Doctor Who: The Mark of the Rani (6 page)

‘Then be guided by me. Take that box and bury it in the deepest shaft!’

‘Can’t see no point in burying a box!’ Ward was a practical man. ‘Better to bury
him
!’

The others nodded in agreement. Not the reaction the Master wanted at all. No wonder he had such contempt for the beings on this planet! Contrary creatures! In fact, if it weren’t that he would derive pleasure from seeing the Doctor butchered by these very humans he so favoured, he’d have eliminated this crew there and then! However, not quite yet...

‘Trust me.’ The voice was ingratiating. ‘I give you my word. Destroying that box will divest him of all his power.’

‘Where is machine? Dost know?’

‘At the slag heap. Off you go. Fetch it to the pit.’

‘Fetch it?’ Jack wasn’t having that. He was no dim-wit.

‘Fetch it? Nay, tha’s coming with us.’ He wasn’t altogether sure he trusted this glib stranger. Anyway, the left side of his neck was irritating him, making him feel tetchy.

The Master, though, had his excuse ready. ‘That box is only the bait. I have to return to the village to set the trap.’

The irony was, that while he had been contriving his elaborate plot, the Doctor was straying into a trap of his own making.

Shawl draped over her head, shoulders hunched, spine bent almost double, impersonating the old crone, the Rani opened the bath house door.

‘Get on in. Get on in,’ she cackled. ‘Towels are already there.’ Four miners trooped in and slouched into the bath chamber. Three of them began to undress. The fourth commenced a tour of inspection. Unfortunately, by the time he discovered the pipe, crimson steam was already billowing into the room. As his comrades collapsed, he tried to fan away the fumes, but the anaesthetic was too potent. Resistance grew feeble... and the Doctor sunk protestingly into oblivion...

8

Titanium hoops shackled the Doctor’s wrists. A blanket covered his torso. Only his head was exposed as he lay on the trolley. Unconscious. Vulnerable.

Having connected the miner on the other trolley to the computer and the extractor so that the fluid from his brain would drip into the crystal flagon, the Rani crossed to the Doctor.

Thinking he was just another human, she brushed the tendrils of fair curly hair from behind his left ear, ready to attach the nozzle of the extracting tube.

Stopped.

Touched his skin. It felt too cool.

Perplexed, she picked up a spontaneous thermometer bracelet: a sensor of her own design. She placed it on the Doctor’s forehead. Sixty, flashed on its read-out. She shook it, tested again. Sixty degrees, the temperature of a Time Lord, not that of a human.

Still not wholly convinced, she bent to listen on the left side of his chest where the human heart is found. Then she listened on the right side. There, too, was the steady beat of a heart.
Two
hearts! This had to be a Time Lord. And she knew who!

Brusquely she swabbed the coal dust from his face with a wet sponge. The icy dowsing brought the Doctor round.

The blue eyes widened with dawning recognition as he saw the figure crouching over him.

‘Well, well, well. The Rani.’

‘You were expecting to see the Master?’ Annoyed though she was with the Doctor’s encroachment, she could not suppress a glacial glint of satisfaction at his futile attempts to release the clamped wrists.

‘See? Not exactly. Not unless he’s grown a little larger since I last saw him!’ On that last encounter, the Master, hoist by his own petard, was being reduced to the size of a microbe!

‘Your smugness is misplaced. He’s here. He’s normal size. And he wants you dead – curse the pair of you!’

Despite his struggles, the Doctor failed to loosen the straps. A change of tack. A critical appraisal of the Rani’s costume.

‘Can’t say I approve of your taste in clothes. Doesn’t do a thing for you, that outfit.’

‘Your regeneration’s not too attractive either!’

‘Brain regeneration’s what I need!’ The Doctor meant what he said. He should have been able to pin this down to the Rani. Personality changes probably due to the imbalance of body chemicals ought to have led him to suspect the Rani. Her knowledge of chemistry was second to none. What’s more, he knew she’d been banished from Gallifrey and was roaming the Universe. But what was she doing here? Pointless to ask. She’d never tell him. He was going to have to elicit the information by more subtle means.

‘Well, you had me fooled if that’s any consolation.’

‘It isn’t.’

His opinion was a matter of indifference to the Rani. All that disturbed her was his limitless capacity for meddling.

She needed the brain fluid. He, with his sentimental affection for the earthlings, was bound to try and impede her.

‘Of course you’d have been discovered eventually,’ the Doctor persisted. ‘Even without my intervention.’

‘I never have.’

‘Oh, this isn’t your first visit then?’

‘I’ve been coming to this wretched planet for cenrunes.’

‘Without being caught? I’m impressed. You must be a brilliant tactician as well as a brilliant chemist.’

‘It isn’t difficult. These homo sapiens you so admire are a feckless lot. Always in disarray. The Trojan Wars, Julius Caesar, the American War of Independence.’

‘And now the Luddite Riots.’

‘Perfect cover.’ For what? He looked about the laboratory, assessing then diagnosing the Rani’s impedimenta: the monitor with a bisection of a skull representation, the pulsating tubes linked to the miner, and then the crystal flagon receiving miniscule droplets.

While he was marshalling his thoughts, the Rani was punching up the scanner. On the screen was a deserted meadow. This was not what she wanted to see. Impatiently she altered the co-ordinates.

‘I think I’ve got it!’ By collating the data he’d resolved the conundrum. ‘You’re extracting a chemical from the brain. The result is the victims become aggressive, violent.

Can’t rest – that’s it! The chemical that promotes sleep!’

The deduction aggravated the Rani. ‘I begin to understand why the Master finds you such a menace!’ She jabbed at the scanner again. An empty approach road filled the screen. ‘Where is the idiot?’

‘I presume you’re referring to the Master.’ The Doctor’s jovial tone belied his mounting sense of desperation. His voyage of discovery had brought to light a gruesome situation; one that he could do nothing to reverse. He was a prisoner.

‘Well, since I don’t want to be a nuisance to you, why not release me?’

It was a fatuous try and was treated with disdain. The Rani continued her search for the Master.

‘Traditionally you’ve wished this planet no ill.’ This is what puzzled the Doctor. The Rani, unlike the Master, had never deliberately set out to be destructive. If anything or anyone got in the way of her experiments, she would remove it, or them. But there would have to be a reason.

‘I don’t now. It’s simply that they’ve got the sole source of supply –’

‘Source of supply!’ The Doctor’s anger exploded. ‘These are human beings, Rani. Living creatures who’ve done you no harm!’

‘What harm have the animals in the fields done them?’

The Rani was stabbing the vermilion tabs on the scanner.

‘The rabbits they snare? Sheep they nourish to slaughter?

They’re carnivores. Do they worry about the lesser species when they sink their teeth into a lamb chop?’

The barren logic of the scientist seemed faultless. Before the Doctor could deploy his facility for exhuming fallacy, he was thwarted. The Rani had located the Master in the vicinity of the pit. Quickly donning her shawl, she turned to the nearest assistant. ‘Josh, guard him!’

The Doctor glanced at the muscular individual who moved in response. So, this was the missing Josh who had not been seen since he came off shift.

The Rani concluded her directive. ‘If he tries to escape, kill him.’ About to leave, she had a better idea. ‘No, Josh, don’t kill the Doctor.’ She indicated the miner on the adjacent trolley. ‘Kill
him
.’ A smile.
‘Touché
, Doctor?’

It was indeed a clever ruse. The Doctor would now do nothing while she was away for fear of jeopardising the miner’s life.

‘Don’t hurry back,’ he called to her retreating figure.

Peri saw the old crone hobble from the bath house.

Exhortations to stay put had gone unheeded. She had followed the Doctor.

It had not been the happiest of experiences. She felt like a leper. The besieged villagers, normally friendly, were hostile. A sensitive girl, she did not blame them. Nobody could cope with the trauma of having husbands and sons mutated into marauding savages. Shattered windows were a stark reminder of the mindless terror assailing Killingworth.

When the old crone reached the bottom of the hill, Peri abandoned the shelter of an alley and crossed the street.

Tentatively, she entered the hallway. ‘Doctor?’

No reply.

She advanced into the bath chamber. ‘Doctor?’ I know you’re here. I’d’ve seen you leave otherwise –’ Shocked, she saw the two drugged bodies sprawled on the reed mats...

the parted wall at the far end... Nervously, she skirted the unconscious men and apprehensively ventured through the wall.

The scene that greeted her was even more distressing; the Doctor shackled to a trolley. ‘Doctor –!’ She started forward.

‘Stop!’ The bellow halted Peri in her tracks.

‘What d’you mean, stop? I’m going to free you.’

‘
No!
’ The Rani’s two assistants were standing quite impassively, but the Doctor had seen enough to realise they were conditioned to obey her orders. Implicitly.

Without mercy. Josh may once have been the husband of the gentle young woman and father of her gurgling, six month old baby, but not any more. Now he was the Rani’s puppet. ‘Touch me and their orders are to kill!’

‘But I can’t just – I must do something!’ She banged her hips in frustration.

‘You can.’ The Doctor waggled his head towards the miner. ‘Get that poor fellow out of here.’ He had calculated that Josh would obey his instructions to the letter.

‘How?’

‘Use some of that famous American initiative! Push him outside!’

Peri was confused. Wouldn’t the Doctor be putting himself in peril if she touched the other trolley?

‘Their orders relate only to me. Now move, Peri!’

Keeping a wary eye on the two muscular assistants, Peri eased past and began wheeling the trolley from the laboratory. She hesitated. ‘Orders? Whose orders?’

‘Just for once forget the cross examination and go!’

There was no mistaking the urgency.

Peri guided the trolley into the bath chamber. Straining, puffing, she manoeuvred round the recumbent bodies –

The latch rattled on the street door. She froze.

In walked the old crone. Peri stuttered as she fought to offer the elderly lady an explanation.

The words were still-born. Standing beside the old crone was the person she most feared!

A beatific smile transformed the Master’s pale visage as he registered Peri’s presence.

‘Who’s this brat?’ asked the Rani.

‘My dear Rani, quite unwittingly you have made my triumph utterly complete.’ He paused, luxuriating in the moment. ‘Allow me to introduce Miss Perpugilliam Brown, the Doctor’s latest travelling companion. Although her travelling days will soon be over...’

9

Bandana streaming, on the wings of fear, a tinker fled.

Hurdling fence and brook, he swiftly outpaced Jack Ward and his gang of aggressors. The hunt was desultory; the prize they sought was the tinker’s abandoned cart.

Scattering copper kettles, pots and pans, they dumped the TARDIS on board and dragged it tumultuously along the rutted lanes to Killingworth.

Terrified villagers retreated into their cottages. The lame and the infirm, slow to get out of their path, were clubbed to the ground. A nine year old boy, recognising his father, ran to him and received an ear-ringing clout.

Discordantly, the jeering mob chanted a mocking parody of a funeral march. The corpse to be buried was the TARDIS.

That was not the only bereavement the Master had in mind!

‘I thought he was dead.’ Peri had been prodded into the laboratory and her protest was addressed to the Doctor.

The Master answered, ‘As you observe, I’m very much alive.’ He glanced at the shackled prisoner. ‘Your erstwhile mentor, on the other hand, is about to – I believe the modern expression is "snuff the candle"!’

‘Snuff the candle! You know, you’ve always lacked style!’ The ridicule was a bluff; the Doctor’s attempt to defer what now seemed inevitable. A slender hope; especially with the Rani there. Summary execution was her style!

‘Stop the babbling and get on with it!’ she insisted.

‘I’ve a score to settle first!’ The Master turned to Peri.

She knew the score to which he was referring. It was a memory she had never been able to eradicate.

‘When we last met, you could have saved me. Instead you left me to die!’ He trained the TCE on the petrified girl.

‘No!’ Respite came from an unexpected quarter. ‘Don’t kill the girl.’

‘Thank you, Rani.’ Sincerity and relief. ‘I’m glad you haven’t sunk quite to the Master’s depths,’ said the Doctor.

His gratitude was misplaced. The Rani checked Peri’s pulse.

‘Hey, let go of me!’

‘Human.’

‘So?’ The significance missed the Master.

‘Her brain’s as good as anyone else’s.’

Willingly he lowered the TCE. This was an unanticipated bonus; an opportunity to add to his rival’s torment. ‘No comment, Doctor?’

‘I don’t think I could stand it.’ He was still playing the only gambit available, but Peri was puzzled by the jocular repartee.

‘Stand what?’

‘A hyperactive Peri. It’s too ghastly to contemplate.’

Despite lacking knowledge of the Rani’s activities, Peri had little doubt that she was in for a decidedly unpleasant experience. So how could the Doctor go on being frivolous?

It was no problem for the Master. ‘We’re being treated to an example of his famous sense of humour,’ he explained. ‘I’m afraid, Doctor, even that will desert you soon.’