Doctor Who: The Eight Doctors Read online

  Slowly Baz turned round, stunned, as they all were, by the impossibility of what he'd just seen. But he still had a good grasp of his priorities.

  'I'm a dead man without that gear,' he said conversationally.

  He slipped a hand inside his jacket and took something out. There was a click and the long, thin blade of a flick-knife sprang from his fist.

  'Hey!' shouted Trev in alarm.

  Baz was too far gone to even notice. 'I brought this with me - for the Doctor.'

  'Well, he's gone now,' said Sam.'You've missed your chance.'

  'Ah, but you're still here,' said Baz.

  'And you started all this, didn't you, Sam?'

  The blade of the knife gleamed as he advanced towards her.

  Chapter 3

  Reunion

  The Doctor staggered across the room and hit the controls that sent the TARDIS hurtling into the space-time vortex. For a moment he leaned heavily on the console, drawing strength from its vibration. He had an odd sensation of déjà vu . Once again, recent events seemed confused, irrelevant. He had an overpowering sense that somehow he'd missed a vital connection.

  'Right place, wrong temporal coordinates,' he muttered.

  His hands moved over the controls, and for a moment he stood watching the central column's steady rise and fall. Then he turned away, and sank wearily into an armchair. Slowly, his head began to nod and his eyes closed.

  The Doctor dreamed.

  He was in the same place, the same control room, but everything was different. He saw a white-haired old man with a fierce beak of a nose, talking to a young man and woman and a dark-haired girl. The old man was angry...

  The old man was him.

  The Doctor awoke and found that he was angry too, his heart pounding. He rubbed his eyes and saw that the central column had ceased its rise and fall. TheTARDIS had landed -

  somewhere. It was time to go.

  He touched the control that opened the TARDIS doors and went outside.

  ***

  He was standing on the edge of a dense forest, looking out over a bleak stony plain, strewn with huge boulders. In the distance low, rocky foothills merged into jagged mountains. A wind howled dismally over the plain.

  Looking all around him, the Doctor suddenly felt a kind of tug upon his mind. He turned and strode into the forest.

  It was dark among the trees, dark and oppressive with a sense of brooding terror. His feet found a narrow track and he pressed forward, thrusting aside the branches and fronds that brushed across his face.

  He paused for a moment, examining the lush vegetation all around him, then pulled off a twig and studied the dense green leaves.

  'Palaeolithic,' he murmured.

  'Somewhere around 100,000 BC probabry. Now, how did I know that? And why am I using the scientific terminology of Earth?'

  He shrugged and moved on. Somewhere ahead of him was the sound of running water and he began to feel an increased sense of urgency.

  All at once he realised that something terrible was about to happen -

  something he had to prevent.

  Suddenly he heard a man yelling in rage and pain. The sound was followed by a woman's scream and then by the coughing roar of some enraged beast.

  A great yellow beast smashed its way out of the trees ahead of him and rushed on by, so close that he could feel the burning heat of its massive body and smell its rank, musty odour.

  He caught a quick glimpse of the cat-like shape with its long protruding fangs as it flashed past, and saw the stone axehead embedded in its side.

  'Sabre-tooth tiger,' he murmured.

  'Very fine specimen too. Done for, poor thing, it won't survive that wound.'

  The sounds of the fleeing tiger faded away and the Doctor moved on.

  Soon he came to the edge of a clearing, and spotted six people. He stood watching them from the shadows. In the centre of the clearing lay a burly blood-covered figure with a sobbing girl kneeling beside him.

  Both wore crudely made skin garments and had long, matted hair.

  Both, the Doctor sensed, were in the right time and the right place, a natural part of this savage environment.

  The others, the four incongruous ones, were the people of the Doctor's dream. The young man and the young woman were kneeling by the wounded savage, washing away the blood from deep slashes in his arm and shoulder, watched suspiciously by the skin-clad girl. The white-haired old man and the

  young girl looked on.

  These four were time travellers, the

  Doctor realised, time travellers like himself. They began wrangling among themselves. The old man tried to draw the young girl away, but she resisted him, turning back to the others.

  The Doctor was still too far away to hear what they were saying, but it was perfectly clear what they were arguing about. The old man wanted to abandon the wounded savage to his fate. The others were determined to stay and help him.

  The majority won and the old man turned away in disgust as they bathed the savage's wounds and then set about improvising a stretcher.

  The Doctor moved closer, somehow drawn by the old man's rigid, angry form, sensing the passions that raged within him. He could understand them as if they were his own. And then he realised - they were his own.

  He felt the impulse of murderous rage flooding through the old man's mind, saw him moving towards a jagged stone that lay on the ground nearby.

  Absorbed in the task of improvising a stretcher, no one seemed to notice when the old man picked up the stone and edged towards the wounded savage.

  'No!' shouted the Doctor, running towards the clearing.

  As he ran the air seemed to quiver around him. He reached the old man just as he raised the stone...

  'No!' shouted the Doctor again.

  The old man whirled round and froze.

  They both stood motionless, facing each other for a moment, and their minds touched.

  Memories flooded into the Doctor's mind. Memories of his childhood, of his mother smiling, of his father holding him up to see the stars.

  Memories of school, of the Academy, of playing truant to drink with the Shobogans, to visit an old hermit who lived high on a misty mountain.

  Memories of public life and of rising high in the ranks of the Time Lords.

  Suddenly he was in the Council

  Chamber on Gallifrey, wearing the high-collared orange and scarlet robes of the Prydonian Chapter, his voice raised in anger against his fellow council members.

  He was striding down the long marble corridors of the Capitol, still seething with anger. He stood in a vault, deep beneath the Capitol, opening the door of an obsolete, erratically functioning Type Forty TARDIS. He heard the voice of a young girl: 'Grandfather, wait - I'm coming with you...'

  These and countless other memories washed through the Doctor's mind, and then the tide of recollection receded and he found himself back in the jungle clearing.

  The old man was staring unbelievingly at him. .

  'Who are you?'

  'I am the Doctor.'

  'Nonsense,' snapped the old man. 'I'm the Doctor.'

  'You are the First Doctor,' corrected the Doctor. 'I know all about you - now.'

  The old man glared angrily at him, and the Doctor felt the fierce pressure of another's will hammering at the barriers of his mind.

  'Good grief! Seven regenerations... I am the First Doctor, and you are the Eighth! I can tell that much, but no more. I have no access to your memories.' He glared angrily at the Doctor. 'Why do you seal your mind against me?'

  'Not through choice, I assure you. My past is a closed book to me as well.

  Until we met, I had very few memories at all. Now I know what you know -

  but no more.'

  'Then you know a good deal more than most,' snapped the old man.

  'Who did this to you?'

  'That's one of the many things I still don't know.'

  'Well, it's quite obvious what you must do.
You must find your other selves, all six of them. They'll restore most of the gaps in your memory, just as I have - though only up to the time in their lives that you meet them, of course.' The old man considered. 'Of course, each time you meet a new self, you'll gain the remaining memories of the one before! With most of the gaps filled in, the remaining barriers will start to crumble and in time you'll be whole again.'

  'I hope you're right.'

  'Of course I'm right, I invariably am. No doubt that's why you came - why you were allowed to come. Well, be off with you, before the time bubble bursts and the others see you.'

  'Time bubble?'

  The Doctor looked at the group working on the stretcher and realised for the first time that they were frozen, motionless.

  'State of temporal stasis - freak effect of crossing the time streams. It won't last for ever, so you'd better be on your way.'

  'Not yet,' said the Doctor. 'I have something to say to you first.'

  'Oh yes? About what?'

  'About that! "The Doctor pointed to the sharp rock, still clutched in the old man's hand. 'When I arrived you were contemplating cold-blooded murder.'

  'You don't know what was in my mind!'

  'You forget, I do. It's my mind as well.'

  'Don't interfere in what doesn't concern you, young man.'

  'Could anything concern me more?

  Don't forget, I shall eventually bear the guilt of your crime.'

  'We are currently being hunted by the rest of that savage's tribe,' said the First Doctor furiously. 'If we don't get back to the ship before they catch us, they will certainly kill us. Instead of leaving him to die - which he may as well do here as elsewhere - these sentimental fools want to patch him up and take him with us, making capture and death inevitable for us all.'

  'And you had a better idea?'

  'I could see a way of disposing of the problem.'

  'And the end justifies the means?'

  'In this case, yes. The lives of three innocent people and -'

  The Doctor smiled. 'And a Time Lord of Gallifrey?'

  'Precisely!'

  'It's still in you, isn't it?' said the Doctor.

  'What is?'

  'The ruthless arrogance that has been the curse of our Time Lord race.

  Nothing must endanger us, nothing must stand in our way. And if the lives of inferior beings have to be sacrificed, so be it!'

  'How dare you take that tone with me -'

  'Be silent and listen,' said the Doctor sternly. 'I am older and wiser than you.

  My memories may have gone, but my morals at least are still intact. You left Gallifrey in a fit of pique, and a stolen TARDIS, when your colleagues on the High Council refused to tolerate your arrogance. You selfishly took Susan with you because you felt it might be pleasant to have her company, without considering what the departure might mean for her.'

  'You have the insolence to accuse me -'

  'I accuse you of doing these things because I know now that I did these things,' said the Doctor sadly.

  'Whatever your motives, much good may come of your leaving Gallifrey.

  But try to learn a little humility. And remember, you cannot fight evil with evil's methods. The end never justifies the means.'

  As the air shimmered about them, he turned and strode away into the forest.

  lan, the young man, leaped up and grasped the First Doctor's wrist.

  'What are you doing, Doctor?'

  'Let go of me,' said the old man. 'I was just going to ask him to draw some kind of map on the ground to show us the way back to the TARDIS.' It was a feeble enough excuse, but all he could come up with in his shaken condition.

  lan took the stone from the old man's hand and tossed it away.

  'It's a good idea, Doctor, but I don't think he's in a fit state to draw any maps. We'd better get going.'

  As they struggled through the forest carrying the wounded savage, the Doctor was silent and abstracted.

  'Are you all right, Doctor?' asked lan.

  He half expected some cutting reply, but the old man's response was surprisingly mild.

  'What? Oh yes, yes thank you, young man. It's just that I've suddenly been given rather a lot to think about...'

  ***

  Conscientious as ever, President Flavia was hard at work at her desk - a desk overflowing with everything from high-tech data chips to ancient parchment scrolls.

  This wasn't of course the same Flavia who had been pitched into the Presidency when Borusa vanished and the Doctor absconded - again -

  after the Death Zone affair. Or rather it was and it wasn't.

  Like the Doctor, Flavia had been through several regenerations since then.

  In the whirlpool of Gallifreyan politics, she had been been deposed from the Presidency and subsequently reelected. Now, in her latest regeneration she was President of Gallifrey once again, elected this time in her own right.

  Unlike the Doctor, the appearance of whose various incarnations always varied wildly, Flavia had preserved much the same general appearance through all her regenerations. Now as earlier, she was a small, deceptively mild-looking woman with a brilliant political brain and an immensely strong will.

  Looking up as her secretary, a pink and eager young Time Lord called Tarin, slid deferentially into her office, she peered at him over the pile of scrolls, papers and microrecords that covered her desk.

  'I did say no interruptions...'

  'My apologies, Madam President.

  Your presence is urgently requested in the Temporal Control Room. There seems to be something of an emergency.'

  'Can't they deal with it themselves?'

  'Apparendy not, Madam President. Besides which...'

  'Well?'

  "This particular emergency appears to concern the Doctor.'

  'Yes,' said President Flavia thoughtfully. 'They usually do!'

  Secrety glad of the interruption, she got up from behind her desk and headed for the door. Tarin followed, a few paces behind. As they went through the elaborately arched doorway, five massive young men in the elaborate red and gold uniforms of the Chancellery Guard crashed to attention and fell in behind them.

  Footsteps echoing, the little procession set off down the long marble corridors of the Capitol.

  Marching ahead the officer in charge bellowed, 'Make way for Madam President!'

  Sometimes Flavia wondered if there wasn't some simpler way of getting about.

  In the vast temporal control room there was an air of restrained panic.

  Technicians sprang to attention as

  President Flavia passed between the quietly humming banks of instruments.

  She made for what seemed to be the centre of the crisis - an agitated little group of Time Lords clustered around an enormous monitor screen. As she approached, Chief Temporal

  Technician Volnar turned and bowed low. 'Madam President! So kind of you to come. Perhaps I shouldn't have troubled you - but then again, given the extremely unusual circumstances, and since I know you take a particular interest in the Doctor...'

  Volnar was a small, tubby, nervous Time Lord and the more nervous he was, the more he chattered.

  'Volnar!' snapped Flavia, cutting through the flow.

  Volnar jumped. 'Madam President?'

  'I am here. Tell me the problem. Briefly. What has the Doctor done now?'

  'Better, perhaps if I show you, Madam President.'

  He touched a control and a mass of complex equations covered the monitor screen. 'There!'

  Flavia regarded him with disfavour. 'Is this temporal gobbledygook supposed to convey something to me?'

  'Allow me to simplify, Madam President.

  Volnar adjusted controls, the monitor screen cleared and a long, glowing line appeared. Pulsing points of light divided it into eight segments of varying lengths.

  Seven of the segments were blue, the eighdi a vibrant red.

  It was noticeable that the left-hand segment was very long, while th
e red right-hand segment, the current one, was very short.

  Volnar cleared his throat. 'This represents the current state of the Doctor's time stream, Madam President - symbolically rendered of course.'

  'I can follow a simple tempograph, Chief Technician. Please continue.'

  Volnar touched another control. 'What seems to have occurred is this...'

  The red segment at the far end of the line curved around until it touched the first blue segment some way along. There was a brief pulse of light as the two lines touched.