The Ghosts of N-Space - Barry Letts [104]
‘I beg you,. Majesty,’ said the Doctor, shrinking back against the Dimensional Transducer, ‘stop this madness. No human frame, not even one which has the elixir of 363
immortality running in its veins, none could survive it.’ His voice was full of panic.
Maximilian ignored him.
‘You see?’ he was shouting in triumph. ‘You see? I am the Emperor! None shall withstand my might! My glory shall fill the Universe and put the stars to shame! Bow down ye mortals and pay homage to your Lord!’
The last flame flickered into his body, which was now some seventy feet tall, a very Gulliver of evil.
He stretched his one good arm up high and cried out to the silent sky: ‘I am Maximilian!’
‘Goodbye,’ murmured the Doctor, and pulled the switch.
When Sarah tried to remember afterwards exactly what happened then, she found it difficult to focus her thoughts.
Certainly there was some sort of explosion, one which deafened the mind rather than the ears. The flash of light which hit the eyes and obscured the sight left no after-glare.
Yet when it cleared and all that could be seen was the sky and the sea and the earth, it seemed for a long shimmering moment that the whole of creation had been shaken by the passing of Maximilian.
‘I did warn him,’ said the Doctor mildly as he switched off the machine.
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‘Look,’ he added. ‘A bonus. The flaw in the barrier has closed up.’ Sure enough, the monstrous bloody gash in the sky through which the N-Forms had come had vanished.
‘But what happened?’ asked the Brigadier. ‘I could see that you were teasing him into taking those things on board, but what then?’
‘I thought it was game, set and match to the Jolly old Emperor,’ said Jeremy.
‘Oh ye of little faith,’ said Sarah. ‘Do you think the Doctor didn’t know what he was doing?’
‘I’m not so sure,’ said the Brigadier.
‘How well you know me, Lethbridge-Stewart,’ said the Doctor with a twinkle. ‘You’re quite right. It could have gone disastrously wrong if I’d mistimed things.’
He started to disconnect the Warping Template.
‘Just think what was going on inside him,’ he went on.
‘A veritable torrent of power pouring in; a literal pandemonium of negativity and evil; his mind, his body –
his whole being – teetering on the edge of chaos. It’s possible that it might have been too much for him anyway, just as I told him.
‘But dynamic conditions like that can crystallize into an ordered structure in a moment. It’s the way the world is built. And if that had happened, I might have been the agent 365
in constructing a monster the like of which the Universe has never seen.
‘So I thought I’d better give him a bit of a push by twisting his Space-Time – remember, he was standing right where I’d aimed the Warping Template. And over the edge he went.’
He took hold of the strange spiral construction, which seemed to move in his hand as he picked it up, and marched off to the TARDIS with a youthful spring in his step.
He doesn’t look a day over six hundred, thought Sarah.
A feast it was. Umberto, Mario and Roberto had filled the big table in the great hall with all sorts of Italian and Sicilian goodies. There was pasta aplenty, of course, all differently shaped and sauced; smoked ham, salami, mortadella and five other sorts of sausage; tiny grilled sardines; roasted leg of lamb and stuffed kid (which Sarah couldn’t bring herself to eat), with peppers cooked to a crisp, and aubergine and fennel; cheeses galore; and if you hadn’t filled up to the brim on almond tartlets and zabaglione you could add a layer of peach or apricot.
‘I like to give a piece of toast,’ said Mario, lifting his glass when everybody had finished eating (except Jeremy, who was on his third helping of zabaglione washed down with a fifth glass of sweet sparkling spumante). ‘I drink to 366