Doctor Who_ The Infinity Doctors - Lance Parkin [79]
‘I hesitated.
‘And he was there. Ohm, ancient god of the Time Lords, chained to heaven as the legends told. I saw him, in the distance, and then closer, towering over me. He spoke to me, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying, and he couldn’t step over the threshold into our universe. He beckoned me forward, with one gloved hand. And then I knew that if I set foot in that place that I would be lost, and that it would mean the end of everything.
He asked me what I wanted. He told me he could change the past, give me whatever I desired. He showed me my friend, dead two decades. He had died in a storm, his boat lost with all hands. Ohm showed me the boat returned to port. He showed me visions of how my past might have been had I been Astronomer Royal or had I left Gallifrey. Whatever I wanted, he said, as the past changed around me. All the mistakes of my youth, all my failed conquests both professional and personal. It could all change. Would I like to be a Prydonian rather than an Arcalian? Which title, honour or job would I wish? Would I rather be a woman than a man?
It could all change, yet remain the same. His voice was a whisper. Just help him to leave this terrible place and a universe would be mine. Nothing was fixed, nothing. The past wasn’t real, the present wasn’t real, the future wasn’t real.
‘Fear filled my hearts at this prospect.
‘“I am who I am!” I shouted.
‘I fled. I stumbled back to my TARDIS, slammed closed the doors, I lung myself at the controls. The flight from the black hole… all the way there, I had been fretting about my return. A journey such as mine had never been attempted before. Now, the technicalities didn’t matter: I had to escape, or all would be lost.
‘My TARDIS reached the event horizon without incident, but as we reached that final hurdle, we were attacked. The control room crackled with green lightning, I could feel the power seeping away, could sense the Time Vortex around my ship fading. I could feel the external shell of the TARDIS
annihilating. I did what I could, I wrestled with the controls.
‘My TARDIS screeched and shrieked as he tried to get free. Time and space… they are different things there. Matter and energy aren’t as know them. Finally, after an hour at the console, I broke free, or so thought. I set the controls for a massive burst of speed, to get away from this terrible place.
But I looked back, and I saw that the tiniest part of my TARDIS was still trapped in the black hole. I looked again, and I saw the hand of Ohm grasped there, pulling us towards the doorway.
‘I panicked. I told the TARDIS to fly on, to leave. But this wasn’t some cave, or the jaws of some sea creature, this was the event horizon of a black hole. There was no escape.
‘An irresistible amount of power, trying to break free from an immovable force. A puzzle for the mathematicians! But no, Lady Larna, you are quite right. By definition, either there wasn’t going to be enough power, or the event horizon would release me.
‘There wasn’t enough power.
‘Oh, my TARDIS tried. He struggled, pulled, stretched out like toffee, pulled himself through more dimensions than we can conceive of. All the time I was clinging to the console. All the time, I knew that my TARDIS couldn’t make it.
‘There was only one course of action to me, I abandoned my dying ship, made for the escape unit. Behind me, I saw my TARDIS, his outer shell stretched and looped around itself, chameleon circuits reconfiguring and reconfiguring, trying to get away. But to no avail.
‘Stretched thin, now, like a vast needle, a line that must have been a light year long, I saw the moment my TARDIS
gave up the fight. He began falling, slipping into the black hole like a drowning sailor. I heard his telepathic cries for help, I heard him pleading: “Don’t abandon