Divided Loyalties

by Gary Russell

  ‘Bit of a puzzle then,’ said Oakwood.

  ‘Puzzle...’ the Doctor frowned, then sighed deeply. ‘Of course, why didn’t I see it earlier!’ He ran back to the pyramid, splashing mud everywhere.

  ‘Look,’ he was saying as the others caught up with him,

  ‘look, it’s built in flat sections.’

  ‘Each one about two feet high,’ Tegan added.

  ‘What exactly is it, Doctor?’ Oakwood was staring upwards, trying to count the sections.

  ‘It’s a trap, Commander, and I think we should get away from here as fast as possible.’

  ‘A trap?’ Dieter frowned. ‘Who for?’

  ‘Me,’ the Doctor said. And I’ve almost fallen right into it.’

  ‘Correction, Doctor,’ said Townsend. ‘You have fallen right into it. Look.’

  A door had appeared at the base of the pyramid and was sliding upwards. As it rose, they could make out a person standing in the entrance, waiting for them.

  The door vanished into whatever slot it fitted into above the space and a man stepped forward. He was dressed in a simple linen hooded smock that stopped just below his knees. He wore sandals on his feet and a belt around his waist, giving him the appearance of a monk. He tugged his hood back, revealing a bald, deeply lined head with almost grey skin and two bright eyes that stared intently at them.

  ‘He’s so old,’ Tegan muttered.

  ‘I am the Observer,’ the man said simply. ‘Thank you for coming.’

  ‘Hello, I’m the Doctor and this is -’

  ‘I know who you all are. You will enter the pyramid.’

  ‘Remember,’ hissed Oakwood, ‘it’s a trap, you said.’

  ‘Yes,’ the Doctor replied, then called out to the Observer. ‘I’d rather not actually. Sorry to disturb you but my friends and I were just leaving.’

  ‘I think not.’ And behind them, on the ridge, the shuttle exploded into millions of tiny fragments that embedded themselves in the mud.

  Braune brought his gun up to bear, but the old Observer didn’t seem perturbed. The gun just fell apart, as if corroded by rust and age. Braune frowned - and Desorgher discovered that his gun had similarly disintegrated. The Observer was, if anything, merely amused.

  ‘Enter the pyramid,’ he repeated, then turned away and walked into the darkness.

  ‘Well,’ the Doctor said after a few seconds. ‘I rather think our options have been reduced to two. Stay out here or go inside.’

  ‘We should stay here then,’ suggested Nurse Dieter.

  Oakwood shook his head. ‘Night’s coming. Before long the temperature will drop even further and we know from our surveys how cold the surface gets. I’m afraid we’d best walk into this trap of the Doctor’s.’

  ‘Not mine actually,’ the Doctor said quietly, ‘but I take your point. Tegan, Nyssa, in you go.’ He counted everyone in until just he and Oakwood were still outside. ‘I’m sorry about this, Commander. I really had no idea what to expect. And I think we can assume that the Observer was responsible for bringing us here.’

  Oakwood smiled at him. ‘Not to worry, Doctor. I’ve been waiting for an excuse to have an adventure ever since I got this posting. Makes a change from watching the news.’ He marched inside after his crew and, shaking his head at the continual surprises humanity offered, the Doctor followed. The door slid shut behind him.

  Apart from a few recent footsteps and the mound of mud that Townsend had disturbed, there was no evidence they had ever been within the crater.

  Adric was seated once again in the mess, making notes. He always carried a small pencil in his breast pocket and Niki Paladopous had miraculously dug up some sheets of paper from somewhere.

  Art appreciation was, the Doctor had told him, a purely subjective matter. One artist may paint a glorious sweep of yellow flowers in a field, capturing the image perfectly, almost like a photograph. Another may opt to exaggerate the image, making the flowers out of proportion to the background and foreground. Another painter could make the flowers angular and two-dimensional, and yet another represent the scene with three yellow splodges of paint on a blue background. But each of them had their own worth and their own admirers.

  Adric never understood why people painted pictures. Art was almost unknown on Alzarius - after all, who needed it?

  The only time it existed was in the purely practical application of schematics and design. Illustrations in the books to show which parts of the Starliner fitted where, and how to replace them. They were line drawings essentially - colour was an even bigger rarity.

  Adric had found his appreciation of art going in the direction of an interest in the art of pure mathematics. He wore his gold-edged star badge with pride - it marked him out as having achieved much in the field of maths and related sciences.

  So when Niki Paladopous had given him a pile of trajectories, positionals and theoretical astrophysics problems, he was, as Niki had said, like a pig in mud’. This was his domain. This was where he was an artist - sifting through numericals, cosines and astronomical trigonometry, making sense of it all. He sort of guessed that Niki had given him this stuff to keep him happy and amused, but he didn’t mind. If the Doctor didn’t consider him reliable enough any more, well, that was his problem.

  Maybe he could stay here, with these people. If the Doctor had everything he needed in Tegan and Nyssa, maybe this was somewhere he could call home now. Oh, it wasn’t exactly racing around the space-time vortex, saving civilisations and righting wrongs, but that wasn’t as much fun as it had been any longer.

  He tried his best - really he did, but still no one really wanted him there. He tried being nice to the girls, telling them when they weren’t looking as nice as they had the day before, but they just said he was being rude, which was so stupid. One day they would spend ages putting make-up on their faces, getting it right. The next day, they wouldn’t spend quite as much time and look a little different, but then not want this pointed out.

  ‘How do I look today?’ Tegan would ask, and Adric would tell her.

  Typical girl - just like the ones back at home. He never understood them either.

  He’d make jokes - asking for the sodium chloride instead of salt at meal times, educated sort of quips like that. Even if Tegan and Nyssa didn’t get them, the Doctor ought to. But no, he just sided with the girls and ignored him.

  Adric looked down at the notes he had been making, doodles more than anything, while his mind wandered to his role within the TARDIS crew.

  Earth was at co-ordinates 5XA8000-743-7, while Little Boy II was at 6AA2357-576-8, on a curve of 314 degrees from the galactic centre. If the Doctor, the old Doctor, had been travelling away from Earth on a similar trajectory - the TARDIS always shifted through the space-time vortex before entering real space at 67 degrees on a curvature of... of...

  Yes! When he had left Earth a year or so ago, with their old friends Romana and K9, they had been travelling... there... Adric made a crosspoint on his notes, and drew a series of curves, allowing for spatial drift and the slight variance given by the space-time vortex distortion as the TARDIS shifted...

  The entry point into his own pocket universe was the CVE

  through which the Doctor and Romana and K9 had travelled to reach Alzarius. They had been going to the Doctor’s home planet, Gallifrey, but went through the Casseopeian CVE at 3C461-3044-7. If Adric reversed those co-ordinates, maybe he could plot a course back through the CVE

  - go home! Find out what was happening on the Starliner, see if they’d got to Terradon yet, or returned to Alzarius or...

  Alzarius? Something at the back of his mind nagged him.

  He’d... dreamt about Alzarius recently, or something. Only it wasn’t a dream - it was more recent than that surely? He hadn’t en asleep for about eight hours and this was definitely something newer...

  Then it struck him - a flood of memories, breaking through whatever had blocked them.

  ‘The Toymaker,’ he muttered.

/>   All thoughts of piloting the TARDIS back into E-Space and home forgotten, Adric rushed from the mess and off to find Paladopous.

  He had to get a message to the Doctor. Urgently!

  Tegan felt strangely calm as she stood outside the chamber.

  The Observer had taken them down, way under the pyramid, through a labyrinth of twists and turns guaranteed to confuse them. Tegan had heard the Doctor mutter something about wishing he had brought Theseus, but he was always making classical allusions, and her head was too fuzzy to try and work this one out.

  It had to be something to do with the depth - they seemed to have been walking for ages and had to be quite some way beneath the surface.

  She noticed Desorgher was suffering as well, periodically shaking his head or squashing his palms against his ears, trying to get them to pop.

  Nyssa, Oakwood, Townsend and Dieter were also showing signs of fatigue, but she noticed that neither the Doctor nor Braun seemed to be affected. She guessed the Doctor’s Time Lord physiology was responsible for his state, while she doubted that Braune would flinch even if he had an arm amputated.

  To call him a stoic was an understatement.

  After a few more moments, the Observer had brought them up to a vast arched stone doorway that reminded Tegan of a cathedral entrance. Indeed, she could almost smell incense and feel an atmosphere of reverence.

  ‘We are here. Please prepare to enter.’

  It was a holy place.

  Tegan wasn’t particularly religious but when her mother had told her that her father had cancer and had to retire from running the farm and let Richard Fraser, her uncle, take over, she had cast a small prayer upwards.

  Hell, if anything had happened to her dad now, she wouldn’t know!

  The Observer looked at her.

  ‘Your pain will pass, child’

  ‘My... my pain?’

  ‘Your father has passed on, child. It was a painless and very dignified departure.’

  ‘How do you... know this...?’

  The Observer reached out a hand and touched her cheek with the tips of his fingers, letting his middle finger rest on her temple. ‘I am the Observer,’ he said. ‘You are the Chosen. It is easy.’

  And Tegan was somewhere else.

  It was warm, humid in fact, the grass a rich green and the sky a beautiful blue broken by white clouds.

  ‘Oh my God - I’m home. It’s the farm...’ And suddenly a chill went up her spine and she gasped. ‘No...’ she was filled with a horrible dread. ‘God no...’

  She was running, her feet making no mark on the grass, past the paddock, around the tractor and up to the main house.

  The doors were open and the family were gathered.

  Mum was seated, being comforted by Mrs Michaels from the town and Uncle Richard.

  Mum’s sister-in-law, Tegan’s Aunt Felicity, was there too along with her cousins Colin and Michael.

  Her Serbian grandparents were there - Gramps and Grammie Jovanka had flown in from Yugoslavia. No Grandad Verney - oh God, he would still be mourning his niece... Aunt Vanessa, who had died at the hands of the Master.

  Mum had lost her husband so soon after losing her sister...

  no, this wasn’t fair!

  Tegan was trying not to cry, not to scream out how unfair this all was, that no family should have to suffer so much!

  Mum was speaking. Crying. ‘First Vanessa, then Tegan and now Bill...’

  ‘But I’m not dead, Mum!! I’m here!’ Tegan wanted to shake her mum, hug her, tell her that she was all right.

  But of course they must have thought she had died with Aunt Vanessa on that Saturday in Barnet. How could she tell them otherwise?

  But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that her father was gone and she hadn’t been there. Hadn’t been able to say goodbye. Hadn’t been able to tell him how much she loved him.

  To recall her childhood, to talk about cars and space ships, to remember watching television and listening to music. And to remember how Dad had encouraged her drawing, enthusiastic about her free spirit - he always understood that farm life wasn’t for her. Dad had encouraged her to spread her wings, to see the world.

  She remembered one sunny day, years ago, when they had lain in a pasture looking up at the sky as a jet plane flew over, heading up to Cairns. ‘Daddy, I want to go in one of those. I want to fly.’ And her dad had smiled, hugged her and said,

  ‘My special girl - one day you will.’

  Tegan realised the image had changed - they were at the cemetery, beside the grave, as the rabbi spoke, recalling William Jovanka’s life. Mum was being comforted by Uncle Richard and Aunt Felicity. Mjovic and Sneshna Jovanka were on either side of the rabbi, heads bowed, saying farewell to their beloved son.

  Suddenly the rabbi looked up, straight at Tegan, and saw her - although that was impossible.

  Until she realised that the rabbi had the Observer’s face.

  Then, one by one, the other mourners seemed to see her.

  ‘Where were you?’ snarled her mother.

  ‘Useless daughter, couldn’t be bothered to be here.’ That was Uncle Richard.

  ‘Too busy with her new friends to even let us know she was alive,’ said her grandmother.

  ‘Whose fault is it?’ asked Aunt Felicity. ‘Who has kept you away from your family? Your duty?’

  ‘Who has stopped you being a comfort to a lonely mother?’ asked her mum, tears cascading down her face. ‘No...

  please...’ Tegan dropped to her knees. ‘Please. It wasn’t my fault. I’ve tried to get back to Earth, but the Doctor couldn’t do it. He couldn’t get me here’

  ‘Oh, so it is someone else’s fault, is it?’

  And standing behind the rabbi/Observer, mouthing pointless apologies, was the Doctor.

  ‘Yes,’ she breathed. ‘Yes, if he hadn’t taken me away, if he had lived up to his promises, I could have been here, Mum.

  It’s all his fault...’

  And the vision was gone.

  Tegan was back outside the stone doorway. The Observer was beside her, his hand at his side.

  Had she imagined it all?

  ‘We are here. Please prepare to enter.’

  Had the previous few moments actually occurred?

  Tegan saw the Doctor out of the corner of her eye and for the first time ever, she felt furious. Livid with him and his empty promises and his useless TARDIS and...

  It was all his fault. Her father was dead. Her mother was coping alone. And it was all his fault.

  So when the Observer eased open the stone doors, Tegan stormed into the room thinking of nothing but revenge.

  Unseen by her, or indeed anyone else, the Observer was smiling as he watched her.

  As everyone filed into the room, there was an audible gasp.

  It was larger than the cathedral Tegan had been expecting. It seemed to have no end - the long, cavernous room stretched back and back, and was quite wide, although she could see its sides. It was quite dark and smelt a bit musty, as she’d expect a cathedral to smell. But the remarkable thing about it was that it was occupied.

  Row upon row, until they faded into the distance, there were people, dressed in the same garb as the Observer, lying on slabs. Men, women and children.

  ‘Are they dead?’ Tegan was standing by the nearest slab. On it lay a youngish man - she guessed he was young, simply because his face was smooth although he was as bald as the Observer. He didn’t appear to be breathing and his skin was ice-cold.

  The Observer did not answer. Instead he dropped on to one knee, bowing his head before her.

  ‘It is my place in the world to remain on guard. Preparing for this day, when the Chosen would walk amongst us.’

  The Doctor stepped forward, before Oakwood could speak.

  ‘Hello, I’m the Doctor. I wonder, could you possibly explain what you mean by ―the Chosen‖? You see, you’ve mentioned that a few times and I rather think you mean my friend here.

&n
bsp; Tegan.’

  The Observer nodded, smiling. ‘Of course, that is why you have brought her here, Doctor. Your path is not hers. Her destiny lies here.’

  ‘Ah. Thank you. That clears that up.’ The Doctor turned away, and winked at Nyssa.

  ‘Look,’ Oakwood began. ‘Did you destroy our shuttle? We have no way of returning to our space station now.’

  The Observer turned away. The Chosen one is here - the rest of you are irrelevant. There is food and water for four days in that alcove.’ He waved a hand dismissively to the left. ‘By then, Paladopous or the boy, Adric, will have arranged a rescue mission.’

  The Doctor was not surprised by the Observer’s knowledge of those they had left on the space station. ‘And if they don’t?’

  ‘Then you will starve to death. Dymok is only for the Chosen.’

  The Doctor crossed over to the alcove. ‘Well, I suppose we’d better get rations sorted out, Commander. We may be here for some time.’

  ‘Doctor!’ Nyssa’s cry made him turn around sharply - and it was easy to see why she was alarmed.

  Of the Observer and Tegan there was no sign. It was as if they had never been there.

  ‘Tegan!’ he called out desperately. ‘Tegan, can you hear me?’

  There was no reply. The Doctor caught Nyssa’s look of anxiety and smiled at her. ‘Well,’ he reasoned, ‘if Tegan is this

  ―Chosen‖, then I very much doubt that the Observer intends her harm. I think we should settle down for the night and worry about our predicament after some sleep. Hmmm?’ If Oakwood was about to argue, he was stopped by Sarah Townsend.

  ‘I think that’s a fair idea, Doctor. But in the morning we need some real answers from the Observer.’

  The Doctor nodded and he and Dieter began sorting through the rations, while Desorgher and Braune cleared some space near the doorway - which required gently casing the nearby slabs and their occupants into a corner. Oakwood and Nyssa pushed the doors shut, to retain what little warmth existed in the cathedral.

  After a while, the Doctor and Dieter shared out the food and everyone ate and drank in silence.