• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

"Business, it is none of yours!" cried the brute. "You know nothing of me!"

"I know Processes take Time," he called, "And that makes you a thief."

"The World, it is mine, I created it! Now. There will only be Now!"

"Oh well, if you only want Now, you're welcome to it." The Doctor let himself slide further down the filament until he reached another of Ace's knots. He left a smear of blood behind him. The cord was cutting savagely into his hands.

"You know what Now means, don't you?" he sneered. "For pitiful creatures like you, Now doesn't even reach to the end of your snout!" He allowed his venom a free rein. He had never loathed a creature more than this, or taken its struggle for survival in the Darwinian universe so personally. It was him or it. "In a frozen Now, Processes go nowhere! Now is a petty little world that gets smaller by the minute. It's where you belong, Process! I'll swap you Now for my TARDIS."

The Process swung its head from side to side. "The Doctor! Bring him down! No more disruptions. Everything is planned!"

The Doctor slid down the filament to the floor and squared up to his monstrous rival. He pointed up through the gantries with a bloody finger. "Then what is that?"

"An omen. It proclaims the new Now. The Process's new Now."

The Doctor blew a loud raspberry. "You're a has-been, Process. A no-hoper. You've been outmanoeuvred by someone older and wiser than you. That moon goes beyond your new Now."

He looked up. A fine red dust was falling through the clouds of steam. Metal screeched and clanked as the girder sections of the Tower pulled apart. The massive structure was opening like an iron flower to receive the descending moon.

"That is the new Beginning," cried the Doctor. "It was invoked by your future. The older Process you could have become, before you threw away that possibility. That Process is dead and now I shall step into its shoes and begin again.

"Professor," said an urgent voice at his shoulder. He turned and saw that Ace had somehow found a way down to join him.

"Not now, Ace. I have my ship to reconstruct."

"But Doctor, there's something I didn't tell you . . ."

There was a blood-freezing wail from the gantries above. The Banshee Circuit was howling at the moon.

A violent hiss came from the side of the well. Out of an opening slithered the battered shape of the older Process.

"My new Beginning," it croaked. "My new Now." It began to raise itself painfully on to one footmouth, but its body was torn and still oozing black blood.

"The Beginning, it is mine," called the younger Process. "You are dead! Your world has failed!"

"And the failure, you are part of it! This world, it shall be swept away in my new Beginning!"

The Doctor glanced up at the descending moon. It was close. The two Processes were hissing at each other like angry kettles. They could carry on like this until they boiled dry.

"The old regime is ended," he called to the younger monster.

It turned on him angrily. "The new regime of Now, I shall create it!"

"But then you'll become the old regime and there'll be another new young Process to overthrow you."

The older Process struggled closer to its younger self. "Trapped," it gloated. "My Beginning, it is the only way!"

The younger creature spat as it reared up. With a shriek, it fell upon the older Process. Its lamprey teeth, both mouths, fixed into the flanks of its victim.

Ace turned away, repulsed. She covered her ears against the terrible screams of the older creature.

"And these two want to be Gods," observed the Doctor.

"They're pitiful," interrupted a voice.

He shuddered. Vael was standing beside him.

"Look at the moon," thought Chesperl. "So cold, like a ghost."

Shadows shifted across the great surface.

Young Pekkary gripped Reogus's arm. "It's the Scaphe! We've found it!"

The flanks of the Tower were closing around the sinking globe like anchor gantries on the space docks of Gallifrey.

Vael cowered under the stare of the baleful light. "It is her eye!" he thought angrily.