‘The walls of the Black Archive.’
‘Precisely, Miss Oswald. They carved their idiot archive out of the sediment of this place. The Black Archive not only contains alien technology, it is built out of it.’
Elizabeth was now staring at him, stony-eyed. ‘Old man, why do you treat your current danger as if it were an educational opportunity?’
‘Because, ma’am, I have never encountered a danger that wasn’t.’
Her eyes narrowed, but she was interrupted as another Zygon came padding over to them. Up close, the smell was overpowering and Clara felt her eyes stinging. The Zygon gave a little bow to Elizabeth and spoke in a scraping whisper: ‘Commander, if I may ask—why are these humans here?’
‘I say they should be, therefore they are. Just because I am presently in human form, do not presume to question my judgement, or I shall put out your eyes. As you know, I have already had to do that once today, and I dislike to repeat myself.’
‘My profound apologies, Commander.’
‘Noted. How many have been processed now?’
‘Almost all, Commander. I am the last of the invasion brood.’
‘Very good,’ nodded Elizabeth. ‘I will remain with the others to ensure your safety. It is time you too were translated.’
The Zygon lowered its head in assent, and Elizabeth placed a hand on its arm, as if comforting it.
‘Do not fear this strange world you go to now,’ she said. ‘For you will be the commander there, not I. It is my place only to open the door. You shall step through it into glory.’
If a Zygon could look moved, this one did. ‘Commander,’ it breathed.
‘To your mission, brave voyager,’ she said, sterner now. ‘There are humans present, as there will be in the future—you must maintain appearances at all times.’
‘It shall be done,’ hissed the Zygon. It began making its way towards the wall behind them. Turning to watch, Clara saw what she had missed before. All the landscape paintings from the Under Gallery were arranged haphazardly round the door through which they had entered, each of them gripped in place by a fibrous sucker extruding from the flesh wall. ‘Landscapes with figures,’ said the Doctor, next to her now. ‘You see? Those are the same paintings we saw in the gallery, but with figures still in them.’
‘Not as bad as you made out,’ she said.
‘Who isn’t?’
‘You weren’t.’ She nodded to the old man who was now examining the paintings.
‘Observe this, Doctor,’ Elizabeth was saying. ‘I believe you will find it fascinating.’
The Zygon had stepped towards a fibrous nodule growing out of the floor. The nodule ended in a ring of fingers, which gripped hold of a gleaming, silver sphere.
The Zygon placed its hand on the sphere. There was a rapid series of clicks, the air around the Zygon seemed to glitch for a moment, and then the whole Zygon simply folded out of existence and was gone.
‘Well, what do you think? Does my betrothed approve?’ asked Elizabeth, slipping her arm into the Doctor’s.
‘That’s Time Lord technology,’ the Doctor snapped back at her. ‘Stolen Time Lord technology.’
‘And to think, you date these people,’ said the Doctor.
‘You boys really don’t have memories, do you?’ sighed the Doctor, querulous as ever. ‘As I have already reminded you, lots of our technology got stolen during the war, it was one of the principal dangers. Perhaps if you pair spent less time flapping your hands about and posing dramatically you might develop some kind of useful recall.’
‘But where did the Zygon go?’ asked Clara.
‘Look to the paintings,’ said Elizabeth.
As Clara looked, one of the landscapes glowed. The lumpen figure of the Zygon was materialising on a hillside.
‘That’s him? That’s the Zygon, in the picture now.’
‘It’s not a picture, my dear,’ said the Doctor, crinkling a smile at her again—the old man seemed to enjoy explaining things to her. ‘It is, in fact, a Stasis Cube. Time Lord art, you see? Frozen instants in time, bigger on the inside. Like a three-dimensional photocopy of a four-dimensional event. But as you can see, you could store living matter inside it too. Though why would you want to?’
‘Suspended animation!’ shouted the Doctor. He turned to Elizabeth, who was still wrapped around his arm. ‘Oh, that’s very good. First class. Your Zygons all pop inside the pictures, wait a few centuries till the planet is a bit more interesting, then out they come. Blimey, you lot—you won’t invade anywhere that doesn’t have decent broadband.’
‘Yes, yes, yes!’ yelled the Doctor, his hands now whizzing about at each other, as if he were signing an aerial dogfight for the deaf. ‘You see, Clara? They’re stored in the paintings in the Under Gallery, like Cup-a-Soups. Except you don’t add water, you add time. You add time-water to the painting-soup. If you can picture that. Nobody could picture that. Forget I said Cup-a-Soups.’
‘Okay, I get it,’ said Clara. ‘Back in the future, when we went to the Under Gallery, the Zygons decided the world was finally worth conquering. Basically the alarm went off, and they climbed out of the paintings.’
The Doctor was now disengaging his arm from Elizabeth’s. He looked at her, cold now. ‘Right, well, seeing as that’s all settled, it’s time I told you something,’ he said. ‘Do you know why I know you’re a fake, Queenie? Because the fact is, you’re such a bad copy. It’s not just the smell, or the unconvincing hair, or the atrocious teeth, or the eyes just a bit too close together or the breath that could stun a horse—it’s because my Elizabeth, the real Elizabeth would never have been stupid enough to reveal her own plan. Honestly, why would you do that?’
For a moment, Elizabeth said nothing. Then she leaned in a little closer to them all, and lowering her voice, spoke in the sweetest tones. ‘Because,’ she said, ‘it is not my plan, and I am the real Elizabeth.’
There was a silence. For the first, second, and third time in his life, the Doctor could find absolutely nothing to say.
‘So, it would appear that my Kingdom is infested with demons that may steal the faces of mortal men and that England is doomed to suffer their dominion in the years to come; that the man whose proposal of marriage I have just accepted is a spy from another world who believes me to be a demon in disguise; and that the odour of my breath might stun a horse. I am of the firm opinion that this has not been a good picnic.’
They were in the Queen’s bedchamber, and Clara was amused at the way the Doctor had arranged himself around the room. The old man sat in a chair at the side, with the air of a presiding dignitary. He glanced around from time to time, seeming either faintly amused or faintly disgusted by everything he saw—except when he looked at Clara, when he always crinkled a smile and nodded. This hated phantom from the Doctor’s past seemed to like her and, to her surprise, she discovered she liked him too. Just as she thought that, he glanced at her and then away again, as if he had overheard her. She knew her Doctor would sometimes take peeks inside her head, and wondered if his previous selves ever did that too.
The Doctor who had proposed to Elizabeth was striding about the room, agitated, his hands rammed in his pockets, like a sulking schoolboy. Dear God, that man could pace. It was as if every floor he stood on was too hot for his feet. He was issuing a constant stream of explanations and excuses and apologies, which no one seemed to be listening to, least of all him.
Her Doctor was sprawled on the bed, as if exhausted by the efforts of his previous self, eyes shut, and apparently dozing. She wondered what he remembered of being in this room, twice before. Mostly he seemed surprised by what was happening around him, but now and then she caught him glancing at the others, clearly haunted by a memory. She lay on the bed next to him, with her head propped on her hand, and her eyes kept returning to the remarkable woman who had brought them all here.
The Queen had arranged herself on the window seat, with the rising sun behind her. Somewhere, a portrait painter wa
s missing a majestic opportunity.
‘Yes, yes, okay,’ said the Doctor, suddenly opening his eyes, and interrupting the flow of excuses, ‘But you still haven’t explained what happened to the other one. Where’s the Zygon version of you?’
‘I was talking!’ said the Doctor.
‘You still are,’ replied the Doctor.
‘My twin is dead in the forest—as I believe I told you.’
‘You didn’t tell us how she got that way,’ said the Doctor, wriggling up to a sitting position on the bed. ‘They don’t just pop like balloons, Zygons.’
‘One begs to differ,’ said Elizabeth. She had produced a dagger from somewhere inside her dress. ‘Whatever a balloon is.’ She flicked a look to the Doctor. ‘I was having a picnic with a strange man, naturally I took precautions.’
‘I took sandwiches.’
‘My dear, you took a Zygon and here we all are. Once I returned here, the other Zygon creatures never even considered that it was me who survived the conflict rather than their own commander. The arrogance that typifies their kind.’
‘What, Zygons?’ asked Clara.
‘Men,’ said Elizabeth.
Clara grinned. ‘And you actually killed one of those things. Like, in hand-to-hand combat?’
‘I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman—but at the time, so did the Zygon. I was therefore able to take the command of the others, without difficulty—’
‘Sorry, wait, wait, wait, wait!’ protested the Doctor, stopping pacing for a moment. ‘You’re saying you just took command of an entire Zygon hive from outer space?’
‘Whatever their aspect, they are soldiers. Like all soldiers they have the character defect of obedience, which they mistake for the higher purpose of duty. It is easy to command those accustomed to orders. In many ways it is a kindness.’
‘But from outer space,’ he repeated.
The Doctor was now chortling away on his chair. ‘I did notice, your Majesty, that they appeared to have taken up bowing. Haven’t seen Zygons do that before.’
‘I confess that was my innovation.’
He laughed even harder. ‘Your Majesty, I am greatly looking forward to meeting you.’
Elizabeth glanced briefly at him; then she looked again, harder. She pointed to the gleaming sphere that rested on the writing desk next to where the Doctor was sitting. ‘That is from the Zygon lair.’
‘Yes, your Majesty. I stole it as we left.’ He picked it up and tossed it in his hand. ‘It belongs to my people. A family heirloom, you might say.’
‘But when did you steal it? I saw nothing.’
‘With respect, your Majesty, that is what you may expect to see when I steal something.’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘Your arrogance is familiar,’ she said, then rounded on the Doctor, who was still reclining on her bed. ‘As is yours, sir—you help yourself to the comforts my bedchamber, as if you belong here. I feel there is something of importance I am failing to perceive.’ She looked around the three men with a gathering frown.
‘Okay,’ said Clara, to break the silence. ‘But if you’re in charge of the Zygons, why didn’t you just order them off the planet, or something?’
‘That would have been unexpected, and therefore questioned. One should not stimulate one’s enemies into thought, while in the midst of a deception. In any event, the greater number of them were determined to put themselves inside those strange pictures, where I understand they intend to remain for many hundreds of years. I encouraged haste in this project, in the knowledge that we would be safer with them gone. I have resources enough to dispose of the few that have stayed behind.’
‘No, no, no!’ said the Doctor, ‘Come on, I know you, you’ve tortured me. You don’t dispose of people! Those creatures are stranded here, you have to find a way to make peace.’
‘The only peace they will find on English soil is underneath it.’
‘No, I forbid this—’
‘You forbid it, sir? Be less bold. Your eyes are pretty enough where they are, and I have a sufficiency of earrings. Henceforth please try to remember—’ her voice rose to a bellow—‘I am in charge here!’
For a moment it seemed to Clara that the windows rattled. Then, in the silence that followed, Elizabeth refolded her hands in her lap, and her smile resumed its former sweetness.
‘Hang on. Eyes,’ said Clara. ‘Downstairs you said you’d put out a Zygon’s eyes …’
‘It was a disciplinary matter, I had to behave as their commander.’
‘That’s what Zygons do?’
‘I have no idea, I was forced to improvise.’ She turned her gaze on the Doctor. ‘Can I expect you to do your duty, beloved?’
‘Depends on what you think my duty is.’
‘I will deal with the Zygons that remain here, and arrange for the paintings to be locked away, where they may do no harm. You will travel to the future and deal with whatever devilry they intend to unleash, upon emerging.’
The Doctors exchanged glances, clearly worried. ‘I may be a dab hand at a picnic,’ said the Doctor, at last, ‘but who said I can travel in time?’
‘You did. You have made many flippant remarks about other times you have visited. Flippancy is so often a concealed truth flaunted by an over-confident man. And I seem to be surrounded by three of those.’ She now rose to her feet. ‘Doctor!’ she said to the man on the chair. ‘Doctor!’ she said to the man sitting on the bed. ‘And Doctor,’ she said to the man, now staring back at her astonishment. ‘The future of my Kingdom is imperilled. Can I rely on your service?’
‘You’ve let this place go a bit,’ grouched the Doctor as he entered the TARDIS with the Doctor.
‘It’s not my TARDIS, it’s his one,’ replied the Doctor, nodding to the Doctor, who was racing round the console, slamming levers, and powering up. ‘I’ve refurbed a couple of times since this version,’ he went on. ‘Dumped the coral, went a bit metal, you’ll love it.’
The Doctor grunted in reply. ‘There better be more round things,’ he muttered.
Elizabeth had lost no time in making the necessary arrangements. The TARDIS had been transported from the forest, where it had been parked for several months, and after a brief ceremony, the Queen had sped them all on their way. ‘England depends on you. Remember your promise, Doctor!’2
‘So where are we going?’ asked Clara, as the TARDIS roared into life. ‘The Black Archive? Because there’s a Zygon in there right now. Well, right then. Well, in a few hundred years.’
The TARDIS lurched and they all grabbed on to the console.
‘Unfortunately,’ said the Doctor at the controls, ‘the Black Archive is the one place on Earth we can’t go.’
‘But I thought the TARDIS could go anywhere.’
‘Anywhere,’ he replied, ‘except the Black Archive.’
The Doctor found himself a chair at the side of this disgracefully grubby version of his TARDIS—really, was a quick dab with a sponge out of the question?—and contemplated the two boys, racing around the console, squeaking and bouncing like cartoon boffins. Really, he kept thinking. Those?
One of them was wittering on about phasing the TARDIS through the sub-dimensions, and the other one was disagreeing, because they’d be better off adapting the chameleon circuit, but none of it was worth listening to. Nothing would suffice, the Doctor knew. For these boys, the Time War was too long ago. They’d forgotten that TARDIS-proofing worked.
He sighed. Why had the Moment brought him here? What was the purpose? Seeing his future had changed nothing about his predicament. Soon he would have to return to the barn, and commit mass murder, and end the war. And then, apparently, he would descend into his second and third childhoods. Nothing had been altered by this visit, except that he now understood that he was doomed to survive.
The Doctor frowned. And yet something had changed. Something inside him was different now, but for the moment he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was.
‘Why c
an’t the TARDIS get into the Black Archive?’ asked Clara. She had joined him, sitting on the arm of his chair, and seemed equally bemused by all the jabbering around the console. ‘Kate said the Tower was TARDIS proofed, or something. Well, Zygon Kate.’
He looked at her for a moment. Splendid girl. He’d found himself glancing inside her mind, from time to time, which was an atrocious habit, of course, and one he would have to cut out. But there was something almost familiar about her, as if they were already fellow travellers. ‘Fear makes companions of us all,’ he said, aloud, and she frowned at him.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Sorry, my dear, I don’t know why I said that. Something in your voice brought it to mind. I’m an old man, my memory is a terrible jumble.’3
‘Not as old as you’re going to get,’ she said, glancing at the other Doctors.
Or as young, he thought, then remembered she’d asked him a question. ‘In the Time War, many species became adept at proofing themselves against the intrusion of a TARDIS—it’s easier to scramble the engines than you’d think. The Zygons were particularly good at it.’
‘And the Black Archive was built inside the remains of the Zygon base!’
‘Just so. Their reasoning seems clear. They wanted to avoid the attention of the Beverley Sisters over there’—he nodded towards the other Doctors—‘who most certainly would not approve of them stockpiling alien technology.’
‘I’m not an expert,’ replied Clara, ‘but weren’t there three Beverley Sisters?’
‘I feel you are making a point, but I’m afraid it is eluding me.’
‘Then I’m not making it very well. So there’s no way we can get into the Archive?’
‘Oh, but we have to, my dear. The Zygons are in there, they must be stopped.’
‘But you just said we can’t get inside.’
‘Can’t?’ twinkled the Doctor. He held up the silver sphere he had taken from the Zygon lair. ‘No such word as can’t,’ he grinned. He got to his feet, and approached the other two, who now seemed to be tearing the console apart.
‘This wiring’s a right mess, you should sort it out,’ Bow Tie was complaining.
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