Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Times Crucible - Marc Platt [107]
Chesperl sat up and turned to Ace. "We're sorry, Ace. After so long deprived of our own powers, we do understand how difficult it is to exist as a non-telepath."
"Thanks," said Ace. "I'll just think aloud so that you don't miss anything vital. If you all talk like that at home, Gallifrey must be the quietest dullsville in the universe."
"You must be joking," said Reogus. "It's just about the noisiest. There's not a minute's peace."
"We will find a way back now," said Amnoni. "The chain of Time is broken. But we need the Pilot."
"The guards have taken him," said Captain Pekkary.
The older Pekkary was touching his own cheek with his fingers, running them along the gully of the scar. "And we must find him before . . ."
"Before there's no more Shonnzi at all," said Ace. "I get the picture. They'll have taken him to the Tower, and I bet that's where the Doctor is headed too."
"A bet?" said Reogus. "How much?"
There was a grinding crash from the stream. Mercury fountained up and the air flared and crackled with static. The two banks of the Cities were grinding together, sending tremors across the Time and Space.
Through the tumult they heard the cracked whisper of the Process. "The world, it is being renewed! Escape, there is none!"
The Guard Captain, the third of the Pekkarys, stood between the Phazels and the City. Its guards chittered as they closed in, whips uncurled, blocking all chance of escape.
Chesperl pulled Reogus back before he could even start to retaliate.
"Where's my guard?" he said, suddenly too afraid to think.
"There's no Shonnzi either," said the oldest Pekkary.
Ace stared at the five guards. Four of them were tall, the doomed futures of the Phazels. But the fifth was shorter. It moved slowly in, its whip raised, the repulsive eyes squirming on its enforced helmet like the Medusa's hair.
Ace shank away from it. In the original guards, this was the creature that had carried her to the Watch Tower. But those guards were dead now. This group of guards was the second group of Phazels. They were in her future too.
Why had she assumed she was exempt? Her future was all tied up. She was as much a victim of Time's tyranny in this world as the rest of them. She was trapped on the same sinking boat, drowning in a flood of mercury and black blood.
Somehow, sometime, she would be caught and recruited as well. Forced back into her own past to enslave and torment herself. And finally she would die, useless and wasted, fodder for the Process's insatiable hunger. The vileness of it ached in her every bone.
She turned away, wanting to scream. The oldest Pekkary caught her in his thin arms. "It can be changed," he whispered. "The possibilities are infinite from every second."
Ace could not speak.
"The Phazels," croaked the leech's voice through its Captain. "Bring them to the Watch Tower."
"No," called the youngest Pekkary. "We have a different future now. We are a crew again."
Silent glances between the Phazels confirmed their alliance.
"We reject you as our future," they chorused aloud.
The oldest Pekkary called a warning as his youngest self stepped defiantly forward.
"Obedience," stated the Guard Captain. "You are all summoned as guards."
The ground shuddered as the colliding Time Phases tore against each other. Ace saw her guard raise its scorpion whip. She yelled in horror.
The tongue cracked across young Pekkary's face. He screamed and fell forward. Blood was running down his cheek.
The oldest Captain clutched at the wound on his own face.
The other Phazels clustered around their wounded leader. As they pulled him up, Ace saw that his eye was torn. She launched herself with a scream towards the monstrous guard that she was doomed to become.
The old Captain pulled her back.
"But I have to," she yelled. "I have to stop it!"
"Not yet," he whispered.
Again the remorseless voice of the Process croaked through the throat of its instrument, the Guard Captain. "Escape, there is none! The Future, it is already planned. It cannot be changed!"
27: An Eye for