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  ‘Sonic screwdriver.’

  ‘A what screwdriver?’

  ‘Really,’ said the Doctor, ignoring him, ‘it’s a very good job.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ interrupted Grandpa, ‘an audio screwdriver?’

  ‘There are only three low-key markers indicating that she’s a duplicate.’

  ‘I’m not a duplicate!’ Bill found she was pleading with him. Because this was painful. Whatever he was picking up, it was about Heather space stuff, right? Right?

  ‘Could easily have missed them. Hard to be analytical, when you have so much … hope.’ And he shared a moment there with Grandpa, who had been looking between them with considerably more compassion on his face. ‘What was it old Borusa used to say at the Academy? “In hope, you are at your weakest.”’

  Grandpa looked angry at him. Which was exactly right as far as Bill was concerned.

  The Doctor turned towards the stairs and called up to the top. ‘So! You! You who gave me hope and took it away! Who are you? Who has been stealing the faces of the dead?’ He started to ascend the stairs.

  Bill was furious at him, but she also couldn’t really blame him. How many times had he seen his friends transformed, herself included? Who would want to inflict such cruelty on the Doctor? ‘Doctor, want me with you?’ And that hadn’t come out all brave and heroic like she’d meant it to, demonstrating that this was the real her, but actually … bit whiny.

  He looked back to her. There was such pain on his face. ‘I would like that more than anything in the world. But, Bill … I’m sorry … you’re not here.’ And he kept walking.

  Bill stared after him. Well, that hurt. That hurt like … death, all over again.

  After a moment of looking between them like a startled parrot, Grandpa came bustling over. ‘Oh my dear, I am so sorry about his behaviour.’ The look in his eyes was such a relief. This old man was sure about his moral compass, and he didn’t seem to care who or what she was. ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘my behaviour. In advance.’

  What was he going on about? But before she could ask, this lovely old codger spun round and bustled after the Doctor up the steps, wagging a finger. ‘Wait, wait! You’ll get it all wrong without me.’

  Which left Bill standing there, shut out, unsure of anything except … she really was Bill Potts. She just had to find some way to convince the Doctor of that.

  6

  The Glass Woman

  In the TARDIS, Archie had been watching the monitor, trying to follow what was going on outside. He had no idea of the emotional background to what had just happened, but he’d seen enough sacrifice to know that these two splendid chaps—who seemed to be the same chap in some odd fashion—were walking into danger on his behalf.

  He surely should go out there and stand with them. Or at least go to help that poor girl who seemed so hurt by the Doctor’s rejection. And yet, if he was the ball that everyone involved here wanted to kick into the back of the net, it would be foolish to throw himself back onto the field. Wouldn’t it?

  The First Doctor wheezed and groaned to the top of the stairs, to find the Doctor had halted there, looking at an empty chair and the wall behind it. The wall was a bank of instruments, a computer made of diamonds, sleek and gleaming and powerful. The chair seemed to be of a piece with it, a latticework of circuitry. The First Doctor fitted his monocle to his reading eye and took a closer look at the wall. What he was looking at was also worrying, something similar to Rassilon’s time scoop, but rather more subtle. ‘Time-travel technology, obviously.’

  ‘From the far future,’ said the Doctor.

  ‘I know.’ The First Doctor turned to look at his foppish replacement and lost his monocle in astonishment. The man was wearing sunglasses. In the daytime. In a temporal anomaly. ‘Sunglasses?’

  ‘Sonic!’

  ‘Indoors?’

  ‘Yeah, but look at them, they’re sonic.’

  ‘That settles it,’ snapped the First Doctor. ‘I am not regenerating. No. You are cancelled.’ Before he could add anything further, a beam of light cascaded into the chair, or perhaps throne would be a better description, because now sitting on it was a regal figure made entirely of glass. A delicate tracery of wires and circuitry ran across every surface of her transparent form. The wires trailed back to the wall behind her.

  ‘What are you?’ asked the Doctor.

  The First Doctor had half expected him to come out with some ghastly so-called witticism about ‘seeing right through her’, but from the look on his fellow Doctor’s face, humour was not on the menu tonight. The First Doctor wasn’t much for jokes. He recalled once when his friend Steven had attempted to explain to him a message contained within a ‘Christmas cracker’. The whole business had taken the best part of an hour and the First Doctor hadn’t been left much the wiser at the end of it.

  The woman waved a glass hand. Suddenly, the whole chamber was illuminated, with the same piercing light that was the sign of her presence. ‘We are what awaits at the end of every life,’ she said. Those alcoves, that also lined the walls here, began to illuminate, one by one. ‘As every living soul dies, so we will appear.’ In each alcove, the First Doctor could see another Glass Woman, shining with inner light. ‘We take from you what we need, and return you to the moment of your death. We are Testimony.’

  ‘Please stop,’ the Doctor said, ‘I’m worried you might actually start singing. So, you come from the distant future. You travel back in time, find people on the exact point of death, and what, harvest something from them?’

  ‘Yes.’ She looked between them. ‘You are the same man, twice.’ The First Doctor almost wanted to protest, but she was nevertheless literally correct. He was finding this talk of finding people at the moment of death especially worrying, given their own situation.

  ‘You steal from the nearly dead,’ said the Doctor. ‘Why?’

  ‘The same, yet so very different.’

  ‘On behalf of the dying, what do we have that the future needs so badly?’

  The First Doctor felt that this barely scratched the surface of the problem. ‘And what does any of this have to do with a World War One Captain turning up at the South Pole, in the wrong decade, hmm?’

  ‘We were returning him,’ said the Glass Woman, ‘to the appointed time and place of his death. An error in the timelines allowed him to escape into the wrong time zone.’

  Inside the TARDIS, Archie had been watching the entire conversation. The picture on this telegraph thing had magically followed the Doctor up the stairs. Now he found himself having to hold on to the console of this ship of some kind to stop himself from toppling to the ground. So. So, that was what was happening here. This was … a grand cosmic authority of some kind. It knew when his time was up. When everyone’s time was up, probably. There had been the sound of a shell overhead, hadn’t there?

  ‘Now his death must proceed as history demands,’ said that calm, professional, voice.

  Archie allowed himself to close his eyes, just for a moment.

  The First Doctor understood the Glass Woman’s point of view. History, after all, could not be changed, not one line. Except on the tiny number of occasions when, apparently, it could. Perhaps his future self had slightly more experience of these matters, had a more subtle sense of the fragile weave of space-time?

  ‘Says who?’ snarled the Doctor, which answered that question. ‘Why? What’s the purpose of any of this?’

  ‘Are we to trust the Doctor of War, who walks in blood?’ asked the Glass Woman, worryingly.

  ‘Asked the time-travelling thief from the future,’ finished the Doctor.

  ‘We must negotiate.’

  ‘So you can deliver a man to his death?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The First Doctor felt that if there was to be a negotiation then he should have a bigger part to play. ‘If I may … who were you?’ He leaned closer, inspecting her with his monocle, and was sure now, that he had it right, that he had got to the heart of this myst
ery. ‘Who did you used to be, before you became … this? Hmm?’

  The Doctor had whipped out his ‘sonic screwdriver’ and started examining her with it. ‘She didn’t “used to be” anyone, she’s a computer-generated interface, connected to a multiform, inter-phasing databank.’

  The First Doctor sighed at how much he had lost. ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, will you put that ridiculous buzzing toy away and look at the woman!’ To his vague surprise, the Doctor did so, and the First Doctor pointed out—rude as it was to waggle his fingers in the face of a lady—his discovery. ‘You see? Her face! It’s very slightly asymmetrical. If it were computer-generated, it would never produce that effect, hmm?’

  The Doctor made a sound in the back of his throat, and adjusted his sonic sunglasses. ‘Yes. You’re absolutely right. I should have noticed that.’

  ‘Well, it might help if you could see properly.’ The First Doctor reached out, took the dratted things, and tossed them aside.

  Of course, the fop went scrambling after them. Which was when a call came from the base of the steps, far below. ‘Er, excuse me. Doctor?’

  Oh dear.

  The First Doctor and his replacement stepped as one to the top of the stairs, and looked down to see that that dratted Captain had stepped out of the TARDIS. The charming young lady was looking at him in surprise.

  ‘Get back inside!’ called the Doctor. ‘Now!’

  Archie dearly wished he was cowardly enough to obey. It turned out he wasn’t. ‘I was watching on the, well, whatever that thing is—’

  ‘Mate …’ The young lady known as Bill was gesturing urgently to him to get back into the box.

  ‘Remain inside the perimeter of the force field,’ called the First Doctor.

  It was going to take a moment to make them understand that he hadn’t come out here out of foolishness. ‘—that window thing. Quite magical. I could hear what you were saying.’

  ‘Get back in the TARDIS!’ bellowed the Doctor.

  Archie stopped, his toe an inch from the line the First Doctor had made. Here was the last point of safety. He understood that completely. He nodded to Bill. ‘Miss. I don’t think we’ve met.’

  ‘Bill Potts. And nah, probably not.’

  ‘Archie,’ he said. ‘Call me Archie.’ Which got a pleasing grin. He turned to call up to the others. He had seen and heard the Doctors debating with some great authority that did not want, it had turned out, to take his life, but who insisted that his life was officially and formally over. The Queen, of Heaven, he presumed, though she hardly resembled she who was traditionally said to serve in that office, had produced Bill, and surely that meant there was an offer on the table, that she could be … returned to life? In which case, his duty was utterly clear. ‘I’m not quite sure, but it seemed to me that this young lady’s life was being offered in exchange for my own. Now, as it happens, I think my number was pretty much up anyway—’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Bill looked suddenly worried. Of course she did. ‘Doctor, what’s he talking about?’

  ‘—so, might as well make it count for something, eh?’

  He stepped over the line.

  7

  Escape to Danger

  The Doctor stared in horror at what this fool of a man was doing. Now, Archie was looking again to Bill. ‘I should be happy to take your place, if that will resolve this situation.’

  ‘Accepted,’ said the Glass Woman on the throne.

  Bill shook her head. ‘That is not happening. That is totally not happening.’ She walked to the bottom of the stairs and looked up at the Doctors. ‘Agreed?’

  The Doctor felt that look on her face. Not for the first time, his sonic screwdriver had told him one thing, but his gut was telling him another. It couldn’t be her. It couldn’t be. It was just too convenient, her showing up again like this. And yet. And yet …

  ‘Tell me what to do, then,’ he called. ‘Bill Potts would tell me what to do.’

  ‘What you always do,’ she said. That look on her face had such faith in it. ‘Serve at the pleasure of the human race.’

  He felt the ghost of a smile on his face. For the first time in days, he felt slight hope and gave it its due. He was dying, he had perhaps moments left, but they could be long moments, now he was outside time, useful moments. He spun on his heel and looked to the Glass Woman. ‘Here’s what’s going to happen. First, I’m going to escape!’ He felt the old man beside him stiffen in shock, and nodded to him. ‘You, with me.’

  And he actually turned his back on the creature who seemingly had authority and power over all time and space and started back down the stairs.

  The old man scampered after him. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Escape is not possible,’ called the Glass Woman, not quite so calmly now.

  ‘It is possible, and it’s happening, and I’m taking Bill and the Captain with me.’

  ‘Why are your advertising your intentions?’ the old boy whispered. ‘Can’t you stop boasting, even for a moment?’

  By now they were both at the bottom of the stairs. The Doctor indicated his older self to the Glass Woman. ‘I’m taking Mr Pastry too. I could do with a laugh.’

  The First Doctor was looking blankly at him. He was obviously yet to meet the actor who played that character. What was his name? Oh yeah, Richard Hearne. The Doctor’s second incarnation had once helped the old man escape from a balloon factory in Epping.

  The Glass Woman had stood up from her throne. She was louder this time, actually becoming angry. ‘Escape is not possible!’

  ‘Oh,’ the Doctor called up to her, ‘I’m going to do way more than escape. I’m going to find out who you are and what you’re doing, and if I don’t like it, I will come back. And I will stop you. I will stop all of you.’

  The First Doctor was staring at him like he was a rebellious teenager. ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’

  ‘I’m the Doctor.’ He had said it so often, so often it had been all he had to cling to, just as it was now. But usually the voice it was meant to shout down was strictly inner.

  ‘No, I am the Doctor,’ his younger self fumed. ‘Who you are, I cannot begin to imagine!’ Because of course his former self would have gone about this completely differently, and would by now be sipping cocktails with the Glass Woman, and be wheedling his way into unbolting her plans, having accidentally got engaged to one of the other glass women, probably.

  ‘Then let us show you, Doctor,’ called the Glass Woman, who would probably have preferred the First Doctor’s approach, given how calm and straightforward she was trying to make the business of theft and extortion. ‘See who you will become!’

  The chamber started to swirl with holographic images, around the Doctors, Bill and the Captain. Oh dear, was she really going to show the old man the full box set? It’d be kind of tough if she got him onside and, knowing the First Doctor, that wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. ‘No! No, don’t do that!’ He was surprised at how desperate his voice had sounded. Because … yeah, there was more to it than that, wasn’t there, Doctor? The old man was looking at him having registered that tone. Then he looked back to the images.

  There he was, in his previous lives, tricking Davros into using that terrible weapon to destroy his own race’s home world. There he was, strutting along thinking of himself as the Time Lord Victorious, when Adelaide Brooke had put a gun to her own head and showed him the folly of his ways. There he was during the Time War, arranging for Daleks to be gunned down, arranging for the closing of the Advent of Woe, arranging for the Nightmare Child to never arise and forever be aware of its non-existence. There he was staggering through Cybermen, making them fall around him. There was Adric. There was Donna. There was Bill.

  He made himself look to the First Doctor. The expression on his face as he gazed at the images was shocked, angry … scared of the future. Then he turned to look at the Doctor, accusing. Beside him, Bill was actually smiling at what she saw in the floating shapes.
It was like she knew him … better. Forgave him. Understood. Had shared what they’d been through. But no, he couldn’t allow himself the comfort of that thought.

  ‘The Doctor has walked in blood through all of time and space,’ the Glass Woman said. ‘The Doctor has many names. He is the Shadow of the Valeyard, the butcher of Skull Moon, the Last Tree of Garsennon, the destroyer of Skaro. He is the Doctor of War.’

  And it was all true, thought the Doctor. He had allowed himself to learn the truth about his supposed destruction of his own people, he had been absolved of that, and yet there was so much else. Was he a good man? That was the question he had asked himself. He had decided he was just a man. And yet … and yet … to be faced with an earlier self, the self that had first decided to be more than just a man, to be a hero, and one who somehow went about that with some dignity too … well, here was perspective. A bit too much bloody perspective.

  The images suddenly flew back to their source. The display was over. ‘What … what was that?’ asked the First Doctor.

  ‘To be fair,’ said the Doctor, ‘they cut out all the jokes.’

  The First Doctor wasn’t about to leave it at that, but no, this was playing into the hands of the Glass Woman, that debate was what she wanted. So no more.

  The Doctor grabbed his sonic screwdriver. ‘Do what I do when I do it.’ He hit the button to activate the sequence he had programmed in while he was still in the TARDIS. He had hoped to use the ship to escape, but he had also been working on Plan B. The iris under the ship snapped open. The police box plummeted, the chains that were still attached to the clamps on its sides unreeling at high speed. ‘Now!’

  He led all four of them to sprint for those chains. They got it. They followed him. They leapt. They grabbed one chain each.

  And then they were out, plunging into the freezing air, speeding towards the ground with the TARDIS dropping below them, above the beautiful sight of Antarctica in darkness. The Doctor could still see tiny lights down there. Just as well time had halted – and it still was, because the snow they were falling through was motionless – or there’d have been missiles flying at them by now. He couldn’t help it, he burst out laughing at the sheer exhilaration. He had gotten away with it again! He could still say that, here at the end of his life! He looked upward to Bill, and she was grinning too. He shared the smile with her, just for a moment. But the doubt of her made him not quite able to hold it. He looked to the other two. They weren’t looking so happy about it, but never mind, because here came the ground! They’d kept the Glass Woman so busy that she hadn’t bothered moving her ship. They only had a couple of hundred feet to cover, albeit straight down. Still, what was a little gravity between friends?