Doctor Who: Time and the Rani (5 page)

'Wonder why he always stood like this?'

'Who?' asked the tetchy Rani. She was a fractious spectator of the parade.

'Napoleon Bonaparte!' He strutted about, admiring his reflection in the mirror. 'I think not. Lacks my natural humility.'

The Rani's raised eyebrows showed what she thought of that evaluation of his character!

Forsaking the Napoleonic gear, the Doctor plonked a capacious furry busby on his head. Swallowing him, it came down below his nose.

'No, doesn't look right without a horse.' His voice, snuffled by the enveloping busby, made the bland statement even more ludicrous!

Dumping it, he ferreted among the racks, muttering encouragement to himself.

'Something dignified. Time Lordish.'

A mortar board and academic gown seemed to fit the bill. He promenaded rather grandly before the Rani.

'A little portentous perhaps, Mel.' He was hoping she'd contradict him.

She didn't. '
Pre
tentious is the word!'

Crestfallen, he flicked off the mortar board and, in rapid succession, tried on a variety of articles worn by the other six Doctors preceding him, culminating with the fifth Doctor's cricketing finery.

'This should bowl a maiden over,' he wisecracked.

The Rani was not amused.

Nor was she entranced by his ultimate apparel. A baggy, half-belted, cream jacket sagged wide to exhibit a pair of braces over a pullover decorated with question marks. From the collar of a tired shirt snaked a green and red paisley tie. Check trousers topped a pair of brown and white shoes.

'Ah, yes. Very
chic
,' he pronounced.

A squashed panama hat with upturned brim completed the sartorial melange. 'A frowning man will clutch at a straw,' he quipped.

'Drowning -' the Rani began to correct, then changed her mind. 'Excellent. Very elegant,' she lied: anything to end this trifling exercise.

Tilting the flattened straw hat to a rakish angle, he surveyed the ensemble in the mirror.

'Thank goodness in this regeneration I've regained my impeccable sense of haute couture!'

'If you've finished preening yourself, can we get what we came for?' No wheedling.

Hard. This buffoonery had to be brought to a peremptory finale!

The Doctor studied her reflection in the mirror. Turned. Frowned. The biting tone evoked a sensation of memory . . .

Superimposed on the Rani was another woman . . . Dressed identically . . . yet with a wide-eyed, elfin look. The image fluctuated . . .to become the Rani . . . Then Mel again . . .

Wham
! Realising his memory was trying to stage a recovery, the Rani had fetched him a resounding slap!

'What. . ? What. . ?'

'I'm sorry.' She wasn't. 'You seemed to be losing control.'

He rubbed his stinging cheek. 'I must have been hallucinating. I had an overwhelming sense of evil. And there was a name - Ra - Ral - Radi -'

'Radiation wave meter! That's what you came to the TARDIS to get.'

'Er - yes - did I? Now, let's see. Where d'you reckon I'd keep it?'

'Tool room.'

"Mmmm . . . Won't be a jiffy, Mel. Absence makes the nose grow longer.' He trotted out.

Cretin!' She hurled the insult after him!

Alone, Mel paused. The steep incline she was climbing rose to a serrated ridge. The elements had eroded the granite into untidy obelisks which the imagination could transform into misbegotten effigies. Ruefully, Mel cast three of them as the witches in
Macbeth
.

A wistful smile relieved her gloomy speculation: if the Doctor were here, he'd quote Shakespeare's gory tragedy, that's for sure! She could herself. During schooldays in Pease Cottage, Sussex, England, she'd hammed her way through the role of the Third Witch. Loneliness crowded in. Evocation of her lush and verdant birthplace brought home her predicament. She didn't even know where in the infinite universe she was stranded.

Pluck, not self-pity, was Mel's style. She resumed the arduous climb. Maybe over the next horizon . . ?

A slight scuffling.

She turned . . . looked towards a clutter of boulders

Nothing.

Imagination again. She clambered on.

. . . The sound of her scrunching footsteps carried to the boulders . . .a tawny, membraned claw crept over a craggy rim . . .

A tiny signal flickered on the Rani's minicomputer-bracelet as she waited for the Doctor in the TARDIS's control room.

Glancing furtively into the corridor to ensure the Doctor's continuing absence, she hurriedly took a reading from the bracelet and tapped the coordinates into the console.

A quartet of images came up on the screen, one of which contained the unsuspecting Mel. . .

'Yes, Urak?'

'We have found . . . the lost girl. . .' His use of the royal 'we' aggravated her, but the news he delivered was welcome.

'Focus in on her!'

Mel's section zoomed into close-up, filling the entire screen.

'Certainly . . . Mistress Rani. . .'

'Rani!' The Doctor bustled in.

There were powerful echoes here. Perplexed, he touched the controls. The familiar ambience was again inciting an inner conflict with the amnesia drug.

The Rani recognised the dilemma. 'Rani, Doctor?'

'Rani! Yes, that's the name. The evil name.'

'Is that her?'

He stared at the screen and Mel. 'Er - well - it must be-yes . . .'

"And she's evil?'

'Completely.' His fingers plucked frenetically at his pullover: he was unsure of himself; confused by her insidious manipulations.

"Then she must be destroyed.'

'Destroyed? Well - er - don't let's be hasty . . .'

A sharp click alerted Mel. She looked up.

A wispy, iridescent net was floating down towards her

In reflex, she nipped aside!

The net fluttered to the gravel in a scintillating display of sparks . . .

Terrified, not understanding where the net came from or who had fired it, she dashed for freedom . . . and, inadvertently emulating the hapless Sarn, she blundered into a trip wire!

Her shin triggered the trap.

In a
whoosh
of dust and shale, a huge, opaque bubble with a bulging metal detonator encapsulated the screaming girl.

Steam spurted from its underside.

Mel frantically tore at the plastic.

To no avail.

The bubble began to spin.

Faster and faster. Towards the edge of a cliff.

Mel kicked. She yelled. Tried to pierce the bubble with her fingernails. Attempted, by running counter-clockwise, to force it away from the precipice.

All in vain. The bubble rolled inexorably on, until, abandoning terra firma, it shot over the edge of the cliff . . .

8

When Mel had quit the drainage pipe against his better judgement, Ikona initially decided the girl could take her own chances. But playing the non-combatant was not in his nature.

Nor was appeasement.

The Rani's domination of Lakertya had been achieved with humiliating ease. His acquiescent countrymen, spoonfed by an indulgent regime, offered little opposition, preferring to believe the intrusion would be small-scale and transient.

A monumental mistake.

Anticipating this, Ikona tried to rally Beyus; the peace-loving intellectual rebuffed him, preaching non-aggression.

An innate dissident, Ikona then endeavoured to organise resistance groups. His efforts were fruitless.

Already nursing a burgeoning sense of disillusionment, he divorced himself from Lakertyan society and dwelt alone: an iconoclast living a hermit's existence.

Until Mel's intrusion. Her dogged defiance rekindled his dormant spirits. He could not abandon her to the bestial Tetraps.

Over the edge of the cliff and out into space soared the 'bubble', ready to drop and explode on impact!

It dropped.

But not onto hard ground. The perpendicular cliffs were bordering a lake . . . and the

'bubble's' landing was cushioned by the placid water.

Respite for Mel?

No. The deadly sphere skittered across the surface towards the shore, on a bearing that meant the detonator would thump into the bank.

Undaunted, the resourceful girl again ran inside, trying to rotate the percussion cap out of harm's way. A brave effort that merely resulted in her losing balance.

Disaster seemed inevitable. She knew what to expect. Her cremation would be no less cruel than that of the female Lakertyan. If the Doctor had been in the vicinity, he might conceivably have been able to rescue her. Without him, there was nobody to come to her aid.

Belatedly reaching the cliff top, Ikona saw Mel's plight. Pell-mell, running a scree, he plunged into the lake and grappled with the bubble.

Killing its impetus, he contrived to steer it onto the beach.

Cautioning Mel to keep absolutely still, saturated, hissing with tension, he eased a bolt bonding the tumour-shaped mine to the plastic shell.

'Have you -' Mel's voice shattered his brittle concentration.

He glared at her.

She persisted, although less loudly. 'Have you done this before?'

'It's the first time! And, Mel, if you don't stop squawking it'll undoubtedly be the last!'

Should the mine blow, he knew they would both be incinerated.

Steeling himself, he commenced twisting the bolt

An explosive arc of fire crackled and leapt the gap of a megavolt catalyst as the Doctor toiled in the interior of the damaged machine.

'I can't help feeling sorry for the Rani, Mel. Though that bubble was a typically ingenious trap.'

Having seen the plastic 'bubble' sail over the edge of the cliff, the Rani had switched off the screen and cajoled the Doctor back to the lab.

'Then the Rani's got nobody to blame but herself,' came the unsympathetic reply.

'I suppose so . . .' Such atrocities could never be justified in the Doctor's book-no matter how villainous the victim may have been. 'But why was she prowling around on Lakertya?'

'I should've thought the answer was obvious.' He stopped, awaiting the explanation.

'You must be on the brink of a major discovery.' 'It'd have to be a cosmic breakthrough for a neurochemist of her stature to come storming the barricades!'

Reining in her impatience, the Rani persisted with the sophistry: anything to keep him working!

'All the more reason for you to press on! Get there first! You've repeatedly said that in the wrong hands, scientific knowledge can be dangerous, haven't you, Doctor?'

'What scientific knowledge?' He flapped his arms in frustration. 'What am I doing? If only I could remember!' 'Get the machine operational and maybe we'll find the solution.' 'Don't be ridiculous! The machine won't show me what's behind those two locked doors, will it?' Baffled, he glared at the arcade door and the panel of the spherical chamber. 'It won't restore my memory, will it!' Bad-temperedly, he plonked the radiation wave meter close to the catalyst. 'If the Rani's after my experiment, we must be playing with fire.' 'Forget her! She's finished! Destroyed!' 'Is she? Don't underestimate her. She's an abomination: a brilliant but sterile mind.' Sparks flew from the catalyst. 'There's not a spark of decency in her.'

'I'm overwhelmed.'

'You are, Mel?'

'Such superior diagnostic talents.'

'It's my forte.'

'What a pity they can't be concentrated on the machine!'

'You're putting the cart before the hearse, Mel.'

'Hearse? Hmmm. You've got death on the brain, Doctor.'

Ikona's hand trembled . . .

Delicately . . . gradually . . .he eased the bolt. . .

A jerk! And it was free.

With mercurial speed, he extracted the mine and lobbed it, discus fashion, into the lake.

The explosion sent a spectacular spout of steaming water spurting upwards into the air.

The pyrogenics alerted Urak . . . and one of his elliptical quadviews zeroed in on the tell-tale fountain of water. . .

'Can you squeeze through the gap?'

The removal of the mine had presented a breach in the plastic shell.

'I - I think I can.' Being tiny was not always an advantage, but in this situation it spelt the difference between life and death.

With the dexterity of an eel, Mel squirmed out.

'Quickly! The noise will have alerted the Tetraps!' said Ikona.

Fear is an invincible spur: together they decamped. In their haste, they failed to notice Mel's scarf had caught on the jagged hole.

The rippling water was becalmed. Once again its surface was dappled with the reflections of the cliffs. . .

Only now there was another reflection . . .

A partially-winged biped standing on the cliffs edge

All that could be seen of the Doctor were the soles of his shoes. The rest of him was inside the machine.

Using the respite, the Rani activated the monitor screen to show the space view of the planet and the malevolent asteroid circling it. Punching up calculations, she contemplated them thoughtfully.

'And another thing,' came the Doctor's voice from the bowels of the machine, 'why was the Rani dressed like you?'

'Perhaps she's fashion-conscious.' The jibe was uttered with indifference: her mind was grappling with a more profound and substantive issue.

'No, she was disguised. Practising another of her talents.'

'Really?' She switched off the monitor. 'Are you going to be much longer in there?'

"Fraid so. More
hasta
less
vista
.'

Not appreciating his humour, but assured of his preoccupation, she printed two words on a small card and, crossing to the arcade, tapped a combination into the lock.