Doctor Who_ Logopolis Part 5

'The Master . . . perhaps that was it. Or perhaps . . .' The Doctor's voice tailed off into a chilling silence. His eye had come to rest on something high up on the bridge that overlooked them. Adric could swear the pale, vaguely defined figure hadn't been there the moment before. The distance made it quite impossible to distinguish any details of the face, but Adric knew positively that the solitary figure was looking directly at his companion.

Eventually the Doctor said, in a strange harsh tone that was quite new to Adric, 'Nothing like this has ever happened before.' And without taking his eyes off the figure on the bridge, he gestured to Adric to stay by the TARDIS. 'I've got to get to the bottom of this,'

was the Doctor's parting remark, as he left him to cross the broken pontoon towards the bank. He picked his way through the weeds and rubble, making for the bridge where the watching figure stood translucent against the sky.

At first the figure didn't move, except to keep his face towards the Doctor, who was now scrambling over the rusty girders that littered the approach to the bridge. Then Adric saw the mysterious observer detach himself from his point of vigil and move towards the Doctor. Like a pair of duellists they met on the bridge, facing each other.

The bargaining began; at least it seemed like bargaining from where Adric stood. The Doctor's scarf blew wildly in the wind, mimicking the earnest gesticulations of its owner.

Whatever the Doctor was saying, the other's replies came more slowly and were less animated. But far from calming the Doctor down, they only seemed to be stirring him on to greater agitation. And then the Doctor was turning to gesture towards Adric, as if the boy's presence was somehow part of the debate. But whatever point the Doctor was trying to make, the other seemed obstinately to reject.

Adric's fear crystallised into a single thought: the Doctor was face to face with somebody - or something - of which he too was terribly afraid.

There had been no sound from the stone pillars or the police box for a long time now, only the rustle of the ivy she moved against in groping her way along the wall. But never for a moment did Tegan dare take her eyes off the courtyard in front of her: somewhere among those crumbling pillars, those small ragged trees, that invisible mocking presence must still be lurking. Then, close by her ear, came a sudden sharp bat-squeak, and a gust of air chilled her cheek. Tegan almost jumped out of her skin.

It was a door, unoiled for centuries, moving in the breeze from somewhere outside. At last there was a way out! She rushed through it, slamming it shut behind her.

She was back in the network of those endlessly winding corridors. Round and round, she thought, like a hamster in a cage.

The Doctor marched into the console room, followed by Adric. 'Door,' snapped the Doctor.

Adric ran to work the lever, his head bristling with questions. But the Doctor was rapidly flicking switches on the console, bringing the colony of little lights and panels back to life. 'Co-ordinates. Come on, come on . . . Co-ordinates - are they set?'

'Where are we going?'

'Logopolis, of course. Set?'

At a nod from his companion the Doctor pulled the dematerialisation lever and the time column began to flash and oscillate. At least everything was working; that was rea.s.suring. But Adric found the Doctor's drastic changes of plan very unnerving, and so was the gloomy silence that settled over the console room once they were in flight . . .

Adric's voice was small in the huge silence. 'Doctor? What . . . what happened out there?'

'I have dipped into the future,' the Doctor replied, as if to himself. His face was a mask, animated only by the steady pumping light from the time column.

The journey to Logopolis seemed to go on for ever. Eventually, when the Doctor detached himself from the console and began to pace the floor, walking in disconcerting unison with the oscillations of the time column, Adric could bear the tension no longer.

'Aren't you going to tell me anything about it?'

'Of course,' the Doctor replied, making a concerted effort to cheer up. 'Wel , as much as I can. Which isn't very much . . .'

What it was that stopped him revealing everything he didn't say. Adric was able to deduce that the Doctor's concern with his own fate and that of the TARDIS was now almost a trivial matter. His fears were focused now on some future event or series of events that he was only able to describe obliquely.

'On Earth they cal it "bad luck". A chain of circ.u.mstances that seems to fragment the laws that hold the universe together. We're in for a run of it, a storm of it, a positive earthquake of "bad luck".' Then he took Adric by the shoulders and spoke to him face to face.

'The Master is a Time Lord - and that means we have an obligation to deal with him ourselves without endangering others.'

'Keep it in the family,' Adric agreed. 'And we will.'

'Not we, Adric. You are one of the others.'

The boy flushed. 'But I can help you . . . can't I?'

'In the ordinary way, yes, invaluable. But this is something far too dangerous.'

A remark of the Doctor's had puzzled Adric. As a Time Lord he was always dipping into the future; that was precisely what had made the phrase so chilling. The answer was now written in the Doctor's eyes. He was talking about a kind of future normally closed to him - and that could only mean his own.

'The man on the high bridge told you about the "bad luck"!'

The Doctor nodded, and Adric drew a sharp breath. 'So it was the Master out there.

You've done a deal with him!'

The Doctor's eyes narrowed. 'How do you deduce that?'

'I just guessed,' the boy said.

'Never guess unless you have to. There's quite enough uncertainty in the world already.'

And he didn't say another word until it was time to land in Logopolis.

The Doctor deemed it polite to show himself first, by way of warning the Logopolitans of his arrival. He put the TARDIS into hover mode above the City and flicked on the viewer screen.

The two travellers looked down on a huge shallow dome smoothed out of the pale rose natural rock. Swirling involutions etched deep into its surface: these seemed to be the city streets, for in the depths of the pink shadows Adric could just make out cave-like holes that he took to be dwelling-places. Apart from a few tiny moving figures there was little sign of life. From the perspective of the hovering TARDIS the City of Logopolis looked like a giant brain.

At one end the rock piled up into a mound that might have been a single large building - some kind of scientific establishment, Adric deduced from the ma.s.sive parabolic antenna mounted above it. A transmission site, perhaps?

The Doctor approached the screen and looked hard at the big skeletal bowl of the aerial, unable to answer Adric's question. 'Must be a recent addition. There'll be plenty of time to find out all about it.'

He touched a b.u.t.ton on the console and the TARDIS began to move across the City to where the smooth dome of rock graduated into a flat plateau. Then, as they prepared to land the most extraordinary thing happened.

The door leading to the inner part of the TARDIS opened with a bang. Tear-stained, showing signs of her exhausting wanderings through the maze of the TARDIS corridors, the red-haired girl in the purple uniform marched into the room.

Tegan's voice exploded like a shrapnel-bomb in the quiet of the console room. 'I demand to see whoever is in charge of this s.h.i.+p.'

6.

The plateau at the north end of the City was flat and open, overlooking a horizon of pale rose sands that merged mistily into the opalescent sky. But the silent figures in flowing dark robes had not gathered in the High Place to look across that breathtaking view. As more of their number spilled in from the direction of the City, stepping out from the shallow gullies which in their southward development became the myriad alleys of dwelling places, all eyes were turned towards the materialising blue police box.

Their Leader was a man of about sixty, though from his a.s.sured posture and the s.h.i.+ne of his skin beneath his short steel-grey hair he seemed to be in his prime. The crowd around the TARDIS thickened and the Leader stepped forward to greet the Doctor.

But rather rudely in the face of all this hospitality the TARDIS door remained closed.

Tegan was the cause of the trouble. She stood defiantly in front of the console, facing the Doctor and Adric.

'I've told you - Tegan Jovanka. It's my name. And before I answer any more questions, I want to know exactly who you are.'

Adric briskly introduced himself and the Doctor.

'And this,' said the Doctor, pointing at the viewer screen which now displayed the sombrely dressed crowd gathering around the TARDIS, 'is Logopolis. Where I happen to have some urgent business. What am I going to do with you?'

Tegan had a very positive answer. 'You can take me right back where you found me.

My aunt is waiting in her car to take me to the airport.'

The Doctor had just taken the data block out of the memory management system and was on the point of reaching for the door lever. 'Your aunt? A plump brown-haired woman? A red sports car?'

Tegan was taken aback. 'You know Aunt Vanessa?'

'I've . . . er . . . seen very little of her,' the Doctor prevaricated.

'Right, that settles it. You'll have to come with us.' He levered open the door, waving Adric and Tegan out towards the waiting Logopolitans.

At that moment there was no blue police box inside the cloister room. A handsome dark green tree of the variety Prunus Laurocerasus, or cherry laurel, had, however, become apparently firmly rooted in the ground a little distance from where the Doctor, Adric and Tegan emerged to face the welcoming party. The Master's TARDIS did not suffer from the same defects as the Doctor's. In particular, the chameleon circuit was working perfectly.

The Doctor allowed the Leader of the Logopolitans to conclude his short speech of welcome. Crisp, well-regimented applause ill.u.s.trated that Logopolis was indeed honoured by the Doctor's visit.

'Nice of you to put it like that, Monitor,' said the Doctor. 'I arrive . . .' he threw a meaningful look towards Tegan ' . . . with a somewhat enlarged entourage. But we're very honoured to be here.'

Tegan was about to raise her voice in protest, but Adric lifted his finger authoritatively to his lips, a trick the Doctor often used.

The Doctor and the Monitor began to saunter towards the pink folds of rock that led to the City. Promising to explain everything if she promised in turn not to make a fuss in front of all these important people, Adric induced Tegan to follow.

'Time has changed little for either of us, Doctor,' the Monitor observed. 'You continue to roam the universe, and we persist in our simple existence on this planet.'

The Doctor laughed. 'That antenna on the other side of the city - far from simple, I should have said.'

'Occasionally our researches require what is sometimes called 'technology'.' With a generous sweep of his hand the Monitor acknowledged the Doctor's point. 'But for the most part our computations are enough.'

The gully they were walking along had grown into a small, smooth-shouldered canyon.

Logopolis began here. Adric detached himself from Tegan's whispered questions long enough to look closely at the caves he had noticed from the TARDIS; he now saw they were square, open-fronted cel s carved from the rock on either hand. At first they dotted the walls intermittently, but as the Doctor's entourage drew closer to the heart of the City the perforations became more regular, until eventually they were completely adjacent, with only a column width separating each cell, row upon row of them, winding the full distance of every street.

The crowd, that had been following at a respectful distance, was now diminis.h.i.+ng. One by one the Logopolitans left the procession, each taking up his station at the entrance of his small, well-ordered dwelling.

The air had begun to chirrup to a sound that might have come from a swarm of large crickets. The Doctor was so deeply engaged in his philosophical exchange with his distinguished host that he seemed not to hear it. Adric couldn't explain it to Tegan - there was a lot that he hadn't been able to explain - but at that moment they turned a corner that looked down into a street they had already pa.s.sed.

A Logopolitan sat at the entrance to each cell working beads on a kind of small frame held on his lap. 'They're just like abacuses!' Tegan exclaimed. As he clicked his beads each seemed to be chanting softly under his breath, and Adric remembered what the Doctor had said about the muttering and intonation. Waves of information were being pa.s.sed from cell to cell, calculated upon and then pa.s.sed on again to the next. It was like being in the middle of a huge, living calculating machine.

The canyons became tall. The Monitor lead them towards a building that was far larger than the rest, boasting what appeared from the layout of the windows to be several storeys. They mounted the flight of steps that lead to the big rectangular entrance.

What was left of the crowd remained outside. Tegan was thankful at least to find the air cooler in the large hall. And then there were more of the same pink steps, before they entered a room that was quite different from the other architecture she had seen. Its surfaces were perfectly even and rectangular, certainly not carved from the rock.

'Our Central Register,' the Monitor announced.

'You have been busy, Monitor,' said the Doctor, handing over the data block. 'All this is new.'

'And more than we need for our immediate researches. Back-up facilities.' The Monitor took the data block over to a long grey work-station that ran the entire length of the wall and settled himself in front of what looked at first like a black console screen. Adric expected some picture to appear there when the Monitor put the data block in front of it.

But instead the Logopolitan leaned forward and, consulting the data block from time to time, began to whisper. Adric edged closer and saw that what he had taken to be a screen was a dark cavity in the wall.

The sound was meaningless to Adric. It was composed of short words that the Monitor articulated with great clarity, carefully separating each from the next as though every syllable were precious. Somehow Adric was reminded of the words in the story about the Angel. But the rhythm in the Monitor's incantation owed much to the fact that the same sounds kept coming round again and again.

'Kayrie gorrock gorrock kayrie zel. Kayrie nerus nerus kayrie zel. Kayrie av kayrie av perdunesta zel. Ressa carra otto perdunesta zel . . .'

Out in the narrow streets the susurration of sound was changing, taking on the s.h.i.+fting rhythms of the Monitor's voice as the new whispered numbers chained from cel to cell.

The abacuses began to clack their calculations, building to a fugue that echoed through street after winding street.

At the very edge of Logopolis the sound of the whole city blended into the moan of the wind hurrying over the plateau from the stretch of rosy sands below. Two objects dominated the high flat ground: the TARDIS and a plump, cherry laurel tree, whose dark-green, glossy foliage marked it as an unlikely product of that stony soil.

And then there was no tree.

Suddenly, with no intermediate stage, in the place of the succulent green shape stood an architectural pillar, stocky, yellowing and fluted. Only the subtlest hint of the laurel tree remained, in the outline of the sharp-toothed, lance-shaped leaves carved around the base and the capital. The pillar stayed there for a moment, rather as a dragon-fly waits for its wings to dry in the sun. And then, with a chuffing, whirring sound, it dissolved from sight.

The Monitor rose from the console and turned to the Doctor. 'The code is being compiled.'

'Thank you, Monitor. I'm certainly looking forward to having a properly functioning TARDIS.'

'Is this business going to take long?' Tegan demanded.

The compilation would only take a matter of minutes, the Monitor a.s.sured them. This wasn't enough to calm Tegan down - nothing was. The Doctor, who still needed to clear up some points of detail with the Monitor about how the new figures were to be re-entered into the TARDIS system, appealed with a silent gesture to Adric. Do shut her up, his glance suggested.

'It's not the Doctor's fault you wandered on board,' the boy said, matching Tegan's aggression with a little of his own. He contrived at the same time to draw her to the window, well away from where the Doctor and the Monitor were trying to have a civilised discussion.

'Wandered? That s.h.i.+p was deliberately disguised as a police box. Talk about flying under false colours.'

'Yes, I'd better explain about the TARDIS. You see, there's this thing called the chameleon circuit. It's simplest to look at it as a sort of logical gearing between the real-world interface and the internal quasi-dimensional continuum . . .' In mind-numbing detail, Adric began his discourse.

Below the window the winding streets bristled with whispers and the clack of abacuses.

In each cell entrance sat a Logopolitan, flicking his beads and intoning the information on to the next. The cells were the simplest of living quarters: a pal et on the floor, a few cooking implements hanging from hooks on the wall, and around the perimeter of the small white-washed room a neat collection of rectangular tablets that might have been the Logopolitan equivalent of books.

One cel in all that winding chain was more elaborately furnished than the rest, although the occupant sitting at the entrance was too absorbed in the business of 'the Numbers'

to realise it at the time. Behind him, at the rear of the cell, a stout, yellowing, fluted pillar had formed, reaching from roof to ceiling.

The savage sizzling sound that echoed round the cell went unheard on the street outside, drowned beneath the rising susurration. Quite suddenly, the stool where the Logopolitan had been sitting was empty; the abacus had fallen to the floor. Beside it lay the occupant, immobile, eyes staring at ceiling, diminished to the size of a dol .

While the whispers and clacking of abacus beads rose to a pitch, Adric was coming to the end of his short lecture on the chameleon circuit's functioning - or rather, reasons for not functioning. He had told her everything he knew on the subject, and what he did not know he had invented. At least it kept Tegan quiet until the Monitor returned from the console with the results of the compilation.

'This will restore your chameleon circuit, Doctor,' said the Monitor.

'Splendid, Monitor.' The Doctor took the data block. 'The TARDIS and I have been looking forward to this.'