Doctor Who_ The Infinity Doctors - Lance Parkin [139]
‘There will be a lot of fieldwork,’ she said. ‘I’ll be away from Gallifrey for most of the time, leading a team of specialists.
It’s just what I’ve always wanted. The chance to travel, to leave the Capitol. There will even be contact with other timefarers.’
‘You could be away for some time.’
‘The Matrix estimates that it will take around two thousand years.’
The Doctor’s smile flickered, ‘That is a long time,’ he mumbled.
She looked over at him, a little sadly. ‘Yes.’
The Doctor stood, ‘I… don’t want to hold up your packing.
I’ve always hated goodbyes. Good luck.’
Larna leant over and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Thank you, she said.
There had been one candle for every year.
The Doctor snuffed out the last between his thumb and forefinger. The room was dark, the smell of wax heavy in the air, reminding him of a church. It must have been the smoke that was making his eyes water, He stepped from the room.
The door closed, and – anticipating its owner’s mood –
locked and bolted itself. And then there was nothing behind it.
The Doctor slumped against the wall for a moment.
So this was victory.
Lord Norval, Savar and a couple of dozen others dead: the Magistrate lost. Larna leaving. Omega… whatever, Broken.
His wife gone. Voran Acting-President, Pendrel as Castellan.
Hedin back in the Endless Library, rewriting his biography of Omega from the beginning. Nothing had changed, because nothing ever changed on Gallifrey except over geological timescales. Nothing was better, nothing was worse. The Sontarans and the Rutans could change, it seemed, but not his own people.
He looked over at her portrait, remembered the day he had painted it. She’d been standing in the atrium of the family home, in that dress of hers that she had found somewhere.
As she had stood there, she’d told him, ever so calmly, that a miracle had taken place. She was pregnant. He remembered how he had felt – that combination of elation and trepidation.
The knowledge that there was a future, a sense of destiny, of inevitability. Things would never be the same again. He’d never look to the past, he’d told himself, only to the future.
The Doctor moved away from the wall, towards his favourite chair. Wycliff trotted out of his box to join him, brushing against his legs. He stroked the cat’s head, deciding that he wouldn’t sit down after all.
The Doctor could feel the key to his TARDIS in his trouser pocket, warm against his leg. He took it out, held it up.
The first time he had left Gallifrey, it had been for a short hop across the Constellation, to his parents’ summer house.
He’d stared up into the dark night’s sky, seen all the moving points of light. ‘Not stars,’ his mother had told him. ‘Ships.
Those ships don’t travel on the sea, those are ships that travel in space and time: He had wanted to ask where they were going, and who was in them, but he hadn’t. When he got back, he’d asked his tutors and looked in books and the video archive, but the answer remained elusive. He’d read about the stars and the planets, and all the people that lived out in the universe, and all about their histories and their sciences. He thought up a lot of questions, and not all the answers were in the books that had been written so far or on the Public Record Video.
To find the answers, he would have to go looking for them.
He’d have to leave Gallifrey, get out there, out into the universe. Who knew where the future lay? Who wanted to know?
The Doctor smiled.
Document Outline
Front Cover
Back Cover
Prologue
Part One Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
The Past
Chapter Four
Part Two Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
The Past
Chapter Eight
Part Three Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
Table of Contents
Prologue
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Part Two
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Part Three
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue