Skagra drew a deep breath and steadied his own consciousness. He took a look at the body of the Doctor, where it lay slumped in the command chair. At least he had stopped up the mouth of the prattling idiot, where so many others had failed.
Reinvigorated, Skagra returned his attention to the sphere. This time he searched directly, using the Doctor’s stolen knowledge and faculties, and turned to read the book.
The symbols remained obstinately what they were. Symbols.
Angrily, Skagra pushed further, deeper into the Doctor’s mind. He caught glimpses of the man’s training, his long years of study at the Academy on Gallifrey.
Ranks of students attired in the long black gowns of novices, sat at their desks, ranged in a semicircle before their tutor. The tutor was talking of the Artefacts, of the codes, secret mysteries and legends of the Great Heroes of the Old Time.
And the Doctor – curse him!, thought Skagra – was staring out of the window into the orange blasted outer wilderness. ‘That would be a lovely spot for a picnic,’ he was thinking.
Skagra withdrew from the Doctor’s mind. He looked down at the body, fighting an impulse to kick at one of the long, lanky legs.
‘He does not know,’ he said out loud.
‘My lord?’ inquired the Ship politely.
‘He does not know the code,’ said Skagra. ‘He never knew it. He told the truth.’ He shook his head. ‘The fool died for nothing.’
‘Oh dear, my lord,’ said the Ship after a pause. ‘I am quite sure my gracious lord, as the most intelligent person in the wide universe, will soon overcome this latest unexpected obstacle.’
Skagra paused and thought. Every aspect of his plan had been checked and rechecked. Every step of the way to the fulfilment of his great destiny. And now he had the secret in his hands, and he could not read it.
A lesser being would have shouted with anger and despair, but Skagra’s icy detachment would not allow him to consider failure. Calmly and methodically, he weighed up all the factors involved, all the options available to him. He would adapt the plan, was he not the ultimate genius?
A few seconds later he reached a decision.
‘I am going to depart this planet in the Doctor’s TARDIS capsule,’ he told the Ship.
‘Oh,’ said the Ship, seeming a little taken aback.
Hurriedly she added, ‘I am sure my lord has excellent reasons for assuming this course of action.’
Skagra weighed the book in his hand. ‘This book is of Time Lord origin. I believe the code is hidden somewhere in the Doctor’s mind, without him even knowing it. It may require Time Lord technology to crack that code.’
‘What an astute observation, my lord!’ cried the Ship enthusiastically.
‘I shall return for the final phase of the operation,’ said Skagra. He waved his hand over a control panel. Interior lights glowed briefly and there was a set of three insistent beeps.
‘Forgive my abhorrent curiosity, my lord,’ said the Ship. ‘But you have just adjusted some of the manual controls, which as you know in your wisdom, are outside my schematics—’
‘Then obviously my actions do not concern you,’ Skagra said shortly.
‘Quite right, my supreme lord and master,’ said the Ship. ‘I apologise most humbly for my worthlessness and crave your forgiveness.’
Skagra did not bother to reply. Instead he walked to the container that housed his book collection and detached it carefully and slowly from its podium.
Inside the bubble scanner, the Ship’s scanner eye lifted curiously on its stalk. Skagra glared at it. The eyestalk quickly turned away and retracted.
He transferred the book container into his carpet bag. He summoned the sphere with a curt gesture. Then he tucked The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey inside his quilted tabard and left the command deck without a further word or a backward glance, the sphere bobbing behind him.
The Doctor’s sightless eyes stared up from the command chair.
Romana wrung her hands, looking pleadingly into K9’s eye-screen. ‘Are you positive, K9? Absolutely negative?’
‘Affirmative,’ said K9 sadly, his tail drooping. ‘No signals on any frequency, Mistress.’
‘It doesn’t mean the Doctor’s necessarily dead, though, does it?’ asked Chris, trying to salvage some hope from their predicament. ‘I mean, the Professor was a very old man. The Doctor can only be about forty, forty-five.’
‘He’s seven hundred and sixty,’ said Romana.
‘Well, there you go,’ said Chris, though he was trying to process that revelation at the same time as being encouraging. ‘He might have survived the psycho-active extraction process thing.’
Romana sighed and stood up. Suddenly she gave a primal howl of rage, bunched up her fists and shouted, ‘I wish I could get out of here!’
The words had barely left her mouth when a cube of white light surrounded her, blazed with light and disappeared again, taking her with it.
Chris looked at the empty spot where Romana had been in astonishment. He clicked his fingers. Suddenly everything was clear. ‘That’s it!’ he exclaimed.
K-9 whirred and ticked. ‘Please clarify this statement, young master.’
‘That’s what you have to say!’ said Chris. ‘You have to wish.’ He coughed and squared his shoulders, then said loudly, ‘I wish we could get out of here!’
Nothing happened.
Chris tried again, louder. ‘I wish we could get out of here!’
Nothing happened again.
Chris grunted and angrily beat a fist against the wall. ‘Oh, blast it!’
K-9’s nose laser extended.
‘No no, K-9, don’t blast it!’ cried Chris. His shoulders sagged. ‘Wishing worked for Romana. Why didn’t it work for me?’
‘Suggest your superstitious inference of a connection between Mistress’s statement and her transposition was mistaken, young master,’ said K-9 sniffily.
Chris snorted. ‘You’re right. That was stupid. For a scientist, it was idiotic.’
‘And unsophisticated,’ added K-9.
‘How did Romana get out but not me?’ said Chris.
‘Insufficient data,’ said K-9.
‘Insufficient data!’ shouted Chris. ‘Insufficient data! Why did I get myself involved in this?’
‘Insufficient data,’ said K-9.
The transposition cube materialised in the long corridor that led from the command deck to the airlock of Skagra’s ship. Skagra watched as the Doctor’s companion, the Time Lady Romana, stepped from it with almost admirable coolness.
‘What have you done to the Doctor?’ she said, looking him straight in the eye.
‘Nothing you would like to hear about,’ replied Skagra. He appraised her. She was forthright and direct, merely stating her intentions with firm conviction. This was good.
‘Let me see him!’ She moved to push past him and down the corridor.
Skagra blocked her path and indicated the sphere, which bobbed along behind him. ‘You would not enjoy it. I have taken his mind. He foolishly resisted the extraction and his body has terminated.’
Romana shook her head. ‘No. I simply won’t believe it until I see it.’
‘It is not important that you believe it,’ said Skagra. He studied her. ‘A third Time Lord. I have considered using the sphere to extract your mind as well.’
‘Much good it will do you,’ said Romana. ‘You obviously didn’t get what you wanted from either the Doctor or the Professor. You certainly won’t get it from me.’
Skagra nodded. ‘Neatly put. But you may be of use in other ways. You will now accompany me.’ He grabbed her arm and steered her roughly back down the corridor towards the airlock.
Romana shook off his grip. ‘I can find my own way, thank you.’
Skagra narrowed his gaze and studied her again, this time at closer quarters, as they walked together towards the airlock. ‘I find your acceptance of your situation quite refreshing. Of course, resistance is fu
tile, as I can use the sphere to drain your mind at any moment I choose. So you logically accept my dominion. Good. This is behaviour much more becoming of a Time Lord.’
‘What do you know about the Time Lords?’ Romana demanded.
‘Things that even they have forgotten,’ said Skagra. ‘Though of course you don’t really expect me to answer your questions.’
‘Who are you? What do you want?’ Romana said insolently.
‘I want many things,’ said Skagra.
They entered the airlock and passed through onto the invisible steps that led down into the meadow. The sphere drifted after them. At the bottom of the steps, Skagra clicked his fingers and the airlock door closed.
‘Where are we going?’ asked Romana.
Skagra pointed across the meadow. ‘To your travelling capsule.’
Romana led the way to the TARDIS. At the door she suddenly whirled around and fixed Skagra again with her penetrating gaze. ‘If you think I’ll open this door, you’re going to be extremely disappointed. My acceptance doesn’t go so far as that.’
‘Naturally,’ said Skagra. ‘Like the Professor and the Doctor, you would prefer to die pointlessly. So it’s just as well for you that I have the Doctor’s key.’
He slipped the key from his pocket, savouring the tiny expression of alarm on Romana’s face. She was obviously more shaken by the Doctor’s death than she wanted him to think.
He turned the key in the lock, feeling the vibration of power coming from within. The battered blue door swung open and Skagra took Romana by the arm and thrust her savagely inside, the sphere following as faithfully as ever.
Skagra repressed a sneer at the antiquated fixtures and fittings of the capsule’s interior, the heavily roundelled walls typical of the Quintilian Era on Gallifrey. He watched as Romana got to her feet from the appallingly grubby floor. ‘No doubt you also refuse to operate the capsule for me.’
‘No doubt,’ she replied. ‘And as no one can operate it other than the Doctor or myself, your “dominion” over me has come to an end, wouldn’t you say?’
Skagra almost allowed himself another smile. So that was why she had cooperated. She thought this was her trump card, and had been waiting to play it.
‘If the Doctor can operate this capsule,’ he said smoothly, ‘then so can I.’
He set down the carpet bag, then clicked his fingers. The sphere came into his open right palm. With the left hand he threw down a big red lever.
The outer doors closed, shutting out Cambridge and this 2 out of 10 planet from Skagra’s life for ever.
Skagra found the information in the Doctor’s mind quite easily. It was complex but almost instinctive, a habitual pattern formed over five hundred years of travel. He closed the real-world interface and disengaged the multi-loop stabiliser, preparing the TARDIS for flight. The precise coordinates of their destination could be input once they had left conterminous time and entered the space-time vortex.
The central column began to rise and fall. Romana launched herself at the console, reaching desperately for what Skagra identified as the emergency override system.
Skagra swatted her to the floor with the flat of his free hand. Then he reached for a seldom-used array of controls on another panel and his fingers tapped out an instruction.
Immediately, the lighting darkened. Skagra continued his work, talking over his shoulder to his captive. ‘This console is now keyed to my biorhythms.’
‘Anyone can dematerialise a TARDIS,’ Romana said casually. ‘But you’d be a real safety hazard at the major controls. That’s why they’re booby-trapped.’
‘Not true,’ said Skagra.
‘How do you know?’
Skagra tapped the sphere. ‘It’s all in here.’
He anticipated her next move. She ran for the interior door, possibly hoping, he surmised, to reach the secondary control room and take charge of the capsule from there.
The sphere zoomed over, blocking her path.
‘I wouldn’t irritate it if I were you,’ said Skagra. ‘It can do far worse things to you than you can possibly do to it.’
‘I don’t see why you want to steal an old Type 40 like this anyway,’ said Romana. ‘You’ve got a perfectly good ship of your own.’
‘Impressed with it, were you?’ he asked. She did not reply. ‘I should hope you were. I designed it. But it has certain limitations. And what the Time Lords have hidden, I shall need Time Lord technology to locate.’
Romana looked up at him. ‘Consider what you’re doing, Skagra. Logically.’
Skagra moved to the input panel and entered a long string of precise coordinates in Gallifreyan notation. ‘I never do anything else.’
‘Then you must know the risks,’ Romana went on, warningly. ‘You have the Doctor’s knowledge but none of his sense of responsibility.’
Skagra blinked. ‘Are we talking about the same Doctor?’
Romana stood closer. ‘You now have access to all of space and time. Power beyond imagining. You must see, logically, how dangerous that is without the correct training, without the unique insights of a Time Lord.’
This time, Skagra broke all his rules. He stopped the inputting process and laughed in her face. ‘Power beyond imagining? This?’ He indicated the console. ‘This is merely a means to an end. It’s going to get me where I’m going faster, that is all.’
‘And where are you going, Skagra?’ asked Romana fiercely. ‘Who are you? What do you want?’
Skagra wondered. It would be interesting to see her reaction. ‘Have you heard the name Salyavin?’
Romana gasped and backed away. ‘Salyavin! You’re Salyavin?’
‘You asked me three questions,’ said Skagra enigmatically.
He finished the input and pressed the coordinate override button. The column thrummed and glowed bright red with new life, rising and falling faster than before. The TARDIS jerked to one side, powering through the vortex at incredible speed, the engines screaming in protest.
‘To answer your first question,’ said Skagra. ‘First, we are going to my command station.’ His fingers gripped the edge of the console. ‘And from there, with your help, to Shada!’
Chapter 36
VERY, VERY STUPID person. Or very, very clever person? He couldn’t decide.
So he opened his eyes and saw the frayed tassels at the ends of his scarf.
He twiddled the tassels.
Stupid or clever?
It might just be fun to twiddle the tassels for a lifetime, like a stupid person. If that’s what he was.
But if he turned out to be a clever person after all, that would be a very stupid thing to do.
‘Very stupid,’ he said.
He could talk. That suggested he was clever. Or did it? He dimly remembered that very stupid people could talk. Sometimes they did it a lot. Didn’t they?
‘Very stupid, very stupid,’ he said again.
Hold on, he thought. Who was he? He couldn’t decide if he was very stupid or very clever without knowing who he was. If he was very stupid he probably didn’t know who he was.
He decided to check to see if he knew who he was or not. ‘Who am I?’ he asked himself.
There were a few seconds of empty nothingness. He twiddled the tassels again. Twiddle twiddle twiddle. Twiddle-dee-dee, twiddle-dee-dee –
Dee. Dee? D? D for what?
Twiddly-diddly-Doctor.
Doctor.
The Doctor.
The Doctor!
Seven hundred and sixty years flashed through his mind in less than a second.
‘Very, very clever!’ he shouted, leaping to his feet from the command chair on the main deck of Skagra’s spaceship.
‘Ow ow ow ow ow!’ he said, slumping back into the seat, shutting his eyes and clutching his throbbing head. ‘Have you got anything for a headache, Skagra?’
There was no reply.
The Doctor opened an eye and looked around. ‘Skagra?’
‘My lord has de
parted,’ said a woman’s voice.
The Doctor opened his other eye and looked around again. There was nobody else on the command deck.
‘Who’s that?’ the Doctor called.
‘My lord,’ said the voice. ‘My wonderful lord Skagra.’
The Doctor swivelled right round in the chair. Still nobody about. ‘No, I don’t mean who’s departed, I mean who is that speaking?’
‘The servant of Skagra,’ said the voice. ‘I am the Ship.’
‘You’re the ship?’ The Doctor smiled. He realised that the voice seemed to be coming from all around him. ‘A talking spaceship?’
‘Correct,’ said the Ship.
‘Skagra must be pretty hard-up for friends,’ muttered the Doctor, choosing to forget K-9. ‘Will you tell me where my friends are?’
‘I will not!’ said the Ship, rather hotly. ‘You are an enemy of Skagra. Any orders you give me are hostile to my gracious lord.’
‘Oh, I don’t mean any harm,’ said the Doctor affably. ‘And it wasn’t an order, I only asked.’
There was a lengthy pause.
Finally the Ship said, ‘I do not understand how you are asking. In fact, I do not understand how you are moving.’
‘Really?’ The Doctor didn’t care for the Ship’s somewhat starchy and disapproving tone. He got up carefully from the chair. ‘Why’s that then? It seems quite natural to me.’
‘Because you are dead,’ said the Ship, sounding puzzled. ‘Your mind was extracted into the sphere.’
The Doctor laughed. ‘Ah, but it wasn’t, was it? The trick on these occasions is not to resist. I just let the thing believe I was very stupid, and then it didn’t pull nearly hard enough. It got a bad copy of my mind, a bootleg version if you like, but it left me with the original intact.’ He tapped the side of his head. He was trying to sound very casual, although in fact the mental effort he had expended had drained him. ‘Understand?’
‘No, I do not,’ said the Ship. ‘I scanned your body for life signs after the extraction. And you, Doctor, are quite definitely dead.’
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