.
"Come again?" said Derrin.
"What have you done?!" demanded Rula, aghast at the carnage.
The Warrior ignored her. "Neural mainframe! That's what you've been working on."
He stood up and took a step towards them. Rula backed away sharply.
"I…saw you. In the cell. How?" she stammered.
"I told you, I'm a shaman. I just wanted to remind you-” the Warrior began.
"He's a Time Lord, Rula," interrupted Derrin.
Rula looked at Derrin, then back at the Warrior, before retreating further.
"Don't run. Lock the door, Derrin," the Warrior said.
Derrin didn't move. The Warrior rolled his eyes, snatched his sonic screwdriver out of his bandolier and flicked it at the door control. A green light on the panel switched to red and a thud could be heard behind the stone door. The Warrior knew he was starting to lose Derrin's trust and it was caused by Rula's involvement, so he tried a new tact. He smiled.
"Rula…uh, I may call you Rula?" he didn't wait for a response. "We're trying to solve High Priestess Ohila's murder and-"
"Ohila's dead?!" cried Rula.
"Ah," said the old man.
The trial hadn't begun yet, apparently.
"And you killed her? That why you're in the cell?!"
"No! I…Rula," the Warrior switched to a gentler tone, "I'm sorry for threatening you earlier, I needed to…it was brash and I didn't mean to scare you. I apologise. But you're a Sister so you must have some rudimentary telepathic abilities. You know I'm not lying when I say I didn't kill Ohila. But whomever did is still at large. We’re trying to find out who, but we must be discreet."
His seldom-used smile was warm. Encouraging.
"I'm a fledgling," she said sheepishly, "been with the Sisterhood less than a year so my telepathy isn't fully developed yet, mostly just flashes of emotion. But…it feels like you're telling the truth…ish. But you're a Time Lord! Is this the invasion? Has it begun?"
"Doctor, you're bleeding!" Derrin squealed before the Warrior could respond.
The Warrior looked at the slice across his upper-arm, it was stained crimson. Evidently he'd re-opened the cut during his manic disassembly of the neural mainframe.
"It isn't healing properly, probably because of the Kharus spearhead. Not to worry."
"Oh, I can fix that," said Rula.
Without waiting for a reply she walked over to a shelf and picked up a small, three-pronged device from the top. She went over to the Warrior, her fear apparently forgotten, and lightly pressed the device over the cut on his exposed arm. The space between the prongs glowed a bright orange for a few seconds and, when she pulled the device away, the skin was perfectly healed. No trace of damage, though a mole that had been bisected by the spear was not quite lined up correctly. The old man looked at the device, astonished.
"What is that?" he said, awed.
"Localised regenerator," Rula seemed confused by his amazement. "Surely you have these on Gallifrey."
"Nothing of the kind," he replied.
"But your people practically invented regenerative science…in fact, you did."
"As part of our genetic makeup, yes, but we've never successfully applied it to a device. That's…incredible. Literally, I think!" he suddenly became lively.
"I should have spotted it the first time round but this…" he indicated the remains of what had once been the neural mainframe scattered around him, "…and this…" he snatched the regenerator device from Rula's hand, "�
�and this…" he bounced forward and seized the Kharus spear from Derrin, who recoiled slightly, "…are clues!"
The Sister and the serving boy looked confused.
"Plus there was the angular misdirection being used at the tunnel entrance, a crude form of dimensional engineering," the Warrior continued. He grinned at them as though he'd just made an excellent point.
They still looked confused. The Warrior's face fell.
"Oh, I miss working with full telepaths. Rula, confirm my suspicions. Explain to me what a neural mainframe is and why the Sisterhood want to build one." He sounded like a teacher, asking a question to which he already knew the answer.
"Uh…it stores and processes the neural patterns of living beings and assimilates the data into a single knowledge base supercomputer. We can store a living consciousness in the mainframe and draw upon its knowledge, wisdom and experience at any time. We can even combine the cognitive power of every mind in the mainframe to design new technology, process more information, maybe even-"
"Predict the future?" the Warrior offered.
"That's what some of our researchers say," she said hesitantly.
"I'm familiar with the concept," the Warrior said drily.
"I've been working on building a miniature prototype based on their work," she continued, indicating the blue lights that had been discarded by the Warrior. "I captured the neutral patterns of ten elders still alive on Karn and stored them in the machine. They were sensitive to light, I was just starting to test their responses to other stimuli when you burst in."
"So it's a homespun version of the Gallifreyan Matrix."
"The what?"
"Why would the Sisterhood want to build one?" the Warrior asked.
"Why wouldn't they want to, Doctor? Members of the Sisterhood live for millennia but we have to die eventually and all that wisdom is lost. Sisters can pass on their knowledge verbally but those are just words, easily ignored or lost or misunderstood. But if we can find a way to harness that wisdom, to put that experience to practical use, it'll be true immortality."
The Warrior looked at her sadly and, for the second time, Rula could see more weariness on the old man's face that she'd seen on all ten dying elders combined.
"This is all wrong. Karn is three centuries away from peak technological development and you've already exceeded it. Exceeded the Time Lords themselves even," he said, indicating the regenerator in his wizened hand.
"The Time War?" suggested Derrin. "Maybe Karn's timeline's been shifted and the Sisterhood were able to get further than the Time Lords predicted."
The Warrior shook his head, "No, I'd be able to sense that. All these things are an aberration, something artificially accelerating Karn's development."
"Maybe Ohila knew something about it. Maybe that's why she died!" said Derrin.
The old man looked at the young pair solemnly and unlocked the door with another wave of his screwdriver. Then he spoke, a new hardness in his voice.
"I'm going to offer you both a choice. Whatever happens to you after that is your own doing. Clear?"
Chapter 10
The rough mahogany bench jabbed into Rula's back but a familiar breeze cradled her face lovingly through the hood of her robe. This was the first time she'd seen the surface of Karn since leaving her village to join the Sisterhood and the cool air was soothing after a year of muggy subterranean tunnels. Even the fire, derived from the Sacred Flame itself, in the centre of the immense ceremony cave was powerless against it. For older Sisters, this was likely their first time on the surface in centuries since their own arrivals or, in some cases, since they had last been in this very cave to attend the coronation of the incumbent Reverend Mother Koralo. Trials were not unheard of in the Sisterhood, but they were usually more intimate affairs dealing with rare instances of insubordination by serving boys. No trials on this scale had happened in living memory, which is saying something for a race of near-immortals, so the coronation cave had become a courtroom for the occasion and everyone in the temple had been summoned to attend.
In studying the history of the Sisterhood, Rula had been taught that Reverend Mother Maren, whom Koralo had succeeded, put an end to trying outsiders who impinged on the Sisterhood in favour of instant and thorough destruction. Her reign had kicked off a golden age for the Sisterhood, laying the foundation for all the subsequent advances in Pythian theology, technology and defence against the one race in the Universe that could threaten the Sisterhood: Time Lords. She'd managed all this despite, or perhaps to compensate for, the ebbing of the Sacred Flame and the Great Elixir Crisis that resulted. Maren was said to have restored the Sacred Flame through her sacrificing herself, as the Flame had been sabotaged by a dreaded Time Lord, Morbius, and only her intense piety and devotion could restore it.
Many remaining Sisters had lived through the Great Elixir Crisis but only one had witnessed its resolution first-hand, an elder named Ohica. Rula had selected her as an ideal candidate for the neural mainframe on the advice of Ohila, who had been tutored by Ohica as a fledgling, specifically because she'd been present at Maren's sacrifice. Unfortunately, her spectacularly advanced age - no elder has continued to survive so long after ceasing her elixir dose as her - had clearly affected her memory. She rambled about monsters and castles and kept calling out to someone named 'Doctor'. There was no record of any Sister with that name, and the records went back to Pythia herself, but Rula had found the word in the Common Galactic Lexicon with various meanings. The predominant two were healer and warrior, neither were needed on Karn.
Doctor?
What had Derrin called that Time Lord? The one in the cell? Whose trial she was attending? The strange man had given them both a choice - what he planned to do next would be dangerous and this was our last chance to get out of the situation before things got, as he put it, "sticky". Derrin had immediately chosen to help, reasoning that if Ohila was killed because she knew something about the Sisterhood's unusual acceleration, then he was better off by the side of someone that the perpetrator clearly wanted alive. The pair had then turned to Rula expectantly. They seemed to think that because she had healed the old man's wound and could sense no ill-intent in him that she'd go along with their insane scheme. No! She wanted nothing to do with this, finding Ohila's killer wouldn't bring her back and it made no difference to her what plots were going on so long as she could still do her experiments and work to preserve the Sisterhood's history and use its wisdom. She'd run from the room, thinking of telling someone that there was a Time Lord loose in the temple, to wash her hands of it and let someone else take responsibility. But she hadn't.
Soon after, the call went out that all Sisters and serving boys were to assemble in the coronation cave, though the reason wasn't given. One of the Sister-Soldiers who had just come off guard duty had let slip that they had a prisoner and that there was to be a trial, but she didn't know what the charges were. Nobody had even hinted that a Sister, let alone a High Priestess, had been murdered. Rula could sense only confusion, boredom and mild irritation among the assembled Sisters. No grief at Ohila's death. No ambition at the idea there was an opening for High Priestess. Despite every Sister being present, cramming into rows of benches, craning to see over the ornate headdresses of more senior Sisters, the High Council was still absent. She couldn't sense Derrin or the Time Lord in the room, who were probably taking advantage of the fact everyone was above-ground to move around the temple unnoticed.
Rula was alone in her secret knowledge. The only one in the room who knew of Ohila's death. Which meant...the murderer wasn't here. Who was missing? The only Sister too old and frail to be moved or to endure the harsh conditions of Karn's surface.
Ohica.
An unseen gong sounded thunderously and the assembly stood in unison. The High Council of the Sisterhood of Karn, heads bowed solemnly, filed into the cave flanked by two serving boys carrying torches also derived from the Sacred Flame. From where Rula sat, the procession seemed to pass through soli
d rock as the Council members stepped from tunnel to cave through the angularly-engineered door. The seven members of the High Council filed around a large, semi-circular table and sat down as the tunic-clad serving boys fed their torches to the tributary Flame in front of the table, which roared its appreciation and signaled the Sisterhood to be seated.
The members of the High Council lowered their hoods. All were former fledglings who had risen through the ranks quickly enough to earn their first elixir dose while they still appeared youthful, but each spoke with a gravity that betrayed their age. A serving boy appeared behind each member of the High Council in turn, produced a headdress - each different in appearance but identical in ostentatiousness - and lowered it gingerly onto the Sister's head. Finally, the boy placed the stout, double-looped headdress of the Reverend Mother onto the head of Koralo, who sat in the middle of the High Council table, pale but stoic. She rose to address the cave at large.
"The trial of the Time Lord sometimes known as The Doctor will come to order."
Oh, Rula thought, Pythia!
Chapter 11
Rula slipped through the stone door as soon as it was open wide enough and leapt into the room. The old man was still there, looking startled and pointing the sonic screwdriver at her in a way that he hoped was threatening. The Time Lord was alone, a hovering viewing globe behind him showing inside the ceremony cave that Rula had just fled. She could make out a tiny, yellow-clad figure who had taken the stand. He relaxed slightly on recognising Rula and used the screwdriver to close the door behind her.
"Shouldn't you be at my trial? Derrin's giving his testimony," he said.
She strode towards him, awe-struck, and he raised his guard again.
"You're Doctor!" she cried.
The man who was once the Doctor sighed.
"I'm not him," he said simply.
"But...they called you Doctor."
"The Doctor," he corrected, "and he came here long ago but never left. I went in his place."
"I don't understand," said Rula.
"What does it matter?" he said brusquely.
"The Doctor...whoever he is...had something to do with the death of Reverend Mother Maren. And they think you're the Doctor so you must have been involved too."
"Where did you get that from? There's no way the Sisterhood would let recorded history have Maren topping herself to save a Time Lo-"
