‘Why?’
‘Because you live in a time machine. All of history is still happening outside those doors. On a good night that means everyone you ever met is still alive and you can’t wait to see them again. On a bad night, it means everyone’s dead, and you want to charge around the universe, pretending you can do something about that.’ She looked up at me. ‘I know which version of you I prefer.’
And there she was, so alive again. I remembered her, twisted, burnt and dead, in the depths of The Library. ‘What if there are people who died because of me?’ I asked. ‘What if there are people I should have saved?’
‘People die. All people, everywhere. We grieve and we move on. That is how we respect the dead. That is how we forgive ourselves in their presence and their absence.’
She’d bent to her work again, and I was very glad she couldn’t see my face.
I knew she’d come back to the children of Gallifrey, again and again. But there was only one conversation I would ever have about that. The timelines had choked off my memory as before, but I knew there was a silence in a dungeon, waiting to be broken. Whatever I was going to say, when I returned there, it was going to bring rage.
The third time I made the journey from Richmond to the Tower was the strangest, perhaps because I knew it was the last. The other two prattled away, and every time they spoke, their words popped up in my memory, twice, at different distances. I joined in, when I was supposed to, my lines arriving in my head as I said them. I was as mechanical as the robot clown. It would be different in the dungeon, I knew. There would be silence, and then there would be anger, and try as I might, I couldn’t remember why. As the Tower came into view, along the river, I felt more afraid than I ever had before. It was time for the third and final part of my sentence.
This time I remembered the stale, sharp smell, and the scuttle of the rats. Old fella was battering on the door and shouting away, and Captain Swagger was larging it round the dungeon walls, pretending he was assessing rock density, or whatever I’d told myself at the time. I played my part, and searched the floor for the nail; I’d known for hundreds of years that this was how I’d get a message to Clara and Kate. I started scratching the numerals on the wall, and let the other two get on with it, joining in when my own voice surfaced in my memory. Still, I couldn’t remember how the silence was broken, and which of us had got so angry.
‘Do you have to talk like children?’ the old boy was saying. ‘What is it that makes you so ashamed of being a grown-up?’
It was time to turn and stare at him: to tell him the truth with a look. You. You’re why we’re ashamed.
Again, that puzzled face in response. ‘The way you both look at me,’ I was saying, hundreds of years ago. ‘What is that? I’m trying to think of a better word than dread.’
Hundreds of years later, I looked back at myself. He was so ordinary. Broken, and humble. Even desperate. Those eyes weren’t blades, they were wounds. I’d expected the face of a murderer. In a way, that’s what I’d wanted. It would have been so much easier to see him as the slaughterer of the billions; to stand in judgement on the forgotten, hated part of myself that I’d cut out and left in the past. But the old man standing there wasn’t that; he was kind, and brave, and hurt. On Karn they said they’d make me a warrior, but whatever this man believed himself to be, and whatever he’d done in the name of that belief, he’d never been a warrior in his hearts. Had the Sisterhood lied to me? What had been in that goblet? One day, if I survived, I would ask Ohila.
But for now I understood the dread on my own face; this man was me. Not some other mutation or strange alternative—just the Doctor. The man who’d turned on his own kind, and slaughtered the children of an entire world, was, and always had been, me. Simply me. The dread on my face was the lifetime I’d spend living with that.
I turned back to the wall. I was on the final numeral, but now my hand was shaking.
Captain Swagger was asking how recent it was, but the old fella didn’t understand. ‘The Time War,’ I explained, not wanting to look at him. ‘The last day. The day you killed them all.’
‘The day we killed them all,’ snapped the Swagger. I know, I want to shout. I know.
‘Same thing,’ I said, because my memory said I had to.
‘It is not the same thing!’ he screamed back at me.
I returned to scratching the last numeral into place—and I waited for the question.
‘Did you ever count?’ That low wearied, voice. How long since I’d asked that?
‘Count what?’ I forced myself to say, though I knew the answer perfectly well.
‘The children. Did you ever count how many children were on Gallifrey that day?’
We didn’t answer. The old boy sat, waiting, and the silence grew like thunder. I kept scraping. Swagger kept pacing. He wasn’t ready to speak yet, which didn’t surprise me, because several hundred years later, I still wasn’t. I sighed. If you want something done, do it yourself, I thought—though, in this dungeon, there was little alternative.
I took the nail from the wall. Now. Say it now. I turned and faced him. ‘I have absolutely no idea,’ I told him.
I heard the pacing stop, but I kept my eyes on the old boy. He was staring at me, fascinated. Maybe even appalled.
‘How old are you?’ he asked, finally.
I shrugged. ‘I dunno, I lose track.’ I turned back to scraping on the wall. ‘Twelve hundred and something, I think. Unless I’m lying. I can’t remember if I’m lying about my age, that’s how old I am.’
‘Four hundred years older than me. And you’ve never wondered how many there were. Never once counted?’
I completed the final numeral, shrugged again. ‘What would be the point?’ I felt his eyes on me, so I glanced at him. He wouldn’t release my gaze.
‘One should live with one’s sins,’ he said.
‘2.47 billion,’ said a voice, very close to me.
I froze. I didn’t want to look round.
‘You did count,’ said the old man, sounding a very long way away.
‘2.47 billion,’ said the voice, sounding very close indeed.
How could he know that? When did I—
A hand reached in front of me, grabbed hold of my shirt, and yanked me round. Now his big brown eyes didn’t look sweet at all; they looked more angry than I could ever remember being. ‘2.47 billion!’ My coat lapels were in his fists, and he wasn’t Mum’s favourite any more. ‘2.47 billion children!’ He was screaming now, right into my face. ‘Of course I counted them. How could I not count them?? Of course I did! And you forgot??’ he roared into my face. ‘How do you forget that??’ And then I have a feeling he might have thrown me across the room. Anyway, a wall got suddenly in my way, and at the same time all the lights started to flicker. As I slid to the floor, it occurred to me that there weren’t any lights in the dungeon.
The darkness wasn’t a problem for long, because it was sunny outside the TARDIS, and River was laughing as she clung to my arm. We were watching the robot clown march across the fields, towards a little farming settlement.
‘Clever, how they work,’ she was saying. ‘You tell it your worst story, and it edits the nasty bits out of your memory.’ She smiled, that way she did when she’d done something she shouldn’t have—which, in fairness, was the only way she ever smiled.
Then, somehow, an old man seemed to be bending over me, looking concerned, and suddenly I wasn’t sure exactly where I was …
‘I always tell the young men in my command not to beat themselves up when the day goes badly,’ said the old boy, as he helped me to my feet. ‘I’d be grateful if I could follow my own advice.’
Swagger was pacing up and down the other side of the dungeon, still shouting away. He never hit people, he was yelling. Hitting people was against his principles. But 2.47 billion children! He launched himself at me again, but the old boy intercepted with surprising speed.
‘I moved on!’ I was yelling. ‘There’s no
choice, you have to.’
‘How do you move on from that?’ he was screaming, over and over.
We were circling each other now, with the old boy in the middle, holding up his hands. ‘Gentlemen, this is pointless,’ he kept saying. ‘This is unworthy.’
And then Swagger was pushing past him, and suddenly I was in a headlock. He was shouting, ‘How could you forget? How could you forget?’
I don’t know how long it went on for, but when it finally ended, I was too dazed to understand why. They were stepping back from me, staring. Swagger was disgusted but the old boy was just puzzled. Something wrong with my face? I wondered. I checked if my bow tie was straight.
‘Is something funny?’ asked Swagger. ‘Did I miss a funny thing?’
Only then did I realise I was laughing—laughing so hard I had to use the wall to get to my feet.
‘What’s funny?’ he demanded again. ‘Tell me!’
‘Look at us,’ I said. ‘Go on, look! You’re trying to tear me apart, he’s trying to pull us off each other, and now I’ve got the giggles.’
‘Why the hell is any of that funny?’ he thundered, but his face was so hurt and confused I almost wanted to hug him.
‘Because,’ I told him, ‘this is what I’m like when I’m alone.’
It took a long time for us all to stop laughing. When we did, we sat in a row on the little bench at the side of the dungeon, and wondered what we could talk about. In truth, between the things we all knew anyway, and the things the other two weren’t supposed to know yet, there wasn’t a lot we could say. So we talked about the old days on Gallifrey, and why we left, and what must have happened to the others. Several hours had passed, when my screwdriver buzzed.
‘Did you get a text?’ asked the old boy, with a caustic look.
I stared at the screwdriver. It had buzzed like that, once before, long ago. But when?
‘It did that before,’ said Swagger, as puzzled I was. ‘I remember that.’
I looked to the old boy. ‘The door,’ I said. ‘You were going to calculate the harmonic resonance of the door at the sub-atomic level.’
‘In theory, we could disintegrate it. But the calculation would take centuries.’
‘Did you start it? The calculation?’
‘Yes, I did,’ he replied, checking his screwdriver.
I looked at the screwdriver in my own hand. The case was new, but the main drives and the software were the same as the old boy’s. In fact, they’d been the same for hundreds of years. Many thoughts were now jumping up and down in my head, and some of them were cheering. ‘How long have we been here?’ I asked.
‘About a day,’ I think.
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, we haven’t.’ I stood up. Despite my best efforts, a stupid grin was muscling its way all over my face. ‘We’ve had a good chat, haven’t we?’ I said. ‘Ups and downs, but good from time to time, right? It might interest you to know,’ I continued, ‘that from my point of view, we’ve been chatting for about 400 years.’ I held up my screwdriver. It buzzed again, reminding me it was now ready. ‘Or to put it another way—400 years later, calculation complete! Pack your bags, ladies, it’s moving day.’
Captain Swagger and Captain Old stared at me. They rose to their feet.
‘You know we’ve had our differences,’ I said, as I readied the screwdriver to disintegrate the door, ‘which is surprising under the circumstances. But when it comes right down to it, whatever anyone says about me, we are getting out of this cell because we are three awesomely clever Time Lords.’
To underline the point, I spun round on the spot and with a big flourish (yeah, I can do it too, Captain Swagger!) I aimed the screwdriver right at Clara Oswald.
I think I probably just stood and stared for a moment. There seemed to be tyres screeching to a halt somewhere, but it might have been the sound in my own head as I processed what was right in front of me.
Clara Oswald.
Standing in the dungeon doorway.
With the door open.
Obviously I wanted to know how she’d got here, and how she’d found her way to this cell, but in that moment, the thing I was most confused about was the dungeon key. Specifically, the fact that she didn’t appear to have one.
‘How did you open the door?’ I asked her.
I have four centuries of memories about that dungeon; the time I spent inside it, and the many years I travelled in its shadow. But I think the most vivid one of all—and the most important because it felt like the final lesson of those four hundred years of my life—was Clara Oswald looking at me puzzled, and saying: ‘It wasn’t locked.’
FEED CONNECTING
FEED CONNECTED
FEED STABLE
PLEASE KEEP THIS BOOK DRY AT ALL TIMES OR YOU MIGHT MAKE THE PAGES ALL SOGGY.
A word, then, about UNIT—
No, sorry, we’ve moved on from Chapter Nine. I’m sure you all did your best, it’s a tricky one for the smartest of us. Try again, if you really must, but human brains are not equipped for this sort of thing. Stick to texting and soaps—I do.
Now then: UNIT has strict protocols concerning—
No, really, pipe down. You’ve all read Chapter Nine, every last one of you. I’ve got the records right here, look. Oh, you can’t see, I haven’t turned on the webcam. Well, sorry, I don’t want to use that till later, it’s murder on the bandwidth.
Oh, hang on—just had an email from the publishers. (Well, I say ‘just’. As I explained, I’m writing from ten years in the future so, really, I’m catching up on my messages a decade late, which is pretty good for me.) Ah, now, this is interesting. Owing to you lot whinging so much, they’re adding an extra bit to the book. At the very end, you will find an additional blank page (the cover price will reflect this, I’m afraid). Next time you read Chapter Nine, turn here and make a mark. That way you can assure yourself, whatever the state of your memory, you have read the chapter in question. Satisfied? Good, good.
Now. UNIT has some very strict protocols regarding written material covering any aspect of their various missions—the silly old whelks. Nothing can ever be held on computer, or any form of digital storage. No, the only accounts you will ever find of UNIT activity are handwritten by one or more of the participants. It is their belief, bless them, that handwriting cannot be hacked (hee hee!) or corrupted (oh, my aching sides, stop it!).
Once, during one of my many visits, I asked old Alistair (Lethbridge-Stewart, do keep up!) what was the most important quality in a UNIT commander. He thought for a moment, in his usual grave way, and said, ‘Good handwriting!’
Oh, we laughed. But we always laughed, he and I, right up to the end. The mischief we got up to! But look, you’re not reading this book to hear about two old boys, chortling away together in a hospice, I do realise that—the fact is, I just don’t care. He was a good friend, the bravest of soldiers, and a devil with the ladies till his last day. Gracious me, that man could tango—but as soon as a pretty girl came in, I was shoved straight out of the way.
Kate was the apple of his eye, of course. She could do no wrong by him. Though when she came to see him at the hospice, he’d tell her she was his only visitor, just so she’d come round more often. The old dog! Sometimes I was right there, hiding under the bed.
Now Kate’s handwriting, it must be said, is exceptionally good (ah, see how I slalom back into relevance) as you are about to see for yourselves. Or rather, you aren’t, since this will be a printed version. Now I’ve already told you that the existence of anything other than handwritten accounts of UNIT operations is forbidden by law, but there are pretty good reasons for this exception, and I have a high degree of confidence that many of you won’t be arrested for owning this book. You will recall that the Doctor, in one of his aspects, was deep beneath the National Gallery investigating the mystery of the oil paintings with the missing figures, before he jumped into a mysterious time vortex and got involved in the Elizabethan Zygon shenanigans (what a delightful way to
be able to describe one’s day).
Fortunately, an account of how events unfolded in his absence, has become available to us in the impeccable handwriting of two of UNIT’s finest. You may wonder, as you read, why and when and even how this account came to be written. All will become clear in due time. Or it won’t, if I forget to explain it. It’s a rollercoaster, isn’t it?
Here then is Chapter Four, the aptly titled, In the Absence of the Doctor.
Chapter 4
In the Absence of the Doctor
LOG 34445986++8U
EXCERPT ONLY
STATUS: VERIFIED
CONTENT: RESTRICTED
AUTHOR: KLS2
EXCERPT BEGINS
My earliest memory is of a bird standing on one leg, on a beach.
My saddest memory is of my father, sitting by a fireside, clutching a whisky. There were tears in his eyes, and my mother was snatching me away.
My vision swam and I focused. My name is Kate Lethbridge-Stewart.
… I dropped the sheet back into place and steadied myself on the wall. I could feel the sweat on the palm of my hand against the cold of the stone. Why those particular memories, I wondered, and why here and now? I made an effort of concentration and forced myself back into the present: I was in the lower levels of the Under Gallery, eighty feet below the London streets. Seven storeys of forbidden historical artefacts were stacked between me and the sunlight. Was there something here, possibly alien, that could affect a human brain? I noted, without surprise, that I’d just referred to myself as a human brain—alien contact, over time, often results in dissociative cognitive processes. I decided to action a psyche evaluation for myself at the first opportunity. I found a handkerchief and carefully dabbed the sweat from my face and hands. I had a UNIT response team under my command, the Under Gallery had been breached, and the Doctor had just gone missing—I needed to maintain appearances.
‘We’re not supposed to touch them,’ came a voice from immediately behind me.
Petronella Osgood. I remembered a note on her file, and had to suppress a smile: Petronella has a talent for being under your feet before you even know she’s in the room. She was also, in the absence of the Doctor, UNIT’s number one tactical asset.
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