Doctor Who_ Psi-Ence Fiction - Chris Boucher [110]
Where would they be? They would be hiding below their darkness. Flank an ambush and it becomes a trap. Even with death only moments away the warrior-trainers' rules nagged at her memory. How could she get to the shaman and his Tesh? The moving floor was still moving. Was that the way? Had they sent the death darkness because they heard the noisy door? Had they sent it that way because they thought that was the way she was coming? The moving floor must go somewhere. She went to it. Would she be flanking their ambush or was she walking into it? She stepped on to the moving floor. When it speeded up and got steeper she found she was no longer afraid.
And there was one dark flash
And there was one dark flash and it was still unsatisfied, still unfinished.
Some stubborn reality was holding all existence back from the voids.
The TARDIS was there in the moment where the singularities were leading to eternity and from eternity and in eternity. The TARDIS was where eternity was nothing and everything. The TARDIS was poised where the unmediated time machine had driven the action and non-reaction through the time lines and multiverses and on to annihilation. The TARDIS
balanced the imbalance and absorbed the excess.
The TARDIS held the line.
The Doctor and the pulse tunnel moved together through one hoop which folded forward into the hoops. The Doctor was suspended, balanced by the power, held upright and spread-eagled in the centre of the first of the pulse-tunnel hoops. There was no pain. There was hardly any physical sensation at all. The static noise had gone. The throbbing pulse had gone. He was almost at peace. At the end of the tunnel he could see the kaleidoscopic multiples multiplying, the flat dark blocks and turning trees, dividing round themselves and whirling downwards into vortices and splitting and reforming and twisting and rolling. It was a mesmerising display. He could feel himself beginning to drift with the patterns. He could feel the possibility of being one with the patterns. Perhaps that would be best. Perhaps he should let his consciousness be taken into sleep. Perhaps he could lose himself in sleep. Perhaps it would be easier to face what was about to happen if he didn't have to face what was about to happen. Again he thought he saw the TARDIS, not a multiplying TARDIS but just one faithful TARDIS, one solid, unshakeable constant in a nightmare of chaos. It was comforting. It was comforting to think his beloved TARDIS was there at the last.
The Doctor jolted awake. The TARDIS was there blocking the pulse stream. He fell forward into a heap. Now there was physical sensation. The static noise was back. The throbbing pulse was back. His hands and knees and forehead hurt.
He was on the floor of the cavern. Rats scuttled away from him. He got to his feet. The TARDIS was hovering just above the floor. It was balanced more or less where he had been suspended. He hurried to it. 'Hullo, dear old thing,' he said. 'Come to save the day?' He clambered through the door.
'Come to save all the days in fact.'
He made his way to the control console. He could guess what was happening before he looked at any of the telltales.
The TARDIS was functioning as the transdimensional containment and the semisentient control system which he had tried to tell Finer his machine was so dangerously lacking. She had been trying to repair the weakness in the multiverse just as the Doctor had told her to do when they first arrived.
When the damage worsened she had drained the auxiliary power banks.
She was inhibited from using her main supply so now she was drawing power like an induction coil from Finer's machine, and she was focusing where the damage was focused. She was reversing everything.
The Doctor watched the observation