Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [129]
‘Cwej and Forrester?’ the Doctor said, raising his eyebrows. ‘They’re your agents?’
‘No,’ Vaughn said, ‘they are just as they appear to be: foolish humans. I should have taken charge myself, but I left it up to them. More evidence of my growing . . . problems. I moved your TARDIS – my TARDIS now – back into this building and sent a message to my agent on Purgatory to have you 219
killed there, but I was too late; you and Provost-Major Beltempest had already left for Dis. Always one step ahead, eh, Doctor? The Adjudicators and that tiresome companion of yours – such a disappointment after the keen mind of Miss Herriot, by the way – returned to Earth and started to make a nuisance of themselves, so I determined to put them out of my misery. Even that failed.
They took refuge in the Undertown, and now they are causing trouble in hyperspace.’ Vaughn’s metal eyes took on their dreamy look again, as if he was looking at something a long distance away. ‘I see you still choose your assistants for their persistence,’ he said eventually.
‘More often than not, they choose me,’ the Doctor pointed out.
‘The woman – Summerfield – is currently causing quite a disturbance aboard by Hith ship. She and her friends are systematically destroying some of my most sophisticated bots.’
‘Bernice does have a habit of getting into trouble.’ The Doctor grimaced.
‘Of what interest is that ship to you, Vaughn? Just a plaything, a bauble to amuse yourself with?’
‘Just think how secure humanity would be if the Earth Empire had such vessels.’ Vaughn frowned, and turned to look out of the window. ‘We are safe from attacks from space, I have made sure of that. The INITEC ships and the INITEC weapons that the Landsknechte use are an almost impenetrable shield. But attacks through time . . . ’ His metal fist clenched impotently at his side. ‘I sometimes sit here, dreading the first signs that I am being unwritten, Doctor. Do you understand that?’
His froglike features swung back towards the Doctor, crimson light coating his skin. The Doctor just looked back without any expression on his face, apart from what he hoped was a tinge of loathing but probably, knowing his luck, looked more like worry.
‘Are you familiar with W.B. Yeats?’ Vaughn asked suddenly, apropos of nothing. ‘He wrote: “Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say; never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day; the second best’s a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.”’ Vaughn shook his head. ‘He was wrong. The knowledge that I – I, Tobias Vaughn, might never have existed, gnaws at me constantly. Your time machine can not only preserve me, but also preserve the Empire. Two birds with one stone.’
‘In the same poem,’ the Doctor said quietly, ‘Yeats also wrote: “Endure what life God gives and ask no longer span.” You might do well to think on that, Vaughn.’
Vaughn wasn’t listening. ‘The Daleks have time travel, I know that,’ he said, scowling. ‘I saw their time ship at the 1995 Earth Fair in Ghana, but it left before I could capture it. Cybermen from the future came back in time to the sewers of London, so I know that they will develop it too, and they still hate 220
me for what I did to them . . . ’
Paranoia, thought the Doctor as he watched Vaughn’s histrionics. The man is insane. Truly insane. Identifying his best interests with those of humanity.
Such hubris.
‘. . . and even those moronic Sontarans can travel through time, albeit in a crude fashion. Despite all my best attempts, despite my financial support of Whittaker, Blinovitch and