Doctor Who_ The Infinity Doctors - Lance Parkin [48]
‘So you take sides!’ the Rutan gurgled. ‘We are but aphids in your garden? Time is a weapon! How is your Established History really that different from the arrogant, misguided Sontaran assertion that they have Established Space?’
‘Long ago,’ began the Doctor, ‘a generation or so after Rassilon, around the time that your War was hitting its stride, there were those that thought as you did. They tried to use Time to destroy and subdue their enemies. For thirty thousand years, on a thousand planets, we fought the Time Wars. The devastation would have destroyed the universe had it not been for the intervention of certain higher powers.
Since that time, Time has been stabilised. It is impossible to change Gallifrey’s past, or to know its future. That is the price that we must pay as its guardians.’
‘But you know the future,’ Stroc said. He was the most thoughtful Sontaran here, although there wasn’t exactly much in the way of competition. ‘You can monitor our future. You can observe the universe, this Conference is history from your perspective. Are you telling us that you know its outcome?’
‘No. We have selected you from a point in time about which little is known.’
‘Little is known by the Time Lords,’ said Sontar slowly.
‘Again we dance to the Time Lord’s agenda.’
‘No!’
‘You can alter history,’ the Rutan stated curtly. ‘You say it is difficult to explain, we say it is difficult to justify. You have a version of history that is beneficial to your race, and you prevent all other outcomes with your knowledge of what is to come. You alter history.’ They were directing their fire at him, not at each other.
‘Yes if necessary. As you know. In the past, we Time Lords have used our powers to remove forces from the universe that threatened all life. The –’
‘Are the Sontarans and the Rutan now such a threat that this is why the Time Lords show sudden interest in our military-political situation?’
‘No, no. That’s not what I meant at all.’
‘There is a way to end this war,’ Sontar said.
‘Yes?’ said the Doctor quietly.
Sontar clenched his fist, waved it at the Rutan. ‘Wipe it out. Prevent it from ever evolving, It is a parasite, a creature of nothing. This war has lasted millions of years and the Sontarans have lost so much. The Rutan is an obscenity against nature, a half-formed thing that looks like biological waste products, not a lifeform.’
The Sontaran leader slumped back in his seat, perhaps realising that he had overstepped the mark. When he looked up again, it was straight at the Doctor. Sontar’s eyes were red-rimmed, but beneath the folds of skin and the bloodshot, they looked like Time Lord eyes. Tired Gallifreyan eyes that had seen no peace for geological ages, that could never be allowed the luxury of sleep.
‘I remember how it was before The War,’ Sontar said wearily. ‘There was fighting then, the suppression of local populations, even wars between rival urSontatan factions.
But there was more than war.’ Sontar paused. ‘I remember a hunting trip in the forests of Sontara with a patty of friends. All those different faces. I remember women, and childhood, growing up, sex, ambition, feasts, old age, laughter. This Rutan creature has known none of that. But neither have my men. We have lost so much, and if the Rutan win, then all of that will be lost forever.’
The great Sontaran sighed, or growled, the Doctor couldn’t be sure which. ‘Erase them from the universe.’
The Doctor couldn’t look him in the eye. ‘No, you must come to an agreement.’
‘But you could do it?’ Sontar grunted.
‘The technologies and abilities of the Time Lords are without limit, not even we fully understand the powers at our command. The capability exists to wipe out both the Sontarans and the Rutans at the touch of a single button. I will not do so. I want the universe to benefit from your existence, not your destruction.’
‘I have a counteroffer,’ the Rutan announced. ‘An alliance between the