Doctor Who_ The Infinity Doctors - Lance Parkin [28]
‘Greetings, Time Lord,’ the mouth – the Rutan – said in a woman’s voice. ‘The humanoid larynx is not capable of recreating the sound, nor is the humanoid mind of sufficient sophistication to appreciate the complexity of the vocabulary, grammar nor syntax, nor is the humanoid nervous system adequate to fully experience the language of the Rutan. For convenience, we have reluctantly adopted your primitive method of communication.’
‘That is most considerate,’ the Doctor replied in Rutan.
The mouth dropped open.
‘Shall we go in?’ the Doctor said sweetly.
The only elevator from the Infinity Chamber floor down to the Panopticon was restricted to Time Lords, to prevent public access to the TARDIS Cradles in between. Larna had been forced to use the emergency staircase that swept around the lift shaft. There were literally thousands of steps down from the Infinity Chambers to the floor of the Panopticon. Hard, grey, stone steps. Halfway down, it had occurred to Larna that there was no reason why the stairs couldn’t be dimensionally transcendental. It would be a straightforward engineering job to arrange the staircases so that you never needed to go up or down more than one flight of stairs to get to whichever level you wanted. She began to model the neatest solution in her head. The mathematics kept her mind from the cramp, her aching hips and sore feet. By the time she had reached the bottom of the stairs she had it all planned, and she vowed to raise the matter to Council as soon as possible.
Not that it helped her now.
As soon as she had finished her descent, it all caught up with her, and she found herself doubled up, desperately unable to suck enough air into her lungs. Sweat was pouring from her forehead, and her back. She was dizzy, her bare feet simultaneously icy cold and stinging with heat. She was too tired to even acknowledge the Doctor’s presence.
‘Have you just run down all these stairs in your nightie?’
the Doctor asked.
Larna nodded, almost managing to straighten herself up.
He was bent over her, unsure whether to put his arm around her shoulders or to give her enough space to recover.
Wisely, he chose the latter.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked gently. ‘Did you have a bad dream?’
‘You noticed what I’m wearing this time,’ she replied hoarsely. ‘And this time it was me running.’
The Doctor looked blankly at her.
‘Terrible danger!’ she blurted, remembering the reason that she had been running in the first place.
‘Calm down. What about it?’
Larna caught her breath. ‘We’re in it. I don’t think that the aliens are all that they seem –’
‘But I’ve just welcomed the Rutan. Everything went swimmingly.’
‘Just the Rutan?’ Larna asked, puzzled. ‘I thought that the Sontarans were due at the same time.’
The Doctor checked his watch and slapped his forehead.
‘Look, Larna, we’ll talk about this. Go to my room, get yourself a drink, make yourself at home. I’ll be there soon.
I’ve not quite finished yet, and I don’t like to leave a job only half done. If a job’s worth doing blah blah, and all that.’
With a smile, the Doctor tapped in his access code and opened up the elevator. The door slid smoothly shut behind him.
And, around two thousand steps too late, it occurred to Larna that she was allowed in the Time-Lord‐only elevators these days.
A little later and earlier, the Doctor stood at the Western Materialisation Zone. 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 were ten Sontaran warriors, in full space armour. They were identical – squat humanoids, with rounded shoulders and torsos. Their limbs were bodybuilder-powerful.