Doctor Who - Nuclear Time (16 page)

Geoff stepped forward. 'Well, well, well, what have we here?' He rubbed his palms. 'My stress reliever has arrived.'

But rather than looking scared, the Doctor merely dismissed the statement with a wave of his hand. 'Yes yes yes. Can somebody please tell me the exact time?'

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Geoff stopped and stared at him.

'Sorry, sorry, introductions - I'm the Doctor, health and safety something something. And you are?'

'Colonel Geoffrey Redvers - project leader.'

The Doctor looked decidedly unimpressed. 'Good stuff. And you.' He turned his attention to the scientist. 'I've met you before although you haven't met
me
yet.'

'Dr Albert Gilroy.'

'I know, now - time anyone? Before you interrogate

me?

Please?'

He

looked

around

desperately. The nervous sergeant next to him checked his watch.

'Two twenty-five,' he said.

The Doctor grinned. 'Twenty minutes, good.

Nothing's set in stone yet.' He looked at Albert and Geoff. 'We -' he waggled a finger between the three of them - 'have some things to sort out.'

'No,' said Geoff.
'I
have some questions to ask you.'

'Really?' said the Doctor. 'Like how I know about you transporting your androids to the courtyard as we speak, despite having never entered the compound before? Like how I know that you're about to populate the village out there,' he gestured towards the tinted window, 'with killer robots that are programmed to think they

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NUCLEAR TIME

are human before you drop a nuke on them? Like how I know that there are fifty distinct models of androids, but some duplicates? Like how I know that two of them are made to act like a happily married couple called Mr and Mrs Sanderson?'

There was a shocked silence.

'Well, they're not
happily
married,' Albert interjected finally. 'That would be unrealistic. They just make do.'

Geoff set his jaw. 'How do you know all this?'

The Doctor straightened his bow tie and adopted the swagger of someone who was on top of the situation, in the hope that it would persuade the others that that was the case.

'This is going to be impossible for you to believe,' he said, 'but I am living backwards through time.'

A snort of derision echoed around the room.

'This is no laughing matter,' the Doctor scowled. 'And if you don't take me seriously you will all die.'

Geoff stopped laughing. 'Is that a threat?'

'No, it's not a threat; it's a
fact.
A series of events are about to unfold which will result in an almost one hundred per cent mortality count for you, Colonel.'

Albert was fascinated. He moved towards the prisoner and touched the sleeve of his jacket as if
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expecting it to explode. 'But how can you be living backwards through time?' he asked with an air of disbelief. 'You're responding to everything we say. If you know the future then you must surely know how this conversation is going to proceed. It's not possible.'

The Doctor sighed. 'Time is complicated, but its processes are based upon simple, fundamental rules —namely that the actions I perform in the future
must
have some cause in the past. But if I do something, or create a situation that
is impossible
to produce from the already determined set of events that have happened to you up until that point, then the time line shunts me into your past long enough for me to manipulate those causes so that such a situation
can
occur. If it's a small thing, then I only live forwards a few seconds, but bigger events need more interaction and so I have to reorient for longer to create the necessary chain of events.'

Albert looked around mockingly. 'But if that is the case and you
do
revert, then surely your backwards self must also be wandering around somewhere.'

'Good question!' the Doctor beamed. 'OK, I can see that what we need here are my props.' He pulled a piece of string from his pocket and laid it carefully on the map-table beside him. 'This here,
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NUCLEAR TIME

is time,' he said. 'You're experiencing things from left to right: cause and effect, cause and effect. I'm experiencing things from right to left: effect, cause, effect, cause.'

He produced a pair of scissors from his pocket with a flourish. 'If I change something here,' he jabbed at a spot on the piece of string and snipped it with his scissors, 'the string to the left of this cut no longer connects because the causes don't match the effects of the right-hand section. So what happens is this —we find the beginning of the necessary causes that need to be changed on the left —' Another jab and another snip — 'and I flip this middle bit of string over, because for this section of string I am travelling forwards through time. Like I am now.' He flipped the middle section of string and began tying it back onto the end pieces.

'If I do things correctly then this right-hand knot here should be a smooth transition that now all makes cause-and-effect sense, and all you chaps will see is that I walk and talk backwards from left to right up until the first knot, then suddenly I'll start talking normally for a while whilst I alter the future until, suddenly again, I begin talking backwards once more.

'A linear progression for you, but from my point of view I go backwards along the string until I hit
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the right-hand knot, then I jump to the left-hand knot and go from forwards for this middle section, until finally I jump
back
to the left-hand knot once more to continue

my

backwards, right-to-left journey,

thereby avoiding any overlap. Happy?'

'It's an interesting way of looking at things.' Albert scratched his stubble and thought carefully. 'But what if, during your forwards progression, the causes don't add up to the effects on the final strand?'

'Then the final strand ceases to exist altogether, a new piece of string is tied on instead and
that
becomes the new future. That's it in basic sort of terms. In reality, it's more of a ripple, running along the final piece of string and changing it into a different colour to signify a new future. Or a different texture... This analogy is confusing me now.' He grabbed the string from the table and quickly bundled it back into his pocket.

Albert sniffed and lost interest. 'OK, now I know you're insane. I just wanted to be certain. Geoff, he's yours. I'll leave you to it.' He moved towards the exit, but the Doctor grabbed him by the arm.

'What? But I thought you understood!'

'Like I said, it's a nice theory - but it's not exactly
practical,
is it? You're just showing off to try and buy some time.'

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NUCLEAR TIME

'Wait, wait. OK, fine, you got me.' The Doctor held up his hands and slipped the psychic paper out from his sleeve and into his palm. 'I'm actually from the Pentagon, access all areas, and I've been fully briefed on your mission, which is why I know everything.'

Geoff rubbed a palm over his eyes. 'This is getting silly now. First you said you were from Health and Safety, then you were travelling backwards through time, now you're a Pentagon official.'

'Ah.' The Doctor held up a finger. 'Actually I'm a Pentagon official who was working
undercover
as a Health and Safety officer. See?' he said. 'Um, just ignore the backwards-in-time bit; I knew that was never going to fly.' He thrust his pass in Geoff's face. 'Look!'

Geoff took the psychic paper gingerly and inspected it. 'Well, it appears to be genuine. Not that I believe it for one second after that little ramble.' He sighed. 'So if you
are
from the Pentagon, what are you doing here? It's not like you guys to get your hands dirty — especially with something as world-changing as this. I thought you'd all be cowering under your desks thinking up incredible alibis.'

The Doctor waggled his hands by way of explanation. 'I'm from the hands-on division.'

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He paused and scratched his chin. 'But you're right, it's all a bit... extrovert this operation, isn't it? Why the nuke in the middle of the desert, and why build the town?'

'I thought you were meant to know all about this project.' Albert's eyes narrowed as he shifted his weight from foot to foot, anxious to leave.

'I know
all about it. I just don't know
why.
That's bureaucracy for you.'

'The androids are practically indestructible,' Albert began. 'Their circuit boards and vulnerable joints are fused over once the model comes off the production line

- we can't risk anybody on the other side getting hold of one. Nuking them all in one go is in fact the
cheapest
option available. And you'll notice the theme of cheapness running through this whole explanation.'

The Doctor tutted. 'Yeah, tell me about it. State-run services, always the first to cut corners. I'm always telling my Pentagon buddies we should go private;

"soldiers of fortune" has a much better ring to it than

"the armed forces".'

'Er, yeah. So anyway, not only are the models too expensive to maintain in the current economic climate, they're also expensive to keep still - what with the EM

fields and whatnot. The village is a low-cost substitute, designed to make them think they're undercover long enough to nuke

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NUCLEAR TIME

them without us blowing up a small fortune in generators at the same time. Luckily we still had a few skeleton buildings lying around from the sixties.'

The Doctor fished around in his pockets for his sonic screwdriver, but thought better of whipping it out in a room full of armed guards. 'Did you not ever consider a focused sonic pulse to dismantle the androids? I found it pretty simple myself... in theory.' He coughed quickly.

Albert looked at him like he was from another planet. 'A focused sonic what?'

The Doctor laughed bitterly. 'Oh dear. Nineteen-eighties technology against futuristic robots. You had no chance did you? Didn't you two ever stop and think that you might be getting a little ahead of yourselves?'

His tone of voice hardened. 'Didn't you two ever stop and think that maybe, just maybe, creating something where the best way to destroy it was with a
nuclear bomb
might be a bad idea? This world hangs by a thread, nations poised to destroy each other within minutes, and you know what the only thing stopping that happening is? The fact that, until now, everything the other side has produced - vehicles, soldiers, buildings - could still be destroyed with conventional weapons. It's
always
been possible to inflict casualties on your

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enemy without ripping apart the planet. And that fact has saved the lives of millions.' He began to pace around the room, his body tense with rage, hands gesturing wildly at the vista that lay beyond the observation glass. 'But now, but
now...
you've managed to make the impossible. A weapon that can
only
be destroyed by a nuclear weapon, where the other side has
no choice
but to use them when your androids begin carving up their people.' He stopped stone dead in his tracks. 'You know this means war?'

'It means war either way, Doctor.' Geoff's eyes were cold and unfeeling. 'That's the point. If the androids live, their existence will be discovered by the other side; if they die, we'll have broken the Test Ban Treaty, a sign of aggression against the Russians. The government want to test the limits, to escalate the situation so that the other side is forced to admit that they won't push the button, no matter what.' He paused. 'By tomorrow, we'll either have won the Cold War, or we'll all be dead. That's it — no other options.'

'Not if we can stop the nuke.'

'The plane's in the air already, there's no going back.'

'Well radio them, call it off!'

Geoff shrugged. 'I don't have the authority. It's out of my hands.'

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NUCLEAR TIME

'Well I might still have a few tricks up my sleeve regarding that anyhow.' The Doctor looked around.

'The most pressing issue at the moment is making sure your soldiers—' He broke off suddenly.

'Where's Albert?'

The scientist had vanished. Geoff snapped a gaze at the soldiers by the door.

'He just left, sir. Said he didn't have time to sit around chatting. And that's his words, not mine, sir.'

The Doctor's face went pale. 'We have to get after him. It's him I need to stop.' He rushed to the door.

'Wait, where do you think you're going?' Geoff clicked his fingers and the Doctor found himself pinned against the door by the guards. 'I'm not letting you outside, Pentagon official or not. We can't risk a rogue element in the unloading.'

'We haven't got time for this, Colonel,' the Doctor snapped. 'Albert is about to do something that will lead to the massacre of your platoon
— he's
the rogue element you should be worrying about.'

'Have we switched back to your "I've seen the future" story now, then?'

The Doctor yanked his hands free. `Go with whatever story you like, but I have to go. Five minutes with Albert, that's all I need, then you can
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load me on a truck to the village and I'll be out of sight and mind.'

Geoff faltered at the sincerity in the stranger's voice.

'Albert wouldn't betray me.'

'He doesn't
know
he's going to betray you!'

'What's he going to do?'

The Doctor turned and looked Geoff in the eye before muttering one single, heartbreaking word. 'Isley.'

Geoff let out a yell, his suspicions confirmed. 'I knew it. I knew he couldn't keep his distance - the extra programs he wrote for her were nonsense. I told him time and time again he was putting us all at risk with that music player business.'

The Doctor raised his eyebrows.