This was worse than making a holo, worse than performing in one of the Institute’s stupid end of term plays. Lacuna’s eyes were penetrating her, peeling her open for the pleasure of an unseen, unknown audience. Britta pulled back, but Lacuna’s fingers were in her hair.
‘Strands of spun gold! Feel it twining in my hands like rope made of sun’s rays. See how the slightest little tug brings forth another liquid jewel from her eye.’
Lacuna chuckled. The sound was so unexpected that for a moment Britta forgot her shame. ‘They like you, my child. Theirs is a universe of abstractions. You and I will show them the world of the senses. Smile a little.’
Britta managed to lift the corners of her mouth.
‘So pretty,’ Lacuna said, and clenched another handful of golden hair. Britta gasped with pain.
‘Prettier. They see you as I see you, my child. I will show them everything about you. And as I enjoy you, so will they. There are dangerous currents affecting them. There have been delays. They need to see beautiful things. They need to touch beauty. You will be with me at every moment, my child. You will be at my side at all times, ready to serve the Corporation.’ Lacuna shivered. ‘That expression – your face – that was the most delicious yet. You have much to give.’
What kind of weapon has to be kept in a cryo capsule? Something alive. And something too dangerous to unfreeze on board ship.
Ace shivered. The cryogenics store was maintained at a lower temperature than the rest of the medical suite, but Ace didn’t kid herself. These were Iceworld-sized goosebumps, and the store wasn’t that cold. She was shivering because she was spooked.
The medic who wanted to sample her virally-protected body had locked the door behind her. ‘The alarm kicks in if the door’s left unlocked for more than five minutes,’ he had said. ‘And I have to stay out here in case the guards look into the surgery. Don’t worry, I’ll let you out in ten.’
Ten minutes is about as much as I could take, Ace thought, and about as much as I’ll need. The room was dimly lit and partitioned with metal racking, but Ace could see it was almost empty.
There was one capsule on each section of racking. The larger capsules; including two coffin-shaped body pods, were at the back of the store. The smaller boxes on the nearer shelves looked more promising. Ace, didn’t know what she was looking for, but she was expecting to find something like a new strain of smart bacteria, or maybe one of the sentient blasters that were supposed to have been outlawed centuries ago.
The capsules were Spacefleet standards. Ace grinned: hacking the built-in monitor system of a cryo capsule had been the first thing she’d done on her first Spacefleet combat trip. Then, of course; she’d been supplementing her rations by defrosting some of the ship’s cryogenically preserved foodstuffs. But the principle was the same.
She tapped a sequence of numbers into the monitor of the nearest box. Ignoring the AUDIO INPUT? reminder that flashed on the miniscreen, she pushed more buttons until the words suddenly stopped flashing and stayed still on the, screen. Then she spoke, very clearly, ‘Vice Admiral, er – Vice Admiral,’ she said and closed her eyes.
She dared a one-eyed glance at the screen. SECURITY CLEARANCE APPROVED – ALL LEVELS was the message on the screen, Ace smiled and said ‘Yow!’
UNKNOWN AUDIO INPUT, the screen said, PLEASE REPEAT.
‘What’s inside?’ Ace said.
TISSUE SAMPLES, RAISTRICK CREW, appeared on the screen.
‘Close,’ Ace said, and moved to the next rack of shelving.
Several minutes later, Ace had interrogated the monitors of all of the smaller capsules. She had found litres of concentrated plasma-plus and enough skin regenerating cultures to clothe several skeletons, but she hadn’t found a secret weapon. The box of intelligent, multi-headed, data-corrupting missiles had appealed to her, but she had resisted the temptation to pocket a few of the tiny darts: she didn’t know what might happen when they thawed. And although effective against any electronic data-processing system, including the human brain, they were by no means secret.
That left the two coffin-shaped capsules.
Ace was beginning to feel shivery again. She forced herself to hurry. She had only a minute left. Her anxious eyes caught sight of their reflection in the dull sheen of the box’s black lid, and she almost lost the numerical sequence she was loading. The screen told her she was in.
‘What’s – what’s inside?’ she said.
The coffin contained a body. Just a body. A trooper. She knew him by name, couldn’t remember his face. Airlock accident. She remembered hearing about it. Ruptured lungs. In cryo awaiting, surgery. Nothing out of the ordinary.
So it was in the other coffin. Whatever it was. Defries’s secret weapon.
Ace stood for a few seconds, looking down at the blank, black box. She reached for the monitor, and started hitting the keys.
‘What’s inside?’
HUMAN MALE.
Ace laughed with relief, but stopped herself suddenly. This had to be the one. ‘Injuries?’ she asked.
PHYSICALLY INTACT.
That was a weird way of putting it. It begged too many questions, and most of them were spinning in Ace’s head. But she needed basic information.
‘Name?’
ABSLOM DAAK.
Abslom Daak. Ace had seen that name before. She knew something terrible about someone named Abslom Daak, but she couldn’t remember what she knew.
More information was scrolling across the screen. VERSION THREE. DALEK KILLER NUMBER ERASED.
Abslom Daak. A Dalek Killer. Ace tried to jog her memory. Dalek Killers – DKs – were almost mythical. No-one ever met a DK, because DKs died quickly and a long way from home. They were criminals, the worst criminals, sentenced to exile on Dalek-controlled planets. Few survived the transmat. Those that got through could expect to live for a few hours. The more Daleks they killed, the longer they might last. Earth Central didn’t much care either way.
And Defries was taking a DK to Arcadia. That didn’t make much sense to Ace. Keeping the DK in the deep freeze, on the other hand, seemed eminently sensible. There was something about the name, though. Abslom Daak.
‘How much longer in cryo?’ Ace asked.
00.04.15.57 appeared on the screen.
Almost five days, Ace thought. So Defries isn’t going to risk thawing him out before we drop out of warp. But I’d like to have a few words with this guy...
‘Any problems with auto resuscitation?’ Ace said.
AUTO RESUSCITATION SELECTED, the screen said, 2% ERROR PROBABILITY.
So he’s in good shape. OK then, let’s give him an early alarm call. ‘Implant post-resuscitation instruction to seek interview with trooper known as Ace,’ Ace said, ‘and reset resuscitation time to four days from now.’
RESET: 00.04.00.00 flashed onto the screen, and Ace heard a noise. She turned to see the youthful-looking doctor standing in the doorway.
‘Did you find it?’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s get you out of here. Those guards will think we’re up to something. Come on, I said. Out!’
Ace shook her head and walked slowly to the door. She’d remembered where she had seen Abslom Daak’s name before. The Dalek Killer was dead.
It was years ago, in the days when she’d been travelling with the Doctor. The days when her life was upside down and she hadn’t known whether she was coming or going. She’d been leafing through the TARDIS memory store, using the terminal in her room (God, the chaos and crap she’d lived in then!) to follow references to the Doctor’s activities. She’d wanted to know, for some reason, what he’d got up to when she wasn’t around. She’d been a bit furtive about it, because although the information was readily available, what she was doing had felt like spying. It had been a frustrating exercise, anyway, because the relational aspects of the TARDIS’s memory seemed almost completely arbitrary to a non-Gallifreyan. But she’d found a reference to Abslom Daak.
The Doctor had been with Daak when he had die
d. He’d made a crazy vow to kill every Dalek in the Galaxy. He had sacrificed himself in a suicidal attack on the central reactor of a Dalek Death Wheel. The Death Wheel had been blown apart, and an entire planet and all its inhabitants had been saved. Daak had been a hero.
But he must have died. He had died, according to the TARDIS. In which case how could he be frozen in a box in the medical suite of the Admiral Raistrick?
‘Of course! I’m a nanobrain.’
‘What?’ The medic had moved away, and now turned back suddenly.
‘Nothing.’ Ace grinned at him. ‘I was being stupid. The answer’s time travel.’
Of course, it was very simple. The Doctor had met Daak in his – the Doctor’s – past, but in the future from where Ace was standing now. So Daak, in his own timeline, had not yet met the Doctor. At some point in Daak’s future (but the Doctor’s past) Daak would launch himself into the reactor of a Dalek Death Wheel; the Doctor would witness the act of heroism; the record would be entered in the TARDIS memory; and then, still in the Doctor’s past and also in Ace’s past, Ace would look into the TARDIS’s memory and discover how Daak died – how Daak will die.
Ace’s head was spinning. No wonder she used to be confused in those days. There was something very worrying about knowing how someone is going to die.
The medic sealed the cryo store. ‘Not so exciting, is it? Just a DK. I can’t imagine why Defries thinks he’ll make much difference. She’s got a shipload of homicidal auxies like you to use as Dalek fodder. But stay alive, won’t you? I want to collect my part of our bargain.’
‘Right,’ Ace said, and left the medical suite. But she hadn’t heard a word he’d said. She was thinking: Daak’s going to wake up in four days. He’ll jump out of that coffin like some deranged vampire, he’ll knock on the door until someone lets him out, and he’ll come looking for me. What do I say to him? Hello, I know where you’re going to die?
Stop worrying, she told herself, He’ll probably be a berserk, criminally insane psychopath anyway. Making conversation could easily be the least of my difficulties.
He cut a hole.
I hate them, they sound like insects moving. They sound like frogs talking.
But I thought he would help her, anyway.
The door was open. He came in. He saw her. He didn’t see me. I was hiding. I was too scared.
Why didn’t he help her? She was screaming. No noise, but screaming. Inside a golden cloud. Shaking like leaves on a tree. Not pretty any more. Shaking and screaming.
He stood and watched.
‘Gerald,’ the chirurgeon insisted. ‘He says it’s unavoidable.’
‘Elaine is a Delahaye. And she’s my niece. I won’t have that butcher tampering with her.’
‘Then what do you suggest? She’s no better.’
‘I can see that! Great heavens, it breaks my heart to look at her. I’ve spoken to the Prince.’
‘The Prince! But Gerald – you know that Francis said we–’
‘Has that young layabout been here again? I thought he was going to Landfall. Time he grew up. I don’t care what nonsense he’s been scaring you with. The Prince will help us. He needs something to do.’
‘No sign of flying ships full of plague victims, then?’
‘Of course not. Complete waste of time. Someone’s idea of a hoax, I’d say.’
The Admiral Raistrick was three days from the Arcadia system. Ace was in her cabin, looking at her reflections in the tesseract.
The cube fascinated her; she could look into it for hours. From its surface, her face looked back at her, serious, frowning. But there were other reflections, inside the cube, smaller and smaller versions of Ace. She could see herself in profile. She could see the back of her head. She could see herself smiling, and that would make her smile, and then the reflection would be accurate.
Could it tell what she was going to do? She shrugged. It was a Time Lord gift, after all.
Abslom Daak would seek her out. For the first time in many months, Ace wanted to see the Doctor. For all his faults, he knew the answers to difficult questions. Sometimes he was prepared to share what he knew. She could do with a chat. She missed him.
Ace was never able to work out whether it was the Doctor’s need for her, or her need for him, that made it happen. Perhaps the tesseract made the decision. Perhaps it had been waiting to link the moments of mutual wanting. It started to unfold.
Each face of the cube fell open, and each face was itself a cube, itself opening into other cubes. It expanded in all directions, like a metallic crystal forming out of a supersaturated solution.
Ace could feel the box-like shape in her hands, she was still looking into its heart, but it was also all around her. She glanced up: she was inside the proliferating structure; her cabin was a distorted, fragmented shadow seen through crystal prisms.
She looked back into the centre of the tesseract. A corridor of cubes corkscrewed away into infinity. In the distance, at the end of the tunnel, there was a tiny image. Like something seen through the wrong end of a telescope, the picture had an impossible clarity.
It was the Doctor, sitting on a white bench.
I might have guessed, Ace thought. I’d better go and see how he’s been getting on without me. Very Alice in Wonderland, this.
Her hands parted as she stood and moved towards the tesseract’s centre. She was suddenly in the tunnel, and the Doctor was suddenly close. He looked up.
She was in a bare, white room. It contained nothing but the Doctor and the bench he sat on. She looked behind her: the tesseract tunnel was there, too, spiralling away towards a distant image of her empty cabin.
She turned back to the Doctor, and grinned.
‘Who are you?’ he said.
‘I know it’s been a long time, Professor, but do me a favour.’
The Doctor’s hands massaged the rim of his hat. It was an uncharacteristic gesture. ‘Professor? Yes, there was someone...’
‘It’s me, Ace.’ Ace struck a pose, pulled faces. ‘You know, as in “Hello, I’m the Doctor, and this is my friend Ace”.’
Unfathomable expressions crossed the Doctor’s face. He tried the words. ‘Hello, I’m the Doctor. And this is my friend – Ace?’
She waited. Confusion clouded the Doctor’s eyes again. ‘Something’s happened, hasn’t it?’ she said. ‘What have you gone and done to yourself this time?’
‘You’re – you’re Ace!’
‘Yes! Well done, Doc!’ This is like training a parrot to talk, she thought. A kilo of birdseed would come in handy. ‘Are we in the TARDIS?’
‘TARDIS.’ The Doctor considered this carefully. ‘Yes. I think I remember the word TARDIS.’
Ace sighed. ‘Budge up, Professor, and let me sit down. I think this might take some time.’
Ace was wrong. She had only to supply a few more reminders, and the Doctor was able to begin to restore his memories. He chortled and exclaimed as he unearthed treasures at an accelerating rate.
‘Memories. They’re all in here, you know. Somewhere. Ace. Yes, that’s you of course. Mel. Peri. Spectrox – nasty stuff. Nil by mouth, I’d say. Daleks. Ah yes. And Davros. Earth, London. Twice. Three times. Oh. Susan. Susan. Well, that’s enough of that. They’re all there, anyway. Knowledge. Yes, it’s all here. Oh – temporal engineering.’
Wide-eyed, he stopped chattering. He took a deep breath. ‘You know, I’ve never seen it quite like that before. It’s like being away from home and then coming back and seeing your furniture as if for the first time. I always knew it was big, of course. But it’s so – symmetrical. Do you know what I mean?’
‘No. Look, are you better now, or not?’
‘I think so. There are grey areas. Block transfer computations, for instance. Something to do with chameleon circuits, whatever they are.’
‘Don’t worry about it, Doctor. It can’t be any greyer than it used to be.’
‘But I think it’s all there. Ask me a question.’
‘A question?’
‘Yes. Something really challenging. N-dimensional geometries, that sort of thing.’
Ace looked at him. ‘How long is a piece of string?’ she said.
The Doctor frowned. ‘That’s a tricky one,’ he said. ‘Infinite-regression mathematics was never my strong subject. Let me think.’
He started counting on his fingers. Ace shook her head sadly. He’d flipped.
‘It depends,’ he said at last. ‘How long was the original string of which the piece in question is a piece?’
Ace started to protest, and then caught sight of the barely-controlled twitching of his pursed lips. ‘Alright,’ she said. ‘You’re definitely back to your old self. Just spare me the Time Lord jokes, OK?’
‘Don’t be so miserable, Ace. It’s not every day you get the chance to restore an entire mind. Certainly not a mind as full as mine. It’s like visiting a museum.’ He pointed to his head. ‘I’m going up and down staircases, opening cupboards full of information, throwing open doors that lead to entire store rooms of data –’
‘Talking of throwing open doors, Doctor,’ Ace interrupted, ‘have you noticed that there aren’t any? In this room, I mean. Are you a prisoner?’
The Doctor thought, and then slumped with his head in his hands. ‘I don’t know,’ he said quietly. ‘I can’t remember. Where am I?’
‘You’re asking me?’ Ace said. And then she realized why the tesseract had brought her to the Doctor. The most important doors in his mind were still closed, and only someone who knew him could unlock them.
She stood up and walked round the bare room. ‘This must be in the TARDIS,’ she said. ‘The walls aren’t typical, but they’re made of the same stuff. You told me once about a room you had to ditch. A very useful room, insulated from everything, even from the rest of the TARDIS. You had to use it, years ago, when one of your regenerations went wrong. You remember?’
The Doctor nodded slowly. ‘Nyssa,’ he said. ‘Tegan. They helped. Pushed me in a chair.’
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