Doctor Who_ Logopolis Part 10

'Now . . . I want no arguments from any of you. Adric, Tegan and Nyssa . . . that way!'

The rocks which had once formed high cliffs around them had now crumbled down to a landscape of gentle undulations; a pink plain lay where the great whispering City had once stood. Beyond the Doctor's gesturing arm they saw only the distant outline of the Central Register, surmounted by the wire basket of the antenna, broke the skyline. But his finger was pointing to a small rectangle some way ahead.

'The TARDIS!' exclaimed Nyssa.

Tegan peered at the distant blue shape. 'It's followed us!'

'But how can it do that,' asked Adric, 'with no one in it?'

'Did I say there was no one in it?' snapped the Doctor.

The two Time Lords stood shoulder to shoulder. The crisp, imperative tone of the Doctor, and something about the evil certainty of the Master's smile, persuaded them of the uselessness of pleading to stay. The Doctor was collaborating with the Master, and there was no place for them now in his plans.

He waved them off with an irritated flap of his arm. 'My friend will take care of you.'

The three companions trudged towards the TARDIS, speculating about who this 'friend'

might be. Nyssa guessed it must be the man who had brought her to Logopolis.

She was right. They saw the translucent figure standing at the door, but he had slipped inside before they were close enough to make out his features. It was not until much later, when the TARDIS was in flight, that they were to meet him face to face.

With a sense of relief the Doctor watched them enter the TARDIS, aware of the evil presence at his elbow. At least there was a chance they would be safe. Then he became aware that the Monitor was nowhere to be seen. 'The fool has deserted us!'

said the Master. 'Doesn't he realise he has no chance of survival without our help?'

Desertion didn't sound like the Monitor's style at all, the Doctor pointed out. He had gone somewhere for a purpose.

'Purpose!' exclaimed the Master. 'A word almost without meaning now. If he's trying to salvage the Research Team's work he may have gone back to the Central Register.'

The Master shaded his eyes and peered towards the distant building. Parts of it had been eroded already, but it seemed to be standing stronger than the rocks around it. It occurred to the Doctor that this might be because of its relative newness. But there was no telling how long it would last.

Together the Doctor and the Master began to pick their way towards it through the debris. Occasional small landslips opened up beneath their feet, impeding their journey, and reminding them of the increasing instability. Soon even this dusty ground would become unstable. And more was at stake than just Logopolis. Even as they advanced painfully towards the Central Register, the rot was spreading outwards through the universe, the Second Law of Thermodynamics unleashed after aeons of constraint.

'I suggest we collect the Monitor, then get out,' said the Doctor.

'How? In my TARDIS?'

'There's no other way.'

The Master smiled. 'You're presuming a lot, Doctor.'

'Aren't I?' said the Doctor. 'And on so short a friends.h.i.+p.'

By the time the two Time Lords had reached the steps of the Central Register the TARDIS was pa.r.s.ecs away. But the dematerialisation had not gone quite according to the Doctor's plans. The light was already flas.h.i.+ng, ready for departure from Logopolis, when the door suddenly opened and Tegan backed out, her flight bag over her shoulder.

'Come back!' It was Adric calling from inside. 'None of us wants to leave the Doctor. But it's best to do as he says.' He appeared at the door, pleading with Tegan.

'Best for him, maybe. It's not personal devotion, I can tell you that. But he's guaranteed to get me back to London Airport, and I'm going to stick with him to make sure he keeps his word.' And she set off resolutely back the way they had come.

'Tegan!' But it was no good just calling her name, and he couldn't run after her and leave Nyssa. The TARDIS was already beginning to chuff and whirr. Adric closed the door . . . and the TARDIS was gone.

Tegan found the spot where the Doctor and the Master had been standing, but the only sign of them was a set of vague footprints. At first it seemed an easy track for someone brought up in the outback to follow, but small potholes kept appearing, and the wind blew streaming veils of dust across the ground, obscuring the horizon.

She was entering what once must have been the middle of the City, if what remained of the dwellings was anything to go by. The ruins were taller here: cells open to the sky, some of them almost complete except for their roofs. The ground was more solid, but in a way that made it more dangerous. Instead of s.h.i.+fting sand beneath her feet, great creva.s.ses would occasionally open up just where she was about to step.

Should she have stayed in the TARDIS, she wondered. That was the trouble with having an independent mind. Tegan consoled herself with the thought that if being lost and frightened on a rapidly disintegrating planet was good for the moral fibre, hers must be receiving a tremendous boost.

The Central Register was still recognisable, although portions of the ceiling and walls had crumbled away, letting in the opalescent light of the Logopolitan sky. The two Time Lords found the Monitor where they expected, seated at the Earth computer surrounded by sheets of print-out. Several of the large disk-drive units that surrounded the console were humming with activity.

The Doctor touched the Monitor's arm. 'The stability is now critical. You must come with us.'

'For precisely that reason I must stay here, Doctor.'

'What can you do here?' said the Master. 'You told us Logopolitan maths wouldn't run on a computer.'

The Monitor gestured to the print-out strewn across the desk in front of him. 'We were developing this as the program to take the burden from our own shoulders: a series of data statements to keep the Charged Vacuum Emboitements open of their own accord.'

'The Advanced Research Project?' asked the Doctor.

The Monitor nodded. 'The computer holds a complete log of that research.'

The Master s.n.a.t.c.hed at the print-out. Somewhere in all this carefully annotated ma.s.s of numbers there might be a permanent solution to the problem of keeping the CVEs open. While the Monitor continued his preoccupation with the console, the Master and the Doctor poured over the doc.u.ment, tracing and retracing the folds of logic.

Eventually, the Master left the doc.u.ment and went to peer over the Monitor's shoulder. It had become clear to the Doctor, who paused now to suck the end of his scarf and think, that although the work of the Research Team was far from complete, it had certainly been on the right track. The Master felt differently. He returned to whisper into the Doctor's ear, 'His work is loose, speculative, useless. We cannot wait for him. We must vacate.'

A creaking sound, emanating from the walls, reminded them that the local structure would not hold much longer. 'Vacate?' echoed the Doctor. 'Where to? The col apse will spread out like ripples in a pool throughout the whole of s.p.a.ce-time. No, what we have to do is . . .' He tailed off into silence, somewhat stuck for options.

'Wel , Doctor?'

The Doctor waved his arms vaguely but enthusiastically. 'A positive response.

Something definite, resourceful. Entropy works by rusting the resolve quite as much as by crus.h.i.+ng cities into sand dunes.'

'You have a concrete idea behind all that poetry, Doctor?' sneered the Master.

The Doctor had to admit he hadn't. He put his hands back in his pockets and returned to his study of the print-out.

'My dear Doctor. You're a poor scientist. It's easy to see why you make so many mistakes.'

'And why you make so few friends,' the Doctor replied.

The bitter exchange was interrupted by the Monitor rising from the Earth computer. 'I have done what I can in the time. A desperate last effort. It only remains to align the antenna and beam the program out to s.p.a.ce.' The antenna still held firm on what remained of the roof. It was a doubtful enterprise; even the Doctor for all his optimism had to admit that. He was about to follow the Monitor through the narrow door that lead to the upper storey, when, through a gaping hole in the wall, he saw a familiar purple uniform in the street below. 'Tegan!' shouted the Doctor.

'Thank heavens you're still here, anyway.' She arrived breathless at the top of the steps, her uniform dusty and her shoes scuffed.

'Tegan! I told you to get out of here.'

'No thanks, Doc. I'm staying with you. You're the only insurance policy I've got.'

The Doctor dragged her inside, ducking a shower of debris. Above them, through ever increasing gaps in the ceiling, they could see the Monitor treading warily across the roof towards the antenna. At one point he stopped to wave to them. 'There is a CVE close by we might be able to re-open, he called down, pointing to an area of sky.

Tegan held her breath; his progress across the crumbling roof looked suicidal. 'What's he doing?'

The Master snorted by way of answer. 'He can do as he pleases - he's harmless. But you and I, Doctor, we must form a plan. I propose . . . one: withdrawal to a position of temporary security; two: reconfiguration of our two TARDISes into time cone inverters; three: creating a stable safe zone by applying temporal inversion isometry to as much of s.p.a.ce-time as we can isolate . . .'

Tegan had been unable to take her eyes off the Monitor, and now her scream interrupted the Master. He and the Doctor turned to look upwards. Another shower of silt was pouring from the ceiling, caused by loose stonework tumbling from the roof where the Monitor was flailing, as if trying to retain his balance. And then, as if in slow motion, they saw him slip. But the horror of it was that instead of falling heavily, the figure of the Monitor began to float down through the ceiling towards them, like some huge flake of ash blown in the smoke of a fire.

The body hit the floor with scarcely a sound, cracked open like a hollow sh.e.l.l, and powdered away to dust.

Tegan stared at the spot, her hand pressed involuntarily against her mouth. 'Horrible, horrible.' She heard a harsh, dry voice that seemed to speak her thoughts and looked up to see the Master backing away towards the door.

'Hardly more horrible than turning people into shrunken dol s,' she shouted at him.

The Master's eyes were wild and staring in his pallid face. 'No! Anything but that. Do what you like, Doctor. Logopolis is yours!' At the door he turned and ran, disappearing down the stairs with debris cascading after him.

'Doctor! We must stop him!' She ran to the window overlooking the street. 'The Master's getting away.

The Doctor had said nothing for a long time. Now he spoke slowly, as if all sense of urgency had drained from him. 'Which means we can't - as he's got the only TARDIS left on Logopolis.'

'Then we've got to get after him.' She ran to the Doctor, but he gestured to her to let him think for a moment.

'Reconfigure the two TARDISes into time cone inverters,' muttered the Doctor, pensively echoing the Master's proposal. 'Yes, it would have worked - for at least part of the universe. What a waste of a brilliant mind.'

A slab of plaster exploded into fragments at Tegan's feet. 'And a waste of two more brilliant minds if we don't do something soon.'

'You're right. The Monitor's program to re-open the CVE . . . There's a slight chance . . .'

The Doctor's movement towards the Earth computer opened up a rift in the floor, cracking the console. The disk drives juddered to a halt. 'Correction - there was a slight chance.'

The Doctor fell to musing again, infuriating Tegan, who put her lips to his ear and said loudly, as if she were talking to a deaf old man, 'Come on, Doctor. We've got to stop the Master from taking off.'

The Time Lord raised an eyebrow. 'Why? There's no point in running from place to place without a positive approach to take with us. The solution is here . . . somehow . . .

Or somewhere very like this. I had a strange feeling we were very close - before this!'

He tapped the Earth computer emphatically; a panel split and clattered to the floor. The Doctor knelt down, absent-mindedly inspecting the damage. 'I sympathise,' he said, patting the machine. 'I've never felt so close to dissolution before.'

Dissolution? The word sounded so final to Tegan. 'This can't really be the end, Doctor. It can't be.'

The Doctor smiled up at her, as if only then reminded of her presence. 'Of course it can't. There must be something we can do. Some desperate, remote chance. Remote!'

He paused to savour this last word, as if there might be the flavour of salvation in it.

'If it's remote it won't be here, will it, you stupid . . . Doctor!'

Tegan's voice betrayed her panic, but it came out as anger.

The Doctor's eyes flashed back in reply. He clapped his hands together. 'Of course!

Here but not here! That's it.' He suddenly turned on what remained of the computer, and began tearing it to pieces with his hands.

'Doctor! What are you doing?'

'An experiment in optimism. Come on, you can help. I want this thing in pieces.'

Utterly baffled, Tegan threw herself down beside him and helped him tear away the brittle casing.

It seemed to take forever. There were several layers; some could be torn out like damp cardboard, while others were solid and had to be eased out with the Doctor's sonic screwdriver. By the time the interior lay exposed her hands were raw from the effort.

The Doctor said little during the work, and when she had asked him three times what on Earth he meant by 'here and not here' all he said was: 'Precisely - on Earth.' And then he went very quiet, rolled back the voluminous sleeves of his coat and reached into the wreckage.

The thing he eased out was a long rectangle the colour of emerald, to which was attached a neat pattern of small objects that looked like large flat beetles with silver legs. Tegan recognised them as some sort of electronic component.

The Doctor turned the board over in his hand, inspecting it carefully. 'As I thought . . .

Bubble memory.' He handed the device to Tegan with a broad smile. 'Bubble memory . .

. You realise what this means?'

'No, as a matter of fact I don't, Doctor.'

The Doctor reached into the machine again, and produced several more of the flat boards, pa.s.sing each one carefully over to Tegan. 'Bubble memory is non-volatile.

Remove the power - and the bit-patterns are still retained in tiny magnetic domains in these chips.'

So that was the Doctor's idea! The Research Team's last program was still here, in the pile of memory boards Tegan held in her hands. 'Which would be great if we had a computer to run it on,' she said.

'But there is! Exactly like this one.' The Doctor grinned as the light began to dawn in her eyes. 'On Earth, as you suggested.'

'The Pharos Project!' Tegan exclaimed.

'Exactly,' said the Doctor. 'Now al we have to do . . . is get there.'

11.

'Master! Wait! There may be one last chance. Master!'

The Doctor's voice was hoa.r.s.e with calling. Tegan took her turn, giving her loud Aussie voice full rein. 'Master! Don't take off. Please . . . The Doc thinks he's got the answer.'

Inwardly Tegan was close to despair. s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up their eyes against the gusts of fine pink dust, she and the Doctor had trudged out from the ruins of the Central Register in a wide sweep of the flattened landscape. It seemed to her that even if there were something in the Doctor's crazy plan for the fragile memory boards she was carrying, the chances were that the Master was long gone.