Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [0]
The last words of a dying alien send the Doctor and Bernice to thirtieth-century Earth in an attempt to avert an unspecified disaster. Before they can even unpack they’ve been arrested by the Adjudicators and sentenced to death by the Imperial army. Their attempts to prove their innocence take them from the mosaic planet Purgatory to a prison inside a star.
Meanwhile, Adjudicators Roz Forrester and Chris Cwej have their own problems. Investigating a series of apparently motiveless murders, they have stumbled upon a conspiracy with sinister overtones. On the run and out of luck, the only people they can turn to are their chief suspects: the Doctor and Bernice.
And as they run, someone is watching them. Someone who knows the Doctor of old . . .
Full-length original novels based on the longest running science-fiction television series of all time, the BBC’s Doctor Who. The New Adventures take the TARDIS into previously unexplored realms of space and time.
After many years of writing book reviews, Andy Lane has now started to sell horror, SF and fantasy stories to American anthologies. He is the author of two previous New Adventures: Lucifer Rising (with Jim Mortimore) and All-Consuming Fire (with John H. Watson MD).
ORIGINAL SIN
Andy Lane
First published in Great Britain in 1995 by
Doctor Who Books
an imprint of Virgin Publishing Ltd
332 Ladbroke Grove
London W10 5AH
Copyright © Andy Lane 1995
The right of Andy Lane 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 1995
Cover illustration and internal illustrations by Tony Masero ISBN 0 426 20444 1
Phototypeset by Intype, London
Printed and bound in Great Britain
by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berks.
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.
To the Fictionmeet crew, especially Ian Atkins, Alan Barnes, Ian Barnwell, David Bartlett, Paul Cornell, Andy Cowper, Val Douglas, Robert Francis, Jackie Marshall, Keith Topping, David Maley and Mark Wyman.
Contents
Acknowledgements
viii
Prologue
1
Chapter 1
6
Chapter 2
24
Chapter 3
39
Chapter 4
50
Chapter 5
65
Chapter 6
79
Chapter 7
95
Chapter 8
107
Chapter 9
123
Chapter 10
138
Chapter 11
154
Chapter 12
167
Chapter 13
183
Chapter 14
194
Chapter 15
205
Chapter 16
214
Chapter 17
227
Epilogue
239
Acknowledgements
Round up the usual suspects – Chris, Tina, Molly, Craig, Liz, Ben, Jim, Justin and Gus, with special mentions to Mark (‘An excellent read . . . a real contrast to All-Consuming Fire’) Benoy, Sarah L. (‘Have you considered seeking professional, medical, chemical or other help?’) Winters and Andrew (‘Don’t quibble grammar with a psycho’) Martin. And to Rebecca Levene, for trusting me enough to let me abandon the plot and make this book up as I was going along. I promise it won’t happen again.
‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned [ . . . ]
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?’
W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming
‘We will sing of great crowds excited by work, by pleasure and by riot; we will sing of the multicoloured, polyphonic tides of revolution in the modern capitals; we will sing of the vibrant nightly fervour of arsenals and shipyards blazing with violent elec-tric moons . . .
Emilio Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, The Manifesto