Doctor Who: Lungbarrow (38 page)

'I banished superstition,' insisted Rassilon. 'I shut the gate on the Time of Chaos.'

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'And I can name you at least four provincial outer-worlds that have raised temples in Rassilon's name.'

'Against my express edict.'

The other loomed over him. 'Then have the statues torn down. Or strike them with a thunderbolt.'

'Now that's a power you never offered me,' said Rassilon with a wry smile.

Anger brewed in his prisoner's eyes. 'I won't be tied by a blood-bargain or a pact. I was merely sent on approval.'

'On my approval, or yours?'

The other gave a cold smile. 'Rassilon, the People's God. How very quaint.'

'A state of affairs for which you naturally take no responsibility.'

'I advise. You don't have to listen.'

'But you're too valuable to dismiss!'

'I will not be chained!' With a snarl, the other smashed his fist against the energy nets.

Purple sparks showered among the roses.

Rassilon backed away from the figure. 'Who are you?' 'What do you want with us?'

The darkness of the figure grew in the smoky sunlight. 'I'm bored. Bored with wielding great power. Who wants to be a player, when he could be a pawn in the thick of the game?'

'You? Give up power and manipulation?' laughed Rassilon.

The other snapped his fingers. There was an explosion in the cold air. The energy web disintegrated. And the Hand of Omega was at his side.

Rassilon eyed the box. Steam drifted off its surface. It crackled to itself.

'You'l never give it up,' he said. 'What about your Family? The ones you think you keep hidden? Will you take them too?'

'Rule wisely, Rassilon,' said the other. 'And be wary of your disciples, lest they worship the icons and not the man.'

He walked down from the tower unhindered, the box following.

'Guards!' shouted Rassilon. 'Seal the ports and time wharfs. No one must leave!'

The Doctor was moving away after the other.

'Wait,' called Dorothée, but they were already drawn in his wake. 'I saw someone. Someone else was watching.'

'Where?' said Chris.

As they rose away from the tower, another insubstantial shape moved out after them.

'Who is he?' asked Romana.

'The Cousin from Hell,' said Dorothée.

'Our Cousin Glospin.' Innocet had a chill in her voice. 'I should have known he'd come after us.'

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Leela, her colour much restored, tried to pul away from the group. 'I shall deal with that craven-hearted snake.'

'Don't break the line,' warned Innocet. 'If you stop to challenge him, we might lose you and the Doctor altogether.'

The Other stood on the steps before a new municipal building, gazing down across the city. The box was at his side.

Passing citizens ignored him. 'Go,' he said to the box, but it had gone already.

There was a flash in the sky followed by the echoing boom of an explosion. A bal of flame billowed up over the miniature gantries of the distant spacedrome.

He walked against the stream of people running from the building. The Doctor moved after him, followed by his own unwelcome entourage.

Gates and sealed doors opened as if they recognized the Other. He ignored the DANGER signs and marched unchal enged, straight through to the heart of the complex. An immense vault opened above and below, its oval shell veined with whispering instrumentation.

'Warning,' declared a synthetic voice. 'Protective attire must be worn in the progenitive chamber.'

The Doctor moved with the other, out along a walkway that spanned the chamber. Out through that calm air of expectancy peculiar and seminal to sacred places.

The watchers lingered at the entrance.

'What is this?' said Leela. 'I thought he was leaving Gallifrey.'

The Doctor and the Other had halted just before the centre of the bridge.

Romana glanced at Innocet. 'You know, don't you?'

The Doctor's Cousin lowered her eyes. 'I think we should leave,' she said.

'Why?' said Dorothée. 'Surely the Doctor needs us.'

Chris shook his head. 'Not now. Innocet was right. I don't think we're meant to see.'

A drone of rising power began to surge through the chamber. Klaxons began to bellow.

Dorothée looked back as they pul ed her away. The Doctor, tiny beside the massive cloaked shape of the other figure, had turned to watch them. For a moment, his eyes met hers across a widening gulf of time and lost hope.

His head suddenly moved up to stare at something.

'It's Glospin,' shouted Dorothée.

The dark ghost was watching from one of the upper walkways.

As the group turned in confusion, the energy surge peaked. A torrent of light fell in dazzling, twisting plumes from the upper pole of the chamber. It struck through an eye at the bridge's centre.

The other stepped into the light. The raw energy, a fierce, primal, living stuff, painful to look at, consumed the man's shape utterly.

There was the sound of a great, whispered sigh.

The Doctor stood alone, staring into the depths of the light.

Glospin turned and vanished.

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'Sorry,' said Dorothée.

They drifted away in defeated silence.

Moving through the deserted building, Innocet said, 'The legends were wrong. The Other never left Gallifrey. He died in the energy of the open progenitive cascades, just as the Pythia threw herself into the Crevasse of Memories.'

'Irrefutable proof, Cousin,' sneered another figure, cutting across their path. 'Or is your brain still soft from post regenerative trauma?'

'Go away, Glospin,' answered Innocet. 'These memories are private.'

'But he's right,' said Romana. 'That chamber was the original Loom. The Prime Distributor that fed the subsidiary Looms in the Houses.'

Glospin nodded to her. 'Good, whoever you are. The Other went into the system. The monster threw himself into the random genetic helices to re-emerge who knows where!'

'It proves nothing,' said Innocet.

'Not to us. But something else understood. Don't forget the Hand of Omega.'

He glanced around the group.

'It left Gallifrey,' said Romana. 'Legends say that the Other stole it. Or that it pursued him across the stars and was never seen again.'

Dorothée thought of things she would not say. She saw Glospin watching her as he fingered his scarred arm.

'There.' Leela pointed up as the Doctor's shape sailed into the sky.

She snatched at Glospin's heels as he moved off in pursuit.

193

New Times for Old

Dark followed light. Day and night flickered in quick procession around the travel ers. Time moved forward again.

Buildings rose and were finished. Fires winked like demons' eyes.

Can't we go back to the House? thought Dorothée. What else is there to see?

There was no sign of the Doctor.

The watchers followed Glospin high across the cityscape, until he swooped towards a high parapet decked with fluttering banners.

A white-haired man was watching a parade pass on one of the bridges below.

'Incredible. Quite incredible.' His shoulders trembled with bursts of excitable laughter. He turned to survey the majestic buildings and arches around him.

'It can't be him,' whispered Romana. 'Tell me I'm wrong.'

'It is him,' said Innocet. 'The first Doctor. This is where he fled to. Into the past. The one place where he could not be followed.'

Glospin, who was closer, turned to them sneering.

'The circle is complete, Cousin.'

The crowds lining the route were not cheering aloud, but the roar of their thoughts was almost deafening. A ceremonial car was trundling past dragged by a horned and crested monster. Its occupant, crowned in triumph, raised his hands in acknowledgement.

'It's him,' muttered the old Doctor. 'Rassilon himself! Incredible! Who does he think he is, eh? Behaving like some mythical potentate!'

He glanced towards a small pyramid of yel ow stone that stood nearby, incongruous against the vaulting architecture. A door opened in its side and the Hand of Omega, battered with age, slid into view.

Immediately, alarms echoed across the city. The commentary of the populous was eclipsed.

'What are you doing?' complained the old man as the box nudged at him, forcing him forward.

Below, Rassilon's carriage was hurried on by its drivers. Guards were clearing the crowds.

The box drove the old Doctor on, forcing him down flights of steps, heedless of being sighted, until they moved out on to a deserted square.

The Omega Memorial rose above them.

'Well?' said the old man. 'And what is this to do with me, hmm? Why bring me here?'

The box ignored him, steering him to the foot of the monument, where it settled and made contented noises.

He poked his stick uncertainly at a wreath of pearl-grey roses that lay at the Memorial's foot.

Shouts disturbed him. Guards were running across the square from all directions.

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Instantly, the box rose to meet them. More and more guards surrounded it. They carried heavy-duty weapons, clearly designed specifical y to overpower the Hand.

As the first angry flashes began, the old Doctor slipped behind the monument and ran nimbly for cover.

Guards came after him. He dodged into a side alley only to find there was no way out.

***

'Cousin Glospin and the Famous Five,' he said. 'Seen enough yet?'

'I already knew,' said Glospin. 'This just confirms how you've used us.'

'Then go away,' snapped the Doctor.

Romana moved in. 'We came to bring you back.'

'Why? Can't you afford to lose me? Well, you may have to. Don't stare like that, Innocet. I can't help who or what I might have been.'

'Did you know?' said Innocet. 'That's what matters.'

The Doctor looked at the older/younger version of himself, trapped in his blind alley.

'No,' he said. 'I had no idea.'

'Liar!' said Glospin.

Leela lunged at him. 'Take that back, snake tongue!'

'Does it matter?' said Chris. 'Don't we all owe him more than this?'

Dorothée was nodding. 'Of course, we do. Whoever he is, he's still...' She floundered. 'He's still the Doctor.'

'And more,' said Chris.

'Yes. Plenty more.'

Glospin moved close to the little man. 'What more is there, Wormhole? What else are you hiding?'

The Doctor smiled. 'Nothing, Cousin. It no longer matters. Just remember. I didn't know.'

***

'Grandfather, in here!'

He stared for a moment before darting inside. Behind him, came the loud boom of explosions.

He let her take his hand and lead him between enclosed colonnades until they reached a small courtyard fil ed with stacks of rags and old clothes.

'Child,' he said, wheezing to catch his breath, 'how can I thank you?'

Her dark hair was straggled and her face was thin. She looked at him with huge brown eyes.

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'Grandfather? You said I'd know you when you came back.'

'Grandfather?'

She flung her arms around him. 'Oh, I knew it was you. I'd know you anywhere.'

'Nonsense, child,' retorted the Doctor. 'Grandfather indeed! I've never seen you before in my life!'

'But it is you. I know it is.' She looked so hurt.

'Indeed?'

'Yes.'

'And what makes you imagine that?'

'I
know
, Grandfather. After the fires, you sent us away to Tersurus, but the spacedrome was closed and there was an explosion. I went back home, but you'd gone.'

'Home?'

'But I couldn't stay there.' She tugged at a pile of rags and pulled out several books. 'I've had to live on the streets.

I sold books for food. I've waited a whole year for you, Grandfather. A year today.'

He put his hand gently on her shoulder. 'I don't know, child. I really don't know.'

Her eyes implored him. 'You've changed. You look different, but I'd know your thoughts anywhere. Don't you remember me?'

The old man shook his head. 'No, young lady. I do not know you.' He studied her hard, squinted as if he'd had a sudden thought. 'But your name is... Susan?'

'Yes, Grandfather.'

There were shouts from nearby.

He stood. 'We can't stay here. I must go back to the TARDIS.'

'Time and Relative Dimensions in Space,' she laughed. 'I gave you that idea.'

He was incredulous. 'Which way?' he said, shaking his head again.

She gathered a bag of books together and led him along the deserted cloisters, talking incessantly of her life since he left her. Her nurse had disappeared and she slept in the ruins of the temple where no one went. Today, the first ever festival of freedom, had been disrupted by strange alarms and now a curfew had been declared.

Eventually they reached the deserted parapet where the pyramid stood. The alarms were stil jangling.

He looked at her fondly. 'Susan, I think you mistake me for someone else. Someone you'd like to see...'

'No,' she protested.

He held up a finger. 'Let me finish, child. I cannot leave you here. I am an exile from my own time, but with this old ship, I plan to do a little sightseeing before I try to settle. Now will you join me, hmm? I think I'd like the company.'

She hugged him tight. Startled, he lifted his arms, and then gently embraced her as well.

'Yes, I think this wil work out rather well,' he said, ushering her into the pyramid. 'But a little less of that

"Grandfather" business, if you don't mind.'

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