Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [81]
‘You’re not human, are you?’ Professor Zebulon Pryce asked as the engines wound themselves up for take-off. He had folded his tall, angular frame into a seat in the ship’s small lounge, still as naked as he had been in his cell.
His milk-white pony-tail draped down the back of the chair. After a cursory glance around, he had shown no interest in his new surroundings. The Doctor couldn’t fathom him out. Humans were usually so easy to understand, but Pryce . . . a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. The Doctor scratched his head. Now who had he said that to originally, and what about?
‘No,’ the Doctor admitted, settling himself into the Nauga-hide upholstery of a chair.
‘Double circulatory system?’
The Doctor was impressed. ‘Well spotted.’
Pryce’s gaze was fixed on the Doctor’s chest. ‘I’ve had a lot of experience with hearts,’ he said, then looked away, towards the sealed control cabin. ‘Do 138
I frighten Provost-Major Beltempest?’
‘Of course you do,’ the Doctor said, ‘although, if you asked him, he would probably say that he was just being careful. Are you sure I can’t get you some clothes?’
‘No, thank you. I am . . . accustomed to this state. Clothes would only irritate me now.’ There was a flicker of genuine curiosity in Pryce’s eyes.
‘What is he frightened of?’
‘He’s frightened of dying,’ the Doctor said in exasperation. ‘You do have a reputation, you know.’
Pryce shrugged. ‘He agreed to have me transferred into his custody,’ he said. ‘I didn’t ask to be here, although the change of scenery is pleasant.’
‘You said that you couldn’t advise us on the icaron flux problem without access to the equipment in your old laboratory. He didn’t want you back on Purgatory, and the prison authorities were very reluctant to release you, even temporarily, but I persevered. You should have seen the paperwork!’
Pryce gazed levelly up at the Doctor. ‘Then he, and you, must think that the potential risk of my company is worth the possible benefit. That is your choice. I cannot be held responsible for what others think of me. I do what I must. We all do what we must.’
The temperature in the ship suddenly escalated. Tugging at his cravat, the Doctor supposed that the massive heat shield had been pulled back into its recess above them.
Scowling, he said, ‘You cannot evade responsibility for your actions so easily.’
‘I’ve never tried to evade responsibility,’ Pryce replied, gazing at the Doctor with no expression in the black pits of his eyes. ‘I killed people. Why should I evade that?’
‘You don’t think it was wrong?’
‘No,’ he said simply. ‘I don’t.’
The Doctor stood and busied himself in the small galley for a moment, making himself a cup of tea in a metal beaker. ‘Can I get you anything?’ he asked. ‘A glass of wine, perhaps?’
‘Thank you, but no. I don’t drink . . . wine.’ As the Doctor re-entered the lounge, Pryce looked up at him. ‘Do I frighten you?’ he asked.
The Doctor hesitated, and sipped at his tea. He remembered a cave on Metebelis Three, and the way the radiation had sleeted through his body like rain through muslin.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I have been frightened before, but I’m not frightened by you.’
Pryce smiled slightly. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘But you are afraid of dying?’
Difficult questions. His mind flickered over a thousand human years of experience. For most Time Lords, death was nothing to worry about. Their 139
minds were absorbed upon the moment of death into the APC, the Amplified Panatropic Computations Network that formed the repository of all Gallifreyan knowledge and experience, guiding the Time Lords in their philosophic enquiries and helping the President and the Celestial Intervention Agency decide upon their more mundane interferences in the affairs of the universe. The Doctor had lost that safety net when he fled his home world hundreds of years ago, and despite his subsequent elevation back to grace, his election as President of the Time Lords and his many adventures in the Ma-trix – the hinterland of the APC – he had never bothered to formally connect his mind back to it. If