Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [140]
Still: once a Cyberman, always a Cyberman, I suppose.’ He bent down and picked Vaughn’s head up. Striking a pose, he proclaimed, ‘Alas, poor Tobias.
I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite . . . ’ He grimaced sadly. ‘A fellow of infinite arrogance, in point of fact.’ He patted the console. ‘Don’t worry, old girl, I wouldn’t have let him have you.’
The Doctor paused, as if listening.
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘I should dispose of him completely, I suppose, but . . . ’
Another pause. The Doctor smiled and shook his head.
‘No, I can’t do that. I . . . I owe it to the memory of a man named Zebulon Pryce to keep Vaughn alive.’
He turned the head over and delved around inside the neck. His hand came away covered in coolant and lubricant fluid, but clutching a small crystal.
‘Delight becomes death-longing if all longing else be vain,’ he quoted softly, then slipped the crystal into his pocket, threw Vaughn’s head away and walked towards the doors.
‘Let’s see how Bernice is getting on with that Hith ship,’ he said, then paused in the doorway. ‘And you’d better prepare two guest rooms,’ he added. ‘We may be playing host to a few more passengers.’
The TARDIS seemed to make a soft, contented sound.
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘It will be just like the old days.’
Bernice was still staring out of the window into the red darkness when she-realized that the Doctor was standing beside her. Behind him, Cwej and Forrester seemed to be arresting security guards wholesale.
‘It’s all falling apart,’ she said dully.
The Doctor nodded. ‘Entropy gets to us all, in the end,’ he said. ‘People and computers and empires. Nothing survives. Nothing goes on for ever.’
‘Except for death and injustice,’ she said without looking at him.
‘But,’ he added, ‘we can rage against the dying of the light.’
She nodded towards the scarlet sky and the scattered fires outside.
237
‘I thought that once we’d turned the ship’s engines on, everything would be all right. I thought we could just turn off all the madness, like we had a switch or something. I thought Powerless Friendless’s death would matter!’
‘No,’ he said. ‘It had all gone too far. The riots have their own momentum now. And there are still people out there whose madness hasn’t emerged yet.
They’re just time bombs, walking around, waiting to explode. When they do, they may take someone with them. They may take a lot of someones.’
‘Then what have we accomplished?’ she whispered.
He thought for a moment. ‘We’ve stopped more people going mad,’ he said finally. ‘Lanced the boil, if you like. The riots will die away, instead of leading to full anarchy. The Earth Empire will still fall – there’s a lot of pain here that wasn’t caused by the icarons, a lot of planets that want to secede – but it will fall more gracefully and slowly than it would have done had we not been here.
Fewer people will die. A lot fewer people. And what replaces the Empire will grow out of stability, rather than destruction. In the end, the scales are tipped a little bit towards the light.’
‘But not by much.’
‘But not by much,’ he agreed. ‘And there are other things that won’t happen, because we’ve been here.’
She turned to face him. He was looking shifty. ‘Other things?’ she challenged.
‘I’ve faced some of my own personal demons,’ he said, ‘and prevailed. Earth will be a better place. For a while.’
Now it was her turn to nod. ‘We did good?’
He thought for a moment. ‘We’re not the score-keepers,’ he said finally. ‘But, in the end, when the points are tallied, I think they’ll say we did good.’
She smiled at him, and he smiled back at her.
‘I keep meaning to ask,’ she said. ‘Do we get a salary for doing this?’
238
Epilogue
‘More tea, Roslyn?’
‘It’s Roz,’ Forrester said to Cwej’s mother, trying not to snap. The poor woman would probably have a heart attack. ‘No. No thanks.’
Mrs Cwej wandered off, not looking at all hurt. Forrester silently cursed.
She did not want to be there.
Then again, where did she want to be? Her empty