Conspiracy on Karn: A Doctor Who Story

by M. J. Baker

  "So you were there!" she squealed with delight at the new knowledge.

  "Where did you hear that name from?" he demanded.

  "One of the elders...Ohica, one of my neural mainframe participants, she was there when Maren sacrificed herself. But never mind that. This is perfect! I can use your memories to fill in the gaps in the mainframe."

  "That's why you came back? So I could help with your experiment?!" the old man said angrily. "It may have escaped your notice," he gestured to the globe, "but I'm a little busy here! Go away!"

  He turned back to the viewing globe and crossed his arms. The silence hung between them like a curtain.

  Rula didn't leave. She wasn't letting a living witness to history out of her sight. She had too many questions, her curiosity was winning out against her instinct to run. She suspected his would too, in spite of his temper.

  "What do you mean gaps?" he asked eventually without turning around.

  "Well...uh...Ohica's mind is too atrophied and-"

  "Is?" he interrupted, turning back to face her, "You mean, Ohica's still alive?"

  "Just about. She's been off the elixir for centuries now, she should have gone long ago."

  The old man stroked his scruffy beard thoughtfully. He looked down at the lights from the neural mainframe still scattered around his feet.

  "Which one is Ohica?" he asked, pointing down at them.

  "I don't know, but I can find out. Uh...shouldn't you be watching the trial?"

  "I hate repeats."

  It took the pair a few minutes to gather up the blue lights, which were actually neural nodes containing the original reading from the elders, and repair the damage to the machine. The work was speeded up with the sonic screwdriver and the Time Lord's surprisingly precise knowledge of what he'd done to wreck it. Apparently, his dismantling of the machine had been "organised chaos". Shortly, they had everything in place and Rula skipped to the door to turn the lights off while the old man activated the machine with the sonic. Ten blue lights flared into life across the room, but one flickered precariously.

  "That one," Rula said, unable to see the Time Lord in the dark, "the unstable one. But you won't get a good reading from it, not with the state of Ohica's mind."

  "Indeed," a gravelly voice said through the gloom. "I'll have to go straight to the source."

  Rula flicked the lights on just in time to see the old man pluck Ohica's node from machine between his thumb and forefinger and pocket it. He turned to the young Sister.

  "Will you take me to her?"

  "Why?"

  "Because, from what I've seen of the Sisterhood today, chances are Ohica's being kept alive for some reason. I'm willing to bet whoever's behind it also had something to do with what happened to me...to the Doctor."

  "And Ohila's murder?"

  "That too."

  Rula looked around nervously, then met the old man's eyes again.

  "I can't. I don't want to get mixed up in this. I've been gone too long already. I…" she trailed off, tears in her eyes.

  "Rula," he cooed soothingly, "if you help me, I'll tell you everything you want to know about what happened to Maren but, if I'm right…" he produced the neural node from his pocket again and held it out, "...you'll hear it straight from the jarnik's mouth."

  The young fledging still looked uncertain.

  "Also!" the daft old man said suddenly, patting his coat and producing a yellow foil packet from the other pocket, open at the top but folded over tightly. "I'll give you a Quaver."

  With everyone at the trial, the Warrior got his first proper look at the inside of the deserted temple as Rula led him, free of the sweltering robe that he'd left in the lab, through grand stone corridors. The floor was paved with marble, decorated with thick ringed patterns that clearly shared a common ancestor with Old High Gallifreyan. Rock of shimmering garnet made up the walls, almost every visible inch obscured by tapestries, with the same looped motif as the floor, hung dangerously close to innumerable torches which cast the way ahead in a forbidding crimson light.

  The novelty of moving through the temple unrestricted wore off once the Warrior realised that they were all more or less identical. Despite their need for haste - the Warrior estimated that the trial was coming to a close, he was running out of time - Rula wouldn't move faster than a brisk walk and she winced with every footfall. The Warrior surmised that Sisters typically move through the temple at a slow, reverential pace and the idea of moving faster, along with the noise the Warrior's boots squeaking and slipping on the marble floor, was unnerving her. Eventually, they stopped at a blank bit of wall and the young Sister gestured silently, though quite unnecessarily, at a panel and imitating waving something. At her prompting, the Warrior produced the sonic screwdriver and used setting 63-Q, otherwise known as the lockpick, to run through every known security protocol in at least two-thirds of the Universe until it found one that caused a heavy thud behind the door and the panel light to switch from red to green. A section of the wall slid aside, revealing a doorway into a room lit dimly by a dozen candles, their flames still.

  Rula stepped cautiously inside.

  "Sister Ohica? May I come in? I have a visitor for you."

  No response came. Rula turned to the Warrior.

  "She usually has a serving chief tending to her, guess he's at the trial too."

  At Rula's bidding, the Warrior stepped after her and the door slid shut behind him. The room was sparsely furnished. A single wooden chair accompanied a four-poster bed with gold trim along amber curtains that were drawn back. Inside, a sleeping creature was nestled among the blankets. Its impish face was sallow and shriveled, with a thin nose and cracked lips of a dull, faded gold. A few wisps of grey hair over the inert face rose and fell with laboured breathing. The Warrior, still holding the sonic screwdriver, changed the setting and scanned it over the slumbering woman, shaking his head as each change in the device's pitch revealed a new ailment.

  "Aren't you doing anything to help her?" the Warrior whispered.

  "Like what? The elixir is a cure-all, we don't need medics. Ohica chose to end her service, which means no more elixir. All we can do now is make her comfortable and…"

  "Let her die," the Warrior finished her sentence distastefully. Then he said, "It cures everything?"

  "By degrees," replied Rula. "Small doses will keep you alive but won't cure you. A proper dose will cure you temporarily, regular administering will eventually make it permanent."

  "What about death? Can it resurrect?"

  "Theoretically, but it's a grave sin to revive a Sister who has chosen to die."

  "What about Ohila? She didn't choose to die. Why hasn't the Sisterhood brought her back?"

  "I suppose they don't know the will of Pythia is in this situation, there hasn't been a sudden death on Karn since Maren and even that was by choice."

  The thing in the bed stirred at Rula's words. Two large brown eyes opened within the nest and rested on the girl's face, regarding her with calm recognition, before moving on to the man. The Warrior saw brown irises thin and pupils dilate. Suddenly, the bed exploded in a swirl of scarlet blankets, limbs and loose burgundy robes, barely hanging on the bones of the frail creature that was now standing on the bed, finger jabbing in his direction.

  "Doctor! Doctor! DOCTOR!" she wailed.

  The Warrior had leapt back in surprise but Rula was unperturbed.

  "Hello, Ohica," the Warrior stammered. "Not quite, but even if I was...him, I've regenerated, you shouldn't recognise me."

  "She doesn't," Rula answered nonchalantly, "she always says that."

  Ohica fixed her wide eyes on Rula, dropping to hands and knees and peering into the young Sister's impassive face.

  "Always says that? The Doctor always says that! The Doctor lies!" she squealed.

  Rula ignored her, "See what I mean, Doctor? Atrophied. Useless. Not sure what you want you think she can tell you but here we are."

  The Warrior shot her an icy look a
nd turned to the old woman.

  "Sister Ohica?"

  Ohica whirled around, still on hands and knees, and faced the Warrior.

  "Can you tell me what you remember? About the Doctor? And Ohila?"

  "Doctor, Doctor! Sarah and Solon! Morbius and Maren-" she stopped at her last word and shuddered. Ohica began grasping around her, finding the strewn blankets and clutching them to her.

  "Ohila tried to help me. My fault...my fault...my fault…" her voice quietened and she kept repeating those two words at a murmur, no longer meeting the man's eyes.

  "Ohica. Do you want to sleep? Do you want me to help you sleep?" said the Time Lord, pulling up the wooden chair and sitting.

  The creature nodded and lay down, looking at the Warrior expectantly. The old man reached out with both hands and cradled her face gently, then he placed two fingers of each hand on Ohica's temples and each thumb along her jawline. Her watery brown eyes and his bloodshot blue eyes closed in unison. The Warrior took a deep breath.

  And entered her mind.

  Chapter 12

  Reading someone's mind and seeing their experiences is not like watching through a camera. The light that hits the retina, the subtle differences in air pressure that reach the eardrums, the particulates in the nostrils. Sights, sounds and smells. It's all just raw data. Disjointed and transient. It's the brain that fits the pieces together, filters it through subtle biases in perception, discards irrelevant detail and gives the experience meaning. And it's that meaning that the discerning telepath, or a well-built neural mainframe, receives.

  Consequently, it's one of the most surreal experiences in the Universe. The reader is stripped of their own identity and embodies pure thought. The substance of an event is shot, fully-formed, into their mind and they must use the psychic connection to unravel it, reverse engineering the subject's perceptions to break down meaning into experience. Even then, detail is lost. Features are exaggerated. The most banal encounter can be twisted into a lurid hellscape under certain psychological conditions. Some psychic devices, like a mind probe, can scrape the original data from the subconscious and produce an objective record, like recovering a file, but it damages the subject's mind, often beyond repair or regeneration.

  The thought was of a face, with burning crimson eyes in sunken sockets, which shot into being. The visage was shifting, blurring, changing. Sometimes it was ancient, scarred and set with a cruel sneer. Other times it was fresh, smooth and wearing a coy smirk. Occasionally, it was both. But the eyes remained constant; full of fury, void of pity.

  It was everywhere. In here, that face was everything.

  The young-old face whirled away like smoke on wind and was replaced with the face of Ohila, smiling benevolently. The warm, loving expression fell away, leaving pure horror on the late Sister's face.

  "The will of Pythia," Ohila's voice said, though the face didn't move, "it must be."

  "No! Her will! Not her will!" came the reply in Ohica's strangled tones.

  "You'll go when the time is right, dear teacher. Please! Have patience! I can't!"

  "You must. You MUST! POISON! LET ME DIE!" Ohica screeched.

  Ohica's cry filled the thought and Ohila's face faded, replaced by the demonic face that had returned and subsumed the ancient Sister's scream.

  "Bylock," the face said.

  It bared sometimes-black, sometimes-white teeth and consumed the thought.

  Ohila's face was back, forming slowly, reluctantly. Her voice came again.

  "I got it offworld. Bylock, like you wanted. The whole vial, in your tea, will do it. But..." she sounded like she was sobbing, "...dear teacher! Ohica! Please don't! I won't do it for you!"

  Ohila's face was gone again, but the young-old image did not come. Instead, the thought was filled with relief, hope, freedom. It was shattered and devoured by the evil face that returned and occupied everything again. This time, the face was topped with a regal, double-looped headdress. It spoke again.

  "Stay a while, old friend."

  The face and headdress remained, but was joined by another face. A young man, messy jet-black hair and large nose. Derrin. His face smiled unconvincingly, turned away and faded as quickly as it had come. The sense of hope returned but was instantly drained, pouring as a thick purple swirl into the headdress, opening at the top to reveal a steaming brown liquid mixing with the amethyst Bylock being poured in. The face's flickering grin widened and dissolved into the tea along with the poison, leaving only the garish teapot behind.

  There was a snap.

  Then there was nothing.

  The Warrior regained consciousness slowly. The first thing he became aware of was a chanting, a single word echoing as though a billion voices were screaming it at once, cursing it.

  "Doctor! Doctor! Doctor!"

  Flames erupted all around and tore through the voices until only one remained. The fire blurred and swam and danced until solidifying into a face. A new face. Peering down at him, this one young and gentle...but angry.

  "Doctor!" she said again.

  The Warrior's head shot up. He was on the floor beside Ohica's bed, the chair on which he'd been sitting was next to him, knocked onto its side.

  "I've got to try again, there's more!" he croaked, moving to stand up. But Rula put out a hand and shoved him back down. The old man looked at her in surprise and noticed she had tears in her eyes.

  "You evil Time Lord! They were right about your kind!" she wailed and broke down sobbing.

  He put his hands out in surrender, reached forward and gently moved the distraught Rula aside. He stood up, his old head protesting at the movement, and went to the bed. He peered into the bundle of blankets once again and saw himself reflected in two doleful, brown eyes. Ohica's wizened lips were curled into a contented smile and the strands of hair over her face lay still. Were it not for those sad eyes, she might have looked peaceful.

  The Warrior drew an amber blanket over the old woman's body as a shroud.

  Chapter 13

  By the time Derrin stomped back into the laboratory, the trial was over. His questioning had taken less than two minutes, but he'd been intercepted by two burly serving boys just after joining the throng of red and yellow bodies heading for the surface. His hearts leapt when they stopped him, expecting an accusation, but they just asked him to accompany them in the slightly apologetic way that serving boys address one another when performing an unpleasant task for the Sisterhood. They led him up a narrow surface tunnel to a small antechamber next to the coronation cave, which was being used as a makeshift courtroom for the occasion.

  When he took the stand, he couldn't help but feel a dizzy thrill that all eyes were on him, including those of the Reverend Mother Koralo. The first trial in living memory and he was right at the centre of it, he would be remembered, he would be known...for serving the tea that killed a High Priestess. The excitement evaporated.

  Derrin was surprised to spot Sorin in the crowd, the sandy-haired serving boy that had ambushed (or perhaps been ambushed by) the Doctor. His face showed no sign of the close inspection of the tunnel wall he'd made about an hour or so earlier, but he kept fidgeting with his forehead as though expecting to find a wound. Dried blood was visible around his corners of his nose and the handle of a localised regenerator was sticking out of the front pocket of his tunic. Chances are Sorin had only just recovered and hadn't yet made sense of what had happened, he might not even remember or think he imagined it. Certainly, he'd have trouble trying to convince anyone, who may just assume he was trying to save face having tripped over his own feet.

  The image of the Doctor raising a spear over Sorin's helpless, unconscious form gave Derrin an involuntary shudder. The serving boy had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and nearly been killed for it. But in the end he'd posed no threat to the Doctor's plan. Derrin felt something heavy in his stomach.

  "Just answer their questions honestly, Darrell," the old man had told him, just after the call summoning everyone to
the trial had gone out, as he heaved another viewing globe out of the cupboard and began twisting his silver device at it. The orb raised to chest-height of its own accord and the cloudy substance within began shifting.

  "And don't try some noble attempt to defend me," he continued. "It'll only make them suspicious."

  "What are you going to do?" asked Derrin.

  "Get a good look at my suspects," he replied, eyes fixed firmly on the globe.

  As Derrin went to leave, he heard the old man make a throaty noise and turned back. The Time Lord was looking at him guiltily.

  "I lied to you," he admitted. "Back in the tunnel, I said they found me innocent but they didn't. I lied so you would help me. They found me guilty but my sentence was exile from Karn. That's why I had to come back. To find out who framed me and why they let me go...and killed Ohila."

  "Oh...why are you telling me this now?" the serving boy asked confused.

  "For one thing, you're about to find out," he said, indicating the viewing globe as a blurry image of the ceremony cave swam inside it. "For another, I hope I've gained your trust enough for me to be completely honest. As I said before, things might get sticky from here and I need to know I can rely on you. There can be no secrets between us."

  He gave the Time Lord the same smile that he gave the Sisters and left without a word.

  Derrin did what he was told and answered the questions honestly. He confirmed that High Priestess Ohila had asked him to bring tea and two cups to the ceremony cave immediately after morning inspection. He'd gone straight to the kitchens, prepared the tea and brought it up to the cave in which he'd met a stranger. The same stranger who he'd been called on to identify earlier and was now in the Sisterhood's custody. He'd left him and the teapot alone in the ceremony cave before Ohila arrived. Derrin turned scarlet when Koralo asked if he had spoken to the stranger, his face almost blending into the red mass of seated Sisters behind him. In a quiet mumble, he explained that he'd told the stranger that he was disappointed to find him there. He was hoping Ohila's last-minute request for an extra cup was a sign that she was impressed with his service and was going promote him to serving chief. It was against decorum for a serving boy to openly seek advancement, but a ridiculous impossibility that a Sister, let alone a High Priestess, would take tea with a serving boy like an equal. The High Council seemed bemused but satisfied and told him he could leave the stand. He was taken back to the antechamber and held there until the trial was over.