Doctor Who_ The Mark Of The Rani Part 5

Miasimia Goria 'Doctor, let's get out of here! I don't just mean this office.

Away from Killingworth!'

This earnest advice was not the result of thought transference; Peri had not plugged into the Rani's wavelength. She had merely applied logic; a discipline acquired and honed during her studies to be a botanist.

'You're in danger! That attack wasn't random! Those louts tried to kill you!'

Disgruntled from the protracted and fruitless cross-examination of the two miners' wives, the Doctor took the acrimonious logic a stage further. 'True. But why? Aren't you interested in why they should make me their target?'

'Not in the least. I can't think of a better reason for abandoning this visit.'

The Doctor recognised a fallacy when he heard it. 'You're forgetting. We didn't just stumble into this place. We were hijacked.'

'I'm forgetting nothing. The Luddites are not our problem.'

Maddeningly, he agreed.

The penny dropped. 'You don't believe it is the Luddites.' Not a question, an accusation.

'Do you?' he challenged.

Her silence confirmed that she, too, had reached the same conclusion.

'Until I know what's going on, we stay.' The curt declaration brooked no more argument. He prowled the office, caged by his own inadequacies. Despite his verbal dexterity, he was unable to rea.s.semble the mosaic into a pattern that made sense.

Equally flummoxed by the irrational sequence of events, Ravensworth steered the distraught women he was escorting away from the shaft; the recent incident would only add to their anguish. Even so, the ma.s.sive cogged wheel's gaunt silhouette could be glimpsed above the shed roofs. A stark reminder of the ills besetting the once tranquil hamlet.

The baby Josh's wife was nursing, whimpered. She cuddled him protectively, but the infant refused to be comforted.

''Tis his feeding hour.'

'Can I get the drayman to give you a lift?'

'Nay, m'lord. Thanks kindly.'

'Aye. Shouldn't have bothered you.' The older woman was near to tears. 'But us were that worried.'

'I'll instruct my foreman to make enquiries among those on the shift.' Ravensworth signalled the guard to open the gate. 'We'll find them.'

His composed a.s.surance hid gnawing pangs of uncertainty as he contemplated the barricaded village street. In the best spirit of paternalism, he had given the people of his estates protection and leadership. Now he was failing them. The slough of despond deepened; a pall of smoke curled on the horizon. Ravensworth prayed it was just a hayrick and not the thatched homestead of a tenant farmer being razed. Normally he would have organised a fire-fighting party, but he could not afford to deplete the defences of the mine.

'Lord Ravensworth!'

The Doctor was calling from the pit shaft.

'Can you arrange for that poor fellow to be brought to the surface?'

'You should co-operate with me, you know,' the Master told the Rani. 'The Doctor's had two run-ins with the results of your handiwork.'

She was disconnecting Tim Ba.s.s from the computer.

The Master persisted. 'He won't tolerate someone deliberately playing havoc with his favourite planet.'

'Can't you get it into your warped skull that there is nothing deliberate about it! The aggression's an unfortunate side effect.'

'Unfortunate? Fortuitous would be a more apposite epithet!'

'Put it how you like. I need the chemical. The only source is the human brain.' Careful to spill none of the small amount of liquid, she began to tip it from the crystal flagon into the phial. 'It can have no relevance to you or your machinations.'

'Ah, but then, as yet you are not apprised of my purpose in being here.' He was registering the extreme caution with which she performed the task.

'To destroy the Doctor. You've never had any other. It obsesses you to the exclusion of all else.'

He was amused; did this arid, calculating chemist think his plans were that naive? 'You underestimate me.

Certainly I want to destroy the Doctor. To see him suffer.

But that will be an exquisite preliminary step. I have a greater concept. A concept that will encompa.s.s the whole human race!'

The Rani studied him like a specimen on a slide.

'You're unbalanced.' She resealed the phial. 'No wonder the Doctor always outwits you!'

The Master's euphoria vanished. In an angry sweep, he whipped the phial from her grasp.

It had the desired effect. 'Give that to me!' she cried.

Relishing the anxiety in her voice, he examined the contents. 'Don't get much, do you?'

'There's only a minute amount in each brain.'

Prudence tempered her response; the fluid represented all she had achieved to date; goad him, and the volatile wretch would have no compunction about spilling the lot.

'Why does extracting this make humans so aggressive?'

She remained mute. She did not want to share anything with the megalomaniac. Most of all the secrets of her research.

But the Master had the initiative. He began to tip the phial. 'I'll not ask again...'

Her reply was prompt. 'Because without that chemical the brain cannot rest.'

A beatific smile. 'Ah, now I understand. You need it for your aliens.'

The sharp reaction betrayed her surprise.

'On Miasimia Goria.' He was savouring her confusion.

More than just pique caused the flush on her cheeks at the mention of Miasimia Goria. She had striven to keep her conquest of the planet concealed.

He could not resist needling her. 'Oh, I dropped in on your domain before following you here. Chaos! Complete mayhem! What went wrong?'

'Wrong? Who said anything went wrong?'

'You rule there. Absolutely. I a.s.sume one of your schemes didn't turn out quite as you expected.'

The Rani was defensive. 'An insignificant affair. In the process of heightening the awareness of my aliens, I lowered their ability to sleep. They became '

' difficult to control. On the other hand, with this...'

he jiggled the precious brain fluid 'and those impregnated parasites, their talents are yours to command.

Such power...' Intoxicating possibilities presented themselves. 'Is that a scanner?' He rapped an opaque screen on an intricate display deck.

The Rani was still smarting, 'Find out!'

Deliberately, he unsealed the phial, allowing a droplet of the fluid to teeter on the brink. It was enough. The Rani switched on the scanner. 'Who do you want?'

'The Doctor.'

'Where did you see him last?'

'At the pit.'

She pressed three tabs, setting the co-ordinates. A magenta corona outlined the circ.u.mference, bathing the screen in a rosy hue. But the image that hardened into detail was that of a sad cortege.

Stretcher borne, draped in a blanket, Rudge's corpse was being carried from the pit shaft when the Doctor halted its progress.

Deferentially, he raised the blanket to inspect the left side of Rudge's neck. Then, while the bewildered Lord Ravensworth and Peri watched nonplussed, he inspected the necks of the stretcher bearers.

'What the blazes are you doing?'

His lordship's exasperation simmered over. Peri could have told him to save his breath!

'Do you hear me? What was that all about, man?'

'Later. You said the son of one of my attackers worked here?'

The request, without a trace of rudeness, disconcerted Ravensworth. 'Yes. Yes. Luke Ward. George Stephenson's apprentice. Very capable young man. Spotted him when he was just a lad. My protege, as it happ '

The Doctor cut in. 'Find him for me, there's a good chap.'

The novel role of errand boy flabbergasted the peer of the realm. He glared after the receding figure in the multicoloured jacket making for his office.

'The dratted man's a positive law unto himself!'

The Master and the Rani had observed all this on the scanner.

'You see, we do do have an allied cause,' he said to her. have an allied cause,' he said to her.

'Unless you eliminate the Doctor, he'll bring this cosy operation to an end.'

She accepted the a.n.a.lysis. The Doctor would dig and delve until he'd solved the puzzle. She would have to get rid of him. 'Then let's get on with it!'

'My way!' The Master's tone was firm. 'We do it my way!' He intended to impose the strategy. The precious phial that she had treasured was going to ensure his domination. 'Any idea where those morons you created might be?'

She jabbed the tabs to reset the co-ordinates.

The scene changed from the pit to a dark, disused mine.

Crawling along the low tunnels were Jack Ward, Edwin Green and several miners. Every now and then, with grubby knuckles, they rubbed the crimson marks that scarred their necks.

Having noted the co-ordinates and seen all he wanted, the Master abruptly strode from the laboratory into the bath chamber.

'Where are you going?' No reply. 'The brain fluid!'

'Perfectly safe.' Ostentatiously, the Master tucked the phial into his breast pocket. 'Next to my hearts. Both of them.' He disappeared into the hallway.

Extracting something from her skirt pouch, the Rani stalked furiously across the chamber. As she flounced into the hallway a hand clapped onto her wrist. Antic.i.p.ating her pursuit, the Master had diverted into an alcove.

When she made no attempt to get free, his suspicions increased. She was being uncharacteristically supine. What was she clutching? He prised her fingers apart, revealing a pill box.

'They're capsules for my lungs. The earth's damp atmosphere affects them.'

A plausible explanation.

Even so, the wily Master was sceptical. He flipped the lid. The box contained an a.s.sortment of pills.

'Do you trust anyone?'

'Yes. Myself. Capsules they may be. But don't touch them until that door closes between us!' He exited into the street.

Glowering after him, the Rani snapped shut the pill box.

With his departure, her alleged need of a capsule had also gone.

A ruse? He obviously thought so. The incident demonstrated the mutual lack of faith binding the Time Lords. Hardly an auspicious beginning to the proposed alliance.

7.