Why does he do it? Only he knows. Apparently he likes writing, and he loves his media. Doctor Who seems to give him ample room to move.
But the big question is, are the stories really worth reading, if they're all that long. Well, we hope they are. Certainly he does have his fans. He won the 1996 Double Gamma Award for Best Fan Fiction, an award previously won by Kate Orman, who has since said of him: "...continues to come up with the goods... hopefully a BBC Books submission is in the pipeline..."
While he refuses to be drawn on this, he has graciously allowed us to republish all of his previous works right here.
Some of these stories are quite sizeable files. That's why we've decided to make it easier for you to choose whether or not you wish to download them. We've included a small selection from each underneath the table. For a preview of the story, click on the story name on the left. To download the whole shebang, click on the story name on the right. It's quite simple, really.
Note that these stories are copyright to the author. If you want to
repackage or republish them, chances are he'll let you, but you have to
let him know first. You can contact us at the below link, and we'll make
sure he hears about your interest. Who knows? He might be willing to write
you an exclusive...
| Flux | Flux (43 kb, Word97 format) |
| Form | Form |
| Function | Function |
| Unhappy Endings | Unhappy Endings |
| Justice | Justice |
| Universal Evil | Universal Evil |
| The Highest Price | The Highest Price |
(First published in Sonic Screwdriver #??.)
Blurb: "What links a deposed dictator in the far future to a small town in 1940s Japan? A madman's obssession might lead to the destruction of an entire world. Can even the Doctor put this genie back in its bottle?"
The author notes:
"This was my first story for Sonic Screwdriver, and my first real Doctor Who story. I still have a fondness for it, and intend to write a sequel at some point, but it has to be admitted that this is a little patchy. Especially the interaction between the Doctor and Ace, which I now feel was a little ham-fisted. Oh well. We live and learn."
Sample selection from the story:
"The Doctor came to a halt before the guard, and a frown furrowed his
face. All human flesh had been scorched off the android, which stood motionless
at the door. It probably couldn't see him, because the glass coverings
over its ocular sockets was melted, glass rivers running down the metal
cheeks like tears. The Doctor cleared his throat. The machine swung into
life. "Identity," it croaked. The voice was harsh and synthesised, without
a fleshly throat to modulate the basic tones. "King James," snapped the
Doctor, rummaging through his pockets. The machine's response was predictable.
"No individuals with that designation have pass authority. Do you have
special designation?" "Yes," said the Doctor, as he found what he was looking
for. He passed the android the plastic card he had retrieved from his hatband,
and the android turned its back on him to slot the card into the receptacle
next to the door. The Doctor took advantage of this to step forward and
jab his umbrella into the android's exposed back. There was a sharp crack,
a flash and the android stopped dead. "Stupid machine," said the Doctor
happily to himself as he pried the American Express card from the machine's
hand. Then he bypassed it and wedged a screwdriver into the housing of
the ID card slot. A moment's hard leverage and he had the inner workings
visible. Here too he found technology that shouldn't exist for a few hundred
years. The neural net inside was quite rudimentary, but still beyond anything
even the Japanese should have had in the 1940s. A minute's work with the
screwdriver and the plastic card, and the door slid soundlessly open. The
Doctor stepped inside, then looked about him. He was at a T-junction of
corridors. He made a snap decision and ran. Seconds later the trio of hunter-killer
sentry robots arced around the corner on internal gyros and followed. Chova-san
looked around him in satisfaction, but it was a short-lived satisfaction.
All his carefully laid plans were ruined. The usually foolish Americans
had developed the atomic bomb about three months earlier than he had estimated,
and when Hiroshima had gone three days ago he had breathed a sigh of relief.
But he had been too soon to relax. The stubborn Japanese had refused to
see sense, and now this terrible thing had happened. Chova was not concerned
about the thousands of deaths in the city. He was not concerned that the
Japanese had just lost their war. They had made the most efficient allies
up until now, that was all. What concerned him was that his anonymity was
about to disappear. The complex he worked in would be the only building
left standing within a thousand metre radius, and the Japanese authorities
would be only too interested to know how they had survived. Chova just
didn't have the time to explain to contemptuous officialdom what he knew,
and just how he knew it. His experiments had just come to an end, and he
had been so close. So close to escaping from this barbarous place and time
he had found himself in. The Council had exiled him, sent him into the
Gyre in the hopes that he would be killed, in the sure knowledge that wherever
he ended up it would be far away from them and the Empire he had served
for so long. He had so looked forward to returning, to taking his rightful
place again as Emperor. Now that would never be. He would never again find
allies so efficient and so unquestioning as the Kyushi corporation. He
would never again be able to get so far without having to explain all these
new technologies; without having to patent them. And yet he had a few hours
left. A few hours, in which to accomplish work which he had carefully planned
out to take two months. But he was close enough. It could be done. He looked
at the object which rested inside the glass compartment. The only concrete
evidence that he was on the right track. The first tangible success he
had had since beginning the project, two years ago. It was a simple skull.
It was a nothing, a curio you could pick up on any street stall. But it
had come out of the time vortex. And that thought was what kept him going.
Chova realised that he had been staring at the skull for an unknown length
of time; not thinking, not realising, barely breathing. He tore his gaze
away from the symbol of his hope and turned back to the controls nearby,
the particle accelerator, the chronon collector, the remote fueller...
He had mere hours, in which to recreate a lifetime's work."
(First published in Sonic Screwdriver #??)
Blurb: "Perception. On the one hand it's a wonderful thing. On the other, it can be lethal... For the scientists working on Station 48-S, the vicious creatures all around them are nothing but shadows and images. But their illusions are about to be shattered... Only the Doctor might be able to save them, but the Doctor isn't feeling quite like himself at the moment."
The author notes:
"This story came from a lot of inspirations, the Alien movies
and The Thing amongst them. After the simplicity of Flux,
I wanted to try something which took a few risks. And I wanted to give
Benny a chance to shine, having just started to like her portrayal in Lucifer
Rising."
Story presently not available.
(First Published in Sonic Screwdriver #??)
Blurb: "It's going to be a time of reunions. Ace is going back to her home town... for a reunion long-anticipated. Benny's long search for her missing father is about to come to an end. And the Doctor... is about to meet someone he'd rather not have met the first time."
The author notes:
"Finalising the loose trilogy of Flux, Form and Function
was never going to be easy. Flux was a Doctor story; Form was
a Benny story. Function deals with Ace (much better than the previous
two had) as well as some background for Benny. (It has been interesting
to see that since this story was published, Kate Orman's Return of the
Living Dad has seen print, being the story of Benny finding her father
on present-day Earth...)"
Sample selection from the story:
"The Doctor drove the stolen Morris with a grim intensity that made
Ace wish she had a spare brake pedal.
"Do you want the easy answer?" he asked her.
"It'll do to start with," replied Ace.
"The Animi are cosmic parasites. They live off the magnetic force of
planets. Normally they establish themselves at the magnetic pole and amuse
themselves with local populations while they feed. They can absorb whole
intellects under the right conditions.
"In this case, it didn't have an opportunity to choose a landing site.
It crashed here, outside Perivale. It's controlling swathes of the local
population, just like a queen ant. Some have more autonomy than others."
"Audrey?" asked Ace.
"She might have been herself. Alternatively, she might just have been
trying to keep you in one place long enough for the Animus to get to you."
Ace frowned in thought. "You said that was the easy answer," she said.
"This isn't really Perivale, is it?"
The Doctor gave her a surprised smile. "No. It's an elaborate virtual
environment drawn from your own memories, and mine, and to a lesser extent
Benny's. This amount of detail must take an enormous processing capacity.
You might have noticed tiny pauses, or things that didn't quite ring true.
There's just too much for the controller to keep track of."
"So where's Benny?" Ace asked at last.
The Doctor brought the Morris to a halt at the top of the hill, brightness
through the windscreen washing Ace's face. The Doctor stared at it grimly.
"In the middle of one of my nightmares," he replied."
Blurb: "Introducing Rees Andovar. Embodiment of pure anarchy, he lives for himself and only himself. Which is a pity, because others have great plans for him... This time, however, he's met his match. How can anarchy hope to compete with the cold efficiency of scientific progress? The Doctor, it seems, has his work cut out for him. And it's more than the lives of his companions at stake this time."
First published in Sonic Screwdriver #??
The author notes:
"This one was written too quickly for perfection. Fortunately the editor
of the magazine split the story - one of my longest to that date - into
two parts, giving me time to rewrite the ending to the point where I was
almost happy with it.
It was a not completely successful attempt to introduce my own master
villain. Unfortunately, the best laid plans... the series developed rather
differently to the way I had originally envisaged it."
A sample from the story:
"She was interrupted at this point by a sussuration in the audience.
Fingers were raised, pointing to something on stage, behind Linda and on
Nilsson-Traager’s right. Linda started to turn, to look.
Too late.
The swirl of light that had caught the attention of the staff swept
forward and resolved into a human form, stage front. Unfortunately that
space was already occupied. Whatever Linda was about to say was possible
remained unsaid as she was pushed forcibly out of that space. In several
directions at once.
The newcomer was a human male, who wielded a small black box in one
hand and a large steel-grey gun in the other. He wore a long black trenchcoat
and a completely incongruous bowler hat. He looked around himself, taking
in the assembled, temporarily speechless scientists, the stage and microphone,
and the mess he stood in the centre of.
“Oops,” he said.
There was a murmuring in the audience. In just a few seconds people
were going to start screaming, the newcomer just knew it. This seemed to
always happen, unless he did something very quickly upon arriving.
Immediate action, that was the thing. He stepped forward slightly,
almost slipping on the slick floor, and gripped the microphone.
“Hi,” he said. There was no immediate response to this. He frowned
and tapped the microphone. Twenty pairs of eyes stared fixedly at him.
He smiled at them all. “My name is Rees Andovar. I’m your new boss. Would
all those who want to live please move to the left side of the auditorium?”
The Doctor leads his companions along the featureless corridors of the
Body Shop. They have been running but are now only managing a stumbling
jog; the corridors seem to go on forever. They are certainly longer than
the Doctor had at first anticipated.
Tegan is wondering if all this is really necessary. After all, she’d
been the only one to actually have any kind of a conversation with Andovar
and he’d seemed a nice enough bloke. A touch of incipient psychosis, maybe,
but nothing she or any other trained air hostess couldn’t manage. All you
needed to do was be firm, stand up to them, and they deflated like the
giant helium dirigibles of Burrazt.
Oh gosh. She must have been travelling with the Doctor too long.
Nyssa, meanwhile, is considering how much of the current situation
is the Doctor’s fault. In fairness the irreversible alteration to Andovar’s
gene matrix had been carried out before they had arrived, and since then
the Doctor had been doing everything which could be expected of him. But
it had become the Doctor’s fault when he hesitated at the last moment.
Andovar had been holed up in a corner, trapped with nowhere to go. Nyssa
can understand the Doctor’s reluctance to pull the trigger. She isn’t sure
if she could have done it herself. But being a Time Lord brings responsibilities.
And letting the time stream manipulator fall into Andovar’s hands had
of course been unforgivable.
And the Doctor?
The Doctor leads his companions along the featureless corridors, apparently
taking turns at random. The smell of smoke trails him, coming from the
scorched tails of his tan tailcoat. He watches the walls around him, occasionally
pausing to take bearings on a small black box he carries. He seems lost.
It has been quite some time since he was here last. Perhaps renovations
to the building have disoriented him. Perhaps he has simply forgotten the
way forward.
Or perhaps he is playing a bluff.
They stood just out of range of the door sensor while staff bustled
past them in and out of what the Doctor said was the central administration
office for the whole complex.
The Doctor was hatless. Tegan wondered for a moment about that, then
realised that he must have left it back on the bridge of the Terabithia,
in 2367. They’d left in rather a hurry. Nyssa had protested, saying that
it surely wouldn’t matter how long they took to follow, as they could take
the TARDIS to a point in time just before Andovar arrived wherever and
whenever he was going. The Doctor had scotched that idea, reminding Nyssa
that it was quite possible for Andovar to make changes to the timestream
which would directly affect Nyssa or Tegan, if somebody didn’t stop him
first.
The Doctor was speaking, breaking into Tegan’s reminiscences. “Tegan,
Nyssa, you might not enjoy some of the things we’re going to see. But remember,
we’re not here to do anything about them. They’re a part of history and
we can’t change them. So whatever you do...” The Doctor leant forward,
addressing the next to Tegan in specific, “... let me do the talking?”
“I thought we were in a hurry?” Nyssa prompted, irritated at
the Doctor’s apparent lack of priority-setting.
The Doctor straightened and took a deep breath. “Yes,” he said. “Come
along.”
There was nothing particularly distressing in the next room. It consisted
of a series of offices branching off a long corridor, similar in layout
to a hospital ward, complete with reception desk at this end of the corridor.
The Doctor went straight to the desk and flashed a charming smile at the
secretary. She didn’t smile back.
“We’d like to speak to Mr Andovar,” he said. “Rees Andovar. We’re his...
ah...”
“Psychiatrists,” volunteered Nyssa.
The secretary stared at them silently for a moment, until the silence
started to get uncomfortable. Then, finally, she spoke.
“There’s nobody of that name registered here.”
The Doctor frowned. He stared at the black box, then flashed it extremely
briefly at the secretary. “He booked in this morning. Could you just check
for us? It’s important.”
The secretary didn’t even glance down at her screen. “I’m sorry, sir.”
The Doctor was getting frustrated. “Maybe he used a different name,”
he said. The secretary just shook her head.
The Doctor glanced at his companions, but they were going to be no
help. The Doctor shrugged in resignation. “I’m sorry about this,” he said.
Then he reached over the desk and touched the secretary on the forehead.
Softly she drooped, and the Doctor lowered her head onto the desk. Then
he stepped around the desk and started scrolling through computer files.
Quickly he came across something he liked. He looked up in surprise.
“Johann Nillson-Traager!” he exclaimed. “I know him. But Andovar’s not
here.”
Tegan frowned. “He wouldn’t just check in. That’s not his style.”
“I quite agree,” said the Doctor. “Come on.”
Story presently not available for download.
(First published in Sonic Screwdriver #??)
Blurb: "What interest can Rees Andovar, self-confessed future ruler of the universe, have in a scientific expidition to a swamp-covered outer world? Perhaps the Doctor can find out in time to stop him. Of course, he'll have to find a way of getting out of these vines first..."
The author notes:
"A return to the simpler days of yore. This story is one I was quite
happy with. The 4th Doctor/Leela combination is almost custom-made for
comedy. (But so is just about any combination with Tom Baker.)"
A sample from the story:
"‘Have you noticed how the river is getting faster and rougher as we
go along?’ said the Doctor.
Rees thought about this. ‘No, I can’t say I have,’ he said eventually.
‘Odd,’ said the Doctor. ‘Neither have I.’
‘So?’ Rees was aware that he sounded more tense than he would have
liked. ‘Is that anything to get worried about?’
‘It’s just that they seemed very sure that this exercise would settle
our differences somehow,’ said the Doctor.
‘Perhaps the river ends at the sea and nobody ever returns because
none of them can swim back to shore?’
‘No,’ said the Doctor, ‘in that case nobody would ever come back.’
‘Did they say people ever came back?’
The Doctor didn’t answer that.
Rees was muttering to himself. ‘All the millions of planets in this
galaxy,’ he was saying. ‘All the thousands of primitive tribes I could
have stumbled upon. I have to get myself caught by people who think a little
argument can be solved by tying you to a raft and floating you down the
river. All the Separatists want to do to me is cut off my head. Suddenly
that doesn’t seem as offputting, somehow.’
‘It could be worse,’ said the Doctor. ‘On Earth they used to have something
called a witch hunt. If they suspected you they would tie a rock to your
ankles and throw you in the river. If you floated, you were a witch, and
then they burned you.’
‘At least that’s quick,’ said Rees. ‘Personally I didn’t intend to
die slowly of dehydration in the middle of a freshwater river on some godforsaken
planet on the edge of the known universe, thank you very much.’
‘I know why I’m here,’ said the Doctor. ‘What’s your excuse?’
‘It’s been almost five years since your friend blew off my leg,’ complained
Rees. ‘As you can see, the Time Lords haven’t caught up to me yet.’
‘Hah,’ said the Doctor. ‘Interfering busybodies running everybody else’s
business.’
‘You know,’ said Rees, ‘for once we are in complete agreement.’
‘Did you really expect Weiss to believe that I drugged the whole group
just because of an empty bottle in my pocket?’
‘Weiss would believe anything I told him,’ Rees said dismissively.
‘What did you tell him?’
‘Oh, simply that you were a genetically-altered weapon designed to
wipe out whole populations, and that if you die then so will everyone else.’
‘How imaginative of you,’ said the Doctor. ‘Did you get your inspiration
from anywhere in particular?’
Rees stared at him, puzzled. ‘You certainly seem to have a short memory.’
The Doctor attempted to shrug. ‘I live a busy life. Leela, what have
I told you about that?’
Rees started as he became aware of a slim, tanned arm holding something
at his throat.
‘But Doctor! He poisoned us all!’
Rees coughed irritably. ‘Drugged, not poisoned, thank you,’ he said.
‘The strongest stuff the medical pack had in it was Dextrazine. More’s
the pity.’
‘Leela, get out of the water,’ said the Doctor, a note of urgency in
his voice. As an afterthought he added, ‘and undo these vines.’
Leela was taken off guard by the sudden change in subject. ‘Why, Doctor?’
‘You should teach your savage to not ask questions, Doctor, otherwise
she might actually learn something.’
‘Shut up,’ said the Doctor kindly. ‘You know, Leela, I think I’ve just
realised why this trip was supposed to be so dangerous. You see, there’s
something very big and very nasty in the water about ten feet away from
your legs.’
Leela didn’t need any more encouragement to pull herself onto the raft.
She set herself about slicing through the Doctor’s bonds. Perhaps fortunately
she didn’t notice Rees unsuccessfully attempting to avert his eyes from
the glistening brown female body inches from his face. Rees made a mental
note to advise the Doctor that local garb, while in some cases useful to
maintain anonymity, had its limitations.
The Doctor leapt to his feet, a dangerous move which set the raft perilously
close to tipping over. He pulled his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket.
‘Will that help?’ asked Leela uncertainly.
‘Some animals are particularly susceptible to certain frequencies of
sound,’ explained the Doctor. He was fiddling with the settings on the
handle of the device. Slightly beyond the raft, the creature started to
close in. It was big, and probably quite used to battering log rafts to
splinters to get to its supper. The Doctor continued in his glib explanation
as more details of the creature became visible. ‘The technique is especially
effective...’
The sonic screwdriver found a peak note and the creature exploded,
drenching the three travellers anew with the resultant water-spout.
‘...when the creature is made of metal,’ the Doctor finished happily."
(First published in Sonic Screwdriver #??)
Blurb: "The Doctor has met his fair share of megalomaniacs in his time. None, however, has ever had a plan as brazen as this one... to become as Gods, Rees Andovar and his allies will kill billions. Unless the Doctor can stop them..."
The author notes:
"By this stage I had some idea of how the series was going to end up,
and which Doctors were going to be involved. Therefore this story needed
to involve Colin Baker's Doctor. Of course, it helped that it was a 6th
Doctor special edition of the magazine..."
A sample from the story:
"‘What precisely do you mean by that?’
The Doctor recognised the voice. Za Panato. Micro-atomic physicist,
author of the controversial Studies into Matter Transmission through Alternate
Realities, holder of three PhDs and the prestigious Kemlan award, and wanted
criminal in half a dozen star systems. The Doctor had long wanted to meet
the man, preferably of course behind bars.
‘I mean I know what you’re doing, and it’s not going to work,’ said
the Doctor.
‘No you don’t,’ said Beresford, and tightened his grip on the trigger...
‘Wait,’ said the third man. ‘I have an idea.’
The Doctor’s concentration broke. He couldn’t keep his mind on the
gun and make sure of what he had just heard at the same time. He looked
up.
‘Rees Andovar. I should have guessed.’
‘I must say it’s a bit of a surprise to me as well, Doctor,’ said Rees
pleasantly. ‘Last time we met, I thought you’d had it. You’re hard to get
rid of, Doctor.’
‘That makes two of us,’ said the Doctor. ‘How did you get away from
the Ship?’
Rees paused for a moment, fingering the scars on his cheeks. ‘Wasn’t
too hard, after a while. I got back some movement in my hands. The ship
started to trust me. Bad mistake.’
‘Evidently,’ said the Doctor drily.
‘All I had to do was bite the end off one of my fingers and it just...
let me go,’ he said. ‘So I have a bit of a bone to pick with you, Doctor.
Have you any idea of the mental anguish it causes, having to maim yourself
to survive? But after three years trapped in that neural net, I would have
tried anything.’ Rees smiled slightly. ‘Of course, it wasn’t all bad. I
learned quite a bit about biomechanical interfacing. It’s turning out to
be very useful information.’
‘I also have a bone to pick with you,’ said the Doctor. ‘Nyssa lost
three toes to frostbite.’
‘I’m heartbroken, really I am Doctor,’ said Rees.
Peri was watching all this in confusion. Somehow Rees had taken over
the conversation. Meanwhile, time was ticking by. The door behind her had
slid shut, and she felt excessively exposed to incoming peril.
‘Doctor, I only wish I had time to teach you what I mean. I don’t really
think chopping small pieces off your latest companion would come close
to showing you how I felt... but I’d be willing to give it a shot.’
‘Let her go,’ said the Doctor. ‘She’s not important.’
‘You’re right,’ said Andovar regretfully. ‘And neither are you. Nothing
matters now... except this machine.’
‘If it worked,’ muttered Panato sourly.
‘Maybe I could help,’ volunteered the Doctor. ‘Having problems, are
we?’
‘I think this might be beyond even your capabilities,’ said Rees. ‘No,
I think it’s probably safest all round just to kill you now.’
Peri had had enough. ‘The Doctor knows exactly what’s going on,’ she
spurted angrily. ‘The diff... um... the diffraction coefficient is wrong.
You’re going to blow everything up if you keep trying it.’
Rees raised an eyebrow. ‘Really. Do you think you could fix it, Doctor?
To save your life and your companions? You’ll be free to go. Or you could
even come with us. Be a god in the new reality. Divinity would suit you,
Doctor.’
‘No thank you,’ said the Doctor. ‘I could never be a happy god in any
universe where the devil is so boringly predictable.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Rees, smiling now. ‘You just find yourselves a
nice corner and sit down. We’ll keep trying this at sixty-second intervals...
and if you see us doing anything wrong, you will tell us, won’t you?’
The Doctor would have preferred to find a nice corner in the TARDIS,
but Beresford and his gun precluded that possibility. So they found a nice
corner and watched.
Forty seconds later the Doctor was helping Za Panato with his sums.
Lieutenant McIntyre paused at checkpoint eight. Another team of troops
deserted from their posts. Not for the first time, McIntyre wondered if
they had all been hand-picked by someone who knew him.
He understood, of course, that they had not been chosen for their intelligence
or their experience, and they had not been chosen for their committment.
They had been chosen simply because they were the only ones not to have
been influenced by the corruption which riddled the government, and, apparently,
the Landsknecht.
If, of course, there really was a conspiracy around...
No. He had no time for speculation along those lines. He had been ordered
by a superior officer. There could be no arguments about that.
He paused again. Something was wrong here, in this section of corridor.
It took him a moment to realise what it was. He stood and scratched his
head as he wondered which of his idiotic soldiers might have thought up
a harebrain scheme like that. The inner airlock door was jammed open with
a screwdriver. It accomplished, in the long run, nothing, McIntyre knew,
as the Landsknecht really didn’t need an airlock anyway.
A moment later a sound caught his attention. He glanced around to his
left, where the corridor wall was hissing and spitting little specks of
steel. It took him another couple of seconds to appreciate what this meant.
‘Oh sh...’
Whatever he had been about to say was abruptly cut off...
...as the corridor wall exploded inward in a shower of molten metal
and shredded flesh. Moments later booted feet strode through the smoke
and onto the station.
The Landsknecht had boarded."
First published in Sonic Screwdriver #100
Blurb: "The Doctor has found himself somewhere he can't possibly be, facing a threat to the very beginnings of Time Lord society. But is he too late? Has the history of the universe been irrevocably altered? The new Doctor certainly seems to think so..."
The author notes:
"An epic story, to round off an epic series, and to ensure the 100th
issue of the magazine made history. What can I say? You gotta read it.
I won't spoil the surprises by giving details. Read what's here, then download
the story. Then buy a copy of the magazine!"
A sample from the story:
"They had given him the right to remain erect, in deference to his
age and frail physical form. So he stood before her and did not kneel,
The Pythia was taller than he had expected, and younger. Not yet the
haggard old crone he remembered from the history books. Her time had not
yet come. And yet there was a glint of madness in her eyes, speaking of
the insanity which would eventually descend upon her.
Should he be careful for the sake of the future when the past had already
been so irrevocably altered?
‘Your coming was foretold,’ said the Pythia by way of greeting. ‘Who
are you?’
‘Just a traveller,’ said the Doctor. ‘I am the Doctor. I think, um,
I might have made a wrong turning somewhere.’
The Pythia fixed him with a gaze which swept aside all pretense. ‘I
cannot read your thoughts,’ she said. ‘Yet it is obvious to all that you
are no mere traveller. Your genetic makeup and your psychic identity mark
you as one of ours. Yet you are unknown to the archives. You arrived in
a travel device my staff have not been able to gain access to, a device
unlike any before seen. And there is not much left in the universe which
has not been seen. Do you know where you are, Doctor? Do you know the consequences
of your arrival?’
‘Should I?’ bluffed the Doctor. ‘I...’
‘You are on Gallifrey,’ said the Pythia. ‘The centre of the universe,
figuratively speaking. The mediator and guiding hand to a hundred thousand
worlds in the Inner Spheres. If you knew how much danger you were in now,
Doctor, your hearts would shrivel in your...’
‘I know far more than I can possibly tell you,’ snapped the Doctor,
irate. ‘I don’t need lectures, young lady.’
The Pythia was momentarily speechless. She couldn’t remember anyone
ever addressing her with anything less respectful than ‘My Lady’, and that
included the many barbarian visitors that came and went on this planet.
That kind of disrespect should earn him immediate vaporisation. She couldn’t
allow people to get away with that. She deserved respect. She was a goddess!
Perhaps having him executed now would be safest... but there was still
so much she didn’t understand about his arrival. Time enough to punish
him later. She held a hand in the air to forestall the retaliation her
subordinates might be tempted to deal out.
‘You will use a tone of respect when you address the Pythia,’ said
the young man behind the Doctor’s shoulder, harshly.
‘I’m beginning to remember why I left this planet in the first place,’
snapped the Doctor. Then he took a deep breath to calm himself. He didn’t
have time for this. Almost without thinking his hands grasped his lapels
as he entered lecture mode. ‘There are things I have to tell you. Believe
me when I tell you it is vitally important that I do not give you too much
information. I need to pay my full attention to this fact. In other words,
distractions would be most unwelcome. Mightn’t it be worth your time to
save questions until after I have finished, hmmm?’
High above the High Council of Gallifrey was meeting.
It was a clandestine meeting, one which didn’t appear on any official
documents or minutes. It was a meeting specifically designed, in fact,
to prevent the attendance of one specific person. To prevent her attendance
in person, although her voice was clearly audible in the sealed, soundproofed
chamber. It had seemed a travesty of tradition and respect to bug the chamber
of the Pythia, but it had been a natural step to take for their own self-preservation.
It had been a step none of those present had regretted since, as the Pythia’s
mental instability went from bad to worse.
Now they listened, enthralled, as the Pythia’s visitor, the prophecied
stranger, explained his presence.
‘You don’t seem to have paid attention,’ the man was saying harshly
in response to the Pythia’s query. ‘Mr Andovar is also from the future.’
‘So,’ and the Pythia’s voice came to them clearly although she was
barely more than whispering, ‘I am to be successful. The Time Scaphes will
work.’
There was a slight pause before the Doctor’s voice spoke again. ‘No,
they will not. A time is coming when time will be traversed by the might
of science, not psyche. When Gallifrey will become the guardian of the
secret of time travel and protector of the universe from those less knowledgeable.’
‘A glorious future,’ the Pythia whispered, ‘befitting the standing
of the Pythias. Gallifrey will maintain its rightful place at the head
of the universe. You bring good news indeed, Doctor. Tell me more!’
‘You are mistaken,’ the Doctor said sadly. ‘You will be the last of
the Pythias. Gallifrey’s future is assured through the line of Rassilon.’
The High Council stared at each other in horrified awe as they listened
to the Pythia’s response. ‘You are mistaken, Doctor. This future you speak
of. It is surely just a possible future, the way events could turn.’
‘On the contrary,’ said the Doctor. ‘It is already fixed. And you must
help me ensure that it remains that way, or risk the stability of this
entire universe.’
‘But you are already too late!’ A note of crowing entered the Pythia’s
voice, of irrational triumph over some unseen foe. ‘Rassilon died months
ago. Your future is no future at all! Now Gallifrey can make its own future.
And you must help us!’
The voice was abruptly cut off, and all eyes swiveled to stare at Glasson,
whose outstretched hand still rested lightly on the audio controls. There
was a moment of unspoken communication, as the minds of the Council melded
in unison. There was more, but the Council had heard enough. They pondered
over what they had heard for some time.
Eventually Glasson spoke. As nominal Castellan he had theoretical control
over those decisions the Council could make without the decisions of the
Pythia. He was a down-to-Gallifrey person with a good grasp of priorities
and his decisions could always be depended upon for Gallifrey’s good. ‘You
know what this means, of course,’ he rumbled.
There was a long silence during which none of the Council could bring
themselves to admit that they, in fact, did not know what it meant.
At length Glasson completed the thought. ‘We can discontinue funding
for the Time Scaphe program...’"