Doctor Who_ The Gallifrey Chronicles Part 17

'He plays the guitar and sings. He's very good at it.'

'We have a music night on Tuesdays. Would you be interested?'

Fitz hesitated.

'He's interested,' Trix said. 'You've got to be brave,' she added for Fitz's benefit.

'OK.'

'Tonight?'

'Tonight? Well, is that enough time to put the word around. . . ?'

'No offence, but we're not really expecting people to come from far and wide. You'll be entertaining the regulars. If you'd rather wait until next week, that's fine.'

'He'll sing a song tonight. Won't you, Fitz?'

Fitz thought about it for a couple of seconds, then broke into a goofy smile.

'Yeah.'

'You know that the Vortex was irreparably damaged at the moment of Gallifrey's destruction. It was a miracle we saw what we did.'

The Doctor nodded. 'The explosion must have created an event horizon in relative time. It prevents any information escaping, and anyone from travelling back to prevent it blowing up, or anyone from Gallifrey's past escaping into the present.'

'So it's impossible to see whatever was making those "footsteps". Convenient for you that the evidence that exonerates you is tucked away in those precise moments.'

'I have no idea whether it exonerates me or not. I'm here, Marnal. Something happened between me sitting in the Edifice waiting to die and me. . .

well, the next thing was me waking up on Earth in the nineteenth century.

The beginning of the hundred years I was stuck on Earth. I suppose.'

'You never questioned who you were?'

101.

'I did very little else for a hundred years. Something had happened, I knew that.'

'You knew you were implicated in a terrible crime.'

'I knew that whatever had happened, trying to remember made me feel uneasy just thinking about it.'

'Guilt.'

'No. . . although there were times when I mistook the feeling for that.'

'You don't feel guilt now you've seen what you did to your own people?'

The Doctor thought about it for a moment. 'I regret any deaths, not just those of my own people.'

'The life of a human is worth as much as the life of a Time Lord?' Marnal asked.

The Doctor glanced over to Rachel. 'Yes,' he told them. 'Why? Do your laws of time say something different?'

'If either a human or a Time Lord had to die, you wouldn't mind which one?'

'What do you mean "had to die"? I would try to prevent both of them from dying.'

'If you could only save one?'

The Doctor was scowling. 'This is stupid. It doesn't even qualify as a hypo-thetical situation.'

'You would betray a member of your own race?'

'If there was no alternative, if the greater good would be better served, yes.

Anyway, what's wrong with humans?'

The Doctor kept a careful eye on Rachel. If he could get her onside, he would be able to get out of here. Marnal obviously had contempt for human beings. If the Doctor could goad him into saying that out loud, Rachel would see Marnal in his true colours.

'Earth's your favourite planet?' Marnal asked.

The Doctor deflated at the change of subject. 'I have a soft spot for it, yes.

From what I gather, you must have too.'

'Is that what you think?'

'You've spent over a hundred years here. You seem to have bought property.

Oh, and made at least one friend.' The Doctor smiled at Rachel. 'I did the same once. Without, of course, your glittering literary career. I'm quite fond of human beings.'

'Do you prefer humans to your own kind?'

'If you're a typical Time Lord, then perhaps the universe is better off without us.'

Marnal stepped back, clutching his lapels, apparently satisfied with what he'd heard.

102.

'Rather than trying to score debating points,' the Doctor suggested, 'why don't we work together to find out what happened? We both want the same thing.'

Marnal shook his head. 'Believe me, you don't want what I want, Doctor.

One last debating point. It's interesting, given what you've just said, that Fitz managed to survive when every single Time Lord was killed, isn't it?'

He indicated to Rachel that he wanted her to help him take the gla.s.s bottle back upstairs.

'I'll leave you to think about that,' he said.

The Doctor stayed quiet. He didn't want to keep reminding Marnal about his companions. No doubt, Fitz and Trix would be trying to find him. Or perhaps they'd found him already, and were waiting for the best moment to come to his rescue.

Rachel made Marnal a coffee. His ready meal was in the oven, which took forever to heat up.

Marnal was sitting in the living room, a place as dull and dusty as the rest of the house. She sat next to him on the sofa and handed him his mug.

'Are you OK?' she asked.

'Me?'

'You saw your planet destroyed.'

'I knew it had happened.'

'That's not the same as seeing it.'

'No. I knew the Doctor was guilty before, but. . . now I've seen what he did.

You said something before about no need for law courts, you could just play the tape of the crime.'

'That's not exactly what I said, but '

'His guilt is now beyond any doubt. I'd thought that when I confronted him with his crime it would be too much for him. That he would break down and confess, that he would be racked with remorse and self-loathing. If anything, he seems more calm than he did before.'

Rachel nodded. 'He was subdued at first, but then he recovered.'

'That makes sense to you?' he asked.

'I don't know how Time Lords' minds work but sometimes, for human people, knowing something, even if it's horrible, is better than not knowing.'

He looked sceptical, so she gave him an example.

'Like when a child vanishes. If, after a week or so, the body is found, it's a relief in a way for the parents. They can begin the mourning process, they can start to rebuild their lives. That's better than constantly waiting for a phone call, making a.s.sumptions, but never knowing for certain whether their child is alive or dead. Or if you're diagnosed with an illness. Knowing it has a name, 103 even if there's no cure, can be better than not knowing why you keep getting sick.'

Marnal was shaking his head, not crediting what he'd just heard. 'Human minds are so confusing.'

'Perhaps the Doctor's mind is more human than Time Lord. He spends all his time with people. He seems to have spent a lot of time on the Earth, perhaps some human stuff has rubbed off on him.'

'I have spent more than a century here, and I a.s.sure you my thoughts remain unsullied.'

Rachel sipped her coffee.

'The Doctor's guilt is now proven. The only question remaining is the manner of his punishment.'

'Are you going to kill him?' Rachel asked, a little aghast. She'd seen Shallow Shallow Grave Grave and she knew how difficult it was to get rid of a body. Plus, of course, it would be murder. and she knew how difficult it was to get rid of a body. Plus, of course, it would be murder.

'He has to suffer.'

Rachel felt a little cold. She thought about the Doctor, tied up and alone in the draughty cellar.

'It's not as though you can go for an eye for an eye,' she said.

Marnal looked miserable. Rachel went to get his meal. She took it out of the oven, and found herself mus.h.i.+ng up the potato for him. Force of habit.

She went back to find Marnal still hunched up on the sofa.

'What punishment is there?' he asked her.

'I think you're still looking for answers,' she said. 'You need the Doctor for those.'

'I have the only important answer. He destroyed Gallifrey, he killed all but a handful of my people. Try to imagine that.'

Rachel sighed. 'I don't think I can. It's like being marooned on a desert island, then finding Hitler there. You can't just phone the police, or whoever you're meant to phone.'

Marnal was deep in thought.

'I don't know. . . ' Rachel said. She wasn't used to thinking like this. Who would be? 'If Hitler really was the last man on Earth, would I kill him? We'd have a lot to talk about.'

Marnal looked at her, a pained expression on his face.

'You know what I mean,' Rachel said. 'If he was the last man on Earth. I don't know how I'd punish him. How did your people punish their criminals?'

He thought about that for a moment. 'That's a good question. This is a situation without obvious precedent, but there may be something in one of the books. I'll need your help to find it.'

104.

Marnal had suggested he think, so the Doctor had decided to think.

He began to meditate. He'd tried it a few times before, searching for some clue to who he was. Always, the message had come back loud and clear from the back of his mind: DON'T Now, though, the Doctor had a little more to go on. He knew he couldn't avoid the truth, and he knew, deep down, that his brain contained the answers.

The cellar was dark and cold, the house above him was quiet.

His eyes should be closed, his mind opened.

There was no 'him' nor 'eyes' nor 'closed', simply 'mind'.

DON'T The Doctor's eyes were open, as though he'd been woken suddenly. He was back in the dark cellar.

Back, back to his beginning.

There was an old myth that humans used only 10 per cent of their brains.

This was a simple misunderstanding. Give or take, there was activity in every part of the human brain. But the physical structures in there were capable of ten times the activity they actually performed. It wasn't that a human being had a brain like a house with ninth-tenths of the rooms sealed off, it was more as though a road network wasn't carrying as much traffic as it was designed to carry.

He was back in the dark cellar.