And suddenly the star was a supernova. The Master swept up his hand to shield his eyes from the intense sphere of expanding light. For a moment there was a white beyond white, as if the white he had always known was merely an imposter, a tawdry approximation of the real thing. And then the sphere was fading at its margins, dulling to purple.
The psychic severance was sudden and shocking. It felt as if the weathervane in his skull had been jerked, set spinning. The pain, like the colour white, had become a thing beyond itself. The Master realised that he had in fact never really known pain, only pain’s shadow.
Until this moment.
The Master fell to the ground, screaming, clutching his head. Above him, the sphere faded into the sky’s perfect limitless black.
Praxilion was once more without a moon.
The Doctor knelt down to examine the unconscious form. The Master had collapsed to the floor of the balcony, his arm dangling limply over the side. The arm glittered with frost, commencing in a sharp line just beyond the Master’s elbow. It was a most beguiling effect, as if the arm had been dipped in sugar.
The Master’s eyes were closed, his face calm. He looked gentle, in a state of serene repose. The Doctor pondered all the evils this man had perpetrated, down through the long centuries of his existence, the crimes and the cruelties. It was impossible to square that knowledge with the helpless sleeping form before him. It would only have taken a shove to send him over the edge. With no air to slow him, the Master’s body would be travelling at a fearsome speed when it hit the Praxilion surface. But there was no need to kill him that way. Left out here, with his arm exposed to vacuum, he would not have lasted long.
It would be a lie to say that the Doctor did not give some thought to leaving him. Not that the Red Queen would have allowed him to do that, of course. She wanted the Master to travel back with the Doctor, and the Doctor had no reason to doubt her powers of coercion. And he, too, wanted to undo the harm that the Sild had already wrought on time. If the Master was the key to that, so be it.
But deep down, even without those factors, the Doctor could not have left him there. They were both of Gallifrey. Wayward sons, it was true. But even a rogue Time Lord deserved better than death at the cold end of time.
The Doctor took the Master by the armpits and heaved him out of harm’s way.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
She would not have heard it if the main alarm had still been sounding, but at some point that electrical system had stopped working. Now there was only the muted crash and rumble of the dying rig, her own breathing, her own frantic tapping of the keypad, the wasp-like buzz from the door each time she hit the wrong combination. The door needed electrical power to work, but evidently Callow and Lovelace had made sure it was not dependent on the main supply. The same was presumably true of the door Irwin and the others were trying to get through.
So she heard the sound when it came. It was a distinct mechanical clunk, as of a gate latch being thrown. And she knew in that moment that she had failed in this last and bravest test of her life. Seven thousand eight hundred and thirty-three … more than two thousand combinations, and she still hadn’t found the right one.
Not that it would have made much difference to her chances, but it had been worth a try. She might at least have been able to put an axe to the MERMAN equipment, and thereby put it beyond the reach of the monsters … whatever they wanted with it. They would surely have killed or converted her anyway, but there would have been a slim measure of satisfaction in spoiling their plans. Really, you had to take what you could get.
‘Eddie!’
The voice had come from down the corridor but it did not belong to Tom Irwin, or indeed to any of her people. That was easily established. The voice was a woman’s. McCrimmon was still the only female employee on Mike Oscar Six.
He heart raced. ‘Who is it?’
‘UNIT! It’s me, Jo Grant!’
And suddenly they were coming down the corridor, torches bright, heavy in their boots, wearing military gear, with helmets and body armour and dangerous-looking guns.
‘How did you …? What …?’ She had far too many questions. ‘You came!’
‘Are you all right?’ asked Jo Grant.
McCrimmon nodded, stunned and overwhelmed. ‘More or less. But what about Tom and the others?’
‘Tom?’ asked Mike Yates.
‘They were trying to get through the door, to get to me and the equipment. They didn’t know the combination, but they were working through the numbers. They’d been taken over by … things.’
‘Sild,’ Jo Grant said, pushing back her fringe. ‘That’s what they’re called. Mike’s men hit them with stun grenades – the Sild came off their hosts and scuttled away.’
‘We managed to shoot a few of them,’ said Yates. ‘The rest have probably made it to open water by now. They know the rig hasn’t got long. We need to get you to the helipad, before this whole place falls apart under us.’
‘OK,’ McCrimmon said, holding her hand up against the dazzle of the torches they were still waggling about. ‘So these things were using my men as hosts, is that it? But you’ve stunned the men now? Does that mean …’
‘I’m really sorry,’ Jo Grant said. ‘But those men are all dead. When the Sild touched them, it was all over. There’s nothing that anyone could do for them. You’re really lucky to still be alive.’
‘But we have to move fast,’ said Yates. ‘We need to disable the MERMAN equipment. Is it somewhere down here?’ His men were already shrugging off heavy backpacks, tearing them open to spill out cables and electrical equipment.
McCrimmon was swinging between shock and elation. It was wonderful to have been rescued, but terrible to know that her friends and colleagues were gone for ever.
‘What the hell is going on?’
‘An alien invasion,’ Yates said. ‘Creatures coming through time, from somewhere else in the galaxy, to take over our planet. They’ve been homing in on the MERMAN signals – it’s where this trouble all started. If we block the signal, we might slow or stop the invasion. Maybe.’
‘Alien invaders? Are you serious?’
‘Do we look like we’re making it up?’ asked Yates. ‘We’ve lost a helicopter full of men on our way here, Miss McCrimmon.’
‘It’s not our first time,’ Jo Grant said. ‘Or second. But alien invaders are never the same twice. We’ve never dealt with the Sild before and we’re a bit in the dark about the best way to fight them. Cutting off the signal is our best guess right now.’
‘You don’t sound confident.’
‘We’re not,’ Jo Grant said. ‘But this is about all we can do at our end.’
‘Who’s taking care of the other end?’
‘The Doctor,’ Jo said, with a strained smile. ‘We hope.’
The Doctor had produced an old wickerwork garden chair and set the Master down in it, arms draped either side, exactly as if he had fallen into a lazy snooze on a warm summer’s afternoon.
‘Where are we?’ the Master asked, sounding like a man roused from aeons of sleep.
‘On our way to an earlier meeting with the Red Queen.’ The Doctor stepped away from the TARDIS console, satisfied for the moment that all was in hand. ‘How do you feel? You were unconscious when I found you. Your arm was exposed to vacuum, but beyond some mild frostbite I don’t think there’s any lasting damage.’
‘I feel … different. Strangely different.’ The Master opened his eyes fully, and raised himself from his slump into a proper sitting position. ‘Doctor, something quite odd has happened to me.’
‘You must have felt some kind of psychic severance when the Consolidator exploded, losing contact with all those counterparts of yourself.’
‘I did.’ The Master rubbed at the back of his head. ‘I still feel the Sild’s presence, Doctor. That hasn’t gone away. But something else has.’
The Doctor also sensed a change in his adversary, but for now it was hard to say exactly where
it lay. It was like the subtle change of light on a landscape, as clouds first occluded then revealed the sun.
‘You’ve had a nasty shock.’
‘It’s more than that, Doctor. I feel quite profoundly altered.’ The Master seemed, for a moment, utterly lost for words. ‘Doctor, I hardly know how to begin expressing this. But for the first time in my life, I feel free of myself.’
‘I’m not sure I follow.’
‘I have never pretended to be anything other than what I am, Doctor. An agent of chaos, disorder, corruption. I have embraced these things just as vigorously as you have embraced life and possibility. But only now do I realise that my state of being did not come from within me. It was imposed from without.’
The Doctor looked at him guardedly, well accustomed to the Master’s mind games. ‘You’ll need to be a bit clearer.’
‘I need hardly ask if you are familiar with emergent systems, Doctor. Consider a flock of birds, thousands of them, swooping and moving as one mass. Almost as if they were a single living thing, rather than a mass of individuals. And indeed, in the flock, they become one entity, an emergent system, a gestalt organism whose rules cannot be inferred from the behaviour of any one element.’
‘I see. And …’
‘I have been that flock, Doctor. That gestalt. What I am, what I have done, cannot be ascribed to any single incarnation of me. It is an emergent effect, a property borne of the combined sum of all my identities, across all the time streams. Each and every one of me has felt that influence, the dark psychic pressure to conform to the gestalt. And in turn, by obeying that group will, we have done truly wicked things – deeds which only serve to reinforce the gestalt!’
‘Well, that’s awfully nice for you, but …’
‘Don’t you see, Doctor? I was present at the collective death of my remaining selves! In that moment I felt the worst pain I have known. But that severance was also a liberation! I am free of the gestalt! Whatever the Master was, it is not me!’
‘And you expect me to believe that, do you?’
‘Doctor, you of all people have always been ready to see the best in people, even in their darkest hours. I am asking you now to see the best in me. I have changed. I am truly not the man I was. And I weep for the things I have done.’
‘Mm. Crocodile tears, I think the phrase is.’
The Master, still enfeebled, tried and failed to rise from the chair. ‘Doctor, now of all times, you must believe me. This changes everything!’
‘I’m not sure it does.’
‘You cannot risk my return into time, at least not in the Red Queen’s era. My other selves still exist around Praxilion – stronger, too, since there are more of them than at the end of time!’
‘If you’re free of their influence now, you’ll be free of them when we arrive.’
‘I fear not, Doctor. I am free now because of the shock of the psychic severance. The Vortex gives me some isolation, some psychic buffering. But when we emerge, who is to say what will happen? The effect of my collective selves, gathered in one point in space and time … I doubt very much that I will be able to resist them.’
‘So what’s your proposal? We spend the rest of eternity shuttling up and down the Vortex, like some demented elevator?’
‘No, Doctor – while that fate might guard me against my other selves, it would be a cruel imposition on you.’ Reaching out to brace himself against the Doctor, the Master finally succeeded in rising from the chair. ‘But my selves are gathered around Praxilion, long after the EMTT. If we travel deeper into time … perhaps even before the EMTT itself … it could be sufficient!’
‘You were never immune to their influence before.’
‘No, but that was before I’d been vouchsafed a glimpse of what else could be!’ The Master’s voice was rising, but not in his usual hectoring, authoritative way. He was pleading with the Doctor. ‘I beg of you. I believe I am strong enough to resist myself, provided we do not emerge in the Red Queen’s time. Now I know what I could be … what I could have been … I can see a better path.’
‘And what would that better path be? Galactic domination?’
The Master shook his head, smiling sadly. ‘I can hardly blame you for mocking, Doctor. But I am quite sincere. I realise the monster I have become, and I wish to begin making some small amends. I could be like you: a force for good.’ Slowly the Master returned to the seat – standing had worn him out. ‘No; I couldn’t begin to be like you. But I could be something better than I was. Wouldn’t that be enough?’
Now it was the Doctor’s turn to shake his head. ‘I’m sorry. I’d like to believe you. But no one changes that easily.’
‘But no one experiences what just happened to me!’ Then an idea seemed to seize the Master. ‘A psychic bridge, Doctor: between the two of us. If you could see into my mind, understand my good intentions …’
‘And open my own mind up to Sild contamination?’
‘Believe me!’
The console chimed. The Doctor returned to it and made a few trifling adjustments to the controls. ‘We’re approaching the other half of the bound-tachyon pair. We’ll be there in a few seconds.’
‘Please do not materialise. You will destroy me.’
‘And how many times have you tried to do just that to me? Now I need to concentrate, if you don’t mind. This is a very tricky manoeuvre.’
‘As one Time Lord to another. We were friends once. Let me live. Don’t make me become that thing again.’
‘You’ve never changed,’ the Doctor said, only half listening. He needed to judge the moment exactly … ‘You’ve always been the Master. You will always be the Master.’
The Master fell to the Doctor’s feet, clutching his trouser legs. ‘I beg of you. Put aside all I have done to you …’
But the central column of the console had ceased its rise and fall. The Doctor stepped away from the pathetic, kneeling figure. The Master was sobbing.
‘It was a nice try,’ the Doctor said, not without a certain fondness. ‘But really, after all we’ve been through, did you honestly expect me to fall for it?’
The console indications showed that they had arrived back on Praxilion, ten million years before they had roused the Red Queen from her stasis. They were in a building, almost certainly the same one they had already visited, except this was much earlier in its life. Air and gravity readings were almost identical to those encountered previously, although background radiation – while remaining within tolerable limits – was considerably enhanced.
The Doctor detached the queen’s ring from its harness on the console, slipped it into his pocket, and opened the door. ‘Look,’ he said to the still-kneeling, still-sobbing form, ‘you can cut out the amateur dramatics now.’
The Master did seem to gain some measure of composure. He ceased his sobbing, took a deep breath, and forced himself to stand. His eyes were red with tears.
‘You’re right, Doctor,’ he said, with an air of absolute resignation. ‘What’s done is done. I can already feel them, you know. From the moment we re-entered normal time. Their influence is as strong as I feared.’
The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS. He took in his surroundings. They were in the same vaulted space as before, except this time it was somehow grander, the decoration more ornate and ostentatious. At the limit of his hearing, he picked up the throb and hum of machines. He had not checked the energy readings, but it was clear that there was vastly more power here than in the future.
The TARDIS had come to rest – materialised – on a heavy golden plinth, equipped with three swooping arms that rose up around it, clenching it like a three-fingered claw.
The Master stepped out beside him. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and tipped back his head.
‘I was not wrong,’ he said, in little more than a whisper. ‘The gestalt is reasserting its hold on me. A moment ago it revolted me to think what I was about to become again. Now it revolts me that I ever begged for your mercy!�
��
And with a strength that the Doctor had not seen in him since he found him slumped on the balcony, the Master laughed.
‘Do you understand what I am saying, Doctor? I am becoming myself again! That thing that pleaded with you was but an aberration!’ The Master smiled triumphantly. ‘That pitiful, mewling part of me is dead! Let the Master be reborn!’
The Doctor wondered if the Master was simply up to more trickery and gamesmanship. But some vile intuition told him otherwise. The Master was being sincere now, as he had been sincere in the TARDIS. And that could only mean that the Doctor had committed perhaps the gravest error of judgement in all his years.
The Master’s words tolled in his head like a cracked bell. You of all people have always been ready to see the best in people, even in their darkest hours
And that was true, most of the time.
‘I’m terribly sorry,’ the Doctor said, quietly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The rig lurched again. From somewhere above came a sustained roar, signalling the collapse of some major structure.
‘Pilots are getting itchy feet!’ Benton said, coming back down the corridor after communicating by wireless with the helicopter crews still waiting on the helipad. ‘They reckon we’ve only got a few minutes before it’s too dangerous to stay put. Might have to take off sooner, if the angle on the pad worsens.’
‘Tell them we’re nearly done,’ Yates said, keeping up an impressive façade of military calm as his men came back from placing the demolition charges in the MERMAN chamber.
‘Can’t you just … pull the plug out or something?’ Jo asked, with what she assumed would be regarded as touching naivety. ‘Won’t that make it stop working?’
‘We didn’t build this equipment,’ Yates said, ‘and we don’t know how much we can trust what Callow told his interrogators about the design. For all we know the thing can keep transmitting its signal even without an external power source.’
‘It’s not going to last long once the rig collapses, all the same,’ Jo said.
Doctor Who: Harvest of Time Page 24