Doctor Who: Festival of Death: 50th Anniversary Edition (2 page)

‘I don’t know what’s happened,’ his dad protested. ‘Maybe the cards got damaged. They worked fine on the skybus.’

‘Mum…’ Koel felt the sweat on his mum’s palm.

‘Do you have any other identification?’ asked the stewardess.

Koel’s dad fumbled in his pockets and presented the stewardess with some crumpled certificates. She skimmed through them. ‘That all seems to be in order, thank you. Enjoy your flight.’

Koel’s dad hauled their bags on to his back. Koel’s mum followed him into the airlock, dragging Koel behind her, his shoes skidding across the floor.

The fear swept over Koel again, like a black chill. He froze. Koel’s mum squatted down. ‘Now what is it?’

‘I don’t wanna go.’

‘Well, we can’t always do what we want, can we?’

‘Won’t.’

‘What do you mean, “Won’t”?’ growled his dad. They were attracting disapproving looks from their fellow passengers. His dad moved to one side to allow the remaining travellers to troop past.

‘We don’t have time for this,’ said Koel’s mum. The two security guards had noticed the disturbance and turned their insect faces towards them.

‘There’s something bad. I can feel it,’ said Koel. ‘Please –’

‘Move along,’ rasped an electronic voice. ‘We’re sealing the tube.’

‘I’ll meet you in the ship.’ Koel’s dad turned and followed the last of the passengers down the access tube.

‘Koel, you’re coming with us and that’s the end of it.’ Koel’s mum tugged at his arm so hard he thought it would snap.

The two guards clicked their rifles back into their belts and
retreated
into the lounge. One of them punched a sequence of triangles on the wall. There was a hydraulic hissing and the airlock door began to shut. A red warning beacon flashed on.

‘No!’ Koel slid out of his mum’s handhold and ducked through the closing door. He pelted into the departure lounge, past the insect guards, past the stewardess. He heard his mum call out to him, but she seemed removed, unreal. Then her voice was silenced as the airlock clanged shut.

Koel raced as far as his breath would carry him and collapsed into a chair, sobbing.

‘It is my pleasure to inform you that the Alpha Twelve intersystem shuttle to Third Birmingham is now closed. Felicitations.’

His mum and dad would be angry, Koel knew. But he had no choice; the thought of the shuttle made him numb with terror.

Wiping his nose on his sleeve, Koel got to his feet and walked back to the observation window. Looking up, he could see the ghostly reflection wearing the sky-green duffle coat floating in the vacuum outside.

One of the guards approached him, removing his mask. The man had bushy eyebrows, and a round, weathered face. ‘And what do you think –’

Koel screwed his eyes shut.

There was a wrenching sound. The screech of metal buckling, the rattle of bolts tearing. Koel felt the reverberation rising through the floor. Somehow he knew what was going to happen next.

The access tube snapped.

It telescoped away, looping through the blackness. The orange lamps flickered and died, the framework shattering into a thousand whirling metal fragments.

The stewardess screamed. An alarm sounded and a warning light soaked the room with its bloody glow.

Then came the passengers. They spilled out of the access tube and floated towards the observation window. Their bodies were twisted like broken dolls, their faces frozen in shock. They bounced noiselessly against the glass.

Koel’s mum’s face was a livid mass of exploded blood vessels, a spray of red bubbles escaping her open mouth. His dad still had a luggage bag in one hand.

C
HAPTER
O
NE

AN IMPOSSIBLE MACHINE
whisked randomly through the time-space vortex. It resembled a police box, a squat blue booth that might normally contain a twentieth-century English policeman nursing a mug of tea, but was in fact the TARDIS, a craft of unimaginable sophistication belonging to an equally impossible Time Lord known only as the Doctor.

Vastly bigger on the inside than the outside, the TARDIS contained a white, roundelled control room, where the central column of the six-sided console was rising and dipping contentedly. Beside it, the Doctor lay sprawled across a chair. A small battered book on his lap was also rising and dipping contentedly, in time to his deep, mellow snores.

Romana, the Doctor’s Time Lady companion, strode into the console room, followed by K-9, their small, dog-shaped computer. She observed the Doctor, unimpressed, and crouched down to speak into his ear.

‘Revision going well, Doctor?’

‘What?’ The Doctor woke with a start. Realising where he was, he adjusted his multicoloured scarf. ‘Yes. Very well. Absolutely well indeed.’

Romana retrieved the book, brushed back her long blonde hair and thumbed through the pages. ‘All right then. Describe the procedure for realigning the synchronic multiloop stabiliser.’

‘Ha!’ snorted the Doctor, slumping back into his chair. ‘Easy.’

He fell silent. Romana tapped her heels.

‘Realigning the synchronic multiloop stabiliser?’ considered the Doctor. ‘First you adjust the proximity feedback converter,
recalibrate
the triple vector zigzag oscillator, take away the number you first thought of, and there you are. Stabiliser realigned.’

Romana sighed. ‘Wrong.’

‘What?’ The Doctor bounded over to her. ‘Wrong? How could I be wrong?’

‘To realign the synchronic multiloop stabiliser, simply activate the analogue osmosis dampener.’ Romana held the book open for him. He clutched the book and boggled at it.

‘Activate the analogue osmosis dampener. I didn’t even know there was an analogue osmosis dampener. All these years and no one’s ever told me about the analogue osmosis dampener.’ The Doctor flicked through
The Continuum Code
and then returned it, unread, to Romana. ‘I knew there was a good reason it wasn’t working properly.’

‘Doctor, you’re never going to pass if you don’t make an effort,’ chided Romana. She knelt down beside K-9 and rubbed his ear sensors. ‘Isn’t that right, K-9?’

K-9 whirred and raised his head. ‘Affirmative mistress. Current likelihood of Doctor master achieving a sufficient score in basic time travel proficiency test estimated at zero point one per cent.’

‘Pah!’ The Doctor circled the console. ‘Some of us don’t need fancy certificates, you know.’

‘Doctor,’ said Romana delicately. His lack of academic achievements was a sore subject with him, and typically he was trying to bluster his way out of the argument. ‘Without your time travel proficiency, you’re not qualified to operate the TARDIS. If you hadn’t failed the test at the academy…’

‘I did not fail.’ The Doctor bristled. ‘I didn’t take it.’

‘You didn’t turn up for it, you mean.’

‘Why should I turn up, what’s the point? I mean, what’s the point in turning up for something…’ The Doctor spluttered for a sufficiently weighty word. ‘… Pointless.’

Romana took a slow breath. ‘You do realise your neurosis is the result of a deep-rooted inferiority complex, don’t you?’

‘Inferiority complex?’ The Doctor fixed her with a probing stare.
‘What
could I possibly have to feel inferior about? Me? K-9, have you ever heard anything so ridiculous?’

‘Affirmative, master,’ replied K-9. ‘You have frequently made statements with greater nonsensical content.’

‘And when I want your opinion I’ll ask for it.’ The Doctor glared at the robot dog.

‘Taking the test might help you come to terms with your past failure,’ suggested Romana. ‘You obviously regret your wasted years at the academy.’

‘I don’t regret anything. Never look back, Romana. You can’t change your own past. It’s in that book of yours, second law of time travel.’

‘I think you’ll find it’s the first law.’ Romana whispered into his ear. ‘Doctor, unless you pass this test I will have no choice but to insist that I drive.’

‘All right, all right.’ The Doctor straightened his coat and rounded on the console. ‘Test me again. Let’s see who’s the neurotic one around here.’ He aimed the last remark at K-9.

Romana smirked at the Doctor, and read aloud. ‘“Practical examination. When encountering causal instability, it may become necessary to relocate your time vehicle to a real-universe location of safety. It is important the ‘emergency materialisation’, as it is known, is performed as quickly and smoothly as possible.”’

‘Quickly and smoothly.’ The Doctor cleared his throat.

‘Right. When I slap the console, I want you to materialise the TARDIS. Ready?’

The Doctor hunched over the controls. Romana outstretched her palm and slapped the console hard.

In a flurry, the Doctor pulled levers and flipped switches, darting around the controls, his eyes raised towards the central column. He gently lowered the materialisation lever. The column revolved and sank and the familiar landing sounds trumpeted into life. The Doctor smoothed his brow and grinned.

A hideous grinding, like gears crunching out of alignment, filled the air. The lights dimmed and the floor lurched away from beneath
Romana’s
feet, sending her spinning into the walls. She gripped the edges of a roundel, bracing herself as the room began to judder wildly out of control.

The turbulence hurled K-9 across the floor and he crashed into the Doctor’s chair. The Doctor remained at the console, hands scrabbling across the controls.

Romana craned forward, her hair whipping across her face. ‘Doctor! Activate the analogue osmosis dampener!’

The Doctor looked back at her uncomprehendingly, the TARDIS instruments fizzling around him.

Romana couldn’t help thinking he was never going to pass at this rate.

The late summer sun dappled through the canopy, the beams cascading through the lazy spray of the waterfall. Nyanna felt the warm light play across her face, her delicate, transparent skin soaking in the vapour. The condensation rushed through her veins, refreshing and nourishing her, and her membranes rippled into a rich green. She inhaled the humid air and luxuriated in the stillness. It would be her last chance, for a while.

The stream splashed into the canyon through the tangle of fronds and root leaves. The entrance to the canyon was a gash in the moss-drenched rock and Nyanna hesitated at the sight. She had rehearsed this scene in countless dreams, even down to the twinkle of the water and the forest aroma. Each dream had been identical, culminating in her being swallowed by the darkness and rushing to consciousness pursued by an overwhelming dread. But now there was no escape. The moment she had tried to push to the back of her mind for so long had arrived.

She advanced into the canyon. The path milled downwards through the boulders and shadow-dwelling orchids, the walls on either side were wet with vines. The heat was unrelenting and the thick, coiling foliage obscured the sunlight.

The canyon twisted open and Nyanna emerged into baking sunlight. Far above her, the giant mothertrees yawned through the
clouds
, their thick stems stretching endless miles before blossoming into vast balconies on the edge of Arboreta’s stratosphere. And, beyond the mothertrees, the glimmering blue sphere that dominated half the sky. It consisted of one giant ocean and it was possible to distinguish the contours of crashing waves, the mist that would soon rain down on Arboreta, and even the shadows of the leviathans that flitted beneath the surface.

Nyanna savoured the vision. It was so beautiful that it was tinged with unreality. The view was so clear she could almost reach out and touch it.

‘Early, Nyanna. As always, early.’ The elder interrupted Nyanna’s thoughts. He was a short, bumbling figure, his neck fan curled up like a dried-out root leaf. His words creaked like branches in the breeze. ‘It seems a lifetime since last we met, and yet, not so long at all.’

‘Gallura? Is he born?’ asked Nyanna anxiously.

‘Gallura?’ the elder said, running the name over his lips. ‘Is not yet born. His egg remains, approaching the moment.’

‘How long?’

‘Hours. The birthsayers believe it will be within the day, within the day.’ He led Nyanna towards the distant mothertrees, following a well-worn path. ‘As always, early.’

The ceiling curved in from one side of the metal floor to the other. Boxes, computer parts and other junk were heaped against one wall, covered in a snowfall of grey dust. The other wall was filled by a bulkhead door. Oversized iron hooks were fixed along the length of the ceiling, rusty and covered in trailing cobwebs.

The blue police-box exterior of the TARDIS began to form in one corner. For a brief while it seemed to be slipping in and out of existence, the chipped wood panelling becoming first solid and then ethereal, until, with a final, resounding crump, the TARDIS materialised.

‘Obviously that wasn’t completely perfect,’ said the Doctor, wafting
his
floppy brown hat over the smoking console. The control room was in disarray; the hat stand had fallen over, the Doctor’s chair was upturned and K-9 was lying on his side, ears waggling.

Romana brushed down her claret-coloured velvet jacket. She felt as though her hearts and her stomach had changed places.

‘Not completely perfect?’

The Doctor blew on a smouldering control panel. ‘You may have noticed a slight bump at the end there.’ He coughed for several seconds.

‘Slight?’ Romana collected
The Continuum Code
from where it had flapped on to the ground, pocketed it, and lifted K-9 into an upright position. ‘How are you, K-9?’

‘All systems functioning normally,’ K-9 said. ‘Suggestion: in future, mistress should drive.’

The Doctor snorted, bashed the door control and the doors hummed open. He jammed his hat hard on to his head, the brim covering his eyes, and shrugged his oatmeal-coloured coat into place. ‘Right. That’s it. I’m going outside, I may be some time. Romana, you can come with me if you want. K-9, stay here.’

‘Master?’

‘We won’t be very long,’ said Romana, tidying her frilly cuffs. She tapped K-9 on the nose. ‘Humour him. Taking your basic time travel proficiency can be very stressful.’