‘The Master, yes. Oh, that’s a relief.’
The Doctor put down the coffee cup and folded his arms. ‘What’s up?’
‘Do you remember that thing that happened last night with the Brig, when he seemed to lose track of who the Master was? Well, the same thing’s happened to Mike. It’s like they keep forgetting! I was starting to think it was me going potty, but at least you remember him. Don’t you?’
‘Quite frankly, Jo, I’d give anything to forget the Master.’ The Doctor rubbed at the back of his neck. ‘Something’s obviously happening, if you say it’s spread to Mike Yates. Have you spoken to any other UNIT people about this?’
‘Not yet. I wanted to see you first, and then …’ Jo hesitated. ‘How could it spread, Doctor? How could amnesia work like that?’
‘It may well not be amnesia, Jo. That’s what worries me. I’m afraid what you’ve described sounds very like the early onset of PTF, or progressive time-fade.’
Jo frowned. She’d spent long enough around the Doctor to pick up a lot of Time Lord lore, but this was a new one on her. ‘Time-fade?’
‘I may be jumping the gun.’
‘And if you’re not?’
‘We’re dealing with something very worrying indeed. Time-fade is an extremely rare phenomenon – so rare that there have only been a handful of documented cases. Or rather undocumented … because even the memory of time-fade itself eventually fades away.’ The Doctor looked aggrieved, as if this was the sort of thing it was very bad form to talk about. ‘Well, it settles one thing. We really do need to have a word with the Master. And the sooner the better. If this is time-fade, it will eventually spread to everyone and everything who has ever had contact with the Master. Every memory, every record.’
‘But we’re immune, aren’t we? Whatever it is, it’s not affecting us?’
‘For now, Jo. It doesn’t mean that the fade won’t reach us in the end.’
‘But what does it mean, Doctor?’
‘It means, Jo, that the Master is ceasing to exist. Ceasing to have existed. If this time-fade is real, the Master is being unstitched from time.’
Director Childers, chief of security at the Durlston Heath facility, was there to meet the prisoner when the black helicopter settled onto its rooftop landing pad. Two of his uniformed staff flanked him, carrying light machine guns. Another two stood behind him, either side of the prisoner’s wheelchair. They had become well used to the prisoner being taken away, sometimes for days on end, and then brought back, usually the worse for wear. The routine had become … well, almost routine.
It was windy on the roof and Childers was more than usually glad of the heavy lambs-wool coat he had thought to bring with him from his office downstairs. He disliked the British winter, with its long weeks of cold, damp weather, calculated to sap anyone’s morale. To think he’d once used to look forward to winter, because that was the main rugby season. To think that he’d once imagined having a professional career with Hull Kingston Rovers. The closest he came to a Hull KR game now was the final scores in the newspaper.
The helicopter’s rotors whirred to a halt. The door opened and Callow got out. The prisoner was still in his seat, head lolling to one side. He looked like he was asleep, or drugged.
Childers nodded at the guards behind him. ‘Bring the chair.’
The chair was driven by a remote-control unit, being operated by one of the guards. It sped forward, its electric motors emitting a high-pitched whine. Callow urged the guards to come closer.
Childers walked up to the government man. He’d long ago made up his mind about Callow. Thought that the world owed him a living. The problem was that the world seemed to agree, most of the time. Doors opened for men like Callow, into the right clubs, the right professional circles. Childers couldn’t imagine him ever drinking Double Diamond over a packet of pork scratchings.
‘I don’t know what you’ve done to him, don’t want to know either.’
‘That’s good, Childers.’
‘But it makes me sick. He’s a prisoner of Her Majesty’s Government, not some animal. Might be how they treat people in other countries, but we’re better than that.’
‘Yes. Very good.’ They were both keeping their voices low, allowing the wind to muffle the conversation. ‘Got that off your chest, have you, Childers? I’ll remind you that if it wasn’t for Her Majesty’s Government, you wouldn’t have a job. And part of that job entails doing what you’re told – especially when national security is at stake.’
‘Security – that’s the answer for everything, isn’t it?’
‘Mind yourself, Childers. You’ve been made more than aware of your responsibilities here. Now help me get him into the wheelchair.’
Childers did as he was told. That was what it always came down to, in the end: doing what he was told. Accepting his place in the scheme of things, just another willing cog. ‘I thought this was the right thing to do, once upon a time,’ he muttered, as they manhandled the unconscious prisoner from the helicopter to the wheelchair. ‘I was ready to go along with whatever it took. But now I’m wondering whether I shouldn’t start asking around. I had that Lethbridge-Stewart on the telephone this morning, you know. Bit of a toff, of course. But there are toffs and there are toffs. I’ve always liked Lethbridge-Stewart.’
Callow’s response was icy. ‘Lethbridge-Stewart?’
‘He’s sending some people out.’
‘You should have refused them.’
‘He’s allowed to let his people have visiting rights, you know.’
‘I’m well aware of the Brigadier’s rights, Childers. He means well and his heart’s in the right place. A bit like you, really – dim but loyal. But if a word of this gets out to him – or to anyone else in UNIT, or Geneva, or C19 – I’ll need look no further than you for the source of the leak.’ Callow stepped back from the wheelchair, while the guard with the remote control activated the automatic restraining mechanisms. Metal hoops closed around the prisoner’s ankles and wrists, locking him to the wheelchair. The prisoner was still out cold. ‘Looking forward to your retirement, Childers? Looking forward to spending a bit more time with the wife?’ Callow touched a finger to his lips. ‘Oh, wait, you can’t. She’s jetted off to the Costa Brava. But never mind. I’m sure you’ll still find something to keep you occupied. It’d be a shame to jeopardise all that. Wouldn’t it?’
Childers looked at the edge of the building, with its low metal fence. ‘Take a running jump, Callow.’
‘I don’t need to,’ Callow said, standing with his hands linked, watching as the guards steered the wheelchair toward the entrance to the rooftop lift, the prisoner’s head bobbing up and down as the chair bounced along. ‘I brought my own helicopter, you see.’
Tom Irwin was the first to break the bad news to Edwina McCrimmon. She was in her office, fielding one worried enquiry after the next from her oil workers. Word was getting around that the loss of Mike Oscar Four had not been what they liked to call an ‘isolated incident’. All sorts of strange and worrying things were happening, and a lot of them seemed to be concentrated on the North Sea. In times of unsettled weather one could expect the odd boat or ship to be lost, but there had been a puzzling cluster of such events in the last couple of days. The worrying thing was that the losses were continuing, even though the weather had become calmer. Not just losses, either. Eyewitness reports of all sorts of madness. Holes in the sea, columns of water dropping from clear skies. Even mention – as yet unsubstantiated – of belligerent metal crabs. Clearly the last was nonsense, but it was a sign of how agitated people were getting. Edwina was largely immune to the usual nautical superstitions, but it was hard not to shake a feeling of impending dread. And we haven’t even shot dead an albatross, she thought.
Her first priority, when she could find a clear five minutes, was to have another word with Pete Lomax. She had been all too willing to go along with the idea that Lomax’s story had been the product of an overheated imagination.
Now she was starting to have doubts. The reports of holes in the sea chimed with Lomax’s claim that a great void had opened under the decommissioned rig. Not just the trough of a big wave, fearful as that could be, or an area of water affected by rising gases, but an actual void, like the hole scooped out of a bowl of ice cream.
Callow, Lovelace and the other man had been all too keen to nudge her into the idea that Lomax had been confused. Lomax, too, had seemed willing to accept as much.
Now she wondered if she had done him a grave injustice, by not taking his word at face value.
‘Ah, Tom,’ she said, as Irwin pushed his head into her office. ‘Can you hold the fort for a few …’
‘It’s Pete Lomax.’
‘I know. I want to have another chat.’
‘He’s gone.’
She blinked. ‘Gone?’
‘I just went to check up on him. There’s no one in his room. The bed’s made. And there’s no sign of him anywhere else on the platform.’
‘It’s a big platform, Tom.’
‘I’ve already got a couple of guys on search duty. But I’m worried, Eddie. It’s not like Pete to just up and vanish.’
‘No,’ she said, on a falling note. ‘It’s not.’
‘Did you speak to him last night?’
‘Yes, around teatime. Not long after the UNIT people left.’
Irwin nodded. ‘I saw him a bit after that – maybe eight o’ clock. After that, I don’t know. Those government men were still hanging around, weren’t they?’
‘Like a bad smell. You don’t think they …’
‘What?’
She was about to say ‘got to Pete’, but that was ridiculous and melodramatic. ‘I saw the helicopter leave in the middle of the night. Callow and the other man, the scientist, were aboard. Lovelace is still on the platform. There’s no way they smuggled Pete out without our knowing.’
Irwin planted his hands on either side of his hips, like a gunslinger ready for a shoot-out. ‘Eddie, don’t take this the wrong way. But I think it’s time you were straight with me about what’s going on.’
‘I’ve been as straight as I can, Tom.’
‘We’ve lost a platform, there’s all sorts of weird stuff going on, and now Pete’s missing. All of this is connected and it’s starting to worry me. I can only do my job if I’m kept in the picture.’
‘I made a mistake,’ she said. ‘I should never have given the UNIT people the brush-off. Maybe it’s time to get back in touch with them again.’
‘And hope they’ve never heard the story of the boy who cried wolf?’
It was a point, but not one she wanted to hear. ‘We need to find Pete, if he’s still aboard. Two men isn’t enough. Put another four on search duty – and I don’t care what it costs us.’
‘Putting employees before profit? Make sure Big Cal doesn’t hear you, he’ll have a fit.’
‘I’m not Big Cal,’ McCrimmon said. ‘I’m Eddie.’
Bessie, the Doctor’s bright yellow Edwardian-style roadster, made an incongruous sight as it pulled up at the heavily defended checkpoint. Other than the red and white striping on the lowered security barrier, the open-topped car was the only colourful thing to be seen for miles around. The flat-topped buildings of the Durlston Heath complex, beyond the high, razor-wired perimeter fence, were blocky studies in various dispiriting hues of grey and off-white.
‘Bit on the early side, mate.’
A guard had come out of the armoured kiosk, toting a sub-machine gun. He wore a black uniform and a jaunty black beret.
The Doctor offered an accommodating smile. ‘Didn’t hit any traffic, old chap. If Director Childers isn’t in yet, we’ll be more than willing to wait in the canteen.’
‘That sounds like a good idea,’ Jo said. After the long, cold drive from UNIT headquarters, it sounded idyllic. ‘A nice cuppa, maybe a slice of hot buttered toast?’
‘Haven’t you already had your breakfast?’ the Doctor asked.
‘That was hours ago! And before you had me shivering in this contraption!’
‘Bessie’s a perfectly serviceable form of transport.’
‘Provided you’re an Eskimo!’
The guard coughed. ‘When you two are done arguing, do you think I could see your passes?’
Jo showed the guard the accreditation for the two of them. The guard took their passes, muttered something unenthusiastic, and disappeared back into his kiosk for a couple of minutes. They could see his silhouette through the glass, on the telephone. Eventually the call was concluded, the guard came out again with their passes, and the barrier was raised. ‘Mind how you go.’
‘We will,’ the Doctor said.
He thanked the guard with a wave, slipped Bessie back into gear and drove under the barrier.
‘What exactly are you hoping to get out of the Master anyway?’ Jo asked, as they trundled down the main service road, threading its way through the complex of buildings.
‘That’ll depend on him. But I can’t say I’m not looking forward to seeing the old fellow.’
‘I don’t know how you can say that.’
The Doctor looked amused. ‘Why ever not?’
‘Well, for a start, he’s tried to kill you on several occasions! In really horrible ways!’
‘We’ve had our differences, it’s true. But he’s still one of my kind. I’m afraid we have rather more in common than I’d care to admit.’
‘More in common than with someone like me?’
‘I didn’t say that, Jo.’
‘But you meant it, deep down. Didn’t you?’
The Doctor could not bring himself to answer. And she would never have expected him to offer her a consoling lie, anyway. The Doctor had too much respect for Jo for that. She knew how he saw her. With affection, certainly. A companion he valued, whose opinions and instincts he had come to prize. A necessary foil for his own vanity. Someone he enjoyed showing off to. Beyond that, though, she was under no particular illusions. The Doctor was fond of her.
But only the Doctor and the Master knew what it felt like to be the Doctor and the Master. No human being in history had ever come close to an understanding of how they experienced time and eternity. Not even Einstein on the best day of his life.
Oh well, Jo thought. At least the Doctor didn’t actively disdain her. That was something. And of all the people now alive, only she got to spend a significant part of her existence in his company. Only she got to see some of the things he spoke of. That also was something.
But being around the Doctor could burn as well.
Durlston Heath sprawled across hundreds of acres of flattened land near the sea, resembling in its blocks and cubes a kind of neurotic toy town. Jo was certain she would not have felt quite so negatively about it had the Master not been here, but it was hard to imagine anyone liking this place. She supposed it provided employment and security for many workers and their families. The facility had been here since the dawn of the nuclear age, constructed in that false dawn of post-war optimism, when it had genuinely seemed as if it might be possible to generate power on a scale and efficiency that made it too cheap to meter.
There had obviously been a misprint on Jo’s last electricity bill, in that case.
At length they came to one of the oldest parts of the complex. Jo’s apprehension rose: it was as if she could sense the Master’s presence, leaking through barriers of concrete and lead. Durlston A had been the original reactor, a prototype which was later souped up to provide power to the National Grid. After decades of service it had now reached the end of its operational lifetime. As far as the public were concerned, the reactor was in the costly process of being readied for the long and difficult business of decommissioning.
Jo knew better. The reactor would be decommissioned, eventually, but only when it was no longer needed to contain the Master. Given the fact that Time Lords were extremely long-lived, it was anyone’s guess as to how long that might take.
In truth, it was
n’t much to look at. A being of the Master’s stature demanded a prison on an unprecedented scale: a citadel of eternal incarceration, an impregnable monument to his cosmic crimes. Something black and spired and soaring, Jo reckoned. Durlston A, by contrast, was a dingy white cube, like a scaled-up washing machine, gristled in pipes and scaffolding. Connected to it was a dreary blue-grey office and control complex, a few floors lower than the cube. The entire structure looked about as impressive and threatening as a municipal ice-rink.
The Doctor eased Bessie to a halt by the main entrance of the control building. He switched off the engine, engaged the external handbrake, turned to Jo and said softly: ‘You don’t have to come inside, you know.’
‘Come all this way, may as well go the last mile.’
‘He can’t hurt us, Jo. Not now. But I still want to know if there’s something going on.’ The Doctor touched a finger to his nose. ‘Watch him, and keep watching him. Two pairs of eyes are always better than one. He may give something away.’
‘I’ll do my best.’
The entrance was up a short flight of steps. Jo and the Doctor went through a revolving door into a brightly lit lobby. Beneath a low ceiling set with strip lights was a horseshoe-shaped console, arrayed with television screens and dials, and equipped with banks of push-buttons and colour-coded telephones. Two uniformed operatives, a man and a women, were sitting on swivel-chairs within the console. They were constantly switching television views, punching controls, picking up and putting down telephone handsets. It was as efficient and technical as a space mission. Jo was able to see several of the television screens, and via them glimpses of the Master, caught from different angles as he moved within the confines of his interconnected room.
She felt a tightening in her belly. Bad enough knowing the Master was still on the Earth, let alone that she was about to be in the same room as him.
‘Well, let’s get this over with. Some of us have work to be getting on with.’
‘Ah, Director Childers,’ the Doctor said, greeting the man who had just come into the lobby from another door. ‘It’s very good of you to accommodate us, at such short notice.’
Doctor Who: Harvest of Time Page 7