Doctor Who: Time and the Rani (11 page)

He was snaking, Indian-fashion, along the ground when the regular beat of marching feet sent him slithering into a rift.

A squad of sinewy, hairy legs stomped past: a tattoo of sound and shadow.

Their destination was the Centre of Leisure.

Storm-trooper style, they clomped down the staircase and raided cubicle after cubicle. The occupants were indiscriminately hauled onto die plaza where a silver, bejewelled bangle was strapped to each timorous Lakertyan's ankle.

Urak, cuspids bared and forked tongue darting, oversaw the operation from the gallery.

'Why are you doing this?' Faroon demurred. 'We have cooperated.'

'Silence, Lakert . . . yan! There have . . . been too many . . . unfriendly acts . . .'

'Not by us,' she protested. 'This is unjust.'

The garnet brooch pinned to her apricot cloak was a symbol of her status in Lakertyan society. It did not, however, exempt her from rough treatment.

She was dragged to the fore to receive the unwanted ornament.

'At least tell us what these are for.'

Faroon did not lack courage, but challenging Urak was a maladroit gesture.

'I will demon . . . strate with great . . . enjoyment. . .' His quadview roamed over the servile pleasure seekers.

'You!' he cackled.

His choice was a young female.

'Come forward . . .'

She froze, too scared to move.

Her fear amused Urak.

With a theatrical flourish, he depressed a tab on a facsimile of the Rani's minicomputer-bracelet which he wore, incongruously, on his hairy wrist.

The jewel in the silver bangle on the young female lit up.

A radiant heat spread from her thin, delicate ankle. A heat so intense that her hand, dipping into the pool as she collapsed, caused a cloud of steam to rise from the water.

For a brief, morbid moment, a skeletal fretwork of bones glowed through the flesh.

Then, as the heat evaporated, the X-ray image faded . . .

A living being had become a corpse.

18

'The Rani might think she's harnessed the brain of a Time Lord, but she's reckoned without one thing.'

'What's that?' Beyus, yoking and loading buckets of plasma, looked at the slight and defiant Earthling.

'The Doctor's character,' declared Mel fervently.

Almost imperceptibly the entombed Doctor's lips began to move... a twitch developed in his cheek. . .

Activity in the crystal tank increased. The Doctor's input mingled with the orderly impulses from the other contributors.

The first sign that Mel may be right, had a mildly absurd manifestation - the goo burped!

Quite distinctly.

The noise penetrated the Rani's cocoon of single-minded concentration.

Tiny lights winked from every instrument indicator on the pyramidal computers.

Again the goo burped.

Not to be outdone, the catalyst gave a particularly loud crack.

Perturbed, the Rani attempted to stem the rising tide of energy by adjusting the regulators.

To no avail. The process was gathering into hectic pace.

THE BARRIER TO UNDERSTANDING TIME IS EMPIRICAL THINKING. I
SUGGEST A LATERAL APPROACH.'

The bland, synthesised voice had taken on a scornful note.

Urgently, the Rani hurried into the spherical chamber.

The furrowed brain appeared about to burst its blood vessels, and a sheath of nerves linking it to the voice box was all of a quiver.

Other synthesised voices joined in.

'I STILL ASSERT ELECTRON POSITRON PAIRS CAN BE PREVENTED FROM

RE-COMBINING INTO PHOTONS:

'REALLY! THIS IS NOT THE PLACE FOR DOUBLE ENTENDRES!
' Could it be the Doctor speaking?

'YOU ARE ALL CONTRIBUTING GIBBERISH!'

'MY THEORY WILL PROVIDE THE FORMULA.’

'A FOOL AND HIS FORMULA ARE SOON PARTED.’
This
had
to be the Doctor!

'OUTRAGEOUS POLEMICS! GOD DOES NOT PLAY WITH DICE!' This surely was Einstein!

DON'T TELL GOD WHAT TO DO!'
So Niels Bohr, Einstein's rival, was also one of the captive geniuses!

'GENTLEMEN, SUCH HOSTILITY! REMEMBER, BLESSED ARE THE PIEMAKERS

FOR THEY SHALL MAKE LIGHT PASTRY.’

Assailed by the manic babble, the Rani gripped the gantry rail and gaped.

The massive brain, ominously emitting a deepening magenta, was throbbing: a seizure seemed imminent!

'IT IS A FUNDAMENTAL POSTULATE.’
continued a synthesised voice.

‘THAT ALL MOTION IS RELATIVE.'

'YOU WOULDN'T SAY THAT IF YOU'D MET MY UNCLE!'

'DISMISSING OPPOSITION AS DECADENT HERESY IS THE REFUGE OF THE

REACTIONARY.'

'AH WELL, EVER Y DOGMA HAS ITS DAY!'

PERHAPS WE SHOULD ALL TAKE A SABBATICAL.'

'OR A NUMBER THREE BUS!'

Great slurps and burps of volcanic proportions belched from the crystal tank.

The catalyst cracked like a demented howitzer.

Signal lights blinked and flashed in irrational discord from the overheating pyramids.

Pursued by the bedlam of debate, the Rani made for the arcade.

'I DENY THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH THE

THERMO-DYNAMICALLY IRREVERSIBLE PROCESS!'

'THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE IS A SUPERSTITION OF THE SCIENTIFICALLY

INEPT.’

‘OH – INDUBITABLY – ER – I THINK.’

'THE HYPOTHESIS THAT NEGATIVE GRAVITATIONAL MASS WILL PRODUCE

TIME REVERSAL, IS UNTUTORED SPECULATION.'

'I HAVE PROVED CONCLUSIVELY THAT THE RELATIVISTIC SHIFT FOR THE

STAR B-SIRIUS IS OVER THIRTY TIMES THAT EXPECTED.'

'I'D SAY YOU'RE LOOKING BACK IN RETROSPECT!'

'IT IS STATED IN THE SPECIAL THEORY AND HAS BEEN DEMONSTRATED,
THAT AN INCREASE IN VELOCITY WILL INCREASE MASS.’:

'DOES THAT MEAN, THE FASTER A FAT MAN RUNS, THE FATTER HE WILL

GET?'

'I'll kill him!'

Abdicating any pretence of composure, the Rani ran into the arcade.

Every cabinet was steamed up!

Some rattled as their occupants experienced spasms of agitation.

Frenetically, she disconnected the Doctor . . . and the commotion began to subside.

'The idiot provoked multiple schizophrenia!' she muttered, checking to ensure the eleven other geniuses had suffered no permanent damage.

'Congratulations,' said Mel. 'You brought us here.'

'And I can dispose of you!'

Trembling with rage, she delved into her pocket for a phial. 'This will rid me of a pair of pests -'

The door of the Doctor's cabinet flipped open!

Unseen by her, he had inserted the penknife into the latch and lifted it!

He sprang out - and grabbed the Rani. 'Quickly, Mel! Don't just stand there!'

The suddenness of his attack caused the phial to be jolted from the Rani's grasp.

'Catch it, Mel!'

She turned . . . fumbled . . . and the phial fell to the floor!

But did not break.

Relief immobilised Mel.

'Let go of me, you interfering maniac!' screeched the Rani.

'Mel! Help me!'

Together they stuffed the squirming Rani into the recently occupied cabinet!

'You'll pay for this with your -'

The door slammed shut, cutting off the threat.

'Switch on. Give her a taste of her own medicine,' Mel advised.

'Two wrongs don't make a left turn -'

He gulped.

Brandishing a net-gun, a Tetrap guard had entered the arcade!

Gallantly the Doctor shielded Mel as the Tetrap advanced to investigate the thumps coming from the cabinet.

'Er -' the Doctor politely doffed his hat. 'She's just testing. Um - for a design fault.'

They were cornered. The stalking brute and its net-gun were between them and all avenues to freedom. A brittle snap! The Tetrap had trodden on the phial.

Luminous green fungus coated the hairy foot.

The contamination spread swiftly over its haunches and torso. The Rani's concoction from the phial interbred with the oily skin's abundant microbes and bloomed into spontaneous fungal growth that smothered its victim, infiltrating mouth and nostrils to block the trachea and lungs.

With strangled gasps, the Tetrap slumped to the floor. . .

'She meant that for us,' cried an indignant Mel.

'Yes, well, let's postpone the post-mortem.'

Giving the lichen-shrouded corpse a wide berth, the Doctor picked up the net-gun and tucked it beside a cabinet. 'Waste net want net!'

Star Struck!

Self-recrimination scourged Ikona as he watched Urak and the Tetraps emerge boisterously from the Centre of Leisure.

Despite taking a short cut, Ikona had not been able to warn his compatriots of the impending invasion. That his forebodings were well-founded, he had no doubts. The exuberant cavorting and splashing of the loutish creatures traversing the brook, were all the confirmation needed.

Grandly, Urak distributed silver bangles among the troop.
'Naf tuo . . . uoy era erawa

. . . fo eht stnuah eseht . . . elbacipsed . . . snaytrekaL . . . tneuqerf. . .
' (By simply reversing the Tetrapyriarban language, this would read: 'Fan out. . . you are aware . .

. of the haunts these . . . despicable . . . Lakertyans . . . frequent.') Braying the equivalent of Tetrapian tally-hos, the winged bipeds rombed cumbersomely into the hunt.

But without their leader. His own malice assuaged, Urak set off for the laboratory complex.

Bracing himself to expect the worst, Ikona went into the Centre of Leisure.

Crestfallen and downcast, mourning Lakertyans presented a tableau of grief.

Averting his gaze from the slain female, Ikona looked to where Faroon was consoling Aragon, an elderly sage who fiddled with a too-tight bangle.

'Don't touch it, Aragon,' Faroon counselled, massaging his leg to ease the pain.

'How much longer must we endure this humiliation?' he quavered.

'As long as Beyus instructs us to . . .'

Ikona did not try to capitalise on Faroon's lack of conviction. A call to mutiny would be an invitation to suicide. Any hopes of salvation now had to be vested in that unpredictable knight errant in a panama hat -the Doctor.

'Once more into the breach!' The misquoting Time Lord poked his head into the rocket launcher's breech.

Despite Mel's entreaties to get clear, he had trotted directly for the spherical chamber.

‘I told Ikona this had a fixed trajectory. If I'm right, I can guess the target.'

'Before this regeneration you were keen on cats. And you know what curiosity did to them!'

‘I should leave the quotes to the expert,' advised the Doctor, designating himself the expert!

'Fixed trajectory, sure enough,' he said, pulling his head clear of the breech.

'It isn't all that'll be fixed if we don't get out of here!'

The Doctor rested his elbows on the rail circling the mammoth brain. The purple rivulets trickled more sluggishly than when he was on stream, and the sheath of nerves quivered only occasionally.

His abstracted air belied the inner dialogue that saddened him. During his many existences, and on his wanderings through Time and Space, he had seen wonders that filled him with awe. Now, perhaps, he was in audience with the most spectacular of all.

His own brain, like that of every Time Lord, was the ultimate refinement of cosmic evolution. Yet the pulsating reproduction devised by the Rani was a thousandfold greater.

As always, his sadness came from the conviction that her superb ingenuity would add to, rather than alleviate, suffering.

'The Rani's pillaged the universe for the most creative geniuses,' he mused, tipping his hat off his forehead. 'Original thinkers who are capable of making the leap in the dark. Why? Why?'

'Well, she's not infallible,' retorted Mel. 'She made the mistake of trying to use you!'

'You're missing the point.' His irascibility was an expression of self-inadequacy. In quick, fussed movements, he explored a mechanism that comprised a hopper and a crucible.

'Then share the secret. Enlighten me,' taunted Mel.

'Trying to use me was a desperate gamble. So why take it?'

'Conceit,' concluded Mel. 'Blind vanity.'

'Wrong. Don't underestimate her. That could be fatal.'

'Well - oh, I don't know. She was pressed for time.'

'Exactly! I'm sure this planet's solstice is the deadline. And I'm positive that asteroid is the target.'

A bossed beading extruding from the wall had been intriguing him. 'Hmmm - he who dares, spins!'

He spun the beading.

A three-dimensional hologram materialised, dwarfing both them and the corpulent brain.

The dominant element was a colossal star: a sun that burned with spurting gushes of fire spiking from its surface.

Then, a subtle change. A white dot on the fiery surface spread malignantly.

'A supernova . . .' The Doctor was aghast.

In a searing flash that blanched everything in the spherical chamber, the star exploded . . .

Fretful kicks and thumps spasmodically rattled the Rani's cabinet.

They penetrated to Beyus as he emerged from the eyrie.

Warily, he avoided the fungus-infested Tetrap corpse.

'Beyus! Is that you, Beyus?'

Perplexed, he hesitated.

'Get me out of here!' The Rani's features were distorted as she pressed them against the glass.

'Do you hear me? Open this door!'

No response.

'Beyus . . .if you place any value on your people's lives. . . you'll release me!'