Doctor Who_ The Infinity Doctors - Lance Parkin [66]
‘You live!’ the Rutan said.
The Doctor was at the edge of the room, close to where the Sontaran had thrown him. He was rubbing his neck, as if there was slight stiffness. ‘It is very difficult to die inside the TARDIS while the engines are running. We exist in a state of grace, outside time as you would understand it.’
The Rutan twitched its tentacle around, holding up the Sontaran for the Doctor’s inspection. ‘Nevertheless, this ignorant, insolent creature attempted such a foul act. I have captured the creature that would have been your murderer. I will kill it!’
‘No!’ the Doctor said loudly. ‘Let Sontar go.’
The Rutan retracted the tentacle, let the Sontaran fall to the floor.
‘I understand. You wish to kill the creature yourself.’ The Rutan had all but finished the Sontaran, which lay, dull and inert, at the Doctor’s feet.
The Doctor held out its prehensile paw, helping the Sontaran to its feet. The Rutan saw its energy fields, knew that the Sontaran was weakened.
‘Kill it!’ the Rutan said.
‘You don’t understand, do you?’ the Doctor asked. ‘I couldn’t kill Sontar in here, even if I wanted to. Now, I appreciate that bringing you here was a little unorthodox, but I wanted to show you something.’
He stepped over to the console, checking the controls.
‘We’ve arrived.’
‘Where?’ the Sontaran grunted.
‘Ten thousand years after your own time. You wanted to see your future. I’ve brought you here. This is what will happen, unless you change your ways.’
He was holding something in each paw: in one, the Rutan anti-matter Converter, in the other the Sontaran star-killing weapon.
‘You said you did not know our future,’ the Rutan noted.
‘Indeed I don’t. But I can guess what I’ll see when I open that door. A spiral arm of dead suns and shattered worlds.
The ruins of two mighty empires now just a curiosity for archaeologists. My guess is that we won’t see any Sontarans and Rutans. Your races will be long dead.’
Sontar drew out a long, hissing breath. ‘Or a Sontaran galaxy, free from the stain of the non-Sontaran. A glorious empire, united under my rule.’
The Rutan remained silent.
‘Perhaps that,’ the Doctor conceded. ‘Perhaps one under Rutan control. But what was the price of victory? Let’s see, shall we?’
He moved round to another part of the console.
‘Bear in mind that whatever we see is not fixed. The past cannot change, but the future is constantly in flux. It is never too late.’
He flicked a switch.
Shutters along one wall slid smoothly open, revealing a scanner screen. The display was a simple grey colour.
The Rutan waited, but the picture did not appear.
The Doctor was adjusting some of the controls.
‘This is the future?’ Sontar grunted.
‘The Sontaran was at the console,’ the Rutan stated. ‘It may have altered the settings through its ignorance and incompetence and caused the malfunction of the scanner.’
The Doctor moved his head. ‘No.’
He paused, then reached for another control. At the far end of the console room, a set of double doors swung open.
Outside it was possible to see the same sea of grey nothingness The Doctor walked slowly over to the threshold and perched there, gripping the door frame to stay inside.
The Rutan followed him over, the Sontaran trudging into place behind them. It gazed down, out past the Doctor. There was nothing there. The Rutan could not hear the consciousness, or sense energy patterns, It couldn’t detect atomic forms.
Even in the darkest, most desolate comer of the universe there more than this: virtual particles appearing and annihilating, a gas ion every square metre or so, the occasional photon. There was just the Grey, fixed for ever. It was the only Rutan, the only Rutan the only Rutan. It felt panic form deep inside its body, it looked at the Time Lord, hoping for comforting words.
‘There’s nothing left,’ the Doctor said quietly. ‘No time, no space, no matter, no energy. The entire universe has gone.’
Chapter Seven
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