Doctor Who: Time and the Rani (7 page)

'You said . . . "her"?'

'Yes,' affirmed Mel. 'She was running from something.'

'You saw what happened too, Ikona?'

No response. Mel wondered why.

'You're not usually reluctant to air your thoughts,' Faroon chided. His silence further aroused her misgivings.

He remained mute.

She addressed Mel. 'From which direction did she come?'

Mel pointed towards the laboratory complex.

Faroon shuddered: the qualms engendered by Ikona's lack of response were being given substance.

'As though she was escaping from the Tetrap headquarters.' Mel could not know the significance of the information. Or the wound it would create.

Ikona did. And realised he could no longer spare Faroon. 'It was . . . Sarn.'

Unable to conceal her anguish, Faroon moved close to the skeleton. The fear welling within had been confirmed.

'Who was Sarn?' Mel whispered to Ikona.

'The daughter of Faroon and Beyus . . .'

Mel felt thoroughly chastened. Unwittingly she had been the bearer of dreadful news.

'I'm - so - sorry,' she said to Faroon. 'I didn't realise.'

Fighting tears, the genteel Faroon expressed no malice. 'I - I had to be - told . . .'

Ikona put his hand on her trembling arm. 'There was nothing that could be done, Faroon,' he added tenderly. 'She stepped on a trap.'

'Yet another victim!' Bitterness underscored her grief. 'I must go to Beyus . . .' This she could do because, alone of all her people, Faroon was permitted into the laboratory complex. From a pre-eminent position of consort to Beyus, she had been reduced to the role of go-between, conveying the Rani's pitiless decrees to the humbled populace whose idyllic existence had been transformed into a nightmare.

However, it was the loss of her daughter, not the blight plaguing Lakertya, that afflicted Faroon as she hurried away.

Permitting Faroon to get some distance ahead, Mel set off to follow.

'Where do you think you're going?' Ikona's manner was brusque.

'If Beyus is collaborating, he must be in the Tetrap headquarters.'

'He is.'

'And I've told you before, that's where I suspect the Doctor will be.'

A perceptive deduction.

One that led only to the next formidable hurdle.

Recognising Faroon, Urak had allowed her access, a facility he certainly would not grant Mel!

She and Ikona were concealed by an escarpment.

'You're still determined to get in?'

'No matter what the risk,' declared Mel pugnaciously.

'Madness!'

Mel shrugged: she couldn't see she had any alternative.

'It must be contagious,' muttered Ikona. 'I'll draw the Tetrap off. . .'

Deliberately revealing his presence, Ikona skirted the perimeter.

Urak's orders were to keep the area secure, but the prospect of catching the dissident Ikona was irresistible

The ruse enabled Mel to gain entry to the grounds.

That was how she came to be weaving her way between the haphazard outcrops of rocks when the Rani was also weaving her way through the boulder-strewn grounds.

Ikona proved too swift for the lumbering Urak . . . but, in any case, his rearview eye had glimpsed a more alluring prize - a generous mop of red curls bobbing along behind a granite ridge!

The missing girl!

Baring gleaming cuspids, Urak levelled his net-gun and fired!

Caught unawares, the victim was snared in a dazzling display of static . . .

11

Dumping the acetylene torch on the bench, the Doctor, surveying the whole range of mysterious apparatus, reversed towards the exit.

Simultaneously, a pink and white garbed woman with curly red hair backed into the lab.

They bumped.

Spun about.

Stared at each other.

'Who are you?' she said.

'You!' he exclaimed.

Warily they circled.

'Where's Mel?'

'Where's the Doctor?'

'What've you done with her?' Belligerently, he lunged at her.

But she ducked beneath his outstretched arms, snatched up the acetylene torch and flourished it menacingly. A threat made comical by its weak flame.

Sneering, he advanced.

Hastily she increased the gas flow, forcing him into an undignified withdrawal from the spurting tongue of flame.

'Now we'll get the truth!' she declared.

He grabbed a stool to fend her off. But the seat cover caught fire!

He dropped the blistering stool and retreated in disarray.

'Where's the Doctor, you brute?'

'Here!'

'Where? Under the carpet?'

'There isn't any carp -
Me
, you stupid woman!
Me!'

'Never! You're nothing like him! If the Doctor's been harmed, I'll -'

'Quit the melodramatics! Your pathetic impersonation doesn't fool me. Incidentally, that wig's not you at all.'

'You should talk! The Doctor's no oil painting but you'd frighten the cat! Oh -' A stab with the acetylene torch was brought to an abrupt halt! The rubber tubing was fully extended!

'I knew you weren't finished, Rani. I told Mel as much.'

'You told me?'

'Not you.
Mel!'
Circling again, out of range, a stratagem in mind.

'I
am
Mel. Who's the Rani?'

'Try looking in the mirror. The face of evil.'

'I've had enough of this drivel. Either you come clean or I'll burn the place down.'

The threat was made risible by the Doctor. With a Kung Fu yell, he sprang onto the bench and stamped on the acetylene torch's tubing.

The flame drooped to a puny flicker. Spluttered. Then died.

He leapt to the floor. The spritely Mel evaded him, putting the bench between them.

Impasse.

'All right, a compromise,' he panted. 'Let me feel your pulse.'

'Don't touch me!'

'Aha! The proof of the pumpkin's in the squeezing.'

'You don't even talk like the Doctor, you miserable fraud!'

'Come along let's feel your pulse - pulses! One for each heart!'

'You're a raving lunatic!'

'Yes, perhaps I am. If you're the Rani, I'm flirting with destruction.'

'And if I'm Mel?'

'Mel? The worst she'd do is give me carrot juice.' He paused. Perplexed. 'Carrot juice

. . . what made me say that?'

What made him say it was a twanging chord of memory. Mel, besides being a fitness buff, was also a nutritionist. Not only had she been insisting on fining down the rotund sixth Doctor, she had been determined to wean him away from sticky buns, chocolates and fattening milk shakes. Crisp lettuce, bean salad and carrot juice were to be the main ingredients of his staple diet.

He hated them. Especially the carrots.

'Perhaps the real Doctor told you,' she said, deliberately testing him. 'It was his favourite drink.'

'Favourite? I hate carrot juice!'

'Oh?' Doubt coloured conviction.

'Aha! Caught you out, didn't I?'

'If you're the Doctor . . .' Was she beginning to waver? 'Why do you look like that?'

'I've regenerated. And I'm suffering from post-regeneration amnesia. At least, that's what I thought

He rubbed the injection mark on his wrist.

'Exchange is no mockery: you feel my pulse. Go on. You want proof I'm a Time Lord.'

Mel's scepticism persisted. She kept her distance.

'Look, I'll lean across the workbench with my other hand behind my back.'

Jigsaw puzzles intrigued Mel when she was a child. Were the pieces of this jigsaw melding together? Regeneration. Carrot juice. His willingness to let her feel his pulse

- well, pulses . . .

Charily, she accepted the offer: 'A double pulse! You really are the Doctor!'

'That's what I've been telling you! Yours now.'

She loosened the tight, candy-striped cuff of her blouse. 'I knew about regeneration, of course. I was with you at your trial.' There she had met the Vale-yard, a future regeneration of the Doctor.

Failing to locate a second pulse, the Doctor patted her hand. Pieces of his jigsaw puzzle were fitting together too. The impersonation. The identical clothes. The drug which he felt certain accounted for the small puncture in his skin. Accounted for the memory loss too.

'But . . . you're nothing like you were. Face. Size. Hair. Everything's changed.'

'Become more of a fool, too, it seems, Mel. Doesn't bode well for my seventh persona, does it? Being so completely taken in by that devious Rani.'

Red wig askew, the Rani lay on the ground, her arm enmeshed in Urak's net.

Casually, he kicked the arm aside to release his net! The callous jolt prompted her into recovery.

Immediately, his attitude altered. 'I am sorry . . . Mistress, I had . . . not seen you . . .

dressed in those . . . clothes before . . .'

'Inquests bore me!' the Rani snapped, striding towards her TARDIS. This was in the shape of a pyramid: the efficient chameleon circuit had adapted the exterior to blend perfectly with its environs.

Urak dogged the Rani.

'Where d'you think you're going?'

'With you, Mistress . . .'

'I've told you not to enter my TARDIS without permission! Stay here!'

Depicted on the monitor screen was the planet and its orbiting satellite.

'Is that Lakertya?' Mel asked.

'Yes . . . but it's the asteroid of Strange Matter that bothers me.'

'Strange Matter? Never heard of it.'

'You should have, Mel. A Princetown physicist discovered it in the Earth year 1984.'

'Computers are my speciality, not nuclear physics.'

'It's an incredibly dense form of matter. A lump the size of this bench would weigh more than your Earth.'

'Well, what can the Rani's interest be?'

'An astute question. If that asteroid exploded, it would send out a blast of gamma rays equivalent to a supernova!'

'Then it'd be goodbye Lakertya.'

'With everything else in this part of the galaxy. When the Rani dabbles, she dabbles on a grand scale.'

While talking, he prowled the lab. The spherical chamber proved an irresistible magnet. 'Listen,' he said to Mel, stuffing his ear against the panel.

'Weird,' Mel replied, listening. 'Like a giant heartbeat.'

He strode across the room, rapping the catalyst machine and the crystal tank. 'Why, Mel, why? What's she up to?' A tattoo of frustrated thumps on the arcade door. 'It begins in there!'

The rat-a-tat-tat on the arcade door startled Beyus who was comforting Faroon.

'Forget it, Doctor. Let's hightail it out of here to the TARDIS,' came Mel's voice.

'What! Abandon these Lakertyans to the Rani's machinations? Impossible!'

Beyus, his stoicism strained to the limit by the sombre news Faroon had imparted, walked slowly to the door . . .

'Given time, I could work out the combination,' the Doctor chuntered, fiddling with the lock.

Watching him, any lingering doubts Mel had were banished: a physical transformation may have taken place with the regeneration, but the quintessence of the crusading maverick was unimpaired.

A sigh. 'I suppose I'll have to break in -'

'Nine - five - three,' came Beyus's voice from beyond the door.

'Did you hear a voice, Mel? Or am I hallucinating?'

'Go on, Doctor! Nine - five - three!'

'Who'd've thought she'd've been so obvious? That's my age' - tapping in the numbers - 'and the Rani's!'

The Rani had lied to the Doctor about seeing the polyethersulphone in a Lakertyan's storeroom. There was only one place where such sophisticated material would be housed: the repair bay in her TARDIS.

She riffled through a miscellaneous collection of plastic sheets, selected the appropriate piece and, using a laser beam cutter, reduced it to the correct measurements for the casing of the machine.

Leaving the TARDIS, she found Urak faithfully waiting outside.

'May I assist. . . you, Mistress . . ?'

'That girl's on the loose in the grounds. Find her before she finds the Doctor.'

'Yes, Mistress . . .'

Urak loped off.

The Rani made for the complex . . . where Mel and the Doctor were discovering the iniquitous secret of the arcade.

'You Know, Don't You!'

'Charles Darwin . . . Za Panato . . . Louis Pasteur . . . Albert Einstein,' recited Mel, reading the labels on the cabinets.

'Names which mean nothing to us,' said Beyus.

'Geniuses. Every one of them. The Rani's brought together the most creative minds and the most powerful matter in the universe. The scope of her imagination is breathtaking,' stated the Doctor.

'You sound as though you admire her.' The anguish from his daughter's death gave Beyus's reproof a tinge of bitterness.

'A murderess,' cried Faroon. 'Sarn was not her first victim. There have been many.'

'Not admiration,' apologised the Doctor. 'Fascination. And sadness. If only the Rani could have directed her exceptional talents for good!'

'The fascination's mutual,' called Mel, indicating the label on the vacant cabinet.

'She's reserved this for you!'

A rare moment: the Doctor's resilience stayed in neutral! He gulped, then tried, unconvincingly, to shrug off the panic he felt.

'What -' He moistened his lips. 'What is it I can contribute that these other geniuses can't?'

Accompanied by Mel, Faroon and Beyus, he beat a retreat into the lab.

'You're a Time Lord,' suggested Mel.