by Paul Cornell
There was only one thing for it. She would have to warn him. There was no law against communicating with incarnations out of sequence, at least not that she'd heard of. Besides, rather like physics, Gallifreyan law let you get away with virtually anything if you did it subtly enough. She sometimes thought that the main purpose of the statute book was to prevent embarrassment.
Romana stared deep into the swirling fractal pattern on the surface of her tea and concentrated on the idea of the Doctor's fifth incarnation. Her time brain, under a Time Lady's frontal lobes, reached out across the continuum, searching through the vortex for the spiderweb trails of a particular TARDIS.
She found it surprisingly quickly, used to the Doctor's particular psychic signature. Instinctively she managed to tune into the time location that would matter most, a little while after Ruath's arrival on Earth.
The connection nearly made her drop the teacup. The Doctor's brain at this point was under terrifying temporal strain. It was like trying to shout through a storm. Somehow, time around the Doctor was being ripped apart. It was as if ... no. Surely not. Not even Ruath would be conceited enough to try that.
Romana shut down some of her less important body functions and threw all her energies into one message. She wasn't sure, but she thought she was getting through. The gap across time had opened for a moment and, she was certain now, a burst of pure thought slipped into the Doctor's tormented mind. But had it made sense to him? She tried again, focusing all her strength on - on
Somebody was shaking her.
"Wake up! Hoi! Wake up!" The voice made her break the connection and open her eyes.
Glitz was standing in front of her, trying to look concerned. "You'd stopped breathing," he told her.
"Try it." Romana sipped her tea in irritation. "You night enjoy it."
"I wouldn't mind, normally," Glitz whispered, his eyes glittering. "Only," he raised his voice again, and threw back a hand, revealing what was behind him, "some friends of yours are here to see you!"
Lady President Flavia, Castellan Spandrell and a squad of Chancellery Guards stood on the flight deck of the little spaceship, looking around and trying not to laugh. Behind them was a glittering new Type Ninety TARDIS.
Flavia stepped forward and helped Romana to her feet, taking both hands in hers. "My dear, thank goodness we've found you!"
"We managed to recover the destination recording device on the Time Scoop," Spandrell added. "Decoding it and following the trail here was a matter of routine."
"I'm worried about the Doctor," Romana told them, following Flavia back to the TARDIS. "I don't know what score Ruath's got to settle with him, but I think he's in terrible danger."
"Don't worry about the Doctor!" laughed Spandrell. "Danger is what he knows best!"
"The Doctor?" Glitz's ears pricked up.
" 'Ere, wait a minute ..." He tried to signal to the Gallifreyans as they trooped back into their capsule. "He's an old friend of mine. If he's in trouble, perhaps I could help, for a small consideration of course ..."
"I'm sure the Doctor will be fine," Flavia was saying. "Besides, we have done all we can for him. It's in Rassilon's hands. Now, Lady Romana, since you've been through so much in the service of Gallifrey, I was wondering if you'd be interested in a seat on the High Council?"
The doors of the machine closed before Glitz heard the Time Lady's answer.
The box faded away.
He raised his hand to ask a question and then lowered it again. "Story of my life; he muttered. Then he perked up again. They hadn't, after all, taken the Miniscope. "Dibber!" he called to the flight deck. "Take us somewhere where they've never heard of Drashigs!"
Seven
While Tegan slept, the Doctor worked at the console. It took some time to calibrate the readings from his device and feed them into the TARDIS computers. Finally, at around eleven in the morning, he had it. He pressed a button, stepped back and stretched, glancing up at the screen.
Alderley Edge was a cluster of graph lines across the bottom of the screen. First one, then a confused tangle of bright lines sped upwards from it, heading straight up into the sky. Each represented a vampire in flight. The frame scrolled upwards, following the first blip, Lang and his kidnapper.
The line continued straight up and stopped. A moment later, the other lines hit the same height and hung suspended. A message appeared on the screen: Parameters exceeded. No further information available.
"Straight up," the Doctor whispered. "They went straight up out of range of the detector." He hit another control and confirmed what he suspected. "To the edge of the atmosphere. A suborbital hop. They could be anywhere: He switched off the screen. There wasn't much time left, and he was running out of avenues to explore. For a moment, the Doctor leaned heavily on the console. Then he snapped himself upright. "Brave heart, as I keep telling Tegan. Still the sample to analyse."
He was on his way out of the console room when he heard the noise. It started as a tingling in his ear, and for a moment he thought that he was going to fall victim to another spasm of the kind that he'd experienced at Alderley Edge. But this sensation was quite different. There was no pain, for one thing. Last time, he'd reeled, his time senses suddenly askew. This was more in the nature of - Ah. Communication.
The Doctor put his hands to his brow and closed his eyes, concentrating. What had been a tingling resolved itself into a voice. Unimaginably distant, across space and time, but a voice nonetheless. It was so faint that he couldn't even recognize the person calling him. It must be another Time Lord, of course, or perhaps one of the other High Evolutionaries. The fact that it was so faint indicated that it was being sent across the centuries, perhaps even across his own time track. It might even be one of his other incarnations, calling for help. No, there was something familiar about the voice, certainly, and his previous selves wouldn't feel familiar at all.
He dropped into a sudden cross-legged sitting position and devoted his whole being to hearing the message. He closed his respiratory tract and shut down a number of minor organs, letting his mind drift out onto what humans called the astral plain.
There was the source of the message! She was standing at the edge of the darkness, broadcasting a tight and disciplined beam. In a moment he would be able to identify her, because it was a she. And what was that she was saying? It was something like ...
Oh no.
"Doctor, wake up!" Tegan was shaking the Doctor's shoulder violently.
The Time Lord opened his eyes and looked into the middle distance ruefully. "Tegan, have I ever told you about disturbing somebody when they're in the middle of astral communication, hm?" He looked up at her. "I might have got lost altogether."
"You'd stopped breathing!"
"I had more important things to think about. Which reminds me - " He took in a great sucking breath. "That's better. Now - " he jumped to his feet, "since you did interrupt a message which might have been the key to our whole dilemma, I trust you won't mind making the tea this time?"
"Kettle's already boiling. I was on the way to ask you about toast. Who's sending this message?"
"I was about to find out."
"Could it be one of the vampires?"
"I doubt it, they're very limited telepaths. I think this is one of my own race."
"The Time Lords? What, are they going to pile in and help us since you knocked off Omega for them?"
"That's not how they work, Tegan. The Capitol hasn't "piled in" to help anybody since ... well, not for a very long time, anyway. And I did not knock anybody off: Now, you mentioned toast?"
Madelaine sat on the steps of the machine, her head in her hands. The great shining globe above her in the sky hurt with its reflected sunlight, but she was too distracted to care.
Jake rubbed some dust from a plaque. " "We came in peace for all mankind"," he read. "Smart. I always wanted to come here. It's nice to have somebody to do things like this with."
Madelaine stood up and walked down the steps of
the lunar module. "You're just trying to distract me. You always try to distract me."
"You think about things, let them play on your mind. I'm not like that."
"No." Maddy studied the silvery surface of the Sea Of Tranquillity, and watched a low cloud of dust shift slowly along. Even the light steps of the vampires had been enough to disturb the airless lunar dunes. They'd left before sunrise on Earth, speeding west out over the Atlantic before they arched upwards and out of the atmosphere. "Can you be sure it's safe, though? Where's the sun?"
"Round the back. Old lad I met down on the east coast used to come up here all the time, he'd worked out the times that are okay. Gave me a copy. I found it the other night. Thought you'd like a surprise."
"It's good here, thanks for bringing me. When I was little I always wanted to go into space. It's just - "
"Just that you're worried about this Lang bloke."
"Not worried. Interested."
"Now that worries me, like.
"Oh, not like that, stupid." Madelaine gave him a quick hug. "He's old and American, and he'd want to exorcise me or something. No, I'm interested in what makes him tick. When we flew off, it was as if he half wanted to come along with me. There's something he's more afraid of than he is of us."
"Has your boss told you what he's going to do with him?"
"My boss? You're the one who wanted us to get involved in the first place. No, Yarven doesn't tell me anything. He only confides in that alien tart. Hey, could we go and meet some aliens?"
"Only if they're hanging about the solar system. Take us months even to get to Pluto, never mind other stars."
"Well, we could go to Jupiter or something."
"After this is over we'll go on holiday there. We'd need to take a packed lunch."
"Lang?"
"Anybody but Lang. Besides, I don't think there'll be much left of him by then, do you?"
"No," Madelaine sighed, walking carefully along a line of astronaut's footprints. "No, you're right there."
Nyssa judged that the moment was right. She carefully pushed back the covers and stood up beside the bed. After seeing Yarven, she'd pretended to go to sleep with the approaching day, but had made a mighty mental effort to stay awake. The windows of the castle had darkened to black and the vampires that shared the room were curled in corners, dead to the world.
She retraced her path down the stairs, avoiding those Undead lying there, who were clutching meat from the previous night's feasting. What was she going to say if she was caught, that she woke and went for a glass of water? Surely even Yarven and his consort would have retired to the master bedroom by now? Even if Yarven was as good as his word about curing her, and even the faint hope of that had lifted her heart and filled her with bravery, she would still tell the Doctor all she could about the castle. There were two areas she particularly wanted to explore. She took her bearings at the foot of the stairs. When Yarven and his people had raced out of the dining hall to an urgent summons, they had turned right, which meant that whatever was so important must be somewhere in the east wing. She knew so little about Earth architecture. On Traken, a great house like this would have been open and airy, with no mysteries to it.
Nyssa ventured carefully into the eastern reaches of the castle, remembering her path as she went. All about her were sleeping vampires, lying in whatever niche they could find. The castle must already be home to hundreds of them, and more arrived every night.
Three doors were ahead of her. Well, she could only explore so far randomly. Perhaps if she had got so far into Yarven's confidence he would show her whatever had so excited the Undead. She didn't doubt that Madelaine and Jake would have, but they weren't here and, silly as it was, she didn't want to get them into trouble. They had been good to her, in their way.
There came a cry from behind one of the doors. The one to the right. Nyssa tried the handle and found that it opened easily.
The young Trakenite stepped into the domed room. The covered pit immediately caught her attention. From it there came loud speech. It was an incantation of some kind, a prayer. As she moved closer to the metal hatch that covered the pit she started to feel afraid. Now that was strange, this was hardly the most fearful situation she had faced since arriving at the castle. She found that she couldn't take another step. Whatever was in the pit was somehow terrifying. But it sounded just like a man.
"Hello?" she asked nervously.
"Hello! Who's there?" a voice called back eagerly.
"My name is ... it isn't important. Who are you?"
"Victor Lang. My name is Victor Lang. Are you one of the ... creatures?"
"No."
"Then help me! We must get out of here, we must get back to the city and warn them! They only brought me here last night. I don't know what they plan to do to me, but I don't want to be around to find out! The controls for the cover are somewhere on the wall, I distinctly heard a lever being pulled. Hurry!" His voice sounded so confident, so commanding even when trapped. It was as if the man was the hero of some great story, and knew it. He was ... terrifying.
Nyssa shook her head, fighting the urge to run from this place. Instead she went to the wall. There was indeed a very obvious set of pit controls, including a large lever of the kind that the castle's electronic systems seemed to favour. She pushed it up to its original position.
The great metal lid swung back from the pit on a hydraulic hinge. Thankfully it made little noise.
"Quickly!" Lang whispered urgently. "There'll be guards."
Nyssa couldn't make herself step towards the pit. "there are no guards," she said. "They're vampires, and this is daytime."
"Vampires? Yeah, I must say I got that impression. Can't get over the fact that they're real. Are you finding a ladder or something?"
Nyssa took a deep breath. "No. I can't come any closer to you. Can't you get out on your own?"
"No!" Lang called, and Nyssa winced at the frustration in his voice. "The walls of this thing are perfectly smooth. What do you mean, you can't come any closer??
"I just can't. Something's stopping me."
"Well ... well, what do you think that might be?" Lang had made a great effort to speak reasonably.
"I think it's your ... faith. When I said that I wasn't one of these creatures ... well, 1 suppose I am now. For the moment, at least."
No reply came from the pit. "Mr. Lang? Are you all right?"
"I'm fine. God bless you anyway, and thank you for trying."
"I'd set you free if I could," Nyssa called desperately. "If you could feel less passionate about your beliefs...then - "
"I can't do that," Lang said quietly. "Guess you'd better cover me up again."
Not wanting to say any more, Nyssa swung the lever again and watched as the pit was closed once more. She felt disgusted with herself. Couldn't she have done anything to help the poor man? The chanting rose again, and she shivered. There was no use worrying about it. If she wanted to help Lang, she had to take the long-term view. Lang's arrival had obviously been what had excited the vampires so much the previous evening. He must be part of whatever plan Yarven and Ruath were concocting. To find out about that, she needed to find a way down to the cellars.
There was a stairwell leading down near to the control point where she stood. If this was such an important room, then perhaps it had direct access to whatever was down below. She took a few hesitant steps down the circular staircase, and immediately came to a solid-looking metal door. It was locked. Ruath, unlike those who had been vampires for a long time, would still retain the habit of locks and keys.
What a useless trip this had been. "If only I had the ion bonder," Nyssa murmured to herself, picturing what one of her everyday laboratory tools would have done to the metal surface. She was about to turn away and head back to bed when a thought struck her. "If I'm a vampire," she whispered, "then why not?" She concentrated, trying to visualize what she wanted to do, and found that all the reflexes she needed were already there in her h
ead, as easy as holding her breath or closing an eye. Neither of those required verbal thought or visualization, and neither did this.
So Nyssa just did it.
It started at her feet, a slow dissolve of flesh and clothing into mist. The mist rolled up her torso until it claimed her head, and then she was a cloud, feeling just as she'd always felt. Trying to touch the wall, the cloud swirled and separated, and couldn't. Nyssa moved under the door, trying not to think about how she was doing it, and mentally closing her eyes as what she thought of as her head went under. Somewhere inside her, a mental urge to duck had been obeyed, though the mist swept through the thin crack undisturbed by it.
On the other side of the door Nyssa, wondering how she could see, found that after a landing, the stairwell continued. She made herself solid again, thankful that the process was easily reversible, and stepped cautiously downwards.
"So what you're saying is that we still don't know where she is?"
"Tegan, Tegan, Tegan..." The Doctor made a pacifying gesture with his open hands. "Patience."
"Patience? It's not very long until the full moon, and then that's it, she's part of the fang and cape brigade for good." Tegan followed the Doctor as he circled the console trying to placate her. It had been a mistake, he thought, to show her the vampire flight-paths.
"I know. But this doesn't help. I still have the samples I took to analyse, and then - "
"What good will that do? Why don't we just go out now it's light, wake up a vampire and make them take us there?"
"It's not as simple as that. We have to - Tegan!"
On her latest circuit of the console, the young Australian had slapped the door release control. She grabbed her coat from the hatstand as she headed for the door. "Don't mind if I have a go, do you? See you later."
The Doctor sighed as she departed. Not much could happen to her in daytime, even if she went looking for trouble. He had to concentrate on what was important, the sample. And he had to be ready to receive the mental call if it came again. The best place to do that was in the temporally removed atmosphere of the TARDIS.