• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

"Thank you, uncle," said Pekkary.

He wore the official uniform of one who has been honoured. The weal of a cruel scar across his face was not hidden. He looked older than his years. One eye was a blank orb. He sat down in Lord Dowtroyal's proffered chair.

Rassilon handed Pekkary a glass of tea. "We have all read your report," he said. "Extraordinary. I should have guessed that the Pythia would have an agent on board as well."

They talked long through the evening, going over Pekkary's report in detail. When food came, Pekkary ate little. He had developed an addiction for plain dry biscuits and found most other food unpalatable.

Time and again, he returned excitedly to the subject of the ship that was infinitely variable in form, and smaller on the outside than in. His eyes grew wilder.

"And it was from Gallifrey. From the stolen future. So, you see, the Time experiments will work. One day we shall travel in ships like that."

Dowtroyal burst into sudden laughter. "And this other pilot, this Doctor, he sounds a strange fellow, whatever his powers."

The other stared coldly from his chair. "Is that how we shall be in the future? Strange and small?" He caught Rassilon's wounded reaction and added quickly, "Present company excepted, of course."

"I should have spoken to the Doctor further," insisted Pekkary. "I would have done in the future. But his ship was still a marvel. It travelled by artron power, not by its crew's will."

Rassilon smiled indulgently. "We have seen through a window. It is a possibility we must take into consideration."

Pekkary was almost fanatical. "But there's work to do. We've already started. One day we'll be the Lords of Time!"

"There are far graver matters pressing," said Rassilon. "The Time programme is suspended until further notice."

"But . . . uncle."

Rassilon's eye's blazed. "We can't pour treazants into a bottomless vortex, not when our people face extinction through a witch's curse! The Time programme is suspended!"

He turned away, shaking.

Pekkary came to attention. "My nurse is waiting," he said flatly. "Thank you. The hospital is very comfortable." He bowed and walked to the door, but a hand touched his shoulder.

"Go and see Omega at the science faculty," said the other. "I'll arrange it. He'll be interested in what you have to say."

Pekkary left silently. After a moment, Dowtroyal made his excuses and departed for another funeral.

"That was cruel," said Rassilon.

"But necessary," said the other. "Poor unhappy fellow."

Rassilon glared up at him. "Don't you have a family? Don't you care about the future?"

"Your future . . . or mine?" He smiled grimly, his every movement radiated dark and calculated power. "Isn't the present enough to be going on with?" He picked up the onion kernel. "An amusing toy. It can go on for ever. Always another mystery inside the first."

Rassilon snatched up two of the half-shells. "Bigger on the inside. But if you invert the process, the original fits neatly inside the second and so on and on. Like so." He completed the trick.

"That's not what I meant."

"But I'm right, aren't I?" said Rassilon. He turned for confirmation, but the other, as usual, was nowhere to be seen.

Quartinian continues:

There are many conflicting accounts of Rassilon's rise. In one sense, Gallifrey without the Pythia was a far from barren world. Great advances are often born in moments of direst need. As a new Ice Age set in, Rassilon faced the imminent extinction of the Gallifreyan race. Colony worlds throughout the Empire were demanding their independence. Sanctions and wars threatened to dissolve the Empire completely.

New solutions had to be implemented drastically fast. Out of this turmoil grew the sapling of the new order. The need to survive created the concept of rationalized families, born through their own genetic looms, that would stabilize the decimated population. Thus were founded the Great Houses of Gallifrey that we know today.

New laws and trade pacts were created. Later came the triumphs of regeneration and, at last, Time Travel.