‘I would appear to have just turned them off.’
His voice tailed away. The Doctor had talked supercomputers to death, cheated at Monopoly with masterminds, and tricked a battle fleet into invading their own home planet. But it was rare to turn off an entire army.
Andvalmon was peeping through his hands. ‘Are you quite sure?’ His tone conveyed a complete lack of conviction in the Doctor’s prowess. ‘Maybe they’re waiting for your next move.’
‘If your definition of “waiting” includes lying in heaps on the carpet, then yes. They’re waiting like tigers.’
To prove his point, the Doctor nudged a Krikkitman with his toe. Perhaps it was a trifle timorous; certainly more of a ginger tap than a goal-scoring kick.
There was a hollow clang.
For a moment, the entire planet of Bethselamin waited.
Nothing happened.
Nothing continued to happen.
A wave of deadly death absolutely didn’t break on the shores of slightly overcooked metaphor.
The entire planet of Bethselamin let out a relieved sigh.
Andvalmon took his hands from his eyes and blinked.
Romana was sat on the floor, staring curiously into the empty dark void under a Krikkitman’s helmet. ‘There’s nothing there,’ she said. She frowned. ‘There’s nothing there.’ She blinked, puzzled.
‘I know.’ The Doctor patted her on the shoulder. ‘I know just how you feel.’
The Doctor and Romana glanced sheepishly at the temple door. From past experience, they knew that a small, cheering rabble would pour through, heaping praise on them and saying nice things about K-9.
They stopped looking at the door and looked at each other instead.
‘Not sure I fancy it,’ said the Doctor. He hoped they wouldn’t bring the orchestra.
‘Me neither,’ admitted Romana.
‘Doesn’t really feel we’ve earned it.’
‘Worse than that.’ Romana was using The Tone. The Tone was a perfect cocktail of exasperation, impatience and ohDoctoryou’vedoneitagain. It never boded well. ‘That Krikkitman was saying something to me. It sounded important. But you cut it off mid-sentence.’
The Doctor indicated the big lever. ‘Would you like me to turn them all back on again?’
‘Can’t hurt.’ Romana risked a smile.
‘Fair enough,’ the Doctor said, reaching for the lever. ‘Then we can maybe defeat them properly next time.’
‘Quite,’ Romana agreed.
Andvalmon was running towards them, waving frantically.
‘We’re joking,’ the Doctor reassured him.
‘Even the Doctor has his limits,’ Romana agreed. ‘We’re just puzzled by what’s happened.’
‘The Krikkitmen are destroyed,’ Andvalmon said, reasonably. He was getting his head around his planet’s first invasion. ‘Bethselamin has been saved. It’s a triumph.’
There was an awkward pause.
‘Isn’t it?’ said Andvalmon.
The awkward pause continued to saunter around the room looking for a chair it liked.
‘Oh come on now,’ Andvalmon continued.
Romana and the Doctor looked at the pile of deactivated Krikkitmen. And they were very worried.
Romana began: ‘The problem is—’
‘That you can’t turn off Krikkitmen,’ the Doctor concluded.
Perhaps mention should have been made earlier of the Boring Test. It was invented by a Dr Boring, who spent his entire life trying to escape from under his surname. Sadly, by the time he realised he could just have changed it, he was far too famous. For one thing, his lectures were always packed out by students who never got tired of the joke. And, for another thing, if he changed his name (he’d quite fancied Maple), people would always be reminding each other about what his name really was.
So, Dr Boring remained Dr Boring for his entire life. He tried overcompensating – he paraglided on the wind moon of Sarion. He walked a gravity rope between the rings of Dolbeep. He was a champion solar surfer. He was an expert chef in a score of planetary cuisines. Magazines did features on his hair, hostesses lured him to parties, and celebrities he’d never met begged invites to his weddings.
He actually got away without discovering or inventing anything much. For one thing, what with all the derring-do, cookery and parties, there was very little time for any research. But that didn’t matter – he coasted quite merrily on his reputation. And then one day, almost by accident, he came up with the Boring Test.
The Boring Test posited, and then proved, the difference between a normal robot and a sentient one. It was the sort of rather nice distinction that made for lively talk at parties. As Dr Boring put it, it was the difference between a kettle and a puppy. One you could cheerfully throw on a bonfire. Although no one had ever invented a sentient robot, Dr Boring posited that, with the grim inevitability of technical progress, a machine would eventually come on the market that was so complicated that it would deserve rights – because it was alive.
Everyone nodded and smiled, invited him to more parties, and continued to toss their old robots in the recycling compactor. His test was used in a couple of trial cases (normally when a disgruntled widow left her entire fortune to the auto-butler rather than her ghastly relatives), and then the Boring Test sat, gathering dust on the Shelf of Quaint Notions.
Until, that is, the Exhausting End of the Thousand Year War with the Krikkitmen. Dr Boring was long dead by then (he did not, you’ll be pleased to know, die in bed, but due to a grisly freak saddle failure on a laser cycle). Otherwise he’d have been all over the rolling newsbeams.
For most of the conflict, his Test had been forgotten about, and then, at the very end of the war, just as the Time Lords were about to wipe out the Krikkitmen, someone surprisingly remembered about it and argued that it might be an idea to run the Boring Test on the Krikkitmen, just to be safe. It caused a lot of groaning and eye-rolling, but eventually, everyone conceded that, yes, indeed, the Krikkitmen were sentient robots with rights. And therefore they couldn’t just be bunged in a black hole. Fair enough, said the Time Lords, and simply imprisoned them for eternity instead.
‘Oh,’ said various Robot Rights movements, and promptly stopped inviting the Time Lords to meetings. Which the Time Lords were fine with, because there were no biscuits.
Andvalmon gazed open-mouthed at the conclusion of the lecture.
‘Simply put,’ finished Romana, ‘the Krikkitmen were the most advanced, the most glorious artificial life forms ever created.’
‘Steady on,’ whispered the Doctor. ‘K-9 might hear.’
‘K-9 has never tried to destroy the Universe,’ put in Romana. ‘No ambition.’
Give him time, thought the Doctor. His fingers stroked the lever, very careful not to accidentally turn the Krikkitmen back on.
‘The problem, and the reason I bring up Dr Boring’s theory, is that it’s all poppycock.’ The Doctor repeated the word until it echoed around the Krikkit Pavilion. ‘Either the test doesn’t work, or we were all so scared of the Krikkitmen we gave them extra points, or we’re standing in the middle of an enormous trick.’ He pointed again to the lever. ‘Sentient robot armies do not have off switches.’
‘Why not?’ asked Andvalmon. Romana was glad about that because for once she didn’t fancy feeding the Doctor questions.
‘For one thing, if your entire army can be turned off by a switch, that’s a bit of an Achilles’ heel.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Andvalmon countered. ‘You’d have to get inside the craft to operate it.’
‘Really?’ the Doctor chewed his lip. ‘It’s a simple flip switch which triggers a tiny electrical impulse. Anyone could whip up a remote control. As soon as they landed on your planet and opened the doors to their ship, you could turn them off like a chat show. It’s nonsense.’
Romana was nodding. ‘The War could not have lasted a thousand years unless everyone in the Universe was having an off millennium.’
‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘It also raises a philosophical point, which is why I started talking about Dr Boring. Romana? You’re good at the fiddly bits.’
‘Thank you Doctor.’ Romana smiled. ‘If an artificially created race became sentient, they wouldn’t have an off switch. Even if their creators had initially installed one, the robots would just take it out. They’d not want anyone to be able to turn them off. A normal robot simply wouldn’t question the existence of the switch, whereas a sentient robot wouldn’t allow the switch to remain. Not unless …’ Romana stopped. She was staring at the Doctor.
‘What is it, Romana?’
‘Unless the Krikkitmen really, really believed in God,’ she said.
That shut everyone in the room up.
Shortly afterwards, the Doctor was taking apart a Krikkitman. ‘If it’s a machine, I’m dismantling it. If it’s a sentient robot, this is an autopsy.’ He seemed the happiest Romana had seen him in some time. She found the whole process unsettling – standing in this ship, surrounded by lethal robots who could, in theory, attack them at any moment. She blinked, an odd feeling crowding her head. Just before the Doctor had flicked that switch, what had that robot been saying to her?
Andvalmon rushed back in to report on the goings-on in the town. The death toll had been smaller than they had feared. There was already talk of a victory dance, with several specially composed symphonies. ‘Everyone’s very cross about what’s happened,’ he told the Doctor. ‘They’re so furious they’re thinking about having an election. Perhaps this planet should have a leader after all, to protect us in case this happens again.’
The Doctor, sucking on a screw, shook his head. ‘There are two things you should never do when you’re angry – go shopping or have an election.’ He waved Andvalmon away with a robot hand. ‘Shoo off and tell them all to calm down.’
Andvalmon stood there, still hovering nervously. ‘Well, you see, it’s a bit tricky …’
The Doctor stamped a Krikkitman’s foot on the floor several times. ‘No, no, no!’ he protested. ‘I know what this is. I’m flattered, but I simply won’t become your honorary president. The burden of responsibility is just too great. And then there are all the rulebooks one has to read, and the babies one has to kiss, and the speeches. I’m a shy retiring sort. Wouldn’t say boo to a goose. Ask Romana.’
Andvalmon blushed. ‘Actually—’
‘Oh,’ said the Doctor, trying not to look put out. ‘Well, yes, she’s a splendid first choice. Aren’t you, Romana?’
Romana stared at them both in astonishment. ‘Are you suggesting I stay behind and run the planet?’
‘Only a suggestion.’ The Doctor felt around for just the right screwdriver. ‘Be a handy bit of training for ruling Gallifrey some day.’
Romana muttered something which may have contained the phrases ‘it appears’, ‘any old fool’ and ‘can rule Gallifrey’. Then she smiled sweetly. ‘Any progress on the Krikkitman?’
The Doctor waggled a metal helmet. Briefly, a great darkness swelled inside it, glowed a vicious red and then died. He tossed the skull (with a neat under-arm movement) into a corner.
‘We’ve all been conned,’ he announced. ‘The Krikkitmen, the deadliest race of androids in the Universe … fakes.’ He chucked an arm or two after the skull.
‘Surely just a misdiagnosis,’ argued Romana.
The Doctor held up a chip-set. ‘No, look at this.’
‘Not without an electron microscope,’ said Romana tightly. ‘K-9?’
K-9 trundled forward to analyse the circuit board. ‘The processor’s external appearance suggests almost unheard-of advances in artificial intelligence processing power. However,’ he sniffed, ‘an internal diagnostic reveals a relatively inferior Thought Lattice.’
‘You see?’ The Doctor nudged Romana. ‘A robot disguised as a sentient robot.’ He burst out laughing. ‘It’s either the least ambitious fancy dress imaginable, or one of the greatest frauds in the Universe. We’ve all believed that the Krikkitmen were an unstoppable race of warriors. In reality, we were nearly wiped out by an army of washing machines. Someone’s made us all look foolish. But why?’
‘Well,’ Romana said, ‘don’t be too hard on yourself. After all this time, it’s a legal nicety.’
‘A legal nicety?’ the Doctor thundered. ‘If it wasn’t for Boring’s test, every Krikkitman that ever lived would now be recycled pencil sharpeners. Instead, five million of them are sitting around in storage.’
Andvalmon shrugged. ‘I don’t see the problem.’
‘Really?’ The Doctor was juggling a grenade. ‘The Krikkitmen are stored in a Time Vault. This troop of robots – a wobbly handful of them – have already gathered up most of the entry gate to their home world. If they can breach one dimension, they can breach another. We’ve got to get to them and destroy the other five million before they’re unleashed. Their plan is pretty clear now – to free their home planet and to restart their war.’
‘But how do you get into a Time Vault?’ asked Andvalmon.
The Doctor smiled. ‘Actually, Romana and I have been there before.’
Andvalmon looked puzzled.
‘The Krikkitmen are stored on the Time Lord prison planet of Shada.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CONTAINS NICE BISCUITS
It was teatime in Cambridge. There’s an argument, never satisfactorily disproved, that it is always teatime in Cambridge. The Doctor reached out for the last ginger nut, and had his hand slapped away.
‘That’s for your friend,’ declared his host. ‘Or, forgive me, I always assumed she was your friend. She was forever following you through doors and rolling her eyes, and that’s what your friends tend to do.’ The old – very old – very, very old – man paused, looking suddenly worried. ‘You did have a friend last time you visited, did you not? I should hate to discover I was imagining her. She had ever such a nice smile.’
‘Romana can’t be here today,’ the Doctor said. ‘She’s standing for election.’
‘Student union?’
‘President of the planet of Bethselamin,’ the Doctor said.
‘Ah, well, I’m not sure I’m eligible to vote there, but do wish her my best.’ The old man dropped an entire Rich Tea biscuit into his cup and swirled it with delight.
‘I’m not entirely sure she wants to win,’ said the Doctor. ‘What she really wants to do is to take a bunch of Krikkitmen back to Gallifrey.’
The little old man sat as bolt upright as his extreme age allowed him to. ‘Aha, so she’s staging a coup and taking over Gallifrey? How marvellous.’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘This calls for fig rolls.’ And he pottered slowly across the floor of his book-lined study, vanished into the kitchenette, and emerged a moment later with a packet of Garibaldi biscuits that, after blinking at in befuddled surprise, he presented solemnly to the Doctor. ‘Give these to her with my warmest regards. If she needs any help breaking into the Panopticon Vaults, my services are at her disposal.’ With a wicked grin, the old man settled back into his chair, and then looked around him with bemusement. ‘What were we talking about?’
Professor Chronotis, the Regius Professor of Chronology, enjoyed one of the very best studies in St Cedd’s College. For a few centuries he’d worked his way steadily up and along the academic ladder, from basement to attic, from no window to broken window, from road view to quad view, and, once he’d finally found a study with just the right angle on the croquet lawn and not too close to the bell tower, he’d settled down and started making improvements. When you’ve been alive for millennia, you do acquire a large number of books, so he’d made his bookshelves dimensionally transcendental. They looked reasonably normal, unless, that is, you stared at them just a little bit too hard, and then you realised that there was something a little fishy about either the shelves or your eyes. If you looked away, you’d notice that the carpet was heroically trying to somehow fit in
around all that shelving while keeping the shape of its pattern. The carpet looked exhausted.
Professor Chronotis’s duties were light. He gave an annual lecture in Chronology, which, if anyone attended, he made sure to mumble through. He occasionally acquired a postgraduate student or two, but hastily shook them off by a combination of vagueness and genuinely frightening algebra. If that didn’t work, he had used to lend them books, but he didn’t do that any more.
The last time he lent a student a book, it turned out to be the most powerful book in the Universe. The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey was one of the more powerful Artefacts of Rassilon. Rassilon was the greatest Time Lord leader who ever lived. Not only did he think rather highly of himself, he also liked to label things with the efficiency of a public school matron. Which brings us to The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey, also known as The Book of Rassilon. It had never been read, because, although it looked like a book, smelt bookishly of caramel and dust, and had pages with writing on them and so on, it actually wasn’t a book at all. The book was the only way to unlock the Great and Mostly Forgotten Time Lord Prison Planet of Shada, hidden away in a very secluded cul-de-sac of space-time.
Professor Chronotis had stolen – well, borrowed – well, pocketed – the book, casually wiping any memories of Shada that he could lay his hands on. The reason was that Professor Chronotis had, long ago, been imprisoned on Shada. He didn’t want anyone to discover he’d escaped, and so removed the only way of getting there, and any memories there were of Shada kicking around.
All had gone terribly well until he’d lent the book to a student, and then things had got sticky. The Universe had very nearly been taken over, and the radiogram had never been the same since.
Right now, the Professor was looking out of the window, watching the Bursar of the College cheat at croquet. He was cheating very badly, and, instead of shouting at him, a female don was laughing at the Bursar until he went red in the face. The Professor smiled. He rather liked progress. Then a thought struck him. His brain was so soft and foggy that the thought didn’t so much strike him as pat him gently, ask if he was all right, and then offer him a sit down. The Professor, never one to ignore his own advice, sat right down.
Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen Page 13