Doctor Who_ Christmas on a Rational Planet - Lawrence Miles [0]
RATIONAL PLANET
Lawrence Miles
First published in Great Britain in 1996 by Doctor Who Books
an imprint of Virgin Publishing Ltd
332 Ladbroke Grove
London W10 5AH
Copyright © Lawrence Miles 1996
The right of Lawrence Miles to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
’Doctor Who’ series copyright © British Broadcasting Corporation 1996
Cover illustration by Mike Posen
ISBN 0 426 20476 X
Typeset by Galleon Typesetting, Ipswich
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Mackays of Chatham PLC
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Contents
A Prologue
PART ONE - STATE OF INDEPENDENCE
1 - Waifs and Strays
2 - A Fistful of Timelines
3 - Thought About Saving the World, Couldn’t Be Bothered
4 - Moment of Catastrophe
PART TWO - MADNESS, MADNESS, THEY CALL IT
MADNESS
5 - Directory Enquiries
6 - Non-Interventionist Policy (Yeah, Sure)
7 - The Edge of Distraction
8 - Various Gods Out of Assorted Machines
PART THREE - DAMAGED GODS
9 - Bogeywomen
10 - Obligatory Chapter Named After Pop Song
11 - Great Executions
12 - Infinity, Shut Up
An Epilogue: - One Way or Another, the World Will Be Saved
Dedicated to the usual suspects.
‘All great myths are inspired by the organic life-cycle. The hero’s quest to find his perfect mate, his struggle to build a better world for his children, his willingness to give up his life for the next generation... but Time Lords do not reproduce organically, and all their young are born from the gene-looms.
What other conclusion can we draw? Time Lords have no understanding of myths, no understanding at all. And they have very little time for fairy-tales.’
– Gustous Thripsted, Genetic Politics Beyond the Third Zone, appendix LXXVII
A Prologue
Necessary Secrets
There were two kinds of darkness. It was one of those things that children always forgot, the moment they were old enough and big enough to reach the light-switch.
The ordinary kind, the dull kind, came and went night-by-night; just a backcloth, big and black and wet, colouring in the sky and framing the city lights outside the bedroom window. It was the other kind you had to watch out for, the kind that lived at the back of the cupboard and in the mystical dimension behind the sofa, the kind that kept secrets, that swallowed lost toys and hinted at futures you could only ever half-understand.
True darkness. Monster darkness.
And when Roslyn Forrester looked up, that was the colour of the sky.
There was a sun, somewhere up there, but it was black, an impossible fluorescent black, turning the desert into a great bruise-coloured shadow that stretched all the way to the horizon and vanished over the edge of the world. Only under the rocks, where the sun couldn’t reach, was there any kind of illumination. Pools of sticky yellow light.
The world’s been turned inside out, she thought. Shadows where the light should be, light where the shadows should be.
Arizona. That was the last place – the last real place – she remembered. After the TARDIS had left Mars, the Doctor had started poking and prodding at the console, as if that’d make the machine go faster. There were things to do, he’d said.
‘Yemaya,’ he’d added.
‘What about it?’
‘Loose ends. After we paid our last respects to SLEEPY, Bernice asked if we should pop back and see how the whole thing started. SLEEPY ‘s progenitor had telekinetic powers.
He vanished just after you dropped in on him. All research records of the Dione-Kisumu Company spontaneously erased themselves