Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book Two - Lawrence Miles [130]
‘Increasingly,’ said the Doctor. Then he opened his mouth, to ask something else, but he had to hesitate before he could get any of the words out.
Here it comes, thought I.M. Foreman. Here comes the big one. The real reason why he came to see me.
‘The leader of the Remote,’ the Doctor said. ‘The one who called himself “Father”. You swallowed him up, didn’t you? Just before you joined with the planet. While you were still Number Thirteen.’
‘Is that what you think?’
The Doctor nodded. ‘I think you’ve still got his memories, somewhere inside you.’
So that’s it, thought I.M. Foreman. That’s the bottom line. He wants access to the Father’s mind.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t swallow him up at all.’
It was hard to read the Doctor’s expression then. He blinked a lot, but the rest of his face didn’t seem to know what to do.
‘Then…’ he began.
‘The Father tried to grab on to the travelling show just before you sent it back to Gallifrey,’ I.M. Foreman told him. ‘He nearly managed it as well. He sank his claws right into the side of the box before it left the planet.’
If he’d been human, the Doctor’s jaw probably would have dropped at this stage.
‘He got sucked into the space-time vortex,’ I.M. Foreman explained. ‘Dragged into the middle of nowhere. Sorry.’
‘He’s still there?’ said the Doctor. He was starting to panic now, the way Time Lords were programmed to if they thought there was something wrong with the continuum.
I.M. Foreman shook her head. ‘I thought it was a bit of a loose end, leaving him hanging around in the vortex. So I got rid of him.’
She reached out with one oh-so‐casual arm, and motioned towards the top of the hill. The Doctor fixed his eyes on the peak up ahead, but still looked blank.
‘I had to draw some energy out of the vortex to build the universe-in‐a-bottle,’ I.M. Foreman said, deliberately making it sound as though you’d have to be a three-year‐old not to understand this. ‘While I was doing it, I thought I’d draw the Father out as well. It wasn’t hard getting a grip on him. There weren’t many other rock-solid things floating around in the vortex like that. His armour was keeping him in one piece.’
‘You trapped him inside the bottle?’ the Doctor queried, apparently still not believing any of this.
‘You don’t need to sound so surprised. He’s still trapped in the vortex. But in the bottle vortex, not in the real one. Less of a risk that way, I thought.’
They trudged the rest of the way in silence. The Doctor was evidently lost for words. He seemed to be finding whole new universes of interesting dirt on the edges of his shoes.
* * *
They finally reached the peak of the hill, where the most valuable object in the galaxy (ostensibly) rested in the long grass under the tree. Night was falling over the valley again, turning the chessboard-fields into black and white, blurring the trees together until the woodland became one huge dark cloud between the two hills. But you could still hear the sounds of life from down below, the insects in the grass and the deer hooves pattering against the earth.
The wind blew the scent of old leaves up the side of the hill, and I.M. Foreman saw the Doctor taking deep, deep breaths, sucking the atmosphere all the way into his body. He’d turned to face the woodland, to face the TARDIS. He probably did that without even thinking about it.
‘Is this where the town used to be?’ he asked. His voice melted into the wind, making the words sound almost musical by the time they reached I.M. Foreman’s ears.
‘Not quite,’ she said. ‘This is where the Remote crucified those two Ogron Lords. One on each hill. I mean, they weren’t hills back then. Just bumps in the desert.’
She sat down under the tree, right in front of the universe-in‐a-bottle. The Doctor glanced over his shoulder at her. ‘You can change the geology?’
‘Oh, yes. I can turn molehills into mountains if I want. It’s not just the biosphere any more. I’ve learned a lot these past few years. There isn’t one corner of this planet left that’s still Dust. It’s all me now.’
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