Doctor Who: The Mutation of Time

by John Peel

  ‘I need hardly remind you that the Daleks would reward failure on your part with extermination,’ Chen added, as if by an afterthought.

  The Monk shook his head, firmly. ‘You’ll get it back, no fear. Little device, Taranium core. Right.’

  ‘Then you had better leave at once,’ Chen suggested. ‘And waste no more of your valuable time...’

  The Monk nodded, and started to retreat. Chen raised an eyebrow, and gestured in the other direction, towards where the Doctor’s TARDIS stood. The Monk gave a watery smile, struck himself rather theatrically on the head, and then moved off in the right direction. He obviously had very little choice in the matter.

  Mavic Chen smiled to himself when the Monk had vanished from sight. ‘Pity – I forgot to tell him that success would also bring a reward.’ Then he shrugged. ‘However, since it is the identical reward as for that of failure, I’m certain that he’ll overlook my omission...’

  Khephren had his slaves working as fast as they could, carrying into the tomb all the treasures that the Pharaoh had sent along for his journey to the after-life. The large blue box that the old man had been examining had turned out to be surprisingly heavy, but they had finally managed to carry it inside. They had set it down in the main chamber, close to the stone sarcophagus that would soon house the body of the Pharaoh. Khephren hurried the slaves out, returning them to the desert to collect further treasures for the tomb.

  *

  The Doctor’s initial idea was to follow after the Monk and confront the rascal, but then he had a better thought. Treading carefully, he set off back to where the Monk’s TARDIS had landed. The rogue was always very sloppy, and – as the Doctor had expected – had not bothered to lock his TARDIS doors when he had left. Chuckling to himself, the Doctor hurried inside.

  The Monk’s time-space machine resembled the Doctor’s own very strongly. It was, however, a slightly later model than the Doctor’s, and boasted a few new features that the Doctor’s old ship didn’t have. Still, the controls were basically the same, and all of them actually worked. The Doctor moved to the panel of the central console that worked the chameleon circuits. Attempting to recall the manual override codes of the computer, the Doctor began to play with the switches.

  Outside, the shape of the ship began to flow and change. The stone block vanished, to be replaced by a tall Ionic column. That was then replaced by a Wells Fargo stage-coach – complete with curtains, but without the horses to draw it. Then it became a silver-leafed tree; an igloo; a small one-man rocket-ship; a Sopwith Camel; a small copy of the space museum that the Doctor had visited on Xeros – the Doctor had at last got the hang of the controls. Finally, it became the shape that the Doctor had been seeking.

  A police telephone box, absolutely identical in form to the Doctor’s own TARDIS.

  With a smug grin of self-congratulation, the Doctor moved around the panels, until he came to the directional controls. Bending down, somewhat stiffly, he opened the underside of the console. After a little fiddling, he removed part of the circuit, and stuck it into his pocket. Then he closed the flaps. Cheerfully, he left the Monk’s TARDIS, pulling the doors closed behind him.

  Sara had finished untying Steven’s hands, and he quickly returned the favour. The three guards left on duty with them had seen nothing, since they spent most of their time in the doorway, scanning for any further signs of trouble. The two time-travellers untied their feet, and. moved quietly up to behind the men.

  They jumped on to the unsuspecting Egyptians as one. Steven struggled with the one he had picked out, trying to wrestle him down. Sara simply chopped at the neck of the second guard. As he was falling, already unconscious, she spun around and kicked the third man hard in the stomach. As he doubled over, she grabbed his head and rammed it into the door-frame. He collapsed, and Sara turned to help Steven, who was still fighting with his single opponent. Shaking her head, she stepped up to the guard and rabbit-punched him. As he howled in pain, she chopped at the side of his neck, and the man fell unconscious on to Steven.

  The astronaut pushed the man off him, and stood up, brushing down his clothes. ‘Very impressive,’ he remarked, honestly, staring at the three unconscious men.

  ‘Standard training,’ Sara said, brusquely, but she was not unpleased with the admiring glance she had caught. ‘Let’s find the Doctor.’

  They slipped out of the door, scanning for signs of the Egyptians, but the sands were clear, save for the inevitable building blocks. Keeping to the cover provided by these, Steven and Sara made their way back to where they had left the TARDIS.

  The Monk’s TARDIS locator was proving to be most helpful, if more than slightly baffling. He had been following it to where the Doctor had landed, but now the reading had shifted. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but that didn’t bother the Monk. Unaccustomed to thinking things through, he simply accepted the fact that the reading was changed, and headed off in the new direction – straight towards the opening in the pyramid.

  It was actually part of the way up the north face. A ramp of earth led up to it, battered down to form a serviceable causeway. It was by using such ramps that the stones had been dragged into place originally, and most of the ramps were now removed. This final one would remain until Khufu was buried and the last block placed to close off the entrance. Then it too would be taken apart and the soil dispersed, leaving the tomb to stand alone.

  The Doctor had caught up with the Monk again, but he was very puzzled about the direction that he was taking. What was the silly fellow doing now? He followed the Monk up the ramp, puffing a bit, and then into the downward-sloping passageway. After a short while, a second passage branched off upwards, and this was the one that the Monk had taken. The Doctor again followed.

  The Monk had arrived in the king’s burial chamber. The walls were painted brightly with scenes of both everyday life in the Nile delta and with representations of the after-life. It was intended to prepare the Pharaoh to face that after-life. The Monk ignored them, as he ignored the treasures that were already there. His face lit up as he saw the TARDIS standing in a corner of the room. Rushing over, he tried the door, only to discover it was locked. He almost jumped out of his skin at the voice from behind him.

  ‘You’re wasting your time,’ the Doctor said. ‘There’s no way in.’

  Holding his heaving chest, the Monk spun about and tried to smile. ‘Doctor,’ he said, extending his hand. It was ignored, so he withdrew it and scratched his nose. He was getting sunburnt in this wretched place to cap his other miseries! Then he frowned. ‘You’ve been following me!’

  Moving to perch on the edge of the sarcophagus, the Doctor leaned on his stick and nodded. ‘For a time, for a time...’

  ‘I see.’ The Monk inclined his head towards the TARDIS. ‘I suppose I should have learned by now that you never leave this... vintage ship of yours unlocked.’

  ‘Yes, yes, you should have learned that.’ The Doctor chuckled, adding in a soft voice: ‘Though I’m delighted you don’t follow my example.’

  The Monk missed this, too busy gloating about his own machine’s superiority. ‘Of course, if your ship blended into its surroundings like it was supposed to do, it wouldn’t be necessary to lock it. Nobody would be able to find it.’

  ‘Like yours, I suppose?’ the Doctor hinted.

  ‘Yes, Doctor, like mine.’ He smiled, ingratiatingly. ‘You could learn a thing or two from me , you know.’

  ‘Could I?’ asked the Doctor, innocently.

  ‘Yes.’ The Monk moved closer to the Doctor, attempting to radiate camaraderie. ‘It’s a pity we’ve got this... well, feud, I suppose you’d call it... going. I mean, you didn’t track me on your Time-Path Indicator this time, did you?’

  ‘Not your machine, no,’ the Doctor admitted. ‘Although I didn’t realize it at the time.’

  The Monk grinned, and patted himself on the chest. ‘I cross-jumped the track,’ he said, trying to sound modest and failing miserably at it.

&n
bsp; ‘Really?’ the Doctor asked, overdoing his admiration. The Monk lapped it up.

  ‘Oh, yes, it’s really quite simple.’ He nodded towards the TARDIS. ‘Tell you what, why don’t we just nip inside? I’ll show you how it’s done – just to prove there are no hard feelings, eh?’

  The Doctor stood up, and smiled. ‘And perhaps you could find the Taranium core as well, eh?’

  ‘Yes, that’s...’ The Monk’s voice trailed away as he suddenly realized that the Doctor must have overheard the whole conversation he’d had with the Dalek and that man. He snapped his fingers, as if he’d just remembered something. ‘I knew there was something I had to tell you! I came to warn you about the Daleks.’

  ‘Warn me?’

  Nodding, the Monk chortled to himself. ‘I played them along for a while. Tricked them beautifully, I thought. You know, they don’t like you? They don’t like you at all.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you?’ the Doctor asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why didn’t you warn me?’

  ‘Oh, that.’ He thought feverishly for a moment for an excuse. ‘I didn’t want to interrupt!’ he finally replied. ‘You were talking. It would have been rude of me to interrupt.’

  The Doctor raised his eyes to the roof at this thin ploy. ‘Of course it would have been. I can see I’d better put you out of harm’s way before I go looking for my two young friends.’ He moved towards the Monk, raising his walking stick menacingly.

  The Monk backed away, nervously. He had never been a physical person. ‘Come now, Doctor,’ he wheedled. ‘You surely didn’t think I was going to help the Daleks, did you?’

  ‘I don’t think you were going to help anybody,’ the Doctor replied. ‘You’re trying to play both ends against the middle... and simply help yourself.’

  The Monk backed further off. ‘Couldn’t we talk this over?’ he pleaded. ‘Like civilized time-travellers? The Daleks don’t want you, they just want their silly little core back. Why don’t we just give it to them, so we can all be on our happy ways again?’

  ‘If you believe that ,’ the Doctor snorted. ‘You’ll believe anything! I know the Daleks better than anyone. Once you’ve stopped being useful to them, they will kill you.’

  The Monk was now wedged in the corner, with nowhere left to retreat to. ‘Don’t do anything you’ll regret,’ he cautioned the Doctor. ‘What are you going to do? Doctor?’

  Within the Dalek time-machine, the Red Dalek moved to the main communications panel. ‘Give your report,’ it ordered the technician on duty there.

  ‘The time-traveller has not made contact.’

  ‘He has betrayed or failed us,’ the Red Dalek decided. ‘Prepare a task-force. All the humans in this area are to be exterminated.’

  ‘I obey.’ The technician turned back to the control panel, and began calling in Daleks from all parts of the time-machine.

  The Red Dalek turned away. Another plan of their human ally, Mavic Chen, had failed. Soon it would be time for his judgement also.

  Steven and Sara had made it back to where they had left the TARDIS, to find it missing. It took them barely a few minutes to realize what had happened to it. The signs of the slave workers were obvious in the scuffed sand, and the furrows of where the TARDIS had been dragged towards the earthen ramp.

  ‘Into the tomb,’ Steven said. ‘Let’s hope the Doctor’s still with the TARDIS.’

  ‘If they’ve sealed the tomb, we’d better hope he isn’t with the TARDIS,’ Sara observed. In that case, the Doctor would have no option but to take off and leave them here... with the Daleks.

  The two of them were relieved to discover that the tomb was still unsealed, and they hurried into it. A little exploration soon led them to the funerary room, and they both heaved sighs of relief as they spotted the TARDIS in the corner.

  ‘No Doctor,’ Steven said grimly.

  ‘Unless he’s inside?’ Sara suggested. Steven nodded and crossed to the police box. He rapped loudly on the doors.

  ‘Doctor?’ he called. ‘Are you in there?’ There was no answer.

  Sara looked about the room with a certain amount of interest. It was loaded now with treasures – gold, silver and bronze metals, gleaming gems, polished and painted woods. Still, it was the huge stone sarcophagus in the centre of the chamber that caught her eye. Everything in the room indicated that the burial was imminent, but that it had not been completed – else the tomb would have been sealed. Yet the coffin in the sarcophagus had been closed.

  As she puzzled about this, the back of her neck suddenly chilled. She tapped Steven, and he turned, following her horrified gaze.

  The lid of the coffin was being slowly lifted from within by a bandaged hand...

  Chapter 9

  Hostages

  With a crash, the coffin lid hit the floor. The enshrouded figure in the coffin struggled into a sitting position, both bandaged hands stretched out before it, groping for something. Sara, normally the bravest of people, was utterly terrified by this apparition. Steven wasn’t in much better shape. Though both of them knew that corpses don’t rise from the grave, it was hard to actually believe that – after all, they were in the depths of a pyramid, surrounded by funerary apparatus, the only light being provided by smelly rush torches blazing fitfully in the still air.

  The mummy groaned, and other noises continued to come from it. The voice sounded vaguely familiar, and Steven and Sara found their fear draining, to be replaced by puzzlement. With one accord, they moved over to the cloth-wrapped figure, and began to tug at the wrappings about its face. In a moment, they had uncovered very familiar features.

  ‘Well,’ said the Monk, taking a deep breath. ‘Thank goodness for that!’

  ‘The plan has failed!’ the Red Dalek grated, facing Mavic Chen within the Dalek time-machine.

  ‘We cannot know that for certain,’ the traitor argued. ‘I agree, the time-traveller has not yet contacted us, but we have no idea of what difficulties he may have faced in trying to convince the Doctor of his good intentions.’

  ‘He was given one Earth hour,’ the Red Dalek answered. ‘That has now expired!’

  Chen brought his fist down in fury on the closest control panel. ‘In the present situation we cannot afford to measure time exactly!’

  ‘He has deceived us,’ the Dalek insisted.

  ‘I don’t think he has,’ Chen argued. ‘He dare not! When will you Daleks ever learn that all things do not work to a pattern? You can’t plan an invasion down to a second! Flexibility can also lead to conquest.’

  ‘Silence!’ The Red Dalek had had enough of this unproductive discussion. The human believed that he was superior to the Daleks; he would discover his mistake in the second before he was annihilated. ‘All Daleks will disembark!’ it commanded to the technician Dalek. ‘All forms of life are to be treated as hostile and are to be exterminated.’

  The assembled Daleks chorused their understanding, and began to file out of the door. The Red Dalek faced Chen once again. ‘You will come with us.’

  Mavic Chen knew that the heavy-handed tactics of the Daleks were bound to cause problems – and that he would inevitably be blamed for them. ‘Recovery of the Taranium core was made my responsibility,’ he fumed.

  The Red Dalek raised its gun-stick, and pointed it towards him. ‘Orders will not be questioned.’

  Slapping the panel again in fury, Mavic Chen was forced to admit defeat. ‘If you insist on this approach,’ he warned, ‘I shall not be answering for the consequences!’ He brushed out of the time-machine ahead of the Red Dalek, and stomped off after the task-force.

  Sara and Steven had finally got the Monk unwrapped from the funeral clothes, and had been forced to listen to his long-winded and self-justifying account of what had happened.

  ‘So it was the Doctor who tied you up?’ Steven broke in, finally, to shut the Monk up.

  ‘Unbelievable, isn’t it?’ the Monk said. ‘Oh, I know I succumbed to temptation on the planet Tigus and str
anded you. But I would have come back again after a few minutes. I just wanted to savour victory for a short while.’

  ‘I’ll bet,’ Steven said, sarcastically, refusing to be taken in by the Monk’s pure-as-the-driven-snow routine.

  ‘And what did the Doctor say?’ Sara asked, preventing an argument.

  ‘Nothing.’ The Monk spread his hands, helplessly. ‘Not a thing. There I was, taking untold risks just to warn him about the Daleks and – bang – right on the head with his stick, and into there.’ He pointed at the casket he’d recently clambered out of.

  ‘Well, when he hears your story, I’m sure he’ll apologize,’ said Sara, placatingly. Steven just snorted at the thought of the Doctor apologizing to anyone, least of all the Monk.

  ‘Oh, I’m not one to bear a grudge,’ the Monk murmured, in sweet, saintly tones. ‘I mean, we all know what the Doctor’s like, don’t we? No, it was just one of those things.’ He was beginning to sound like an entry from Foxe’s Book Of Martyrs .

  ‘Well, where did he go?’ Steven asked.

  ‘ How do you expect me to...’ the Monk started to yell, then recollected his act and smiled again. ‘Unfortunately, after his brutal attack, the next thing I remember was...’ He waved to the coffin.

  ‘He’s probably out looking for us,’ Sara suggested to Steven. ‘After all, we have been gone a long time.’

  ‘All right,’ Steven agreed. ‘Now what do we do? Go out there again and take a chance on missing him? Or just wait here and hope he’ll come back soon?’

  ‘Stay here,’ said the Monk. ‘Definitely.’ Both of them ignored him.

  ‘He’ll need help if he meets the Daleks,’ Sara pointed out.

  ‘I’ve got such a headache,’ the Monk complained.

  ‘What happens if we meet them?’ Steven argued.

  Oblivious to the fact that no one was listening to him, the Monk added: ‘Still, I suppose the Doctor’s got some medicine or other in the TARDIS...’

  ‘We’ll just have to take a chance on that,’ Sara replied to Steven.