Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [128]
‘You didn’t have much moral sense back when you were helping the Cybermen.’
‘You think not?’ Vaughn asked. ‘You examined my micromonolithic circuits, Doctor. You know how easily they could have been modified to kill people, rather than render them unconscious. I had to fight the Cybermen over that.
They would have preferred a clean sweep.’ He paused momentarily. ‘It worries me that I stand between mankind and the darkness, and if I . . . fail, then mankind is lost. That is why you must help me, before it is too late.’
‘I don’t understand,’ the Doctor said quietly. ‘What are you so scared of?’
Vaughn’s full metal lips pursed slightly. ‘Doctor,’ he said carefully, ‘I am not . . . what I was. I have paid a galaxy’s ransom over the years to fund research into biological engineering, genetics, bionics, robotics and data storage. Do you remember the Biomorphic Organizational Systems Supervisor, Doctor? I built BOSS, although, looking back, I see that it was a mistake. And Professor Kettlewell – remember him? I funded Think Tank’s research into robotics so that they could build a body for me. I have ransacked the bodies of Cybermen left behind in the snows of the south pole, the rotting brickwork of London’s sewers, the sterile surface of the moon and the metal corridors of Space Station W3, and I have learned many lessons from them, but I have found no way of placing my mind back into a human body again, nor building a robot body as good as the one that Cybermen built for me. You are right about me, as you were right about the Cybermen a millennium ago. Each time I decant my mind from one body to another, I lose a little bit more. My memories are beginning to become –’
‘Corrupted?’ suggested the Doctor.
‘A thousand years . . . ’ Vaughn looked away, ‘and I have lived every second of them. How many different methods of data storage has my mind passed through? With every conversion from magnetic media to optical crystal, from optical crystal to positronic lattice, from positronic lattice to hyper-cache, information is lost. Entropy, nibbling at the edges of my thoughts. I can no longer remember the names of my parents, the taste of fresh strawberries, the feel of a woman’s skin. I have lost so much.’
‘Well,’ the Doctor said, slapping his hands upon his legs, ‘this has been nice, Vaughn, but –’ He got up from the chair. ‘– I must be going. Things to see and 218
people to do. Thank you for looking after the TARDIS for me, and all that, but –’
‘Sit down.’
The Doctor sat down again.
‘I need you,’ Vaughn said. ‘I thought that I just needed your time machine, but I cannot even open the door.’
‘Isomorphic controls,’ the Doctor murmured, glad that he had managed to lock the TARDIS’s door when he left. He had been known to leave it open for the entire duration of his stay upon a planet.
‘I need you to operate it for me. I want you to take me back to before the time we first met and help me rescue the body I once had, the body the Cybermen built for me. Or take me into the future to a time where humanity can build me an equivalent. I . . . I need to touch and to taste again, Doctor.
Not for me. Not just for me, but for the Empire. I am its last defence. If I die, humanity is lost. I had hoped that the Hith ship, and that remarkable organic technology of theirs, could help me in my bid to build a new body, but their body chemistry bears no relationship to anything we understand. You are my only hope.’
‘No, Vaughn.’ The Doctor’s voice was less of a negation and more of a warning, but Vaughn didn’t pay it any heed. ‘You don’t understand the way that time works. I can’t change what has already occurred, or influence what will be.’
‘But you have, Doctor. I’ve seen the evidence. You continually interfere with history. I’ve tried to catch you, time and time again, but by the time I discovered that you had appeared, you had already left. I planned different methods of intercepting you, but they all failed.’
‘Until now,’ the Doctor said sourly.
‘Until now,’ Vaughn concurred. ‘Earth demography has finally developed