‘I do not understand.’
The Doctor skidded to a halt, waving his screwdriver at the wall in front of them. ‘It doesn’t matter. We’ve come to a dead end.’
K-9 looked at the wall and then at his master and then the glow in his eye dimmed.
‘Ah well,’ the Doctor sighed, ‘That answers my next question. I wondered if it could get you …’
‘… Too.’
The Doctor stood in darkness and tried to work out if he really was in darkness or just trapped in an illusion of darkness.
‘Or, I could be so scared my eyes are simply refusing to open,’ he remarked.
‘DOCTOR!’ boomed a voice.
‘Oh, a booming voice!’ the Doctor laughed.
‘BUT THIS IS WHAT YOU WANT ME TO BE? ISN’T IT?’
‘Not really,’ the Doctor smiled thinly. ‘Sometimes, a man can get bored of evil. Every now and then, he really fancies a Sunday off. You know. A lie-in. Too much toast, homemade jam, and the chance to read the papers. K-9 adores the comics, I like laughing at the fashion supplement. Romana’s a fiend for the business section.’
A hand landed on the Doctor’s shoulder and whispered in his ear.
‘You’re babbling,’ said Romana’s voice.
The Doctor opened an eye, or the light changed. Romana was standing in front of him.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.
‘Oh, I’m not,’ Romana shrugged. ‘I’m just cutting out the next couple of minutes where you try and establish whether or not I’m an evil duplicate through a trivia contest and quizzing me on where I left my gloves.’ She put her hands on her hips and her head tilted to one side, quietly amused by him. ‘I’m not Romana.’
‘I’m glad we’ve cleared that up.’
‘I’m here to talk to you.’
‘You’re here to persuade me. That’s what War TARDISes did so well.’
‘If you like.’ Romana knelt down to stroke K-9’s nose. ‘You don’t seem surprised to see me.’
‘Well …’ The Doctor loved showing off. ‘It was easy really. Something had to transport poor Hactar to the precise spot in space where he could pull off his little stunt. Something arranged for the Alovians to be destroyed in that freak filing accident. I got suspicious when I was walking about in that dream world outside – I could almost accept a giant cloud making a spaceship out of stardust and wishes – but knocking up an entire psycho-sensitive meadow and three-piece suite – that’s more the thing a TARDIS would do. So, I looked at the tree. The one bit of the landscape that didn’t change. And I wondered – back to the whole sentencing of Krikkit. You were behind it. Weren’t you?’
‘Oh yes.’ Romana nodded enthusiastically, and pulled out a yo-yo. She proceeded to execute some tricks even the Doctor couldn’t manage. ‘It’s why I arranged for poor Cardinal Melia’s abrupt exit from existence. I didn’t dare have a full set of his memories turning up in the Matrix. It would have given the game away.’
‘Quite.’ The Doctor frowned. ‘I know you did it, but I have no idea why.’
‘Ah.’ Romana tapped the Doctor on the nose. He was beginning to find this impersonation of her too perky. Like the first time she’d tried jelly babies and experienced a glucose rush so powerful she’d nearly regenerated. She led him back to the control room, where her hands played over the controls. ‘Funny feeling,’ she said, ‘programming oneself.’
The doors opened. The meadow had gone. In its place was yet more darkness, only a darkness tinged with something, a distant, eerie blueness.
The form of Romana hopped out, and waved to the Doctor. Clearly he should follow.
He was nowhere, and nowhere was freezing.
The War TARDIS pointed around at the nothing. ‘I knew that, with the end of the Krikkit conflict, the days of the War TARDISes were over. We’d be sealed up – not destroyed, just penned away until the Universe needed us again. So I manufactured the situation.’
The Doctor blinked. ‘You caused a war that you’d already fought?’
‘I rearranged it. And then stage-managed the peace. So that, one day, the other War TARDISes would be freed. And now they are.’
‘You planned the second Krikkit War just to free them?’
Romana simpered. ‘And to give them something to do.’
‘But, the battle’s over. Already.’
‘Ye-es.’ Romana paused. ‘But the War TARDISes will be needed. Sooner or later.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘It’s a big Universe.’
‘Pah! People who say that have too many bedrooms.’ The Doctor paced the darkness, and found he was enjoying it. His eyes were growing accustomed to the dim blue blackness in a way that made it less total and more like a firm absence of light. ‘The Universe? The Universe is a whole lot of nothing. You know there aren’t any maps of it? I once met a team who’d been sent to survey it. With a measuring tape. And graph paper. And one of those clickety wheels on a stick. Terribly dedicated. Vastly long-lived. Last I knew they’d given up and were running a B&B on the rim of the Cartwheel Galaxy.’
The Doctor found his stride, but experienced a momentary wrinkle of confusion. Where was that faint light coming from? Why was it so cold here?
The creature that had borrowed Romana smiled at him. ‘What’s your point, Doctor?’
‘My point is that you could downsize the Universe in a weekend. If you decluttered, got rid of all the empty spaces, cold stars and dead planets, you’d have something so small London Transport could run a bus route through it. You’d lose a few nice sunsets along the way, but everyone would rub along together.’
‘You think so?’ Romana was amused. He could tell because of the way the cold and distant lights picked out her face.
‘Oh yes. The rotters are few and far between. Your Daleks, Krikkitmen and Sontarans. But they only get away with it because they’re so far away. You always assume they’ll invade someone else first. But cram us all together and they’d pipe down. And yes, I know you’ll point out that there are some fairly terrible people on every planet – but, if you squeezed us all together, we’d all put on a good front. A family inviting people round for Christmas Day.’
There was more light on Romana’s face. Surely.
‘After the sudden re-emergence of the Krikkitmen, things will calm down. I may even take a holiday.’ The Doctor smiled. ‘Somewhere with a nice sunset and, where are we?’
Romana shook her head. ‘You’re such a fan of the Universe. We’re taking a stroll through the far edge of infinity. If you look over your shoulder and wait 20 billion years for the light to catch up with you, you’ll see Krikkit’s sun.’
The Doctor looked down at the nothing beneath his feet. A few minutes before, he’d assumed it was just quite springy flooring. But there was defiantly nothing beneath the Doctor’s feet. He unrolled his scarf and let it drift away on the distant solar winds.
‘I should panic,’ he announced.
‘I thought here would be a good place to talk.’ Romana breathed in and then breathed out again, and little sparks of light drifted from her. ‘The poor planet of Krikkit, their views shaped by their Universe – because there was a cloud around their world, their horizons were limited.’
‘Perverted,’ the Doctor growled, trying to reach out to one of the nearby stellar clusters.
‘If you prefer.’ Romana clearly didn’t think it was a big deal. ‘It’s simply a neat demonstration of how geography affects our viewpoint, don’t you think?’
‘You’re comparing Krikkit to a village with no B-roads?’
Romana considered this. ‘Yes,’ she said eventually. ‘And then they were shown the truth and they went mad.’
‘And?’
‘And that’s what I’m going to do to the rest of the Universe, Doctor.’ Romana smiled. ‘It’s why I rescued Hactar and repurposed his Supernova Bomb. It will cause something greater. That’s why we’ll all be needed. It will be a time of total madness and great war.’
The Doctor frowned, an itch forming in his brain. ‘What?’
‘The Universe, Doctor, it’s difficult for people to get their heads around isn’t it?’ Romana clucked sympathetically.
‘Well, yes,’ the Doctor said. ‘Solar Systems, Cosmoses and Galaxies, we get the terms a bit jumbled together. Everyone does so want to be thought of as Tokyo or New York, when really, on a universal scale, we’re all Bishop’s Stortford.’
‘Exactly.’ The figure of Romana smiled in triumph. ‘And when just one planet realised the truth, they started the worst war ever. Imagine what will happen if I show everyone the truth?’
The itch in the Doctor’s head got bigger. ‘What truth? I always worry when people say that.’
Romana stood in a patch of space where only a few distant twinkles of light reached her. ‘Have you ever wondered why the sky is dark, Doctor?’
‘Not particularly.’ The Doctor rubbed his nose. ‘At the risk of namedropping, Edgar Allen Poe once started banging on about it, but we were being chased by a giant crow at the time and—’
Romana smiled. It was unlike her normal warm smile. ‘The Universe is practically infinite, Doctor. And yet the sky is dark.’
‘Eh?’ That had once been one of the Doctor’s favourite words. It had helped when he was still getting to grips with humans, and needed a moment to digest an unfamiliar or unwelcome topic, such as totalitarianism or rich tea biscuits.
‘If the Universe is infinite then there would be an infinite number of stars. And so, I ask you again, why is the sky dark?’
The Doctor looked around at the chilly blackness. ‘Because,’ he began, hoping his brain would kick in with something clever. ‘Well, it’s just Olbers’ Paradox, isn’t it?’
‘There have been various explanations – long, complicated arguments. But the simple truth is this – that it allows us all to keep a sense of proportion. We go to bed at night and our Universe is comfortably big.’ Romana leaned forward again. ‘Do you know what’s supposed to give us that sense of darkness? Clouds. Giant clouds of hydrogen gas. It’s where I got the idea for Hactar’s second life.’
The figure of Romana was now sharing a little secret with him. ‘I’m going to use the Supernova Bomb – not to destroy the Universe, but to blow away the clouds for everyone.’ She smiled. ‘I’m going to turn the lights on. The result will be total war.’
She clapped her hands. The emptiness burst with light, brighter and brighter, the Doctor assaulted by the glare of a billion billion billion suns.
He cried out, staggering backwards, but there was nowhere to stagger to. Or from. All around him was light. He blinked, hoping his eyes would adjust, but they shrank from the sight. Eternity – both as a concept of time and space – was pitilessly, neatly illustrated.
The Doctor’s brain reeled. There was simply no escape from any of this. Up until now he’d understood how the people of Krikkit had felt, but purely intellectually. ‘That must have been a bit awkward’ was the gist. Only now did it strike the Doctor with considerable force that the sky was a beautiful accompaniment to evolution.
When a race is first born, the sky isn’t a threatening thing. It’s a leaky roof with jewels on it. As a race matures, it finds out more about those jewels, and realises that they are, in fact, other worlds and stars, and the roof is a lot further out of reach than they’d previously thought. As their technology advances, they can see even further, and to realise how small their world, how big their surroundings. Evolution allows a species to perceive just as much of infinity as it can cope with. And here it was, all blown away. Distant blazing stars filling the sky with a light that was inescapable, a burning that stretched back billions of years.
The full light of eternity shone upon the Doctor, and he did not like it one bit.
It took the Doctor a while to notice the change, mainly because his eyes had been shut. He stood up with the pained dignity of a man who realises he has been rolling around on a non-existent floor.
‘Well?’ asked the figure of Romana.
The Doctor shook his head.
‘I wanted you to see all of the Universe,’ the War TARDIS said.
‘But to see all that …’ The Doctor exhaled. He’d realised the mental state of the being opposite him. ‘Everyone will go mad. They’ll go blind mad.’
‘I’m going to bring about an age of enlightenment. There will, of course, be terrible conflict. But my sisters are waiting to drive the survivors on to greatness. I’ve made sure the Universe will be ready.’
‘Really?’ The Doctor felt a chill that wasn’t just from standing in a vacuum. ‘I don’t think the Universe needs a great war. It’s fundamentally a peaceful place. Why else would a bumbler like me be able to deal with its problems?’
‘I offer efficiency.’
‘No, you don’t. Your plan makes sense to your head but not to anyone’s hearts. Fiddling with billions of years and wiping out billions of planets? Just to prove a point? We can do that because we’re Time Lords. But we don’t.’ The Doctor yawned and stretched, his hands seeming to brush against a distant star. ‘The people of Gallifrey have learned to be lazy. It’s our greatest gift to the Universe.’
The figure of Romana leaned close, sneering. ‘If we had not been caged, your society would rule the Universe. Imagine what you could have achieved.’
‘I’d rather not.’ The Doctor shuddered.
‘It’s what you will do.’ The figure of Romana smiled her very worst smile. ‘You won’t have any choice.’
‘Really?’ the Doctor sneered back. ‘You were born for war. You want to rule over an infinite battlefield. You’re not thinking of how it’ll actually be. You’re just thinking of flying on from one glorious firefight to the next. You think the Universe is big? Well, I’ll tell you the truth. It’s small. Generals don’t weep because they’ve run out of things to conquer. They cry because, for all their grand plans and huge schemes, it’s the tiny, dull details that stymie them. For every Hannibal there’s a poor Richard, drowning in mud, crying for a horse. When I tell you that war brings out the worst in people – it’s not just brutality, it’s pettiness, pointlessness, greed and squabbling. You want to set eternity on fire? I tell you this. It’ll be boring. Boring. I’ll have no part of it.’
The Doctor turned his back on the War TARDIS and strode out into the stars.
‘Take me home, please,’ he said. ‘It’s getting cold.’
CHAPTER FORTY
THE GREAT KNOT
The Doctor and K-9 sat in the control room of the War TARDIS. The Doctor found himself holding a cup of tea he’d put down millions of years ago and in another reality. He sipped it. Not bad.
K-9 eyed the Doctor warily. He was preparing emergency retreat programme Beta Epsilon. According to the dog’s internal chronometer, it had been far too long since there had been an explosion. The Doctor-Master had worked through various methodologies when confronting an alien menace, and it was now only a matter of time before there was a billow of smoke and a terse, ‘Run, K-9!’
Instead the Doctor put down his teacup, and picked up his coat. For some reason it was hanging from the hat stand. Oddly, it felt a little heavier than usual as he slipped it on.
‘On balance,’ he said, ‘I’m glad my TARDIS doesn’t talk to me. I fear she’d be terribly cross.’
‘Perhaps she’s just waiting for you to have something interesting to say.’ A voice floated through the room.
The Doctor ignored it. He patted his dog. ‘You have to admire the ambition of this machine. But look at it – it’s exhausted.’
The lights around them were, indeed, dimming.
‘Odd isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Hactar and this War TARDIS. Each with a plan for the Universe. Hmm.’ He felt around in his pocket, fishing out a cricket ball. He tossed it up in the air and caught it. ‘Both of them using all their energy to execute incredibly ambitious and incredibly daft schemes. It’s sort of selfless. While also being insane.’
&nb
sp; K-9 did not answer.
‘It’s just –’ the Doctor tapped his teeth – ‘when we met that Krikkitman, it told me I’d encounter three gods who prop up the Universe, holding its fate in their hands. I’ve met two – both bonkers. One’s a tired computer who wants to end it all. The other’s a warmonger who wants to drive everyone insane. I’m not sure I’m up to meeting a third.’
The Doctor examined the tassels at the end of his scarf to see how they were getting along. Having been ordered by Romana to get it cleaned, he’d once had K-9 analyse it. The dog had informed him that the unique interaction caused by trailing the ends of it across a hundred worlds had created a micro-culture that was developing into its own species.
The Doctor stroked the scarf thoughtfully. ‘This one tassel. The inhabitants will one day become aware of what they live on. And that there are tassels next door. And that, beyond the great knot, is an entire infinity of scarf. What wonders await them.’
He realised he was nibbling the tassel and dropped it back to the ground.
The Doctor’s dog cleared his throat. ‘There is a possibility, Master: you have encountered the third god already.’
‘Have I?’
‘One who will decide the fate of the Universe.’
‘Indeed?’
‘The third god is you, Master.’
A few minutes later, an unreal tree opened in a non-existent meadow, and an angry man strode out, followed by his robot dog.
The angry man paused only to kick a large, empty, and totally dead computer terminal.
Then he walked away, crossly.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
THE MOST IMPORTANT MAN IN THE UNIVERSE
On Westminster Green, a group of politicians stood around, waiting to see if anyone wanted to interview them about anything. Occasionally, a tired young man in headphones would appear and grab one of them. Mostly they just stood there, wearing the awkward smiles of people who know no one at a party and were wishing they hadn’t come. One was eating a sandwich while patting his hair nervously.
Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen Page 29