Doctor Who: The Mark of the Rani (12 page)

‘Hurry! Behind here!’ The Doctor indicated a laurel bush.

The Rani had a simpler solution. ‘They’re easily disposed of.’ She extracted the mini-computer from her pouch.

‘Give me that!’ The Doctor wrested the mini-computer from her.

‘If they see you, they’ll have no mercy!’ The Rani’s comment was justified. The aggressors would certainly slaughter the Doctor given the opportunity.

‘Maybe not.’ He threw the mini-computer to the ground and stamped on it.

‘Doctor, they’re heading for the Dell!’

Peri’s consternation was not echoed by the Master.

‘Redfern Dell’s about to become populated with new trees... ’

Another dilemma, one of morality,’ scoffed the Rani.

‘And we all know the Doctor’s dedication to morality.’

The Master could see the pendulum was swinging in their favour.

Untypically, the Doctor prevaricated; risk six lives, or risk genocide? An eternal problem and split seconds to resolve it.

‘You have to stop them!’ Peri took the TCE. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t have any qualms about using this!’ No idle boast. In the past she had demonstrated that she was an expert marksman. ‘Get going, Doctor!’

‘All right. Take these two to the old mine working.

Along this path. Wait for me there.’

‘You’ve got it. Now hurry!’

Pausing only to whisper something to Peri then, seemingly in his haste, colliding with the Master, the Doctor raced off.

‘Okay,’ ordered Peri. ‘You heard him. March!’

With surly reluctance, the Rani led the way. Bringing up the rear, Pcri’s arm was completely steady. ‘And don’t try anything! Either of you!’

Peri, to use her colloquialism, was in the driving seat.

The same, however, could not be said of the Doctor.

As he sped down from the ridge, he saw that the leading aggressor, Tim Bass, was about to barge into the clearing.

‘
Stop!
’ The Doctor’s bellow arrested them.

Bass spun about. So did the rest of the gang.

At the sight of the detested inventor, they gave chase.

Blundering through ferns, crunching on the thick carpet of fallen leaves, the Doctor decoyed them, helter-skelter, away from the Dell.

At least, that was the intention.

The mob split; a pincer movement that outflanked him.

Ile floundered every which way. Jeering, they made sport of him. All of them had had experience as beaters; putting up pheasant for the gentry. Now they had themselves a sitting duck!

In desperation, the Doctor appealed to reason.

Explained how he had rescued them.

They didn’t contradict him.

They didn’t listen. Relentlessly, the burly, hyped-up hunters closed in...

17

The trio reached the old mine working without mishap, but the uninviting darkness deterred Peri.

‘That’s far enough!’ They halted. ‘Now don’t move!

Either of you!’

Peri’s caution was not unwarranted: deviousness was the Master’s forté. ‘I believe an apology is in order, Miss Peri,’ he said. ‘I meant you no harm. My quarrel’s with the Doctor, not you.’

Peri wasn’t having that. ‘What about Luke?’

‘Luke?’

‘Did you mean him no harm!’

‘That was
her
idea. Not mine.’ Loyalty, for the Master, was a trivial concept.

‘Stop grovelling! No-one’s going to believe you’ve got a conscience,’ commented the Rani.

‘You can hear what she’s like.’ In apparent agitation, the Master fidgeted with his collar. ‘It was her doing, Miss Peri. I didn’t even know what she’d planned.’ His gloved fingers sought the ribbon around his neck, from which a medallion was suspended.

Suspended by his tethered hands and feet, the Doctor had replaced the sheep’s carcase on the pole!

His mission was a failure in every respect. To the accompaniment of victorious acclamations, his bearers were swaggering, once more, for the Dell.

‘You must listen! Please! You’re making a terrible mistake! I’m not your enemy!’

‘Hear that, lads? Mister inventor says us’re making mistake!’ That was Tim Bass’s reaction from the rear of the column.

Snorts of laughter greeted the remark. The shoulders of the two men hefting the pole rose and sank as they guffawed, making the Doctor’s sagging frame swing even more painfully.

The medallion, too, was swinging.

‘Put that away!’ Peri jabbed the TCE menacingly. ‘If you value your miserable life you’ll do as I say!’

Crestfallen, the Master complied.

‘The Doctor said you’d try to hypnotise me.’

An apoplexy of laughter convulsed the Rani. ‘So that’s what he whispered before he left!’ The laughter changed to coughing. She tried to speak, but the spasm was unremitting. Blindly she fumbled for her pouch.

‘Keep your hands where I can see them!’ Peri wasn’t standing any nonsense. She’d heard about the Master’s powers, but the Rani’s bag of tricks was unknown territory.

‘Only – getting – a – tablet.’ Wheezes interrupted her explanation. ‘A – nervous – affliction. Won’t – stop –

without – a – tablet.’

‘She’ll have a seizure.’ The Master feigned concern. ‘I’ve seen it happen before.’ His solicitude appeared genuine.

Another hacking paroxysm.

‘Oh, for pity’s sake get the tablet. But carefully. No tricks!’

About to select a capsule, the Rani spluttered again, upsetting the pill box.

Bending as if to collect them, she used the distraction to break a capsule – which she flicked into Peri’s face!

Sparkling, iridescent particles were ejected, lac-quering her skin so she glowed like a pagan effigy.

Nauseated, swooning, Peri crumpled...

‘I beg you! Don’t go any further!’

Impervious to the Doctor’s pleas, the column of bellicose aggressors stormed on.

‘Turn back! You’re walking into a trap!’

In a thunderous applause of wings, a flock of startled crows flapped skywards as the pole carriers invaded Redfern Dell.

‘Stop! Listen to me!’

The leading carrier stomped, confidently, onto a disc!

An explosion of bark-like flakes engulfed the bulky miner in a brown blizzard.

The impact was so abrupt, it jerked the second carrier onto an adjacent disc. A similar fountain of brown flakes mushroomed.

Stunned, the surviving aggressors stared in disbelief at the double transmutation. Where their friends had been there stood two sturdy trees.

Aghast, in disarray, they fled, leaving the Doctor.

But leaving him where?

Still hanging like a sheep’s carcase. Only now he was suspended between the two ’trees’.

He took stock of the situation. The pole seemed none too secure. Gently, he twisted to look below. Luck was not with him. Underneath, exposed by the upheaval, was a disc. Any miscalculation and the Doctor’s own wooden memorial would be added to the Dell’s macabre collection.

He tried freeing his ankles – one end of the pole became dislodged. ‘Aaaaaah!’

It fetched upon a protruding branch.

His ill luck had not changed... the sloping pole had positioned him directly above the disc. What’s more, he was now at an inclining angle, his head lower than his feet!

‘Stay calm. Stay calm. It’s only a matter of balance.’

Slowly he began sliding his bound ankles towards his bound wrists. Physical dexterity was not his greatest attribute in this present regeneration.

A creak from the near end of the pole. He gulped.

Another slip. His coat tails swept the grass.

Tensing his stomach muscles, he tackled the knot. The fumbling made the pole slip again, bringing his head to within a couple of centimetres of the waiting disc.

Fear speckled his brow with perspiration as he managed to loosen the knot. Gingerly, his soles touched the ground.

Keeping close to the ‘tree’ and away from the disc, he eased his wrists over the end of the pole and untied them.

But his ordeal was not finished. Still marooned, he had to find safe passage through the Rani’s minefield.

Unlike Peri earlier, he had no guide. Another lecture to himself. ‘There’s got to be an answer. Positive thinking’s what’s needed. Regard it as a sort of board game.’

Unfortunately, the penalty for making the wrong move would be grimly final!

Absently, he delved into his cornucopian pockets, and came up empty. Bleakly he contemplated the clearing. Peri would not be able to hold the fort in-definitely. For all her courage – and she was a remark-ably brave young woman –

she would not be able to cope with the evil pair much longer. ‘And then... and then...’ The gruesome prospect acted as a spur. ‘What I need is a magic wand.’ Wand? His infinite talent for improvisation came to the rescue.

Grasping the pole, he extended it in front of him.

Whacking and scouring the terrain ahead, he advanced across the Dell...

The Rani and the Master were also advancing... along the murky tunnels of the old mine towards her TARDIS.

‘Wait!’ The Master rejected defeat. ‘I refuse to run away and let that crack-brained freak win again!’

‘Then stay. But without me!’

This did not suit him either. ‘Have you no pride?’

‘Pride? I’m a scientist. I’ve calculated the odds, and they, not idiotic pride, dictate my actions.’

‘You intellectual microbe! Slave to a computer!’ Hardly the dialogue for mutual co-operation! ‘He’ll be back! He won’t desert the girl!’

The Rani was unyielding. ‘You’ll never learn! Give me my phial.’

‘When I’m ready. Not before!’ Confidently, he patted his breast pocket.

But for the gloom, the Rani might have registered his fleeting expression of perplexity.

‘Peri?’ The call curtailed the argument. The Master’s assessment had been justified.

Having negotiated the discs, the Doctor’s speed would not have disgraced an Olympic champion. His unguarded call, which had been heard by the Master and the Rani, was prompted by Peri’s inert, apparently lifeless form.

‘Peri!’

She stirred and focused, with relief, on the Doctor’s kindly face. ‘The Rani... tablets... my fault...‘

‘Never mind that now. Are you all right?’

‘Yes. Yes. I’m fine –’

‘Sssh. Hear that?’ The scrunch of shale from deeper in the mine. ‘The Master’s decided to stand and fight! Why couldn’t he just have left!’

If this statement was incomprehensible to Peri, the next did little to enlighten her.

‘I must get those two into the TARDIS.’

TARDIS? Which TARDIS? Peri, who had been stranded in the bath house when the wardrobe dematerialised, felt her temper rising. Must he always talk in riddles!

‘Any chance of an explanation?’

‘Later.’

‘Later! That’s all I ever get! Later!’

The Doctor rattled a pit prop. Firm. He shook another.

The same result. The loose prop he had bumped into must be further in... where the Master with his TCE lay in ambush.

An all too accurate prediction.

The Master squinted at a bend round which he expected his protagonist to appear. ‘Now you see why I didn’t kill the girl,’ he said to the Rani.

Suddenly, the Doctor flitted across the tunnel, offering himself as a target. The Master fired. Missed. Hit a pit prop

– exactly as the Doctor had intended.

The prop glowed red... disintegrated.

A slight trickle of dust from the roof... A faint rumble...

Then, eerie silence... The Doctor wondered if the stratagem had failed.

An almost imperceptible grinding groan... increasing in volume to an ominous rumbling. Grabbing Peri, the Doctor scarpered for the exit.

The Rani and the Master fled further into the mine towards her TARDIS.

Another lull brought the false promise of respite.

Convinced the storm would still break, neither of them slowed.

They were not wrong.

A sibilant rustling preceded the onrush of fissures that crazed every surface. The cracks streaked ahead of them in a banshee discord of rupturing stone.

Groping, stung and scratched by slivers of rock, they stumbled blindly on through the mounting cataclysm.

Large chunks of debris pelted them as the roof cleaved apart. Then the inferno took on a new dimension; a torrent of sludge oozed in through the rift, swamping them.

Squelching in the rising goo, the quaking Rani thrust the key into the lock of the grey wardrobe.

Indifferent to the Master’s plight, she squeezed in the door, not even wanting to offer him the asylum of her TARDIS.

But his instinct for survival was invincible. Before the door could shut, he scraped in.

Refusing to be denied, boulders bombarded the outer shell of the time-machine. Inside, with frenzied discipline, the Rani began the dematerialisation drill at the console.

‘Quickly! Quickly! You’ll destroy us both!’ The Master’s accusation enraged her.

‘
I
will! You blame
me
?’ shrieked the Rani.

Panicking, he leant across the console to operate the controls himself.

Whack!

A mighty wallop sent him reeling!

Winded, he was unable to retaliate as, outside, an ear-splitting tremor released a crushing avalanche. This exterior cauldron of violence was matched by an interior cauldron of seething emotion: acerbic recrimination consumed the dissident pair.

The Rani completed the dematerialisation cedure. All they could do now was be patient.

‘You wouldn’t be told!’ Her shrill voice lacerated him.

He alone was the reason they were in this predicament!

She would never have delayed for the Doctor’s return! She would also have anticipated his cunning and not been suicidally tricked into firing the TCE! When she’d said that the Doctor always outwitted the Master, she was not just goading, she meant it!

A sonic murmur provided respite. The

dematerialisation commenced. Above the console panel the silver rings corkscrewed into their intricate intertwining.

Relief brought temporary amnesty.

‘Set the co-ordinates for the mine owner’s office,’ urged the Master.