The encounter with the Doctor-with-no-name and his charming companion had put him out not one jot. If people chose to wear ridiculously long multicoloured scarves and to turn up on occasions decades apart not looking any older, it was none of his business.
But now, as he pinned another notice on the board and permitted himself just a tinge of inward pleasure at the thought of scrambled eggs on toast and the BBC’s Saturday serial in a few hours, he found himself bristling for the first time in years.
A quite ludicrously dressed person was stomping – yes, that was the only word for it, stomping – through the entrance to the courtyard. Now obviously it was no business of Wilkin’s if people chose to attire themselves in long silver capes and wide-brimmed silver hats, and went about carrying old carpet bags, that was their own affair.
But this fellow had none of the Doctor’s affability or charm, and Wilkin was quite sure he had never seen him before.
He was in his early thirties, and might have been handsome – his features were symmetrically pleasing and he had full, sensual lips – were it not for two things. Firstly, there was the jagged scar that ran across the right side of his face, so that actually it wasn’t symmetrical at all. And secondly, those full, sensual lips were curled arrogantly in a permanent disdainful sneer. All sneers were disdainful, Wilkin admitted to himself, but this one conveyed unfathomably deep levels of coldness and condescension.
‘You!’ the stranger barked.
Wilkin shot back his own best look of coldness and condescension, which was pretty good but couldn’t really compete. He then turned back sniffily to the notice board.
‘You! Gatekeeper!’ the stranger barked again.
Wilkin looked about the otherwise empty courtyard with exaggerated politeness. ‘Were you addressing me?’
‘I want Chronotis,’ said the stranger.
Wilkin winced at the lack of formality. ‘Professor Chronotis?’
‘Where is he?’ the stranger demanded.
Wilkin wanted this rotter out. ‘He will not want to be disturbed. He is with the Doctor – a friend.’ He added with emphasis, ‘A very old friend.’
The stranger stared down at him for several seconds. He hands moved as if to open the carpet bag. Then, without another word, he turned on his high silver platform heels and stomped back out of the courtyard.
Good riddance. Wilkin wondered where on Earth he had been brought up, with manners like that.
It would have surprised Wilkin to discover that the stranger had not been brought up on Earth at all. It would have surprised him even more had he learnt that his intervention had quite probably saved the lives of the Professor, his very old friend the Doctor and the fair Romana. And it would have left him agog with fear and horror had he been party to Skagra’s thoughts as he stomped back out to the streets around St Cedd’s. Though of course Wilkin would never have shown it. He was only ever inwardly agog.
Skagra was considering the information the Earth gatekeeper had supplied. So Chronotis had an old friend called the Doctor.
The Doctor, the Doctor…
Something about those words had made Skagra retreat and reconsider. He was certain that he had read something about this ‘Doctor’ in the course of the researches that had led him here halfway across the universe. And any ‘very old friend’ of Chronotis could not possibly be an Earth human. So the Doctor was a Time Lord.
Skagra needed more information. Who was this Doctor? Doctor who?
Chapter 7
ROMANA WAS WORRIED. ‘Anyone that could send a signal directly to the TARDIS must be terribly advanced.’
‘Terribly’s the word,’ agreed the Doctor. ‘And what’s more…’ He nodded towards where the Professor was absent-mindedly clearing away the tea things, ‘they not only had to know who we are, they have to know who the Professor is.’
Romana considered. ‘Then it can only be a Time Lord.’
The Professor tutted across at them. ‘Really, my dears, I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.’
Romana remembered the voices they’d heard on the river and shuddered. She wasn’t at all sure about that.
The Doctor held out a hand and started to tick off items on his fingers. ‘So. Whoever it is sent the signal, they know me, they know you, they’re probably a Time Lord—’
Suddenly the Professor jumped and clutched at his hearts. ‘Wait!’
They waited. He stood in the same position, his expression a curious mixture of enthusiasm and embarrassment. More seconds ticked by.
‘Professor?’ ventured Romana.
Chronotis sprang into life again. ‘Well, now you put it like that, young fellow,’ he said with a broad smile, ‘I’ve had an idea about who might have sent that message. Someone who knows you, knows me, and someone who – yes, quite – just happens to be a Time Lord.’
Romana considered. The Time Lords had produced a share of genial exiles – the Doctor, the Professor and, she supposed, herself – at least. But they had also spawned a number of criminals and renegades.
‘Yes, I think I know who sent that message, all right,’ said Chronotis.
‘Who?’ demanded the Doctor. His grave expression told Romana that he also was fearing the worst. ‘Who!?’
The Professor chuntered on. ‘It all adds up, you see. Obvious, really.’
‘Who was it?’ spluttered Romana.
Professor Chronotis flung his arms wide, and shouted: ‘Me!’
Romana and the Doctor looked at each other.
The Doctor snorted. ‘But you just said that you didn’t send it!’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Chronotis, shaking his head a little sadly as if to rattle the thoughts around inside it. ‘The old memory’s getting a bit touchy of late. Doesn’t like to be prodded about too much.’
Romana’s hearts went out to the old Professor. It wasn’t polite to ask, but she estimated that he must be about twelve or thirteen thousand years old. Even the amazing capacities of a Time Lord brain must bow down eventually to age and decay.
With that surprising agility of his, the Professor crouched down and rifled under the sofa, pulling out a battered, dusty wooden box. He flipped open the lid, revealing an ancient contraption that Romana just about recognised as a very old-fashioned space-time telegraph. These had been used by Time Lords to communicate with each other through the vortex, that mysterious medium through which TARDISes travel, before the days of message boxes and time rings.
‘Oh yes,’ he said, tapping a weakly flashing bulb on one arm of the old machine. ‘Yes, it was definitely me, there it is, in the Sent Mail folder.’ He squinted at a tiny readout screen. ‘But my dear old things, I sent that message ages ago, simply ages ago.’
Romana smiled. ‘I told you, Doctor. You got the time wrong.’
‘I know,’ said the Doctor, ‘but you’re always saying that.’
‘Well, you’re always getting the time wrong.’
The Professor slammed down the lid on the box and pushed the telegraph back under the sofa with one slippered foot.
‘Professor?’ the Doctor asked gently.
‘Yes?’ replied the Professor. ‘Ah, you want more tea.’
He started to move in the direction of the kitchen again. The Doctor caught him gently by the shoulder. ‘First – what was it about, Professor?’
‘What was what about?’
‘The message.’
The Professor shrugged. ‘How should I know? You’ve seen it more recently than I have. Something about coming to see me as soon as possible, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said the Doctor, as patiently as he could. ‘Yes, but why? And why so urgently?’
‘Was it to do with the voices?’ asked Romana.
‘What voices?’
The Doctor coughed. ‘When we were on the river we heard a strange sound, a sort of babble of inhuman voices.’
‘Oh, just undergraduates talking to each other I expect,’ said the Professor. ‘I’ve tried to have it banned.’
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The Doctor shook his head. ‘No, it wasn’t like that at all. It was the sound of humans – or ghosts – very quietly…’ He searched for the right word.
Romana supplied it. ‘Screaming,’ she said with another involuntary shudder.
The Professor snorted. ‘Overwrought imaginings, Doctor. With your lifestyle, I don’t suppose it’s surprising. The next thing, you’ll be seeing sea monsters rising from the Cam—’ He interrupted himself, clutching his head as if to grip a thought that had popped up in there. ‘No, now I remember!’
‘Remember what?’
‘No, I remember why I wanted you to come and see me.’
‘Why?’
The Professor shot a glance at Romana and lowered his voice. ‘Delicate matter, slightly. Er, we can trust your young friend?’
Romana nodded. ‘Absolutely.’
The Doctor nodded. ‘Completely absolutely. She’s a good sort.’
‘Well,’ said the Professor. He fidgeted. ‘Well, the reason I sent for you… well.’
The Doctor looked as if he might finally explode.
Romana gave Chronotis her warmest smile. ‘Please, Professor, just tell us.’
‘Well,’ said the Professor again. ‘It’s about a book.’
The Doctor blew out his cheeks. This revelation couldn’t help but come as something of anti-climax. ‘A book? Is that all?’
The Professor squirmed. ‘Well, you see, it’s a rather special book.’
Chapter 8
CHRIS WASN’T AT all sure he should do what he was about to do to what was, after all, somebody else’s property. But this book was irritating him and he wanted answers. Whatever its pages were made of, it wasn’t paper. Paper should not have the capacity to make you feel that it was looking at you. Staring, in fact. In fact, he corrected himself, paper doesn’t do that. That was an established fact, so well established that nobody had had previous cause to ever even suggest it.
So he set up the lab’s electron microscope, took some sharp scissors from a drawer, and went to slice off a tiny section of this suspicious non-paper substance. The sooner he had it on a slide and under the microscope, the sooner he would find out what it was, exclaim ‘Of course that’s what it is!’ and everything could go back to normal.
He couldn’t cut the paper-or-whatever-it-was.
Chris boggled.
He checked the pages in his fingers. They had the same strength as paper. And scissors cut paper.
He tried to cut another section of the same page. Again the scissors met the same resistance. Chris was having none of this. He carried the book over to the lab’s spectrograph, and switched the big white machine on at the mains. This would do the trick. Soon he’d be saying ‘Of course that’s what it is.’ He could feel the words hanging in the air, absolutely ready to be spoken.
The spectrograph warmed up. Chris opened the book at a random page, slid it face down into the scanning aperture and pressed the scan button. Soon he would have the answer.
The spectrograph performed a sweep of the book. Chris looked eagerly towards the little slot from which the answer would soon come in cold hard print. Whatever this book was made of, the spectrograph would identify it. eiπ + 1 = 0.
There was an explosion deep in the bowels of the machine. Thick black smoke began to pour from the little slot.
Chris, momentarily shocked back to reality by the thought And who’s going to pay for that, leapt across to the mains and pulled the plug from the wall. He coughed, waving away the clouds of smoke –
And the book, not even remotely scorched, shot out of the scanning aperture like an overenthusiastic slice of toast.
Chris picked it up, glared at it, then hurriedly opened all the windows onto the courtyard.
‘Right,’ he told the book. ‘Right!’
Chris had never shouted at a book before. (Except, of course, Jonathan Livingston Seagull).
He switched on the lab’s big old X-ray machine and positioned the book under the lens. Then he slipped on a protective apron, darted behind the protective shield, and pressed the switch to take the plate.
The lens flashed.
And the book glowed. For just a second, Chris saw it surrounded by an aura of tiny golden particles. It was a light like he had never seen before and it filled him with a superstitious awe that any number of magpies had never been able to manage. In that light he fancied he saw galaxies being born, time being torn apart. And the most curious thing was that he also saw two people.
One of them was a very tall man in some sort of long ceremonial robe. Like a medieval bishop, he carried a wooden staff. His face was forbiddingly stern and yet kindly.
The other person he saw in the light was Clare.
He blinked to clear his head.
The book sat innocuously under the X-ray machine.
Whatever it was, Chris thought, he was absolutely terrified of it.
Chapter 9
DAVID TAYLOR HAD just popped into town to get a few things. When he’d set out it had been quite sunny, unnatural for October really, but now he was regretting his light fawn coat and thin polyester shirt. There was quite a breeze blowing down the high street now, plucking at his carrier bags, which were full of things for Mum. They were having one of their good old Saturday nights tonight, nothing special, a bit of telly and a chat, then he’d shift her garden chairs into the shed for the winter. He’d got all her favourites – a nice bit of chicken, some mushroom, and a couple of Supermousses, plus a box of rosé. She’d never say, but David knew how much Mum missed a bit of company since he’d moved out, and what with Dad dying. Some of David’s mates had ribbed him about giving over a Saturday night to stay in with his mum. But they’d only be propping up the bar at the Bird in the Hand and shuffling desultorily to Blondie on the tiny wooden dance floor until 11 p.m. It was the same every week. Even the police had given up raiding the Bird nowadays.
He got back to his old brown Capri and fumbled with the bags and his car keys. There was a wet patch in one of the bags, he could feel it knocking against his jeans, and he hoped it wasn’t the desserts leaking.
Suddenly, a stunningly gorgeous man stepped up, as if from nowhere. That was quite an achievement, thought David, as he was wearing a silver ensemble topped up with an even more outrageous hat and cloak. Very bold, and he must have been freezing in that get-up. The stranger had piercing blue eyes, full, sensual lips and, to top it off, he even had a scar – a sexy one, not a horrible one. David gulped. He wasn’t used to being fancied, but this guy was giving him such a look.
‘Hello, honky-tonk,’ said the stranger in a severe and almost expressionless voice. ‘I wish to ride with you.’
David looked around for candid cameras. He couldn’t think of what to say.
The man had already made his way around the car and was standing at the passenger side. Oddly, David noticed he was carrying an old carpet bag which didn’t go with the rest of the gear at all. He found this impressive. Here was a guy who clearly didn’t care what anybody else thought of him.
‘Look, you know,’ David burbled, not at all sure how to handle this. ‘We could go back to my place – I mean, only if you want to – but I’ve got to be somewhere else in a couple of hours, OK?’
‘We will go to my place,’ said the man levelly, never taking his beautiful eyes off David.
‘Sure,’ breathed David, still stunned. ‘I’m David.’
‘I am Skagra,’ said the man flatly.
Exotic, thought David. Swedish, perhaps? He opened the car, threw the carrier bags into the back seat, got in, leant over and flicked the lock on the passenger side. The man slipped in, hat and all, and sat staring straight ahead, his long thin fingers curled round the leather straps of the carpet bag.
David gunned the engine and automatically the car stereo blasted into Cilla with ‘Love Of The Loved’. Tinny brass erupted from the tiny speaker. David scrambled to switch it off. He didn’t want the guy to think he was a silly old queen.
> ‘You local then?’ he asked, inwardly cursing at the naffness of that line, the brownness of his car, the fawnness of his coat, the polyesterishness of his shirt, the Cilla-ness of his tape collection, and the small spot on the left-hand side of his neck which he knew was in full view of his passenger and which he’d neglected to deal with that morning.
‘I am a visitor,’ said Skagra as the car turned into the narrow, quieter streets around the colleges.
‘So which way now?’ asked David.
The stranger pulled back the straps on the carpet bag. David couldn’t understand what happened next. A big grey ball floated slowly from the bag. It was like something out of a magician’s act, there didn’t seem to be any wires or rods or anything supporting it, and the stranger’s hands stayed completely still on the straps of the bag.
‘That’s clever,’ enthused David. ‘You could be the new David Nixon, Skagra, how do you do that?’
Skagra did not reply, his eyes fixed straight ahead on the road. ‘Stop!’ he barked.
David found himself obeying, his foot jammed on to the brake pedal. An angry cyclist swerved around the car, shouting an obscenity. They were at the gates of one of the colleges, St Cedd’s David thought it was, though he’d never been clever enough to get more than three O levels.
David smiled across at his passenger. ‘You’re full of surprises,’ he said, and decided to try and sound experienced and insouciant. ‘What other tricks do you do, then?’
They were the last words David Taylor ever spoke.
The grey ball zoomed up to his forehead. He felt its icy, metallic touch for half a second – and then suddenly it was as if his brain was being pulled out of his body. He heard a thin, distorted babble of inhuman voices. There was a sudden searing pain, and David Taylor no longer existed. His last thought in this world was of Mum waiting at the old house.
Skagra watched as the human’s head lolled to one side, exposing an unsightly blemish. The clothes the human was wearing would have to do. It was obvious from his encounter with the gatekeeper that these primitives were overawed by his attire. And this ludicrous vehicle would shorten the journey back to gather information about the Doctor.
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