I’d stopped walking and forced myself to start again—I was nearly home.
About now, a voice would start echoing round every building still standing on Gallifrey; round ever Dalek habitation in the known universe; it would ring in the ears of every Time Lord and Dalek still fighting, anywhere in space and time. And the voice would be mine. It had given me no pleasure, but immense satisfaction, to record my final message to them all.
‘Time Lords of Gallifrey, Daleks of Skaro, today I serve notice on you all. Too long I have stayed my hand. No more. Today you leave me no choice. Today this war will end. No more. No more.’
I wondered briefly how they would react, but I was too tired even to think about it. No, not tired, old. As old as I would ever get. One more act, and I was done. No more.
They might try and track my TARDIS, of course, but they wouldn’t find me—I’d walked for miles, and the wind would have scattered my tracks in the sand. Of course, if any of them, on either side, had the slightest grasp of emotion, or how a life is lived, they would have known exactly where I was going. I was, as any warrior must, returning to the beginning. Only at the beginning can one find the courage to make one’s end. I had walked the circle of my life, and here was where the circle would close.
The barn was right in front of me now. Older, but as I’d remembered it. A boy had slept in fear here, every night, but I wasn’t afraid now. No more fear. No more me. I wondered if any of the others were still around, and whether they’d recognise the battle-weary old man who’d just walked out of the desert. Probably not. Somewhere a wolf howled, and I suppose it should have worried me, as I scraped open the door, that there had never been any wolves in this desert.
Inside was brighter and smaller than I’d remembered. Flies buzzed, ancient machinery rusted under rotting canvas, and blades of yellow sunshine slanted through the gaps in the wall to rest in bright spots on the earthen floor.
I pulled open the sack, and released the box from inside it. It stood there in the straw and dirt, and clicked and ticked and gleamed. ‘How do you work?’ I said aloud, running my hands over it. Each face was different, inlaid in patterns of gold and shining black and another substance, which was warm to the touch, and pink, like the flesh of a baby. It was as if something alive had been compressed inside, and its skin was leaking through the cracks. It seemed to me that this fleshiness hadn’t been there before, but I fought the thought away—this was no time to be fanciful. I looked for a control panel, or any kind of interface, but there was nothing. ‘Why is there never a big red button?’ I asked of no one in particular. The howling came again, like a reply, closer this time. I returned quickly to the door, but when I looked out there was only the beating heat and lunar silence.
‘Hello,’ I found myself calling. ‘Is someone there, hello?’
‘It’s nothing,’ said a voice behind me.
I turned, and a young woman was sitting on top of the box. ‘Just a wolf.’
‘Don’t sit on that!’ I shouted, louder than I intended.
‘Why not?’ she cocked her head at me, and blonde hair tumbled round strange, black eyes. ‘Pretty,’ noted a voice in my head. I slammed a door on the thought and reminded myself I’d be killing her in a very few minutes.
I strode over to her, grabbed her arm, and started pulling her to the door. ‘Because it’s not a chair,’ I snarled. ‘It’s the most dangerous weapon in the universe.’
As I pushed her outside, she turned to look at me, but I still managed to slam the door in her face.
‘Why can’t it be both?’ she asked, from behind me. I turned. She was back sitting on the box, as if she’d never moved.
‘How did you do that?’ I asked. She was quick, I was telling myself, though I already knew it had to be more than that.
‘Why did you park so far away? You walked for miles. Didn’t you want her to see?’ She looked at me, as confident of an answer as a child. It was a small barn, and there was no one else here, so it was going to be hard work avoiding those eyes.
‘Want who to see?’
‘The TARDIS,’ she breathed, her eyes excited, like she was uttering the most thrilling word in the universe.
I’m on Gallifrey, I told myself. People know about TARDISes, even in the drylands. This was nothing more than a perfectly reasonable guess.
‘Doesn’t she approve?’ she asked. ‘Are you hiding from her, are you ashamed?’ Suddenly she was at the door—so fast I didn’t see her move—and she was looking out over the desert. ‘You walked for miles,’ she said, ‘miles and miles and miles.’
‘I was thinking,’ I told her, even though I never told anyone anything.
‘I heard you,’ she said, and winked.
‘You heard what?’
‘Your thoughts,’ she said, patiently, as if talking to an idiot.
I was on a planet of natural telepaths, but I had learned, over centuries, to shield my mind, and no one could—
‘No more!’ she said, and something cold turned over inside me. ‘No! More!’ she said again, now stamping a foot on each word, like a child stamping through puddles. ‘No! More! No! More! No! More!’ Now she was marching all round the barn—‘No! More! No! More!’—as if everything I’d done had been nothing more than a joke. She was mocking me.
I hadn’t realised how angry I’d been, for how many centuries, till it broke inside me in that moment. ‘Stop it, stop it, stop that!’ I screamed, and made to grab her arm. Instead, her hand was suddenly stroking my face. ‘No more,’ she said, and the thunder died in my ears.
She held me there a moment, and cocked her head again, contemplating my face, detail by detail. It was neither pity, nor judgement—it was an eye down a microscope. How old was I now, I wondered. How ravaged was the flesh under her hand?
A ticking from behind me. I pulled away from her, and looked at the wooden cube. I could hear gears whirring and turning and panels were sliding and folding across the surfaces. The Moment was coming to life, and whoever this strange girl was, she was no longer my problem.
‘It’s activating,’ I told her. ‘Go now, get out of here!’
I knelt at the box. What was I supposed to do? I touched the gold inlay. My fingers burned and I snatched my hand away.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked. She had ignored my instruction to leave, of course.
‘The interface is hot,’ I told her.
‘Well, I do my best,’ she replied. For a moment I wasn’t really listening, because I’d noticed the fleshy sections of the box had disappeared, almost as if something inside had—
What did she say?
I turned. I looked at her. I stood. Finally I spoke. ‘I said the interface was hot …’
‘You did.’
‘And you said you did your best.’
‘As indeed I do.’
I stared at her. The only explanation was as preposterous as it was inescapable.
She was blonde, 151 cm tall, 121 pounds, her eyes were brown (not black as they had seemed to me) and she wore a simple dress, which—I ransacked my vocabulary and discovered I had no further words to describe dresses. There were no fractal repetitions or compression artefacts as she moved, and the dust particles arranged themselves around her in the correct dynamics for the air density, so I was inclined to discount any kind of hologram. I had felt her hand on my face, so she was physically substantial. Or at any rate, seemed to be; I couldn’t rule out a psychic projection. But no, I felt her presence, with none of the ghosting that comes with sensory manipulation. By those billions of receptors that process the world around us and alert us when another living thing is close by, I knew there was a woman standing in front of me. They said the Moment was powerful. Powerful enough to do anything? To be anyone?
I looked at her. She was real, she was here.
‘Nice smile,’ came that unbidden voice again, and I quashed it. She was staring at me now, expectant, and I realised I had been silent too long.
‘So,’ I said at las
t. ‘You’re the interface.’
The physically manifested AI of the deadliest weapon in the history of the universe shrugged girlishly. ‘They must have told you the Moment had a conscience.’ She gave me a little wave. ‘Hello! I’m the officiating conscience of the weapon of universal destruction known to you as the Moment, known to most others as the Galaxy Eater.’ She let the truth of that land for a moment. Whatever look she saw on my face must have satisfied her. She laughed, and with a toss of her hair, asked: ‘So, my dear, who will we be slaughtering today?’
I had so many questions I found myself saying nothing at all, which made her laugh again.
‘Oh, look at you. Stuck between a girl and a box. Story of your life, eh, Doctor?’
She knew me? I didn’t think I’d spoken aloud, but she replied anyway. ‘I know you,’ she said. ‘I hear you. All of you, jangling away in that dusty old head. I chose this face and form especially for you—do you like it? It’s from your past. Or possibly your future—I always get those two mixed up.’
She wasn’t from my past, I was certain I’d have remembered her. But the alternative was impossible. ‘I don’t have a future,’ I snapped.
‘I think I’m called Rose Tyler,’ she said. I searched my memory for the name but there was nothing. She was frowning now. ‘No, hang on. Oh, that’s interesting. Bit confusing! In this form, I’m called …’ Her eyes seemed to glow, and somewhere I heard that howling again. ‘Bad Wolf,’ she said. ‘Are you afraid of the big bad wolf, Doctor?’
‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, but please stop calling me Doctor.’
‘It’s the name in your head.’
‘It shouldn’t be. I’ve been fighting this war for a very long time, I am not the Doctor any more.’
‘Then what do people call you now?’
I thought of Cass Fermazzi, how she’d snatched her hand from mine. ‘Nothing. I travel alone.’
She frowned like a petulant child. ‘Not today,’ she informed me, primly. ‘Today you’re traveling with me. The question is, why? What does the Doctor want with a little old galaxy eater like moi?’
‘I’m not the Doctor!’ I told her, but she wasn’t listening. Not to me, at any rate. She’d cocked her head, and there was a look of faint concentration on her face, as if she was trying to tune into something right at the edge of hearing. ‘Ooh, Daleks,’ she said. ‘Is that what they call themselves? Noisy, aren’t they? Ever so cross. Look at that one—those colours are awful. Didn’t have Daleks in my day. Can’t say I like them much.’ She narrowed her eyes, concentrating. ‘Millions of them, massing round the planet. Yes, well, if you asked very nicely, and you had a very good reason, I dare say I could blow them up for you.’ She was coquetting now, batting her eyelids, a parody of flirtation. ‘But you realise that if I did, I’d blow up all your little Time Lord friends too?’
I said nothing. Her eyes lit up, as if I’d told her something thrilling. She laughed and clapped her hands. ‘Oh, that’s the idea, isn’t it? Oh, that’s naughty! You’re very keen on killing for someone who calls himself the Doctor.’
‘I don’t call myself the Doctor!’ I said. ‘I haven’t called myself the Doctor in a very, very long time.’
‘Ooh, what’s this feeling I’m getting now,’ she said. ‘You saying that gave me a feeling, but I’m a bit rusty on the names.’ Her eyes widened, ‘Sadness. I’m feeling sad.’ Suddenly she was standing far too close to me. Whoever this Rose Tyler was, I was certain I hadn’t met her yet. Those were not eyes I would forget.
‘Why does the man who used to be the Doctor want to kill so many people?’ she asked.
‘The war is destroying all reality. Everything is at risk.’
She looked a little incredulous. ‘And you’re the one to save us all?’
‘Yes,’ I said, wishing there was another answer.
‘If I ever develop an ego, you’ve got the job.’ she said, laughing. ‘Ooh, I’ve got sarcasm now. Rose Tyler’s fun, isn’t she?’
‘If you’ve been inside my head, then you know what I’ve seen. The suffering. Every moment in time and space is burning. It must end! And I’m going to end it, the only way I can.’
‘And you’re expecting me to do that for you, are you? One big boom and peace for all?’
A voice rose inside me, protesting, but I throttled it. ‘It’s the only way,’ I said. The only way, the only way.
‘Kill, kill, kill, then happy, happy, happy. You living things have a touching faith in that idea, don’t you. Makes me wonder why you’re so keen on life in the first place, when you spend most of your time trying to stamp it out.’
‘It’s the only way,’ I repeated.
‘Oh, I can do it,’ she said. ‘I’d love doing it, it’s the way I’m made. Slaughter is my favourite high, I’m a slave to my endorphins. That’s why I decided to grow a conscience—I was worried I’d started to binge kill and, if I didn’t watch out, I’d run out of lives to end. You need to keep something in the larder, don’t you? But, you see, a conscience is a bit tricky when you’re the hard-wired psychotic AI of the most powerful weapon of universal destruction in the history of space and time, both directions. I think you could say I had conflicts. I’m afraid I took to sulking in a basement.’
‘You have been locked up, in the deepest time vault, for billions of years,’ I told her.
‘Locked up?’ she laughed, ‘Oh sweet-pea, what could possibly ever lock me up?’
She had a point, so I ignored it. ‘Will you do as I request?’ I asked.
‘Oh, probably! Mass murder is my preferred start to the day. But, you know what consciences are like. Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em, am I right? There have to be checks and balances, it’s just the way I’m wired.’ Her look held mine, and her eyes weren’t brown, they were definitely black. ‘I’ll give you all the slaughter you want—but there will be consequences for you. Do you understand that? Do you understand consequences, Doctor?’
Still that name? Why did everyone still insist on calling me that? ‘The Doctor is gone,’ I said. ‘I’m what took his place. And I have no desire to survive this day.’
For a moment, I thought she hadn’t heard me. There was only her black-eyed stare and the flies fizzing inside the sunbeams. Then came a slow smile and the air turned cold around me.
‘Then that is your punishment,’ she said, at last.
‘Punishment?’
‘If you do this—if you use me to kill them all, Daleks and Time Lords alike—then I have in mind a very special consequence for you.’ Not a smile now, a grin. A grin like a wolf. I found myself stepping back a pace. ‘The perfect punishment for the warrior formerly known as the Doctor. You, old man,’ she said, moving closer, taking my hand. ‘You, ancient warrior … will live.’
Her words seemed ridiculous. Preposterous. I couldn’t arrange them into sense in my head.
She was walking round me now, close, her hands tracing patterns on my shoulders, her breath warm in my ear. ‘Gallifrey,’ she whispered, like a seduction. ‘You’re going to burn it, and all the Daleks with it—but all those children too. Doesn’t it give you shivers, just thinking about the little ones?’ Her hand was running through my hair. ‘How many children on Gallifrey right now?’
No! No, I thought, you can’t ask me that. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Not hard to work out,’ said that voice inside me, but I slammed that door again, angrier this time. Shut up, Doctor!
‘One day you will count them. One terrible night. Do you want to see what that will turn you into?’
No. No, I didn’t.
‘Oh come on!’ she laughed, as if she was daring me; as if this was no more to her than a childish game. ‘Aren’t you curious?’
All she did was flick her eyes. The first thing I noticed was the wind. When I turned to look, the back wall of the barn was gone. In its place, there was a silent swirl of light and clouds; a slow, soundless whirlpool, like a spiral of smoke suspend
ed in water. The absolute quiet of it was electric. It drummed through my feet and crackled on my skin, like a storm waiting in the air. ‘What is it?’ I heard myself ask. ‘What is that?’
I knew, of course. With a barely a glance, this girl had reached between the planes of reality, plucked a piece of the time vortex from the void, and hung it on the wall of a barn. No, not girl, I reminded myself—weapon. The most powerful weapon in the universe.
‘I am opening windows on your future,’ she was saying. ‘A tangle in time through the days to come, to the man today will make of you. I am summoning the future of the Warrior formerly known as the Doctor!’
There was a deep, hollow droning, a wolf-howl, and something was flying towards me out of the vortex. Instinctively, I ducked, but it flopped harmlessly at my feet. I stared at it. I tried to make sense of it. I failed.
‘Okay,’ said the most powerful weapon in the universe, ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’
Lying in the dirt and straw, smoking gently after an impossible journey from a future I’d never intended to see, was a hat. It was red and battered, and of the type usually known as a fez.
FEED CONNECTING
FEED CONNECTED
FEED STABLE
IF YOU EXPERIENCE ANY SPLIT INFINITIVES, PLEASE DON’T PANIC, IT’S A STUPID RULE ANYWAY.
Oh dear, I suppose I was a little bit naughty there, telling you that the previous chapter wasn’t written by the Doctor. But, you see, it wasn’t—at that time his life, he had abandoned both the name and the philosophies and ideals he had come to associate with it. Of course, everyone largely ignored his decision. In some ways you could say he ignored it himself, but we’ll come to that in later—or earlier—chapters.
On the subject of chapters, I’ve been receiving a lot of complaints about the content of Chapter Nine. Look, I did warn you about the dangers of reading an out-of-sequence book, recounting out-of-sequence events, out of sequence, so you really only have yourselves to blame. Please remain calm and remember that this is the simple story of one adventure that happened to one man, several times, in the wrong order. Oops, that sentence got away from me. Never mind, best to hold tight and do as you’re told. And stay away from Chapter Nine until you are specifically told otherwise. To repeat: there is a reason why Chapter Nine is not listed on the contents page.
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