Doctor Who_ The Gallifrey Chronicles - Lance Parkin [71]
Dread. Unease tugging at the primeval parts of her, the oldest areas of the brain. Was this how animals felt when they sensed a hurricane or a forest fire coming? She tried to analyse it. It was only through thinking hard that she realised something had gone fundamentally wrong with the light.
The Doctor hadn’t been able to prevent the destruction of Gallifrey; that had happened. All the Time Lords were dead, their home planet had gone. That was a fact and it couldn’t be undone.
Despite that, he had saved the day, snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.
He’d done it from inside the Edifice, with seconds to spare. And the little man he’d seen while meditating had given him some clues, he was sure of it.
The Doctor started writing:
The new arrival ran her fingers along the dusty console. ‘The Edifice was your TARDIS all along, then?’
The Doctor waved his hand. ‘Yes. Get to station one, and boot up the library computer. I’m sure I’m forgetting something very important.’
‘Forty seconds.’
The Doctor snapped his fingers. ‘Ace remembered going to Paradise Towers,’ he said triumphantly.
‘Pardon?’
The Doctor was wiping spores and mould from another panel on the console.
‘Yes, here.’
‘The telepathic circuits? I’ve got the library computer working, by the way.’
‘Good. These are still functioning Once, I was editing out some of my memories using the telepathic circuits, when I –’
‘Why?’
‘I forget.’
‘Har har. Thirty seconds. You were clearing some space, like defragging a hard drive.’
‘I suppose I must have been. It can get very cluttered up there. Anyway, a long time ago now, gosh, just before I faced the Timewyrm, I accidentally gave Ace one of Mel’s memories.’
‘And now you’re. . . editing out your memories again. Can’t this wait?’
‘Er. . . no. Where’s Fitz, by the way?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Doctor.’
He joined her in front of the library computer.
146
‘You’re hacking into the Capitol’s computer systems,’ she noted. The Doctor looked up. ‘Obviously I need the password. You don’t happen to know Romana’s birthday or her mother’s maiden name, do you?’
She shoved him aside. ‘Here, let me. I can uplink directly.’
‘I’ve got a plan,’ the Doctor told her. ‘We need twelve seconds, give or take.’
‘We have eleven. Ten, nine, eight. . . ’
The Doctor read this back to himself. His companions weren’t ever that caustic, but overall it seemed a plausible account.
So, he’d done something fiendishly clever to delete his memories. That answered one question. He’d lost his memories because he himself had deliberately erased them. He instinctively knew this was what had happened.
Then again. . . hadn’t he just said to Marnal that why he lost his memories wasn’t that important a question?
He tried to remember but, again, there was that sense of dread, as he knew there would be. Fear flapping its wings, warning him to keep away. Just an instinct that there were some things he wasn’t meant to remember. He’d said as much before he did the deed, sitting in the Edifice, waiting to die.
‘It makes no sense,’ the Doctor said, to no one in particular. ‘I saw Gallifrey destroyed.’
He hesitated. That way, it sounded like a denial.
‘I saw myself destroying Gallifrey,’ he rephrased. Then a third attempt: ‘I destroyed Gallifrey. I was solely responsible. The Doctor, in the Edifice, with the binding energy.’
The fear wasn’t there any more.
It just came and went, it always had. Ever since he’d woken up on the carriage, well over a hundred years ago now. He had learnt not to think back, because it only scared him. But he knew what he had done now. It wasn’t quite remembering, but it was as near as he was ever going to get. If he’d been blocking it out, for fear of having some sort of a breakdown. . . well, that block had gone and he felt fine. Not fine, obviously, but. . .
‘My choice,’ he said, ‘I pulled the lever. How many times do I have to say that I don’t feel guilty? I did what I had to do. If I had my time again I wouldn’t change my decision. The alternative was worse.’
Had he done something even more horrible? Ockham’s razor