Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book Two - Lawrence Miles [78]
‘So, at the centre of their warship, they built their weapons system. They engineered a substance – I don’t know how it works, exactly – that exists on the boundary between the two worlds, our world and the other universe. If you look at that substance, you can see the things from the outer planes, trying to get through to our side of reality. It’s probably validium-based, I should think. The ship’s been damaged over the years, so some of the material’s started seeping up to the ship’s surface. But you know that, don’t you?
‘You call that substance the Cold, Guest. The Cold.
‘Remember what you said, in that video you gave to the UN? “The dispersion of the past is our speciality.” At the time, I thought it was advertising copy. A way of selling the Cold to your customers. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? It’s a truism of Faction Paradox, and it’s a truism of your people, as well. You don’t just change yourselves whenever you’re “remembered”. You change your history, too. Every generation rewrites the story a little, until the original meaning’s lost. Think, Guest. Just think.
‘The substance you call the Cold is part of the Time Lord warship.
‘Just think about what that means.’
* * *
Guest hesitated.
There was something coming through the receiver. Something he couldn’t identify properly. He caught flashes of thought, brief images. Words?
But what kind of person would transmit words through the media?
* * *
‘I know you can hear me, Guest. So listen.
‘At the dead centre of the Time Lord warship is an enormous mass of the Cold material. When the order to detonate the weapon comes from Gallifrey, the cellular field that keeps it stable will be taken away. The hole will be opened. The target planet, the warship, everything for millions of miles around, will vanish into the other universe. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a second ship on standby somewhere, ready to seal up the hole again once it’s all over. I can’t imagine the Time Lords leaving a whopping great gap like that lying around space-time, even if they are getting desperate.
‘Don’t you see? The coordinates for the Cold. Relative 101 by 4E. Relative. Those aren’t coordinates for a fixed space-time location, they’re coordinates for the centre of the ship, relative to the position of the main transmitter. The Faction must have told you the numbers generations ago, but somewhere along the line you must have forgotten what they really meant. The thing you call the Cold isn’t in another dimension at all. It’s in the middle of the warship. That’s why only a TARDIS could reach it, because the ship’s security systems would only let a Time Lord get into the internal workings. The place you call the skin of the Cold must be a kind of buffer zone, between the surface and the core. But it’s still in this universe. Right under your nose.
‘Over the years, the memory’s been corrupted. Once upon a time you probably knew what the Cold was, but the idea’s been distorted every time you’ve been “remembered”, until your mythology’s turned it into some kind of god.
‘You’re not reaching one of the loa, Guest. You’re inside the ship’s systems. And you’re not about to release the Cold. You’re about to detonate the weapon.
‘You’re about to kill us all. Us, everybody in Anathema, and anyone who happens to be in the vicinity of the ship.
‘Do you see now?
‘Do you?’
* * *
Well? the Cold repeated.
Guest tried to shake his head, but his head had been stretched out of shape, and every piece of his consciousness had been wired into the substance around him. There were definitely words. He couldn’t interpret them properly, though. Besides, how important could they possibly be?
The Cold surrounded him completely now. Every part of the darkness was tuned in