Doctor Who_ The Gallifrey Chronicles - Lance Parkin [21]
‘Yet my planet is still here, and yours isn’t,’ Rachel said.
Marnal’s face seemed to grow dark. ‘Indeed.’
‘And you really think the Doctor did it?’
‘I know it.’
‘But he was helping mankind there. Without him, the Network would have conquered the Earth.’
‘He was interfering, don’t you see that? Breaking the most sacred law of the Time Lords.’
‘He saved lives. Including my life.’ She hesitated. ‘And yours, for that matter. You were on Earth then too.’
‘Who is to say the Network shouldn’t have conquered this planet? What gives the Doctor the right to pick a side and fight for them?’
‘Those aliens would have killed us.’
‘No. They wanted you alive. They’d have made you smarter and stronger.
United your species, given them a great purpose, made you part of a vast and ancient civilisation.’
Rachel considered this, then said, ‘He saved my planet.’
‘And destroyed his own.’
‘We don’t know that for certain.’
‘We know it. We just don’t know the exact circumstances. What I’m interested in is that if the Doctor was telling the Provider the truth, and he really has amnesia, he himself may not know the reasons why he did it himself.’
‘Well,’ said Rachel, thinking aloud, ‘who’s to say that the Doctor shouldn’t have destroyed Gallifrey? Perhaps he picked the right side and it was meant to be.’
Marnal was clearly angry at the thought. ‘No.’
‘How can you know?’
‘I know. I know what was meant to happen. It wasn’t that. With that one act, the Doctor has done untold damage to history.’
Rachel looked over at the bottle universe. ‘And now you’ve picked up his trail again.’
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‘I can track him, yes. I will use this device to find out what I can about him.
He’s the enemy, Rachel. We must know our enemy.’ Marnal hesitated, then smiled. ‘It seems we may be able to know him better than he knows himself.’
‘God, I hate Mars,’ Fitz said, not for the first time. ‘This is even worse than the last time I was here, when Anji –’
‘As I said to Dr Johnson, “When one is tired of Mars, one is tired of life”,’ the Doctor retorted.
‘Yeah, shut up, Fitz. This is brilliant!’
Trix was bouncing along in the light gravity. Her catsuit looked great on her. Emma Peel in sequins. Electric-blue wig and lipstick matching her eyes.
Exactly the way a bird from the twenty-first century like Trix should dress, in Fitz’s book.
It wasn’t, on the other hand, a look that suited Fitz at all.
‘It’s 2097, Fitz. When in Rome. . . ’
‘When we were in Rome, Doctor, you wore a toga. Here, though, I notice you’ve opted for the old frock coat and poncey shirt ensemble. Your normal clothes.’
‘What of it?’
‘Well, I can’t help but notice that you’re the only one of us not wearing moon boots and false eyelashes.’
‘You look very fetching, Fitz,’ Trix assured him. ‘In fact, I really want to take a photo of you.’
She waved the 3-D camera she’d just bought at him.
‘Get lost.’
It was the middle of the day, but it was about as warm as a winter’s afternoon. The sky was dusty pink. The Doctor stopped in his tracks.
‘You’ll be inside the dome but I need to be out here. So I need to dress up warm, and you need to dress formally. We know there’s going to be an assassination attempt on the pope, but we don’t know where, or how.’
‘That’s another thing. It’s always that lot these days, every second time we land somewhere. They’re always doing the same sort of thing, and you always beat them.’
‘Practice makes perfect.’
‘Yeah, but it’s boring. Who’d want to fight them when we could be taking part in a yacht race across the whole world of Selonart or seeing an astral flower bloom? What about when we fought crystal skeletons across time and space, defeating them at the end of the universe? I’d watch a movie of that, I’d even read a book about it.’
The Doctor had a serious expression. ‘This is a crucial point in Earth’s rela-tions with alien species. The very first papal visit to Mars. The pope is going 47
to consecrate the first cathedral here, and anoint