Doctor Who Page 5

  ‘You are not escaping!’ called the Glass Woman’s voice from right next to his ear. Yeah, he thought, how’s that going for you?

  A moment later, however, he discovered exactly how well, as the chains slammed to a halt. They all had to grab hold to stop themselves being thrown clear. The TARDIS was left dangling, just about twenty feet above the frozen wastes. The four of them were considerably higher up than that.

  ‘Come on!’ he shouted, and started to scramble precipitously down the chain. A fall from this height … oh come on, don’t be ridiculous, Doctor. He was reconciled to that, no point in fearing it now. He saw the others were doing their best to follow, the First Doctor wide-eyed with the effort. What would happen if the old guy regenerated now, in a different way to how he remembered it? Would he even turn into the annoying bumbler with the big trousers? Or would they rip a hole in space-time and destroy the universe? Ironic ending, that one. Bit of a shaggy dog story. He banished the bleak thoughts and leapt for the roof of the TARDIS, hit it, held on, and started climbing down. Horribly, the TARDIS started to rise once more, the chain now being hoisted back into the ship. ‘Jump!’ he shouted. ‘Jump!’

  He and the other three did so at the same moment, and all hit the ground together. He rolled over and winced, but no, no damage, he just had to take a moment to concentrate, to hold back the change … and managed once again to do so. He looked around to find his three allies slowly getting to their feet. Above them, the TARDIS was rushing upwards, beyond their reach.

  Bill looked to him. ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘Run!’

  ‘Where? They’ve got the TARDIS.’

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly what they’re supposed to think.’

  Bill looked between him and where the police box was now being dragged back into the hull of the enormous spaceship. ‘Yeah, but they do though.’

  ‘They’ve got my TARDIS.’ The Doctor pointed at his younger self. ‘Over to you, Mary Berry.’

  Of course, the reference was lost on his younger self, who was yet to meet the celebrity chef he so resembled. It had been his … third incarnation, hadn’t it, who’d spent that wonderful summer with her on that narrowboat in the Cotswolds?

  The First Doctor suddenly cottoned on, and dusted snow off his waistcoat, his imperious stage magician self once again. ‘They have, as you say, the TARDIS. So what’s the last thing they’re going to expect us to do, hmm?’ He produced his TARDIS key with a flourish. ‘Escape in the TARDIS!’

  8

  A Dance to the Music of Time Lords

  ‘Come on!’ The First Doctor headed off through the suspended snow, taking Archie’s arm. ‘This way, my good fellow.’

  ‘I’m … a little confused,’ said Archie.

  ‘What, only a little?’ chuckled the First Doctor. ‘Dear me, dear me, I must be slipping!’

  ‘What’s going on with the snow?’ Bill asked the Doctor, catching up.

  He couldn’t quite look at her. ‘Time has stopped.’

  To his annoyance, she grabbed his arm and turned him to face her. ‘Okay, so you don’t think I’m real yet, do you?’

  ‘We’ve got to keep moving!’

  But she held him back. She was so desperate for him to give in to this hope. ‘Except you rescued me, so maybe you do a little. Listen, I don’t know how I got here, but I am actually me—’ She stopped, thankfully. She was looking past him. ‘Doctor … is that another TARDIS?’

  The Doctor saw that the First Doctor had reached his ship and was unlocking it. Archie, beside him, was nodding at the sight of it, as if one more impossibility didn’t make much difference, really. ‘No,’ said the Doctor, ‘it’s another of the same TARDIS. Inside, quickly!’

  ‘Hang on,’ she just had time to say, as he seized her hand and pulled her through the door after the other two, ‘the windows are the wrong—’

  She stopped when she was hauled into the console room, and the Doctor had slammed the door behind them, and she got to do the ‘amazed at what’s inside the box’ moment a second time. Because this interior wasn’t his own stylish modern installation, but the plain white look of factory settings, offset with the plinths on which his predecessor displayed his precious things, the overall effect being like the classical and modernist wings of an art gallery that had been involved in a terrible accident.

  ‘Take off,’ the Doctor shouted. ‘Now! Deep space, anywhere!’

  The First Doctor was already doing his routine little dance around the console, with the power building up as he did it, because, of course, he hadn’t worked out how to boil it down to a bunch of code routines and one big lever yet. The Doctor resisted the urge to march over there and … probably short circuit everything, actually. Best leave the old boy to it. The First Doctor raised a finger to make him wait, then triumphantly hit a control. The engines roared, the central column started to rise and fall, the room lurched, and they all had to grab hold of the console or fall over. At least, the Doctor reflected, the old lad had managed to avoid rendering his passengers unconscious. Must be one of his good days.

  ‘We are in the Vortex,’ the old man declared.

  ‘Tell you what,’ noted the Captain, delighted at having an idea he could put his finger on, ‘these police boxes, they’re ever so good, aren’t they?’

  ‘The navigation systems don’t function properly,’ the First Doctor said. ‘I’m unable to program our flight with any accuracy.’

  ‘Yeah,’ sighed the Doctor, ‘I remember.’ He wandered over and had a quick fiddle with the controls, just enough to sort things for this one journey. Just enough to let the old girl understand what he was planning.

  His previous self looked up at him, appraising, and also … disapproving.

  ‘What you saw,’ said the Doctor, ‘your future. I suppose it can’t be easy, seeing all your regrets in advance.’ Though, thankfully, if these things worked out as they usually did, when the Time Lords didn’t arrange things so that only certain edits were made, both of them would walk away from this with only the vaguest memory of what they’d experienced.

  The First Doctor looked back to his instruments, not being able as yet to formulate a reply.

  ‘Those things have to happen,’ the Doctor went on. ‘All of them. The future depends on it.’

  ‘You misremembered,’ the First Doctor said.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Borusa’s lesson. “In hope you are at your weakest … in strength you are at your worst.”’ He looked up at him. ‘It wasn’t weakness he was warning us about.’

  That … rather stopped the Doctor in his tracks. He actually had forgotten that. He had forgotten the important bit, over and over, as if forgetting it had become the most reliable part of his character. Yet his first self never had. ‘Yeah, well,’ he muttered, ‘Borusa and his terrible poems, look how he ended up.’ Because his old tutor had hardly practised what he preached, had been definitively hoisted on his own petard. Which, of course, indicated the truth of what he’d said.

  ‘He had a point, on that occasion,’ said the First Doctor. And, as if he could see he’d made his own point, he offered the Doctor a slight smile. ‘Although his poems were truly awful.’

  ‘Doctor,’ Bill stepped forward to interrupt. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘What does it look like? Bill Potts could figure it out.’

  She looked aghast at him, once again. He wondered why he kept doubting her. Perhaps he’d been kicked too many times, been fooled too many times. But before she could reply, the First Doctor had come bustling forward. ‘Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry, I appear to be forgetting my manners. This is the ship. My ship. I built her.’

  The Doctor coughed, loudly and significantly. What a whopper!

  The First Doctor ignored him. ‘She is known as TARDIS. The initials stand for—’

  ‘Time And Relative Dimension In Space.’ Bill said it with him. And she hadn’t even gone for the plural on the D word, like he sometimes did when he decided to flirt
with the translation circuits. She’d actually noticed which version he regarded as traditional, the Doctor realised, and used it for this old man who she must now be thinking was this ship’s original owner. That quickness of thought was so like her. Wasn’t it? She saw him looking. He managed not to turn away.

  ‘How do you …?’ The First Doctor frowned and nodded. ‘Oh, I see, you travel with him!’

  ‘Used to.’ She looked wistful for a second. ‘Kind of miss it.’ The look on her face broke the Doctor’s hearts all over again.

  ‘Well, my dear,’ said the First Doctor, patting her shoulder, ‘he clearly misses you. That ship of his is in dire need of a good spring clean!’

  Before Bill could entirely grasp his unfortunate meaning, the Doctor hustled his former self back to the console. ‘No no no, stop, stop. Stop talking, look at the astral map, concentrate on that. Oh, look at all the lovely blinking lights—’

  The First Doctor jerked from his grasp, affronted, but they were interrupted by Bill. ‘He’s you,’ she said. They both looked at her in surprise. ‘He’s you. Well, you’re both … you’re both each other.’ Archie had raised a finger, about to ask a question, but instead he opted to just lower it again. ‘You told me you had different faces. I never quite got what that meant, but if it’s true, I think he’s one of your old ones, yeah?’

  ‘Oh,’ said the Doctor, smiling at how good she was (or rather, he had to remind himself, how good an impersonation), ‘he’s a very old one.’

  ‘The original, in fact!’ noted the First Doctor.

  ‘You know,’ said Archie, ‘I find I’m lagging behind a tiny bit again …’

  The Doctor clapped his hands together. ‘Right! Any questions?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Bill, ‘why didn’t you keep the hair?’

  ‘The hair?’

  Bill pointed. ‘The hair’s awesome.’

  The Doctor stared in horror as the First Doctor flirtatiously flicked back what remained of his locks and chuckled. Of all the … What about his … ? He had put a lot of work into—! ‘Terrible question!’ he said. ‘Boring question! Here’s a better one.’ He took the sonic sunglasses from his pocket and slid them back onto his nose.

  ‘Not those again!’ called the First Doctor. ‘I forbid it!’

  You should have found the dimmer switch, then, thought the Doctor, but he didn’t honour Mr Because I’m Worth It with a reply. He tapped a control on the side of the sunglasses, and a picture appeared on the monitor, high up on the wall, where everyone had to risk repetitive strain injury to see it. It was the Glass Woman, an image that the sunglasses had automatically recorded earlier. ‘There you are,’ he said, ‘I was right. Asymmetrical.’

  ‘I said that!’ gasped the First Doctor.

  ‘Same difference.’ Very much enjoying this, he went to his earlier self, took off the sunglasses, and shoved them onto his face. The First Doctor reacted like a cat who’d been thrown into a coal cellar. ‘If her face was based on a human original, perhaps identifying who that was will tell us what we need to know about Testimony.’

  ‘Why,’ demanded the old man, ‘am I wearing these?’

  ‘Because I love it,’ said the Doctor, ‘never take those off.’

  The First Doctor suddenly stopped, his hand reaching for the controls on the frame. ‘What’s “browser history”?’

  The Doctor suddenly recalled one of River’s little habits concerning their personal communications and … cat pictures, yes, that was it, cat pictures. He grabbed the sunglasses off his other self’s face and dropped them back into his own pocket in one smooth motion. He saw Bill grinning at him and ignored her. He was already busy at the controls. ‘I’m trying to find a match for that face in the TARDIS databank, but there’s hardly anything in it yet.’

  ‘My dear fellow,’ said the First Doctor, ‘one face in all of history, in all of space and time …’

  ‘Yeah, we need a bigger database.’

  ‘I doubt even the Matrix on Gallifrey could quite run to that.’

  The Doctor had had a terrible thought. ‘No. No. We’d need something better than the Matrix …’ He wandered away to think.

  ‘So …’ said Archie, trying to keep on top of things, ‘we’re trying to track the glass lady, yes?’

  ‘Basically,’ said Bill. ‘I think.’

  ‘I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again,’ said Archie. ‘Our policemen are wonderful!’

  The Glass Woman was watching those who were trying to escape her. She was watching through the eyes she had access to, inside the TARDIS. She was watching Archie, and she was watching the two different versions of the same person, one of whom actually seemed, to judge by the look on his face, to have had an idea about what they might do to get away.

  The Glass Woman was very good with faces. She had seen so many.

  These poor people had no idea what she was or what she stood for. They still thought they could get away.

  9

  The Ruins

  ‘What a striking-looking creature,’ said Archie. He was looking at the image of the Glass Woman. ‘Quite beautiful really, isn’t she?’

  ‘If you like ladies made of glass.’ Bill was looking at the image too. There was something about the Glass Woman that was way too familiar for her liking, something about her that was buried in the memories she couldn’t access. She shivered.

  ‘Well,’ said the First Doctor, ‘aren’t all ladies made of glass, in a way?’

  Archie actually chortled at that. ‘Oh, very good, sir, very good.’

  ‘Are we, now?’ Bill looked over to her Doctor, to see him wincing like he’d just stood on a piece of Lego. He looked as if he desperately wanted her to let that go. So she didn’t.

  The First Doctor clasped his lapels. ‘Oh, my dear! I hope it does not offend you to know that I do have some experience of the fairer sex.’

  ‘Me too,’ she said simply.

  ‘Good Lord,’ said Archie.

  ‘Loads,’ she mouthed to him, with a smile.

  There was a sudden lurch, and they all stumbled. The Doctor looked up from the controls as the central column slowed to a halt. Bill got the feeling he’d done that deliberately. He hit another control, and the doors whirred open. Bill went to see what awaited them. The Doctor joined her. Under a hellish red sky stood the stark, blackened ruins of what looked to be a science fiction city that had lived through seven seasons of Game of Thrones. Giant statues had been broken in half, domes had cracked open, and spires leaned precipitously against adjoining buildings. An alien breeze brought the smell of … burning. Of rotting meat. Of death. The remains of moons tumbled overhead, impossibly close, as if even gravity were failing, and nearby a larger planetoid was ripping itself apart. ‘Where are we?’

  The First Doctor was still examining the readouts on the console. ‘You steered the ship! You piloted her perfectly! We are billions of years in your future. And, apparently, at the very centre of the universe!’

  ‘Out there,’ said the Doctor, indicating the wasteland beyond, ‘is the most comprehensive database ever assembled of all life, everywhere. There is one little problem.’

  ‘Which is?’ said Bill.

  The Doctor grinned his scary grin. ‘It wants to kill me.’ With that, he strode out onto this new world. Bill followed. She was quite surprised that, after all he had seen, and considering the condition he was in, Archie got to the doors before the First Doctor did.

  They walked together, a few steps along the dark canyon of a street on which the TARDIS had landed. The shadows on every side felt like death looking down on them. Rustling vines draped the shattered walls. Roots writhed up through the cracked concrete at their feet. There was a sense of rustling, restless movement everywhere, like the planet was full of rats, squirming a centimetre below the surface. They stopped to gaze at the jagged, ruined skyline.

  Archie, in particular, seemed almost physically hurt by what he was seeing. She guessed, from what the Doctor had said about the si
tuation the Captain had come from, that here was just more of the same, another world of the same, when immediately before this he’d been seeing wonders that had let him escape. She couldn’t help but feel for him. Product of his time or not, here was someone who’d also been willing to offer his life so she could live hers. She didn’t believe he’d do anything other than still honour that bargain. ‘What,’ he whispered, ‘in the name of sanity, is this place?’

  ‘The Weapon Forges of Villengard,’ said the Doctor. ‘Once the nightmare of the seven galaxies. Now home to the dispossessed.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked the First Doctor.

  ‘You,’ said the Doctor.

  The First Doctor caught his meaning and looked sharply at him. He really didn’t want to own the future he was being promised. ‘I don’t understand,’ he snapped. ‘How were you able to pilot the ship here?’

  The Doctor sighed. ‘Because she’s not a ship, she’s the TARDIS. Because you didn’t build her, you stole her. Because you didn’t steal her, she stole you. Because she’ll never take you where you want to go, but she’ll always put you where you need to be. Which, right now, is here.’

  The old man waved all that aside with an angry gesture, but it was clear from his face that he’d taken it in.