Doctor Who_ Slow Empire Part 13

'You can't do this!' Anji snapped at the Doctor. 'I can't believe you're doing this! After all you said, how can you be helping helping these things after all?' these things after all?'

'I really have no choice, Anji,' said the Doctor solemnly. 'You heard what they told me. You heard what they were going to do. All I can do, now, is take the course of least harm and hope that I can live with the consequences.' He turned back to the creatures, who appeared to be looking around in puzzlement not puzzled in the usual way that people were upon stepping into the dimensionally incongruent s.p.a.ces within the TARDIS, but merely and innately puzzled by anything and everything that was not themselves, and was not of themselves.

'Come along!' the Doctor said briskly, even going so far as to clap his hands. 'Let me take you where we need to go.'

With that, he set off across the console room and disappeared through an internally connected door. The creatures watched him for a moment, then came to a corporate and possibly incorporate decision and followed him, leaving Anji, Fitz and Jamon looking at each other, every bit as puzzled as the creatures themselves had apparently been.

'What the h.e.l.l is he playing at now?' Anji demanded.

'Don't look at me,' said Fitz, shrugging. 'I know I've known him longer than you, but that's just given me more time not to know what the h.e.l.l he's playing at.'

'I must confess,' said Jamon de la Rocas, 'that I had expected him to attempt some stroke in these environs, doubtless making use of ail his strange contrivances.' He frowned. 'If not here, though, I fear that I cannot imagine what such a scheme might ultimately be.'

'Well, we'll never find out if we don't go and see,' said Anji.

All together, as a group, they left the console room and followed the trail of the Doctor. That is, they followed the entirely more evident, slimy and noxious trail of the creatures who were accompanying him. When they reached its end, Anji's eyes widened in much the same way as had those of Fitz when the monstrous creatures had so recently entered.

'That's...' she began.

'It looks very much like it, doesn't it?' said Fitz.

It was the miniature copy of the console room he had seen earlier. There was no sign of the Collector, however, and the access panels had been closed up. The chamber looked utterly pristine save of course where it was being busily befouled by the secretions of a collection of monstrous creatures.

'This is where I control the core functions of the TARDIS,' the Doctor was saying. 'You can make the link here. Do you want to run a high-tension cable or something of that nature inside?'

'We will make the link ourselves,' said a creature, the one who sported a jaunty if slightly beaten-about Amba.s.sador Morel-effect. 'We will make the link between the Engines and our... brethren in the Endless Real with our material forms...'

With a casual but very careful courtesy, the Doctor stepped away from the console. 'You're perfectly welcome. Be my guest. I think you'll find it's those control pads there you're looking for...'

And then things happened quickly. Too quickly, on so many wildly differing scales, for any single observer ever to fully comprehend them. And not necessarily in the entirely correct order, besides...

In the ash-cloaked crater, the ma.s.sive Pylon most ancient and the progenitor of every pylon discharged its energy with a burst that could never have been seen with human eyes, or heard by human ears, for the simple reason that any unprotected human close enough to see or hear it would have been vaporised upon the instant though the echo of that discharge, in certain secondary electromagnetic forms, would in the fullness of time be heard throughout the Empire entire.

The primary force of the discharge sped, at the speed of light, towards the nearest planet of the Empire upon which might be an Engine of Transference, then to be relayed to the next, then the next, and the next the initial stages of a cat's cradle that would, in time, bind up all of Imperial s.p.a.ce.

In the TARDIS, a collection of embodied abstract nightmares attempted to link with reality-altering processes, the nature of which they did not quite comprehend, attempting to use them to set up a dissonant modulation in the signal from the Pylon a specific form of corruption that would allow their fellow Wraiths, still trapped in what they called the Endless Real, to latch on to and ride the signal, bursting from each Station of Chamber of Transference in their thousands and millions, on a thousand worlds, wherever the signal hit...

Something was... wrong.

Very wrong.

One of the problems with human sensory equipment, in the relative sense, is its inability to receive information outside some very narrow wavebands and its inability to distinguish certain things within those bands. Garbled information is merely corrupted, no matter what the number of forms that corruption might potentially take. For the chaotically manifested forms, of Vortex Wraiths, however, the situation is somewhat different In the depths of the TARDIS, hooked to the control console, the creatures realised that some other factor was operating. The processes of the TARDIS were alien to them in any case but this this was alien in another way entirely, alien in a way it was impossible to predict. Discord piled upon discord in an accelerating loop that twisted the signal in a way, inside themselves and on their own terms, that almost drove them mad. Desperately they tried to adjust their modulations to take in this unknown and erratic factor and bend it to their will... was alien in another way entirely, alien in a way it was impossible to predict. Discord piled upon discord in an accelerating loop that twisted the signal in a way, inside themselves and on their own terms, that almost drove them mad. Desperately they tried to adjust their modulations to take in this unknown and erratic factor and bend it to their will...

They miscalculated. The Pylon signal slipped from their control and began to pulse, frequency rising, accelerating out of all possible control...

On several worlds, the world of Shakrath included, Amba.s.sadors screamed and went into spasm as the tendrils of an obscene, otherworldly control were ripped from their minds, wholesale, physically if psychosomatically shredding their brains in the process and shutting down their central nervous systems with terminal shock.

'Get out of here!' the Doctor cried, as the creatures cl.u.s.tered round the console and, connected to it with tendons, began to shake and bubble and smoke. He picked up Anji bodily, she being closest to him at the time, literally threw threw her out of the door, then chivvied Jamon and Fitz out behind her. her out of the door, then chivvied Jamon and Fitz out behind her.

'Where are we going?' Anji panted as they ran up the corridor.

'Console room,' said the Doctor.

'Don't you mean the real real console room?' asked Fitz. console room?' asked Fitz.

'Yes, the, ah, "real" console room, in the sense that you seem to mean.'

Behind them, several squealing creatures burst explosively into flame.

The first that the various worlds of the Empire itself would know of the above events in the wholly physical sense would come, relatively speaking, over the next months, years, centuries and millennia, when the corrupted signal would hit the Pylon of their own Engine of Transference without warning, set up conflicting, escalating dissonances in a fraction of a second and shatter the Pylon catastrophically. Much in the same way, in fact, as the Doctor and his companions had witnessed on the world of Thakrash. (For some strange reason, though, or rather from a variety of small and seemingly inconsequential reasons, such potentially lethal detonations occurred with a minimal loss of life. Sometime later, and long after the events detailed in this chronicle, the Doctor was heard to remark that he really should think about getting round to doing that, at some point.) There was a Pylon, of course, however, in the immediate vicinity of the TARDIS and the effects of the dissonant backlash were more or less immediate. Such was its nature that the blast took out half the entire planet upon which it was situated, the actual name of which would never become known.

On every Imperial world where there remained an Amba.s.sador, including that of Goronos and the Amba.s.sador Jarel, those Amba.s.sadors went into terminally spasmodic fits, simultaneously, for which the relatively few Amba.s.sadorial deaths previously had been merely a precursor. Those who found their Amba.s.sadors, or at least found their remains, would have no clue as to what had caused their deaths at least, for anything between a month and a millennium, until the detonative signal from the Pylon hit them at the speed of light.

The blast was of such power, in fact, that it might have even destroyed the TARDIS or at the very least wounded her seriously had not the Doctor reached what Fitz had called the 'real' console room in time to slap a switch and have her dematerialise bare microns ahead of the leading edge of the blast.

In the words of Jamon de la Rocas, in the very merest sliver sliver of the nick of Time. of the nick of Time.

Epilogomena

'It's a little strange,' said the Doctor. 'I think it's a little strange, anyway. I was playing all those bait-andswitch games, thinking how sophisticated I was being and congratulating myself all the while on my cleverness but, looking back on recent events, I realise how crude my plans actually were. Crude, but with that kind of cold remoteness that comes from treating people like the pieces on a board the worst of both worlds. I don't think I'll be doing that again, for a while.'

He and Anji were in the console room, looking at the simulation he had built up of the transmat linkages between the worlds of the Empire. Anji watched the links shift and fragment in different ways as he ran a series of different extrapolations.

'How much of it did you actually plan?' she asked him.

'Not too many of the specifics. A lot of those were pure improvisation. When I noticed that the TARDIS was generating herself what I a.s.sume to be a backup for this place ' his gesture took in the console room 'should we ever need it, I decided to lay the final trap for the Vortex Wraith manifestations in there.' He frowned at the 'true' console, which while functioning normally, so much as it ever did, seemed to be contriving to do so with the impression of umbrage. 'I don't think she's happy with me, for making all that mess in there. Meeting the Collector and discovering how supremely incompatible its technology was with the transmat technology of the Empire was entirely fortuitous. I'd have been able to achieve the same effect in some other way, with a bit of work, but it saved me a lot of time and effort.

'The plans I made were general in nature,' he continued, a large part of him still intent on switching between permutations on the display. 'That was the problem, really I was imposing imposing solutions on things, making them fit within my own interpretations for no better reason than solutions on things, making them fit within my own interpretations for no better reason than I I wanted them to, and then finding ways of justifying it. The Processes of the Empire were distorting s.p.a.ce-time and interfering with the function of the TARDIS, so of course it had to go but that's nowhere near enough of a good reason. The manifestations of the Vortex Wraiths were using the Empire to subjugate millions and prepare for ma.s.s invasion, so of course it had to go but that's a blatantly simplistic reason, just a hook on which to hang what I wanted to do in any case.' wanted them to, and then finding ways of justifying it. The Processes of the Empire were distorting s.p.a.ce-time and interfering with the function of the TARDIS, so of course it had to go but that's nowhere near enough of a good reason. The manifestations of the Vortex Wraiths were using the Empire to subjugate millions and prepare for ma.s.s invasion, so of course it had to go but that's a blatantly simplistic reason, just a hook on which to hang what I wanted to do in any case.'

The Doctor sighed.

'I came to realise,' he said, 'that the real reason why the Empire had to go, so far as I was concerned, was that it's entire underlying structure was based upon coercion and imposed control from the conditioning imposed on those poor souls who set it up in the first place, onwards. I loathe and despise that form of imposition, so what do I do about it? I impose my personal preferences upon an entire galactic sector let alone the way I manipulated the people I like to call my friends...'

'Yes, well,' said Anji acidly. 'We gaze into the Abyss, the Abyss looks back and so forth. Dreadful movie, by the way. I almost never forgave Dave for forcing me to watch it. You can tell where the talent was in that that marriage.' She realised that she was wandering slightly from the point. 'The point is, this Empire collapses at the speed of light, however long that takes. Civil disorder, riots and whatnot. Spot of ma.s.s cannibalism here and there...' marriage.' She realised that she was wandering slightly from the point. 'The point is, this Empire collapses at the speed of light, however long that takes. Civil disorder, riots and whatnot. Spot of ma.s.s cannibalism here and there...'

The Doctor gave her a look. 'Is that supposed to make me feel better?'

'Nope. The effects of all this transmat stuff on s.p.a.ce-time. With the Empire gone, is that still going to be there?'

'No,' the Doctor said. 'The distortions are resetting themselves even now actually, they're resetting exponentially and faster than they probably should, which leads me to believe that a base state of time travel might now actually be possible within the parameters of...'

'So things are going to settle down,' said Anji, 'except where they don't. People are going to develop star travel, except where they won't, and things will generally carry on, without a load of Amba.s.sadors to stick in their collective oar. Listen, I've seen seen the places you made us go, yes? The things that Emperor got up to on Shakrath, those lunatics still dreaming of a power they thought they once might have had on Thakrash, that total "imposed control" you were talking about on Goronos... So tell me this. On the whole, all things considered, is the d.a.m.n place going to be the places you made us go, yes? The things that Emperor got up to on Shakrath, those lunatics still dreaming of a power they thought they once might have had on Thakrash, that total "imposed control" you were talking about on Goronos... So tell me this. On the whole, all things considered, is the d.a.m.n place going to be better better than that from now on?' than that from now on?'

'Well, broadly speaking, yes...' the Doctor began.

'Then stop coming it with all the trembling hand on the brow and n.o.ble regret, then,' said Anji, 'because you're fooling n.o.body. You've left things better than you found them, and that's pretty much all that anybody can hope for. You know what I think, in the end?'

The Doctor smiled slightly. 'What do you think?'

Anji gestured towards the extrapolatory screen. 'I think you should switch that b.l.o.o.d.y thing off, and get back to working out how to get me home.'

The Stellarium was back. n.o.body had seen it actually appear; it was simply there.

'Ah, me,' said Jamon de la Rocas, gazing out through the virtual-crystal dome at the vortex. 'To think I should have lived to see such transcendental marvels. A collection of lights that appear to do nothing much save swirl around, then swirl again...'

'I was a bit worried,' Fitz said, watching the vortex with slightly more active pleasure than Jamon. The familiarity of it made him feel, in some sense, that he had come to something marginally approaching home. 'I was worried that we'd find all these millions of Wraiths waiting for us. I'd have thought they'd be angry angry enough to attack us with anything they could throw.' He peered out at the churning metaplasmic light, frowning. 'There don't seem to be any of them. Not one. It's a bit weird. I wonder what happened to them.'

'h.e.l.lo, all,' the Doctor said, strolling into the dome. 'Don't tell Anji, but I'm taking a small break from locating a set of useful infraspatial co-ordinates for Earth. If she finds out, I have the nasty feeling that she might be slightly tart. Periods of stress and duress do tend to coa.r.s.en her language, I've noticed, for a while. Has anyone seen the Collector?'

Fitz shrugged.

'Not I,' said Jamon.

'It occurred to me that I haven't thanked it for its sterling work,' the Doctor said. 'The modifications turned out almost better than I'd hoped with a decided lack of things strangely disappearing the moment you put them down and turn your back on them, besides.' He turned to look at Jamon. 'Are you feeling quite all right? You seem a little down, if you don't mind me saying so.'

'Just feeling a little out of place, Doctor,' said Jamon. 'Indeed, some small part of me wonders if I'll ever be in in place. Well, not actually a place. Well, not actually a place place as such, but you'll understand what I mean. Traveller is what I am, my place being forever that of a stranger on any world, in my own small way but with the Engines of the Empire being destroyed as we speak, that life is no more.' He gazed out into the vortex again, somewhat mournful. 'Also, I confess, I cannot take my mind from those who but for the grace of the G.o.ds might have been me. Those in the process of Transferral when the Engines themselves are destroyed. The signals of their Souls hurled for ever through the void, with never a place for them to come to rest...' as such, but you'll understand what I mean. Traveller is what I am, my place being forever that of a stranger on any world, in my own small way but with the Engines of the Empire being destroyed as we speak, that life is no more.' He gazed out into the vortex again, somewhat mournful. 'Also, I confess, I cannot take my mind from those who but for the grace of the G.o.ds might have been me. Those in the process of Transferral when the Engines themselves are destroyed. The signals of their Souls hurled for ever through the void, with never a place for them to come to rest...'

'Of course!' There was the sound of a slap. The Doctor had slapped his head with the heel of a hand. 'I knew I was forgetting something. Slipped my mind entirely.' He didn't seem exactly depressed about it.

'We'll have to do something about that right away,' he said cheerfully, as Jamon looked at him askance. 'We'll put our heads together and come up with something, never you fear.'

There is little left, I fear, to tell in the general, and little enough in the personal. While I know other tales concerning the Doctor, and many of them to boot, this one must by needs be drawn to a close. All good things must come to an end, or so they say, but in my general experience the self same thing holds true, too, for nigh on everything else. Suffice it to say that the Doctor and his companions, Anji and Fitz, travelled on though to what ultimate destination, and what perils they might have met there (and, indeed, upon the way), I cannot tell, though should I subsequently hear you may rest a.s.sured I'll be the first to do so.

The Collector was indeed located, some very brief while after the events I last related, and offered pa.s.sage to the planet of its people. After much pause for thought, however, it elected to decide that the remains of an Empire plunged into disarray might offer such pickings as might make any specimen of his species swoon with pure delight. Mindful of the possible consequences should the Collector remain entirely free and at large, however, the Doctor decided that it might be best for all concerned if it were placed in the charge of a companion to whom it might look for the example of restraint concerning its baser... Yes, yes, I know it wasn't quite like that. I am merely giving these good people the gist. And, yes, I know that you've been very good in keeping your manipulatory appendages away from all the nice things in the vicinity. Perhaps these good people will allow you to select a little something in recompense for your being so good, at some appropriate point.

Now where was I? Oh, yes...

And as for myself? you ask. Well, in some circ.u.mstances, I truly believe that it is better to show than tell. A pretty little thing, is it not? Now, as you can plainly see, this is a little something the Doctor himself fabricated. A personal transportation unit, or so he called it, operating in much of a similar way to the Engines of Transference as were save that it is capable of Transferring one from some previous point to another in a matter of mere seconds, no matter what the distance in fact might be. In the words of the Doctor himself, people shall always need a stranger among them, a bearer of new tales, and as such I hope that I might have proved myself worthy of the remit in some small degree.

It has a secondary purpose, however. You will recall, of course, how I have remarked upon the fate of those poor Souls who found themselves caught between pillar and post, as it were, when Transferring to a Chamber or Station that has been destroyed? Their signals lost in the lonely dark? Well, the secondary purpose of this marvellous little device is, so the Doctor says, to intercept and reintegrate that signal and And, speaking of which, please do, if you would be so kind, bear with me for one moment...

Ah! Sir! How quite wonderful to meet you! These good people you see here, I am sure, mean you not one iota of harm, never you fear about that. Now, I understand that you might be feeling a little confused at this point. Perfectly unnatural, may I say, if you weren't. There is much that you should know about your present circ.u.mstance, though it is a tale quite long, I must say, in the telling...

Notes.

1. Many and varied, are the apocryphal stories surrounding the Domina of the Hidden Hand indeed, rather too many for them to be easily encapsulated in a single person, even had that person been at it all hours, every day, for an entire lifetime. Hard evidence suggests, in fact, that she was a not particularly notable ruler, not particularly long lived and rather more retiring than otherwise. Of course, the places to which she retired retired at all hours, every day, and what she got up to in there when she did, lay foundation to her legend for sultry rapacity in spirit if not in the fact of their particulars. at all hours, every day, and what she got up to in there when she did, lay foundation to her legend for sultry rapacity in spirit if not in the fact of their particulars.

2. Eleven luminous planetoids, now, following a combined collision and explosion which, by all accounts, could be seen by the naked eye several stellar systems away.

3. Shakathri firegems are, in fact, something of a misnomer, on the count of their not being gemstones at all, but the pupal form of a luminous insectoid creature that, when hatched, promptly latches on to the abdomen of any human in the vicinity and burrows into the heart to deposit an egg sac. The pupal stage of these creatures lasts for several hundred years, and, at the time in question, those of Shakrath had no idea of the true nature of the ornamentation that covered their finest cities. They soon would.

4. It may be noted that most worlds of the Empire, at this time, had a pluralistic theology, but with a distinct lack of any specific pantheon. They tended to speak vaguely of 'the G.o.ds' in much the same way as a three-timesa-lifetime member of the Church of England might speak of G.o.d in the singular.

5. It may be worth noting at this point that Anji had thought Fitz to be playing a version of the tune to the TV-series Steptoe and Son Steptoe and Son. Fitz, on the other hand, knew where Syd Barratt lived.

6. The Great Mother, again, was a staple of Imperial cosmology, without those who spoke of her dwelling overmuch on her particular specifics. This tends to confirm the notion that such matters were spread thinly across the Empire, like b.u.t.ter on too many slices of bread.

7. Pig iron, in the Empire, derived its name from the fact that the smelters refining iron from ore were commonly populated by a slave race of Piglet People.

8. In the language of the Empire, mentions of specific G.o.ds and their duties were literally on the level of 'one of the G.o.ds whose, you know, job it is to make sure that people go to sleep and whatnot'. Where applicable, we have contracted such constructions into mythological terms relevant to an inhabitant of Earth.