He stared at them, watching until they went. Then he turned to Ace.
Now I’m going to get it, she thought.
‘When I say stay put, I mean stay put,’ said the Doctor, ‘not take on an entire Dalek assault squad single-handed.’ He ran practised fingers along Ace’s leg, checking the damage. Before Ace could stop him he hooked one palm under her knee and brought it sharply upwards. The leg twinged.
Ace gasped.
‘Why did you come here?’ asked the Doctor.
‘I left my tape deck here.’
‘Where is it now?’
Good question! she thought. ‘In little bits,’ she said ruefully.
‘Good,’ said the Doctor.
‘What do you mean “good”?’ Ace was astonished. ‘Where am I going to get another one?’
‘Your tape deck was a dangerous anachronism. If somebody had found it and discovered the principles of its function the whole microchip revolution would take place twenty years too early, with uncalculable damage to the timeline.’
‘So?’ said Ace sullenly.
‘Ace,’ said the Doctor, ‘the Daleks have a starship up there with the capability of erasing this planet from space. But even they, ruthless though they are, would think twice before making such a radical alteration to the timeline.’
There’s more to this time travel lark then meets the eye, decided Ace.
The Doctor reached out and pinched the lobe of her ear, once.
‘You should be able to get around on that leg now.’
Ace carefully got to her feet and tested her weight on the leg. It was still a bit shaky but the pain had gone.
‘Cheers, Professor.’
The Doctor smiled and picked up the baseball bat.
Rachel and Allison stood in the cellar and stared at the alien machine. Rachel’s fingers were itching. Inside the machine were secrets that could reshape the world. She wanted to get in there and have a good look at its guts.
‘The subject obviously is placed on the dais,’ said Allison. ‘Then what?’
‘The Doctor called it a transmat,’ said Rachel. ‘What does that imply to you?’
‘Matter transmission, but that’s…’
‘Impossible,’ said Rachel glumly. ‘You know, after this is over I’m going to retire and grow begonias.’
‘Lovely flowers, begonias,’ said the Doctor from the stairs.
‘Doctor,’ said Allison, ‘how exactly does this thing work?’
‘Don’t bother,’ said Rachel.
The Doctor stepped over to the transmat and casually ran his hand over it. ‘It’s a link for the Daleks, allowing them to beam attack squads on to Earth without anyone knowing it.’
He shook his head and raised the baseball bat as if feeling the weight of it. He smiled and then smashed the baseball bat down on the control panel: metal crumpled, energy flared off the bat, and coloured panels shattered. There was a stink of ozone. ‘And I don’t want them here just yet.’ He punctuated every word with the baseball bat. There was a splintering sound and the end of the bat flew off. It ricocheted off a wall and fell at Rachel’s feet. ‘Hah – weapons,’ the Doctor looked at the remains of the handle, ‘always useless in the end.’
He looked at Rachel. She stared at him. Those remarkable eyes of his were full of energy.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘there are things to be done.’
Mike came down the stairs smiling. When he saw Ace, the smile became wider.
‘I found this upstairs,’ he said, producing a Dalek eyepiece from behind his back, ‘in the chemistry lab. One of the Daleks seems to have lost it.’
Ace took the eyepiece from him, tossed it end over end and caught it. ‘I wonder how that happened?’
‘Somebody must have knocked it off,’ said Mike, ‘with a blunt instrument.’
Ace tossed the eyepiece up again. A hand snapped out and caught it in mid-air.
‘Where’s Gilmore?’ said the Doctor.
‘He’s coming,’ said Mike, gesturing at the stairs.
The Doctor waved the eyepiece at Ace. ‘It’s dangerous to play with Daleks, even bits of Daleks,’ he said and threw the eyepiece over his shoulder.
Gilmore emerged from the stairwell. ‘The area is clear of Daleks. How should we proceed from here?’
‘I think,’ said the Doctor, ‘before we proceed anywhere, I should consult my assistant.’
He pulled Ace out of earshot. ‘We’re facing a very serious crisis. Destroying the transmat won’t hold the white Daleks very long.’
‘I could brew up some nitro-nine,’ said Ace.
‘I think it’s gone a little beyond that now,’ said the Doctor.
Mike leaned over and said to Allison: ‘What’s he up to now.’
‘Something Machiavellian,’ said Allison.
‘Something what-ian?’
Rachel looked at the Doctor’s back. He was making small sharp gestures; Ace was nodding. ‘I think he’s playing games, very dangerous games.’
Gilmore nodded. ‘He seems to know what he is doing.’ It was said grudgingly.
Rachel looked back at the Doctor. ‘But Group Captain,’ she said, ‘do we know what he’s doing?’
10
SATURDAY, 15:00
The technological renaissance on Skaro briefly made the ageing planet once again the centre of Dalek cultural life, in so far as it can be said that a race like the Daleks can have a culture. This was its short flowering before the inevitable fall.
The Children of Davros, a Short History of the Dalek Race, Vol XX
by Njeri Ngugi (4065)
IT WAS CALLED the Eret-mensaiki Ska, Destiny of Stars. The flagship of the Imperial Fleet, it was constructed in orbit round Skaro. Elegant in conception and execution, it typified the Dalek renaissance.
Now it ran quietly, locked into geostationary orbit by the ceaceless murmering of its thrusters. Passive sensors soaked up data from the planet below like a sponge.
The systems co-ordinator was alone at the centre of the bridge, the Dalek’s adapted manipulator arm plugged into the console before it. Through the interface it monitored the many functions on the vast ship. In a fundamental way, it was the ship.
With a small part of its mind it adjusted the nutrient drip in the birthing creche, balancing the protein levels in the feed tubes that led to the gestation capsules. Inside each duralloy bubble a perfect Dalek foetus contentedly gurgled to the soft whine of the indoctrination tapes.
The systems co-ordinator monitored a servo-robot as it scuttled across the vast port flank of the ship, quickly sealing meteorite punctures with tiny squirts of gel.
A hull-mounted missile launcher twitched in its socket testing its orientation.
Radiation sensors inside the burning heart of the fusion generator spiked twice and then subsided.
All this barely broke the surface of the co-ordinator’s consciousness, as subliminal to it as breathing was once to its humanoid ancestors.
The focus of its attention lay two hundred kilometres below, priority red, watching for the sign.
Waiting.
‘I don’t think Group Captain Gilmore is very happy,’ said Ace.
‘He’s a military man,’ said the Doctor. ‘Lack of action makes his brain seize up.’
Ace looked over at the other table where Gilmore was sitting with Rachel and Allison. Harry’s best effort lay uneaten in front of him. She caught Rachel staring at the Doctor again; the scientist quickly looked away when she noticed Ace.
Mike laughed, the sound muffled by the sausage he was eating. His fork stabbed at the air, punctuation for his humour. He saw Ace watching and covered his mouth with his hand. Ace looked down at her mixed grill. What she needed was some toast.
The Doctor was staring ahead, his brow creased. Ace had seen this look before.
The Doctor was waiting for something to happen.
George Ratcliffe was good at waiting.
He learned to be patient in prison while the r
est of England waged senseless war against the one nation that should have been its ally. He had been reviled by the very people he’d been fighting to save.
They had called him a traitor.
Men that had stood shoulder to shoulder with him in the 1930s – good men who had marched down Cable Street, proud to be English, proud to fight against the Jew and the Bolshevik, proud to stand up for their race – even they had rejected him, blinded by the Zionist propaganda. Ratcliffe found himself alone, a single voice against the madness.
And so he had gone to prison under Regulation 18b and learned patience; he had been rewarded.
A few spots of drizzle fell on his face. Around him gravestones marked generations of dead Englishmen. In the distance, birds sang. Ratcliffe walked slowly down the main path. The sky threatened rain.
Third on the left, thought Ratcliffe, and stopped.
The grave was unremarkable. The headstone bore a single mark – the Greek symbol for Omega.
The Hand of Omega, thought Ratcliffe, destiny and power.
Ratcliffe’s business as a building merchant prospered in the 1950s. The East End had been mauled during the Blitz. There was a lot of work and Ratcliffe still had his contacts.
Rebuilding the Association proved harder. The influx of new immigrants helped. They were easy targets, more obvious than the Jews, more different. Yet it was not like the 1930s – there was affiuence now. People didn’t need scapegoats like they used to. Ratcliffe knew in his heart that the Association would never amount to more than a rabble driven by hatred.
But that was before they arrived. Then everything had changed.
Rachel sipped her coffee: it was cold.
‘I just feel we should be doing something,’ said Gilmore.
‘I wouldn’t advise it,’ said Rachel. ‘We’re in way over our heads already.’
‘You were designated chief scientific adviser – one tends to expect some advice from one’s advisers.’
Oh really, she thought.
‘For one thing, Group Captain, I was not hired, I was drafted. And for another, do you think I’m enjoying having some space vagrant come along and tell me that the painstaking research I’ve devoted my life to has been superseded by a bunch of tin-plated pepperpots?’
‘Steady on, Professor.’
‘Steady on?’ Rachel had trouble keeping her voice down. ‘You drag me down from Cambridge, quote the Peacetime Emergency Powers Act at me and then expect me to advise on a situation that is outside the realm of human experience. Bluntly, Group Captain, we are reliant on the Doctor, because only the Doctor knows what is going on.’
Gilmore glanced at the Doctor, who was still sitting with his chin on his hands and looking into space. ‘Well, I wish he would tell us.’
So do I, thought Rachel, so do I. She took another sip of coffee: it was still cold.
Ratcliffe needed something to probe the grave. He wasn’t going to drag his men down here and dig up a grave in broad daylight. Not until he was sure that what he wanted was down there.
He found a loose rail, part of the brass ornamental surround of a nearby grave. It was rusty and came away easily. He raised it above his head and, with a last look at the Omega symbol on the headstone, plunged it into the earth.
The Omega device felt the disturbance in the earth above it and responded with sudden eagerness. It snapped out a tendril of itself and probed. A thin lattice of heavy iron atoms, streaked with oxide impurities. This analysis was unnecessary, its parameters for response included any deliberate disturbance. There was a subtle shift in one part of the device’s matrix as it considered the implications and formulated the proper response.
This took a nanosecond.
It reconfigured part of its substance, drew power from its reserves.
And howled.
*
Ace watched as the Doctor smiled grimly.
An externally mounted sensor on the Eret-mensaiki Ska overloaded and went dead. Emergency systems shut down other equally sensitive sensors, but not before three more flared and died. There was a flurry of activity as medium range detectors cast around for the source, locking on with Dalek efficiency.
A point flared like a small sun on the three-dimensional grid-map of the world below. It was a power source, radiating energy at such levels that the ship’s automatic defences responded as if the vessel were under attack.
The systems co-ordinator was bombarded with a rush of data. It quivered in its shell as atrophied glands released adrenalin into its body.
Power source detected. Its amplified thoughts coursed through the com-net – full alert. The signal radiated out of the bridge in a controlled chain-reaction.
The alert bridge crew slammed into their connections. Neuro-receptors engaged into command jacks. The system operator shunted scanner, weapon and defence functions over to the bridge crew.
Scan-op quickly tested the signal and reported: It is the Omega device.
The systems co-ordinator made its decision.
Inform the Emperor.
The girl skipped through the cemetery. The gravestones shifted like ghosts to her augmented eyes, their shapes overlaid with different, alien meanings. She was so charged with energy that she couldn’t feel her feet touch the ground.
She rounded the church and vaulted the iron railing that surrounded it. Her legs easily absorbed the impact of the landing, transforming the energy into a forward vector with machine-like precision. Her eyes scanned the lines of stones: she had a function to perform.
The girl saw activity and ran towards it.
It happened.
For a second she had no legs; she squirmed in liquid confinement. Thoughts burrowed their way into her mind, her reflexes slowed by pain.
She was lying on the ground, breathing in the grass.
It had happened before.
The girl got up, her nausea overridden by control. She picked up the target activity and became flush with power again.
A group of humans worked at a grave. One of them had a name and designation – Ratcliffe, quisling. He was shouting at the other humans digging in the grave, urging them to work faster. Then he saw the girl.
‘What are you staring at?’
He remembered being a man. The blue-white sun that burned over the mountains on the long summer evenings. A childhood, adolescence among the debris of Kaled encampments, games of Hunt the Thal played with sticks and mutant beetles. His indoctrination and training, a glittering career, the Elite cadre, lovers, adrenalin, blood, bone, sinew, feelings.
Ended by the war.
Ended by a Thal shell and a rush of radioactivity.
He remembered the smell of his own blood, pulsing slowly from severed arteries, the taste of concrete dust in his mouth, and the crackling of his own skin. He hurtled blindly into darkness.
And then resurrection.
An age of pain and humiliation. He was reconstructed with chrome and plastic, held together by tungsten wire. They drilled sockets through his skull and threaded fibre-optics into his forebrain.
He screamed when he saw himself for the first time. The med-techs smashed him back into darkness with anaesthetic. Questions were raised among the Kaled Elite: for all his brilliance, should such an abomination be allowed to live? The psych-techs said there was an eighty-six per cent probability, plus or minus ten per cent, that he would commit suicide within an hour of waking. A decision was made – let the creature prove his function, or die.
They allowed him awareness once more and he looked at himself again. The Elite gave him a trigger linked to a lethal dose of poison and then they left him.
He spent a long time examining the monstrosity he had become, searching for some reason to live. His remaining hand trembled on the switch that would kill him. With a convulsive effort he twisted himself into his new shape. I am but the idea, he thought, the seed, the dream. He saw a purity, not in what he was, but in what he might become. A being unbound by flesh and the stupidities that flesh b
rings. A creature fit to hold dominion.
Carefully he put the trigger down. At a thought his chair turned, a door opened and he slid out to face the Elite. ‘Give me what I want,’ he told them, ‘and I will give you victory.’ They provided for him, of course. It was their destiny to serve his purpose.
Emperor on the bridge.
Now the low vibration of the Dalek ship sang a song of power as he entered.
Report, he ordered.
Scan-op shunted data. We have located the Omega device.
Tac-op went on line, estimated troop deployments, native and renegade, updated battle senarios, bombardment patterns. Renegade agents are in the area, it reported.
Prepare the assault shuttle, ordered the Emperor. They will surrender the Omega device or be exterminated.
The girl was beginning to irritate Ratcliffe. Her cool gaze was making him uncomfortable. ‘Haven’t you got a home to go to?’ he demanded.
She just stared back – unblinking, Ratcliffe realized with a prickling of the flesh on his neck. He turned back to his men. ‘Put your backs into it,’ he shouted. ‘We don’t have all day.’
He could feel the girl’s eyes on his back. He turned, ready to lash out, threaten – anything to make her leave.
The girl was gone.
With a sudden thrill Ace saw the Doctor come to life. With a small movement of his hand he summoned Gilmore over. The cafe became suddenly quiet and expectant.
Now that’s style, thought Ace.
‘We need to establish a forward base at the school,’ said the Doctor. ‘Can it be done?’
Gilmore nodded quickly and turned to Mike. ‘Sergeant, get Embery. Move in command units.’ Ace could hear the confidence creeping back into Gilmore’s voice. ‘Establish forward command, third floor, defensive positions on the ground floor and the roof.’
Mike hesitated over his second plate of chips.
‘Get a move on,’ snapped Gilmore, and Mike moved.
The Doctor’s eyes were intense as the soldiers began boiling out of the cafe. He’s doing it again, thought Ace.
Rachel felt suddenly cold when she saw Ace grin.
Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks: 50th Anniversary Edition (Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Collection) Page 8
