Doctor Who: Festival of Death: 50th Anniversary Edition (8 page)

‘Us?’ said Romana.

‘Oh, you must remember how you did that,’ said Evadne. ‘In the necroport. You, the Doctor –’

‘Stop!’ The Doctor bellowed, slamming his hands over his ears. ‘Shush! Don’t tell us! I don’t want to know!’

Evadne gaped at the Doctor, confusion writ large over her face. ‘Eh?’

Romana took her patiently to one side. ‘As far as we’re concerned, we haven’t saved the G-Lock yet. So you can’t tell us how we did it, because then we would have foreknowledge we shouldn’t have. If we knew what our futures would be, we might behave differently, and things might not end up happening in the way that you say they have happened. Understand?’

‘But you’ve done it, it’s happened.’

‘Not for us it hasn’t. We mustn’t know too much about our future actions. It would create all sorts of dangerous paradoxes,’ said Romana.

‘And it would spoil all the fun of finding out,’ added the Doctor.

‘Quite,’ seconded Romana, before she realised what the Doctor had said. ‘Aside from that, it could cause serious disruption to the time stream.’

‘Hang on,’ began Evadne. ‘It’s happened, so it doesn’t matter what I say now, because you’re going to succeed anyway. Am I right?’

‘Unfortunately time doesn’t work like that,’ said Romana. ‘Because we’re Time Lords, we’re not bound by history. We have the ability to change our pasts.’

‘But a responsibility not to,’ said the Doctor.

Evadne blinked in concentration. ‘But how do you know that I’m not supposed to tell you stuff? Me not telling you might mess up this time stream thing too.’

The Doctor and Romana looked at each other. ‘Just take our word for it,’ suggested Romana.

Evadne sniffed. ‘All right. I don’t understand, but I’ll keep quiet.
Say
no more.’ Her face brightened. ‘I’m just relieved to see the Doctor alive and well again, anyway.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Romana, and immediately wished she hadn’t.

Evadne turned to the Doctor. ‘The last time I saw you, you were dead. You sacrificed your life to save the G-Lock.’

Dunkal handed over two sheets of paper: Metcalf’s witness statement, plus a copy. Metcalf gave each a flamboyant signature. ‘I trust that everything is to your satisfaction?’

Dunkal jangled the change in his pockets. ‘Pending further investigation, it seems we have no choice but to consider the Doctor and Romana guilty as charged.’

Rige collected the statements. ‘Guilty.’

‘Most satisfactory.’ Metcalf’s desk intercom buzzed. He pressed the reply button. ‘Yes, Executive Metcalf speaking?’

‘Sir, this is the prison guard. You know those two you had brought down here?’

The two Investigators listened with interest. ‘The saboteurs. Yes?’ answered Metcalf.

‘It is my unfortunate duty, sir, to inform you that they have escaped.’

‘Escaped?’ Metcalf could hear himself going high-pitched. ‘Escaped? You let them escape – again?’

‘It wasn’t my fault, sir. I was overpowered by a third party and rendered insensible.’

‘I do not believe I am hearing this. Insensible? I doubt you were ever sensible to begin with,’ said Metcalf. ‘What is your name, guard?’

‘Dudley, sir.’

‘I see. In the face of overwhelming incompetence, you give me no choice but to fire you, Dudley. Please collect your belongings and leave.’ Metcalf switched off the intercom and swirled in his chair to face the Investigators. He drummed on the desk. ‘As you heard, it transpires our two convicts are once more on the loose. Wreaking havoc, no doubt.’

Dunkal pressed his cigarette into the ashtray. ‘You want us to apprehend them again?’

‘I most definitely do,’ said Metcalf. ‘Dead or alive. I shall leave which to your investigatorial discretion. In execution of your duties, so to speak.’

Rige unpacked his rifle and levered off the safety catch. ‘Best news I’ve heard all day.’

‘Here we go again.’ Dunkal straightened his peaked cap, and followed Rige out of the office. As they left, Metcalf flicked on the public address system.

‘G-Lock. This is Executive Metcalf speaking. I regret to announce that once again the terrorist known as the Doctor is on the rampage, accompanied by his co-conspirator Romana. Will all skullguards immediately attend to their recapture, dead or alive.’

‘Although they are both highly dangerous, and have caused the recent disaster resulting in mass murder, there is no cause for public disquiet. Thank you.’

Romana listened with growing trepidation as the loudspeaker crackled off. The Doctor was still deep in thought. Since Evadne’s announcement, he had barely said a word. His face was drawn, his eyeballs even more prominent than usual. ‘I hope I don’t die too soon,’ he muttered, laughing humourlessly. ‘I should be most upset.’

‘Doctor,’ said Romana gently. ‘We can’t be sure that Evadne’s telling the truth. She might be mistaken. After all, she has obviously experienced considerable psychological trauma.’

The Doctor cheered up. ‘You’re right, of course, Romana. Best to just get on with it, mmm? “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow –”’

Before the Doctor could finish, Evadne dashed back from the end of the corridor where she had been keeping watch. ‘They’re coming this way.’

‘Who?’

‘Skullguards.’ Evadne ushered them over to a doorway. The door
swung
open to reveal complete darkness. ‘Double-quick. Through here.’

K-9 was the first to enter, wobbling over the clutter of wreckage. Watching the robot dog cautiously, Evadne disappeared after him.

There was the clatter of approaching bootsteps.

‘Skullguards.’ The Doctor rubbed his nose, and then dramatically dived through the door. Romana caught a fleeting glimpse of four black-robed guards rounding the corner, before she leapt through the entrance and tugged the door shut after her.

The bootsteps neared the door, paused, and stomped away. Romana let out a relieved sigh. There was the overpowering smell of burnt metal; she was reminded of a disused refinery, or the inside of an oven.

The Doctor switched on his torch. They had entered an immense cathedral-like chamber, its pillars bridging together to form arches across the high ceiling. The sloping walls were coated in soot, and the masonry had crumbled in places to reveal the ship’s skeleton of girders. Rubble from the collapsed ceiling covered the ground, forming mountains of smashed slabs and scorched metal. The opening they had used was merely a concealed side entrance – two huge iron doors dominated one end of the hall.

‘Here we are. This is the Great Hall,’ announced Evadne, her voice echoing in the silence. ‘Or least, it used to be.’

The torch light flitted along the walls. On one side, the hall was overlooked by a gallery of windows. The glass had shattered and, as the shadows lengthened and shortened in the moving light, the windows resembled empty eye sockets.

Hundreds of open, metal caskets filled every available space on the lower walls. They were decked in three levels, each set slightly further back into the wall than the one below, each casket standing upright and accessed by a narrow walkway. More caskets spilled out on to the floor, arranged in rows and aisles. Each one was the size of a coffin, with enough space to allow the occupant to lie, or stand, within. Romana was reassured to see that they were all unoccupied.

The Doctor flashed the light over to the doorway, where K-9 remained.

‘K-9, stay there,’ said the Doctor. ‘Keep guard. Set your nose on stun.’

K-9 whirred his assent and, as he rotated to face the door, the Doctor, Romana and Evadne advanced deeper into the hall.

The Doctor’s torch drifted its attention back to a nearby coffin. As with all the others, there was a crown of wire at its end, at the indentation where the head would rest. A lead connected the crown to a small bank of circuits, toasted beyond recognition. These were then connected to heavy cables, which coupled together, looped along the walls and formed a locus at the centre of the hall.

‘What happened here? I mean, what used to go on here in the Great Hall?’ asked the Doctor.

‘The Beautiful Death. This is where it takes place. Took place,’ said Evadne.

‘The Beautiful Death. Ah.’ The Doctor pulled a suitably gothic expression.

‘You must remember, you said this is where the tourists were –’

‘We keep telling you, we don’t remember,’ interrupted Romana. ‘Because none of this has happened to us yet. Please, it is very important you answer only our specific questions.’

‘Sorry,’ Evadne said. ‘I keep forgetting. Say no more.’

‘And what is this?’ The Doctor shone his torch on the object in the centre of the hall.

‘That?’ said Evadne. ‘Oh, that’s the necroport.’

The necroport jutted out of the floor, a small, approximately conical structure about the same size as the TARDIS. It had been severely damaged, the surface buckled out of shape, the smoke stains partially obscuring paintings of skull-headed angels. The machine, ensconced in hydraulic ducting and power linkages, seemed to be merely the upper section of a much larger device buried beneath the floor. A bolt-ringed hatchway was set into an alcove on one side of the device.

‘The necroport,’ the Doctor said to himself. He reached for the
hatchway
and heaved. It clanged open. He peered down into the necroport. ‘Shall we?’

Evadne seemed apprehensive, and opened her mouth as if to warn them, but thought better of it.

‘Do you think it’s safe?’ Romana joined the Doctor. Inside the necroport a ladder descended to the level below.

‘Probably not, no.’

‘What about the collapsing hyperspace tunnel?’ said Romana. ‘You wanted to find the interface, remember?’

‘You’re right,’ said the Doctor. ‘It’s just… well, I’d quite like to see what it is I’m supposed to have sabotaged, that’s all.’

‘Romana, I don’t know if this helps,’ said Evadne tentatively. ‘But… well, you told me to bring you here. Before you were locked up, I mean. You said it was very important that you were taken to the necroport.’

‘Did she?’ said the Doctor. ‘Well, I always take Romana’s advice. When I agree with it.’ He climbed into the necroport, and swung his way down the ladder.

The cramped chamber had been consumed by fire. The concave metal walls had warped under the force of a great explosion. Every footstep crunched into a thick layer of ash.

The Doctor’s torch picked out an adjoining room, but the way to it was blocked by rubble. It appeared that much of the Great Hall above had caved in, destroying the room’s contents. Tracing the stress points, the Doctor calculated that the explosion had been concentrated within this second room.

Two more crunches announced that Romana and Evadne had entered the chamber behind him. The Doctor turned and noticed three coffins arranged against one wall. Again, the caskets were wired into the innards of the necroport. But this time, the coffins were occupied.

Romana and Evadne gasped in horror. The middle and right-hand coffins contained two blackened, charred corpses. The bodies had once been humanoid, if not human, but were now
unrecognisable
. Their clothes and the skin had been stripped away, leaving skeletal blocks of charcoal.

Even the Doctor was shocked by the occupant of the third coffin. This body was in a similar state to the others, but its ribcage was rising and falling. It was still alive.

The corpse’s eyes snapped open, and drank in the Doctor, Romana and Evadne. The creature was humanoid, but had strange, frond-like rills around its neck. The Doctor couldn’t identify the species, but it appeared to be vegetable in constitution.

‘Gallura’s still alive. I do not believe it,’ said Evadne hoarsely.

Gallura raised his head. ‘Doctor. At last.’

‘It is happening,’ said the birthsayer. ‘The birth of Gallura is now.’

The birthsayers clustered around the carpel. There was a rasp of tearing fibre and the tube cleaved in two. With a final palpitation, the skin of the womb burst open and amniotic fluids gushed out into the sternum chamber. Encased in its glistening sac, the baby slowly slipped out of the mothertree’s stem and emerged into the proud embrace of the elders.

‘You know who I am?’

‘Of old, Doctor, of old,’ said Gallura. Every word seemed to be wrenched out of him, each exhalation a dying breath. ‘Listen. I can sense the approaching moment. I must ask something of you.’

The Doctor shifted closer. ‘What is it?’

‘Go back, Doctor. You know your future is in your past. Go back in time and avenge my death.’

Evadne and Romana watched the Doctor. He appeared to be half-fascinated and half-horrified by the sight before him.

‘Promise me you will go back,’ said Gallura. ‘Avenge the extinction of the Arboretans.’

‘I promise,’ said the Doctor. ‘I have no choice.’

‘You have a choice,’ croaked Gallura. ‘There always is a choice.’

‘Then I choose to go back. You have my word,’ whispered the Doctor.

Gallura looked at the Doctor for what seemed a very long time. Then his head dropped back, and his eyelids rolled shut. The remaining air wheezed out of his lungs.

The Doctor faced Romana. He looked confused, afraid. ‘He’s dead,’ the Doctor stated.

The oldest birthsayer lifted the newborn clear of the folded remains of the birth sac. Supporting its head, she wiped away the fluids from its semitransparent skin, and wrapped it in a nutrient tuber.

She presented the baby to Nyanna, who cradled it to her chest. The baby’s eyes were bright and inquisitive, and a delicate lattice of veins bulged from its forehead, flushed with fresh, green blood.

‘Gallura is born,’ said the birthsayer proudly.

‘Well. That’s that, then,’ said the Doctor.

‘I still can’t get my head round it. He managed to survive, in here.’ Evadne took one final glance at the three charred corpses.

Romana followed Evadne to the ladder. ‘Where to now, Doctor?’ The Doctor raised one hand. ‘Evadne. Do you know the way to Corridor 79?’

‘Oh yeah,’ said Evadne. ‘It’s on one of the lower levels, not far.’

‘Right. First we collect K-9, and then we’ll go and see this hyperspatial interface. And then…’