Doctor Who - [093] - The Invasion Of Time Page 5

  'What orders-Supremacy?'

  'Regarding the re-decoration of my office!'

  'The matter was put in hand.'

  'No doubt. But is it finished?'

  'I believe so.'

  'Make sure!' ordered the Doctor. 'Attend me there within the hour. I shall expect to see the work complete.'

  Too angry to speak, Borusa turned away.

  The Vardan Leader said, 'Congratulations, Doctor. You show great promise in the application of power. You could be a first-grade dictator.' This was quite a compliment. The entire Vardan philosophy was based on the seizure and application of power. A ruthless arbitrary dictator was the most admired figure in their society.

  'Thank you,' said the Doctor humbly. 'That's very kind of you.'

  'How long will it take you to find the Great Key?'

  'That,' said the Doctor solemnly, 'is a matter of time.'

  'The invaders are in control,' moaned Rodan.

  Her world had suddenly crumbled around her, and she was in a state of near-hysterical collapse. Leela, on the other hand, was used to danger, and was positively exhilarated by it. Not surprisingly, it was Leela who took control.

  'Good! Now they are here, we can fight them.'

  'Didn't you hear the High Council's announcement. We must submit.'

  'You listen to your High Council-I shall listen to my Doctor. He has a plan.'

  'What plan?'

  'I do not know.'

  'Then how can you be so certain?'

  'The Doctor always has a plan.' Rodan started to protest further, but Leela said, 'There is no point in further discussion. Talk is for the wise or the helpless, and I am neither.'

  'What shall we do?'

  'The Doctor wished me to be banished,' said Leela slowly. 'So, I will be banished!'

  'Should we not surrender?'

  'No!' said Leela fiercely. 'You talk always of surrender, of submission. Are all your tribe like this?'

  'We are rational beings, we accept the situation.'

  'You are cowards!' Leela went on thinking aloud. 'No, if the Doctor wished me banished, it was for a reason. I should have known that.'

  'But the Doctor is a traitor!'

  'Never!'

  'But reason dictates--'

  'Then reason is a liar.'

  'But Leela, if I am right--'

  'Then I am wrong, and I will face the consequences. Now, are you coming?'

  Rodan nodded miserably. She switched off the force-field and followed Leela from the room.

  The Doctor strode grandly into the Presidential office and found Borusa waiting. The place had been transformed. Walls, ceiling, doors, even the floor itself had been covered with intricately decorated lead panels. They were patterned in wheels and cogs and levers and they gleamed dully like the inside of some antiquated machine.

  The Doctor looked round appreciatively. 'Nice, very nice indeed. A little too rococco for an aesthetic purist perhaps, but I like it.' He seemed to notice the Chancellor for the first time. 'Ah, Borusa! What are you doing here?'

  'You wished to see me, Your Excellency.'

  'I did? Now, what about... Oh yes! Are the re-decorations to my office complete?'

  'As Your Excellency can see...'

  'Completely, complete?'

  'To the last detail.'

  'No substitute materials, no forgeries, no penny-pinching?'

  'No expense was spared,' said Borusa dryly. 'The materials and workmen were the finest to be had in the entire Thesaurian Empire.'

  'Really?' said the Doctor admiringly. 'So all this exquisite relief work is in pure lead?'

  Borusa decided that the combination of absolute power and knowledge of his own treason must have completely unhinged the Doctor's always erratic brain.

  'Apart from a small admixture of strengthening alloy, that is the case.'

  The Doctor smiled, and seemed to relax. Suddenly Borusa saw not a power-mad traitor, but the Doctor he had always known, the pupil whose impudent charm had so often brought an unwilling smile to his face.

  The Doctor put an affectionate hand on the old man's shoulder. 'Good! Then at last we can really talk! Sit down.'

  Borusa sat, and the Doctor began to speak. He talked for a very long while pouring out past history, information gained and future plans and Borusa listened in astonished silence.

  When the Doctor had finished, Borusa shook his head in amazement. 'But why not simply warn us? Why the betrayal?'

  'Would you have listened? The Time Lords had grown complacent, ripe for conquest. You needed the shock of invasion to wake up. Besides, once I had made contact with the Vardans, I had to pretend to join them to survive. Any attempt to warn you, and they'd have killed me, and invaded you just the same.'

  'But to shield your feelings, your every thought for so long a time... the strain must have been intolerable.'

  'Difficult, I must confess, even for me. I owe you a great deal, Lord Borusa, and not least my apologies for all the indignities and insults I was forced to throw at you.'

  'The President need apologise to no one.'

  'Thank you.'

  'The President need--'

  'Thank no one either?' The Doctor smiled. 'True, very true, just a habit I picked up somewhere.'

  By now Borusa had absorbed the problem, and was considering how to deal with it. 'How accurate is your data?'

  'Absolutely accurate, as far as it goes-but not yet complete.'

  Borusa said thoughtfully, 'So, the Vardans can travel along wave-lengths of any sort. And since an electro-temporal field is needed for communications, they can read thoughts.'

  'At almost any distance-if their attention is concentrated.'

  Borusa looked around him. 'But a lead-lined room, such as this one...'

  'With at least a hint of elegance, I hope?' said the Doctor irrepressibly.

  Borusa frowned at his old pupil's frivolity. 'A lead-lined room like this can shield us from them?'

  'True.'

  'And you managed at least partial shielding totally unaided?'

  'Also true, but then, I had the benefit of your training!'

  'Then why could I not shield myself?'

  'Because, like the rest of the Time Lords, your mind is too logical. Most of you are lacking in humour, you have little imagination.'

  Borusa gave an affronted sniff. Suddenly the Doctor said, 'What about tea?'

  'Tea?'

  'Tea!'

  'Tea is the leaves of a plant, genus camellia in dried form.'

  'I know what tea is-what's for tea?'

  'What has tea got to do with the Vardan invasion?'

  'Nothing! That's the whole point.'

  'But I don't understand.'

  'Of course you don't. You're too single minded. Transparent as good old glass.'

  'You're right,' said Borusa sadly. 'I wouldn't last a moment. My mind is too logical, too easy to read. The master learns from the pupil, eh, Doctor?'

  'Well...' said the Doctor modestly. But perhaps there was the faintest hint of smugness in his smile.

  Rodan led Leela through the Capitol, looking for the little used tunnel that led to the outside. As they moved along, the corridors became narrower and more neglected-looking, almost disused. The Time Lords seldom ventured into the outside world.

  Rodan paused at a corridor junction. 'Straight on, I think. Though I'm not really sure. I've never been this far.'

  A voice behind them shouted, 'Halt!'

  They turned, and saw Andred, covering them with a staser. 'Where do you two think you're going?'

  'Outside,' said Leela briefly.

  'Don't you know we've been invaded?'

  'As a matter of fact, we do, Commander Andred,' said Rodan. 'I was on duty in space traffic control when it happened.'

  She told Andred of the arrival of the alien craft, and of the mysterious failure of the transduction barrier. Andred in turn told them of the astonishing events on the council chamber, and of the Doctor's strange behavi
our.

  'Well,' said Rodan, when he'd finished. 'What are you going to do about all this?'

  'I'm not sure yet. How much is this alien girl involved with the invaders.'

  'I don't think she even knows who they are.'

  'But she's the President's friend-and he is working for them.'

  'He isn't, he's only pretending to help them,' said Leela fiercely.

  'I see! So you and the Doctor only want to help us. I suppose that's why you destroyed the transduction barrier.'

  'I destroyed nothing.'

  'She couldn't have done it, Andred,' said Rodan. 'She was with me when it happened.'

  'Someone blew up the control room. Who was it, if it wasn't her?'

  'I've no idea. All we want is to get out of here.'

  'Why?'

  'Because it's too dangerous on the inside, and Leela thinks we may be able to do some good outside.'

  Leela was getting impatient. Her hand hovered near the hilt of her knife, and she was poised to spring. She rather liked Andred, but she was quite prepared to kill him if he stood in her way. 'Well, are you going to let us go or not?'

  Andred bolstered his staser. 'All right. Carry on this way and you'll come to the exit tunnel. But be careful, there's a curfew. If any of the guards see you they'll shoot-Kelner's orders.'

  'Why don't you come with us?'

  'I can do more good here. Someone's got to keep an eye on Castellan Kelner and besides, there may be a chance of having a go at the invaders.' He gave Leela a look. 'Or even the president.'

  Leela gave him an angry glare but said nothing. Andred scarcely knew the Doctor after all, and he couldn't be expected to share her own blind faith in him. 'Come on, Rodan,' she said, and led the way down the corridor.

  Half-regretfully, Andred watched them go.

  The Doctor and Borusa had nearly finished their discussion.

  'By the way,' said Borusa as they prepared to leave, 'why did you order your friend Leela to be banished?'

  'For her own protection. Leela is a barbarian, a primitive. She's quite incapable of shielding her feelings or emotions.'

  Borusa nodded. 'So, if I'm as transparent as good old glass...'

  'Leela is even more so. She's a danger to herself and to us all. But once she gets outside...'

  'That barbarian garden? How will she be safer there?'

  'Because that barbarian garden is her natural habitat. She's a huntress, a creature of instinct. There's no power out there, no technology to confuse her...'

  Borusa shuddered. It was beyond his comprehension that anyone could live without civilisation. 'How awful! Will she be able to survive?'

  'I don't know.' The Doctor got to his feet. 'We'd better go and face them, Chancellor. They'll get suspicious if we stay out of sight too long.'

  Borusa got stiffly to his feet. 'You haven't told me very much about your plans.'

  'As much as I dare,' said the Doctor apologetically.

  'Quite so. The less I know, the less I can give away.'

  'You must block from your mind the little that I have told you,' warned the Doctor. 'Can you do it? Can you act as you did before?'

  'Yes!' said Borusa determinedly.

  'Well done,' said the Doctor gently. 'You're a very brave man, Cardinal Borusa.'

  The Outcasts

  By now Leela and Rodan were outside the Capitol, making their way across a bleak and windswept stretch of moorland.

  The journey through the outer corridors had brought them to a narrow tunnel, which ended in a kind of airlock, a precaution against the possibility of the natural atmosphere contaminating the air-conditioned calm of the Capitol. Rodan had operated controls, they had gone through a narrow door, that led Outside. The door slid closed behind them, and suddenly they were in open country, the sheer white walls of the Capitol rising incredibly high above them.

  The change in conditions had affected the two girls in completely different ways. Leela was cheerful, exhilarated, delighted to feel wind with a hint of rain in her face, springy turf underfoot instead of cold, hard marble.

  Rodan was soon feeling cold and frightened. Deprived of the comforting warmth of the Capitol she was lost, helpless. 'Leela, I must rest. I'm so tired.'

  Leela glanced over her shoulder. Although they had been crossing the moor for quite some time, the gleaming towers of the Capitol were still in sight. 'No, we have not come far enough yet.'

  Rolling moorland stretched endlessly ahead, rising and falling, broken only by occasional clumps of trees. 'I never thought Outside would be like this,' sobbed Rodan. 'It's so empty.'

  'Surely you have been outside before?'

  'Never. None of us come Outside. Why should we? Everything we need is in the Capitol.'

  'Here is better,' said Leela confidently.

  'But it frightens me.'

  'You are frightened? Why?'

  'It's all so-empty.'

  'We must go on,' said Leela firmly. 'We can still see the city, so those in the city can see us.'

  'How much further?'

  'To the other side of the hill. Then we can rest.'

  Leela began striding light-footed across the turf. With a reproachful look, Rodan stumbled after her.

  It seemed to take forever to climb the hill and descend the other side, but they managed it at last, and Rodan threw herself down, close to the edge of a little wood.

  'Now can we rest?'

  'Yes, for a while.'

  Rodan dropped to the ground in a heap. Leela looked round carefully, and sat beside her.

  Rodan took off her flimsy sandals and rubbed her sore feet. 'Why did I listen to you. It was stupid to leave the Capitol.'

  'Would you rather stay with the invaders? At least we're safe out here.'

  An arrow flashed through the air and stuck quivering in the ground just in front of them.

  Rodan jumped to her feet with a scream. Leela was on her feet, her knife in her hand. 'Quickly, Rodan, run!'

  But it was too late. Men with spears ran out from the trees, and gathered around them in a menacing circle. They were trapped.

  Castellan Kelner regarded the hulking guard standing rigidly to attention before him. The guard's name was Varn. He was very big, very brave, and very stupid. Best of all, he was utterly loyal to Castellan Kelner, who had recognised his qualities, and promoted him to the command of the Castellan's bodyguard, an elite squad who took orders only from Kelner. 'Now then, Varn, you understand your new appointment? From now on you will guard the President. You will stay with him at all times, is that clear?'

  'Yes, Castellan.'

  'You will report to me everything the President says or does.'

  'Yes, Castellan.'

  'The President has enemies, Varn, and there may be those who wish to harm him. You will protect him from any such attack-unless I order otherwise.'

  'Yes, Castellan. Nothing will happen to the president while I am guarding him.'

  'Good. You see, if anything did happen to the President I might have to take over as President myself. I have no desire to expose myself to the dangers of that position-for the moment, that is.'

  'I understand, Castellan.'

  'Good. You will take up your new position immediately. But remember, Varn, you are still serving me. When the time comes, I will see that you are suitably rewarded for your loyalty.'

  'Yes, sir. And thank you, sir.'

  Varn saluted and marched massively from the room.

  Kelner smiled. He was not yet sure exactly where the Doctor stood, and until he was, it was difficult to decide whether he wanted him alive or dead. Only time would tell. Meanwhile Varn would be at the Doctor's side. To protect, or to kill him-just as Kelner ordered.

  In the centre of the woods there was a tiny clearing, and in the clearing was a long hut. It was made of unpeeled logs, roofed with turf and camouflaged with branches, and it blended almost perfectly into its surroundings. A man came out of the hut and stood waiting before the door as a group of men with
spears dragged two female captives into the clearing. The man was called Nesbin, and he was the leader of the strange community known as the Outsiders. Nesbin was tall and strong, roughly dressed with harsh, craggy features. He wore a kind of simple smock, and a headband kept shaggy shoulder-length brown hair from his eyes. He and his followers had the weatherbeaten look of people who lead hard lives in the open air.

  Thoughtfully Nesbin studied the two captives. One was a Time Lady of the kind he had often seen before, though she had none of the usual elegance of her kind. Her face was dirty, her robes tattered and she looked tired and frightened.

  The other captive was more of a puzzle, a tall skin-clad girl with reddish-brown hair. She was struggling furiously with the two men who held her arms.

  Nesbin's men were almost as bedraggled as their captives. Most seemed to be bruised, and one or two had roughly-bound wounds.

  Nesbin stared at Ablif, a burly young man who was the leader of the hunting party.

  'What's this, Ablif? Have you been in a battle?'

  Ablif rubbed at a deep scratch on his brown cheek. 'We found these two hiding on the edge of the forest.'

  'Were they armed?'

  Ablif nodded towards the girl in skins. 'This one was. Took the whole lot of us to get this off her.' He tapped a long bladed knife thrust into his belt.

  At a nod from Nesbin, the two men holding Leela dragged her closer. He studied her thoughtfully. 'She's a strange one all right.' He reached out and touched her hair.

  Immediately a foot lashed out, kicking his right leg from under him. 'Keep your hands off me!' hissed a furious voice.

  Nesbin got slowly to his feet, trying to ignore the grins on the faces of his men. 'Well, well, it speaks!'

  'I am not an "it". I am Leela, and this is Rodan. Who are you, and what do you want from us?'

  'My name is Nesbin. I am leader here. More to the point, what do you want with us?'

  Rodan spoke for the first time. 'We don't want anything with you.'

  A tall bony woman called Presta came out of the log hut. 'It's a trick. She's a Time Lady, isn't she? Send her back to the Capitol where she belongs.'

  Rodan was horrified. 'No, you mustn't do that-we're escaping from the Capitol.'

  'Escaping? What for?'