Doctor Who_ The Gallifrey Chronicles - Lance Parkin [53]
‘You want me to have faith in you?’
‘Only charlatans ask for faith, just before they ask you to give them your money or die in their name. I can let you find the truth for yourself. All those things you said. You don’t want to be right. You want to look at the universe with opened eyes. You’ve just been waiting for a chance, one spark to show you the way. Let me out of these chains, and I’ll let you out of yours. I’m the Doctor – I can make you better. Come with me, and let’s go on adventures.’
Rachel took one step forwards, then stopped dead.
‘Nice try.’
She started to leave.
‘Rachel?’ the Doctor pleaded.
110
She turned round. ‘You nearly had me going there. You’re the worst of the lot of them. You killed all those people. You’re Doctor Death if you’re anything.
Trying to get my hopes up. Manipulating me with cheap. . . emotional crap.
You think I’d solve all my problems if I saw a whale? You’ve got no idea.’
‘I. . . did what was right, I’m sure of it,’ he told her. ‘I’ve. . . I’ve created more than I’ve destroyed.’
‘Are you sure about that?’ Rachel asked. She went away, closing and bolting the door behind her.
‘I wish I could remember,’ he said. ‘I know that if I did I could show you –’
He shook his head, which was full of that sense again, that black shape just out of view, that scratching in his mind. He wasn’t free of it.
‘I know what I did!’ he shouted out, frustrated. ‘I saw what I did!’
The Doctor was back in the cellar.
111
There is no society on Earth where there is a clear distinction between the living and the dead. On first hearing that, one rebels. Where is there room for ambiguity? A man is alive or a man is not. But every culture has its tradition of ancestor worship and a belief in ghosts. Almost every religion preaches that there is some form of an afterlife, and many faiths claim that communication between the living and dead is possible. Across the world, there are tales of men who are the undead and living dead, like zombies and vampires. There is a belief that people can return from death to life – the only dispute seems to be whether everyone can, or just the especially virtuous. Even though these beliefs appear universal, we might dismiss some or all of them as superstition.
However, modern doctors are far less clear about the point where life begins or ends than they would have been even a hundred years ago.
It’s not always even a question of blurring a boundary between two opposite states. A number of African cultures divide the population into three constituencies: the living, the sasha and the zamani. The sasha are the gone-but-not-forgotten. There are those alive that met them and can figuratively ‘bring them to life’ for others. When the last of their con-temporaries dies, a person becomes zamani, or truly dead. Even then, they have not ceased to exist, they are simply in a new form, and are revered.
Transcript from The History. . . of Death, BBC Four documentary, first broadcast 2007
Chapter Seven
The Edge of Destruction
There were about twenty people in the pub, not counting the landlord, the barmaid, Fitz and Trix.
Fitz was the only support act, but he wasn’t going on first. A girl called Emma and a lad with a fiddle were playing for about half an hour before him and the same length of time after him, with his turn giving them enough time for a breather. They played every month, and the regulars loved them. He’d been told to keep his set to about ten