Doctor Who Page 10

  ‘And don’t go forgetting me again, because, quite frankly, that was offensive.’

  She smiled once again. And then she was Bill again. ‘You see?’ she said. ‘Memories. Important, right?’

  He was about to say yes, yes now he saw. He had been frozen inside, and now these ghosts had given him a chance to thaw. The newly born hope hurt inside him. It seemed to be demanding he go on. He hated it for that. He still couldn’t face that.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said a new voice. ‘“Where is he?”’ From behind Bill stepped a third ghost of his past. It was Nardole, his former assistant, servant, and, in some ways, jailer. He had a big, let’s have a party smile on his full moon of a face. ‘Hello, sir.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the Doctor in reply, ‘you’re both here now. How does that work?’

  Nardole’s face fell.

  ‘We can be everyone,’ said Bill. ‘We are everyone. All those Glass Women, remember?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s good, this, isn’t it?’ said Nardole, tapping his head. ‘I lived happily ever after too, before you ask. Cybermen came back a couple of times, and we were still getting Cybermats every spring when I popped my clogs, but basically, we got it sorted. Seven hundred and twenty-eight years, not bad, I thought. Six wives, two of them at once. Good times. All of them in here with me now. Like me, made of glass when I want to be, or when her upstairs does, made of memories the rest of the time. I got taken by accident. They thought I was human and I was like, “Yeah, go on, be heartless and cruel, send me back,” and they gave in. All of me is glass now, look.’ He held up a glass hand, then reverted it back to flesh. ‘Not just the nipples. Got my hair a bit wrong, though, haven’t they? I’m always saying that.’

  ‘You don’t have any hair,’ said Bill. Here they were, interacting like they were … real. He had to smile at it. He was on the edge of accepting it.

  ‘I have invisible hair! Or I’m supposed to!’

  ‘You know,’ said the Doctor, chipping in, ‘when you’re already dying, you’re entitled to think your day can’t get any worse. But here you are.’

  ‘Got a suggestion for you, though,’ said Nardole.

  ‘Oh, there’s a novelty.’

  ‘Don’t die.’

  Beside him, Bill nodded.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because, if you do, I think everybody in the universe might just … go cold.’

  The Doctor felt despair and anger flare in him at once. How dare they ask this of him? He pointed to the war. ‘Look over there! You know what that is? Peace! Peace on a battlefield! Isn’t it beautiful? Can’t I ever have peace? Can’t I rest?’

  Bill kept eye contact with him, desperate not to let him go. Selfishly desperate, he thought. ‘If … that’s what you want. Okay. Sure. Of course you can.’

  ‘It’s your choice,’ sighed Nardole.

  ‘Only yours.’

  ‘We understand.’

  But in their understanding, in their emotion, they were putting such pressure on him. They knew it, too. They kept wanting him to come back, to realise, to step away from the precipice. They just did not get where he was.

  ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘No, you don’t understand. You’re not even really here.’ He saw Bill start to protest. He went to her and silenced her with a hand. That wasn’t what he meant and she knew it. He wouldn’t deny her being any more. ‘You’re just memories kept in glass. You’re done. Completed. You don’t have to make this decision ever again. Do you know how many of you I could fill?’ He found he was getting angry. Fine. Let them see that. ‘I would shatter you! My testimony would shatter all of you! A life this long … do you understand what it is? It’s a battlefield, bigger than this one. And it’s empty. Because everyone else has fallen.’

  They remained silent in the face of what he’d said. Bill looked desperately sad. Nardole just shrugged.

  ‘You’re right. It’s my choice. And I will make it the same way I always do. The same way I do everything. Alone.’ He turned to step away, to head for the TARDIS. That would be where he’d die. Or … no, it should be at home, on Earth. One foot in and one foot out. That wouldn’t be very elegant, would it? Wait, what was he missing here? What was that hurt inside him, that thing that slowed down his walk, made him want to … He spun on his heel and walked quickly back to where they still stood. He calmed himself. He made himself smile, the warm smile they both deserved. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you both.’ He squeezed Nardole’s hand, just for a moment. It felt like flesh. ‘For everything you were to me.’

  ‘Aw,’ said Nardole, grinning.

  ‘But what happens now,’ he said gently, ‘where I go now …’ Bill was still looking so seriously at him. She was on the edge of tears. ‘It has to be alone.’

  She pulled the Doctor to her and hugged him. He held her. And it was a real hug, with no thought in his head about what it might mean or reveal, because it was far too late for that.

  Nardole wrapped his arms around both of them. ‘Cuddle,’ whispered the odd alien who had meant so much to the Doctor. The Doctor hugged him back.

  Bill looked into his eyes one last time. Then she started to fade. So did Nardole. He stepped back and watched them go. At the last moment, at the very last second, Bill managed a smile. A smile of encouragement. A smile of hope.

  And then she was gone.

  The Doctor stood alone. He felt the pain of his wounds and the weight of the ages. He was so tired. He found the TARDIS key in his pocket, and looked at it. ‘Time to leave the battlefield,’ he said.

  He walked to the TARDIS, unlocked it and got inside.

  Without looking back, he closed the door.

  18

  The Doctor Rises

  The Doctor only just managed to get the controls working, but finally he got the ship in motion, the noise of take-off filling the console room. He was going to die in the Vortex, then. Well, the TARDIS would take his body somewhere. None of his business. He looked at the console. The old girl was showing him on the monitor a diagram of all space and time. What, was this meant to be what lay ahead for him to explore? ‘Oh, there it is. The silly old universe. The more I save it, the more it needs saving. It’s a treadmill.’

  He felt so … old. So completed. He had wondered, in this incarnation, about every aspect of himself, about his worth, his beliefs, his meaning in a universe that seemed to have forgotten everything he’d learned and didn’t see the need to consult him as it was learning those harsh lessons for itself, over and over. He had lived through that. He had lived out the human life he had always envied. He had put aside the questions of his youth, about the mysterious victories of good over evil, as a conundrum that could never be solved. He had known lasting love, he had found peace, he had died a good death, to save others, already. What more could there be for him to learn? He would not be merely the sum of his memories, something to be collected in the Matrix, he would put a proper full stop at the end of his life, like … well, he’d been about to think ‘like humans did’, but … but he’d just discovered they didn’t do that, hadn’t he? He’d just discovered something … new.

  This damned universe, mocking him at his moment of greatest fear.

  The console room made mechanical noises of the kind he’d gradually accepted as being those of a voice, though he usually put a broad interpretation on what it might be saying. ‘Yes,’ he called back, ‘yes, I know, they’ll get it all wrong without me.’

  The noises came again. They spoke of more than the people of the universe getting it wrong. They spoke of a memory it turned out he actually now had in his head once again, a memory he’d previously forgotten. He could hear her voice, now the machine had made him think of it.

  ‘Perhaps there’s just some bloke,’ said the voice of Bill in his memory, ‘wandering around, putting everything right when it goes wrong.’

  He almost laughed. He almost laughed a laugh so big it nearly brought on the change on its own. Oh. Oh! He had learned another new thing, a
lthough really he had already known it. He was such … an idiot. A complete idiot—or at least, an idiot who had been completed by this realisation of his own stupidity. Because he had learned new things, had changed twice, in the space of the last few minutes.

  Testimony was a human system. It would not save them all. It would not save them from pain and horror. It would not see where lives did not have to end, where change was possible. It was just something else instead of death. Someone still had to save people. Someone still had to help them. But … not someone who was pleased with the life he had completed.

  He was satisfied. He had done the best he could. Change was required, because it always was. ‘Well,’ he whispered, ‘well, I suppose one more lifetime … won’t kill anyone.’ He felt the light start to play with his hands. He’d released it to do so. ‘Except me.’

  The sound of the Cloister Bell started to reverberate through the console room. So, this regeneration was going to be another big one, was going to be explosive. He climbed slowly up onto the higher level. He wanted to be closer to his library. ‘You wait a moment, Doctor,’ he called to the spirit of the future that he could already feel jostling to squeeze into his molecules. There were a few things he wanted to say to whatever old or young pale-skinned man took his place. Because he was one of those stuck-in-a-rut Time Lords who always got basically the same model of body. He wouldn’t be ginger, either, with his rotten luck. ‘Let’s get it right! I’ve got a few things to say to you.’

  He swayed giddily along the deck. The TARDIS did seem to be reacting oddly to his impending change, as if it were already in trouble, but … woo, too late now, that was something for the next guy to worry about.

  ‘Basic stuff first. Never be cruel. Never be cowardly.’ He suddenly pointed to the spectre of the future he couldn’t see in front of him. ‘And never, ever eat pears!’ Because that was his personal taste, damn it, that was a quirk born of experience, and he didn’t want to squander it. That had been with him since his tenth life, and when that man had become human for a while, what had he done? Eaten all the pears, that’s what, and he’d had to wake up from that experience with a mouth full of that. He was suddenly struck with something he really did want to pass on, something that was the product of much longer experience. ‘Remember,’ he called, ‘hate is always foolish, and love …’ He let himself recall the long details of his own love for a moment. ‘Love is always wise.’

  He stumbled back down the stairs from his high and mighty pulpit, back to the console once again. This was where he had lain that first time, wasn’t it? He could do worse. ‘Always try to be nice,’ he hissed through the increasing pain. ‘But never fail to be kind.’

  He stumbled on, straight past the console, hilariously, all the way to the doors, like he was going somewhere. He felt drunk on the energy of renewal, of completion. He spun back and yelled at the room. ‘Oh! And! You mustn’t tell anyone your name.’ His walk took him back towards the floor that awaited him. ‘They wouldn’t understand it anyway. Except—’

  He didn’t make it past the console this time. The pain took him and he fell. He lay there for a moment. He was starting to boil. The steam was rising from him. His flesh was in a crucible. Or was that also the smoke from … was there something wrong with the TARDIS? He didn’t know either way. He hauled himself up. He would finish his sentences. He would end deliberately and consciously. His life’s meaning would be complete.

  ‘Except for children. Children can hear your name, sometimes. If their hearts are in the right place, and the stars are too.’ He thought of the children the future Doctor would meet, those that would be inspired by him, by … them? What was this? Agony seized him again, and he reflexively grabbed the console. ‘But nobody else,’ he whispered, pulling himself to his feet. ‘Nobody else, ever.’ This was his house, these were his rules, these were what a man had to hang on to. But he had to let go. Because … oh. Oh yes. He could see someone now. In his mind’s eye. He could see the future.

  ‘Laugh hard, run fast,’ he said to them. ‘Be kind.’

  He stood there. He adjusted his cuffs. It was all going to be all right. Of course it was. Seeing who he was going to be, he was suddenly filled with … hope.

  ‘Doctor,’ he said, ‘I let you go.’

  He let the fire take him.

  Epilogue

  And there the new Doctor was: standing in clothes that were far too big, in uncomfortable boots, looking at the steaming mess that the regeneration process had made of the console. The wedding ring fell from the Doctor’s finger. It made a small noise as it fell to the floor of the TARDIS.

  Okay, focus on one thing. One thing. Here was the monitor, which was buzzing with static, the image on it flickering. What was it to be this time? There was something different about this body, wasn’t there? Facing her was a young woman with a swish of blond hair, astonished eyes and a pleasing, goofy, grin. She stared at her reflection.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘brilliant!’

  Change was possible. Change was here. What had she been worrying about just now? No idea. She hit the first button of a navigation sequence.

  The console exploded. Just for a moment, the Doctor saw a warning flash onto the monitor screen. Systems crisis. Multiple operations failures. Was there actually something wrong with the TARDIS? What had caused this?

  She didn’t have another moment to think. The TARDIS spun violently, sending her head slamming into the deck. She watched as the gravity went wild, her library shelves falling off the upper deck. She grabbed for the vents in the floor panel and managed to hold on as it went from being a floor to being a vertical wall, with her hanging from it.

  Suddenly, the ship’s doors burst open. The atmosphere inside the ship flew outward. At least they must be somewhere, not in the Vortex. But she couldn’t hold on against this new force grabbing at her coattails. She flew towards the doorway. Her feet hit the edge of it as she desperately flailed to grab hold of something … anything!

  At the last second, her fingers grabbed hold. She managed to haul herself back up towards the console as all her books, her papers, all the records of her travels, flew past her, falling into whatever was out there. She managed to get one hand, now both hands, back on the console. She chanced a look back over her shoulder. Okay, okay, all she had to do was—

  There came a sound from in front of her. She turned back to look. Fire burst up the central column of the console, cracking it as it went. The tremendous energies of the TARDIS were about to—!

  Light and sound erupted into her face and the Doctor flew backwards, like an arrow, towards the door, her flailing hands failing to grab at anything. She fell straight out through it, like one of the billions of pieces of paper that were falling around her. Behind her, through the police box doors, she saw a fireball erupting, consuming everything inside. The light on top of the box began to flash urgently, and the sound of the TARDIS’s departure roared before the blast could leap out of it and consume her—consume everything!

  The TARDIS vanished.

  The Doctor fell, arms cartwheeling. Below her, as she spun, she saw the lights of a city at night.

  It was just her now, in this terrifying second. Without a TARDIS. Falling from what must be several thousand feet. Towards a completely unknown destination.

  Towards her future.

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  BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing

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  BBC Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

  Novelisation copyright © Paul Cornell 2018

  Original script copyright © Steven Moffat 2017

  Paul Cornell has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  Doctor Who is a BBC Wales production for BBC One.

  Executive producers: Steven Moffat and Brian Minchin

  First published by BBC Books in 2018

  www.penguin.co.uk

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9781785943300

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  Project Editor: Steve Cole

  Cover design: Two Associates

  Cover illustration: Anthony Dry

  Production: Phil Spencer