Doctor Who_ The Infinity Doctors - Lance Parkin [27]
‘I knew he’d say that,’ the Doctor muttered.
‘It could be a malfunction with the chamber,’ Larna suggested. ‘I’ll need to see the fault locator records.’
‘Do these things ever go wrong?’ Waym wondered.
Savar nodded sagely. ‘Oh yes, from time to time.’
Waym scowled at him. ‘I wasn’t talking to you. Larna?’
She was trying to release the controls from Savar’s program, but with no success. ‘Could you let me have a look?’
Savar shook his head, grinning like an idiot. ‘I’ve not finished yet.’
Larna tried again.
‘What could it be?’
Larna frowned. ‘Well, Infinity Chambers draw their information from the Matrix. They don’t observe the real universe, just a very, very elaborate computer model of the universe. One that’s accurate to the last quark. There could be a glitch in the data.’
‘Caused by?’
‘Intervention,’ Savar said suddenly. ‘Divine intervention.’
‘No alien race has access to the Matrix. Well, not any more. Over the years, a number of races have tried and…’
She broke off, staring at the two fleets hovering over Gallifrey.
‘If this image of the universe has been interfered with, then the fleets might not be there at all. Something else could have come through the vortex gate instead, something that we just can’t see. The Doctor could be walking right into a trap…’
She checked the chronometer set in the console. Eight Point Eight Nine Bells. ‘It’s nearly nightfall. He’ll be in the Panopticon. I haven’t got much time…’
She bolted out of the room, the hem of her night-gown in her hands.
A squad of Watchmen ringed the materialisation zone, the Doctor stood a little way off-centre. Behind him, the hourglass-shape of the Time Lord Citadel was dominating the skyline of the Capitol. Aircar traffic had been diverted away from this part of the city, but it was still bustling.
As one, the clocks began chiming Nine Bells.
The centre of the platform began to shimmer. An ebony pyramid rotated into three-dimensional space, and continued to hang there, spinning slowly. The Doctor held a blue control pad in his hand. He pressed the green button.
The pyramid faded away as it stopped swirling, and in its place was a single Rutan, if such a term meant anything. It was a churning mass of various slimy, viscous substances, like a giant oyster swimming in thick vegetable soup. It glowed and pulsed from within. And then, as quickly and instinctively as a pupil dilating in bright light, the Rutan began to adapt to its new environment. Its outer layers grew thicker, the way that skin forms on cooling cocoa. Tendrils began to sprout from its underside, the diffuse glowing began to concentrate into three points, deep within the body. This had the effect of backlighting the creature’s nascent internal organs and muscle structures. Within a matter of seconds, the Rutan had transformed itself into a creature that resembled a translucent squid. Electricity crackled around it.
It sat there, not acknowledging its surroundings.
The Doctor licked his lips. ‘Hello?’ he called over.
No response, not even a flickering tentacle. The Doctor walked over to the Rutan. Without anything like an eye, an ear or a nose, how did it perceive the world? Obviously not from sight, sound or smell. To a Rutan, the world must be made up of temperature fluctuations or variations in the local electrical or magnetic fields. Or, perhaps, they didn’t even make that distinction. To a telepathic group mind of metamorphic amoebae, the universe probably existed in a binary state: Rutan and Not-Rutan.
The Doctor bent over the Rutan, not even sure that it knew he was there.
A slit had just appeared in the Rutan’s flank. It would be about wide enough for the Doctor to put his hand in, not that he had the slightest intention of doing so. It parted, the sides of the slit thickening up. Inside it was black.
The Doctor knew he was staring, but doubted that the Rutan could blame him for that, or even distinguish one humanoid facial expression from another.
As the crack opened wider, the Doctor saw teeth. A row of white teeth like a baby’s, and behind them