Doctor Who_ Father Time - Lance Parkin [126]
He wanted to travel in time. Debbie had taken him to see Bill and Ted, and he’d seen their flying telephone box and wished he’d got one of his own. If only Zevron’s saucer hadn’t been fitted with a self-destruct circuit, that dream might have come true nearly ten years ago.
Show me the future, the Doctor asked.
* * *
‘Why are you doing this?’ Miranda asked.
‘To rid the universe of you and your kind.’
‘Think about what you’re doing. You’ll die, too.’
‘It’s a price worth paying.’
‘And who will lead your people?’
‘Someone will emerge.’
‘You’re the last of your family. And I doubt you’ve endorsed a successor, not if you spend so much time away from home in your Librarinth or on this ship. He might get ideas.’
‘My people are strong – they are the supreme beings of the universe. They will survive.’
‘No,’ Miranda said. ‘You said yourself they wouldn’t. They’ll be swept away by your enemies. Without this ship, without you, they’ll be wiped out, or enslaved. They need you. But even with you, the Empire’s on the verge of collapse.’
‘No, I won’t accept that.’
‘I know you won’t, and that’s why what you’re doing is wrong, and that’s why it’ll destroy everything you’re fighting to preserve.’
* * *
It was too bright in here to see anything.
The Doctor could hear something. Violin music, violin music in the heart of a lightning storm. It felt like a memory, but... The Doctor ducked as a large robot arm swung a silver fist at his head. A swarm of wasps surrounded him. ‘Time is out of joint!’ he heard himself yelling. Mr Saldaamir smiled his disconcerting smile. The Doctor grabbed a ship’s wheel, with the stars streaking over his head above him. A man in a bowler hat walked through the mud, checking something from a clipboard. Mather: an old man now, his hair gone grey. A large metal vehicle, something between a tank and a chrome turtle, sat in a forest clearing. A young woman in a scarlet tunic with long blonde hair, smiling at him, as if he should recognise her. There was a crowd of people in what looked like Renaissance clothing. ‘The planet’s called Albert?’ he asked. A conical robot, gunmetal-grey, swung a camera eye at him, the lights on the top of its head flashing angrily. A man with thin white hair and a mournful expression looked down his nose at him. ‘I wondered when I’d put in an appearance.’
The Doctor tried to concentrate on the here and now.
He was in the heart of vast machinery. Great columns plunging up into the heavens, down into the depths, and snaking out in all directions in between.
The sphere wasn’t this large on the outside, the Doctor told himself.
And that seemed like the most natural thing in the world. Whatever had made him think that there should be a relationship between interior and exterior dimensions?
There was no obvious cause for the previous damage, the faults that had kept the ship here long enough for him to get here. It was quite a stroke of luck that had happened.
You make your own luck, he realised, telling the engines to shut themselves down for three days, then backdating the order. He felt the engines disable themselves. Don’t tell Ferran, he said, just tell him it’s a routine repair.
The Doctor felt the power equations enter his mind, and did a quick calculation – there was a lot of energy here: as a bare minimum, Earth would be in the blast radius if the engines exploded. The side of Earth facing the ship would be scoured clean: the seas would become gas, every forest would become ash. At least it would be quick for that hemisphere – the other half of the world would take several minutes to die, as the tidal waves, blasts of air and superheated debris bombarded them.
He set to work.
* * *
Ferran stared up at Miranda.
Her clothing now was frayed, with all the colour leached out – as if she’d stolen it from