‘You’re supposed to give at least a day’s warning, you know. The only reason I’ve conceded is that Brigadier of yours, raising merry hell in Whitehall.’
Childers was a tall, solidly proportioned Yorkshireman. He had a lantern jaw and bullet-shaped head; his remaining hair shaved close to the scalp. His frame looked too big for the suit into which he’d been stuffed. He reminded Jo of a bouncer. She had done her homework on the man before a previous visit. Working class, risen up through the ranks by sheer force of will and ability. Not a man to be underestimated.
‘I see he’s up and about,’ the Doctor said.
‘Beggar hardly seems to sleep.’ Something in Childers’ gruff manner had eased. ‘Must be due to that thyroid condition of his.’
‘Thyroid condition?’ Jo asked mildly.
‘You remember,’ the Doctor said. ‘Prisoner M … has a rare medical condition, Jo. It’s the reason he needs to be kept immersed in a constant low-level radiation field. What would be harmful to us, over an extended period, is beneficial to him. Sort of like radiotherapy, only the dose is constant.’
Jo did her part and nodded. She had forgotten about this nonsense cover story. The truth was that the Master’s physiology ensured that he was unaffected by the radiation field. But it was a very effective way of keeping others away from his influence.
‘You’ll be needing your dosimeters, before you go in there,’ Childers said, as if they might have forgotten that detail.
‘In recent days … have you noticed anything unusual?’ The Doctor asked. ‘Not so much about Prisoner M – although I’d be interested to hear if you had – but in your memories, your recollections of him?’
‘My recollections of him?’ Childers creased his meaty features into a frown. ‘Is this some daft idea of a joke?’
‘I realise it’s an odd question.’ But the Doctor forged on. ‘When you woke up this morning, or yesterday, how long was it before you remembered the prisoner?’
The odd thrust of this conversation had drawn the interest of the two console operators, who risked glancing up from their screens and telephones for an instant. Childers glared at them. They returned to their surveillance.
‘I don’t have to remember him. He’s on my mind all ruddy day. He’s never ruddy off my mind. Does that answer your question?’
‘Excellently. Now do you think we could see him?’
They went into a second room, a windowless office adjacent to the lobby. There was a door in the opposite wall, a cabinet to the left of it, a smaller console and chair to the door’s right. Childers beckoned to the cabinet. ‘It’s open. Take your dosimeters.’
Jo went to the cabinet and took out two of the radiation detection badges. She passed one to the Doctor and clipped the other to her coat. The badges were white rectangles, with strips of black film fixed across them. While she did this, Childers moved a newspaper off the swivel chair and eased his frame down onto it. He put the newspaper on the right of the console: it was yesterday’s edition, turned to the sports section, with a black and white picture of a rugby match above the final scores.
Childers touched a series of switches. Screens lit up, echoing the views they had seen in the lobby.
There was the Master, pacing around with his hands clasped behind his back, as if in deep and restless concentration.
Childers tugged a flexible microphone to his lips. ‘Prisoner M. Can you hear me?’
The Master halted in his peregrinations and turned to face a hidden speaker. His urbane, pleasant voice came out of a grille. ‘Go ahead, Director Childers.’
‘You have a pair of visitors. The Doctor and Miss Grant.’
The Master had his back to the camera, so Jo could not see his expression. ‘What an unexpected treat.’
‘Go to your chair.’
‘At once.’
The screens flicked from one camera to another as the Master moved through his rooms, before finally coming to rest next to what appeared to be a wheelchair. The Master lowered himself into the chair, resting his feet on the metal supports at the front. His arms rested on the padded supports either side, black-gloved hands dangling over the edge.
‘Your glasses.’
‘Of course.’
The Master reached into the waist pocket of his black tunic and came out with a pair of black sunglasses. He snapped them open, fitted them to his face double-handed, obscuring his eyes, then allowed his hands to return to the wheelchair’s supports.
‘Be still.’
Childers touched another control. Via the camera, Jo saw a pair of heavy clamps whirr into place around the Master’s wrists, binding him to the chair. Another pair fixed his legs into place. A single clamp curled around from behind the chair to secure the Master’s neck. The Master squirmed against the hard metal restraints.
Childers looked down, studying a set of lights as they flicked from green to red. ‘He’s secure now. I’m opening the main door. It’s on a timed entry code: you’ve two minutes to get to it, then it will lock automatically.’ His hands moved to a small keyboard, covered by a black plastic cowl. The Doctor heard four digits being entered, then another row of lights flicked to green.
‘You’ve tightened arrangements since my last visit,’ the Doctor said.
‘Can’t be too careful. You know what he tried to do to that psychiatric team from Geneva, when they turned their back on him. They’re the poor fools that need psychiatric help now!’
The Master’s voice crackled through again. ‘Is there some difficulty?’
‘No,’ Childers said. ‘Your guests are on their way through right now.’
‘I await them with great interest.’
Childers touched another couple of controls. ‘I’ll be watching on these cameras the whole time you’re in there. So will my team in the lobby.’
‘And listening in?’ the Doctor asked.
‘Would that be a problem?’
The Doctor put on his best apologetic face, one he reserved for all manner of officials and bureaucrats. ‘I’m afraid so. Matters of national security and all that.’
‘I hear that a lot these days,’ Childers said, reaching over to flick off a microphone.
The Doctor smiled. ‘Sometimes it’s the truth.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
They walked into the main reactor building. It was a huge enclosed volume, a large armoured cube, boxing a space large enough to swallow a good-sized cathedral. There were galleries and walkways everywhere, spidering up and down the interior walls. The floor was a grid of walkways running between the bulging forms of turbines and associated equipment, hulking snail-like forms mostly painted a uniform mid green. In the middle, occupying at least half of the building’s internal volume, but sunk down into a pit in the floor to at least half its height, was another cube. It was also wrapped in ladders and catwalks. A small number of guards, wearing radiation-proof clothing, patrolled the chamber with machine guns and walkie-talkies. Jo glanced down at her badge, bending it to get a better look at the strip. It was already speckled with little white stars, like bird droppings.
‘This way,’ the Doctor said.
They ascended a spiral staircase up the side of the inner cube. At the top was a door, which in turn led to a short passageway through to the cube’s interior. Bathed in yellow light, it made for an impressively complicated scene. Occupying most of the floor was a water-filled trench, sheer-walled and deep. Above this pit was a heavy-duty crane, running on a gantry. The crane was presently lifting a blocky object out of the water, a thing about the size of two luxury caravans stuck together side by side. It was made of metal, and it had no windows.
The crane stopped when the object was out of the water. A swing bridge moved automatically into place. Jo and the Doctor descended a short flight of stairs down to the level of the swing bridge, then walked across it. Warm water bubbled beneath. The flooded pit was deep and lit by submerged lights. At the end of the swing bridge, where it met the side of the accommodati
on unit, an armoured, watertight door had swung open. The Doctor knocked politely
Jo checked her dosimeter again. More white speckles. Twenty minutes, Childers had said. She had a feeling it was going to be the longest twenty minutes of her life.
‘Doctor, Miss Grant – please make yourselves at home.’
The Master, confined to his wheelchair, could not rise to greet the Doctor and Jo. But the chair swivelled on their approach. The Master’s gloved hand rested on a small battery of controls set into the right armrest. The chair whirred forward to a table, facing two seats that had been welded in place. ‘I am afraid you may find my hospitality leaves a little to be desired.’
The combination of beard and heavy sunglasses masked much of the Master’s face. Jo was glad of that: she didn’t have to look into his eyes. But she was more than aware that those eyes would be looking back at her, boring through the plastic.
‘We won’t be staying long,’ the Doctor said, tapping a finger to his dosimeter.
‘Nonetheless, do sit down.’
The Doctor and Jo sat in the welded metal seats. ‘Caught you at a busy time?’ the Doctor asked.
‘As a matter of fact, I was indulging in some light reading.’ The Master’s fingers jerked in the direction of a heavy leather-bound textbook spread out on the table. ‘A history of early surgery. Quite remarkably barbaric, Doctor: scarcely distinguishable from a torture manual.’
‘I’m sure you found it thoroughly entertaining.’
It was a lie, Jo thought. He had not been reading at all, certainly not when they arrived. They had seen the Master pacing around his cell like a caged animal.
‘We’ve been concerned about you,’ she said, reciprocating with her own lie. What she meant was: we’ve been concerned about what you might be up to.
‘My dear Miss Grant: such a touching concern for my welfare. But I assure you, there is no need to worry yourself on my account.’ His fingertips curled to gesture at his surroundings. ‘Look around you. My every desire is catered for. What more could I wish for, beyond these walls?’
‘The chair seems a bit of an indignity,’ the Doctor said.
‘The small price I must pay for the pleasure of guests,’ the Master said. ‘Think nothing of it, Doctor. I am allowed a degree of mobility, the inconvenience is small, and I shall not have to put up with it for very much longer.’
‘Director Childers is going to relax the rules again?’ Jo asked.
‘The man is an irrelevance. I merely state that my present conditions will prove temporary.’
The Doctor smiled. ‘You’re not telling us you’ve hatched a scheme to break out of here, are you?’
‘And if I had, Doctor, would I be so foolish as to reveal that scheme to my greatest adversary, the architect of my incarceration?’
‘If it allowed you a chance to boast, you might.’
The Master chuckled. ‘We know each other too well, Doctor. But the truth is, I have no plans to escape. “Plans” would imply a state of affairs that has yet to come to pass, something that might yet be derailed by circumstance. That I shall escape, Doctor, is as cold and irrevocable a certainty as the ultimate heat death of the universe. I could not prevent it coming to be even if that were my desire. Wheels are in motion. I am quite powerless to stop them.’
Jo looked at the Doctor. ‘Why would he tell us that?’
‘Because he never learns, that’s why.’ The Doctor reached over and turned around the anatomical textbook. It was open at a series of grossly unpleasant line drawings, annotated in Latin. He turned over a couple of pages, hesitated, then turned back to the place where he had started. The Doctor touched a smudge and lifted his finger to his nose, sniffing the bouquet. ‘He’s arrogant, Jo: that’s always been his downfall. Never misses a chance to brag. And no matter how many times he fails, he never accepts that the fault might lie in the over-estimation of his own competence.’
‘One of us failed basic chronic navigation, Doctor. One of us passed with the highest commendations in temporal engineering the academy has ever granted. Need I labour the point?’
‘It’s never stopped you before.’
‘Will you please stop bickering?’ Jo asked exasperatedly. ‘We’ve been here five minutes already and all you’ve done is snipe at each other like a pair of old washerwomen!’
‘Five minutes, five million years: it makes little difference to Time Lords,’ the Master said. But he sealed the remark with a smile. ‘You are quite right, Miss Grant: it is entirely unbecoming of us. In fact I am delighted that you have chosen to drop by – both of you. I know we have had our differences, but I cannot say that my time on Earth has been without its compensations. You have both added a certain spice to my stay. But all good things, as they say, must come to an end. Perhaps now would be the ideal time to bid adieu, while maintaining the fond hope that our paths may yet cross again, in some other time and space?’
‘So you can have another go at murdering us?’ Jo asked.
The black mirrors of the sunglasses reflected her own face back at her. ‘Leave me to my affairs, Miss Grant, and I shall leave you to yours.’
‘That’s reassuring.’
‘So you really think you’re getting out of here, do you?’ the Doctor asked.
‘Without a shadow of a doubt.’
‘Childers’ men would pick you off in seconds. You may be a Time Lord, but you’re not immune to bullets. Even if you managed to regenerate, you’d be incapacitated long enough to be recaptured.’
‘You are labouring under an unfortunate misapprehension, Doctor. You presume that my escaping would depend solely on my own actions. Needless to say, I would never be so foolish as to attempt such a thing. Fortunately, I have no need to. My departure from this state of confinement will be facilitated by external factors.’
‘Help – from outside?’ Jo said. ‘But apart from a handful of people, no one knows you’re here.’
‘I do,’ the Master said.
‘What on Earth do you mean by that?’ the Doctor asked.
‘Use your imagination, my dear fellow – what little of it you possess. I am a Time Lord. I travel through time. There are iterations of me spread across all eras of history. Past versions, future versions. I am legion. This version of me, trapped here, is but one facet of my multi-temporal existence.’
The Doctor directed a concerned glance at Jo. ‘You think you can call on some other incarnation of yourself?’
‘Not “think”, Doctor. Know. And the deed is done. My call has gone out, and I am pleased to inform you that it has been answered.’
The Doctor’s tone was grave. ‘If you cross your own time stream, you risk catastrophe. The Blinovitch Limitation Effect …’
‘Is nothing but a story told to children, designed to keep the real power in the hands of the High Council.’
‘Wait,’ Jo said, raising a hand. ‘Let’s get this straight. He can’t have sent a message to himself, can he?’
The Master chuckled quietly.
‘Tell us,’ the Doctor urged. ‘If you’ve already put something in motion, what harm can it serve? Have you sent a message into time? How do you know it’s been answered?’
‘I do, Doctor. An event … has occurred. The nature of this event speaks of temporal manipulation on an impressive scale.’
The Doctor leaned forward. ‘The disappearance of that oil platform? How would you know about that?’
Jo tried to read the response in the Master’s expression, but the supercilious smile conveyed nothing useful.
‘If such a thing were to happen, it could only be me, or iterations of me, launching a massive temporal assault on this time.’
‘But you’re still here,’ Jo said.
‘Patience, please, Miss Grant. Skaro was not destroyed in a day.’ The Master gestured to his little television set, on which the test card was currently showing. ‘I see from the news that there have been reports of unusual weather phenomena. Water falling from the sky. Ships
vanishing. Clearly my time interventions are gathering strength, their energies being calibrated and focused.’
The Doctor folded his arms. ‘And you’re certain it’s you, are you?’
‘Who else, my dear fellow?’
‘Well, you’ve sent a message, somehow, and something is responding. But isn’t it a bit of a leap to assume that the time intervention is down to you?’
‘I encoded my psychic patterns on the time signal. No one but me could have decoded it.’
The Doctor picked absently at a piece of fluff on his sleeve. ‘Well, I hope for your sake that you’re right about this. And I suppose the time-fade is all part of your grand plan as well, is it?’
The Master budged his seat forward. He seemed to strain against the metal hoops binding him place. ‘Time-fade? What are you talking about?’
‘Oh, come on – it’s obviously your doing. First the Brigadier, then Mike Yates – for all we know, it could have spread to the whole of UNIT by now. Very clever, I grant you.’
‘I confess I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Nice try, old chap.’ The Doctor winked at Jo with theatrical over-emphasis. ‘Thing is, we’ve seen the evidence for ourselves. Classic PTF. It’s as if their specific memories of you are being progressively scrambled and erased. But of course you know this. The amnesia will create a level of confusion and disruption that will help you to make your escape, when the moment comes. It’s all part of whatever dastardly scheme you’ve been hatching.’
The Master’s voice was level but threatening. ‘I assure you it’s nothing of the kind.’
The Doctor looked at Jo. ‘I think it’s high time we were on our way, don’t you? The tone’s turned a bit frosty all of a sudden.’
‘I warn you,’ the Master said, squirming in his seat. ‘Do not trifle with me. Time is on my side! Time has always been on my side!’
‘It may well be,’ the Doctor said, pausing. ‘But … who are you, again?’
‘No!’ the Master called. ‘I will know of this! I demand it! Tell me about the time-fade!’
Doctor Who: Harvest of Time Page 8