'That's right. A red cross on the side.'
Suddenly the centurion grabbed the
Doctor's arm. 'Do you know what's going on, Legate? Something is, by Mithras! This is no normal war!'
Gently the Doctor freed himself. 'I think you're right. And I'm afraid I don't know what's going on, but I intend to find out. Now I'd better be on my way.'
The centurion jumped to his feet and helped the Doctor to rise. His manner became suddenly formal, as if he regretted having talked so freely. He raised his voice. 'Company, prepare to march!'
The men began forming themselves into ranks.
'Where exactly did you see this wagon?' asked the Doctor casually.
The centurion pointed. 'Up that path, sir, way back in the hills.' He inspected the reformed ranks. 'Company, salute!'
Once again the swords and spears crashed across the bronze breastplates.
The centurion turned to the Doctor.
'Hail and farewell, Legate.'
'Hail and farewell,' said the Doctor solemnly.
Battered and battle-weary, but still disciplined and indomitable, the little company of Roman soldiers moved off.
Unbidden, another Roman expression came into the Doctor's mind, as he watched them march away.
'Those who are about to die salute you.'
He turned and moved away up the path.
***
As the Doctor followed the path into the hills, he thought about what the centurion had said. This was certainly no normal war.
Not with percussion weapons and internal combustion vehicles interacting with Roman legionaries.
He began to ponder the strange workings of his own mind. His memory loss, it seemed, was by no means total. He knew that Romans were Romans and that a legate was a high-ranking official.
He knew about the internal
combustion engine and about guns, and that guns and Romans didn't belong together. His mind seemed to hold a vast fund of general information, available if he should need it.
'It's only the little things I can't remember,' he mused bitterly. 'Like who I am, and where I've been, and what I've done.'
Still, presumably another batch of memories was close at hand - if he could just find the version of his self that held them. Which might not be too easy.
Contrary to his first impressions, his search had brought him to a very dangerous place.
Soldiers at war have little time to worry about stray civilians. It was fortunate that the centurion had been so easily impressed. Fortunate, but also very odd. The man had seemed almost too willing to accept the Doctor's story
- as if he was eager to make sense of anything strange.
There had been something vague, abstracted about him too, thought the Doctor. As if he had been recently hypnotised - or brainwashed...
Pondering these thoughts, the Doctor became aware that he had entered an area of swirling mist. But it wasn't simply mist, there was something else about it. It seemed to enter his mind, telling him to go back, rilling him with vague dread.
Powerful as these feelings were, he was able to overcome them, though not without considerable effort. To another, more impressionable mind - the centurion's, for instance - the mist might form an impassable barrier.
Determined to discover what was on the other side, the Doctor pressed on.
Suddenly he stumbled clear of the mist
- and straight into a landscape from hell.
Instead of rolling moors and a winding river he saw unending acres of churned up mud, criss-crossed with barbed wire and scattered with twisted metal shapes.
Lightning flashes streaked the darkening sky, and the air was filled with a steady thunderous rumble. Somehow the Doctor knew that this was no natural storm.
A phrase sprang into his mind:'no man's land'.
Certainly this land wasn't fit for men, but there were men there all the same. The Doctor saw two groups of gas-masked figures, stumbling towards each other through mud and poisonous mists to meet in conflict.
Most of one group was mown down by a concealed machine-gun nest, and the remainder were driven back in a sudden flurry of savage hand-to-hand fighting. The survivors broke apart and stumbled wearily back to their own lines. Each group left a handful of silent figures lying in the mud.
The Doctor looked on appalled.
'Why?' he asked himself. 'What's the point?'
Suddenly he heard a gruff voice shout, 'You! Hands up!'
Some of the retreating soldiers loomed out of the mist and surrounded him.
They wore long grey overcoats and cloth-covered metal helmets that rose to a spike.
'You - come!' growled the nearest soldier.
The Doctor studied his captors. They all carried rifles with fixed bayonets, and he realised that this was no time to argue or to attempt some plausible story. If he gave them trouble, these men would shoot him down and leave his body in the mud, along with those of their friends and enemies.
Raising his hands, the Doctor allowed himself to be led away through the mud and then down into a winding network of perimeter trenches.
Eventually one of the soldiers marched him into a dugout, a low underground room lit by candles, where a weary young officer was working at a trestle table.
'Recording another military triumph?' said the Doctor angrily.
The officer looked up in surprise. He wore a high-collared, belted tunic with a row of brass buttons. His youthful face was decorated with a fringe of beard, which made him look more like a scholar than a soldier. He studied the Doctor for a moment. 'According to our orders, we sent a patrol into no man's land. According, no doubt, to theirs, the English repelled it.'
'And was anything gained - by you or by the enemy?'
'Nothing whatsoever.'
'Then why do it?'
'Standing orders,' said the officer.
'The High Command like to see a little activity along the front line. Stops the men from getting slack.'There was an edge of bitterness in his voice.
'Forgive me, but shouldn't I be asking the questions?' He looked at the soldier in the doorway.'Where did you find this man?'
The soldier came to attention. 'Out there in no man's land, sir. He was just standing there - observing.'
The officer turned back to the Doctor.
'Spying?'
'On that piece of murderous military stupidity? What could anyone possibly learn from seeing that?'
The officer waved the soldier outside and resumed his thoughtful study of the Doctor. 'Well, who are you?'
'I might ask you the same question.'
'I am Lieutenant Lucke of the Imperial German Forces and you are my prisoner. I must include your capture in my report.' He pulled a piece of paper towards him. 'What is your name?'
'You can call me the Doctor.'
Lucke looked up sharply. 'What did you say? Is there then an entire medical convention, wandering about in no man's land? No doubt if I were to press you for an actual name you would say "John Smith".'
'I might very well.'
The Doctor pulled up a chair, sat down opposite Lieutenant Lucke and leaned forward eagerly.
'Do I take it you have encountered someone else calling himself the Doctor?'
Only vaguely aware that his prisoner had taken over the interrogation again, Lieutenant Lucke nodded.
'That is so.'
'When?'
'I'm not sure - not so long ago. One day is much like another out here. He had a girl with him and a young man.'
'What did he look like, this Doctor?'
'A small man, with a fringe of black hair. Curious, old-fashioned clothes, not unlike yours.'
'What happened to him? Where is he now?'
'He escaped - he and his companions.'
'Where to?'
'To the enemy lines, I suppose. The High Command insisted that he was a spy. Yet he did not seem much like a spy to me. Like you, he was angry about the war.'
'What was he doing he
re? What did he want?'
'I have no idea.'
The Doctor sat back, disappointed. His other self was here, somewhere - in this strange place that held Roman legionaries, armies that fought with weapons of mass slaughter and who knew what else besides. He became aware that Lucke was staring fixedly at him.
'He was mad, you know, this other
Doctor,' whispered Lucke. 'He told me he came from another planet, that he had a machine that travelled through space and time. And I believed him, so I must have been mad as well.'
'You were right to believe him,' said the Doctor calmly. 'He was telling you the truth. I have such a machine myself.'
'You too are a time traveller?'
'I can tell you something even more astonishing,' said the Doctor. 'I believe you may have travelled through time and space yourself.'
Lucke didn't reply. He went on looking at the Doctor with that strange wild-eyed stare, his fingers toying with a pistol that lay on the table.
'Just tell me this,' said the Doctor urgently. 'Where are we? And what is the year?'
'We are in France,' whispered Lucke.
'On the Western Front. The year is 1917.' He spoke the words like a creed, as if he needed to believe them to maintain his sanity.
'How long have you been out here?'
Lucke rubbed his forehead. 'I'm not sure. A long time. Sometimes it feels like forever.'
The Doctor leaned forward. 'Not far away, just beyond a bank of mist, I met some more soldiers. They too have been here for what seems forever, fighting a war that never ends.'
'Soldiers like us - like me?'
The Doctor shook his head. 'They are Roman legionaries. For them, this place is the frontier of the Roman Empire and the time over a thousand years ago.'
Suddenly suspicious, Lieutenant Lucke snatched up the pistol.
'He tricked me, this other Doctor.' He tapped the pistol. 'He had something he called a sonic screwdriver. Without touching it he made a screw come out of the butt and go back in again. Latei, he stole my pistol and escaped.
Do you have tricks to show me, Doctor?'
'I'm not trying to trick you,' said the Doctor urgently. 'If my theory is correct, you and your men and your English enemies and the Romans - and countless others for all I know - were all brought here, brought here and left to fight. Don't you want to know why?'
But Lieutenant Lucke didn't. The concept put too much strain on his tortured mind. He slowly levelled the pistol at the Doctor's forehead.
'You are a spy! Spies must be shot.
Captain von Weich, my area commander, explained it to me. All became clear. If I shoot you I shall become sane again. Everything will be in order.'
A strange, and strangely familiar noise came from the inner room.
'What was that noise?' asked the Doctor.
'I hear nothing. Don't try to trick me again, spy. It is time for you to die, Doctor!'
The hand with the gun was so close that the Doctor could see the knuckle whitening as Lucke's finger tightened on the trigger.
Chapter 5
Decision
'Lieutenant Lucke!'
The bark of authority in the voice had Lucke leaping to rigid attention.
The Doctor turned, curious to see the man who had saved his life.
Standing in the inner doorway was a tall, immaculately uniformed Prussian officer. His tunic and breeches were beautifully tailored, his jackboots and his buttons gleamed.
To complete the picture he had a shaven skull, several duelling-scars and a monocle.
Adjusting the monocle, the officer gave Lucke an outraged stare. 'What do you think you are doing, lieutenant?'
'My General?'
'The pistol...'
Lucke stared at the pistol in his hand as if it didn't belong to him and then fumbled it back into his holster.
'I was about to shoot this spy, my General. Captain von Weich gave orders that all spies were to be shot.'
'By a firing squad, surely? You don't want blood and brains all over your papers, do you?'
'The matter is urgent, my General.
The Captain's orders...'
'Captain von Weich has been killed in action. I have taken over direct command of this sector until a new area commander can be sent down from HQ.'
'At your orders, my General.'
'What have you learned from this man?'
'Only that he calls himself the Doctor
- like the one who escaped. He too claims to be a time traveller. Shall I arrange for him to be shot?'
The General considered. 'I think not. I shall send him back to HQ for interrogation.' He went over to the table, screwed his monocle in more tightly and stared into Lucke's eyes.
'You have done well, Lieutenant
Lucke. You have captured a dangerous spy and handed him over to your superior officer.' His voice became low, hypnotic. 'You are doing your duty as an officer in the Imperial
German Forces - here, on the Western
Front in 1917. Continue with your report. Everything is in order.'
'Everything is in order,' muttered Lieutenant Lucke, before sitting down and returning to his report.
'You, come with me,' said the General.
The Doctor rose and followed him into the inner room, a cramped combination of office and bedroom. A gleaming metal box, like a giant wardrobe stood in one corner.
The General glanced at Lucke, before closing the door.
'He seems stable enough now. Lucky for you I turned up, old fellow. It's dangerous to tamper with the conditioning, you see. Their minds can't stand it. Well, only the strongest ones - and they all join the Resistance.'
He looked hard at the Doctor as if trying to see how much of what he said was understood.
'The Resistance killed poor old von Weich,' he went on.
'Not that he was von Weich at the time. He was Captain Beauregard Lee of the Confederate Army, in the American Civil War Zone.'
The Doctor kept his face impassive, but more and more pieces of the jigsaw were dropping into place.
'So it's all a game,' he murmured. 'A whole series of war games with live soldiers. But why? Just for sport?'
'Not at all, old fellow - though it does have its amusing side. No, you might call it a training exercise.'
The General looked thoughtfully at the Doctor. 'I'm not sure who you are or how much you know, but whatever you know it's too much. They'll find out the truth at HQ. I'm needed here, so I'll have to send you back under guard.
You won't do anything silly, will you? The only way out of here is past Lucke. A word from me and he'd be only too happy to shoot you.'
The General touched a control on the side of the metal box and a square door frame slid outwards revealing a sinister figure in black leather, clutching a massive blaster-rifle.
'Take this prisoner back to Security,' ordered the General.
The Doctor stepped through the door frame and it closed behind him. He looked around, curiously. He was in a metal box, nothing more, a shiny-walled corridor stretching away ahead.
If it was a TARDIS, it was one of the most basic kinds.
The black-clad guard stood on the opposite side of the corridor, covering him with the rifle, managing to look both sinister and ridiculous at the same time.
The journey was very short. The
Doctor had the sense of a quick trip through space alone, though presumably this odd vehicle did have time travel capacity if it was being used to pick up the warring soldiers and bring them here - wherever here was. And if it was any kind of TARDIS it would be able to hold an infinite number.
They arrived, the door started to open and the Doctor sprang.
The guard tried to bring his rifle to bear, but the Doctor was already too close. One hand swept the rifle aside, while the long fingers of the other closed with paralysing force on the guard's neck. Catching the unconscious body, the Doctor lowered it to the floor inside the machine and stepped out, just as the door sl
id closed behind him.
He found himself in a large open area in front of two docking bays. One was empty and the other was occupied by the machine he had just left. In front of him was a magnetic control board and behind it a long ramp led upwards.
After a quick glance at the control board, the Doctor made his way up the ramp. It led into a long metallic corridor, with an open door at the far end.
Doctor Who: The Eight Doctors Page 6