Doctor Who: Harvest of Time

by Alastair Reynolds

  ‘Maybe not, but we don’t want the ruddy crabs getting their claws on it. This is the only way to be sure.’

  Jo had been into the chamber, but only for a few seconds. Callow’s combination had worked on the inner door as well, the one that Edwina McCrimmon had been trying to get through, and it had turned out that she had been very close to hitting the right set of digits – four 7s. The equipment had not been very impressive to look at, considering all the trouble it had brought: several upright silver cylinders, the size of beer barrels, connected to numerous grey-cased electronic boxes and spooling tape reels, the whole lot still whirring and clicking. There were cables and cooling pipes and computer terminals.

  Jo thought of him being in here, the one whose name was now all but lost to her, helping the government men but at the same time helping himself, tweaking their equipment to serve his own ends. How simple it must have been, to take these boxes and cylinders and cables and make them do his bidding. The Doctor was good at that sort of thing, it was true – improvising, make-do-and-mend. It was the only way he stayed sane, on this primitive backwater of a planet. But him … the other one … he was in a different league. He could make anything into anything, given time. What fools his captors had been, to imagine they had any kind of hold over him.

  But not so different to UNIT and the Brigadier, really, thinking they had a hold on the Doctor.

  ‘Ready to go, sir!’

  Yates’s men had spooled out two lines of fuse, all the way back along the corridor to the first door, and they had connected these dual fuse lines into a box about the size of a biscuit tin. This was a radio detonator, Jo was given to understand. Yates had a similar-sized box in his hands, a corresponding transmitter unit would be used to detonate the charges when they had returned to the helipad. Given the structural damage already sustained by the rig, it was much too hazardous to blow the charges until they were outside and ready to leave.

  ‘Arm,’ Yates said.

  One of the men flicked a sturdy switch on the lid of the receiver box. An amber light came on.

  ‘Armed.’

  Yates flicked one of two switches on his own box. A similar light came on. The two boxes were now linked by radio, ready for the transmission of the final triggering command.

  So they pulled out, doing their best to respect the bodies of the dead men on the other side of the door, but knowing there was nothing they could do for them now. Jo watched Eddie McCrimmon with guarded admiration, knowing what she had been through these last few hours. She had not only confronted her own imminent death, but lost good friends and come to a sobering understanding that Earth was not exactly alone. And still she was functioning, keeping it together.

  ‘That’ll do it?’ McCrimmon asked. ‘Those little charges you placed?’

  ‘They’ll bring the roof down,’ Yates said. ‘Literally, if this place is as rickety as it feels.’

  ‘The time ruptures have undermined the rig,’ Jo said. ‘It’s happening everywhere, not just here.’

  ‘We’d better get a crack on,’ Benton said, as if any of them needed that spelling out.

  They passed more bodies on the way to the top of the rig. The route they had come in by was blocked by fire, so they had to take a lengthy diversion through a different part of the rig, trusting to Eddie McCrimmon’s flawless local knowledge. Through a canteen, through a common room, down a corridor lined with recently abandoned bedrooms. All the while Yates was cradling his transmitter box, watching the indicator light on its top. ‘Bother,’ he said, as the amber light flickered and returned. ‘Signal’s weak!’

  ‘Had trouble reaching the helicopters, sir,’ Benton said. ‘Must be all the metal in this place. It’s not like a normal building.’

  By the time they reached daylight, the amber light had gone out completely. Yates swore at it, turning the box this way and that to see if he could get a signal.

  The rig jolted again. Jo watched in appalled wonder as one of the tower cranes buckled and fell into the seething grey seas below. ‘How long?’ she asked Eddie McCrimmon.

  ‘Dunno. Feels as if one of the legs is crumbling away under us by the minute.’

  Yates nodded grimly. ‘Back aboard the helicopters, everyone. Including you, Jo – and Miss McCrimmon!’

  ‘I’m not setting foot off this rig until I know the rest of you are safe,’ Eddie said. ‘Sorry, but I’m still the boss of this thing and you are still my guests.’

  ‘At least get on the helipad,’ Yates said. ‘The rest of you, move it! Benton – you’re staying with me.’

  Benton responded to this with cheerful equanimity. ‘What’s the plan, sir?’

  ‘The plan is that some poor mug’s got to go back inside. We’ll just have to trigger it and hope for the best.’

  ‘I stopped hoping for the best around breakfast time, sir. It’s been downhill ever since.’

  Half the squad was now back aboard one of the helicopters. Jo watched as it lifted off from the perilously tilting helipad. Part of her desperately wanted to get aboard the other machine, but she kept thinking of what the Doctor would do.

  ‘I’d better come with you,’ Eddie said.

  ‘No chance,’ Yates said. ‘Get aboard that helicopter, Miss McCrimmon.’

  ‘Is this a civilian facility, Captain?’

  The question seemed to puzzle Yates. ‘Last time I checked.’

  ‘Then I’ll do as I jolly well please, thank you. Or do you really think you know your way around the rig well enough? There are new fires breaking out all the while – thing’s going to be the Towering ruddy Inferno before you can blink.’

  ‘I won’t allow a civilian …’

  ‘Then we’ll all go, shall we? Take a picnic? Look, the time we’ve been standing around arguing, I could have been halfway to the secure area – and stopped for a pee on the way. That gadget of yours doesn’t look very complicated.’

  ‘She’s right,’ Jo said. ‘It makes sense.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Grant,’ Eddie McCrimmon said, with an edge of doubt in her voice.

  ‘But I’ll come with you. No ifs, no buts.’

  ‘You’re all barmpots, I swear. But if you insist … Captain, give me that transmitter.’

  ‘No,’ Yates said forcefully. ‘We’ll go. The three of us. Benton – get everyone else aboard the second helicopter, and pull clear of the helipad. Hover at a safe distance. You should see the blast when it happens. If there’s no sign of us within five minutes of the explosion, start heading for the mainland. We’re low on fuel as it is – last thing we want to do is ditch in this weather.’

  Benton hesitated.

  Yates yelled: ‘That’s an order, sergeant!’

  The Master took the Doctor’s hand in his, clutching his sleeve with the other. ‘Sorry? My dear fellow, no apologies are called for! You have done absolutely the right and proper thing! You have given me back to myself! You have made me whole again! You have my undying gratitude!’

  A phalanx of alien guards surrounded the plinth on which the TARDIS rested. These, the Doctor supposed, were the native citizens of Praxilion. He had seen nothing quite like them. They were furry creatures with multiple legs, like fat hairy caterpillars, except that each was longer than a man was tall. They were all bent into right angles, upright ‘L’s with their rear halves horizontal to the floor, each supported by six pairs of thick muscular legs, splayed out from the body rather than supporting it directly from underneath. The other half of each creature, bent perpendicular to the floor, came equipped with a head and just as many limbs, except that the upper three pairs were longer and more obviously dextrous, being tipped with mitten-like hands, each hand consisting of a flat leaf-shaped palm and an opposable ‘thumb’. The creatures’ heads were almost mammalian, with snouts, broad smiling mouths and darkly intelligent eyes. Their fur, from head to tail, was organised into red and white stripes, like toothpaste squeezed from a tube. They gave off a sweet, honey-like odour.

  All were armed. Ove
r their fur they wore belts and harnesses and elaborate cross-webbing. Each Praxilion carried in two of its hands a thing like a cattle prod, a golden staff tipped with a glass muzzle and connected to a cylindrical backpack by a flexible tube. These weapons, whatever their nature, were pointed at the Doctor and the Master.

  ‘Step down from the platform,’ buzzed a synthetic voice, emanating from the nearest Praxilion.

  The Doctor and the Master did as they were instructed, both men instinctively raising their arms to show that they carried no weapons of their own.

  ‘State your identities,’ buzzed the voice again.

  ‘I am the Doctor … this – as you undoubtedly know – is the Master. And if you don’t mind, a little courtesy might not go amiss. We were sent here by your queen, so the least we deserve …’

  This insolence earned the Doctor a crackle of purple energy from the nearest cattle prod. He staggered and was about to drop to the ground when the Master caught him.

  ‘Do not hurt the Doctor! Not if you want my continued cooperation.’

  ‘What are you to us?’ buzzed the voice contemptuously.

  ‘Your miserable planet’s salvation. Why else would your queen have gone to the trouble of sending me back here?’ The Master, satisfied that the Doctor had recovered from the energy burst, folded his arms haughtily. ‘I presume we have arrived during the Sild onslaught? I presume also that the Consolidator is presently in orbit around Praxilion?’

  Now there was a note of guarded respect in the alien’s voice. ‘You know much of our world.’

  ‘I also know how it ends. In abject desolation. In ten million years your kind will be extinct and all but forgotten.’ The Praxilion raised its lance threateningly, but the Master countered by raising the black-gloved palm of his own hand. ‘Trifle with me if you wish, but you will find it profoundly counterproductive.’

  ‘Let them approach. If they have found their way to this time, it can only be because I sent them.’

  It was a different voice this time. Amplified, but recognisably human in intonation. Indeed, they both recognised the speaker. The Doctor and the Master looked over the heads of the Praxilion phalanx to the throne of the Red Queen, her Imperial Majesty Uxury Scuita. She sat in the chair, between hefty banks of throbbing stasis equipment.

  She was visibly younger, although only relatively speaking. This was still a tremendously old woman. The Doctor reminded himself that even now, it was two million years since the Red Queen’s arrival on this world. She was already rationing the finite remaining seconds of her life.

  ‘You sent us,’ the Doctor said. He made to reach into his pocket, only halting when the phalanx jabbed their staffs threateningly. ‘Steady on! I only want to show you the other half of the bound-tachyon pair.’

  ‘Allow me to see it,’ the Red Queen commanded.

  Slowly, the Doctor withdrew the ring and rested it on his upturned palm. ‘May I?’ he asked, indicating the stone steps at the base of the throne.

  ‘Approach.’

  Leaving the Master standing at the foot of the steps with his arms still crossed, the Doctor ascended to the throne. ‘We met you in the future,’ he told her. ‘You’d been waiting for us, just so you could direct us back to this moment if we overshot.’

  The Red Queen nodded. She seemed less a prisoner of the throne than she had been in the future, her bearing more regal. She still had the glove on her right hand, the golden rod gripped in the left. But something was different about the rod, the Doctor noticed. It had gained a gold-encrusted sphere on its top, which now served as a handle.

  ‘And how long did I have to wait? I assume the worst. A million years? Two?’

  ‘Ten,’ the Doctor said. ‘You were near the end of your stasis capacity. If we’d have arrived even a little later, I doubt that you’d have been there to greet us.’

  ‘And Praxilion? What of it? Had better days come? Tell me we overcame the Sild, reversed the harm they have done to our world. Tell me I did not let my people down.’

  ‘You didn’t let your people down. But I can’t tell you things were much better.’

  ‘You could have consoled me with a white lie, Doctor.’

  The Doctor hesitated, trying to find some crumb of consolation in what he had to report. ‘What the Master and I witnessed in the future is just one time stream. Our travelling back will almost certainly shift events onto a different one. That’s what you hoped for, isn’t it? To alter history from this point on?’

  ‘We had a history, Doctor. A past and the hope of a future. The Sild destroyed all that. Now we’d like it back again.’ The Red Queen outstretched her hand. ‘May I see the ring? It’s not that I doubt you.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  The Doctor passed the ring to the queen. She held it up to her eye, examining it carefully, its ruby light pulsating and wavering as if the fire in it had been quickened. ‘Astonishing to think this thing was touched by myself, ten million years from now.’ She looked at him marvellingly. ‘You are a time traveller. You must be used to this sort of thing.’

  ‘The day time travel stops astonishing you,’ the Doctor said, ‘is generally the day something ghastly goes wrong.’

  The queen stretched out the ring finger of her ungloved hand. She was already wearing what appeared to be a duplicate of the ring containing the bound-tachyon pair. She slipped the new ring onto the same finger, and worked it up the length of the wrinkled, bony digit until it was in the contact with the first. She pressed them together, and the rings blurred and merged, the ruby glow intensifying and then settling down to its former brightness.

  ‘I did not doubt your word, Doctor. But it is as well to be certain of these things.’

  ‘I agree wholeheartedly.’

  ‘And your associate – the Master? He presents himself willingly? I’m surprised not to see him in shackles.’

  The Master, unbidden, ascended the steps to stand next to the Doctor. ‘The Sild have made an enemy of me, your Majesty. But I confess there is another reason for my apparent submission.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I have need of urgent medical intervention. I have been touched by the Sild.’

  ‘Then you are fortunate to be alive.’

  ‘The contact was brief, and I am a Time Lord. Nonetheless, my mental fortitude is not limitless.’

  ‘You would seek my help.’

  ‘I was told you had some experience in this matter.’ The Master spoke carefully. ‘Mention was made of an Infinite Cocoon.’

  After a long interval the queen said: ‘It is true. We have such a machine, although we scarcely understand all that it is capable of. Even so, in the most extreme cases, it has saved the lives of Praxilion citizens who were touched by the Sild. But all paid a price! Most we tried to save did not survive their time in the Infinite Cocoon. They came out changed. Sometimes horribly.’

  ‘I am willing to take my chances.’

  ‘And then what? If you survive the machine, you will accept to be handed over to the Sild?’

  ‘I must confront them eventually, whatever happens. Now is as good a time as ever.’

  ‘Wait,’ the Doctor said, raising his hand. ‘I have done what was demanded of me, by bringing him back to this time. But I will not be party to an injustice! The Master has committed great crimes, it’s true. But he should answer to the Time Lords, not the Sild!’

  ‘I am afraid, Doctor,’ the Master stated, ‘it is rather late in the day for qualms.’

  The Red Queen called to her aides. ‘Prepare the Infinite Cocoon!’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Jo, Yates and Eddie McCrimmon went back into the rig, fighting every rational human impulse to get as far away from it as possible. Yates kept trying the detonator, trying to get a signal through, but so far there was too much interference. Jo wondered how much time they had left. Mike Oscar Six was burning, at risk of explosion or runaway inferno at any moment; it was also undergoing a slow but steady structural failure, which
might at any second result in it collapsing back into the sea. There was the very real possibility, too, that elements of the Sild were still present, lurking in shadows and corners. No sane person would rather have been down in these hot corridors than up in one of the UNIT helicopters, Jo thought.

  ‘You seem to be taking this in your stride,’ Eddie said to Jo, when they were passing through a recreation area, set with rows of orange seats before a blank white projection screen. ‘Rigs disappearing into thin air, robot crabs taking over people … You’re acting like it’s all in a day’s work.’

  ‘That’s not far off the truth,’ Jo said.

  ‘When you first came to see me, you had a feeling something more was going on.’

  ‘Let’s just say that this isn’t the first time UNIT has dealt with some pretty strange stuff.’

  ‘And this friend of yours – the Doctor? Where does he fit into things?’

  ‘He doesn’t, really. The Doctor’s the ultimate square peg.’

  ‘The third man – the one with Callow and Lovelace – he knew your friend, didn’t he?’

  ‘They go back a bit.’

  ‘The third man said they were at school.’

  ‘They were, I think. But when we say “school”… that’s where it gets complicated.’

  ‘Is the Doctor all right?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Jo had to swallow hard. ‘He left us. Took off in the … that’s what we’re hoping, anyway. He might be trying to fix things at his end.’

  ‘His end?’

  ‘There’s this thing he can do. It’s a bit difficult to accept, unless you know him.’

  ‘Thing?’

  ‘He travels.’

  ‘And have you ever … gone with him?’

  ‘Once or twice.’

  ‘When I was a little girl,’ Eddie said after a long silence, ‘I had these books. Ten of them. They were blank to start with. I filled them up with stories about this woman, this queen, who lived on another planet. I had a big biscuit tin of felt-tips, all the colours you could get. That was where I got the name of the queen from, from the words on the side of the tin: Luxury Shortbread Biscuit Assortment. Her Imperial Majesty Uxury Scuita! She was in charge of this kingdom, full of talking animals … I did all the stories, drew pictures and made up facts and stuff about the queen’s world. How the money worked, how the magic operated, what kind of clothes the queen wore, the customs … I lived in that world, Jo. I was on another planet. But only in my head.’