Doctor Who_ Empire of Death - BBC Worldwide [7]
When questioned, he said the TARDIS was detecting a weakness in the continuum not far from our destination. Not far in terms of space or of time? I joined him at the vessel's control console, having become adept at interpreting the many displays and readouts. Both, the Doctor replied. Still, he thought it was nothing to worry about just yet. We could always come back and address it later. I found myself protesting against this attitude. All too often the Doctor was guilty of putting off until tomorrow what he should have done long ago. Tomorrow never comes in a time machine, I reminded him.
His reply was drowned out by the wailing of a louder and more urgent alarm, a mechanical cry for help. It was a collision warning. The Doctor tried to alter course while I monitored the approach of the other vessel. No matter how the Doctor tried to avoid the onrushing danger, the collision kept drawing closer. Finally the Doctor abandoned his efforts altogether and shouted for me to brace against the imminent impact.
Suddenly, everything stopped - the central column of the console ceased rising and falling, the various alarms and klaxons fell silent, the constant background humming that accompanies the TARDIS at all times was absent. In their place was an eerie silence and something else. The air was thick with a sickly sweet smell like the succulent flowers that grew in the grove on Traken, petals falling across the calcified remnants of long-dead evil. I used to tend a creature in that grove and always associate its presence with such scents, a stench that turns the stomach with its overpowering sweetness.
The Doctor asked if I was all right, to which I just nodded.
He couldn't tell me what had happened as the TARDIS
instruments were locked in place, frozen at the moment of impact. I pointed out this was impossible and he glumly agreed.
As for what happened next, I will attempt to give a more complete record, including all our spoken words as I remember then. I feel these will be important in the days to come. I saw the ghost first. It was standing in a corner of the control room, quite meek and unassuming, behind the Doctor's back. The phantom smiled at me and winked before clearing its throat. The Doctor looked at me for reassurance before slowly turning around to face the ghost. 'Hello, Adric.
We thought you were dead.'
‘I am,' the ghost replied matter-of-factly 'But you of all people should know that's just a beginning, Doctor - not the end.'
Dr Robert Kirkhope kept a secret locked tightly within his heart. On occasion, when the need arose, he was willing to kill babies. He gained no pleasure from this murderous activity. Indeed, he was resigned to the fact that it would condemn him to an eternal damnation in hell, suffering all the torments and horrors from which he tried to deliver unwilling mothers when they asked. The physician had long since stopped looking at his gaunt face in the mirror, lest his tired eyes bear witness to what he had done in the name of mercy.
It was many a winter since his shadow had darkened the doorstep of any church.
For twelve years Kirkhope had served the community of New Lanark, seeing to the medical needs of more than a thousand people housed in this remote village on the banks of the River Clyde. He did the best he could by those people with the medicines and knowledge he had available. He nursed people through sickness, helped new children be born into the community and tended to the dying. It was a terrible burden to know you would soon be standing over the graveside of someone you know and have to share that knowledge with them, to pass sentence like some remorseless magistrate.
But that was nothing compared to killing a child. The first had been just a week after he arrived. One of the mill workers had approached him, an unmarried girl of fifteen summers.
She shyly confessed to having been with a man and letting him have his way with her after he said he loved her. Now she was worried that something was wrong, her monthly